The Fictioneer

Jump-start

2005-03-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it's harder to get started again than I would have thought.

I looked around last night and noted that I've been trying lots of different things to jump-start my mental health, and somewhere in here I accidentally struck gold. Unfortunately, it's like a psychic flash--you might have one, you might benefit from one, but if you're asked to repeat the process, you might not be able to have another one.

So... somewhere in the middle of late-night online games of Ticket to Ride... and struggling to get a new short story off the ground... and preparing for a nine-day trip to Hong Kong... and trying to reconnect with my wife and son... and slowly but surely contacting friends and family again (I still owe some emails to folks like Debra and Glenn, but I'm getting there)... somewhere amidst this and lots of other little Band-Aids, I am starting to feel better.

Man, does shit back up on you when you go to ground.

So, now I'm cleaning up my own mess that I've let trail along behind me for all this time. I've had a fight with some friends about this depression--that sucked, but I think we're doing a fair job of putting it back together again. I've finally had chances to spend time with Janel again, time that reminded me why I love her, why I've always seen her as such a strong and beautiful woman. I've looked around at the promises I've made that need to be kept and the people who've been waiting for me to get this under control. I've started feeling like I can do stuff again.

I've jump-started.

Thank you for helping me, all of you.

Coming Back

2005-02-23T08:09:00.000-08:00

Hey, gang,

I'm continuing to struggling with whatever the inner demons are that have decided to move in and set up housekeeping in my head. That said, I thought I'd try to make a few blog entries just the same, just to play catch up and to reassure friends and family that I'm alive. These aren't the same demons that apparently were recently living in Hunter Thompson's head, for instance.

So, starting on the weekend, I'll ease back into blogging. It may take me some time to gear back up to once a day--as some of you know, that's a real drain to hit that mark every 24 hours--but I'm going to try to at least be faithful to the readers who've been faithful to me.

That said, I owe a bunch of you emails. Glenn, Mitch, Luana, Debra, lots and lots of people. I promise, I'm digging my way back.

Taking Time Off

2005-01-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

Hey, gang,

I'm going to take some time away from the blog. To be honest--and if you're gonna be honest somewhere, it might as well be here--I've been more than a little depressed lately, and it turns out that writing for the blog becomes unwieldy when I try to focus on it in this state. I've started and stopped, started and stopped, and I feel like I have nothing to say that isn't... well, that isn't this.

It's surprising how many individual things contribute to an overall sense of emotional disorientation. It doesn't help that I'm a depressive personality to begin with--I'm not as cyclic as a true manic-depressive, by comparison, but I'm sufficiently regular that I can expect some chemical imbalance once every couple of months. I wrote through a few of these bouts, in fact, without much incidence. I can put on a happy face pretty effectively, I think. Often, Janell doesn't even know for sure unless I say something. And most of the time, I'm just fine, good, even better than that.

Lately, though, I have an overwhelming feeling of senselessness and a certain amount of hopelessness. Routine is hell, I've discovered. Knowing what's going to happen to you (barring disaster, which doesn't alleviate hopelessness, by the way) for every hour of every day for the next five days or six days, or that the cycle will repeat beginning next week... this weighs on you. I suppose living in the moment can steer you clear of that, at least for the moment, but it's always there for me, hovering, waiting for me to acknowledge it.

For instance... While I wait for something to happen with my book, I am discouraged from writing another. I recently saw that a book called "P.S. I Love You" was released... using the EXACT premise of a book I wrote TWO years ago. I feel plagiarized... and again, helpless.

Or... I like my job, but it's nothing. It adds nothing to my existence beyond a paycheck. It adds nothing to the lives of my friends and family. It's just a job. I have no pride it telling people what I do. I just do it, am mollified by it, and not comfortable criticizing it in an era when a fine job is, in truth, a GREAT job.

And... In a sea of friends and family, I still feel lonely. It's the reality of feeling depressed--your sense of being a burden to others is powerful and stifling. You smile because you are supposed to. You comfort those who have sufficient courage to admit their worries, and you say nothing about your own because your troubles seem trivial and whiney. You have daydreams of what it would mean for someone to magically recognize your symptoms and swoop in to save you, the Rolling Stones' knight in shining armor, coming to your emotional rescue.

But here's another reality: people can't do that. If they try and fail, you've failed them. They can't be sure what you're looking for, and you can't explain in out loud. Your needs are perhaps unrelated ("I want someone to bring me cookies") or heartbreakingly unspeakable ("I want someone to put their arms around me so I can cry to someone instead of to myself") or too fantasical for anyone to achieve them ("I want to have a week with no commitment, no responsibility, and no expectations of me").

It requires nothing but a moment's isolation to dwell on this; the car ride home can be hard if I don't have Harrison from daycare with me. And it never goes away, even when I distract myself. It's probably something I should see someone about, but again, so much of what you feel is secret, or inexpicable, or downright shameful, that you can't say anything to anyone, let alone to someone who is prepared to scoop you out like ice cream and promptly dissect you for these shortcomings.

So, I'm going to step back from the blog for a week. Please check back next week, Wednesday, and I'll be back with some sort of update. I always have something to talk about--I'm that guy at the party who gets you cornered by the bathroom and just talks your ear off--but it's hard to talk with much enthusiasm when your thoughts lack any sort of enthusiasm about life at all.

Hang in there, come back in a week, and I'll do the same.

More old photos

2005-01-21T21:32:00.000-08:00

I love digging through my old stuff, especially if I've forgotten most of it.

I think of it this way: it's like a stranger's garage sale with a lot of stuff I personally would think is very, very cool.

I love finding the old magazines and rediscovering the article I saved it for; the cereal box prizes that I was dying for when I was ten; the toys and the trinkets and the little souvenirs from Monkey Jungle or the Sunsinger in Allerton Park or Six Flags Over St. Louis or the Fun Fair in Fairview Park.

And there are always the photos. I can't even tell what's going on in some of them anymore. But some of them bring back some quick memories, like these two that I found in the bottom of my dresser drawers.

Remember the idea I had about documenting what you have? I guess I'm testing this idea here!

The first picture is my mom, dad, and sister, circa 1973 or so. I was nine years old, I believe. It's in the kitchen of the house at 1690 West Center Street, before we moved out to the country house where I would live until I moved out on my own. My mom wasn't quite yet 30; my dad was just a few years older. My sister was five or so. My dad, the hippy with the hair down his back, and my mom with the hairstyle popular on Mary Tyler Moore and, now, That '70s Show. I had my very own camera, a black-and-white Instamatic, and this is one of the few posed photos I took. I still have a few scattered others--one of my gerbil Twerpy, of a family Thanksgiving a year or two later, but this is the one that is of my family. Don't be fooled by Tammy's smile; she was forced to pose, I seem to recall.

The second photo is one of those "damn, I almost successfully forgot" photos, of a vacation with my Aunt Debbie, Uncle Bill, and Cousin Valerie in a motorhome cruising through the Ozarks of Missouri. I have no idea where the hell we really were; Yogi clearly doesn't either. Wherever it was, we hated it. Tammy and I were NOT motorhome types; we were more hotel campers. I'm pretty sure it was either summer 1977 or summer 1978, however. The "Darth Vader Lives" button on my shirt was a popular accessory around that time.

You'll note you can't see my face too well beneath the Chicago Cubs cap and the long hair. This is the wonder of selectively sharing your old photos--you can choose to hide the really shameful stuff as long as you like, or at least until you die and someone else finds it.

Or unless you put it in your scrapbook. I'll have to think carefully before I do that with *all* these old photos I found. Maybe I'll show you one to prove it.

Later.

Old School

2005-01-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

While digging around for that Garfield book a few days ago, I came upon a bunch of old photos, one of which was of me and my high school chums (a word I learned from the Hardy Boys) back in 1982. Of the old gang, I still talk to John, Doug, and Brian regularly; the others have gone their own ways in time and space. The four of us who've stayed close, we're even hoping to see one another this summer. The last time I saw any of them was July of 2003; as Bruce Springsteen says, "Time slips away, leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days."

I would not call high school "glory days," by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, in a conversation in 2002 about our twenty-year reunion, Doug and I both chimed in that high school had been sufficiently lousy for us that we weren't interested in going to catch up with anyone other than the guys we *already* talked to regularly. I think John and Brian were surprised; their high school experiences were apparently a lot better than Doug's or mine.

Nevertheless, I do have a few fond memories of that time, and this photo is of the people who, for want of a better term, helped me survive those four years. My D&D gang, my Friday night Rocky Horror Picture Show movie pals, my first drinking buddies, my fellow Beatles fans, my best friends.

I never made any friends in college, which I've since heard is when a lot of folks find their lifetime friends. I think I made mine mostly in high school. (I made a few more when I moved to Seattle, I should note.) Look around at who's in your life now. How far back do they go? When did you meet them? What became of your college, your high school, or even your grade school, friends?

And now the tough question: can you guess which one of these guys from 22 years ago is me, now that I'm old enough to be the father of any of those boys in the picture?

What if... Photo Life Journalism

2005-01-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

What if...

...you wanted to document your life?

What if...

...you had boxes of pictures and the little knick-knacks you've picked up over the course of a lifetime and lots of things that had actual financial value, though no one could tell?

What if...

...those items that had no fiscal value but lots of sentimental value to you were unrecognizable to anyone but you without explanation?

I've been thinking about the era of digital photography, the phenomenon of scrapbooking (you can tell who I live with, can't you?), and the fact that my ego is big enough to blog daily.

What if...

...you took a photograph of your things, the things you've made an effort to collect, and put those photos in a scrapbook, along with a few lines (or even a few pages!) to explain what it was, where it came from, why it's worth anything to the people who might read your words later on...

***
(beneath a photo of a Shirley Jackson's book, Witchcraft in Salem Village)

When I was in elementary school, we read this book. I had no idea that Shirley Jackson was the same morbid woman who wrote the short story "The Lottery." As far as I was concerned, this was just another book we were reading for our fourth grade reading class. It became a much more interesting book when the hippy-teachers at The New School where I went decided to write a play based on the book, and we kids would perform it for the parents.

My best friend, Mark Parnaby, and I were cast at the eleventh hour in bit parts as the constables who escort the young witches to the gallows. We had no lines. We were on "stage" for under a minute. We were notorious troublemakers at The New School, so we were marginalized.

Mark was the one who devised the plan: after we had escorted the witches to the balsa wood gallows and put the nooses around their neck, the lights would go out to imply their executions. In that instant of darkness, Mark argued, we should kick the proverbial--and literal--bucket out from under witch Rosie (one of our fellow students who had received QUITE a substantial speaking role, due to her family's financial influence at the school, Mark further argued). I actually liked Rosie; it was her sister Barbie who I would much rather have hung, but Rosie was the witch we constables were accompanying out from the wings.

So, the deed was done. Balsa wood, I should note, is an extremely flimsy wood. Much chaos ensued following our bid for infamy, as you might guess.

Interestingly, Mark was cast as Handy Holmes, our friend Don as his sidekick Wally Watson, and I as the dim-witted Inspector of Scotland Yard in the next school play we did, a rip-off of the Pink Panther flicks. I'm assuming the attempted hanging of Rosie might have had something to do with it.

Years later, well after college, I stumbled upon this book at a used bookstore called The Book Barn in Forsyth, Illinois. Seventy-five bucks, the guy who ran the place wanted for it. I did not shell out, even for the memory of my and Mark's John Wilkes Booth moment during the adapted play. But my mom did, for the following Christmas.

If I ever see Mark again in this lifetime--last I know, he and his wife Zehra were living in Chicago, but at this writing, I've not seen or heard from him since 1995--I'll show it to him and see if he pegs me as the mastermind behind the "Witchcraft" play fiasco of 1974.

***

Would it tell the tale of your life when you were done? Or would it take you the rest of your life to document? Would anyone want to read it? What if someone did it for you? Would you be glad your parents, your sister, your best friend created a massive, photo-filled tome for you?

I would.

What if...?

Vigor Mortis

2005-01-19T17:21:00.000-08:00

Sorry for my seeming disappearance. Blogger's been down, Harrison's been sick, and thus I've been thwarted from actually publishing anything.

That said... I'm still thwarted, at least until Friday, by which time Harrison will allegedly be better. :)

In the meantime... a short story called "Vigor Mortis" that I wrote a few years ago...

"Vigor Mortis"
by Michael G. Ryan

I was standing another non-stop sixty-six-day guard shift with Zed when it happened: I was free. No trumpets blared, no parades paraded by, no pomp, no circumstance… just freedom. I heard an audible click (my remaining teeth coming together in surprise), and then Master Mendark’s presence was completely gone from my shriveled brain. All that remained with me in the darkness was an indescribable hunger and a sudden vision… of roast chicken.

I looked over at Zed to see if he’d felt it too. (Zed was just what I called him, by the way; he’d never been able to tell me his real name.) No telling what he knew: Zed was missing both eyelids and his lower jaw, so he always looked bug-eyed and taken by surprise. He was standing mostly in the shadows along the tower’s narrow walkway, a blood-encrusted spear clenched in his vile, rotting fists. He was a chilling sight to see—a flesh-eating zombie, a walking corpse, the living dead. I’d have been terrified out of my mind if I hadn’t been one, too.

I began to test a few words on my dried tongue. It had been long years since I’d had cause to speak—we’re not a chatty lot, we zombies—but now I needed to know if Zed had felt what I’d felt. Had Master Mendark suddenly dropped dead? Were we all being set free to go back to our former lives, that is, being dead? Or had I alone someone slipped free of Master Mendark’s control while everybody else…?

Shut up, Cagari, something whispered in my ear before I’d spoken—it could’ve been a worm, I’m not sure. What if you’re the only one? Don’t you want to taste that roast chicken?

Oh, yes. To taste human food again—not food made from humans—was something I used to daydream about often in those first years out of the coffin. In my pre-undead existence, I was an “improvisational” chef; that is, I was one of those culinary artists who could mix goat’s lard and pine cones with molded rat bones and create a delightfully zesty soup. (The secret is in the goat’s diet.) As I was dying in a freak kettle fire, I thought my cooking days were over. Then came my zombification by Master Mendark and my chance to work the kitchens again, but Mendark was only in need of mindless soldiers, watchdogs for his immense and apparently foreboding tower. I stood guard outside the kitchens once, and I was often rooted like a statue at the grand entrance to Master Mendark’s dining hall, but I never got the chance to cook again. In fact, I never got the chance to eat real food again. Zombies are monovores—we consume only one thing and it walks on two legs—and I missed sampling the incredible range of foods I’d known in the before-life. So, if Mendark’s control over me was gone, what was stopping me from a bit of sampling now?

Zed actually provided me an unexpected clue: he suddenly turned and walked brainlessly off of the tower’s rampart, plummeting to his next death. One moment he was there; the next, he was only a lingering stench. Ah, freedom! I never heard him hit because as soon as it was clear to me that we were all free of Mendark’s control, I set out for the kitchens.

Mendark’s tower was a dark labyrinth of walkways, tunnels, pits, dead-ends, bridges, gates, and assorted chambers of one questionable purpose or another. I’d been in most of them, so I knew exactly where I was going, and I shambled off with as much purpose as a corpse could muster. I descended from the top of the tower to the Master’s master-bedroom level. As I emerged from the stairwell into the shadowy hall just outside the bedroom’s gated entrance, a startled voice cried out, “Halt!”

I stopped and turned to face Roomer the Trainer, Master Mendark’s “zombie wrangler.” He was a short, stocky fellow with a hook for one hand and the disposition and brains of a monkey falling out of a tree. Every step he took was a symphony of clacks and rattles, as he was loaded down with a wide variety of chains, collars, locks, and cuffs for restraining untrained undead. He used to use a whip to control us until a particularly dexterous zombie caught the whip’s tip, reeled Roomer in like a fat fish, and ate the wrangler’s whip hand. After that, Roomer was a much louder advocate for bondage than discipline.

“Why aren’t you on guard duty, zombie?” he snarled at me as he approached with a collar. He snapped it around my narrow throat and stared deeply into my eyes. He stood there that way for so long you’d have thought we were lovers—if you were sick that way. After a long while he said, “What’s this? How did you get free?”

I debated answering but settled for dead silence. I was good at it. The sole lesson I’d learned from Roomer the Trainer was this: Never bear arms against someone unless you’re sure you can get away with it.

“Well, you won’t get away with it,” Roomer said. “Back to the Master with you.” He tugged at the chain shackled to my collar and turned us toward Mendark’s bedroom gate up the dark hall. “He’ll bring you back under control.”

I was about to risk defiance for the sake of poultry when I looked down and saw the thin, colorless tripwires criss-crossing the corridor just outside the bedroom gate. To say that the Master was paranoid does not do justice to his condition, and we zombies were trained to recognize his predilection for lethal booby traps. Of course, the ones immediately outside his bedchamber were rarely activated—another sign that something besides me was rotten at the gate of Mendark.

Roomer the Trainer apparently lacked a zombie’s education, which doesn’t say much for him. He stumbled blindly over the tripwires. A black pit suddenly opened beneath our feet. But what he lacked in foresight, he made up for in reaction. He pushed me backward out of harm’s way—a seemingly selfless act until you realize that he then hooked his claw in the links of the chain that was connected to my collar. My name promptly changed from “Cagari” to “Anchor.”

You might think that Roomer’s weight, what with all those chains and collars and assorted nasty metal devices, would have pulled me right over the edge after him, sending us both plummeting to a dark doom. I might’ve thought that, too, if I hadn’t deliberately stepped into the pit after him anyway. I pulled a Zed.

My dead weight no doubt contributed to Roomer’s rapid rate of descent as we tumbled and turned together for a solid six stories. He cursed a blue streak despite the blackness, calling me names that would’ve been horribly insulting if I’d still had the body parts in question, only to be silenced by our jolting arrival at the pit’s bottom. Because of the darkness, I couldn’t see the spears we landed on, though they made unusual popping noises as they poked their way through our bodies. I’m sure that if I’d been alive when I hit, I’d have been dead. As it was, I worked my way off of the spears, envisioning Roomer the Trainer in the dark next to me as I’m sure many zombies had envisioned him before—a shish kebob, ready for seasoning.

Clearly, I couldn’t stop thinking of roast chicken.

He reached weakly for me as I began to rise, his hand closing around my wrist. But when I pulled away, his arm came with me while the rest of him stayed behind. I heard him groan one last time as I wandered off into the darkness, but by then he was a distant Roomer, so I really didn’t care whether he was alive, dead, or unalive. I was much more concerned about finding my way back to the upper levels of the tower… now that I’d fallen into the crypts. My sense of smell was quite weak (a good thing when you’re rotting), but the odor of corpses was unmistakable—it smelled like me, only more so. Bones clattered beneath my bony feet; though the darkness was complete and seemingly impenetrable, I knew there were bodies stacked all around me.

Mendark didn’t bother with coffins or burials. He simply threw zombie and enemy leftovers alike down here until they plugged the tunnels and created walls of bone and slimy flesh. Water came in from somewhere, turning the whole place into a vile soup.

Sigh. Soup.

I climbed over damp cadavers, balancing myself on the bigger skulls by using Roomer’s disarmed arm as a crutch, eager to get back into the drier corridors where I could find the staircase leading up to the kitchens. As I came down one side of a mountain of cold flesh, I bumped into flesh that was definitely still warm.

“Stop or die!” someone snarled from the darkness. I stopped—what other choice did I have? I’d already done the latter.

“Friend or foe?” another voice demanded, drawing closer. I could hear metal on metal: armor and swords. I had a sudden suspicion that I knew the reason for the booby-traps outside Mendark’s bedchamber.

“Slave,” I answered. My voice was gravelly and low, but it sounded like church bells to me; after all, I hadn’t heard it in nearly fifty years. “Old slave. Trying to escape.”

“We’ll get you out of here,” the first voice said again, then, “as soon as we figure out how to get ourselves out of here.”

“We’re not lost, Sir Valance,” the second voice said. I guessed there were about a half-dozen of them altogether. “I know we’re in the West Crypts, not far from the back landing. If we could only see, we’d be out of here in no time.”

Valance! Not a day went by when the Master didn’t curse that knight. Valance was the bane of necromancers everywhere, one of those shiny-eyed, steel-jawed do-gooders who killed dead things in the name of all things just, right, and alive. He served a king who’d gained the throne simply by surviving the multiple assassination attempts by younger siblings, but Valance apparently believed whole-heartedly in what he did… which meant he’d happily re-bereave me of life if he knew what I really was.

“…and that’s how we lost our only torch,” Valance was saying to me. “So, do you think you could lead us to the back landing? Once we find Mendark, I promise you that your freedom is assured.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking furiously. “Freedom.”

“Give me your hand,” Valance said, and I heard him draw closer. “We’ve been forming a chain so as not to become separated.”

I handed him the business end of Roomer’s arm. He commented once about how cold my touch seemed, and then he and his men fell in behind me in the darkness, chatting among themselves about how Mendark’s demise would be swift, merciless, and gruesome. I was pretty sure that if I didn’t come up with a good idea, my next demise would be about the same.

“There, Sir Valance!” one of the knight’s men shouted after a time of wandering about the pitch-black crypts. “Light!”

Sure enough, a small bar of flickering light shone beneath a thick door just ahead of us in the corridor. Beyond would be the back landing, with stairs leading up to Mendark’s secret tower (which obviously wasn’t too secret if Valance knew how to find it). At the very edges of the door I could just make out skeletal hands and torsos, more useless corpses piled like, well, corpses in the Master’s crypts. This was where they’d finish me off. Without a plan, I’d reached death’s door.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Sir Valance said to me, tugging me along by my third hand. “Soon enough this will all be at an end.”

We moved ahead toward the door. Desperation set in, and I was struck again by the sight of those bodies stacked up just outside the door. Then, finally, inspiration kicked in. I’d have been sweating if I still had enough flesh left to do so.

“Help!” I shouted as best I could with my withered vocal cords. I jerked hard on Roomer the Trainer’s loose arm, and when Valance didn’t let go of it, I did. Then I threw myself down on my back, belly up. As soon as I was down, I struck a suitably horrible death pose.

Valance and his men scrambled about, drawing swords, shouting to one another and calling “after me,” until one of his men thought to open the door to the back landing so they could see what they were doing. When the flood of light poured over me, I was just another of the many dead things lining the corridor.

“Old slave!” they shouted. It sounded pathetic, really. And I actually felt a little guilty about deceiving them as they stepped over me again and again, some of them inspecting “my” severed arm with growing dismay. I felt just a little guilty; it was an emotion that had been buried with me once years ago.

After searching about for a few minutes, Valance (who really did have shiny eyes and a steel jaw, by the way) and his men finally passed on—meaning that they left. They disappeared onto the back landing, Valance casting furtive glances back into the crypts as if I might suddenly appear to be saved, sans my right arm. When I failed to materialize, they headed up the staircase to murder Mendark instead of me.

As soon as I was sure they were gone, I followed at a discreet distance as far as the third level: the kitchens. I could hear Valance and his men above me on the stairs as they clanked and banged on up to the fifth or sixth level in search of the elusive Master. I, meanwhile, pushed open the swinging door to the land of roast chicken.

The place was as still as a morgue, and I should know. Pots, pans, bowls, cups, tableware, and various other more-difficult-to-describe utensils were scattered everywhere—clearly, the kitchen had been abandoned in a hurry. Only one torch still flickered along the near wall, the others having gone out from inattention. Wooden cabinets hanging from hooks on gray brick walls stood open and empty. A big barrel of salt had been tipped over and was spread across the floor (I stepped carefully around it, as I wasn’t sure if I would be able to feel it in my various open but dry wounds). The place had been looted—

—by Master Mendark himself.

Mendark was just pivoting open a thick stone secret door on the far wall as I stepped through the kitchen door, letting it swing shut behind me. He looked up suddenly as I approached him. In his throne room with wranglers and bodyguards all around him, he was quite the intimidating figure: dark facepaint, purplish teeth, his signature jewel-encrusted skullcap, the layered robes of dark purple with mystic death images woven into the cloth, and those shoulder-length earrings that resembled undertaker’s scalpels. But standing in the kitchens in his gray bedclothes, head bald and exposed, skin pasty white, a backpack bulging with food stuffs over his shoulder and a chicken leg clenched between his teeth, he more closely resembled a petty thief in the night… a thief making off with my chicken.

He paused in the secret doorway, the thick stone threatening to pivot and snap shut at any moment, and he took the chicken leg from his mouth. He managed a weak smile. “Zombie,” he whispered. “Come to me.”

I went to my chicken.

Mendark’s old face relaxed, and he reached over his shoulder to put the chicken leg into his pack with one hand while the other held the spring-loaded secret door back. My eyes tracked the chicken. It disappeared into his backpack, and he brought out his jewel-encrusted skullcap.
“Put this on, zombie,” he said, handing it to me. His arm holding back the secret door was beginning to quiver with the exertion. “Hurry!”

Slowly I took the skullcap and dropped it atop my head. It was like putting a serving bowl atop an apple; Mendark still had some fat around his skull. He looked pleased nonetheless, and I felt the same way: For the first time in years, I was within reach of my first meal made of something other than people parts. I couldn’t really smell it yet (sense of smell goes first after death; taste goes second), but I could imagine that I could smell it, which was almost as good.

“You’ll make a fine Mendark,” the Master sighed, looking me over. “You march on out there and let that lout Valance find you now, zombie. It should give me more than enough time to escape.” He turned to go through the secret door into the tight, narrow passage beyond, adding almost as an afterthought, “Roomer trained you well.”

I reached with my right hand for his backpack as he turned away from me.

And then the secret door slammed shut with a terrible screeching and tearing that sounded not unlike someone being drawn and quartered. That sound was me losing one-quarter of my limbs as the secret door tore my arm off.

I adjusted the skullcap carefully with my left hand, then turned and shuffled back into the corridor beyond the kitchen. I could hear banging and battling going on above me; when I cocked my head and looked up the winding secret staircase to the floor above me, I could see smoke and body parts hanging over the edge.

“Valance!” I croaked. Then again, “Valance!” Louder this time, more forceful. “Valance!”

It grew deathly silent up above. I saw a few of the knight’s followers peer over the railing down at me, and then at last I saw Valance himself. He was covered in blood and fleshy bits, and his eyes were wild with righteousness, self and otherwise.

“Don’t move!” he cried out when he saw me. His face suddenly disappeared, as did those of his followers. I waited patiently as I listened to them thump, thud, and curse their way back down the stairs to my level.

Valance came first, his sword at the ready, lowered to point at my chest. He noted the skullcap in one bold stare. The others spread out behind him, weapons drawn.

“At last we meet, Mendark the Dark,” he said almost graciously. He bowed his head toward me.
“Not yet,” I said. I slowly took off the skullcap and extended it to him. “Old slave.”

Valance looked confused for a moment. He glanced back at his men, a few of whom shrugged or discreetly looked at their feet. “Old slave? From the crypts?”

I nodded.

Now Valance looked more than confused; he looked embarrassed and annoyed. I’m sure he might just as well have bowed to a plate of rotten bacon in front of his followers. “What’s the meaning of this? Where is Mendark?”

“If I help you,” I said slowly (I still sounded as if I had a mouthful of worms—and I might have), “can I eat his chicken leg?”

***
It took some time, but soon enough, the deal was struck (after I convinced the group that “chicken leg” wasn’t a euphemism for “Mendark’s leg”). Sir Valance and his men stormed the kitchen, where they found Master Mendark right where I’d left him: just behind the spring-loaded secret door. My right arm still clenched his backpack, and my upper arm was neatly wedged between the secret door and the stone wall, effectively holding Mendark trapped. He had tried to strip off the backpack and leave it behind, but the passageway was too narrow for him to maneuver. He had settled for trying to chew through one of the pack’s straps—or maybe he’d been trying to chew through his arm, for all I know. Either way, he was still caught there when the steel-jawed hero and his swarthy companions fell on the villainous necromancer and did what steel-jawed swarthy heroes do to villainous necromancers.

Valance was good for his word; he tossed me the chicken leg sticking from Mendark’s backpack as we had agreed. Mendark actually lived long enough to see the gesture, something that would’ve made me feel warm and fuzzy inside if blood had still pumped through my veins. I was glad I’d been able to lend him a hand.

I took a bite of the chicken leg, chewing slowly, letting the dark meat spark my faded tastebuds back to life. Valance, triumphant over evil, stood nearby, watching.

“Well?” he asked as I swallowed. “How is it?”

I could have cried as I turned to look at him. “It tastes just like human.”

The Garfield Hunt

2005-01-16T15:42:00.000-08:00

Looking at the small collection of autographed books I own--the best of the lot are Stephen King, Oliver Stone, and John Irving--I wondered what had become of my Jim Davis autograph.

I was in junior high school, and I went to Chicago on the Greyhound to see my friend David over Christmas. Though I've now not seen David in more than twenty years, this was an AMAZINGLY important trip. It was a formative trip. How cool is it when you can define key moments like that?

I had received Billy Joel's 52nd Street album (yeah, it was an ALBUM) for Christmas, but this was all because I'd told my parents I liked "My Life." I took it with me to David's. We played it incessantly, and I discovered that Billy Joel was a badass. "My Life" was moderately defiant; "Big Shot" was outright hostile. "Stiletto" stood a pretty good chance of warping my perception of romance. And "Zanzibar"? Where's Zanzibar??

My lifelong appreciation for Billy Joel and Africa--that's where Zanzibar is--has its roots in this trip.

David and some of his friends liked just across the Wisconsin border; they'd all been to Lake Geneva, and they were all players of a roleplaying game that had been around roughly three or four years in their neck of the woods. Dungeons & Dragons. They taught me to play over those three days (I was a wizard who got polymorphed into a troll, discovered that chopping limbs off of trolls makes MORE trolls with a weird allegiance to the original troll they grew from, and who ultimately lost his life when he tried to take over a pirate ship with a small army of amputee-trolls whose allegiance to me also degenerated with each generation they were removed from me. Boy, talk about information you could have used YESTERDAY...).

Not only have I played D&D for the rest of my life, but it also led to my interest in Magic: The Gathering, my job in Seattle at Wizards of the Coast, and pretty much everything I have to be thankful for right now.

When the weekend was over, David accompanied me back to downtown Chicago to catch the bus. Across the street from the station was a massive, three-story tall bookstore. In Decatur, my hometown, NOTHING has three stories. But this bookstore... We went shopping, of course. David was ecstatic to discover a new hardback out by an author he loved, some guy named Donaldson who wrote fantasy.

"The Wounded Land is the first book in the second trilogy," David said as he scooped his book up. "You should read the first series. It's all here in paperback. Get all three."

I did. I read them, all thousand pages of them, over the next week. The Chronicles of Thomas Convenant became books I would talk about to this day, and they convinced me to try my hand at writing fantasy. I've not yet given up that idea.

Finally, on the top floor was a booksigning that we stumbled into. Again, David knew about the book in question.

"You have to get one of these," he said as we stood in line. "This cartoon is in the newspaper up here every day. It's about this big, fat, mean cat. It's hysterical."

So, I bought the first book of Garfield comic strips, Garfield at Large. The guy who still draws it to this day, Jim Davis, signed my copy. On the bus ride home, I read the whole book, laughing out loud. Often. Garfield was still very cat-like back then, and the jokes were all REAL cat jokes. Why cats hang on screen doors. Why they eat plants. Why they clearly love us and hate us at the same time.

So, this weekend, I tore my office apart looking for that old book, and as of yet, I've not found it. But the search reminded me just how significant that one weekend in Wisconsin was. Sometimes we can't remember how we met someone or what we liked about an author or a movie. We can't remember how things began, only how they ended. First dates are hard to remember; divorces are easy. Happiness is elusive but sadness is always right there, waiting for you, whether it's welcome or not.

The memories of that important weekend--even if I haven't found that old Garfield book again yet (I'm sure it's in my office SOMEWHERE)--were very welcome this weekend. If you've got those kinds of memories, I'd recommend finding a notebook, a Word file, or a blog to write them down in.

Seinfeld character

2005-01-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, so here we go! First entry in the "name your topic" for the blog. Scott suggested, "Which Seinfeld character would you say most closely relates to you?" No restriction on characters, so it doesn't have to be one of the main four.

Sadly, it's Kramer.

I profess vast knowledge when ignorance is truly the master of my domain.

I start stuff I have absolutely no hope of finishing, but YOW! do I have the giddy-up to get it started.

If I thought I could get away with it, I would mooch off of my neighbors. But mama, it's a long walk next door.

I have hair issues.

Clowns kind of freak me out, too. (I don't recall what did it to Kramer, but Stephen King's IT did it to me.)

I can't name my Newman, but oh yes, you know who you are.

I even have Kramer's fashion sense....

Starsky and Hutch Chimps

2005-01-14T08:34:00.000-08:00

Long before David Blaine put himself in a box suspended above the New York City streets, there were lots of other trained monkeys performing tricks for a bemused audience. One of those monkey tricks that I always thought was sort of cool: the novelist who'd sit in the window of a big downtown metropolitan bookstore and bang out a book, using elements given to him by passers-by.

Now, I didn't necessarily respect that--no more so than I respect chimps in swimsuits or chimps in hard hats--but I thought it was a cool challenge. I think it's the sort of thing that must happen to musicians all the time. "Oooh, you play the guitar! Can you play 'Seasons in the Sun'? I LOVE that song!"

This is why there's such a high suicide rate among amateur guitar players. They have to learn to play "Seasons in the Sun," just in case someone requests it. I bet "Seasons in the Sun" is to guitar what "Fur Elise" is to piano.

In any event, I always thought I could throw a monkey wrench into that writer's Great American Novel, given the chance.

"Your book needs a werepire," I'd say.

When he stared blankly at me through the plate glass window of the Kroch and Bretano's storefront, I'd key the microphone again and whisper, "It's a vampire that becomes a werewolf when the moon is full. A werepire. But in his vampiric form, he's allergic to wolf dander. Got that, Gore Vidal?"

Well, I thought about that fishbowl author again when a friend recently wrote to me to ask, "So, do you think blogging's a waste of time yet?"

No, but there are days when I hope I'll get anonymous postcards with monkeys in women's underwear on them, just so I'll have something to write about today.

With that thought, plus caged writer, plus a really funny song on the CD player (if you know what it is at this point, feel free to chime in) for moral support, I came up with an idea. Not a great idea, and one I might regret while stressing over it later, but it sounds like fun for now.

I know I have at least 14 folks who read this blog pretty much every day, give or take. What if some or all of those folks threw stuff into the fishbowl for me to write about?

Now, I can always write about trivialities. I can't wait to tell you about this game I'm playing obsessively with co-workers (Ticket to Ride, Days of Wonder Games!) or my mother's self-righteous phone call yesterday to read me a Harrison Ford quote that she feels justifies her falling asleep during Star Wars thirty years ago (we'll get to that soon, I promise). But I thought it might be fun to try out some of your topics.

So... michaelgryan1964@yahoo.com. Send me a topic. I'll brace myself for all manner of ideas, from "write something about Franz Kafka's 'In the Penal Colony" (which means I'll be out there trying to find it and read it first) to "what's the worst movie you've ever seen?" to "explain photosynthesis." (I make no promises that what I say will be right, of course.)

I'll credit (or discredit) the topic supplier, if you're game. And I'll do at least one of them a week for as long as they keep coming in.

I can even write about Dutch chimps that send their love from Amsterdam. I'm very skilled that way.

Small World

2005-01-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

Not a Disney reference in the title, by the way, though I can imagine why you'd think so...

One of the things I always loved when I was younger was bringing my different friends together and seeing if they could be friends with each other. Your friends liking each other, when their initial common bond is just you, is exciting, for some reason. To me, it feels like the world is tighter. There are always loose strands of relationships out there, people you keep meaning to get in contact with, people you've drifted from, people you've now gone so long not talking to that you now feel guilty touching base again. Those loose strands leave me feeling incomplete most of the time. I like the world small, no matter how big is actually is.

So, you can imagine my happiness in reading the comments on yesterday's blog and see Debra responding DIRECTLY to Beverly. For those of you who don't know them, or only know one of them, Beverly was my boss when I was an editor at Wizards of the Coast and is one of the kindest, most patient, and most generous souls I know. Debra was a co-slave with me at AGP, and she's without doubt one of the most forthright, honest, and passionate people I've ever met. The wonder of both of them: they both like *me.* I never said either of them had good taste in friends, you'll note.

They've met before, on a couple of occasions, at various shindigs (or wingdings, if you prefer) that I've thrown (or tossed). They're both on the same side of the political spectrum, and they're both extremely well-read, fiercely independent women, the kind of woman my mom and my sister and my wife are, and thus the kind of women I really like to have influence my world. But I can't recall ever seeing them speaking to each other, though I'm sure they have.

So, seeing the world shrink down a little--Debra making a joke to Beverly via the blog comments--really makes me feel good.

Strange, the places we find happiness in the world, however small that world is.

Broken Record

2005-01-12T07:53:00.000-08:00

I know Frost encouraged us to explore the path least taken... but I can't find it today, due to the woeful lack of snow. So, I'm going to go down the path I've already been down twice this week.

At 10 P.M. last night, we were still going to have between two and four inches of snow on the ground THIS MORNING. They're predicting ony 10 hours ahead. (And that "four inches" figure seems to be randomly selected, by the way; I think "meteorologists," for want of a better term, use it the way you pick "C" on a multiple-choice test when you have NO idea what the correct answer is.)

So, I go to bed last night, having heard the crystal ball prophecy about wind and rain and dropping temperatures and piles of snow, with a low-grade version of elementary school hope: maybe school (read: work) will be closed tomorrow due to this blizzard the village idiots (read: "meteorologists," still with the degrading quote marks, you'll note) have forecast.

It's a balmy 46 degrees when I get up this morning. Out in the driveway, I feel overdressed in my leather jacket. The last snowfall that they didn't accurately predict is melting in my front yard.

On the radio, the weather is NOT the lead story. Finally, some sense of embarrassment, enough so to push it off the front page and not let them use expressions like "snow tsunami."

Todd Johnson, who seems like a generally likable (if not self-important in a weatherman sort of way) guy, comes on the radio and sounds pretty defensive to me.

"That cold front is temporarily stalled at the Canadian border, but it's still on its way," he insists. "We should see snow in the Puget Sound convergence zone this afternoon."

Convergence zone? This is a clever way of creating a false location where it might snow, allowing forecasters to say, "See? This town was IN the convergence zone, which is why it got snow" when snow randomly falls somewhere west of Idaho.

And you know what's truly stunning? The reporters on the news radio channel back this nonsense with near-religious zealotry.

"We'll keep you up to date on how this afternoon's commute is shaping up," one of them says. "Some people will undoubtedly leave work a little early today to avoid any weather-related traffic delays."

Leave work early?? The only reason to leave work early for the snow today is if you REALLY want to see it and you need the extra three hours to drive up to the mountains to find it. Because you certainly aren't going to find it anywhere below 4000 feet, unless it just happens to be snowing in Todd Johnson's backyard when he prepares tomorrow's forecast. Then you want to go to Todd Johnson's house, and you probably don't need to leave early for that. He's still at the radio station until five tonight.

As stupid as it sounds, I was livid all the way in to work this morning. I think this is redirected rage over the Presidential election; or a shift in focus of my annoyance over the governor's election that the Republicans thought was GREAT when they thought they'd won and now believe is a CHEAT since they've lost; or general malaise as I realize that the weather has become oddly important to me this week, when the VAST majority of the time, I don't think about the weather at all.

But a rumbling Mt. St. Helens... earthquakes in Japan... a tsunami in Southeast Asia... mudslides in California... maybe all the weather is starting to come together in an apocryphal manner that was forecast 2000 years ago in the Bible. Now there were some guys who knew how to create a vague "convergence zone." Who knows--maybe we're in it.

If it snows this July, we'll know for sure.

Elevator Music

2005-01-11T14:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve never worked in a place with elevators before. Well, that’s not entirely true—I’ve worked where there were elevators that were dedicated to freight and where there were elevators that were essentially reserved for handicapped or elderly folks who actually needed them. But now I’m not on the second floor; I’m on the twentieth. It’s no longer an act of pure laziness to take the elevator up to my desk. But it takes time to use the things. You gotta actually wait for them, even the high-speed ones.

Every day when I come into the shiny glass building where lawyers tend to dominate and where five floors belong to Rupert Murdoch, I see this older woman in a black RAINIER PLAZA fleece vest cleaning the floors. Sometimes she’s carrying a spray bottle of an unidentified bluish liquid around to squirt on the large glass directory, the kind you see outside the anchor stores at the mall. She’s nebulously foreign—she might be Asian, maybe Hispanic, possibly South American. Her features are no longer distinctive enough for me to be sure.

She doesn’t speak. Not even when spoken to. When she’s not scowling, she’s glassy-eyed. She looks as if she’s watching a boring movie in a foreign language where mostly no one speaks anyway during long, panoramic shots. Maybe the blue stuff, when airborne, numbs her senses.

I said good morning to her one day when I first started last fall. It was early, and the lawyers who tromp through the lobby are rarely chipper in the breakfast hour, so I took her stone-faced silence as disbelief. The lawyers sip coffee and making grunting noises in the elevators coming up. They rebuff my chattiness on the 20-story ride up with all the tact and grace of gorillas in Armani suits. In fact, I make it a point to single one of them out every once in a while, just for sport.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I say.

“Sgoin,” lawyer mutters.

“You know, I used to think the idea of this little TV screens in the elevators was stupid,” I say, pointing, “but now, I actually look forward to it. I’m actually getting news from it.”

“Umpheryeah,” lawyer says, thinking that’s the end of it, our conversation is over.

But I don’t get off until the twentieth floor. And we’re only at about the fifth.

When they go, they leave skid marks. They don’t look back, but their faces have changed to an annoyed reddish hue. And when they get off, I try to say something insipid.

“Have a happy.”

Oooh, lawyers hate that, I think. They have NO happys. It’s why the woman in the lobby is beneath their notice.

So, giving her slack for the surprise factor, the next couple of times I said, “good morning,” I started to wonder if her ongoing silence was indicative as a language barrier. Or if she wasn’t sure I was talking to her. She sometimes waited by the elevators to polish the chrome plates around the buttons, her face down, breathing shallowly as if the flat office air was suffocating her.

I made an effort to be sure she saw me smile directly at her. If the words were foreign, the gesture was definitely universal.

No response. Squirt, wipe.

I gave up just before Christmas when I said, “Merry Christmas to her,” and got no answer.

Today, as I waited for the elevator, a bit pissy because I was later than I wanted to be, I looked up, and there she was, just at the edge of the elevator banks. Same fleece vest, same spray bottle, same look. Except today, she was crying.

The elevator came, and the slither of lawyers boarded. I hesitated, which was just enough for one of them to push the “close door” button and make my decision for me. When they were gone, I pushed the button again, then stepped over to her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

That surprised look again, the one from last fall when I didn’t slither with the rest of the slitherers from floor 19. It took her a moment to figure out why I was asking, then she smiled as she wiped her eyes.

“Oh, it’s the cleanser,” she said, gesturing with the bottle.

“Oh, sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she said, then my elevator came.

“Have a good day,” I said.

“You, too,” she said. “See you later.”

I rode up with no lawyers. It felt like a triumphant day, for many reasons.

Monday's Hero

2005-01-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 1977, Star Wars was on the cover of Rolling Stone. Front and slightly off-center: Han Solo, blaster drawn. Harrison Ford, my hero.

That was 28 years ago.

This month, George Lucas got together the casts of ALL the Star Wars flicks--including Ford--for a shoot to appear in Vanity Fair (on the street tomorrow, as I understand it). I readily concede that Harrison looks a little older, a little grayer, but hey, he's STILL Han Solo, he's STILL Indiana Jones, and he's STILL my hero.

But here's the kicker: Ford is on the cover of another magazine this month today, due out tomorrow as well.

Grand Magazine.

It's dedicated to retirees, to the elderly, to GRANDPARENTS.

Ford has been named "Grandparent of the Year."

My hero is a member of AARP.

Man, I can tell it's Monday.

Snow--only a day late

2005-01-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

We were going to get four inches of snow on Saturday. And it was going to be 45 on Sunday.

No snow on Saturday, though it *was* 45 degrees... that day. But today, Sunday?

The weather retards on the TV news call it "surprise snowstorm." Really. They put on their best "wow, caught us by surprise" looks as they LEAD the news reports, smugly talking about it as if they knew about it but just couldn't tell us (because then they'd have to kill us), and proceed to "forecast" when it'll stop, when it'll melt, and when it'll come again.

It's like listening to Rain Man and Forest Gump discuss physics. "I fall down." "Yeah, me too. Lots." Idiots.

But it makes for nice pictures, I guess.

The footprints came with the house. Like carpeting.

The mini-forest down the street from us. Looks like dusk, but it's actually high noon!

Old School

2005-01-08T11:49:00.000-08:00

First, a quick response to Debra... you're welcome! The fact that *I* could solve a techno-question is a sign of how relatively simple it was, but I'm glad to get the best-friend bonus of having been the first one to tell you how to reformat your blog. (My mom's head is spinning off right now: "YOU helped someone with their computer problems? Dear God, I hope it didn't explode on her when you were finished with it!")

Now... Old school.

Not the insipid movie, but instead... the television shows Soap and Battlestar Galactica. Remember these? I'm tearing through them on DVD at a shocking rate. Were they good back in the late '70s, when they first came out? I'm not sure. I know that Katherine Helmond (who went on to play Mona on Who's the Boss? with Tony Danza) was a frickin' billion years old even back then. And Billy Crystal was the only star who really rose from the show, as far as I can tell. And the laugh track is a little painful at times. But in general... yeah, it's funny.

Battlestar Galactica is a slightly different story, if only because I've only watched the first hour of the three-part pilot. I'd forgotten how hot Jane Seymour was. Or how much I hated Boxy, the stupid robot dog. Or how they recycled the special effects of the Cylon ships over and over (and over). Dirk Benedict was still very cool as Starbuck, Richard Hatch was still too deadpan as Apollo, and Lorne Greene as Adama was... well, Lorne Greene, straight off the Ponderosa.

Yeah, yeah, I know--Jane Seymour will be dead before the pilot's over. I still remember 1978 better than I thought I would.

As an addendum, my sister Tammy makes me CD compilations every Christmas. She mixes a grab bag of songs I've said I like recently ("Accidentally in Love" by Counting Crows or "100 Years" by Five for Fighting), songs she thinks I'll like ("Another Postcard" by Barenaked Ladies, "The Reason" by Hoobastank, both songs I do, indeed, like), and then... songs from when we were both young.

"Makin' It" by David Naughton. Oh my God. How frickin' cool is this??

You might remember Naughton from either the Dr. Pepper commercials from back in the mid-70s (he danced to "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, he's a Pepper, she's a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?," one of the best jingles on the era, in my mind). Or, more likely, you remember him as the guy who turns into a werewolf in American Werewolf in London. "I'm sorry I called you 'meatloaf,' Jack." Ring a bell?

Those Pepper ads netted him a short-lived TV series, Makin' It, about a disco dancer (it WAS 1979, after all), with Naughton as the lead and the theme song, sung by him, was on the charts longer than the show was on the air. Someone once wrote of this show, "It started on the wrong side of the shark."

But the song is still awesome, despite some cornball lyrics. "I've got the goods/they stand when I walk through the neighborhoods."

Anyway, I'm clearly stuck in the late '70s these days. As old school as it is, it doesn't feel old school to me.

Now I understand how my grandfather felt when he sang the song "Tangerine," a song from his own youth, to my cousin Bill and me, and we feel apart with laughter because we only knew it in the context of a weight-loss ad. Even older school, I guess.

Snow--gimme a break

2005-01-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

For two days, the "weather" people (I use the term loosely here, to correspond to the rocks in their collective heads) have been going on ad nauseum about the "arctic blast" and "storm of 2005" that was allegedly headed our way. Wednesday, I heard we'd have four inches on Saturday, with the worst of the "blizzard" hitting the Seattle metro area beginning midday Friday. That got moved to late Friday. Then it got moved to overnight Friday. Then that four inches became two, then it became "covering." Then it would go away entirely, because it turns out that it'll probably be in the lower 40s here tomorrow.

If you're a political pundit and you project the wrong candidate over and over again as victor, you eventually stop being a political pundit.

If you're a doctor who can't successful predict the spread of your patients' various diseases, you eventually stop being a doctor.

But weather people? They keep right on mugging for the camera at the beginning of every local newscast they possibly can, issuing their dire warnings and then (whew! bullet dodged!) their self-congratulatory "that one missed us" speeches. They do their bits about how to protect yourself from the "biting cold" (this ain't Siberia, gang), show you their jetstream nonsense, send their camera crews out to scour the vicinity for the best possible snowfall they can find (to justify their ridiculously wrong predictions), and bundle up in parkas in front of a wind machine to give the illusion that they're standing at the North Pole to give you their report, when in fact they're on the parking lot of the local TV station, where the snow is melting as it hits the ground.

And do we have to SEE the jetstream? Do those blue wavy lines across the U.S. map mean jack shit to you? Me neither. Does "barometer falling" tell YOU what to expect? Nope. This is like me saying to you, "I removed the comma here, changed the tenses to match here, removed the em-dashes and put in a semicolon here, and took the passive voice out here."

Your response should be: "Who gives a fuck? Can I have the edited text, please, you self-important turd?"

Instead of just giving us their inaccurate forecasts, they have to JUSTIFY how they came to their inaccurate conclusions. It's like Hitler trying to justify a two-front war. You still LOST, dipshit.

I'm oddly furious about this "snowstorm" that never found its way here. I'm thinking, why do I bother listening? Why don't I just go outside in the morning, look around, and make my own weather forecast? It's what these overpaid, underqualified meteorlogical "journalists" do. Any monkey with one hand cupping its nuts to decide if they're shrinking 'cause of the cold or drooping because of the heat can achieve the same level of accuracy in predicting what's coming next in the weather.

Hmmmm. Feels to me like a cold front moving in. There's definitely shrinkage.

2005: What Are You Looking Forward To?

2005-01-06T06:29:00.000-08:00

This question, when posed to some co-workers this week, evoked a limited variety of blank stares. (I mean, a blank stare is just that, a blank stare.) Maybe early January is too soon to ask. Maybe the arbitrary choice of January 1 as a "starting point" doesn't really mean anything other than another day on the calendar, and I could just as easily ask on July 17, "What are you looking forward to in the next calendar year?"

It surprises me that I don't have an answer either. When I look really hard at the crystal ball, the future seems more a void than ever.

We'll have some good movies in 2005--the next Star Wars installment, the next Harry Potter flick (November), the revitalized Batman franchise. I've not heard much out of my favorite authors, Stephen King and John Irving. 24 comes back to TV this coming Sunday. My friend Mitch will probably introduce me to one of my favorite actresses this year, since he knows her well. Paul McCartney's got a new CD coming in February. Harrison Ford is due for a film sooner or later, though I've not heard that he's working.

Maybe I'll sell a book this year. Maybe I'll write another one, though that's proving harder to get jump-started than I thought it would be.

Washington will probably get a governor. Stayed tuned for this one.

Maybe I'll get to see Doug, John, or Brian. I've not seen them in over a year and a half now.

Maybe some friends I know who are lonely or depressed or a little lost will be less so this year. All good things must come to an end, it's true, but all good things must begin in order to end, right?

Maybe the war will end. Maybe it won't.

In past years, I came into the New Year with a certain amount of ambition or expectation. In 2005, I feel ambivalent. I feel like I'm standing in line for a movie, but I have no idea what we're going to see until the lights go down. I hope it's a Disney cartoon. Maybe a Pixar piece, something fluffy that still earns Oscar buzz. Minimal conflict, the periodic laugh, and the sense that a lot of people worked really hard for a long time to make it work as well as it does. That's a good movie; that's worth skipping the popcorn for so I don't miss any of it while I'm at the concession stand.

Dear God, don't let it be Saw.

So, what are you looking forward to? What's on 2005' s horizon as far as you're concerned?

Feel free to include your own movie metaphor in your thoughts.

Christmas gift!

2005-01-05T19:52:00.000-08:00

Mickey was already living with us, but Pooh joined us this Christmas.

These plaster pieces are ridiculously overpriced... and rapidly moving up the list of "things I want to collect."

Dear God. Another thing to collect. I'll laugh and cry at the same time.

What Constitutes "Caught Up"?

2005-01-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

We all keep a mental list of the stuff we want or need to do. From hard deadline-driven stuff (mail the bills) to soft deadline-driven stuff (answer the twelve emails I haven't gotten to since Saturday) to the ambiguous deadline-driven stuff (write that novel, paint that picture, do that household renovation, write that will... which is a "soft deadline," in my mind).

So, how do you know when you're caught up?

If your emails are all answered, the bills are all paid, the house is clean, the laundry's done, all calls have been returned, and you've eaten... are you caught up?

If the above is done, plus you've vaccumed out the car, replaced that burned out lightbulb in the laundry room, sent out thank-you cards for some generosities, dusted that shelf you never even look at, and read the books you borrowed six months ago... are you caught up?

If you've done all of that, plus you've cleaned out your email accounts, sorted those boxes in the closet, swept the garage, taken those Goodwill boxes to be delivered, cleared off your TiVo, and got your Mother's Day gift NOW... are you caught up?

ALL OF THAT'S DONE, AND you've painted that picture, wrote that short story, mailed that ex's stuff back to him/her (which you were pretty sure you were NEVER going to do), and set every clock in the house to the same time so the damned things all synch up... NOW are you caught up?

I suppose that's the definition of life, isn't it? One more thing to do... until you don't get to do anything else because of that hard deadline. Thank God I don't have to dress myself for my funeral, pick out the casket, figure out the life insurance paperwork, and shovel that dirt. I mean, really--when is it all done???

New Year's Cleaning: The Cat Secret

2005-01-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

The stupidest thing about New Year's Day is that it has the PSYCHOLOGICAL feel of "starting over." For the record, January 1 is absolutely no different than January 10 or October 13 or February 29 (well, maybe not that last one). It's just another day, and if you really want to stop smoking, lose weight, start a major project, begin saving more money, whatever, any ol' day will do.

Still, January 1 is tricky. It works on almost all of us. And thus did I resolve to clean the house top-to-bottom in honor of the new year.

This is how I made the secret cat discovery.

Cat people have very refined senses of smell, I've learned over the years. We can go into someone else's home and, if they own a cat, sniff out said cat's presence in mere minutes. Yet there are varied stages of cat smell that we all know exist but rarely talk about:

*The Detector. The aforementioned "I know you've got a cat, too" sense. People without cats don't possess this. It's like a useless form of ESP.

*The Reverse Detector. Cats know cat people. They mysteriously appear when cat people come over, just to see what sort of attention they can get. For the record, they appear when non-cat people come over, too, but that's for the sake of torturing them, and you can see it in your cat's eyes. "I'm gonna screw with this guy--he has allergies."

*The Boxer. The non-cat people have a rudimentary form of this--it's that very faint hint of ammonia that says there's a catbox somewhere nearby. Non-cat people aren't sure what they're smelling, and it's gone as quickly as it arrives. Cat people consider this "normal."

*The Stunned Boxer. This is the one that cat people and non-cat people share, but with different reactions. The catbox has gone on too long without being changes; the paint is peeling off the walls. God forbid the furnace kicks on in the room with the box, or we could all be fumigated right out of the house. Eyes water like you're sniffing butane without the pleasant high afterward. Non-cat people run from this odor with their faces crinkled beyond recognition; cat people sigh, get the rubber gloves and a twenty-pound tub of cat litter, and go to work to get back to "The Boxer" stage.

That was yesterday... and that was how I discovered that Janell, an alleged cat person, is incapable of reaching the Stunned Boxer stage.

Ammonia in the air, thick as mosquitoes in the Amazon, and Janell can't smell a thing. She inhales deeply, so much so that I'm sure we'll need to take her to the emergency room, and still, nothing. She can't explain it; neither can I. But I've elected to make it a New Year's project (different than a resolution, mind you) to figure out WHY she can't smell a catbox that should be growing new life in it.

See what wonders a new year can bring about?

My Mom, On Film

2005-01-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

If you don't know my mom, you most certainly know someone LIKE my mom. It goes like this: you take out the camera at some festive occasion--a birthday party, Christmas, breakfast (hey, you have your moments, I'll have mine).

"Let's take a picture!" you suggest.

Everyone agrees--except that one person in the back, the one who ducks low and scurries out of the telephoto range like a mouse back to its hole.

"I'm having a bad hair day." "We can do this again when I lose ten pounds." "I haven't done my makeup." (The last one's always MY excuse.)

Taking a photo of some people is like trying to catch a vampire on film or getting more than one of the Loch Ness Monster's tentacles in the frame. That's my mom. And if she does happen to agree to participate, her smile is invariably a grimace--the "smile" that comes from lack of practice and only smiling when she's revving her engine while Latter Day Saints are in the crosswalk in front of her hood.

Turns out, you need bait.

While she was here over Christmas, we dangled Harrison in front of her.

We chummed for days with Weebles and Fisher-Price Little People before we went for the kill. The weather was fair; she came right up our trail, her dorsal fin breaking the surface to glint in the sunlight. Still, she stayed just out of range. We added chocolate-covered cherries to the chum trail, and she closed enough for us to get a barrel in her, but still, no photo. Finally, she was close enough that we could drop the cage--the one with the grandchild in it. This tends to bring grandmas close enough to snap a quick picture, provided you've honed your reflexes. This one was a good-sized one--almost a six-footer. My assistant, Janell, had dressed our bait while I loaded the camera. The world was still while we moved into position. The grandma was near; we could sense her. The grandchild was dangled. Suddenly, movement!

I shot without thinking. No focus, just instinct. Nature doesn't stop for the likes of me; humans have to learn to adapt to this great green-and-blue planet of ours. Even the seemingly harmless grandma can be a challenge and a danger if not approached with the greatest respect for what a million years of evolution has created.

My first shot was my best.

In a flash, she was gone again, out of camera range, chittering about bad hair and ten pounds, as the wild grandmas are inclined to do. We brought the grandchild back on board, then my assistant and I turned for home, content with what we'd seen. Later, we might contact the National Geographic Channel to share our data. For now, we were content to have a precious photo of grandma and grandchild, together as mother nature intended.

New Year's Eve

2004-12-31T07:15:00.000-08:00

So, 2004 ends tonight at midnight.

In general, I have no problem with this at all.

I started off 2004 with food poisoning from a Chinese restaurant. I should have seen the ominous portends in that twelve hours of groaning and puking. But no, I thought it was an isolated incident, not a prologue to the rest of 2004.

By mid-year, when Janell got laid off and my own job prospects weren't turning into anything worth noting, I began to understand the significance of that sweet-and-sour nightmare from six months earlier.

It took five months, but we're comfortable again, back on our feet, focused, energized. And the year is ending, a new one beginning tomorrow. Will I be eating Chinese food in 2005? Possibly, but probably not.

New Year's Resolutions? I have none. I know better. I did it last year. Let's look at last year's short list...

*Publish a book. Hmm. Beyond my control, it turns out. Stupid reality. Stupid publishing industry.

*Capture an albino Bengal tiger. Sigfried and Roy were going to take care of this one for me. You remember how that turned out.

*Shoot The Hobbit before Peter Jackson does. Stupid reality. Stupid film rights industry. Stupid New Zealand and their work visas.

*Drink myself blind with joy when G.W. loses on election night. Well, it wasn't "with joy," but...

*Eat Chinese food until I puke. At least I achieved one resolution, and I did it right away, leaving the year open for the rest of my unreachable resolutions.

For 2005, I'm not only going to avoid setting the bar too high, I'm going to avoid setting the bar AT ALL. This is the year that I'll hold my head up with pride if I so much as sleep in successfully. This is the year that I'll smile when I admit that I lathered and rinsed AND repeated. This is the year I'll call it a watershed moment if I beat my high score on Tetris, return a book I borrowed three years ago to a friend who's forgotten I have it, or improve my Billy Bob Thorton's Sling Blade voice imitation.

This is the year I'll brag about how I finally tossed the eggnog from the fridge, even if it's July when I finally do it. This is the year I'll watch brainless reality TV without guilt or the desire to try out for next season. This is the year I'll admit I'm more Wheel of Fortune than Jeopardy.

Above all, this is the year I resolve to make no resolutions. Except maybe have some Chinese food tomorrow afternoon--sweet-and-sour PORK this time, though. That ought to solve the problem, don't you think?

Tsunami concluded

2004-12-30T08:12:00.000-08:00

Debra sent me some extremely reassuring links and commentaries, all of which indicated that Jakarta was unaffected by the tsunami. Other residents of that area, in fact, have begun to send relief to the hardest-hit regions of Indonesia. As Debra said to me, "I honestly and truly know in my heart that she's fine."

She is.

She sent me an email last night from Jakarta, asking if I'd received her first email on Tuesday? (I hadn't; it arrived about ten minutes after the second one, telling me that there's a server issue on her end for getting emails out.) She's safe, her family is safe, and she's still anticipating flying back to the U.S. this coming weekend.

I called this entry "Tsunami concluded" because I can stop worrying about Hellen... but the disaster in Southeast Asia is far from concluded.

I saw part of the Primetime Live special last night that showed the water sweeping away lives, literally, as it dragged running children down underneath it. I've sent money via CNN (it's right there on their front page, if you want to help), but it feels a million miles from enough. 116,000 dead. My God. It's unfathomable. Try to remember the last time you were at a big concert or a major sporting event. Try to remember looking around and the wave of faces... now multiple that times three, and kill them all at once. Football stadiums filled with dead people.

I hope to see Hellen when she's home next week, just to reassure myself, to draw some comfort from her presence about the horrors unfolding on the other side of our world. It feels like 9/11 to me; it feels like we've all been betrayed by our own planet.

I'll try to write something a little cheerier tomorrow. And I sympathize if you feel a little overwhelmed by the ubiquitous coverage of the tsunami. But even if we turn away from looking at it, I hope we're all thinking about it, if for no other reason than because it only takes one person... one person you care about... one person you value... in the middle of a nightmare like that... to make it REAL for you. It's no longer The Day After Tomorrow or a distressing two minutes at the beginning of ABC World News Tonight. It's a little bit of your own life unraveling while the lives of thousands end across the ocean from us.

And yet it could just as easily have been our own coastline, from Seattle down to Los Angeles, that woke up to a wall of water the day after Christmas. That underwater earthquake could have sent its ripple our way, and those three football stadiums full of bodies could be on this side of the world. Maybe we'd be looking to Southeast Asia for help. Because, in the end, all of us are on this tiny little planet together, and if we don't look out for each other, who will?

Tsunami Continued

2004-12-29T06:47:00.000-08:00

Still nothing from Hellen. I've contacted CNN, where they're compiling lists of those believed missing. I'll be contacting the local news at the end of the week, if we still haven't heard anything. I don't know that any of it will do any good; my concern for Hellen is just a drop in this ocean of suffering that's ripped through Southeast Asia. What happened to all of us here in the States on 9/11 was vicious; what happened on the other side of the world last week is beyond comprehension. The equivalent of the entire population of my hometown was wiped out in Asia. Last night on the news, I see these flip-book images flickering past my eyes on the TV of bloated bodies in mass graves. I see young women wailing over their dead children. I see stone-eyed survivors, dying of thirst while the ocean laps at their ankles. In all of those faces, I look for Hellen. And while I'm looking, I'm thinking, This is impossible. She's fine. If I go look at my email right now, there's no doubt a letter from her, assuring me of her safety. This is impossible. This doesn't happen to people I know. This should not ever happen to Hellen.

I hang on to the confidence that we'll hear from her, that there's no electricity in Jakarta to power her computer or that she's been so preoccupied with the disaster that she's not checked voicemail or email. Or maybe she's suffering in a different way--maybe she's helping others, or maybe she's lost someone whom she's searching for herself.

If you're the praying kind, please do so--her name is Hellen Widjaja. If you're not, then please send your good thoughts, your karma, your cosmic spirit, your hope winging around the world to wherever she is, would you?

Tsunami

2004-12-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

Three days ago, Sunday, I wrote to my friend Hellen. She and I worked together at AGP; like Rob, Chris, Mike, Traci, Lisa, and Debra, I've continued a good friendship with her long after I've left the company, and I just saw her a few weeks ago, when I rounded up the AGPers for my annual Christmas game. Hellen is always so gracious--she's soft-spoken and modest, far too classy to be friends with the likes of me. She's one of those people who give me pause when some juvenile bit of slobbering bathroom humor bubbles up in my brain. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, she's one of those who make us all want to be better people.

Hellen is with her family in Indonesia for Christmas.

I've written to her. I've tried to call her on her cell phone. And I've written again. But so far, I--like hundreds of thousands of people all over the world--just wait.

Over 50,000 dead in all of Southeast Asia. Health officials estimate just as many will die from diesease in the coming days as water supplies and bodies deliver a vile epilogue to those who weren't swept away by the tsunami.

Jakarta, where I'm pretty sure Hellen is, is south of the prime area of devastation. But still, it's hard to draw any comfort from that. She could have been vacationing at the beach; it was Christmas, after all. And Hellen was very much looking forward to going to home, along with her sister, to spend time with her family. To relax.

I've heard from other AGPers--and we're all just waiting.

Christmas photos

2004-12-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

A few photos from Christmas... more to come, if my mother will EVER let me take her picture...

BEFORE the eight garbage bags of paper and boxes and ribbons and bows...

Twelve photos like this... and Harrison smiled BETWEEN all of them.

Michelle and Luana came over on Christmas--and smiled DURING the photos, proving once and for all that girls are better than boys, I guess.

Not quite grasping that this is an ANNUAL event, Harrison anticipates more presents tomorrow.

The Haul the Day After

2004-12-26T06:45:00.000-08:00

I noticed something early this morning, the morning you might expect to be tinged with the post-Christmas letdown: I'm not down at all. I have LOOT.

Upon reflection, I realized something. You build up for six weeks to Christmas, and then it's all over in a day. Most of us, whether we admit it or not, start anticipating our birthdays a month or so before it actually arrives. And weddings? Those things take a year to plan out, even the cheapy ones. All of these are events that come with luggage--the "wow, I can't believe it's over" kind of luggage.

And yet these highly anticipated occasions all come with the best possible anti-depressant: PRESENTS. The dragon's hoard you can sit amidst the morning after, in piles or spread out, even sorted the way you used to divvy up your Halloween candy into candy bars, hard candies, and "other" categories.

While I have scores of photos--and I'll restrict myself to posting only one or two this week, I promise--I also have BOOTY. Not that kind of booty; the GIFTS kind of booty. Books and DVDs and CDs and games and clothes and the odd knick-knacks and require explanation to those not as enamored of them. All the TREASURES of Christmas morning, in one pile of avarice.

Really, who could feel blue amidst all that green?

And if for some reason you still don't feel okay--your hoard's not quite the size you'd like, you got clothes when you were hoping for music, you have some sort of Catholic/Jewish/Jehovah's Witness/Mormon/Other guilt about gifts...

Well, the big sales start today, too.

Nutcracker photos!

2004-12-24T18:43:00.000-08:00

I can't even begin to comment on my sister's comments to yesterday's blog... if I do, I'll sob. Online. It's a scary thing. She and I will talk tomorrow, and I'll tell her then how much I appreciate what she said and how much she means to me.

Instead... today... the day before Christmas... a few appropriate photos from our Nutcracker experience this week. In addition to the ballet, we acquired an autographed copy of the book, made even more precious to us when we heard from our friend Traci that next year's performance may not include the Maurice Sendak sets.

Tomorrow, Christmas, I'll take the day off from blogging. My mom and step-dad arrive in the afternoon. I see my goddaughters (I'm counting Luana these days) in the mid-morning. And Janell, Harrison, and I will do the classic rip-and-tear in the morning. No pink bunny costumes for Harrison this year (as far as I know), but we'll take lots of photos anyway.

Merry Christmas to all my friends and family, from just down the road in Bothell (Mike Lewis) all the way to Arusha, Tanzania in Africa (Abraham Mushi).

It is through the companionship of others that we learn the definition of who we are... and who we hope to be.

Mike/Michael/Mick/Mikey/Miguel/Michel

Most men have a well-motivated fear of nutcrackers...

...and most women have a well-motivated fear of giant rats, but they couldn't have children without us!

Now that I Have My Sister's Attention...

2004-12-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

...I knew she would log in to see if I had anything to say on her birthday, but hey--I'm a big brother. I have no obligation to do nice things for her unless it's tinged with that "big brother annoyance factor." I saved it for one more day, and I'm proud to say that she acknowledged this in her comment yesterday.

Because yesterday, my lil sis Tammy turned thirty-six.

And I've now not seen her in almost a year.

We won't be able to see each other this Christmas, and while I've been understanding of the necessity of this, it doesn't mean I'm happy about it. I miss Tammy. You've never met anyone who is wittier in conversation, who is as open about her political and social views, who is as passionate about her passions. When we were younger, we fought ferociously, the classic sibling rivalry thing. But as time has passed, we may not have mellowed, but at least we recognize that the battles are better fought against others more deserving of the grief.

I suppose I don't differentiate her much from the rest of us when I say that she's had some hardships. She's experienced intense loneliness. Long before I lost my dear friend Paul, Tammy lost a dear friend in a car accident, and it changed her fundamentally--she grew up one Christmas night, when the reality that teenagers are not truly immortal came home to her. Her career just won't do what she wants it to do. She has moved thousands of miles in pursuit of a dream that refuses to manifest itself.

But I believe the true difference lies in her persistence. My sister is a fighter. She's an old soldier now; the things that she wants might still be out of reach, but she will not give up, never.

Tammy's always been hard to read; as a family, we're not very emotional most of the time. We're not exactly the Brady Bunch. Hell, we're barely even the Bundys. Janell once observed that we never really say "thank you" to each other for the things we give to or do for each other. It's true--I never noticed it until I started watching for it, but we don't really do it. But Tammy called last night to say "thank you" for the birthday gift I sent her, and in those unexpected moments when we are affectionate, the fact that I've not seen her in a year doesn't seem so painful... and yet even more painful than ever.

Happy Birthday, Tammy. I love you. Thank you for being my sister. I wouldn't even trade you in for Marcia Brady.

The Nutcracker, Sets by Maurice Sendak

2004-12-22T05:24:00.000-08:00

You may not know Tchaikovsky (except from the periodic Bugs Bunny cartoon or Lexus commercial), and you may not know Hoffman (who wrote the book that the play's based on), but you probably know who Sendak is. Where the Wild Things Are is a classic bit of escapism--especially for those of us who ruled, however briefly, the island of the monsters before we abdicated the throne. Sendak brings the same surreal, weird imagery of big eyes and gnashing teeth to the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of The Nutrcracker.

Janell and I are off to it today, for the afternoon performance, and it sets in motion my strongest sense that Christmas is near. Nearly every year since we've been together, Janell and I have gone (we missed last year when the season... and Harrison... just overwhelmed us). I was bored the first year and have been bored by other ballet performances since then. Really bored. Throw-myself-out-of-the-balcony bored. but the second year, I was only disinterested. I was engaged the third year; and by the fourth, I was actually excited to go. Now it's a tradition. So, THAT'S how traditions begin: with boredom. Who'd have thought?

Wanna see more? Check out http://www.pnb.org/season/nutcracker/

Janell

2004-12-21T06:08:00.000-08:00

I realized while contemplating today's blog that I rarely talk about Janell. You might've heard a bit about her--she's the one who foolishly hitched her wagon to my horse four-and-a-half years ago. Yet I've talked about Debra and Beverly and Scott and Warren--all worthy people, every one of them, and I know a couple dozen more who are equally deserving. But Janell? Janell deserves better than me, every day, and so this seemed like the right time to make sure I give her the accolades she so deserves.

I've not made a list in a week or two. So, my Janell list. My best list.

*She's beautiful. It goes without saying, but really, shouldn't it ALWAYS be said anyway?

*She creates memories for me--we picked up the word "mahalo" in Hawaii, and though it means "thank you," she made it "our" word by having it mean "hello" as a greeting only we two share.

*She's biting, sarcastic, self-righteous, egotistical, disdainful of the human race, unwilling to suffer fools, dismissive of the world. My God, she's me! No wonder I love her!

*With me... and with our boy... she's tender. She remembers that we are family. She remembers that families are sometimes very small and like a lifeboat on a scary, borderless sea. She steers us, and I believe there's always land even when I can't see it.

*She's ambitious, motivated, hard-working, goal-oriented, loaded with office savvy. My God, she's nothing like me! No wonder I love her!!

*She loves me. Many have not. Many have tried and changed their minds. But she loves me anyway. She never changes her mind about me, even if I change my mind about myself. That's love, the best kind.

I love you, Janell... even if I made you wait over 120 entries to see it written here.

Faithful, to the End

2004-12-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Most everyone I know is faithful to one author or another--those are the authors whose grocery lists we believe would still make interesting reading. The ones who, when the critics rightly trash some unpleasantry they've insisted on publishing, we defend with, "Well, [MY FAVORITE AUTHOR'S] work is still better than most of the garbage being published today."

I have said this numerous times about Stephen King. I've read everything he's ever published, right down to the rambling essays in Entertainment Weekly that sometimes read as if he banged them out while sitting on the toilet, doing a crossword and listening to the radio.

Faithful, I cannot finish.

I'm pretty devoted. I'll undoubtedly try again and again (and maybe even again) to get through it, but let's cut to the chase: this is NOT a Stephen King book. It's a baseball book that happens to be by Stephen King. And another guy, Stewart O'Nan. And I hate the name "Stew." The book's pop culture references are restricted to Boston Red Sox players and trivia, and to be honest, I dont really get it. Maybe you have to just LOVE baseball. Maybe you have to know who Red Sox hitting coach Ron Jackson is (I don't; well, I do now, but I don't care, so I might as well not know).

It's a sad moment when you realize you're actually going to put a book back on the shelf unread. It's a sad moment when you discover that even your literary heroes have their Achilles's heels. It's an even sadder moment when it cost you $26.00 for the hardback to find all this out.

The Power of the Blog

2004-12-19T07:17:00.000-08:00

One thing that most people don't realize: if you're plugged in to the movers and shakers of the tech world, you can really, REALLY make your blog a power tool. Specifically, a drill. Even more specifically, a drill for drilling into people's private lives.

My friend Doug, who's been my friend for 27 years now, works as a security specialist for Cisco Systems. My wife Janell, who's been my wife for 5 years next May, works for the end-all, be-all of tech companies, Microsoft. My mother Irma, who's been my mom for 40 years last November, is--in the word's of Wile E. Coyote--a "soopha-GENius" when it comes to computers.

In other words, between the three of them, they've given me the ability to use MY blog to see through YOUR computer. It's like having a peephole built into my hardware. Now granted, you have to be actually READING my blog for it to work, and as soon as you log off, I can't see your room anymore, but as long as you keep cruising this page, I can watch you like a TV show. In most cases, a sitcom.

To be fair to some of my friends who have since figured out that I can do this, I've included this detector: if the bracketed text below appears in bold-faced red, then I can see you. Right now. So behave yourself.

[HI]
Bloglar-User (TM) is logged on.

If you see black text, I must not be online; otherwise, if it's red, I'm looking into your office right this minute. So... hi! :)

***

Case in point: Hi, John and Marge. I can see your office (since I have scan ability, I can't tell if you're on the Mac or the PC, but if I shut off the scan mode, I have a more limited view of your office). For instance, if I rotate view... I can see the mousepad with kittens on it. Cute. That's the one by the Mac. If I scan this way.... Ah, you've added the black metal bookcase, the one to the right of the office door over by the coat tree, since the last time I scanned. Nice. I clicked in one day earlier this month, and there was a guy moving stuff around, and it was the first time I'd gotten a good look at the light blue carpeting you have in here. This office has really come together. I'm not sure that chair you're sitting in really "goes" since it's gray, but overall, it's coming together.

Now, I know what you're thinking, but I promise I've never seen anything I shouldn't. Sometimes if you leave the computer on, I can see the couches out in the formal living room (which I can't see right now, of course, since you're blocking my view while you're sitting at the computer), but I've never seen anything going on out there that you should be worried about either. I've only shut my view mode off once, and that was just because John wasn't quite as dressed as I was comfortable with when he came in to sit at the computer. Other than that...

Well, that's enough for today. My mom's coming out to Seattle for Christmas, and she said she knows how to hook up a digital camera to my view mode so that I can take still photographs of what I see. Here's looking forward to the morning of December 26!

Bye, John and Marge! See you soon... though probably not if you see me first. :)

[HI]
Bloglar-User (TM) has logged off. Viewpath 14428-621-3412 closed.

Character Study #3: Scott the Doppelganger

2004-12-18T06:25:00.000-08:00

Way back last summer--pre-blog days, even--Janell and I planted a row of hedges along the edge of our front yard. They went in with the best of intentions: we knew a squadron of college-aged boy would soon be moving in next door, and we were building the wall of Jericho with evergreens. The shrubbery equivalent of a line in the sand.

So, Janell's folks came down to help us (her dad Jerry did a healthy chunk of digging; her mom Bonnie's contribution was to caution us that we were about five seconds from hitting a power, water, or phone cable and bringing destruction down on the neighborhood). We dug a trench and put the transplanted hedges down in it.

That trench might as well have been a grave. Those hedges were dead in 72 hours.

Now, I can kill a cactus with nary an effort; Janell, on the other hand, has a certain degree of success in nurturing life that comes from the earth, provided it stays in the earth. (If you're a houseplant destined for *our* house, you'd better say goodbye to your loved ones.) We were mystified that the hedges died, and we offered all those inane rationales that you give when you don't really know what you're talking about. "We didn't get them in the ground fast enough." "They need more watering." "They're buried too close to cables." (Janell's mom's explanation.)

So, that was the end of the transplanted hedge experience. Except for one small thing. Scott.

We bought the hedges from a couple Janell had contacted, Scott and Wendy. Wendy was pregnant at the time with their second child, and Scott was doing some home improvement projects before the summer ended and they had TWO children (which leaves you just enough time to blink twice a day before you need to tend their needs again, as I understand it). One of his projects: replace the hedges, sell the old ones. So, we ambitiously took my Ford Escort wagon up to their place to put these hedges in the back and haul them home.

Take note: TWO of these hedges would fit in my car. There were 15 of them.

Without hesitation, Scott volunteered to put them in the back of his pickup truck and haul them down for us. With equally lack of hesitation, we accepted. It was that or come back 8 times to get them all home.

While hauling scratchy greenery back and forth from earth to truck, Scott and I got to talking. Turns out he was a Star Wars Insider subscriber, which I used to write for (and which I'm still hoping to again--where are you, editor-in-chief Brett Rector?). He knew my work. And if you talk about Star Wars, you can talk about Lord of the Rings, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Matrix, and The Simpsons, and...

And pretty soon, I was inviting Scott in to see some of my Harrison Ford autograph on my Star Wars Insider article and loaning him some VHS tapes, like the Star Wars Holiday Special, that he'd never seen.

That's how it began, way back last summer. I've seen Scott only ONE time since then--I'm not sure I could pick him out of a crowd of guys who were all tall with tight haircuts--but through the wonder of email, we've become friends.

And I'm pretty sure he's my doppelganger.

The conversations between us flow with exceptional ease; the one time we went to lunch, we gabbed like we'd known each other for years. "Did you see...?" "What do you think of...?" "Oh, I gotta tell you about this thing I read...."

I've not met anyone in years who shares so many of like interests with me. Of course, we were both in line for Star Wars on DVD, but the similarities between us go way beyond that singular film series. I ran a list of musicians I really like in a blog once, and Scott had CDs by EACH of them in his truck on the way to work that morning. We've read a bunch of the same books. We share a political conviction (and these days, victimization) about the Presidency, if you insist on calling Bush "President." Of course, we both have kids and forego sleep in hopes of watching an additional hour of movies or TV. Soon, he'll be ready to plow through his TiVoed episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives, and we'll share theories about both shows when he does.

Next Monday, we're going to lunch for only the second time, and I'll take him the Return of the King DVDs I picked up for him at Best Buy last Tuesday. Like my friends Ethan and Carmen, Scott knows how to find a deal--a week before it came out, he was sending my info about what the various stores and online vendors would be selling it for. Best Buy, he finally determined, had the "best buy" by about 58 cents.

This, we do not share. I'd have bought it blind at Fred Meyer for eight more bucks and never thought twice about it. I'm lucky to have friends like Ethan, Carmen, and Scott, who can guide me away from being the classic stupid consumer.

And like me, the freelance writer, Scott is also an entrepeneur--while he writes exceedingly well, however, his creative line of self-employment isn't the same as mine. He and Wendy run a small business on personalized ornaments and pictures, and he generously sent me one this year. They are adorable, and most certainly worth checking out at

www.personalizedfree.com

You're down to a week until Christmas as of today, so if you want one, I'm betting you'd better hurry. The trio of bears with Janell's, Harrison's, and my names on their hats is so cute, and it went right onto the tree.

And in the end, Scott is a really, really nice guy. He's friendly and generous, he's open and enthusiastic about the world, he speaks with such honesty and affection about his wife and daughters (he now has two and sleep has become an ancient memory, or so both he and Ethan tell me), and he always has something funny or interesting to share with me. I'm a sloppy correspondent, as most of my friends can attest to; I always feel a little guilty that I, the writer, am behind in answering his latest missive, but he's also always quite understanding about being overwhelmed by the world. I like to believe I'm the same way with people I'm waiting to hear from.

Doppelganger. Or long-lost twin. I'm calling my mom to be sure there's not something she forgot to tell me about my birth...

Reality Check

2004-12-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

Five weeks. That's how long it's been since the elections (read: coup d'etat). And unless you're from Washington state, they're probably now off your radar like a fast-sinking ocean liner.

Like I said, unless you're from Washington state. We're still trying to figure out who our next governor's going to be. And the votes of the 28 people in my office alone might be the ones that decide it.

When all the votes were tallied, the Republican candidate, Dino Rossi, had won... by less than 100 votes. Democrat Christine Gregoire called for a recount, two of which are permissible BY LAW.

Machines whirl and machines twirl, and back come the numbers a second time. It's more or less than same--three million people vote and the difference between the votes for the two candidates is about the number of people I invite to my Oscar parties.

Gregoire calls for the second recount, which is to be by hand. The Republicans howl that she should do the "right thing" and concede. With .001 percent difference between them, SHE should give up.

The hand count proceeds. Gregoire's middle finger is symbolically raised to the Republicans.

Now it gets fun. Election officials in King County, where Seattle is (and where Democrats congregate en masse), seem to have some serious organizational problems keeping track of votes or determining what actually qualifies as a vote. If these people were running my daycare, I'd yank my kid in a minute before they let him wander off the playground.

They come up with ballots that were overlooked, lost in the machines, ballots that reflect "voter intent" (when some dipshit somehow misses the instructions that are in 24-point bold type, all caps at the top of every page). The court cases have been flying this week. Out of this veritable train wreck has come the revelation that--surprise!--a bunch of votes that were cast legitmately and correctly weren't counted because the voter's signatures couldn't be found on file.

These last ones, they should be counted with contest. Yet the Republicans are digging their heels in. If it wasn't counted before, they argue, don't count it now; they know that new votes from King County are very likely to be Gregoire votes, and with the difference in votes being the number of customers at Pizza Hut on a good night, they don't want to take any chances. They boo-hoo to the media that the election is being "stolen" from them, that it's "rigged."

Shades of Florida 2000, huh? Jeb Bush down there, counting those votes oh-so-carefully for his brother. And Washington's electoral joke still doesn't hold a candle to the Ohio precinct that had roughly 600 registered voters but that somehow still tabulated some 6000 votes in the Presidential election, most of them for Bush. Let's remember that Ohio gave Bush another four years as narcissistic miliataristic dictator. And Kerry conceded before we could get the reality check on Ohio cashed.

If only he'd raised his middle finger, too.

And Yet the World Keeps Turning...

2004-12-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

Christmas can be an illusion, the fog wrapped around the aftermath of a tragic wreck.

Bows and pretty paper, the allure of what's inside a box with your name on it, flickering lights on a tree, even an undisturbed fall of snow, these cannot always fulfill the promise our culture has told us they can.

They cannot heal the heartbreak of a romance that's ending.

I have a friend whose world is upside down right now. She's in the midst of loss while everyone around her is looking for the Scotch tape and stopping by the Hallmark store for that forgotten Christmas card.

And yet she soldiers on. And the world keeps turning, the time keeps passing, and in ten days, Christmas 2004 will have passed. Life will no longer turn on gift exchanges, and time will, in essence, slow down. Just a little. Just enough to breathe.

She knows I'm here, if she needs me, regardless of the time of year. I remember having my heart broken and discovering that time is relentless, that holidays don't get delayed to give you the chance to deal. In fact, I promised myself back then never to forget what it feels like to lose someone you really, really wanted--empathy is the greatest means of understanding we have. So, if she needs it, there's a guest room and a new fireplace and an unopened bottle of wine just waiting for her.

We can even sit around the Christmas tree and let that illusionary fog surround us, at least long enough to forget hearbreak for one evening.

I'll even put a bow on it, and we can call empathy and forgetting it a gift. It's the best one I have to give under these circumstances.

Christmas in Seattle... and Car Problems

2004-12-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

No, it's not a recent photo, but it got your attention, didn't it?

I rolled my old Ford Escort Pony back in 1994. Three flips down Interstate-72 at 70 miles an hour. Whee. A carnival ride without cotton candy... or fun... or assurance of survival....

I revisited the memories of that blissful January morning this last week when, in the middle of a torrential Seattle rain--our winter weather from about the beginning of October until the following May--my windshield wipers stopped working.

Next time you're tooling down the highway at 65 and it's even just drizzling, try turning your wipers off for a half-mile. Do it at night (which begins at 4 P.M. here), and watch the pretty, pretty prisms of light that the reflecting headlights make as they BLIND YOU because the water doesn't get removed from your windshield. Try to guess where the edge of the road is; even those white reflectors that make you think you have a flat when you run over them are tough to see. You turn into Stevie Wonder driving himself home from work.

I rolled my Ford Escort Wagon (my replacement for the shattered Pony) into the dealership near work to have the wipers looked at. Four hundred bucks later, they still barely work--I'm pretty sure they broke something while "fixing" them, since Brooks, the "team lead" who serves as liaison between pissed-off customers and half-witted mechanics, insisted that NOW I had a broken ball-joint in the wipers. Another hundred fifty dollars, he said jovially... as if I'd just schedule that for tomorrow, Brooks. Roll it right in. Break something else while you're at it--it's a nine-year-old Ford. Ford. Fixed-Or-Repaired Daily. If something else is no longer performing "at top-notch quality" (yes, he said that to me about my car, the one Janell affectionately calls the Mocha Turd), it undoubtedly should be repaired post-haste.

Or I could just start a new impression while driving. How about Ray Charles?

More Christmas Photos!

2004-12-14T06:05:00.000-08:00

Every year, I add a few more buildings to my Disney Christmas village. Just a few. Roger Rabbit's Toontown House here, Geppetto's Toyshop there. It always seems to me that it's incomplete, that it's still a work in progress.

Except I added 13 buildings this last calendar year, and it occupied an eight-foot-long table.

Clearly, I need a new hobby... or a bigger living room. Let's go with the bigger living room.

Nightmare Before Christmas, Toontown, Disneyland, Princess cottages, and Pooh Corner buildings. See how it gets out of hand?

Christmas game, finale

2004-12-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

Of the six people--all AGPers or ex-AGPers--who came to play, only Traci had read the blog before arriving. She netted a bonus draw from the deck to choose a different card, but in the end, she was content with the card she had.

While I was checking out, the woman at the counter marveled at the game we were playing, especially when she heard some of the rules and parameters. (Mike, Chris, and Rob threw in together and made a game for me before they arrived--I had to spell out "Seattle" and either Seahawks, Sonics, or Mariners using the letters in the titles of my purchases. Whoo-whee. Harder than I thought!)

"I wanna work where you guys work," the woman at the checkout said enthusiastically.

Please, lady, I wanted to say. It was as if she just told a bunch of ex-cons, "You make the *bestest* friends in prison, don't you?"

But it led me to a pertinent observation: I really like my old AGP gang.

I made some friends for life at Wizards of the Coast--Mark, Lora, Warren, Beverly, Rick, Carmen--and I had assumed it was the nature of the beast. Gamers tend to congregate. The AGP folks are not gamers; I think I'm the only one of the group, including Debra (who wasn't able to come to the Christmas game), who has ever played D&D or Magic. So, there's obviously something more to friendship than the common bond of a shared activity. And in this case, it extends beyond escape from an unpleasant work environment: only Traci and Hellen are still there. For the most part, they don't hang out together--Chris and Rob have been friends for years, and Mike and Chris share a football obsession, so the three of them still move in the same circles. Yet I speak or exchange email with all of them at least once every two weeks or so. There's something different about each one of them that makes me feel close to them. As far as I can tell, I'll still be friends with each of them ten years from now. And AGP will be such ancient history that using it as a crutch to explain a common bond for friendship will be long past.

In the end, I checked out the gang's stuff, said Happy Holidays to everyone, and most of them had to go, off to their next seasonal activity--shopping, football, wrapping. Hellen gave me a Christmas gift before she left (a DVD I've been wanting and a great set of blown-glass Mickey Mouse ornaments), and then they were off.

I assume much fun was had by all... and I got to make an interesting observation about friendship. Everybody got something they wanted.

Christmas Game

2004-12-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Today, I'll get together with my former gang from AGP (Mike, Rob, Chris, Traci, Hellen, and Lisa; Debra can't make it today) to Christmas shop for them.

Actually, as is our ritual, *they'll* do the shopping. I'll just hang out in Borders until they're done.

For the last three years, I've taken the gang to a store and cut them loose to shop for a precise dollar amount, one they cannot exceed but that they want to get as close to as possible. The first year, they had a time restriction; the second year, they had the same time restriction (half-an-hour) AND the titles of the things they chose had to collectively contain all five vowels plus Y.

This year, we'll play a variant of last year, but a little harder. I've made a collection of cards. Each one contains a stiuplation for shopping. In turn, each player will draw three of these cards, choose the stipulation he or she feels can best be played, then return the other two cards to the pile. For example, if I drew these three cards...

*One of your items must have a copyright date of 2002.
*None of your items can have the letter E in the title.
*You can choose to keep this card until every other player has selected a card. Then, look at everyone else's cards and choose 1 to steal. That player then draws again.

...I'd go with the last one. More options, right?

The set contains at least one danger card...

*Choose one other player now. Give this card to that player, whos new card is "the titles of your items must collectively include the entire alphabet except for X and Z and one other letter of your choosing." That player now draws cards and chooses one for you.

Oooh, there's a fight forthcoming if someone plays *this* card. :)

It took me about two weeks to latch onto the game and about two hours to actually develop it. Could I have shopped for six people in two hours? Not me. This makes everyone happy... except whoever gets that card above bestowed upon them.

And now the burning question: will any of the people who are coming to play today read this blog before they come and thus gain an advantage over the other players?

If one of you has and you say to me before the game begins, "Nice blog entry today," you'll get a bonus when we play. See? The game's already afoot!

List: Favorite Christmas Stuff

2004-12-11T23:34:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you have your own list, and this is the time of year to think about them. We have two weeks to enjoy this season; if you haven't yet, make your list of favorites, then MAKE a chance to enjoy them. No one will carve that time out for you--you have to do it yourself, or come January, you might feel like the season skipped you by.

*Favorite Christmas movie: A Christmas Story. I had the glasses and the BB-gun obsession as a boy.

*Favorite Christmas TV special: A Charlie Brown Christmas. Remember when CBS "Special Presentation" Christmas cartoons opened with that horn-and-percussion graphic of the 3-D letters coming toward you? Charlie Brown takes me right back to that, just waiting for the two hours of cartoon special to begin.

*Favorite Christmas song: No, it's not "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." Man, does that guy need therapy. I like "Run Rudolph Run" by Chuck Berry, or "Winter Wonderland" by Elvis (which ends with the King's trademark rockabilly taking over), or "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" by John Lennon, though only a few times before the message dominates the spirit.

*Favorite Christmas ritual: I can't wait to go see the Pacific Northwest Ballet's rendition of The Nutcracker. We missed last year (babysitters are as rare as platinum), and I thought about it until June.

*Favorite Christmas treat: Would you drink eggnog in July, even if it hadn't been in someone's fridge for seven months? Doubtful. The taste is exclusively December.

*Favorite Christmas memory: My sister came home on Christmas morning, 1968. I was livid. My dad picked me up from my grandparents, where I'd been THOROUGHLY enjoying my brand-new metal gas station--this was in the era when attendants still simultaneously pumped your gas, checked your oil, cleaned your windshield, and checked your tire pressure, so the station came with dozen little plastic men. I was taken kicking and screaming to the car to go get my mom and newborn sister at St. Mary's Hospital. I'm sure my dad meant it as a Band-Aid when he stopped by our house to let me see the gifts Santa had left. Instead, it was borderline child abuse when I only had two minutes with my new Lionel train set before being whisked back into the car, once again bound for St. Mary's. I remember thinking we weren't going back, that that was it. I'd had a total of 15 minutes max with my gifts, and now Christmas was over. At the age of four, I was able to clearly define "rip-off" for anyone who asked.

My sister was like every other three-day-old baby, I've since figured out--silent, swaddled like burrito, eyes closed, vaguely resembling an eighty-year-old man. I held her in the car for a few minutes, grudgingly but with a certain fascination. Tammy. It wasn't just three of us anymore; we were four now.

Rip-off.

But it's my favorite memory anyway. When my sister, who lives a thousand miles from me now, calls or writes, I feel a floodgate moment--I have a thousand things to tell her, from the latest theory I've built around Lost to something I heard on CNN last night to a funny joke someone told me at work. There are those we connect with in a most fundamental way that makes us want to info-dump. The people you call for no reason at all yet talk for an hour. When we call, the conversations always end reluctantly, like there's something left unsaid, one more thing to add. Tammy's one of those. I got such a gift that Christmas, though I've under-appreciated it far too many times since that then.

At the time, it was my worst Christmas memory. A sister? What am I going to do with a sister? Can I trade her for an airport to go with my train and gas station? How about for the farm, the one with the barn and the fences?

But hey, I'd only had four Christmases at that point, right? What did I know?

And now I wouldn't trade her, or that memory, for anything.

Well, maybe for the airport and the farm.

Peachtree Road

2004-12-10T01:03:00.000-08:00

I'll come back to the Christmas madness--hell, it's here for two more weeks, right?--but one of those weird, quirky things that I do a lot is latch onto a CD and play it mercilessly through a project. In the two months it took me to bang out the novel Mama, She Done Told Me, I only listened to the Elvis Presley CD, 2nd to None. During the three months I wrote Mad Season, it was Matchbox Twenty's More than You Think You Are.

Getting through this Christmas season, it's Elton John's new one, Peachtree Road.

Elton John is one of those musicians whose every radio release is one I know. All of 'em, even the one from Road to Eldorado. (Anyone else know it?) But his CDs? I only own the greatest hits.

After all, the guy has 43 CDs. Let me say that again. Forty-frickin'-three CDs. That's a heavy load to pick up if you're just getting into someone with earnest. As I am.

I think the CD is great, something I can listen to beginning to end without digging around for the remote to skip a track. I read a review on Amazon in which some South Bend, Indiana dork named "EJ Fan Metrotitle Man" said the CD was second-rate... in part because some of the lines "don't rhyme." Nice to see that literacy and musical criticism is alive and well in the Midwest.

Let's try it from the view of an unjaded reviewer who hasn't listened to 42 other CDs by the same guy.

-- "Weight of the World" is poetic.
--"Porch Swing in Tupelo" is lazy and Southern, a song about Elvis.
--"Answer in the Sky," the radio release, is quite memorable as a tune.
--"Turn the Lights Out When You Leave." I hate country music; I like this country music.
--"My Elusive Drug" is close to forgettable, I think.
--"They Call Her the Cat" is honky-tonk fun, albeit weird.
--"Freaks in Love." I totally get this song. It's the very definition of love.
--"All That I'm Allowed" is a bit overproduced but fine.
--"I Stop and I Breathe" is another poetic song, with some solid vocal work.
--"Too Many Tears" is a "message" song, and man, I get tired of message songs.
--"It's Getting Dark in Here" is sad and sincere. I could do without the background vocals.
--"I Can't Keep This from You" is one of those songs that I'm not quite sure what it's about.

In all, I think it's a CD worth my while; I recommended it to my friend Scott (who shares my myriad passions note for note, as I plan to outline in greater detail in a future blog!!), and he came back with a similar review. I think Scott knows better than I; I'm also looking forward to my friend Mitch's comments, since he knows Elton John pretty well, too.

For samples of ALL of the songs, check out Amazon.com and put "Peachtree Road" in the search engine.

Mr. Ryan's Neighborhood, Holiday Edition

2004-12-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

Won't you be my Christmas neighbor?

If I had a cardigan sweater, this picture would be complete. Or a cup of eggnog. I should be changing my shoes, or talking to the Postman, shouldn't I?

As it is, you can at least see the tree and the newly updated (to gas) fireplace. Thus far, none of us have felt that special Christmas headrush of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Take note the lack of gifts under the tree. This is where *you* come in, right??!

Ho, ho, ho. :)

1980

2004-12-08T08:50:00.000-08:00

I was writing an article for my high school paper--I was a sophomore, and I'd interviewed the senior class clown for an inane "human interest" story, and I was struggling to make Kenny sound like something other than a complete jerkface who would ultimately drain my tax dollars for a prison cell. It was my dad's birthday; I had a piece of cake beside my typewriter on the dining room table. In the next room, Monday Night Football was inexplicably on TV. No one in my home ever watched football, ever, but it was on just the same.

And then John Lennon was dead.

Howard Cosell told us, during a break in the game. First John was shot and being rushed to the hospital. And then John was gone.

My dad came in and turned off the TV. He was an enormous Beatles fan. He'd turned me on to them when I was just a boy. For his birthday that day, I'd given him the new Lennon album, Double Fantasy. He put it on the turntable in the dining room and we listened. We didn't talk hardly at all. Because John Lennon was dead. Because a friend we never even met had been gunned down.

In the days that passed, we learned it was a fan who did it to him. A fanatic. A guy who'd asked for John's autograph earlier that evening, the last man to have his picture taken with the ex-Beatle, the man who would forever be in the last photo of John taken while he was alive. It would make me cautious about being an open fan to celebrities for the rest of my life--they can't trust us to just be fans when some of our number stalk them or haunt them or hurt them or kill them.

I went to a vigil that next Saturday. It's one of the last things I remember doing with my dad before he and my mom's marriage started that slow-motion disintegration that's really moving at light speed. It was cold in Decatur's Central Park. We gathered in a small crowd, and we observed Yoko Ono's period of silence in honor of her fallen husband.

Twenty-four years later to the day, December 8. I still mourn John. Thinking about his passing makes me look at the corner I seemed to turn, as if his death changed things, just a start, the butterfly effect. Once or twice I've wondered if somehow John's murder contributed to my parents' divorce or the slow separation I've undergone from my dad or my own cautionary approach to being a fan of Ming-Na or Yunjin Kim or Harrison Ford. A stranger dies, but the ripple gets to us all eventually, doesn't it?

The last picture.

Poke-Xmas

2004-12-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

My company, which makes the Pokemon trading card game, had its Christmas bash tonight.

I suspect I'm one of the few employees who will remember it.

In an upscale restaurant called El Gaucho, the beer and wine did flow. Janell and I had a glass of red wine from the bar, and then someone at our table ordered a NICE bottle of Merlot. The difference between the two was ratpiss and divine nectar.

As Leo Sayer once sang, "There was ham and there was turkey, there was caviar, and long tall of glasse of wine up to yar." To be truthful, food spreads rarely impress me (because I can't really tell the quality difference between a McBurger and a Porterhouse steak without seeing the pricetag first). But this buffet was amazing, elegant, and "Jimmy." (Get it? Jimmy buffet? Let's try to introduce this into the language to describe a good buffet, people!) I had steak and shrimp and scallops and mushrooms that tasted like steak and cheesecake that tasted like... well, cheesecake. But really, really GOOD cheesecake.

By 10:00, most of the room was hammered. That was when the microphone on the stage was finally turned on, and the speeches began. At least two of said speeches were in a language similar to English called "Inebrish." You need another drunk person to interpret for you to get the full gist of it.

They gave us great toys just for coming (a wireless hand-held Nintendo game station that acts sort of as a chat toy, too!), and Janell and I slipped out second, behind one of the VPs, in order to come home to pay Traci for watching Harrison. I think the VP who left had a sitter, too--the ultimate escape hatch.

As Janell was waiting for her coat, two of my teammates, both from the Graphic Design department, approached me one after the other. Rick, squinting at me through eyes that had turned the color of gin, slapped one arm around my shoulder.

"Mike," he said eloquently. "I love ya, man."

Then he was promptly distracted by a lightbulb above the bar and moved away.

Where was that coat-check lady?

Then Ginny came up to me. "I haven't got to talk to you all night," she said. "Is it got or gotten? You're an editor."

"Go with 'been able,'" I said.

She nodded quite seriously. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm so happy you're at the company. I haven't got... been able to gotten to tell you that. Not really. You're a big help to me. You really make my job so much easier."

"It's my pleasure, Ginny," I said. The coat-check woman came back with Janell's coat.

"And I want you to know," she said, leaning in, "that this is not just the wine talking."

It never is.

As the Latin saying goes, "It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend; one's present or future thirst; the excellence of the wine; or any other reason." Tonight's Christmas party would most certainly qualify.

Christmas Decor: Part II

2004-12-06T23:34:00.000-08:00

Tonight, the rest of the Christmas decorations went up. Sort of.

In isolation, most Christmas ornaments are cute. They're small, too. And they're purchased, at least in my house, without the immediate evaluation of just how many other ornaments I already have.

I now officially have more ornaments in boxes put back in the attic than were actually put on the tree. At least 51% waste.

But rest ye weary gentlefeet, because it's all done. Our great friends Beverly and Rick came over to have dinner and exchange Christmas gifts tonight, and after much merriment (and some freakin' awesome gifts; I don't think I know *anyone* as generous as them, and I know a LOT of people), they headed home, Harrison headed to bed, and Janell and I headed back into the attic. By 11:00, our formal living room had been transformed into a Yuletide wonderland.

We can tear it all down again in three weeks. Ho ho ho.

One final note about Christmas: Beverly told me that each year, she picks one person to show a special time, to give her top gift to, to really indulge. Well, she did it for me this year, and though I was thrilled BEYOND words, I was also puzzled. Why me? What criteria does she use?

"Your blog," she told me. "About me on my birthday. It was the nicest thing anyone has done for me in, like, forever."

(If you want to see it, it's September 14th.)

As I told B, if I'd known being honest in a blog would net me awesome gifts, I'd write something nice about her every week!

That said, I was both surprised and touched that the blog meant that much to her. As she pointed out, people don't really say the nice things they think about each other. Maybe we whisper them in the dark to someone we love, or maybe we hold somebody's hand when they're sick or dying to be sure they know how we feel. But I guess she's right--as a rule, we don't say what we really think of people.

I guess we always assume that they already know.

Beverly and Rick, I love you both. Your devotion and commitment to your friendships is unparalled. Rick always makes a point of confirming when we'll see each other again before he says goodbye. Beverly always outlines her upcoming travel schedules so I'll know when and where to find her. Both of them show infinite patience with Harrison, though they're not "kid" people and everybody but Harrison knows it. Even my cat, Selena, comes out from under whatever rock she's hidden under (the storage space under the stairs, actually) when she hears their voices. She knows good cat people from afar.

And you're both so, so generous. Thank you for the gifts and the time and, most important, the unspoken promise of more years of friendship to come. The material things from you are awesome; the non-material things are even better.

Christmas Decor: Part I

2004-12-05T21:58:00.000-08:00

Ten hours.

That's how long I spent today on Christmas decorations. I went for extra batteries, spare lights, and more extension cords--because God forbid I'd plan in advance for this day--and the local Fred Meyer looked like the opening sequence in Saving Private Ryan. You know the aisle you normally go down to get from the back of the store to the front, the aisle that always seems empty? In Fred Meyer, it's the "Ethnic Food/Aluminum Foil" aisle. Weird combo, but it's usually pretty sparsely populated, so you can roar your cart the width of the store with minimal blockage.

Today, even that aisle had eight carts blockading it. Even Methuselah's mom was shopping for soy sauce.

But Fred Meyer was the healthy breather from today's festivities. Christmas village houses and nutcrackers and more ornaments that a Hallmark warehouse came out of our attic today. You ever break a sweat around your house, doing household things? Neither do I... except today, you'd have thought I ran a marathon.

To Harrison, this was a source of much amusement. Whatever Daddy's up to, I'm going to be up to it, too. Having a two-year-old "help" you move furniture is a Fear Factor challenge. The goldfish Janell bought him today wasn't even sufficient a distraction; setting up a Disney Christmas village with umpteen extension cords and power strips was MUCH more entertaining than a bowl swimmer.

So, after a full day's worth of work, it's all up... except for the ornaments on the tree. The lights are on it, but the ornaments remain in their boxes because exhaustion caught up with us before the joy of decorating could trump it. So, we're leaving that for tomorrow night.

My original plan was to post a photo of the finished living room here--oh, did I mention that all this work was for ONE FRICKIN' ROOM??? Anyway, I didn't get to the photo. You don't want to see pictures of boxes and me looking vaguely like Saddam Hussein right after he came out of the hole in the ground. So, here's hoping for Tuesday's blog to have a photo... unless those ornaments have to be postponed. In which case, I'll get that photo up sometime around December 25.

Moving Day

2004-12-04T23:28:00.000-08:00

My friends Rob and Jackie moved this weekend from their condo into a brand-new 2200 square-foot two-story home. Foregoing actual movers, they recruited 10 friends to come over on a rainy Saturday morning to load (and subsequently unload) all of their material goods.

Now, I've done this before. Dozens of times. It nearly ALWAYS goes badly. You end up standing around while the homeowners pack the last 72 boxes, or someone drops the nineteenth-century armoire that belonged to the wife's great-grandmother, or three guys spend a half-hour trying to figure out how to get a king-sized mattress up a queen-sized stairwell (which is when someone will invariably start quoting the Friends episode where Ross cries "PIVOT!" over and over.)

Rob and Jackie's entire move--the ENTIRE move--took just at 3 hours.

They were packed, down to the last spoon. They had labeled every box. They had the truck on time, they had a plan for filling it with boxes then furniture, they had doughnuts and bottled water. In short, they had a plan.

It was the easiest move I've ever participated in.

I worked inside the truck for most of the morning, so I ended up touching every single thing they own. If anyone ever gets killed in Rob and Jackie's house, I'll be a suspect because my fingerprints are all over everything. My days as stocker at Kroger's, loading and unloading grocery trucks, came back like a bad penny.

The most entertaining moment of the day was when, on the unpacking end, the crew split in two--those inside (with no shoes on), moving boxes at Jackie's direction to the rooms where they belonged, while those outside (yeah, with shoes on) brought the boxes inside or into the garage at Rob's behest.

Mike, one of the outside movers, handed me a box like he was passing drugs.

"Rob says this goes into the loft," he said to me in a low, conspiratorial voice. He glanced over my shoulder. "And he says not to say anything to Jackie."

I shrugged. "Okay."

I took the box and turned around--right into Jackie and her raised eyebrows.

"Garage," she said.

I hesitated. "Uh, Rob said loft."

Rob foolishly picked that moment to step inside to pass along another box to the inside crew.

"This is garage," Jackie said, turning to Rob.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Computer stuff/garbage," they both answered. Guess who said which descriptor.

There was a moment of Old West, High Noon gunslinging as they stared at each other, waiting for resolution. You could hear the spaghetti western music. I stood there thinking, man, this box is kind of heavy.

"Spare bedroom," Jackie finally said.

Rob visibly sagged with relief.

"Is that in the garage?" I asked.

I have a suspicions that this box, which ended up in the spare bedroom with the futon (if you're reading this and wondering where *I* put it, Rob), has some migratory skills. I wouldn't be surprised if it's already taken flight for the winter, headed south, back downstairs, maybe even to the curb next Friday morning when Rabanco Disposal cruises their block in search of moving day treasures.

By the way, a lesson learned from that moment: if you're involved in someone else's moving day, pick one spouse and stick with that person's loading/unloading principles. It may not give you a good blog entry, but it'll spare you the awkward gunslinging moment.

Rupert Boneham Wrote to Me!

2004-12-03T22:34:00.000-08:00

Way back before the All-Stars, Rupert was the favorite Survivor player in our house. He's my age; he had the "fat kid" bullies when he was a boy (I had the "skinny kid" bullies, who had timeshares with the fat-kid bullies); he's a Midwest guy from Indianapolis, just a skip across a state line from where I grew up. He seems like the kind of guy who would've played D&D when he was younger.

More important than anything, he was a big, gruff, tenderhearted person. As a counselor from troubled kids, he seemed to know the balance between tough love and gentle comfort. He was the first Survivor player we actually openly rooted for.

So, when Rupert lost the first game, we were crushed. It seemed brutally unfair. When he didn't win All-Stars, we were indignant. It was brutally unfair. When the unexpected "fan favorite" call-in voting netted Rupert a million dollars of his own, we cheered in our living room. It was karma, finally.

When he was voted out that first time, we wrote him a letter to tell him his fan base was out here. He had said in his closing statements that he was so disappointed; he felt like a failure. Janell, with that scary Microsoft access, found his address, and we told him how wonderful we thought he was, that it was just a game and not a reflection of the man, that if we had a million bucks to give to someone, he could have it--his talk about founding Rupert's Kids in Indy sounded noble and worthy of support.

Yesterday, Rupert wrote back.

"Dear Michael,

Thanks for your letter and kind words during my time on Survivor, Pearl Islands. I'm glad you liked Survivor. When I returned from Pearl Islands, I couldn't believe how much mail I had, and I began answering my mail myself. Then I was asked to return on All Stars, and when I returned home the second time, the mail was totally overwhelming. My original letter to you became misplaced in all the chaos after Survivor All Stars.

Laura, Raya, and I have been very busy since Survivor. One of the things that has kept us busy is the starting of Rupert's Kids, a non-profit organization that will provide mentoring and support to young people as they transition into adulthood. On September 14, 2004, we launched our website, RubertsKids.org.

I apologize again for the length of time it has taken me to answer your letter. Michael, I can't believe how many folks have written me that had the same challenges in childhood as you and I. What I have learned is we are who we are and we have to be the best at who and what we are and then give back to others.

I hope you enjoy the picture I've enclosed. Thanks for your support.

Peace,
Rupert"

Maybe it's a form letter; certainly some of it is. But he wrote back anyway, and that's very, very cool. And I think the man is a great guy who handles his celebrity and money to the benefit of others, and since Ben Affleck and Paris Hilton don't seem to be doing that, that elevates Rupert in my book.

Rupert's Kids has a toll-free number (888-662-9275) if you want to check it out and see if the man's goals deserve your support, too.

UPS

2004-12-02T23:21:00.000-08:00

I come home yesterday evening to find a sticker on my front door. UPS has been at the house during the day, trying to deliver packages--you know, those things you order lots of during the holiday season?--and no one was home. So, instead of leaving the boxes, they left the sticker, saying they'd try to deliver again tomorrow, i.e., today.

You know, today... when no one will still be home.

But that's cool--I'll sign the note and have them leave the packages on the front porch. But wait... UPS wants a signature. Huh? Who the hell is sending me packages that necessitate a signature?

Amazon.com! I haven't ordered anything that requires a signature, though I have about eight boxes coming from them. Annoying. And just brilliant, this time of year, to demand signatures when people are racing various holiday deadlines. I'm one of them--I need these packages by the weekend.

So, I call UPS on their toll-free number. Twenty minutes later...

"Can I just have them leave the boxes on my porch?" I ask.

"Is the box on the sticker checked that says 'please sign to have packages left'?" the woman with the Southern drawl asks me.

"No."

"Then, no, sir. If the driver requires a signature, he can't leave the box."

"See, your driver is trying to deliver between the hours of 9 and 5 on a weekday. When most people have jobs. No one will be here."

"Then you'll have to make other arrangements, sir," she says.

I'm scanning the sticker for a loophole, sure there's one there, when she asks, "Can you have a neighbor receive it?"

"I suppose," I say reluctantly. I'm not too keen to trek next door and ask someone to keep one eye open for my Christmas packages, but I'm starting to feel like my back is to the wall here.

"You can check the box that says 'leave package with neighbor' and the driver will go to the address you indicate," the woman says.

And the little light flashes in my head.

"Will it be the same driver from today?" I ask.

"I can't say for certain, sir," she says. "Possibly not. But if you tell the new driver that a neighbor will sign for it, he'll take it there."

I tell her that's what I'll do, and I hang up. I find a black pen--the same color that the driver filled out the sticker with--and check the box that says "please sign to have packages left." Why, now it would appear that the *driver* checked that box, wouldn't it? Then I switch to a blue pen, flip over the sticker, and sign it, as directed by "the driver" on the other side.

I slap the sticker on my front door again.

The packages were delivered to my front porch today... along with the next "we need your signature" sticker.

Let me see if I can find my black and blue pens....

Departure

2004-12-01T23:29:00.000-08:00

A week ago, Warren packed a truck with most of his material possessions and, with a one-way return plane ticket in hand, drove off cross-country toward St. Louis. His son and daughter both live there; his old gaming community (presumably comprised of mostly men over sixty, his peer group) is there; the storytellers' organization he loves is there. Unlike Seattle, St. Louis might offer him a job, something he wants more than he needs financially and something he needs more than he wants socially. He's closer in St. Louis to the woman he loves. In all, St. Louis has so much to offer him compared to Seattle.

Except I'm here in Seattle.

With his rental truck returned in St. Louis, he flew back for one more night in Seattle, a night to pack the last of his boxes into his car, wipe down the walls in his old apartment, and see a few friends before he headed out on the road again. His intention is to drive cross-country for a few weeks, stopping and seeing various sites along the way. Warren is good at being alone; such a drive will swell his soul.

On his list of things to do before he left: meet me for lunch today.

I special-ordered his Christmas present to be sure it arrived on time--since he'll be doing the tourist thing for the next few weeks, there's no telling where I'll be able to ship it to him before the holiday. When the gift came, I wrapped it in classic Mike manner: excessive amounts of paper and enough tape to hold a commuter plane together. Warren's a no-frills kind of guy, so I dispensed with the bow.

Now, Warren is hard to shop for, especially if you're not breaking new ground. He likes what he likes and *doesn't* like what he doesn't like. No DVDs or CDs for Warren, but if you try to buy his board games or books, you're taking a big risk. I've recommended two books to him over the years; he faithfully took a stab at both of them, and abandoned both after the first chapter. Yet he's read everything by Nora Roberts. Go figure.

But I know his passion for the universe. I based a character on him in one of my books, so strong a part of him is drawn to the stars. So, I found a spectactular book from National Geographic that features photos of the universe as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. A magnificent coffee table book, hardback, full-color. It's a shame such a prize was wrapped by the likes of me.

And this morning, before I called him to arrange where we'd meet for lunch, I wrote him a letter. Just something to tell him how much he's meant to me. We've been friends for almost a decade, and in that time, he's become one of my best friends. You know the ones you treasure the most--they're the ones you fight with and still come back. The ones you tease and then wish you hadn't. The ones who tease you back and stop when you ask them to. The ones you call just to say "hey" and "I saw something on TV I thought you'd think was cool..." The ones you discover you are counting on.

Warren came to stay with me when my first wife left me. Warren praised my work when he thought it was good and criticized it when he thought it was bad, and both opinions made my work better. For all his time as a rough-and-tumble FBI agent, Warren found a center of peace and calm, and he conveyed it to me without hesitation.

"There's so much violence and heartbreak in the world," he said to me once, explaining why certain films and books were on his DO NOT CALL list. "I dont want to see it in my entertainment."

I learned to assess my entertainment as "Rated W: Might be inappropriate for Warren's sensibilities."

I tried to condense a lot of feelings into less than 200 words, a sheet of paper. It surprises me sometimes how such a simplistic concept of love requires reams of paper to convey it. At the bottom, I wrote down all of my contact info--address, phone, cell, emails, everything that he might need to reach me.

And then, waiting to meet him, I had to admit to myself that I don't know when I'll see him again. As much as he loved Seattle while he was here, Warren has more in St. Louis. And with a two-year-old, I don't travel much anymore. I might not see him for years. I might never see him again. My dear friend, who I have spent thousands of hours with over the years, and I might not see him again. I thought about this standing on the street corner, waiting for him to pick me up.

I was resolving to myself that I would reiterate to him over lunch that we MUST make sure we find a way to see each other in times to come when he called on my cell.

"There's too much," he said. "There are more boxes than I had imagined, and I haven't even started the cleaning. And I have to go to the bank, or else things are just going to be a mess when I get to St. Louis."

"I understand," I said. I felt suddenly conspicuous, standing on a windy street corner with a wrapped Christmas gift, as if passers-by could tell in my face that I wouldn't be delivering it. "Do you want to try to get together later toni--?"

"I have hotel reservations," he said. "I have to leave right away."

"Okay," I said.

Even over the wind that made a hollow sound over the mouthpiece of my phone, I could hear him swallow. "I'm sorry," he said.

"It's okay. You have to go."

"I have to go." He was quiet for a moment, then said, "I'll see you later, Mike."

And we hung up.

I went back into my building and took his gift back to my car. I put his letter with it, the one that tried to say all the things I've said here but with a bit more brevity and a bit more polish.

And when I headed out around 4:30 to pick up my son from his daycare, it was already getting dark outside. By then, I figured, Warren was already on the road, driving into the night, maybe even already reaching his first hotel, the first stop on his cross-country journey back to his new home.

I hope he knows tonight that I miss not getting to say goodbye to him, and that I'm just waiting to say hello again.

Bye, Warren.

He's Just Not That into You

2004-11-30T23:16:00.000-08:00

If you don't know about this book, allow me to defrost my testicles and tell you what I can about it:

*165 pages of "advice" by an unknown writer for Sex and the City
*In it's 14th printing--1.4 million copies sold in the last year
*Simple, amusing advice of how to "recognize the signs" that a man isn't interested in a woman
*Been featured on Oprah... twice

Armed with the awareness of this staggeringly painful example of money for nothing, I've set out to write my own "advice" book, with a goal of 165 pages and as much humor as I can jam into it. The problem is, of course, that I'm not funny.

Makes for a challenge, doesn't it?

Thus... tapping my funnier friends!

So, beginning in January, right around the time I plan to start writing another actual novel, I'm diving into my own self-awareness book, How to Fake an Interesting Life. I'll be looking for brainstormed ideas, so if you're leading an interesting life--or are just faking it well--please let me know, and I'd like to ask you a bunch of questions. You can write to me at michaelgryan1964@yahoo.com and I'll tell you what I think are some of the core ways to create the false front of an exciting, fulfilling life without actually leading one.

I'm sure maintaining a blog counts as one of those faker's ways...

Yunjin Kim Wrote to Me!

2004-11-29T09:52:00.000-08:00

I'm a shameless fan, I guess. I get excited about such small things, but like a lightweight drinker, I argue that it's a *good* thing--I'm a cheap drunk, and at least it doesn't take a week in Hawaii or a new BMW to make me happy.

Yunjin Kim, the Korean actress from the TV show Lost, sent me an autographed picture!!!

She wrote "To Michael" above her signature, though it's hard to see here.

Many years ago, when she was still on the show Square Pegs, I wrote to Sarah Jessica Parker. I was one of her very first fans--she wrote me a long handwritten letter, sent me an autographed picture, and when I wrote to her again a couple of years back, she remembered me enough to send another picture. I hope that Yunjin Kim becomes a huge star in the U.S. and that I'll have the honor of saying "I was an early fan." She included a handwritten note:

"To Michael,

I want to thank you again for your kind support. The pictures finally came out! Thanks for waiting! Love, Yunjin XOXO"

It was like an early Christmas present. The season is off to a great start!

Dad's Day, Revisited

2004-11-28T13:46:00.000-08:00

Luana, her beau Russ, Lu's mom Kathy, and my goddaughter Michelle came for dinner tonight--a belated Thanksgiving celebration--and Luana brought my copy of the photo from Dad's Day Weekend with her. This is from when the guy told me, "Dad, straddle your daughter from behind." Oh brother.

Harrison followed Michelle around most of the night (he recognizes a future wife when he sees one, I suppose); he latched onto Russ, calling him "Papa," and seemed almost crushed when they all had to leave at the end of the night; and in the end, we waved goodbye to them from the living room windows as they disappeared into the night.

How odd that Harrison would find family in strangers. How odd that I would feel a surreal moment of empty-nest syndrome watching Luana and Michelle drive away. Is this what getting older is about--a drifting sense of absence and memory, setting aside bits and pieces of your own life to add it to someone else's life, someone younger, someone you want to take care of?

Or am I getting overly sentimental as the seasons change? Let's go with that. For now.

So... do you see the family resemblance?

Janell says I "look like a dad." I'm not quite sure how to take that.

Santa Claus Hath Cometh to Town

2004-11-27T23:52:00.000-08:00

Third year for Harrison and still he approaches Santa as one does a dog whose disposition hasn't been determined.

You'd better not pout... I SAID...

Note the matching knitted sweaters. The one that adds 10 years to me and takes 10 years off of Mrs. Dorian Gray. Someone in this photo actually *made* those clothes and it's a safe bet that it wasn't me or Santa. So, that just leaves Harrison and Janell. Who looks guiltier?

I'm sort of hoping for matching Indiana Jones hats next year.

The Day After

2004-11-26T22:49:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not referring to that post-nuclear war TV movie. I'm referring to the first official shopping day of the Christmas season.

The movie and the mall bear some striking similiarities.

I was up at 3:45 AM... after staying up until eleven Thanksgiving night watching the Seinfeld special on NBC. Oh, curse TiVo for not having a stronger will than mine! If only it would force me away from watching programs in real-time.

By 4:20, I was in the car, headed to pick up my friend Carmen, who went with me this year to seek out the freebies. Only Carmen and my friend Ethan are crazy enough to do this; I've yet to make another friend who will sacrifice sleep and common sense for the sake of a free Disney mini-snowglobe.

By 5:20, we were at the mall, joining the crowds surging through JC Penney's for that aforementioned snowglobe. Some people were still in their pajamas; presumably, they went back home and to bed after getting their handout. I, on the other hand, went through the line twice. Free is free, people.

At 5:45, Carmen and I temporarily went in separate directions--she went after the $10 gift card at Sears, I lined up for the free Bon-Macy's giveaway. Remember that goggle-wearing kid in A Christmas Story, waiting in line behind Ralphie to see the scary department-store Santa? I got the 52-year-old equivalent of him in line behind me at the Bon.

"It's not a teddy-bear this year," he told me, forelorn as if he was announcing his cancer was back. "It's a bobblehead."

I used to work for a bobblehead company; hearing the word again was like the hypnotist's secret word that makes you cluck like a chicken or imagine you're naked in front of a crowd. I cringed.

"Bobblehead?" I said, hearing the tremble in my voice. "Is it Santa?" (We made Santa bobbleheads. Tons of Santas. All bobbling and fat.)

"No, it's a gingerbread man," scary guy in line told me. "Benji."

"The dog?" the guy in front of me suddely asked. He'd been listening to his ipod and eavesdropped at just the wrong moment. "They're giving away stuffed dogs? What happened to the teddy bears?"

"No more teddy bears," I said. I sounded so authoritative, like I knew of what I spoke. I didn't, for what it's worth. "Now that the Bon is owned by Macy's, it's class is gone. It's a bobblehead."

"Of the dog Benji?" The guy in front of me sounded incredulous. "They should do Snoopy."

"It's a gingerbread man," scary guy said.

"Snoopy is NOT a gingerbread man," the guy in front said, scoffing openly. "It's Snoopy, man. The dog in the cartoon."

You want to know who was in a cartoon? Me, listening to 2/3 of the Three Stooges at 6 A.M.

I got my bobblehead--I'm not sure, but it still might've been made by my old company--and went to rejoin Carmen. She bought a sewing machine. It weighed six hundred and twelve pounds, and I chivalrously volunteered to take it to the car so she could go through the Bon line for the crappy bobblehead doll. Benji. Oh brother.

Alderwood Mall has finally finished it's four-hundred-year renovation, and now J.C. Penney's has a parking garage. How novel. Except I didn't know they had TWO parking garages. After twenty minutes of wandering the lot like a Christmas Jew in the desert, I called Carmen's cellphone.

"You can't find the car?" she asked before we even said hello. She and my wife must talk about me often; Janell would've answered the same way.

"Maybe somebody stole it," I suggested. I have no doubt my '93 Ford Escort wagon--a brown one that Janell has beknighted "the mocha turd"--is high on the theft-watch alert list.

"Did you go out by the shoes?" she asked.

"Yes."

"The women's shoes?"

Silence.

Carmen said, "I'll come help you find it."

By the time we loaded the car and went back in to shop, my arms both ached--I'd been Atlas with a sewing machine on his shoulders.

The Disney Store had the cattle lined up around the back of the store and back out the front door again. Two clerks running four registers. Those foolish sheep, shuffling along like lemmings for a buy-one-get-one-free. Not me. Not this ship, sister.

Oooh. Look at the Mickey ornaments. They're so cute. But the line....

Moo. Baa. Lemming. (I don't know what a lemming sounds like.)

Whirlwinds of KB Toys, the book store, Godiva's (yeah, Janell knows a stocking stuffer now), McDonald's (no deals, per se, unless you count the best grease in the ENTIRE WORLD WHEN YOU'VE HAD THREE HOURS OF SLEEP!), Target, Costco... Boxes, packages, wrappings...

I dropped Carmen off and was back home by 4:15... twelve hours after leaving the house. Was it only half-a-day later? It felt like a month. Janell had been out in it, too. We both looked shell shocked--like the day after a nuclear bomb.

Only thirty more days until Christmas. I'm expecting some serious radiation fallout between now and then.

Giving Thanks

2004-11-25T14:33:00.000-08:00

My wife and son, my mother and sister. The ones who have to put up with me.

My good friends. The ones who voluntarily put up with me.

Financial stability. No matter how hard I try to achieve instability.

A modicum of talent. Same amount as the guy who wrote Bridges of Madison County; it's all I ask.

Harrison Ford, Ming-Na, Stephen King, John Irving, Paul McCartney, Yunjin Kim, Elton John, Dave Matthews, Matchbox Twenty, Disney, Pixar, Elmore Leonard, J.K. Rowling, Tom Wolfe, Stephen Donaldson, George Lucas, Lemony Snicket, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Amy Tan, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Tom Hanks, Matt Groening, Phil Collins, Eddie Murphy, and the scores of other celebrities who keep creating things that I look forward to with the same glee as when I was a kid waiting for David Cassidy or Darren McGavin or Adam West to come on TV.

Hope. I'm thankful for it even when I don't have it, because I hope it's out there just the same. And in hoping it's coming... well...

So, Happy Thanksgiving. Eat like there's no tomorrow... because if you'll be in line at J.C. Penney's at 5:30 AM for the free Disney snowglobe, today and tomorrow are guaranteed to blur together.

Thanksgiving Song

2004-11-24T08:41:00.000-08:00

There aren't songs about Thanksgiving.

Christmas is loaded for bear with songs, of course, enough so that I own about 70 CDs of Christmas "favorites." (There are times, however, when "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" makes you want to choke yourself to death on tinsel.) Most any spooky song stands in fine for Halloween--"Monster Mash," "Werewolves of London," "Frankenstein," even Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" (that spooky music from The Exorcist) work just fine. And I *could* write a sonnet about your "Easter Bonnet." Hell, even "Yankee Doodle" works for the 4th of July.

But there's no song about Thanksgiving.

Except one. Sort of.

I heard the entire thirty-minute, unedited version of Arlo Guthrie's spoken-word-song 1967 tune "Alice's Restaurant" on the way into work this morning. I even drove around the block twice so I could hear the end. It might be a bit dated, referencing the Vietnam War... but maybe not so irrelevant, given our Iraq War.... And so I present, in its entirety, italicized where sung, "Alice's Restaurant," our Thanksgiving Day song.

***
This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's
Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on
Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the
restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the
church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and
Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of
room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room,
seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't
have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be
a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So
we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW
microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed
on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the
dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dump
closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off
into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn't find one.

Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the
side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the
cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile
is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we
decided to throw our's down.

That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a Thanksgiving
dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the
next morning, when we got a phone call from Officer Obie. He said, "Kid,
we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of
garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And
I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie--I put that envelope
under that garbage."

After speaking to Obie for about forty-five minutes on the telephone we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and he said that we had to go down
and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the
police officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the
shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the
police officer's station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at
the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and
we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again,
which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station
there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was
both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I
can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the
quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of
Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop
signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the
Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars,
being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to
get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of
cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and
they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each
one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to
mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put
us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your
wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I
said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?"
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the
toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took
out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the
toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie
was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice
(remember Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few
nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back
to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat,
and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.
We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back
of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up,
and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he
sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows
and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.
And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry,
'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American
blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the
judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each
one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And
we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not
what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street,
where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one
day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so
I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to
look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted
to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York,
and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all
kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave
me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604."

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections,
detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me
at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four
hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty
ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was
inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no
part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the
last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there,
and I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said, "Kid, we only got
one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre,
with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all
the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever
go to court?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten
colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on
the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want
you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's
where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it
up and said.

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

I went over to the sergeant, said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm
sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench
'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints
off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the
guitar.

With feeling.
So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and
sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.
I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
for another twenty five minutes.

I'm not proud...

or tired.

So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.
All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant

What is wrong with the world?

2004-11-23T08:08:00.000-08:00

This morning on the news...

*A memorial is scheduled today for two little boys, ages six weeks and nineteen months, who starved to death in their cribs while their mother drank herself unconscious in the next room.

*Police are still investigating the murder-suicide of a Edmonds, Washington, man who killed his two preteen daughters before shooting himself to death, the result of a bitter custody battle.

*Police arrested a Texas woman today who cut off her eleven-month-old daughter's arms and let the the little girl bleed to death in her crib.

This is all in ONE DAY. One morning commute's radio broadcast.

There are days when I feel like the news is a nasty version of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," this endless diatribe of societal failings. It makes it so that I don't even want to turns the news on anymore...

NBA basketbrawl, Washington vote recall
Peterson did it, "Secretary" Rice
Chinese author's suicide, Fallujah's nowhere left to hide
Camden is a DMZ, oil's record price
deer hunters, Arafat
Vioxx, Crestor, Stewart's rap
Reloaded JFK, what else do I have to say?

Revived after Revisions!

2004-11-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

Done, and done--I spent two solid days locked in my office, listening to the new Elton John CD over and over (and over and over), working through the last of the revisions my agent wanted to see. And four thousand words later--that's how much new material I ended up adding to the book--I can breathe again. I just got back from Fed-Ex; the book is on its way back to her.

Some observations of the last week while I've been struggling through revisions...

*One headlight went out on my car. Just one. But since they both come on at EXACTLY the same time EVERY time, shouldn't they burn out at about the same time, too??

*The NBA: Nasty Bad Asses. I heard some announcer boo-hooing that the players have to "suffer so much verbal abuse from the fans" at every game. Cry me a river of multi-million dollar contracts and upcoming rap albums. Fans don't get punched in the face at WNBA games--sort of supporting the idea that money corrupts. As a side note, one of the fans who took it on the chin was named Mike Ryan.

*My Christmas shopping is one week behind schedule. Maybe one and a half. See what happens to you when you're neurotic? Self-imposed schedules suddenly become scripture!

*The JFK assassination computer game came out over the weekend. You play Oswald, of all people, trying to KILL Kennedy as his motorcade passes the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Good God. I'm both repulsed and fascinated by this. I'd be ashamed to play, yet I would, I think, given the opportunity. Ugh. Not the sort of moral quandry I relish on a Monday morning. It takes some of the fun out of having succeeded at revising the book this weekend, I assure you.

Commercial Appeal

2004-11-16T07:44:00.000-08:00

Figure skating was on TV last night, on ESPN-- a channel I am rarely on, but since I really enjoy women's figure skating, I end up there periodically.

In the midst of the women's long programs, a quarter of the TV screen disappeared, down at the bottom. It just went black. And then, after a brief delay, National Football League scores began to scroll.

Next to me, Janell made a snorting noise. "Boy, ESPN doesn't know who their target viewing audience is for this show, do they?"

Raising the question... I know the stereotype of a football fan. But who IS the target audience for figure skating?

***
On a different note, I'm going to take three or four days off from blogging this week in order to do revisions to my novel, as requested by my agent. With a little luck, I'll have it all done by week's end and, on the weekend, can report back for active duty here. I'll post as opportunity presents itself before then!

Some Favorites Blogger Doesn't Ask You About

2004-11-15T06:34:00.000-08:00

In lieu of a weekly list--which has lost some of its allure, to be honest--I thought I'd infrequently toss in a list that occurred to me spontaneously. What are the odds that this particular list came up on a Monday, my previously traditional "list" day?

*Favorite Dirty Word: If you don't have one of these, get one. You're missing out. I'm a fan of "motherfucker," just 'cause it's SO vulgar. I was thrilled when, during his Inside the Actor's Studio appearance, Harrison Ford said it was his favorite dirty word. I really gotta check with my mom if it's possible Ford could be my real father.

*Favorite Expression You Didn't Even Know You Used All the Frickin' Time: Apparently, I preface my more annoyed declarations with "Let me tell you something...." And now it's like realizing you've got a zit--I hear myself saying it ten times a day. Or saying part of it, anyway; I try to stop myself about half the time.

*Favorite Way to Waste Time: eBay. Then Amazon.com. Then watching Headlines News for more than half-an-hour, which means you're just recycling old news now. I'm wondering if "blogging" will make my list by this time next year.

*Favorite Food that You Have No Business Favoring: If you've not had Franco-American Spaghetti with greasy ground beef mixed into it, you're missing a religious experience.

*Favorite Unnatural Time of Day: 5 A.M. If you're up and rested, nobody will ask you to do anything and you can have no guilt about wasting time on eBay. Late at night is just too exhausting, but early mornings were made for privacy.

*Favorite Article of Clothing that Should've Been Thrown Away a Long Time Ago: On women, I happen to like granny panties. Sorry. I can't explain myself, so I won't bother trying. On myself, I'll hang onto a sock until I can put my foot through either end. Same thing with shoes--or what I think of as "oes" by the time I'm done with them, when they're but half what they once were. Hey, at least you can be glad I don't like granny panties on myself.

*Favorite Memory of an Utterly Meaningless Moment: I was maybe seventeen, working as a clerk in a Kroger's grocery store. Greg Kennedy, head stocker, came by me. He was a Burt Reynolds-like Vietnam vet with the sense of humor found in the rougher redneck bars. I thought he was about the coolest guy I'd ever met. So, when I said goodbye to him by calling out, "Have a good one, Greg," and he answered, "Already got a good one; now I'm looking for a bigger one," I almost cried with laughter. It meant nothing, though Greg grinned at me like the cat that ate the mouse, but I have never, ever forgotten that moment.

*Favorite Name, the One You'd Have if Anyone Had Asked You: I'd be a Keith. Keith Jackson Ryan. Screw Tom Clancy--I was born before he wrote his first Jack Ryan book, so he'd be plagiarizing me at this point.

Wow, I could keep going at this for days. I'll leave "Favorite Humiliating Song You Sing in the Shower" and "Favorite Way to Embarrass Other People" for next time!

How the World Grows Smaller

2004-11-14T08:53:00.000-08:00

Tempering my birthday and reinforcing my awareness that the world is always going to be a mystery to me, no matter how hard I try to understand it...

Iris Chang. We went to the U of I at the same time. Her parents were both professors there. Unlike some of us who just keep missing the mark, Iris wrote three books, one of which was a NY Times bestseller. She won awards left and right for her humitarian research into the trials fo the Chinese in America; she even made the cover of Reader's Digest. She had a two-year-old son.

She killed herself this week.

She suffered from depression, and her work was hard--she interviewed people who had been brutalized by the Japanese invasion of China and the rape of Nanking. Her writing career was built on documenting historical atrocities, a tough row to hoe for someone who already feels the weight of the world on her shoulders because the synapses in her brain refuse to let her feel peace.

I have this vision of her driving her car out a lonely stretch of highway with a gun on the passenger seat beside her. She'd known she was saying goodbye to her baby boy for the last time when she left the house that day. As she pulled off the road, what was in her mind? Pills are a cry for help; bullets are a sincere desire to be finished. I know her heart at that moment; I know how terrible the fear of living, coupled with the terror of dying. I understand that she could not see beyond the next few minutes, that all thoughts of what she would leave in her wake were gone.

And now she's gone. Just like that, a beautiful young woman with a career I envy, someone I could easily have been attracted to and even loved in another place and time, takes herself away. From her husband. From her baby boy, who will never understand as he grows up if someone his existence contributed to her fathomless depression. From anyone who might have saved her from herself.

This saddens me more than I can write here. I know I have a bias--she was a pretty Asian woman whose path crossed mine, she was a gifted writer, she grappled with depression, she was a recent parent. Had it been some obscure white stockbroker, I know I would not have been filled with the same sympathy, the same empathy. It would have been an article on the back page of USA Today, as Iris Chang's death probably is for millions of others.

But the fact is, this is another of those days I'll note in that mental book, the one of "what-ifs." What if there's ever a chance to change history by traveling back in time. What if the afterlife is a hivemind where we can find anyone, from anywhere and any time, and both provide and receive comfort. What if we can utterly understand the completely indecipherable one day.

Why, Iris? Why did you do this?

I hope I can ask you about it one day. Even if you didn't know last week, maybe you know now.

The Usual Suspects

2004-11-13T23:50:00.000-08:00

Janell threw me a birthday party this afternoon at the Tap House Grill in Bellevue, and a lot of good friends showed up. Better still, they brought gifts! You can't go wrong when people you really like also happen to like YOU enough to give you free stuff!

Back row: me, Janell

Second row: Glenn, Rick, Beverly, Chris, Debra (Debra, where are you going??), Rob, Mike, Ethan, Warren

First row: Farnaz, Lora, Mark, Jim, Traci, Jackie, Yuri, Hellen

It was great fun to hang out with the whole gang (minus Carmen, who had to be at a wedding today, Lisa, whose folks are visiting from out of town this weekend, and my goddaughter Michelle, whose dad couldn't get her there because he had to work), and while preparing the photo above to post, I got to thinking about all of them. It amazes me how you journey from place to place, time to time, and everybody contributes something different to your life to make you whole.

I look at this picture, imagine the missing friends from Seattle and the friends and family who live across the country, and it's a fascinating puzzle. It's a snapshot of who I am right now in my life. It's part of that Rubik's Cube mystery that I think most of us ignore most days--even me, yes. I only get philosophical an hour or two a day, I promise, mostly when working on this blog. And in that picture, I can see my own secrets, my own hopes, my own shame and my own pride. I've shared it with these people, and I think that's another role of friends: to reflect it back to you, to help you take ownership of who you have been, all in expectation of who you'll be.

Even the people I've not known that long, I've known for three years. And Beverly and Rick? They go back to my first DAY in Seattle, back in the spring of 1995. For the first year I was here, I spent every single weekend in their company. I met Mark and Warren later that same year. The time just slides by us, doesn't it? The children have come (Mark and Lora have three, Ethan and Yuri have two, Glenn and Farnaz are about to have their second, and Janell and I have eleven... uh, one. Sorry. Just feels like eleven some days!). Some of our friends have moved on, and a few have even died. Warren is moving to St. Louis in a week, and I'm still holding this reality at arm's length. Time comes and goes, faster and faster like a merry-go-round out of control, and change is the only inevitability.

Well, yesterday might have slid by as fast as any other day, leaving little but a memory in the space it occupied, but I've deliberately immortalized it in this photo. I know it's just a bunch of people in a picture, and someone else looking at it might see just a blur of faces, but I see the usual suspects, the ones who have made up a decade of my life. I'll look forward to seeing them again in the photo on my 45th birthday.

Birthday

2004-11-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

Middle age.

Huh. It ain't all that.

The lay of the land looks more or less the same. No one crept out last night and switched all the road signs into some foreign language. I haven't stumbled, dry and weary, upon some ancient amphitheater in the desert, its seats filled with deathly silent spectators, all waiting for me. Instead, Hemingway's truth holds fast: the sun also rises.

I went to work. Rick, Larry, Heather, Ginny, Roy, Russ, Eric--the new work gang--wished me happy birthday. I got birthday emails from Traci, Chris, Brian, John, Parsoni, Luana, Rachel, Mitch, and Scott. Carmen sent a really cute Winnie the Pooh cookie collection to my office, and my sister Tammy sent along a junk-food basket that had co-workers begging me to open it RIGHT NOW. Janell took me to a really nice lunch at a nearby steak house. In the evening, I talked to my mom, and gifts arrived from her at the house. Harrison, oblivious to any changing in the age guard, wanted to play with the snowglobe that "he" got me.

And I went to bed forty instead of thirty-nine. In the end, it doesn't really matter, and it doesn't really change anything.

But I'm changed anyway. I *want* to be changed. I have my arms thrown open wide to the possibility of the heavens. I want wisdom or insight to flood my mind simply because I'm starting another decade. I hoping for an epiphany that will explain things to me that I've turned over and over in my head and hands like a Rubik's Cube.

Brace yourself, if you're hoping for the same things: if they come, it's not immediately self-evident.

I'm hoping that being open to the possibility, more open than I've ever been willing to be, will somehow make forty *mean* something. My friend Paul used to say, "Every day is Christmas." His logic was that, for one day a year, we are bottomless springs of kindness. We shed our biases and embrace diversity with a tolerance that'll be gone by New Year's. But Paul rightly pointed out that this wisdom is selective--we choose it, for the sake of the holiday. So, why can't we choose it all the time, every day?

And here I am, half-desperate for a certainty to shine down on me just because I'm forty now. It won't come today, I know. But having my roadmap out in this familiar but strange land might mean something important when I stop hoping and actually start constructing that epiphany I'm waiting for.

Veterans

2004-11-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

For all my distaste for the current administration and its policies in Iraq, I want to be clear that I have always had the utmost respect for veterans.

My friend Doug, whom I've known since we were both in seventh grade more than 25 years ago, was practically career Army before taking a job at Cisco. My friend Warren served before he became an FBI agent. Rob, one of the gentlest people I know, was in the Navy. My father-in-law served in Vietnam. And my uncle, grandfather, and father all gave of themselves to the U.S.

All the more reason to oppose the war: I never want someone I know and care about to be killed defending a brainless decision. They join up knowing they could be killed in the line of duty, but they assume it will be for a just cause.

Never let it be for oil. Never let it be for revenge. Never let it be "because we can."

But that aside, I hope today that Doug, Warren, Rob, and all the others I know who have served in the U.S. military feel appreciated and understood, even if we cannot always see eye-to-eye politically. All of them are honorable people; all of them are people I would feel safe having guard my home and my family in the middle of some terrible, unforeseen night. And in the end, they have done what I know I am not capable of doing: they volunteered their lives for the sake of strangers.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Nerd

2004-11-10T06:55:00.000-08:00

Whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo, whoo-hoo!!!

I may not have mentioned this, so... WHOO-HOO!

Last Friday, the teaser trailer for the third (uh, sixth) and final (uh, right) Star Wars film hit theaters, TV, and the Web. Lo and behold, let us witness the return of Chewbacca and the rise of Darth Vader!

He had yellow eyes. Oh, Scott Farkus, you evil Jedi bully, you!

So, for the uneducated (or those even mildly interested), my Star Wars legacy of nerdiness...

*I saw the original film 49 times in the theater, Rogers Theater, over the course of that one summer of 1977. It was the only film the Rogers showed for more than a year.

*My mom, bless her pitying heart, made me both a Han Solo black vest and, later, when Empire came out, a blue Han Solo denim jacket with shoulder flaps. For the record, Mama-san, if you made me one of these now, I'd still wear it. And we have DVDs to get stills from now! (A far cry from the cutouts I had from magazines back in the early '80s.)

*I used to be able to quote all of Greedo's dialogue from the showdown between him and Han in the cantina. Now I'm down to "Go ta doh da, Solo?," which is still enough to prove some village is missing its idiot. As a sidenote, I still catch myself quoting about two lines ahead, and aloud, when the scroll goes up at the beginning. "It is a period of civil war," I pronounce, and other people leave the room.

*I dressed up for the premiere of Return of the Jedi. The denim jacket still fit, and Han never even wore it during the damned movie!! Oh the shame!

*
(Nope, can't even say that one. It's just too humiliating.)

*I had Meco's disco version of Star Wars on an album... and I really, really liked it. I danced to it. Sigh.

*Shameful Star Wars trivia about someone else: my mom fell asleep during it. Twice. Both times in the theater. Hehehehehehe. Someone with more embarrassing SW stories than me!

I have others. Please feel free to share between now and the next trailer, in March of next year, when I'll happily share more.

It's All in the Mind

2004-11-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are.

And somebody once said that middle age begins with the first mortgage and ends when you drop dead.

On Friday, this Friday, I'm turning 40. You know what that means? It means I'm welcome at the Old Country Buffet's "Early Bird Dinner Special" around 4 P.M. every Friday. It means the college students I think are hot could be my hot daughters. It means that Farrah Fawcett--whose suggestive nipple in a red one-piece once held my adolescent attention like a total eclipse--is now drawing Social Security.

Yikes. I'm going to be 40.

John Lennon once said in a song, "Life begins at 40." Easy for him to say. He was 40 years and two months old when he died. In the world according to Lennon, I'm going to get shot in mid-January.

Should I resist my middle age? Dare I embrace it? Dare I eat a peach?

As Lancelot's gay lover once said, "I shall not go gently into that good knight." Or something like that. Unlike the French, I can put up a resistance. I've not mocked enough of the notions of my fellow human beings, nor have I lorded myself over the less fortunate sufficiently to be middle aged. I've not yet tried some of the greater things in life, like farting in a high-speed elevator (I've never worked in a building with one before now, so guess what I'm doing Friday morning on my way upstairs?). I've never successfully claimed to have voted for the Communist Presidential candidate just to see who'll break first, my Democratic or Republican friends. I've never embarrassed my son yet--at his age, that high-speed elevator prank is nothing but fun.

So, what's the secret to staying young? Is it all a state of mind, a deliberate blind eye turned to the liver spots that show through our winter gloves?

I'm going with medication. If you send me a birthday card this week, please include a sample of your preferred prescription med. Don't tell me what it is--I'm looking forward to mixing them.

I'll let you know next week how a birth control pill, Valium, two Viagras (you know who you are), and a Flintstones chewable work together. I'm betting I'm going to have a great birthday!

Yunjin Kim

2004-11-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

I had a really, really cool moment this weekend when I heard from Yunjin Kim. She's the Korean actress who plays Sun on ABC's amazing new show Lost.

Yunjin Kim

A few weeks back, I decided to write her a fan letter, and my first draft turned into a soapbox almost immediately. Do you know how many Asian women have leading roles on prime-time television? Three--Ming-Na on ER, Linda Park on Star Trek: Enterprise, and Yunjin Kim on Lost.

Now, consider this: Ming-Na (www.ming-na.com) gets less than three minutes screen-time per episode of ER. Linda Park (www.lindapark.tv) is doing slightly better but let's face reality: she's on UPN.

Yunjin Kim had an entire episode built around her and actor Daniel Dae Kim (www.danieldaekim.org), and they remain central characters in the show, week after week.

I think that, as a rule, Asians are not treated well by the networks, and Asian women are treated quite shabbily. I should note, though, that Ming-Na had a spectacular turn on Law & Order this season, but again, it's just a one-shot deal. And it was supposed to be broadcast the night of the Vice-Presidential debate, so the episode was shunted around, making it difficult for even her fans, let alone the mainstream population, to find it.

About halfway into my tirade, I realized I'd missed the point of a fan letter to Yunjin Kim, so I started over. While I still wanted to make my point about how Asian casting (note that there's been no television show centered around an Asian family since Margaret Cho's All-American Girl in 1994), I really wanted to tell her how much I enjoyed the show and how great I thought the episode with her backstory was.

She responded to me with a very nice email, telling me about her website and promising me a signed photograph when they are available from the network. She also sent me the address to her newly created website.

www.yunjinkim.com

If you get the chance, check it out. And for the love of God, watch Lost--if you're missing it, you're missing the best show on TV and the chance to support the presence of Asian and Asian-American actors on U.S. television.

SAW

2004-11-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

This is the movie I saw while visiting Luana over in Pullman a week or so ago. It's the one I walked into blind, having no idea what I was seeing. It's the one that still disturbs me.

The premise: a doctor and a photographer wake up in a filthy, abandoned, freakily lighted public restroom, each chained to the the piping by his foot. They are the latest victims of the Jigsaw killer, who likes to test the boundaries of his victims by giving them horrific, potentially fatal ways of escaping the deathtraps he puts them in. Will the young woman eviscerate the paralyzed but definitely alive young man to get the key out of his stomach? She needs it--otherwise, in a minute or so, the "reverse bear trap" wired to her head is going to split her skull into pieces, and the key's the only way out. (See the poster.) Will the fat man slithering through the razor-enhanced barbed wire to get out before the dungeon's door slams shut and locks him in forever? These grisly traps are backstory: in this case, the doctor finds a single bullet in his pocket, and and audio recording that tells him he needs to shoot and kill the innocent photographer if he wants to save his wife and daughter, both hostages of the Jigsaw killer.

Between the doc and the photographer is a corpse--a suicide victim--with a gun in its dead hand. To get to the gun first, one of the men will need to escape the chain around his foot... and that's where the title of the film comes in. Each man finds a hacksaw on his side of the room. It's not strong enough to cut the chains, but it'll go through flesh and bone just fine.

Ugh.

Critics have torn the movie apart, and probably with some justification. Sorting out the logic of it after the fact was tough. Why this? Who did that? What's the reason for that??

But in the moment, none of that mattered. This movie is damned scary. If you can avoid the reviews and the trailers, go see it for the fright of the year. I've seen lots and lots of horror flicks in my time--when I was younger, they were my favorite kind of movie--and I have some points of comparison in terms of fright. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Halloween. The last few minutes of Ringu (The Ring).

I don't know if it's still giving Luana the shivers, but I still find myself thinking about it with a bit of a shudder. I am secretly grateful Janell wasn't there to see it with us--when she saw the TV-movie version of The Shining I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom with her every single time.

If she'd seen what I SAW, she'd need to get up with me now.

DAYSed but No Longer Confused

2004-11-06T06:40:00.000-08:00

Well, my little odyssey of soap operas that began last summer with the weirdness of the Salem Stalker on Days of Our Lives and the candidacy of Howard Dean seems to be coming to an end. The outcome of one of them, at least, makes sense. The Days outcome.

Tony, the lunatic (formerly dead of a rare blood disease) who orchestrated the hynotizing of Marlena to convince her that she had committed a series of murders... the madman who drugged people to simulate their deaths, then stole their "corpses" from their coffins... the nutjob who re-created the entire city of Salem on a remote island and then surrounded in with a forcefield (I love how soaps can mirror REALITY so well)... is also a patricidal vampire.

Really.

Tony's father, Stefano, turns up on the island, too. Sort of. Everyone thinks it's Stefano (also a mental case, as I understand it), seated with his back to them in a chair in a magnificent study, a cigar burning. But when the chair is turned around, it's Psycho in spades: Stefano is a desiccated corpse. Tony cured his own blood disease by killing his father via a blood transfusion to save himself.

This plotline partly comes about because the actor who used to play Stefano is on another soap and unavailable. It also partly comes about because this show is just flat-out weird.

Tony claims he did all this out of hatred and jealousy of his brother John (who's also one of the walking dead on the island); I guess little bro stole Kristen, the love of Tony's life, out from under Tony's nose. (Note that I can't find anything to suggest that Tony messed with Kristen's life, which he should have done as well, don't you think?)

Well, the bad guys always lose in this scenarios, and somehow, Tony ends up on the run from his tormentees... to disappear. Yep, they undo his plot but they don't technically get the bad guy. Where's the future story arc in that? Instead, Tony somehow sets off a volcano on the island before escaping, and John, Marlena, and the other "victims" of the Slasher have to flee for their lives back to Salem.

Ah, reality TV. Where would we be without it?

Reader letter in this issue: "The story surrounding GENERAL HOSPITAL's Courtney taking in a teenage foster child is ridiculous. I find it very hard to believe that Social Services would put a 17-year-old boy with a single, twenty-something woman who lives in a loft that has one bed." Oh, yes, M.S. of House Springs, Missouri--let's definitely try to keep soaps more believable. We should add more forcefields and battery-operated volcanos!!!

What the Hell Is He Talking About??

2004-11-05T11:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, my commentary on the last 24 hours is restricted to short notes about the world in general. Let me know if you actually understand all of them--you either know me really well, or you need a life as badly as I do...

--Damn, and I kinda liked Raj. Bowtie notwithstanding, I'd hang out with him... but I'd keep him away from all my single female friends, because a dork with a walking stick who calls every woman "my dear" is NOT going to date anyone *I* know.

--I'm pretty sure that's James Earl Jones's voice... or else it's Mufasa talking to the Emperor.

--Elastigirl's got a hot butt. It's too bad she sounds like Holly Hunter.

--I'm guessing that Jesus either shops exclusively at Wal-Mart, can't stand pork chops, or has no sense of humor. Or maybe all three.

--There are some happy kids home from school today in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. It's like every child's dream, provided you're not actually *there* when it happens. Sorta like Jesus finished his pork chops and then did you a favor.

--Guilty, guilty, guilty. He should've gone fishing for a better alibi.

--Comatose, huh? It was probably Tuesday's outcome that did it to him. I feel a little comatose myself.

--Well, I'm voting for the donkey! Again! This time, the big fat smelly green thing can't win!

Coping without Hope

2004-11-04T08:48:00.000-08:00

A friend wrote me a rant today about Bush's victory that culminated in this sentence: "please delete this email. Web-based emails make me nervous now."

Another friend was within one lip-tremble of crying over lunch yesterday while we discussed the Presidential elections.

I empathize with both of them. And while this might sound a little close to the ostrich head-in-the-sand approach to politics, let me outline my own plan for coping. Because fear of being monitored and heart-sinking depression, as both of these friends know, is unacceptable. We will not be driven to despair because one snot-nosed wooden-gunned cowboy and his cronies hold the politic reins of our country for the next few years.

So, here's my approach...

We fought, we lost. That's the fact. But we did not die. We may YET die--let's see how long it takes him to bait South Korea into nuking Los Angeles--but we're not dead today. Today, Georgie Porgie is still President. And he was President a couple of months ago when I got my new job. He was President while I was having fun over in Pullman. And he was President while I was writing books and taking Harrison trick-or-treating and watching Lost and writing out my Christmas list.

Not to appear naive, because I know he's made a mess of things and the mess can be greater still, but we'll survive. We might even thrive, some of us, even a lot of us, who opposed him.

And again, the semi-ostrich approach: I don't want to hear him, I don't want to see him. I don't need to have my nose rubbed in our loss by his half-cocked smirk and his mangling of the English language. I don't need to hear the derogatory, self-satisfied doubletalk of Condi Rice to recognize that we have to listen to that gold-toothed half-wit for another 1500 days. So, I'll make my source of information TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, and the new Disney catalog for the next few months, until I feel I can deal again.

In two years, we'll elect more senators. And a senate with a majority of Democrats can defuse a healthy chunk of a nutball Republican presidency. Then we shoot for 2008, and whatever G.W. and his circus train of profiteers mess up between now and then, let's hope a Hilary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket can clean up.

We cannot beat him right now, folks. He won, fair and square. Unless he fucks up royally and hands us an impeachment option, we're stuck with him for a while. And we have new information about our fellow Americans, too--we're a divided nation, and if we let politics become more than the shell game that it is, we quickly learn to hate the other half for their difference. It's just another form of discrimination and prejudice, in the end.

So, if you can't beat 'em... ignore 'em. My ex-wife's sister had a bumper sticker that read "Shoot your TV." For now, that's a solid plan. Don't give CNN a minute of your life. Christmas shop, read a good book, go to the movies, follow your football team, play with your kids, visit your friends, and set this aside for the moment. Stewing on it is agony. Vigilance is still the only way to root out evil, yes, but you can set aside vigilance long enough to find your bearings again.

After all, it isn't the end of the world.

Hopefully.

Four More Fears

2004-11-03T08:04:00.000-08:00

This morning, the Republicans--eager to have things their way--started calling for Kerry's concession speech. They are salivating to sneer in the faces of the minority and say, "What we've been doing is supported by the American people... but not YOU American people. We're not even sure you ARE Americans, you who voted for Kerry."

I am reminded of their own ads showing the stalking wolves. The wolves of the GOP were snarling outside the Democratic door this morning.

As I wrote the sentence above, Janell called me to tell me that Kerry conceded. He called Bush and gave it up.

I could cry.

Eleven states voted against same-sex marriage propositions.

Tom Daschle got kicked out.

The governor's race in my previously liberal state of Washington is so close that it's possible the Republican candidate will win.

The Republican lock on the Senate, the House, and the White House is secure.

Wall Street numbers jumped this morning because defense, chemical, and energy companies feel secure and freewheeling under this administration. They can do what they wish without fear of repercussions now.

Four more years of George Bush. A massive turnout of voters this time, and Bush received in excess of three MILLION more votes than Kerry.

I feel completely disenfranchised. I feel alienated from my country, as if I should simply surrender to silence, go through the drudgery of the day, and simply watch events unfold instead of being a participant in them. I feel as if I no longer understand the majority of my fellow citizens--I thought most of us were on the same page.

We're not.

We believe in war. We believe in mismanaged budgets. We believe in prejudice and discrimination. We believe in big business. We believe in isolationism. We believe in Big Brother and the Patriot Act.

George Bush, the bumbling schoolboy, and his evil, dry-handed old teachers--Rumsfeld, Cheney--can do what they want to us now. They have all the power, from senators to governors to attorney generals. They can send us to Gitmo Bay when we disagree. They can take any amount of money from anyone at any time they wish, so long as it isn't Halliburton. They can look at gays and say, "Sorry, no happiness--uh, marriage--for you." They can look at the poor and say, "Sorry, no food--uh, welfare--for you." They can look at the elderly and say, "No survival--uh, healthcare--for you."

And yet, the elderly in Florida voted for him. The Cubans--who he has told are not allowed to see their families more than once a year--voted for him. Military families, whose children are being blown into bloody bits of meat, voted for him.

I am ashamed of my country today. Our country is alone in the world and we don't seem to care. And within this isolated country, I feel like a lot of us are even more alone. We are afraid of our government. And our one chance to do anything about it is over. For four years, the tyranny is coming. We won't be welcomed to participate--we'll be marked as the ones this administration wants to target. The big-mouthed do-gooding minority.

I hope Michael Moore is on his way to Canada as I write this.

Dads' Weekend

2004-11-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

After a couple of days banging around the WSU campus with Luana--whom I think of as my older goddaughter--I remember exactly what was hard about college.

Being broke. When fixing a *second* bag of Top Ramen for dinner is living on the high horse, you're in college.

Actually weighing the pros and cons of walking a half mile to get somewhere. Hell, if I could, I'd drive to our mailbox, but Luana happily donned multiple layers of clothing to trek across campus to the football stadium. Definitely in college.

Sharing a home with strangers and needing to either safeguard your possessions or surrender them to the general population of your house. Two of Luana's housemates are football players who have successfully sunk her couch by body-diving onto it, and no food is safe in their fridge unless labeled, and even then, it's a coin flip whether it'll be there tomorrow.

All that said, I had a great time with Luana this weekend. I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag in her tiny little room, and I showered in her tiny little shower (which was small enough that crossing your arms isn't an option without both elbows touching wall), and I sat in the hail with her for the first quarter of the football game while visiting USC scored THREE touchdowns in the first SEVEN MINUTES (we then trekked home, soaked but amused, to watch the rest of the game on TV). Some highlights of the trip...

*Photo with Dad. The university bookstore, The Bookie, had a professional photographer taking pictures of dads and their kids. Luana and I went and had our photo taken, a "moment in time," as the photographers hyped themselves. The stone-faced cameraman didn't pat an eye when Luana referred to me not as her "dad," but as her "sugar daddy." Nor did he blink when when we both smirked after he suggested I "straddle your daughter from behind" on our respective stools.

*Bowling. If you don't bowl, you're missing out. The only thing that should stop you is a bruised thumb (and in some people's cases, like my friend Beverly, even THAT need not be a deterrent). I took Luana and Russ, her 6'8", 300-lb. boyfriend, bowling, though both claimed to be utterly talentless at the game. Uh-huh. I was on a league, people. A LEAGUE. I beat Luana only because she gutter-balled finding her balance in the first few frames, and Russ beat me by sheer force of will. He threw his bowling ball like a softball. And he even made $3.00 off me, 10 cents a pin, enough to buy 30 bags of Top Ramen. If you'd seen Russ eat, you'd know--that's ONE meal.

*Scary movie. We'll get into seeing SAW in a future blog. Suffice to say that Luana and Russ picked it, and I have been paying for it in my nightmares ever since.

*Drew Carey. I thought it was pretty cool that 10,000 people paid between $25 and $40 a pop to have Drew Carey and most of the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway? mock the WSU football team's horrific 42-12 loss to USC. Ah, to be a fat, middle-aged comedian... uh, and get paid for it.

*Public Displays of Affection. PDAs, as Luana called them. I left her and Russ at the table in a restaurant while I went to the restroom, and when I came back, they were holding hands. When I sat down at the table again, Luana let go of Russ's hand and pulled away.

"It's fine, you know," I told her.

"No, it's not," she said firmly. "It's not respectful. Maybe it's a leftover from my Chinese culture, I don't know, but it's not respectful to show PDAs in front of family like that."

I swelled with pride for two reasons: Luana referring to me as "family," and her grace and poise in a time and place in her life where it would be easy to crawl all over her boyfriend, some sort of rebellious sexual display. Luana has class; she's a focused student (she's taking another year in order to complete her DOUBLE major), she's got a strong sense of what a romantic relationship in college does or does not mean, and she wants to put her best face forward. She told me that she cautioned Russ about swearing in front of me. (And if you know me, you know I'm one step removed from being a drunken Marine in my vocabulary.)

I'm already looking forward to being "dad" next year and to attending her graduation. I liked Russ and was even more honored that Luana actually wanted to know what I thought of him. (For the record, he's a mature young man with an obvious respect for his family and a clearly tender heart for Luana; I like big jocks who feel absolutely no need whatsoever to live the dullard sexist stereotype, who are comfortable being affectionate and sweet with the people they care about.) He was respectful of her, respectful of me.

So, for two days, I was very, very proud to call her Luana my daughter.

She was even a good sport about dressing alike.

Really, she looks a lot more like her mother.

Books on Tape... er, CD

2004-10-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

So, for the next few days, I'll be on the road. I'm driving over the mountains and across the desert to Pullman, Washington, to stand-in as "dad" for my goddaughter's older sister at Washington State University. (Note: No blog entries for the next three days, by the way.)

That's 5 hours each way. The only thing I can do for 5 hours straight is sleep, and even that's questionable. I expect to be a little nutsy by the time I reach port on both ends of the trip.

With that in mind, I thought I'd get a book on CD to take with me on the road, some great classic I've missed or recent bestseller that's on everybody's must-read list. I strolled over to Barnes & Noble to pick something out.

I might as well have shopping for a book on CD at the fabric store. And I *hate* the fabric store. Ask my mom. It was a form of torture when I was a kid.

Really, there was next to nothing. It's like the books-on-tape industry takes that hyphenated term REALLY seriously. Lots of books on tape; very few on CD. Those that are on CD fall into the following categories:

--Political nastiness. Self-importance in the worst way. I like Michael Moore, detest Ann Coulter, and have no desire to listen to either of them for 10 hours. This is probably why they never invite me on road trips with them. NOW I get that stand-offishness.

--Mysteries. I'm assuming mystery fans are extremely close to illiterate, because the industry seems to think so. ALL of Sue Grafton's "A Is for Always in Print" books were available on CD; none of Elmore Leonard's were. Same deal with James "Nursery Rhyme Killer" Patterson's work. No John Irving or Tom Wolfe or Amy Tan, however. The fan base for those authors is apparently either too snobbish for CDs (though *I* was shopping) or are completely deaf.

--Religious tomes. If the Bible had been read by James Earl Jones or Pee Wee Herman, I might've gone for it. Otherwise... Holy cow, how many different ways to read this book *are* there??? Eight, according to the CD shelf at B&N. And I didn't bother checking the tapes. Interesting to note that these CDs never have pictures on the cover. Huh.

--Sports. Think of these books as having cross appeal: self-important, not intended for the high-minded, with a certain religious zealousness that can only be found in temples, synagogues, mosques, and stadiums/ballparks/arenas.

So, I guess it's a whole mess o' Beatles on the road with me. Or else I'll have to take a plain old paperback novel with me and hope I can drive over the mountains with one hand on the wheel and one eye on the road.

Maybe I'll even read aloud to myself just to replicate that CD-listening experience I'll be missing.

Eclipsing Halloween

2004-10-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

At 7:24 or so tonight, the moon will be fully eclipsed. They said on the radio this morning that it will be orange, a perfect moon for the Halloween week.

Some Halloween thoughts...

*If I could be a ghost, I think I would. For a while. I'd haunt a few people, bang a few doors, appear in a few mirrors, then shuffle off the last vestiges of the mortal coil. Oh, and I'd haunt someplace where you would never expect to find a ghost, like the cereal aisle on a Safeway or a toilet in a Shell station off the interstate. Unroll all the toilet paper while someone's doing their business. Spooky stuff.

*If I could be a vampire, I wouldn't. Anne Rice convinced me it's too melodramatic a monster.

*The number-one costume this year is George W. Bush. Another melodramatic monster.

*I miss trick-or-treating, but it seems defeatist when I can go into any Seven-Eleven and feasibly buy the whole candy rack. Instead, I buy a half-gallon of milk and a TV Guide. Man, when the hell did I grow up???

*One Halloween, when I was really little, an old woman who didn't have any candy to give out let me come into her kitchen and pick anything I wanted for my trick-or-treat bag. She had apples, homemade cookies. I went with a box of spaghetti from her pantry. My dad could make some mean spaghetti--go with what you know.

*My mom made me a werewolf costume one year. A full bodysuit of fur. I couldn't get my pants on over it, though, and HEY, WEREWOLVES DO NOT GO OUT PANTLESS. Shirtless, sure. But even Lon Chaney had slacks with tears in the knees. Gotta stay in character.

*I love the rubber smell of the inside of a mask. They say smell is the strongest memory jolter, and that smell rockets me right back to standing in the dark, on the curb, assessing the loot in my trick-or-treat bag. I couldn't wait to take it home, divvy it up into piles (candy bars, gum, miscellaneous Tootsie Rolls and Sweet Tarts, and the oddities--the religious pamphlets, the toothbrushes, the quarters). But at the curb, it was all still just a massive bagful of sugar, uncounted and therefore bottomless. And then I'd yank that mask back on and hurry to hit the other side of the street.

Next year, I'm throwing a Halloween party if it kills me. And if it does, I'll come back as a ghost just to haunt the party. It's good to have life and post-life goals.

Puyallup Halloween

2004-10-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Debra has her daily soapbox. I trust she'll let me climb up there with her for this one.

Puyallup, Washington--home of simple-minded educators, apparently--has officially cancelled Halloween activities in the school district. The superintendent (and various pinheaded spokespeople for the district) has said that it a) distracts from the learning process to have all these hubbub around the festivities, all this dressing up and celebrating and what-not, and b) that they don't want to offend members of the Wiccan religion and real-life witches.

I can't stand people who lie to cover their own ulterior motives.

Let's cut to the chase here: Puyallup school officials just put themselves on the map by garnering some national media attention for being so far to the left that they're practically to the right. I'm a liberal, a lifelong liberal, and *I'm* offended by this stupidity. It seems calculated to draw attention. CNN mentioned it; it's in newspapers all over the country. Google my subject line, and you'll see editorials across the nation.

So, publicity aside, what other reason could Puyallup have for dressing up as dunces this Halloween?

Is it really some ultra-liberal PC-ness? Nope. Wiccans aren't offended by Halloween, at least not in Puyallup. Some of them were at the public forum last night when people came out to protest this new take on crushing the fun out of our children's lives. Those Wiccans who spoke had no issues with the holiday or the celebrating thereof. In fact, they suggest in various interviews that this is an ultra-Christian maneuver to banish a holiday that the Christians see as "evil." Who knows.

And to the Wiccans' credit, at the school board meeting last night, no witches showed up to cast spells and reward the assistant superintendent Tony Apostle with piles of gold and fantastic youthful good looks, either, by the way. Trust me. I've seen the pictures. And Karen Hansen, the talking head for the district, is either Colin Powell (the messenger to be shot for the message) or a real-life Donald Rumsfeld, looking to take the fun out of everyone else's lives to make a political point. Good job, Karen Rumsfeld. If I were a Wiccan with that witchly powers your district so wants to protect, I'd turn your asses into toads.

So, this grandstanding about not wanting to offend "real-life witches" and presumably, real-life vampires, real-life werewolves, and real-life Bigfoots is, in the end, just a really bad costume for the district. I believe their reasoning lies more along these lines:

"Think we can get out of having to decorate and babysit these brats in their little fairy princess costumes if we ban Halloween?"

"Jesus, Tony, how are you going to pull that off? Everybody and his uncle will pitch a fit if you don't let them dress their little darlings as the monsters they really are."

"Maybe we can say it interferes with learning."

"Yeah, that's funny, Tony. That six hours they're not learning--hell, that could be the difference between Harvard and the UW. No, you're going to have to do better than that if you want to get out of cleaning up paper-mache pumpkins."

"I got it. The Wiccans. We'll let them take the fall. We can get out of giving up our cigarette breaks by saying we don't want to offend the Wiccan religion."

"That's frickin' genius, Tony. I'll have Karen type some bullshit up. Hey, you know what? We could get out of Thanksgiving parties, too, if we say we're offending vegetarians."

"Don't be stupid--we get Thanksgiving off."

So, I'm expecting St. Patrick's Day to be targeted next. Oh, and Labor Day--wouldn't want to offend the unemployed.

If I were in Puyallup school district, I'd send Harrison to school dressed as Jesus with a pointy hat and a wart on his nose. I'd tell him to try to turn his juicebox into a wine goblet over recess, and if he couldn't, ask the teacher to produce a Wiccan witch to do it for him. And when they sent him home, I'd go pick him up dressed as one of the Apostles--Tony Apostle, assistant superintendent. I'd wear a carnival sign that says, "Want to win a free diamond? Stick a piece of coal up my ass."

That's how tight I think they are out in good ol' down-home Puyallup. I hope you all get rocks in your trick-or-treat bags this year.

Epi-blogue: Seventeenth Week, Seventeeth List--Sports Nuts

2004-10-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

Janell and I watched the second game of the World Series last night, and we watched it with the enthusiasm of people who actually care what happens. The irony? We don't.

We're both rooting for the Red Sox, but for no reason other than that they've been underdogs in the past. We liked that they smashed the hated Yankees, coming back from a 3-0 deficit and making A-Rod pissily say to the media that he wouldn't be watching any more baseball until next spring. Nyeah-nyeah, poor sport. And I'm completely enthralled by the fact that, even before the season began last spring, Stephen King announced he'd write a book about the Red Sox season this year. Now King is taking notes at the frickin' World Series. Man, did he pick the right year to write about the Sox. He's like a psychic spooky guy. He should write a book about a guy who can see the future. Oh, wait...

But on the whole, I'm not a sports fan. I’ve enjoyed the baseball games I've been to when the Mariners were not close to being the worst team in the league. I've enjoyed the women's basketball games I've been to when the Storm was unstoppable, like this year. But I didn't care much for the one hockey game I've been to, and I think the last football game I went to, Tana Clements, with whom I had an English class, was one of the cheerleaders.

And then there are the sports I simply don't get.

Thus, today's list.

*Curling. This is a sport??? Really? I don't think so. I saw this for the first time in the Beatles' film Help. I thought it was a joke, the people with the brooms, sweeping in front of the big metal curly thing. Nope, it was legit. I laugh when I see it anyway.

*Golf. As the nine-hundred-year-old English teacher/golf coach Mr. Phipps in my high school told the assembled students that first week my freshman year, "Golf is NOT a spectator sport. If you wish to support the team, please do NOT attend our events." I hated the guy (he told me point-blank I'd never be a writer; nice way to build the dreams of a fourteen-year-old boy), but I gotta concede: he was right about the golf thing. I've had more fun counting the rhythm of my turn signal blinkers than watching golf. Maybe it's more fun when you have a club in your hands because you can consider beating yourself to death with it before the boredom gets you first.

*Mountain climbing. I get the challenge; it's the death that I find discouraging. And I like my sports like I like my sex: safe. And, to be honest, warm. Every couple of weeks, some dipshit without a Sherpa gets killed on Mt. Rainier because a rock fell on him or he pitched his tent on an avalanche line or he stepped left into a gorge instead of right onto the hiking trail. (Note I use the male pronoun here because, for the most part, women seem smarter than to take their lives into their own hands because some mountain "is there.") Any sport that requires a search-and-rescue operation is not a sport, in my book; it's passive suicide.

And finally…

*Quidditch. Yeah, I know it's not a "real" game, but you'd think Rowling could've worked out the scoring a little better anyway. I mean, 150 points for catching the Golden Snitch? But only 10 points per basket??? That means you have to have 160-point lead on your opponents to win if you don't collect the Snitch first! I'm sensing this game was deliberately imbalanced to ensure Harry Potter's regular victory, to make him the Curt Schilling, the Edgar Martinez, the Lauren Jackson, the Tiger Woods, the Sir Edmund Hillary of Quidditch.

Sorry, I couldn't think of any famous curlers. See, I told you it wasn't a sport.

Traffic and Weather on the Tens

2004-10-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

I forgot to turn off my weekday alarm, so guess who was awakened by news channel 710 KIRO at 6 A.M. this dark Sunday morning? I want to make one brief observation about news channels: I know they need to repeat info to ensure you get the latest news whenever you tune in. I recognize that if I listen for more than half an hour, I'm going to hear the same stories two or three times. But why would you continue to give helicopter traffic reports every ten minutes on a Sunday morning??? Let me give YOU the reports from "the tens," 6:00, 6:10, 6:20, and 6:30:

*6:00: "Traffic still looks good both directions on I-5, no delays on either the main line or the express lanes. 405 looks just as good, so expect an easy commute this morning."

*6:10: "Over on the eastside, nothing to report along the 405 corridor. Smooth sailing both north and south of Bellevue."

*6:20: "Still an easy drive out there this morning. Nothing blocking on either I-5 or I-405, and your downtown drivetime traffic getting from Everett to Seattle is right on schedule."

*6:30: "Both bridges across Lake Washington are clear ths morning, both directions, so if you're headed into Seattle, either bridge will get you where you're going right on time."

So, I've drafted the 6:40 report for them...

*6:40: "All highways are clear, and our next report will be from the station, as I'm being fired for wasting helicopter fuel when we have the Washington State Department of Transportation website, which updates every three minutes, to tell us that there's no one out on the highways this morning. Oh, and common sense too. Because unless a circus truck loses a load of llamas on the eastside this morning, pretty much any accident isn't going to change traffic flow when a grand total of six cars are traveling the I-405 corridor before sunrise on a Sunday morning. Wait, we've just seen a Pontiac take the NE 8th exit into Bellevue, so make that five cars on 405. I'm Paul Tosch in the 710 KIRO First-Alert traffic helicopter, and we're headed for a drive-thru now..."

Now, llamas on the freeway and helicopters at the drive-thru: THAT'S news I should have on the tens.

The Good Earth

2004-10-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I read three books that all had movie tie-ins: Jaws, The Exorcist, and Helter Skelter. (See a trend of weirdness here?) I had to sneak to read The Exorcist--let's face it, it was NOT a book for ten-year-olds. The film for each had a different effect on me:

*Jaws showed me that a book and a film need not follow the same story arc. (Richard Dreyfuss's character, Hooper, is not only a complete dick in the book, he also is the one that gets eaten by the shark; Quint, the Robert Shaw character, gets dragged to a drowning death after his foot gets tangled in the barrel ropes trailing behind the fish instead of being chomped in half, per the film.)

*The Exorcist showed me that, on rare occasions, a film can outshine a book. The book was more atmosphere than straight-out horror; the film was split-pea puke and nasty boils on Linda Blair's face. Definitely scarier.

*And Helter Skelter showed me that an engaging book can be made into a boring, plodding exercise in adaptation, the performance of Steve Railsback as Charles Manson notwithstanding. (They made another TV movie out of this book just this last spring, and it wasn't a whole lot better.)

In the early '80s, I had the good fortune to stumble upon my all-time favorite book, The World According to Garp, and was still reading it when the Robin Williams film came out and ruined the end for me. Except it wasn't the end, and that was the lesson I learned from Garp: a book can be so much more than a film, going well beyond what you can see on the screen, adding subtle twists and turns of characterization that even Oscar-worthy performances can't bring out.

Which brings me to The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck.

I just finished reading it, a tale of a simple Chinese farmer named Wang Lung and his life from the time of his marriage in his youth until his ripe old age when all that the Earth could give him had come to fruition. A great read; a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, with some great characterization (I loved O-Lan, Wang Lung's selfless wife, though Wang Lung never really loved her at all, despite how hard he tried to find it in his heart to do so) and epic feel. I enjoyed it, enough so to want to see the film, if there is one.

Yes, there is. MGM, 1937.

Wang Lung was played by Paul Muni. A white guy.

O-Lan was played by Luise Rainier. A white woman. She won an Oscar for her role, no less.

Thus have I learned another lesson, many years later, about the transition a book takes to the screen: the suspension of disbelief can be a very narrow and precise thing. You can cast an American as a German, and I'll believe it. You can cast a Korean as a Japanese, and I'll accept it. You can cast Tom Cruise as Austin Powers, and you have my faith. But there's an invisible line in the sand here. And it's this:

Don't cast a woman as a man, even Yentl, or a man as a woman (and that includes Nathan Lane), and expect much positive reaction from me. Don't cast a white guy as a black man, even if the white guy is Anthony Hopkins, and expect me to swallow it. And don't cast Caucasians as Asians and expect me to rent it.

The book is great, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. According to Leonard Maltin, it's a great movie, too, but I wouldn't know because I won't be watching it. If your own suspension of disbelief allows you to see it, let me know what you think.

And given that it's an Oprah book, I'm hoping this means there's another film adaptation on the horizon. In other words, I'll wait for the movie.

Post-flu

2004-10-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

The wonder of having a two-year-old son is that he's pretty much willing to try to help me with any project. Hammering a nail, Dad? Hell, I'm in on that--let me find something to pound with, like this glass bowl here. Whatcha eatin' there, Dad? Well, yeah, duh, I want some! Fork it over! Got your hands full changing my diaper, Dad? Here, let me toss some of that around the room for you.

And if you're sick, a two-year-old child is more than happy to take some of the puking chores off your hands.

Smells lemon fresh... if lemons came out of your butt.

Mama-San

2004-10-21T23:02:00.000-07:00

My mom turns... 26... today.

For all the love I've found in the world--great friends, two wives (not at the same time), my baby boy--none have been as constant as that from my mom.

She doesn't say it often. We've never been a touchy-feely family, though I've gone roaring the other direction in recent years. But my mom's affection for me and commitment to seeing me through crises and victories has never flagged, and this despite her own ongoing challenges. She's cold all the time; she runs that furnace in her old house with clear intent to melt the paint from the walls. And just yesterday, a hit-and-run driver tore through her front porch, leaving her with a pile of broken bricks and shattered wood, just one more problem to deal with before another Illinois winter descends on her.

But she still maintains her sense of humor, and we bitch about the world together. She has been a best friend when I was otherwise alone. She has been a savings-and-loan when no one would hire me. And he has been a dad when there was no other to be found.

When I talk to some of my peers and discover how difficult the relationships between them and their parents are, I am thankful all over again that I have the mom I have. I love her very much. I suppose that's why we talk almost every day. When I think about it too hard, it breaks my hear that I only see her twice a year. I'm already counting the days until Christmas.

I sent her a brand-new Cary Grant biography and Aladdin on DVD for her birthday. She knows this by now; I was on the phone with her when she opened them. Every year, for Mother's Day, her birthday, or Christmas, I try to come up with something new and cool for her Cary Grant collection (it's pretty amazing at this point!). And Aladdin will keep her from pirating it (which is something she does with alarming regularity; I hope no feds are reading this blog). I'd like to say I'm the good kid, but my sister apparently sent her a pretty cool DVD too. Drat.

I love you, Mama-san. Happy Birthday from your baby boy!

Reasons Not to Vote for Bush: My Own

2004-10-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

Linda asked me in one of her comments to actually go ahead and list my reasons for not voting for Bush, so I thought I'd honor that request with a few of my personal issues with the current administration...

*If you're wrong, admit it. Once it was ascertained that there were no WMDs in Iraq, which the administration preached to us relentlessly prior to the war, that was the time to say, "Sorry, lousy intelligence. We'll try to get out now." Instead, Bush and company blustered that they'd have done it anyway because Saddam was a threat, he was just as bad as the terrorists, blah, blah, blah. Maybe they're right about all that--but that's not relevant to the reasons we were given. If they had said to the American people, "We want to go after Saddam because of WMDs and because, even if he doesn't have them, he's a threat to world security who needs to be removed," would we have supported it? Doubtful, since senior Bush chose not to go into Iraq following the Gulf War and Clinton never advocated invasion of Iraq either.

Further, I interpret Bush's revisionist rationale as an indicator of his attitude in general--accountability only if caught, and maybe not even then. He blames the CIA, he criticizes Kerry for supporting the war "because he used the same intelligence I did," and he denies having made emphatic, gunslinger statements (Cheney is a far worse offender on this account, by the way) because, frankly, they just don't sound as convincing a couple of years later. He never says, "I made a mistake, I made the wrong call," which would humanize him immensely, in my opinion.

*Finish what you start. Iraq dominates the administration's policies and public persona. Afghanistan? Bush seems to have never heard of it. Our war on terrorism began with Osama Bin Laden, who we still don't have in custody, and Bush deliberately extended it into Iraq... where Al-Qada now has operatives, since it's a hot zone. Yet the U.S. MADE Iraq a hot zone for those terrorists. By delaying action in Afghanistan and then pursuing it half-assed, low-key, and almost as an afterthought since sending the first troops there, we have very little to show for our heroic efforts to stop terrorism. We eliminated the Taliban government, and that's about it.

Oh, and in the same vein... I do not accept the "Well, we haven't been attacked on American soil again since 9/11, so we must be doing a good job of preventing it" argument from the administration. You can't prove a negative. I could just as easily say, "My wife has not had the flu this season; therefore, her diet has prevented it," when it could just as easily have been lack of exposure, medicinal supplements, or plain ol' luck. The administration takes credit for something that does not exist.

And as a final note regarding the "finish what you start" complaint... Bush should have had not just one plan, but two or three back-up plans, for getting us out of Iraq once we were in. How are we leaving if it goes well? How about if it goes badly?

Or maybe the plan was that we're not leaving at all. That would explain why we've never heard the plan.

*It's only four years, for crying out loud; can you keep your hands clean for that long? Whenever I see Dick Cheney on the news, the first thing I think: Halliburton. Whenever I see the Saudi prince on TV, I think: Bush. They've not even tried to keep things above board--Halliburton should NEVER have been allowed to even have the APPEARANCE of improper conduct when it came to contracts in Iraq. Maybe they're the best company for the job, I don't know. But I know this--if anyone in the administration stood to profit from the war, Bush should have called it out and said, "This can't happen or we're going to look like sneaky bastards." Instead, they look like sneaky bastards, profiteers in a war zone.

The only person who I trust in this administration to be at least TRYING to be moral is Colin Powell. He strikes me as the odd-man out. Condi Rice, "Rummie" Rumsfeld, the others, they can all look at the camera and lie (and know that we know they're lying) without blinking an eye. Colin Powell looks honestly ill when he's regurgitating bad calls for his boss.

*Don't play head games with us. Orange Terror levels, terrorist "chatter" that suggests our bridges are going to be blown up, keep bottled water in your house for when the biological attacks come... and above it all, the idea that we are unpatriotic if we question why we're being patted down for weapons when we go into a movie theater. And like sheep, we've accepted most of it. But it's primarily games meant to distract us and make us feel "secure" while making us feel terrified. It's a calculated effort to make us look to an authority figure to help us, but it's the equivalent of an abusive husband telling his wife he'll protect her from himself now if she doesn't "make him" hit her again. We're being played, often and with malice, and it infuriates the administration when they're called on it. Thus, the "unpatriotric" stamp.

*Treat us with respect. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, they all speak to the media with contempt, dismissiveness, belittlement, and a condescending "do not question ME" attitude. It's as if they've forgotten when they are speaking to some reporter from USA Today that they're actually speaking to you and me. That no-patience-for-fools approach that they take translates to their intolerance for the American people. They think that they're dealing with children, and they act as if they only work for and report to each other. We, the voters, are a second-class citizenry... until election time rolls around. Notice that you don't seem much of Rice and Rumsfeld these days? I don't see them out stumping for the President. Even Cheney is pretty low-key these days. Why? Because they insult us and chide us like children whenever they speak to us, and the re-election campaign knows it. So, they're kept away from us. Trust me, you'll see a lot more of them come November 3 if the votes go to our Texan tyrant...

Flu

2004-10-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Me sick.

Not the sort of wonderful illness that has you vomiting into your shirt pocket so as not to let it dribble down your chin, but a variant thereof. All the usual bodily exit ramps are in full use, with no moderating traffic signals, regrettably. Those sounds you hear are not shifting earthplates, hundreds of miles beneath the surface, but are instead the discontented foreign-language rumblings of my stomach, sending me a message both pleading and vaguely threatening.

Lots of irony in playing host to this distant cousin of the flu:

*No sick days in my new job yet. So guess what? I'm forced to spead the love around the office. But since I'm too nice a guy for that, I'll sit in my little cubicle quietly and isolated, not unlike a prisoner in solitary confinement, and push through the day without much human contact. Except for kissing my boss; it's hard to resist his beard.

*We were scheduled for flu shots in our building TODAY. Since it's preventative and not curative, I suppose it wouldn't have mattered. Much. I blame Bush anyway. And the Canadians, who have more vaccine than they can use. And the elderly, who are sucking up all the vaccine from those of us who really don't need it.

*In past years, when the flu is not really a topic for discussion and nobody really cares about it, I've not caught it. Is this the "out of sight, out of mind" principle? Well, this year, all I hear about every day is flu, flu, flu--on the radio, on the TV, on the lips of my co-workers (another veiled reference to my boss's beard, there). So, I think I might have WILLED myself into the flu. Dammit, why can't we all be talking about the lottery???

*And the ultimate irony, yet the hardest to admit... I sort of like being a little bit sick. It lets you bitch and moan without having to really pay the price for it. People who are ACTUALLY sick don't whine half as much as people who are ALMOST sick. I like the idea of being sick enough to skip work but not sick enough to skip DVD shopping. Thank God I'm sick on Tuesday, then, when all the new releases come out...

Epi-blogue: Sixteenth Week, Sixteenth List--Reasons Not to Vote for Bush

2004-10-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

I started putting together my own list of reasons for this week, and then--in the interest of being thorough, complete, and accurate (NOT Bush ideals, I assure you)--I thought I'd hit the Web to see if others were making similar lists.

Oh, yes. Most definitely.

http://www.thousandreasons.org/

"Relentlessly documenting the failures of the Bush administration" is the site's subheading. And they're not kidding--some of their stuff is a bit flaky (for instance, drawing from a random editorial in a local newspaper does not qualify as substantive sources for documentation, in my book), but for the most part, they're on the money. If only 10 percent of what they report is accurate, it should outrage Bush haters and give Bush supporters pause.

And the list is much longer than 1000 reasons why not to vote Bush--I think it's probably become one of those holy grails for the authors. How high can we go before the election? Can we come up with 1461 reasons, one for every day of his Presidency? (You gotta remember Leap Year, of course.) They've already done that, by the way--1551 and counting.

My own ten reasons pale by comparison, are literally 100 times less impressive, and cannot fully contain the myriad justifications for voting against Bush in two weeks.

By then, the list might make it to 1600... Pennsylvania Avenue.

Moment of Weirdness

2004-10-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

It's 3 A.M. last night. And in the darkness, I reach out with my right hand... and touch another hand.

Oh my God.

It's not Janell--it doesn't feel anything like Janell's hands. The skin is dry, the knuckles bony, and it's wearing a ring, a plain band it feels like in the split second my fingertips brush over it. The hand also feels cold and lifeless. Worst of all, it's about eight inches from my head on the pillow.

To my credit, I don't make a sound. Instead, I sit bolt-upright in the bed, trying to focus my eyes in the gloom, hearing the rain outside, looking for a shape under the sheet next to me, feeling the sudden, wincing, maddening tingle of my left arm "asleep" from where I have been sleeping on it wrong.

Yeah, it was my own hand I'd reached out and touched in the night. And I'd not felt my own touch because my left hand, stretched awkwardly beneath my sleeping head, was as numb as if I were dead. I've read that newborn babies need to be swaddled tightly so they don't flail around with their arms and scare themselves with these foreign appendages waving suddenly in their faces. I guess I get that concept now.

I'm glad I didn't have some weird response and bite it in self-defense or something equally stupid. Also, I had no idea my knuckles were so skeletal. No wonder Janell doesn't hold my hand more often.

Hero-ic Effort

2004-10-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

Procrastination is creative prioritizing, I think.

Something like three months ago, my friend Carmen loaned me a DVD of the film Hero. Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi (from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Remember when this was in the theaters? Yeah, well, that was when she loaned it to me. Turns out the film, which was nomimated for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar at *last* year's Oscars, has been out on DVD in Hong Kong FOREVER. The theatrical release in the U.S. was pretty much to justify releasing it to DVD here, I suppose.

Well, I kept trying to get to it. How hard can it be to get 98 consecutive minutes to watch a quick movie?

I could have finished it faster watching a minute of the movie every single day since she loaned it to me.

But I prioritized it ahead of a whole stack of DVDs I've accumulated in the last few weeks. Here's how I finally worked it out...

*First, you gotta get to the "watch a movie" stage. This is THE challenge.

--Oooh, read a chapter or two of The Good Earth or watch Hero? Well, books aren't meant to be read in a single sitting. So, book before movie. And if a book sucks, you quit--if a movie sucks, you somehow feel obligated to stick it out. I think it's the "you paid to be in this theater" mentality, applied to home viewing.

--Watch a TV show or Hero? This is where pathetic math comes in: most shows are no more than 52 minutes, counting commercial breaks and creative TiVo work. And most shows, especially reality shows or really popular water-cooler shows, just aren't the same later on. (I say this knowing that my friends Mitch, Mark, and Jim are all a behind a few episodes of Lost.) So, TV in real-time, right? Scary part now: if I watch Survivor, then The Apprentice, then tune in to see if Ming-Na's going to get more than two lines in this week's ER, I could have watched Hero... twice.

This process gets worse when you're governed by the sleeping patterns of a two-year-old child. Guilt will keep you away from the TV when your child is awake... most of the time. But even if you elect to hunker down in front of the tube and toss good parenting aside, it's practically guaranteed that the child will come in, plunk down, and begin demanding the Wiggles. I suspect you don't even need a child to make this a problem; a childish significant other will do just fine.

So, if you've actually found the privacy window and the enthusiasm and the timeframe for a DVD--yea for you! So, we evolve into stage 2... choosing a DVD.

*Well, a loaner, of course, should come before a keeper. This cuts out my copies of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Mean Girls and alll the perks on Aladdin. Hard to believe you'd have more than one or two loaners in the house at a time, but lots of my friends know I dig movies, so I have about eleven.

*Assuming you have choices, some things to weigh: which of these is creeping into Library Police territory? You know what I mean--which if this is so damned late getting back to its owner that I'm now on that person's list of "dubious" friends? (And I hate being "dubious.") If this isn't a criterion, how much time do I have to watch? Which of these am I most likely to buy sight-unseen? Which of these am I testing out to see if I want to own it? Which am I watching because I blindly said, "That sounds interesting" when my friend was telling me about it, before I realized I was committing myself? And which of these actually fits my mood/the weather/the day of the week?

And in the end, I finally watched Hero today.

I know my Chinese friends will sneer--I haven't met anyone who has Chinese heritage who thinks this film is any good--but I liked it. You know why?

It was a loaner that's been in my possession three months, it was 98 minutes long, Harrison was napping, it was raining outside so I could use a jolt of an action film with minimal dialogue and beautiful cinematography, I feel overly sedate and I happen to think Zhang Ziyi is gorgeous so it felt emotionally satisfying, it's Saturday, and I can now watch my new Star Wars DVDs relatively guilt-free before going back to other loaners.

Oh, yeah, and it was a pretty good film, too.

Great Pumpkin

2004-10-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

Despite my focus on a holiday two months away, I have not forgotten that my favorite holiday is still forthcoming... and Janell and I took Harrison to a pumpkin patch to celebrate part of it...

Bride of the Pumpkin Patch and the sequel, Son of the Pumpkin Patch

Hay feverish

Wait, that's not my kid...

"Sincerity as far as the eye can see." --Linus Van Pelt

I'm Dreaming... of a...

2004-10-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

I know it's only mid-October, and Halloween and Thanksgiving are still threatening like storm clouds on the horizon, but I'm looking ahead to Christmas already. I feel like I have to--to not think ahead would be to ignore a seasonal ambush. So, I have formulated a plan for the season that is akin to the invasion of Normandy. I call it Operation: Joie de Noel. In French to honor Normandy, of course.

Every year, it's the same thing: by the time the Christmas tree is up and the twinkling multicolored lights are on, it's time to take them down again, and I've missed the season. I put up my massive Disney Christmas village and dump 15 holiday CDs into the randomized player. But do I get a chance to sit down and take in the little lights in the village? Do I actually ever hear any of those Christmas songs?

The eggnog sits in the fridge, waiting to be drunk, ultimately to spoil and be poured down the drain because I never get to it. I set out the DVDs for my favorite Christmas specials--Charlie Brown, Grinch, A Christmas Story, A Wish for Wings that Work, a half-dozen others--but finding the time to watch them becomes the quest for the Holy Grail. Take note: Indiana Jones found but lost said Grail. This does NOT fill me with optimism for watching The Year without a Santa Claus.

Every year, Janell and I go to see the Pacific Northwest Ballet's rendition of The Nutcracker. It's our tradition. And last year, we had to miss it because our pressures were high and our babysitters low. Or maybe it was the other way around.

How does all of this fall down so gracelessly? It's simple, really. There aren't enough hours in the day.

Consider this: nothing else in your life moves aside to make room for the holidays. Work continues at 40+ hours a week, the laundry still needs to be done, traffic remains gnarled, the bank still expects the mortgage payment. As it stands in July, your weeks are filled; come December, you want to squeeze in a hundred more things... and the biggest time-consumer of them all, shopping.

Now, I like shopping. More for myself than for others, I'll admit, but I even like shopping for others. And in the technological time of online shopping, it's not even all that hard. But it takes time, and though I like diving into Yuletide shoppers--the atmosphere drives me into the Cinnabon, where I never otherwise go, to be honest--it's one of the biggest distractions from enjoying the other seasonal stuff. In fact, it's hard to have fun giving those gifts when your mind is preoccupied with the ones you still need to shop for.

So, this year, I'm sparing myself December. My goal, Joie de Noel, is simple yet elegant:

*Make a shopping list the last week of October. Where I'm unsure, ask people what they'd like for Christmas. If they don't answer, strike 'em off the list--be merciless! We’re looking to save Christmas here. Begin online shopping, which will cover 90% of the gifts, I'm pretty sure. No longer be dismissive of gift certificates--I don't like giving them, but man, do people like receiving them. Take advantage of that misguided appreciation in my friends.

*Prep Christmas cards the first week of November. Don't mail them or email them yet; wait until the first week of December for that, but have them all ready to go. Hell, next year, prep them in August. No one can tell the difference, and let's face it--they're getting thrown away after January 1 anyway. Continue online shopping. At this point, I should be at least 25% done with said online shopping. If not, plan to kill myself the second week of November.

*If I'm still alive during the second week, buy new lights for the tree (it's not worth the grief to find out at the last minute, as I'm setting up the tree, that the lights from last year don't work) and get another power strip to set up the Disney village. I bought more village buildings for it this year; so, no surprises like last year, when I realized I didn't have enough outlets. We were a fire hazard waiting to happen. Shopping: 50%, or suicide in the third week. Aren't I in the Christmas spirit?

*Third week comes, I'm still alive, but Thanksgiving is closing in. This is the scheduling week--who I am going to see and when, in order to deliver said gifts. Better to fill up an entire Saturday, dawn to dusk, and see lots of people than to spread it out too much and get stressed about no down-time. When ordering online, I'll have been careful to have gifts shipped to where they're ultimately going. No fooling around with having them shipped to me, wrapping them, then shipping them out again. That's paying for shipping twice! Let Amazon.com wrap them for me. 75% done with shopping, now getting down to the stuff I need to buy in stores versus online.

*Thanksgiving week. All the online shopping is done. The Christmas cards are ready to go. I'm down to the proverbial (yet self-imposed) wire. This week, out come the fake tree, the village, the nutcrackers, the CDs, and all the other decorations, and on the day after Thanksgiving, when JC Penneys and Mervyn's and The Bon have their pre-dawn freebie giveaways, I will be in the crowds, finishing the last 10% of the shopping list. I'll get as much of a head-rush as I can out of being in the crowds, and when I come home with my bags of things that need to be wrapped, I'll be exhausted, shell-shocked, and emotionally drained... but done.

Then, throughout December, I can spot-shop for little extras for Janell or Harrison; I can enjoy the tree, the music, the TV specials, the general feeling of the season. I can leave my materialism in November, and dream of Bing's white Christmas. Joie de Noel.

Ah, the optimism of mid-October, eh?

Epi-blogue: Fifteeth Week, Fifteenth List--Generic List

2004-10-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

And now I'll officially be caught up on my lists. See what a mild case of obsessive-impulsiveness can do to you, children? STOP ME BEFORE I LIST AGAIN!!!

Too late.

While I breeze by the generic cereals that are meant to be Cap'n Crunch, Fruit Loops, and Lucky Charms (right down to the purple moons, yellow hearts, green clovers, and blue diamonds), there are some products that I am willing to test out for their similarity to what they're ripping off. I mean, really, we all know the Monkees were the generic Beatles, but "Last Train to Clarksville" is still an adequate toe-tapper for when you're sitting in traffic wishing you were dead. The same cannot be said for Britney Spears, the generic Madonna. Or Hillary Duff, the generic Britney Spears. Or Lindsay Lohan, the generic Hillary Duff. (Isn't it sad that I know this???)

A couple of the ones I've sampled recently (like, in the last month)...

--Hershey's Skor candy bar IS a Heath bar. And Heath, unlike the Hershey copyright infringement covered in delicious milk chocolate, it doesn't have some pseudo-Dutch name to make you think it's imported "better" chocolate.

--Big K's "Dr. Skipper," though packaged to look EXACTLY like Dr. Pepper... ain't. Ugh. It's one atom away from being sulfuric acid.

--Tri-Nessa will NEVER replace Ortho Tri-Cyclen in MY book.

--White Hen Pantry can't quite live up to Seven-Eleven, but my memories of White Hen remain strong, if only because my sister Tammy and I used to get orange sherbet Push-Ups there on hot July afternoons. By comparison, Hucks--the other generic for Seven-Eleven--always seemed to have nudie magazines on the lowest rack. I suspect Hucks was a front for a national adult bookstore chain. (Weird, isn't it, that those don't exist? Everything else has a chain: the Sunglass Hut, Cinnabon, the Calendar Club, Waldenbooks... oh, wait, so there IS already an adult bookstore chain...)

--Digimon is the generic Pokemon. If you don't know it, you should. "Generic" is the nice word here for "rip-off." And since the latter pays me a weekly salary now, I'm going to call it superior to its generic in every possible way. Check back with me if I ever lose my job to see if I still feel that way...

Epi-blogue: Fifteenth Week, Fourteenth List--New TV

2004-10-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

Ask me how long it took me to calculate the week and list number, having missed one. I was an English major; this math stuff is hard.

There was a time when I thought the Fall Preview in TV Guide was the end-all, be-all of publications. I still try to fool myself with it some seasons--sort of the way you agree to go rock-climbing or jogging with some boneheaded jock friend when, in truth, you'd much rather be flopped in front of said TV. You have convinced yourself you want to do it, that you like it, that you used to really get a thrill out of it. But those were the days, my friend... and they end.

But each fall, I approach the new TV season with a certain cautious hope, a bit enamored of all the possibilities that something entertaining is just around the corner, some new favorite waiting to be discovered. I remember discovering Friends, Twin Peaks, Survivor... I even remember the wide-eyed wonder I felt as a boy discovering Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I was hopeful about this fall season.

So, today's list... the shows that gave or took away that hope...

*LAX. Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood are great eye candy. Their show, not so much so. At least the setting was different, probably inspired by The Terminal, but certainly more fraught with sexual tension than Tom Hanks has achieved since Bachelor Party. I dropped out after three episodes.

*Joey. I don't know; I want to like it. But as Janell points out, Friends was an ensemble of six, with intersecting stories. Joey is about one. I'm still trying to dig it, and I've taped it... but I've not watched the tapes in any timely manner. I wonder if the end-of-season ratings will suggest I'm not alone in a backlog of TiVoed Joey episodes. And then I wonder if it'll be back next season.

*Desperate Housewives. Yeah, I'm watching this. And I can't even stand Teri Hatcher. But damn, the show is amusing. I like the subversive plot twists. I like second-guessing entertaining characters, even the stereotypical ones. Of course, I'm mildly embarrassed to be watching what I know is garbage, but hey, you'd wonder what was in the plastic-wrapped toy box that the grieving widower tried to sink to the bottom of the quarry, too! Trust me!

*Lost. This is the gem of the season. This is the one that was worth tuning in for above all others. 48 survivors of a horrific plane crash end up on a deserted tropical island, every one of them with secrets, and every one of them potential lunch for some nasty (as-yet) unseen horror that crashes through the underbrush and knocks down trees. It's like Survivor, Stephen King-style, except getting voted out of the tribe presumably means getting eaten. Interestingly enough, both Desperate Housewives and Lost are on ABC, and both have ongoing stories instead of being episodic.

It almost makes me want to tune in to The Bachelor. It's on ABC, and it has an ongoing story, right?

Why do I suspect The Bachelor would drive me back to LAX?

Christopher Reeve

2004-10-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

I wasn't a fan of his work, but I was a fan of his life.

In the next few days, if you have a chance to hear or read about how he lived, how he approached his disability, you'll learn about a man who never once gave up hope. He turned his accident into a source of inner strength. And I was one of the people who completely believed in him; I had no doubt that Chris Reeve would walk again one day.

I guess he's walking in the next world now.

So long, Mr. Reeve. This world was better off while you were in it.

The Chuckle Factor

2004-10-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

I never really know what's funny, I don't think. Ever try to explain or justify your sense of humor to someone? I don't know how. I can name a bunch of things I think are funny, but is there a pattern to the Marx Brothers, Scrubs, and bathroom humor? Beats me. So, when I finally checked out the new Jibjab cartoon (go to their website, www.jibjab.com, and click on the D.C. link in the upper-right corner), I thought, Hmm. The first one was funny; this one, not so much so. Is it funny for people you know aren't gay--who are essentially anti-gay--to declare a cartoon "I'm gay! I'm gay!"? I don't think so at all.

And since we're into the heavy season for political jokes, a couple I've heard lately...

A friend of mine sent me this joke the other day:

*Why aren't there any Wal-Marts in Iraq?

Because they're all Targets.

Well, *I* thought it was funny.

And I've heard others of late, with varying degrees of the Chuckle Factor.

*Why is two-thirds of Iraq without electricity?

Because the U.S. won't hand over the power.

Both of these are perfectly suited for grade schoolers, but this next one requires an understanding of our current administration's intolerance for Arab nations...

The new Iraqi Prime Minister has just finished giving a speech to the U.S. Senate, and walks out into the lobby where he meets President Bush. They shake hands and as they walk the Prime Minister says, "You know, I have just one question about what I have seen in America."

President Bush says, "Well your Excellency, anything I can do to help you, I will do."

The Iraqi P.M. whispers, "My son watches this show Star Trek and in it there are Russians, Blacks, and Asians, but never any Arabs. He is very upset. He doesn't understand why there are never any Iraqis in Star Trek."

President Bush laughs, leans toward the Prime Minister and whispers back, "It's because it takes place in the future...."

And finally, my favorite of the lot... because it could easily be a true news story...

Fire Destroys Bush Presidential Library

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A tragic fire on Monday destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. Both of his books have been lost.

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president was devastated, as he had not yet finished coloring the second one.

Portrait of the Child

2004-10-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

What I remember most about Harrison's first professional (for want of a better term when you're dealing with the "qualified photographers" at JC Penney's) portrait sitting was the twenty minutes we played with the water fountain afterward.

They threw balls at him--not endearing to a two year old who can't catch anything that wouldn't roll to a stop right in front of him anyway. They made weird faces at him to get him to smile, which only brought about a condescending, indulgent chuckle, not a real smile. Though he can't pronounce the words yet, Harrison certainly knows the thought "lower life form."

In the end, I sat at his feet and Janell stood by the photographer, and together we coaxed a few smiles out of him. The photographer was pretty firm that she wanted a shot of him with a football--perfectly logical, if you're sexist and disinterested in the wishes of the consumer--so we ended up getting at least one of those. The interesting thing about a photo shoot like this is, you can take all the photos you want. But selling them to the parents? That's a different story.

After a session that would have brought Tyra Banks to her knees, Harrison and I slipped away while Janell made the selection from the digital printouts. We found a water fountain outside the restrooms that, with a little effort, Harrison could reach. A long metal bar in the front operated the water flow, we quickly discovered. I hurried back to Janell.

"We're definitely done with photos, right?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, but she sounded uncertain.

"Well, I think it's too late," I said. I could hear the fountain gurgling down the hall.

"Yes, we're done," she said more firmly, looking at the photographer--a slightly overweight, decidedly bored twenty-something woman with glasses so thick she looked like that Japanese soldier on Gilligan's Island. "We'll pick one of these."

So back I went to the water fountain, where Harrison was much closer to soaking wet than bone dry. I gathered paper towels from the men's room to mop up the lake we created on the floor. And on the parking lot before we got back in the car, we wrung Harrison out like a towel, leaving another puddle beside the car. I don't know about the portrait sitting in general, but the waterplay was certainly something to smile about.

Portrait of an Idiot

2004-10-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm back in the editor's saddle, I'm even more offended by the story coming out of Livermore, California.

The local city leaders shelled out $40,000 to have artist Maria Aquilar's create a mosaic featuring famous people from world history. Aquilar's work would stand outside the city's brand-new library--you know, where all the books are. Presumably Aquilar understood that libraries are considered bastions of LITERACY when she misspelled almost a dozen names on the mosaic, names like Michelangelo and Einstein, people I guess she's never heard of.

But never mind. Hell, mistakes happen. So, presumably she'd be EMBARRASSED and want to fix it, right?

Not without a fee. "Mercenary" Aquilar wanted another $6000, plus travel expenses from Miami, to come back to the Bay area and fix the "typos" (the AP's word choice; I'd call them "fuck-ups." You say "potato"...). The city council caved into this fairly quicky in hopes of avoiding the humiliation of having the nation's eye on Aquilar's errors.

But now Aquilar is pissy that she's gotten hate mail for being stupid and illiterate (and, no doubt, for being wildly arrogant and dismissive in the press when she was called out for her errors, saying they weren't significant errors. Somewhere right now, Einstein is trying to figure out the theory of idiocy). So, she has decided that she won't be returning to Livermore to fix the mess.

All of this sort of makes sense to me still. She doesn't strike me as the brightest paint on the pallet, but I wouldn't be too keen on having my mistakes trotted out for public ridicule, then have people continually give me crap about it when I'd already said I'd fix them (yeah, yeah, yeah, for $545 per error; she should have made another 20 mistakes to fund a Hawaiian vacation after she "fixed" them).

But here's where the kick in the teeth begins.

Let's quote the AP here, since my own words can't do justice to the hoity sniffing that I can envision this Aquilar doing while she deposits her $40,000 severance check...

***
Alquilar explained that it took her a lot of time and money to create the work, a brightly colored 16-foot-wide circle made up of individual tiles depicting the names and images of famous people in world history.

She noted that plenty of people from the city were on hand during the installation who could and should have seen the errant spellings, she said.

"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I didn't see it," she said.
The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar said before deciding to leave the work as is.

"The people that are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words," she told The AP.

When asked whether she chose the words and names for the work or whether the city provided her with a list, Alquilar took an artistic stance in response.

"The art chose the words," she said.

***

This makes me want to punch "the art" in the face. And stop-payment on "the art's" check.

Not looking at the words??? It's outside a FRICKIN' LIBRARY, MARIA. You want people to ignore the words, hang your art on the concrete underside of a train trestle. Never mind how disrespectful this is to the people named, Marie. Sorry,MariAH. Upon second consideration, those people are all dead. So, it's even more disrespectful to those of us who have to suffer the self-righteousness of people who have FUCKED UP, as if their mistakes are everyone's fault but their own. "Why did they let me do that?" she seems to ask. "Why was I given free rein to screw them for their investment? How could they have let that happen to me?"

Uh, let's assume it was trust that misled them, Maria. Let's assume it was faith in your artistic integrity that suckered them in. And let's not forget to add that they probably were banking on your literacy when they plunked down forty grand for you to apparently write down whatever letters you thought got you close enough to correct, Mahree.

If you send me $2000, I'll fix your name anywhere I've misspelled it, Marria. And I'll give it to the Livermore City Council to ensure that your artist's signature is removed from the mosaic you apparently feel isn't your problem--or responsibility--anymore.

Disneyland Photos

2004-10-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

Having been accused of being somewhat verbose in the past, I thought I'd spare readers 4000 words by posting four pictures instead. I'll make up for it one day, have no fear...

We discovered what a bear does in the Hundred Acre Wood. That's right--Pooh.

For some reason, I thought the teeth would make me look more skeletal instead of stupid.

This seemed smart at the time, taking a self-portrait with a $300 digital camera on the drop of a water ride.

The whole raison d'etre for Disneyland. And he even loaned me five bucks! What a mouse!

Mulan

2004-10-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

On our last day, during our last few hours at Disneyland, I met Mulan.

Now, I've met her before but with less-than-perfect results. During a previous excursion to Disneyland, I ran into her on day one, had my picture taken with her, and then, not really pleased with the resulting picture, sought her out again the next day.

"Mulan, may I have my picture taken with you?" I asked, sidling up next to her.

As Janell snapped the picture, Mulan spoke to me out of the corner of her mouth. "Didn't you already have your picture taken with me yesterday?"

I scurried away before the restraining order could be issued.

And I've seen Mulan before, in a parade down Disneyland's Main Street, a forty-something Hispanic woman in an ill-fitted pink-and-red gown. To paraphrase an old advertising slogan, This must be my father's Oldsmobile. My Mulan is young and slender and, above all, Chinese.

What is it about a costume, be it a dark wig and a familiar dress or a massive stuffed head and a furred-covered body, that makes us lose sight of reality? That's not Mulan--that's some college student making slightly more than minimum wage, complaining to her friends at the mall about all the children that smell like tapioca and maul her every morning at the Goofy's Kitchen Breakfast Buffet. I saw probably a dozen Chinese women in the park--tourists--who could just as easily have fit the bill, had they the costume.

But put someone in a Mickey Mouse costume, a Santa suit, or a Mulan dress, and common sense goes right out the window. Suspension of disbelief becomes suspension of reality, and suddenly the spotting of a costumed employee of the park becomes a celebrity sighting. Donald and Daisy suddenly become Ben and Jennifer, an uber-celebrity, Donsy. My heartbeat picked up. Mulan! I'd seen Janell react the same way the day before to encountering Miss Piggy in Disney’s California Adventure, sausaged between the Muppet Theater and the Rizzo merchandise cart. The frantic need to meet an imaginary character. At least the other white meat is normally in 3-D.

At the breakfast buffet, I stop eating. I am entranced by the living, breathing animated character that just went by our alcove. I fumble with the camera, trying to give it to Janell. I drop it on the floor.

"It's Mulan!" I breathe. Janell recovers the camera before I can do more damage.

Thank God she went into pork fever over Miss Piggy the day before; it makes my foolishness seem a little less foolish and eliminates the probability of divorce over a cartoon. (After all, I'm sure Jessica Rabbit has been the cause of many a raised eyebrow between wife and husband.) Janell prods me after my Chinese fantasy much as I encouraged her porcine pursuit outside the Muppet Theater yesterday. But there are kids everywhere. What are all these kids doing here? This is hardly the place for kids, here with Goofy and a vested-but-shirtless Aladdin and my Beijing beauty. Shouldn't they be in the park, mobbing Mickey or Snow White? Mulan is *my* favorite.

Yet the children are not daunted by an infatuation with a make-believe woman. Instead, they crowd me out as surely as they did when I was one of them, picked last for dodge ball. If my mother had been at Centennial Lab School during recess, however, she’d have done what Janell does at the breakfast buffet: knock a few kids down to get me to the front of the line. I think she's still high on meeting Miss Piggy, the aftertaste of bacon. She's still practicing her own karate chops.

"We have to go, Mulan," Janell says. "Can we get your picture, please?"

Mulan demurs, bowing her head, graceful and gorgeous and... caked with disguising makeup when you get up close to her. Ah, but no matter! It's Mulan, and I pose next to her with one arm around her waist that feels as taut as a trampoline. She must be wearing quite the girdle that squeezes her into that costume day after day.

And then, that's it. It's over. We're on our way out, and the mob of children has swarmed her again. But I have my precious picture of someone probably named Brittany or Melinda who poses as my ink-and-paint crush. I am high as Janell and I finish out our last morning in the parks before heading for the airport and reality again.

Oh, yes, we rode lots of rides, met lots of other characters, got to spend some great time with our friends Mitch and Rachel, and generally unwound and relaxed. But that's all what you'd expect from a vacation, right?

Did I mention that I got to meet Mulan?

Only on the honeymoon did Mulan realize that, like Pinocchio before him, Michael was made of wood.

Breather

2004-10-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning, at roughly 6 A.M., Janell and I board a flight for Anaheim and Disneyland. Harrison will still be sleeping, and Janell's mom will be sleeping nearby, ready to take care of him when he wakes.

So, for a few days, no blogging. I'll be back on board with new entries Wednesday night, at the latest, maybe Tuesday night, depending on how the return trip goes. You know I'm writing about Disneyland the first few days back, so if you're vehemently opposed to all things Disney (Dizzyland, as one of my friends calls it), you can probably skip a few additional days, even.

But since my Mondays tend to be lists, let me list a couple of favorite Disneyland routines...

*The Blue Bayou. It's the fancy-schmancy restaurant that sits on the Pirates of the Caribbean. It's serene and atmospheric, and I have the cinnamon apples for dessert.

*Club 33. The ill-kept-secret secret club/restaurant that Walt had installed *above* the Blue Bayou for honored guests. Only place in the park that serves alcohol. By invitation only, and you know I ain't on that list. $5000 annual membership fees and a five-year waiting list just to join. I like posing for photos outside the nondescript door that leads to Club 33, a locked door, with a bemused, rejected look on my face.

*The Indiana Jones Adventure ride. Duh.

*The Haunted Mansion. This is the time of year that they deck it out thematically to be Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas Haunted Mansion. Absolutely awesome, bone daddy.

*Shopping in the Christmas stores in New Orleans Square. No idea why, but I love this. I rarely buy anything there, but there's something about this particular "land" that appeals to me more than the others.

*Tower of Terror. I was on it in Disney World and it scared the beejeezus out of me (and once you lose your beejeezus, it's a bitch to find again, let me tell you). Now they have one at California Adventure, the second park, and you can bet the last of your beejeezus that I'll be on it more than once, if said beejeezus endures well enough.

*The Roger Rabbit ride in Toontown, the Peter Pan ride in Fantasyland, wandering Main Street late in the evening. Yeah, the park closes earlier this time of year, but still, it'll be fun.

*It's a Small World. Most people seem opposed to this ride, but I don't mind humming the tune incessantly all day long. Same thing with "Zippety-Do-Dah" after you've been on the log ride. It drives people around you crazy... but presumably, they can find something else in Disneyland to take their minds off of it.

Back on Wednesday!