Starting today, you can find Syntax of Things at its new Typepad home. Sorry for any inconvenience to those of you who have this one bookmarked. www.syntaxofthings.com will take you there as well.
posted by Jeff 1/25/2004
Largehearted Boy has been kind enough to provide a link to one of the funniest things I've seen in some time (you'll need Quicktime and some volume, but trust me on this one...it's worth it). And today I needed a laugh, so thanks David! And thanks Venis Productions.
I know that I often present myself as one who is reticent to change. Some readers may get the idea that I live in a bubble or a cabin in the east San Diego mountains. Actually, I'm not at all adverse to most change and welcome it with at least a half-open mind. For instance, take the Labradoodle. Now if I were so set in my ways, I would spew forth at least three paragraphs on why this is abhorrent and why humans shouldn't tinker with nature, that we're all asking for it by mixing breeds for nothing more than our own vanity and profit. I would probably go off on how the Labrador is a regal breed that shouldn't be diluted with the likes of the poodle. But I won't.
I'm all for the Labradoodle. In fact, I once had a female chipughua (chihuahua/pug mix) as a neighbor. When we brought Homer, a male American Eskimo, into the family, I suggested a new breed, the Chipugimo. After a few weeks with just the pure breed Eskimo, I realized that this would definitely alter the course of future animal/human relationships, so I abandoned the idea.
This is part two in a series in which I reflect upon the numerous opportunities I've had to demonstrate the flexibilities of my protestant work ethic. You can find part one here.
My time of being a gas station sweeper/painter earned me enough pay to keep me happily unemployed during my freshman year of college. I was able to learn all of life's important lessons and attend classes without the hassle of having to do anything much more than making sure that I had enough Mountain Dew in the refrigerator to get me through the week. Of course, it helped that I had a pretty nice scholarship that kept four cinderblock walls around me and a cement slab roof over my head, not to mention that the salt-peter laced food of the cafeteria was kindly provided to me gratis by a Presidential Award (and to think, I never thanked him for all of those fried fish fillet sandwiches). But with the summer of 1990 looming, I knew that my idle time had to be filled. My father wouldn't stand by and let me do nothing. So I started making phone calls. Genius me came up with a plan. I would move to Atlanta for the summer and stay with my Aunt Jackie. Jackie's husband, Rex, said that he could easily get me some sort of job working on the truck docks at the company that employed him as an accountant.
So after moving in with my aunt and uncle, peeing in a cup, and spending three weeks gainfully employed as first a file clerk and then a dock sweeper, I was given a pink slip. Seems my salary pushed the company to the edge of bankruptcy. Feeling a little guilty that his promise to get me a job landed me only the prospect of drawing unemployment, my uncle made a few more calls. While at a party, he ran across an old friend who had a friend who knew someone who could get me a job working for an environmental engineering company. And so it happened.
I spent the rest of that summer working on the 11th floor of the Colony Square building in midtown Atlanta, making $7.50 an hour as an "intern." My job was to make sure the copier ran efficiently, to deliver samples to the lab on the other side of town during rush hour on a Friday afternoon, and to keep the desk chair that I sat in from making too much noise. Eventually, I was trained to do some of the asbestos testing and was sent out on the real grunt jobs—the places that had to be tested at two in the morning. Toward the end of my tenure at the firm, they decided to send me on a weeklong trip to Albany, Georgia, to test for lead paint at a housing project. Albany in August is no Amsterdam.
I made it back to school in time for fall semester, with stuffed pockets and another quarter of blissful unemployment to keep me busy. But I wasn't through with work. Just before Christmas break, my old boss at the engineering firm called and wanted to know if I could spend my month off testing for asbestos at Shaw Air Force Base in beautiful Sumter, South Carolina. Knowing that this would probably secure my unemployment until at least the following summer, I decided to spend my break with some like-minded people, working by day, drinking by night. Not much else to do in Sumter when the entire base was pretty much locked down because of the impending war. Hazards of this job included straying too close to the flight line when a B52 was landing and entering by accident a classified area which subsequently led to being asked to go "face down" by a couple of guys holding guns (which is not what anyone wants to hear, but especially if you're in South Carolina; ask Ned Beatty).
I know that I’ve mentioned before that one of my biggest fears concerning the Internet is the inevitable further loss of regional identity. Not a new concern, I know. In fact, before there was even the notion of every house having a computer, John Steinbeck had a similar lament. Here’s a passage from My Travels with Charley, first published in 1962:
One of my purposes [of his cross-county trip] was to listen, to hear speech, accent, speech rhythms, overtones and emphasis. For speech is so much more than words and sentences. I did listen everywhere. It seemed to me that regional speech is in the process of disappearing, not gone but going. Forty years of radio and twenty years of television must have this impact. Communications must destroy localness, by a slow, inevitable process. I can remember a time when I could almost pinpoint a man’s place of origin by his speech. That is growing more difficult now and will in some foreseeable future become impossible. It is a rare house or building that is not rigged with spiky combers of the air. Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better English than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.
I who love words and the endless possibility of words am saddened by this inevitability. For with local accent will disappear local tempo. The idioms, the figures of speech that make language rich and full of the poetry of place and time must go. And in their place will be a national speech, wrapped and packaged, standard and tasteless. Localness is not gone but it is going. In the many years since I have listened to the land the change is very great. Traveling west along the northern routes I did not hear a truly local speech until I reached Montana….The West Coast went back to packaged English. The Southwest kept a grasp but a slipping grasp on localness. Of course the deep south holds on by main strength to its regional expressions, just as it holds and treasures some other anachronisms [Ed. note: Heh!], but no region can hold out for long against the highway, the high-tension line, and the national television. What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I regret its loss nevertheless.
I know I mentioned Atmore, Alabama, on here just last week, and it probably comes as much as a surprise to me as it does to you, but I have to give it another mention here today. Atmore is a tiny town, population of 8,000 soaking wet and shrinking everyday. My parents still live there; Dad still runs his business as best he can, mostly by taking on jobs from neighboring towns like Canoe, Flomaton, and Brewton. Atmore does have one advantage in that it’s located within sixty miles from two fairly sizeable cities: Mobile and Pensacola. But being this close has its disadvantage also. People tend to drive to those cities to shop, leaving the local merchants with slim-pickings for customers. This very fact caused the closure of a Kmart last summer. The city does have a Super Freds and is probably one of the last places on earth with a Piggly Wiggly.
Usually, there is little or no real news that comes out of Atmore. Most of the crime there is of the petty variety, with an occasional murder, a kidnapping, or a drug bust to keep the natives chatting in the hardware stores. During Christmas, my mom claimed that Atmore “has a growing gang problem.” I’m not quite sure what the gangs of Atmore do exactly and I couldn’t get much of an explanation from Mom. Even she saw the humor in what she said. From time to time, I still like to give the local paper an online viewing to see what is going on. They don’t seem to update the site that often, so I usually resort to a google news search. Again, I usually find more news about a person with the last name of Atmore than I do about the town, but today I was left staring at this:
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Mary Kate Gach wants to stop the man who killed her daughter from posting graphic details about the murder on the Internet.
Gach filed a $40 million lawsuit in Montgomery Wednesday alleging that from his prison cell on death row at Holman Prison in Atmore, convicted murderer Jack Trawick published on the Internet "graphic descriptions" of his crimes and given advice on ways to commit rape and murder. The Web site has offered for sale "souvenirs" including pictures of Trawick and copies of letters he has written, the lawsuit says.
Ok, so this really doesn’t have much to do with Atmore, per say. But you see, Atmore is home to two prisons (three if you count the work release farm). Holman is Alabama’s primary maximum security prison and the location of death row. When I was a teenager and still lived there, the execution of a prisoner was an event. Alabama’s first electrocution after it reinstated the death penalty happened right after my family moved to town. I remember staying up late that night in hopes of seeing the lights dim. They never did.
I’ve come to expect a certain amount of discomfort from a good novel. I expect the plot—or some plot device—to move me from a place of relative comfort and make me question the very idea of this comfort. In J.T. LeRoy’s Sarah, the discomfort is evident from the opening scenes and reaches its zenith with the realization that this is a world occupied by cross-dressing lot-lizards (truck stop prostitutes), truck driver johns, and the pimps who make their living off of both. In particular, this is the story of a 12-year-old boy, the narrator Sarah, who is coming of age in this world, whose main goal is to become a force within this world, and who will stop at nothing to gain the coveted talisman—a raccoon penis bone—to wear around his neck to impress his sister/mother. At the same time, the story is about a search for identity, a boy searching for his mother by becoming her, and about loss and redemption, of Sarah’s being lost, then found, then ultimately lost again. In some ways, this is a novel that could have been written by William S. Burroughs, though LeRoy displays so much more sympathy toward his characters than Burroughs was ever able to muster. In other ways, this book reminds me of the diaries of Jim Carroll with all of the raw energy, bleak settings, and vast decay. LeRoy makes no excuses; he simply tells the story, mixes in a huge amount of hyper-reality, and leaves the reader feeling like he or she needs a good, long shower.
posted by Jeff 1/19/2004
Friday, January 16, 2004
The Scroll Knows
I haven't really followed the NFL season this year, so I'm not going to give a comprehensive breakdown of the two championship games this weekend. But if beatific karma has any say in the matter, then I'm putting all of my coins on the Colts. It has nothing to do with Peyton Manning rising to the occasion and finally getting over the "can't win the big game" hump that has followed him since his days at Tennessee. Nor does it have anything to do with Tony Dungy getting proper retribution after his former team--and many say the team that he built--won the Super Bowl last season. No, this will be the karma of the Kerouac scroll. Jim Irsay, the owner of the Colts, happens to own the 120-foot scroll of the On the Road manuscript which he bought at an auction in 2001, and is now sending the scroll on a 13 city tour. I remember when the scroll was placed on the block. My fear, at the time, was that it would end up in the hands of Madonna or one of the Backstreet Boys. Irsay seems to be a man who can be trusted. He sees the historical significance of the artifact, not just the dollar signs. In an interview with AP, Irsay says, "My goal all along was to have it and share it with all those who want to see it, whether it's in this country or other countries." I haven't seen a list of cities that will be included on the tour, but I'm already making plans to see it (if only in the palm pilot in my mind).
Update: After much blood, sweat, and google searching, I've managed to find some tentative tour dates for the scroll. Interesting choice of cities.
Kerouac Manuscript Tour
2004 Orange County History Center, Orlando, FL, Jan. 10 – March 21
Naropa University, Boulder, CO, May 10 – June 25
Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, Sept. 15 – Nov. 30
2005
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA, Jan. 19 – March 31
Las Vegas Public Library, Las Vegas, NV, March 24 – May 15
Natl. Museum of American History, Washington D.C., June – August
University of Texas Austin, TX, Sept. 1 – Nov. 30
2006
San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA, Jan. 14 – March 19
Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, Indianapolis, IN, May 1 – July 31
Columbia College, Chicago, IL, TBD
2007
Denver Public Library, Denver, CO, TBD
Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, NM, TBD
New York Public Library, New York City, Sept. 1 – Dec. 31
One of my numerous (I’m up to three) responsibilities as a supervisor is to weed through the slush pile of resumes to find the person who will one day take over my job. In doing so, I’ve been thinking back on my overflowing experience in our great American workforce. For the next few Thursdays, I’m going to give you a look back at my job history.
posted by Jeff 1/15/2004
Would You Like Fries with That? 1984-1989
Not many people I know entered the workforce at age 13 (and I’m not including grass cutting, car washing, or lemonade selling). Trust me, I didn’t one day wake up and decide to get my career started before all of the good ones were taken. My decision was made for me. In 1983, my dad discovered that there was an alarming shortage of electrical contractors in the tiny town of Atmore, Alabama. He saw a way to make his thousands by starting his own business there. Those first few years were definitely the Mom & Pop years of the new company. He operated out of a rented apartment while Mom served as the secretary and bookkeeper, doing much of her work from the kitchen table as she multi-tasked homework help and cooking. In the summer of 1984, in the midst of his first large job as a newly minted business owner (an addition to the First Baptist Church in Brewton, Alabama), Dad decided to dip into the family work pool, so he recruited me as his first full-time helper. So at the tender age of 13 ½, I became a taxpaying member of society. My initial salary was $2.50 an hour, but Dad paid for all lunches, and the benefits included unlimited vacation for visits to cousins and to be, well, thirteen. The work was mostly menial labor but did have its share of risks (electrocution was always a misplaced screwdriver away) and rewards (getting to know my father as something other than a disciplinarian and occasional batting practice pitcher).
I continued as his helper on-and-off through the summer of 1988. It was during this summer that I realized the family business was not destined to fall into my lap one day. This revelation occurred when I drove a ground rod through my hand. Not only did I receive a new bike thanks to the workers’ comp. checks, but I also had the last half of the summer off to reflect upon the decision not to be heir to my dad’s company.
After my senior year of high school and following a rather heated argument with Dad that included threats of exile and castration, I decided that I would not spend my summer working for him and he decided that he no longer wanted me as an employee.. I’d progressed up the pay scale to an amazing $4.50 an hour, so I knew I was going to have to find a job to at least come close to this number; otherwise, I would lose money because of my refusal to be a mind reader and all-around slave to a man who never seemed to appreciate my efforts. Keep in mind that Atmore doesn’t exactly have much to offer a teenager other than the typical fast-food drudgery. I knew that was where my immediate future lay. I filled out the applications at Hardees, Pizza Hut, and Ponderosa, throwing in a few hopefuls at Rite-Aid and Kmart. Finally, the call came from Pizza Hut. I was now going to be a cook for a place that I had single-handedly kept open since moving to Atmore.
I made it four days at Pizza Hut. Four days, the PH-1 training tapes, a ton of dishes, and a grand total of one pizza made before I turned in the polyester uniform and name badge. Luckily, my friend Mitch, whose parents owned a chain of gas stations stretching all throughout southwestern Alabama, asked me to join him as a roving maintenance man. Mostly, the job entailed sweeping the outside of the stations, painting, and general handyman duties. Hazards of this job included being on a scaffold as a rather severe afternoon thunderstorm approached unnoticed and sunburn while painting the handicap blue on the curb just outside of the station. On top of the fact that I didn’t have to work with my dad and I made fifty cents more than he was willing to pay me, I was often able to pilfer beer and cigarettes from the stock room unnoticed. It made for a rather good end to the high school portion of my working life.
In case you haven't heard, Spalding Gray is missing. I didn't post about this yesterday, hoping that today would bring news that it had all just been a mistake and he was actually in Tampa shopping for an antique desk. No such luck as of the time I'm writing this. Gray is somewhat famous for his "walks." In fact, in this interview, he discusses the importance of his walks to his writing:
I write in the morning between 9 and noon. And then I walk around and around and around. This city allows me to be spaced out because I know it so well. I know I could never write a story about it. I could tell a few things about it but I could never conquer it through a whole story. It allows me to be neutral. The infringements are so great here I never notice them. The overload is a sort of white noise.
I'm still holding out hope that he's on one of these walks.
In unrelated but depressing nonetheless news, L.A. investigators are still probing the death of Elliot Smith. You have to admit that a self-inflicted mortal stab wound to the chest seems nothing short of suspicious. The Smoking Gun has all the details, including a copy of the Coroner's Report.
Tomorrow, I will search long and hard for something uplifting--but I make no promises.
posted by Jeff 1/14/2004
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Daylight Fading
I thought it might be time to mention that all is not right in the world of music. Sometimes I cringe at the thought of turning on the radio or opening one of my favorite music blogs to read about what is going on. Yesterday came what has to be one of the final straws. Largehearted Boy has posted an mp3 link (warning: I'm not responsible for the crap that will come out of your speakers if you click on this link) of the Counting Crows covering California Stars. If you're not familiar with the original, it would be reason enough to reinstall Kazaa and grab it. I remember hearing the song for the first time. The wife and I were on the final leg of our journey to San Diego in 1998. The desert doesn't offer many choices as far as radio goes, and we'd pretty much gone through our CD collection on the way out here. Somewhere around El Centro, we started picking up a Spanish language station playing gringo musica progressiva. And that's where I first heard Tweedy's voice singing a before unheard song. I guess it would kind of become the anthem of my first few months in San Diego.
Now the Counting Crows are covering it. Oddly enough, I was just in a conversation about the buzzards a few weeks ago. I don't have much positive to say about them; in fact, the only thing that comes to mind when I hear the name is that the lead singer has fake dreads so I mentioned this in the conversation. At the time, I felt that it was probably just an urban legend that had survived all of these years (probably spawned from the same source as the Stevie Nicks having coke blown up her arse by her personal assistant). Anyway, I did a quick google search and was relieved to find out that not only is this legend true, but it is something that Mr. Crow admitted and is proud of:
He's a nest of paradoxes. The fake dreads that made him finally feel he looked like his self-image. The craving for fame on "Mr. Jones", from the first album, followed by the very vocal shying-away from it. The American rock god/poet born to working class, Russian-Jewish parents. The intelligent and articulate former English student who claims he had a year-long bad acid flashback in his early teens that rendered him incapable of speech and basic functions. The Basquiat-U-Like singer who emotionally berates his live audience with repeated cries of "Don't waste your life like I do mine!", yet has a life - in terms of both creativity and rewards - that they (especially here in the two-paces-behind Midwest) would kill for.
Truly, enough said.
Because I don't want to leave you with a sour note ringing in your ears, I'll give you some good Wilco news. Not only is the band planning a spring release for their follow-up to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but Jeff Tweedy will be putting out a book of poetry. I can assure all of you that rushed out to buy the Jewel poetry collection and have regretted it ever since that Tweedy has at least some experience writing verse. I'm willing to give it a try.
posted by Jeff 1/13/2004
Monday, January 12, 2004
Don’t You Wish Your Weekend Was Half as Fun or Where Has All My Weekend Gone or End Game: The Weekend That Wasn’t and Never Was or Week(end)
I read this rather interesting take on titles (link from ArtsJournal) and it was a rude reminder of my weekend. No, I didn’t spend it all trying to come up with a title for my Great American Novella. Instead, I had a wonderfully enjoyable time writing staff evaluations. I’m still pretty new to the job of supervisor, so this is my first experience in the realm of reviews from this side of the desk. I had a feeling when I took the position that this would probably be one part of the job that I really didn’t like. Feeling confirmed. It’s not the evaluation part of the process that is bothersome. I couldn’t get beyond the language, the repetitiveness, the all-too-blurry line between objective and subjective. At one point, I felt like doing them all in haiku. After six hours, with only five done and nine to go, I had officially drained every last creative ounce possible out of the collective language of reviews. I only wish it were a title to a story that I had to come up with….
By the way, if you’re working on a scholarly treatise, you might want to avoid using a colon in the title. Just consider this your helpful hint for Monday.
When I first stumbled on Mark Haddon's novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, I figured it would be a good final book to finish off the $150 Borders Gift Certificate that Santa brought me. I'd filled my arms with fairly pithy books that promised days of intense reading and needed something of a simple page turner after just finishing House of Leaves. The premise of a mystery told from the point of view of a boy with Asperger's syndrome immediately caught my attention. Instead of scooting the book to the bottom of my stack (in order of future read) I kept it on top. Then I opened the book and the first paragraph completely sucked me in:
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog.
Something about the narrator's tone, the preciseness of the imagery, the dead dog, all led to me wanting more, and before I knew it, I was staring at the appendix still clamoring for more.
Not that Haddon's story doesn't resolve itself. Christopher John Francis Boone, the story's narrator, sets off on a quest to find the dog's killer. In doing so, he also discovers secrets about his life that had been kept from him by an overprotective father. Christopher's world is one of formulas and numbers. In a world where the two sides of the formula don't often equal, he has set up rules (doesn't like the colors yellow or brown) that help him cope. He sees the "normal" world as not living up to his particular expectations. In some ways, he helps redefine what is normal for those around him.
Because this has turned into a 12-hour day at the grind, I'm going to dig into the pile of old material to give you (and me) a bit of humor.
BLOOMINGTON, IL—Claire Thompson, author David Foster Wallace's girlfriend of two years, stopped reading his 67-page breakup letter at page 20, she admitted Monday.
"It was pretty good, I guess, but I just couldn't get all the way through," said Thompson, 32, who was given the seven-chapter, heavily footnoted "Dear John" missive on Feb. 3. "I always meant to pick it up again, but then I got busy and, oh, I don't know. He's talented, but his letters can sometimes get a little self-indulgent."
Since I had all of zero blog-worthy links in the previous post, I thought I would throw this in for good measure.
...the government sent hundreds of pager-sized radiation detectors to ten cities, including San Diego, as part of the effort to detect and prevent dirty bomb attacks.
There comes a time in every early 90s Hyundai Excel owner's life when he or she has to make the ultimate decision, and when I smelled the acrid smoke of some sort of electrical fire followed by the inability to crank said car of mine while in the middle lane of traffic at a red light, I knew that I faced this decision: life or death. When my newly found mechanic (who happened to be at the corner of the previously mentioned red light) told me that to breathe life back into the car would cost me $400, I have to admit that I was ready to see how much my favorite charity would give me as a tax write-off. But not quite ready to jump back into the world of car payments, I knew this decision would mean that I would re-join the public transportation world. Not a difficult decision after all. I chose life.
And if I wasn't quite sure I'd made the right decision, my trip on the #2 bus to pick up my car at the garage confirmed it. For almost a year after we moved to this neighborhood, I took the #2 to work. This line is pretty much the Mississippi River of transit routes, passing through the heart of San Diego through some of the not-so-nice areas before dumping one right in the middle of downtown. At the time of day I had to take it today, there is rarely a seat to be had. One ends up standing in the aisle holding on for dear life as the bus driver hits every pothole and swerves past every slow driver possible so that her day can end on time. And there always seems to be the one wheelchair-bound patron waiting to further pack the aisle as people make room (and no offense to the wheelchair bound, I assure you). In my 2 riding days, I saw it all: old men fighting, crack deals consummated, and, well, consummation of sorts. Today was just your ho-hum #2 ride. I made it safely to the mechanic and paid for at least a few more months of not having to take the bus.
posted by Jeff 1/07/2004
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Collecting What's Mine
With the latest news that Pete Rose is admitting that he gambled on baseball, we all now await with bitten nails to see if he will finally get his shot at the Hall. Well, some people do. I just wait for the fifty bucks that my cousin owes me for the little wager that we had on whether or not Pete was a gamblin’ man. Ok, it was years ago. In fact, I haven’t even seen this cousin since the late 90s, haven’t spoken to him about this wager since we made it, but a bet’s a bet, right? So pay up, John. I told you that Pete was a con man. Anyone that would wear his pants that tight has to be at the least playing the ponies, and when you throw in the spiked bowl cut, you’ve got yourself the makings of William Bennett.
I know that I’ve been a bit more narrative with my blog than usual. I can promise it won’t always be like this. Most of my narrative thrust goes in to the other part of my writing, but because I’ve decided to be at least a part-time blogger, I need to have things to blog about (and I’ll now quit using that word) and I can honestly say that I haven’t spent much time “in the world” the last couple of days. The only time I really took my nose out of a book all extended-weekend long was on Saturday. My wife wanted to take her recently acquired and newly fixed camera to the beach to take pictures of the sunset. Being a sucker for a potential green flash sighting, I decided that I would accompany her. At first, we were going to go to Sunset Cliffs, a place we’ve been to a number of times and a place guaranteed to produce a good postcard quality photo. But on the way, I suggested that we hit up the Ocean Beach pier. First of all, we’ve never been there, and having lived here nearly six years, I’d say that’s second only to the fact that I’ve yet to go to Sea World (and unless I’m given a ticket, I never will). So despite the relative chill and the fact that I don’t have anything much warmer than a windbreaker, we went out on the pier. And we actually had time before the actual setting of the sun to look around. Hence, the problem. Take my advice: if you’re ever on a pier with birds flying around above you, it’s best not to stand in one place for too long. Birds see you as a target. More specifically, they think that the brown windbreaker that you have on is an inviting place to poop.
Despite the poop on my shoulder (a prankster version of the green flash, I assure you), Elaine and I enjoyed the pier, the birds (except one), the little kids chasing the birds, and the mom chasing after the little kids. We decided to cap off the night with a trip to the Thai buffet and then Borders. Speaking of Borders, when did it become impossible to sit and read in a bookstore café? While waiting in the Borders’ café for my wife to finish up at Old Navy, I was forced to listen to a woman discussing her recent trip to the beautician, a man detailing his plans for watching the Sugar Bowl, and a middle-aged woman asking her friend via a cell phone if she’d like to go to the Gaslamp and smoke a “fookah.” “Yeah, a fookah. They’re fun.” I made it through about half of a page of the book I was considering buying when I just closed it and decided to do my Carlos Castaneda imitation, the one where I listen for the one voice in the room. But a Borders filled with people trying to use up their xmas gift certificates has no voice. It has screams, many screams, but no voice.
Postscript: I proudly wore my poop-stained jacket the rest of the evening. After my wife scraped most of it off with an abandoned coffee stirrer, all that was left was a slight bleached-out looking spot. Without a noticeable scent, I decided that for the evening the poop on my shoulder would be a badge of honor.
I've come to the conclusion that watching college football with the volume down is another one of those surreal experiences that only happens every so often where sports are concerned. Sure, I've done it before, but never, I guess, with the intensity of the football game being what it is tonight (LSU v. Oklahoma for half of all the marbles). Perhaps I've had way too much coffee (not to mention a latte) today. Who knows? I once had a similar experience while watching a Wimbledon women's finals. This after eating too many slices of marijuana pizza and smoking a rather large doob on top of that. When the high kicked in, I became one with the grunts coming from the screen. The sound of Dick Enberg's voice became that of an omnipotent god detailing the course of human history. I've not been able to watch women's tennis since (except for the occasional glimpse at Anna Kournikova).
It's still early and the score is tied 7-7. If LSU pulls this one out, I'm convinced that Baton Rouge may see one of those little riots. Question is, will this be only a half-riot? Stay tuned.
posted by Jeff 1/04/2004
Friday, January 02, 2004
Smoke and Mirrors
From now on, every pack of cigarettes will come equipped with a tape measure. Thanks California for making smokers feel at home.
Smoking: Taking a puff is now banned within 20 feet of an entrance or window of a public building. The buffer zone was five feet.
I don't have many fond memories of New Year's Eves. For the most part, I can split all of them for the last two decades into sober (boring) or drunk (empty). Actually, that pretty much sums up every calendar day since my first drink back in 1984 or so. This will mark my fourth clean-and-sober NYE, and for the most part I've simply watched as everyone around me got shit-faced. I guess it means that I'm the one person that is guaranteed to enjoy the Rose Bowl Parade the next morning (right). My favorite recent NYE would have to be the Y2K eve. I spent most of it on an upstairs porch that overlooked downtown. It was a rainy night (eerie for San Diego) and the one thing that will always stick with me was the heavy gunfire at midnight. I could hear the sound of bullets as they fell from the sky harmlessly landing in the yard. That and the burning down of my favorite Soup Plantation.
As for childhood memories of NYE, one particular stands out. I'm not sure of the year, but I remember that my father bought my brother and me a ton of firecrackers. Since they were banned within the city of Selma (AL), Dad decided to take us out to the parking lot of the company for which he worked, which happened to be about 100 yards outside the city limits. I remember driving out there and listening to the BluebonnetBowl on the radio. I remember it as being a cold night so we were more than likely sporting a recently gifted for xmas coat, but no gloves--and this will be important to the story.
Dad would have given us all of the standard warnings regarding the lighting of and escaping from firecrackers. Basically, it would have been "Light it and get the hell away." I think as we went about trying to destroy tree trunks and ant hills, he started loading up his truck with supplies (Dad worked as an electrician and was travelling out of town during the week). Not to say that he wasn't supervising us, but I think he felt that as boys we would be wise enough to not do something...stupid. But he neglected to give us (read: me) the warning not to throw them, and if you must throw one, don't throw it as you would a baseball. See, the fuses on these black cats were often unpredictable. One would be painfully slow, to the point where we would nearly have to relight it at a lower point. But then there was that one, and it happened to be the one that I decided to light and then imitate Charlie Hough. I remember the pain as it traveled down my arm. It was as if my hand had been the recipient of a blow by one of Dad's pipe benders. Of course, I was on the ground when the realization of what had happened actually sank in.
So from that I gained both a healthy respect for firecrackers and three deep purple fingernails. No lecture from Dad though. Once he saw that my hand was still in tact, he knew it was time to go home. And I don't remember if I stayed up to watch Dick Clark rock in the New Year.
Have a safe and happy one, one and all. Drink one for the clean and sober; we'll stay on the right side of the road for you.
So I’m a little tired this morning. I spent the better part of an hour walking through the streets of downtown San Diego carrying my Old Farmer’s Almanac while trying to figure out what the weather is going to be like on New Year’s Eve. Not that I really care; my festivities will take place under a roof and the only moisture that I’ll feel will probably be the result of Bob Pollard’s onstage whiskey distribution.
It’s really hard to believe that another year is coming to a close and I haven’t compiled a single list of my favorite this or that. In fact, I haven’t compiled one of those lists since never. So why start now? Well, it’s a slow day at work, the almanac tells me that tomorrow’s weather will be fair, and I’m in the mood for some hindsight. So here you go—the top 5 things that I didn’t do in 2003:
5. I didn’t finish Infinite Jest. I’m sure that I’m not the only one out there that seems to be continually staring at the shelf, at that huge brick of a baby-blue spine with those big black letters, thinking, “This could really be the day that I give it another go.” After finishing House of Leaves, I had this urge to give it another go. And then there was the near instant recollection of all of those footnotes. Page upon page upon page. Well, some people have Everest; I have IJ. Here’s to you Mr. Wallace.
4. I didn’t go on a whale-watching excursion. Ok, so I shouldn’t be too down about this. After all, I’m not too sure that I could convince my wife into going along since she gets carsick easily—so imagine the boat ride—and she has a fear of big ocean creatures, specifically whales. This has been on my to do list since moving to San Diego.
3. I didn’t make the trip to see R.E.M. & Wilco play at the Hollywood Bowl. Just two hours up the 5 and forty bucks could have made for a great evening. I would have seen my favorite band of the 80s (R.E.M.) and my favorite band of the 90s (Wilco) at a place that I’ve wanted to visit; thus, three birds with one ducket. But alas, the show was during a week in which duty called and during a time in which the funds were low. Both bands did play San Diego’s annual street fest, but paying the fifty bucks to see them play half-sets was not, in my opinion, worth the headache of hour long lines at designated bathrooms and crowds who would rather see a Bob Marley cover band than anything else.
2. I didn’t use my tax refund to go to Seattle to see the Braves play the Mariners. It was a pretty good series, but I decided to use the funds to go to Atlanta and see a game at Turner Field. It happened to be Tom Glavine’s first game in Atlanta since he signed with the hated Mets. Overall, a good decision since I got to see the game with my dad, but man, I really want to see Safeco.
1. I didn’t quit smoking. Enough said.
I feel like I should have prefaced the previous entry with some explanation. For those of you who don't know, I'm a southerner by birth, and I spent the first 28 years of my life in various parts of the South (Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana). My family, with the exception of my brother, still calls it home. When I first moved to California, I almost felt like I needed to hide this fact. There was a sense that if I revealed my roots, I wouldn't be taken as seriously as someone from, say, Cleveland. It was as if Alabama carried a stigma that would land me only vast amounts of mockery and countless dead-end jobs.
I could keep the information from people...until I spoke to them. No, I don't have a thick accent (rarely use y'all, fixin', or ain't) and many people don't hear it all. But it's there and when you haven't heard the drawl other than on TV I suppose it's really not that difficult to pick up. After a while, I decided that it wasn't worth the effort. In fact, as time went by, I became less self-conscious of the fact that I am a Southerner.
I've been thinking a lot about my Southern heritage lately. Sure, there is plenty that I'm not proud of, plenty that needs to be damned, plenty to even be ashamed of. But there is that rich culture that seems to be disappearing faster than it can be recorded. Every time a computer is plugged in or a satellite dish is put up in the rural regions of the South, a little more of the autonomy of the region vanishes. Of course, there is good to be gained from this, but with the good comes the decay of traditions. How long before the mountain music becomes only an artifact on a web page? How long will it be before the oral tradition, the art of storytelling so rich in the South, is replaced by html-encoded e-mails? And I could go on.
I guess some of this reflection comes from seeing the movie Big Fish over the weekend. In the movie, set mostly in Alabama, a son patches together a biography of his dying father. Much of what the son knows comes from "tall-tales" told by the father, tales that the son gives absolutely no credibility to, and in fact is so turned off by the stories that he has stopped speaking with his father. The father does spin some very fantastic yarns and when taken only on their surface could be interpreted as nothing but fantastic ramblings of a certifiable bullshitter. The son, on the other hand, represents that new wave of Southern children: skeptical, jaded, modern. He, too, is a storyteller, but instead of following in the oral tradition of the father, he's a reporter for the UPI bureau in Paris (France, not Texas). He is a man determined to get the facts and deliver them in black and white with ink, not with the colorful words and imagination of his father.
Sadly enough, I've seen some of this first hand. My great-grandparents lived long enough for me to remember hearing their stories, often told while sitting on the front porch. Even my grandparents relayed a certain part of their history through tales. I can recall days spent listening to my grandfather discuss his childhood through elaborate stories about baseball games, either witnessed or played. I see less of that in my parents. They are much more concrete, their narratives tend to lean toward the factual side. My father is a storyteller, but I don't think he has a fantastic bone in his body. Mom simply relates what she knows and only if she thinks it worth both her effort to tell it and our effort to listen to it.
That leaves me..."the writer". My personality doesn't really allow for me to be the vocal teller of tales. I pretty much live on the page. But I'll never forget the afternoons spent on my great-grandmother's knee as she entertained me with some of the grandest stories, stories I don't really recall other than bits and pieces (one about some kids getting lost in a basement, for example). And who knows what I'll pass down to my children. Will the written word be enough? Will they be able to piece together my biography through the short stories I've written? But I'm sure whatever way I choose to deliver it, my children will be able to hear the South in my voice. And I guess now I'm not afraid to admit that.
posted by Jeff 12/29/2003
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Southern Accents
There's a southern accent, where I come from
The young 'uns call it country
The yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talkin'
But everything gets done, with a southern accent
Where I come from
Now that drunk tank in Atlanta's
Just a motel room to me
Think I might go work Orlando
If them orange groves don't freeze
I got my own way of workin'
But everything is run, with a southern accent
Where I come from -
For just a minute there I was dreaming
For just a minute it was all so real
For just a minute she was standing there, with me
There's a dream I keep having
Where my mama comes to me
And kneels down over by the window
And says a prayer for me
Got my own way of prayin'
But everyone's begun
With a southern accent
Where I come from -
I got my own way of livin'
But everything gets done
With a southern accent
Where I come from
Tom Petty (amazing version by Johnny Cash on the Unearthed boxed set)
posted by Jeff 12/28/2003
Santa brought me my favorite thing: rain. Only problem was the fact that the wind that accompanied the downpour (yes, Virginia, a true gulleywasher, a bonafide toad strangler) made it just a tad difficult to use my new gas grill. The steaks were unevenly cooked (but good). Our flying pig wind toy was trying to head toward North Park, but the strings that tied it down kept it here to enjoy the last few hours of a great xmas. Time to settle in and listen to some Cash before bed. I've actually been thinking of the makeover for this blog. More soon.
posted by Jeff 12/25/2003
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Bleh
I've consumed so much coffee over the last few days, I'm beginning to get this strange feeling brewing in the depths of my very being. And to think, I've been away from work where my coffee consumption is usually five-fold what it would otherwise be. This is just pure Xmas season, need a pick up to be alert with the parents around sort of caffeine fix. And then I find this little nugget. And that reminds me of a little joke:
In the 24 Hour Fitness of the sperm world, an eager young sperm admired his great physique in the mirror. To his comrades, he bragged that when the call came he would be the one to mount the egg and thus win the ultimate battle of fertility. Just as he was putting down the heaviest of the dumbbells, the alarm went out. First out the door, the eager sperm sprinted down the chute that led to the battlefield. He had a safe lead on the rest of the competition.
Then, past the point of no return, the eager sperm hears a call from behind him:
Hell will be a constant state of forced cleaning, perhaps the type of cleaning one has to do only when the parents are a few hours away from being delivered unto us by Delta. In the same hell, the cleaning will involve lots of dust and cat litter boxes, dog hair hidden in every possible crack in the floorboards with huge piles gathered under the bed, and toilets--toilets everywhere. Perhaps there will be breaks where out of your too warm brown paper sack you can pull out coconut shards and drink Zima. Music will, of course, be provide by Madonna.
A few weeks ago, I made the daring yet impulsive purchase of William Vollmann's new treatise on violence, Rising Up and Rising Down. It's a pretty impressive package, looking more like law books than anything else on my shelves, but now it sits there waiting for me to even crack a single spine. Ah, too much to read and not nearly enough time. Well, time and the fact that I finally picked up House of Leaves. I feel that I'm now in an ever expanding, hidden passageway looking for an exit. Not to say that the novel (if you wish to call it that) isn't good. I'm still trying to figure that one out. But it is sucking away my energy. Now that Christmas is looming and the annual parental visit is right around the corner, I'm in serious trouble. Vollmann will have to wait, indefinitely.
In the 1970's and 80's, legions of students and professors in humanities departments embraced the view that the world was a ''text'' -- that the personal and political were shaped by language and that literary and cultural critics possessed tools as powerful as those of, say, political scientists for understanding the world and effecting social change. While outside observers have long inveighed against theory's abstruse argot and political pretensions, this year theory seems to have lost much of its cachet, even among its would-be defenders.
Considering how theory was treated by a lot of the old-guard professors at my university, I'm inclined to call for a murder investigation.
posted by Jeff 12/15/2003
Friday, December 12, 2003
A Word of Advice
When preparing for that oh-so-fun Holiday party, make sure to take care of even the smallest details.
posted by Jeff 12/12/2003
Can We Talk About the Weather
Thursday morning there should have been rain. All signs pointed to a decent chance: greens on radar, Channel 8 initiating their Storm Watch coverage, clouds, wind. I should have know better than to get excited over the prospect of something other than the ubiquitous San Diego sun. I've lived here long enough to know that more often than not the chance of rain is about as slim as Paris Hilton's chances of winning at Jeopardy. Still, for someone who loves weather--and by that I mean changes in weather, specifically rain--the chance is enough.
And it did come. One very short "shower" around mid-morning. The rain was blown onto my office window as if to further tease me. But just as I was settling in for the action, the sun popped out, the rain disappeared, and cars all over San Diego skidded into ditches. And the rest of the day was just like that. A hit-or-miss shower, a few dark clouds, wind, but nothing to write home about.
A lot of people wonder why I complain about San Diego weather. I'm one of the few people I know who actually think that it's a negative. Mostly, it's because I grew up in a rainy climate. It's in my blood. I spent a few minutes to figure out that since I moved here in June of 1998, San Diego has received a total of 35.24 inches of rain (give or take a couple of inches). Compare that to the last year that I lived in Mobile, Alabama (the rainiest city in the continental United States). In 1995, Mobile saw 80.49 inches.
So some words of advice to my friends in Southern Cal. If you are ever in the South or Midwest and the T.V. weatherman proclaims a "Storm Watch," BELIEVE HIM! I know that term means nothing here where the easiest job in the world is being said weatherman. But there, heeding that warning could keep you from starring in a sequel to Wizard of Oz.
posted by Jeff 12/12/2003
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Begin Again
So no one was minding the store while I was away. Pity, huh? Seriously, though, the last six months have been overwhelmingly busy and I simply could not dedicate the time to this site. On more than one occasion, I at least thought of making a graceful re-entry. I even received a few requests and some suggestions via e-mail, but I couldn't make it back until I knew I was ready to give it the good old college try (whatever that means).
Much has happened in the half-year since I slipped into a blogless coma. I made my first trip to Europe; I was promoted; I moved into a nicer and larger apartment (which required that I mortgage the still unborn first-born). Yet so much has stayed the same: I still smoke too much; don't get nearly enough exercise; and I can't get off my duff to finally finish Infinite Jest. The time away has given me a chance to rethink the purpose and scope of this exercise. I know that before I mentioned a sense of organicism. I wanted the blog to take on a life of its own. Too an extent, that is still the goal. But I have ideas.
For now, that's about all I can offer. We'll see how things go. Hopefully, I'm here to stay.
posted by Jeff 12/11/2003
