2/25–28/07
Dull Boy
It's true what they say about all work and no play. I know that I've had fun in the past—I've gotten together with friends a couple of times just this weekend—and I expect that I'll have some in the future too. But I can't imagine when, or what it would be like. For some reason, right at the moment I don't clearly remember what fun is like. Outside my window right now the sky is overcast with gray clouds, the trees are bare, the houses seem huddled together in the cold, and the ground is covered with dirty snow. And it feels that way inside by mind, too. I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm glad to have some work to do. But it's not like one of those moments when you're just fizzing with a zest for life, I'm sorry to say. Of course my mood will change soon—it always does—and the good mood will seem even better for coming after this blah stretch.
And whattaya know, I just saw two very little girls dressed in purple coats run happily down the sidewalk, holding hands. They've been let out of school, and it's time to go out to play. A cheerful sight indeed. Of course, my own school day is longer, but surely the bell will ring some time.
2/24/07
Rushing Roulette
Sorry if you've been checking in, it's been one of those busy times. But the other day I was driving home from a friend's house and it was pretty slippery, with about an inch of snow on the ground, more coming, and the temperature just under freezing. I crept along slowly because at any moment the road could have become icy, not just moderately slick. Most other people did too, but you always see people zooming along obliviously. The fact is that you can get away with this for a while, most of the time, when conditions are that bad. But you can get away with Russian roulette, too, roughly five out of six times. But my thinking on this runs thusly: In winter weather, with the road covered with ice and snow, you run a high risk of losing control. If you lose control, the car will slide, virtually without friction, until it runs into something. A median, a ditch, another car, a tree. So it's up to you whether you want to lose control going 22 miles an hour, or 54. I choose the slower speed. And quite a few cars go whizzing by me. Which is entirely up to them. All I can say is that close to home, one of the vehicles that went by at a high rate was an ambulance with its lights and sirens going. Maybe somebody had a heart attack or stroke or slipped in their shower. Or maybe someone lost at Russian roulette. Me, I got home with no problems, but when I cut the engine off I was glad.
2/23/07
Red Letter
Yowie, gotta do a bunch of errands and such but I had one thought, which is that lately I've been considering the question of when, how, and how much people should compromise. You can get all kinds of opinions from people on the subject, naturally, because people are chattering monkeys. But me, I want the goods—I want divine instruction. Which is rare, these days, as a blacksmith's shop. God doesn't seem to talk from the skies anymore, the Delphic Oracle has closed for good, the tea leaves you might have read in years past are now jumbled in a bag. But today I was clearing junk mail off the table and my eye fell on this:
2/22/07
The Power of Perplexity
Some of us make our way in life by always being oriented to the world around us, always being aware and alert. Such people have done their homework, they're on top of things, they're savvy and know the score. And good for them, say I.
Others of us walk around in a fog, perennially perplexed, so obviously lost that strangers take pity on us and try to help. That's more my style, a lot of the time. Yesterday I was standing on the sidewalk a few blocks away, a piece of paper in my hand, dressed only in jeans and a sweatshirt, despite the cold wind, peering at the houses on either side of the street. A woman walked toward me and said, "That's the walking tour brochure you've got there, isn't it?" And indeed it was. I told her I've been studying the local architecture a) just for the interest of it and b) because I'd like to do a little movie about the main architectural styles you see around town and the characteristics of them. Just a fun little two-minute thing, the sort of quick journalistic approach to a new subject I've done professionally for 20 years or so. And wouldn't you know it, this woman studied art history and, if I heard her correctly, has served on the local historical commission, knows all the styles, lives in a very nice Second Empire house herself. I met her husband too, and we had a nice long talk on their porch, chatting about our various projects and perhaps forming a lasting friendship, one never knows. They seemed like awfully nice folks, and I can learn a good bit from each of them, and all because I stood on the sidewalk, looking at buildings in a vague, befuddled sort of way, dressed inappropriately, in a way that might have inspired someone less aware of local architectural brochures to fish her pepper spray out of her bag just in case. See? For some of us, perplexity just works.
2/21/07
The Thing With Feathers
Wednesday was an interesting and hopeful day: first a meeting with a very cool person with whom I'd enjoy working, I think. Then home, and for some reason the rest of the day I kept noticing things that can fly. Creeping through early rush-hour traffic on one of the area's ugliest, grubbiest roads, I saw a flock of geese chilling out in an empty lot. (Does anyone say "gaggle" any more? The local weekly newspaper recently printed a picture of geese which the caption referred to as a "herd." Ho boy.) And you know how it is with something you don't expect to see—at first you don't see it at all, you just register that something looks funny. One of the geese looked funny, in that way, and then the image rearranged itself in my brain—it wasn't a goose, it was a much, much more rarely seen wild turkey. Cool! They've made a comeback from their near-extinction in decades past, but it's still a little event to see one.
Further down the road, I saw something well up in the air that I couldn't identify. I got my camera out, in case I was about to make the definitive portrait of space aliens, but when I got a little closer I saw that someone had tied about a dozen balloons together and let them go. They were high up, but from one angle I could tell they were red and possibly heart-shaped—leftover Valentine balloons, sold at discount in a party store. They floated together in the sky like one of those strange colony creatures you might see in the ocean, or under a microscope, a networked creature that changed shape with the currents it rode but still maintained its integrity. I've seen feral balloons, of course, seeking their newly freed path in life above innumerable county fairs, zoos, street festivals and such, but I'd never seen anything quite like this. It was drifting vaguely southeast, and I suppose in a day or so it would be out over the sea, and would eventually be eaten by and bring about the death of not just one but an entire pod of whales. But in the meantime, it was a curiosity.
That evening I went to hear a friend give a lecture on the Battle of Brandywine, which happened right around where I live. He gave a good talk and I learned a good bit, but the thing that struck me the most was a cannonball from the battle that someone had brought to show him. It was a shot for a four-pounder cannon, he said, a rusty iron ball, about the size of a tennis ball, pitted with age. But you couldn't help looking at the thing and thinking about the British ships sailing up the Chesapeake Bay, the soldiers and horses and cannons and other equipment debarking, the formations marching up the dirt roads towards Philadelphia, the lazily flowing Brandwine, a wide creek, deep in spots but shallow and easily forded in others, the blue-coated Continentals arrayed on its northern bank near Chadds Ford, the advancing redcoats, the bandoliers and breeches and tricorn hats, the muskets and bayonets, the early-fall greenery in the fields and on the hills, the crack of the small arms and plumes of smoke from the cannons, the yells and music and screams and shouted orders and generals riding back and forth, directing troops and demanding updates, and then the disorder as the British flanked the Americans and forced them to retreat, and all of it evoked by this one concrete object, a nondescript iron ball this guy held in his hand as he talked. Maybe someone picked it up the day after the battle, or maybe it was unearthed six months ago on a condominiusm construction site. But it certainly held my attention. I was impressed with the work my friend has done—he wrote a book about the battle, and in researching it he's travelled internationally to read every diary, letter, journal, or other contemporary account of what led up to the battle, the event itself, and the aftermath. I imagine he knows as much about it as anyone living. But the iron ball was there that day. That's what struck me the most.
2/20/07
Give It To Me Straight
I suspect that in a misguided effort to be polite, I'm telling people things in terms that are much too tentative. Just now I answered a phone call, and the party was asking for Dr. Davidson. There's no Dr. Davidson on the premises, and to my knowledge there never has been, and no Dr. Davidsons are expected to arrive. It's a wrong number, in other words. But here's what I said:
"I think you may have a wrong number?"
But it's not a matter of opinion; there's really no doubt about it. There's no Dr. Davidson on the block, much less in my house. Moreover the guy asking for Dr. Davidson sounded fairly chipper, and I'm sure he could have borne up under the strain of being told in a frank, direct way that he had a wrong number and that he must seek for Dr. Davidson elsewhere. But I hate to give people bad news, and I guess I was somehow trying to soften the blow.
I've read that in some cultures, it's considered impolite to give people bad news. What they do in these cultures is to tell you what they think you want to hear. When will your car be fixed? Tomorrow! Is the museum to the right, or left? To the right! The people you're talking to may have no idea where the museum is, or when the car will actually be fixed. But they think you couldn't handle the trauma of hearing the truth. I think that's what's behind my absurd, finishing-school phraseology. But the next time, I'll be more direct. "Sorry, dude—wrong number." I'm sure people can handle it. Of all the bad news possible, the news that you've punched a wrong number is about the least bad you can get.
2/19/07
High Praise Indeed
I was concerned because our writers' group had a mass read-in tonight, six or seven people reading short pieces, and I didn't want to feel sorry for anyone. Which, I'm pleased to say, I didn't. Actually (bear with me) it reminded me of reading Pauline Kael's review, 25 years ago, of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Kael was the Queen of Hearts of the film reviewing world at the time, and I thought she'd rip "Fast Times" up, but no. "Watching 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' I was surprised at how not-bad it is," her review began. Almost everyone who read tonight had something worthwhile lurking within their writing. I kept thinking, with certain exceptions on the high and low end, how generally not-bad they were. Frankly, I often worry that things will be bad, and I'm often pleased to find my worries groundless. In fact, I may lie on my deathbed, looking back over my life, and say, "I was surprised at how not-bad it was."
I've been trying to learn a little about architecture, and it's been fun. You can go to French classes, but you're likely to forget a lot of what you learn for lack of opportunities to practice. You can't speak French to someone whenever you want to, but learning architecture is different because you can look at buildings anytime. And the thing is, if you learn about a style, you start seeing it everywhere. What was once a building vaguely from the 19th century is now a Second Empire. It's like suddenly understanding a language. I was walking through the darkness to the writers' group meeting, which is held where I went to elementary school. There's a big old house across the street, and I saw it glowing whitely in the darkness, and after all these decades I saw that it had a turret on one side. A turret! Asymmetry! "You," I said to this house I'd failed to understand for so long, "are a Queen Anne!" And it was like the house said, with affectionate exasperation, "That's what I've been trying to tell you."
2/18/07
Failure to Communicate
Life is, among other things, a steady stream of ironies large and small. Example: today I'm finishing up the script for a video on interpersonal communication. I'm doing some last-minute research, and I just read over a list of 21 tips for promoting conversation and being easy to talk to. This makes me smile because what with the bitter cold lately and the freelancer's tendency to tap at a keyboard hour after hour, there have been days lately when I haven't spoken to a single human face-to-face once from morning until night. "Maintain eye contact," is one of the 21 recommendations, but when the only people I see all day are on the sidewalk 75 yards away the eye contact thing isn't really workable. But there's another tip, "Refrain from monopolizing conversation," and I've certainly got that one down.
Just for fun, I'm working on a little movie about some of the interesting architecture you can see around town. I wanted to have some music that evoked the 19th century, so I wrote a little something I thought worked, and I've been practicing it before recording. And isn't it always the same? I was fine, played it through without mistakes multiple time, until I started recording. Then it was like my hands were numb from the wrists down. I tried six or seven times to get a clean recording, but no. And then I turned off the damn microphone, and played one more time, grimly expecting, and to tell the truth hoping, to make a mistake. But no. I played that damn song perfectly. And felt very sour about my success.
2/17/07
Getting Caught Dead
It was creepy enough eight years ago, when there was a stir about the golfer Payne Stewart who died, along with everyone else, aboard what came to be called the ghost plane. It was a fairly disturbing idea, after all, this piece of high-end machinery hurtling through the sky for hours, operating properly by itself, all its human passengers sitting dead in their seats because of a sudden loss of cabin pressure.
That was creepy, yes, but I thought it much, much more macabre in a sad and tawdry way that the other day they found a mummified corpse, dead for a year, sitting in a home with the television on. It sat there day and night, bathed in the flickering blue light, as the box nattered on—desperate housewives, prop comics, Super Mario, the whole unending parade of foolishness. On one end of the room, sitting silently on the couch, is the great mystery, wearing a bathrobe, I imagine. On the other end of the room, never silent, the vast wasteland. For a year. Yeesh.
There's nothing very uplifting you can say about that, except that it's a really, really good argument for having friends and giving them a call every few months or so. Or at least you should have one of those medical alert necklace things. "Help!" you could say. "I've become mummified and I can't get up!"
2/16/07
Pompeii
I went back to the former workplace the other day to get a form signed, and I made a point of sneaking in, avoiding foe and friend alike. Foe is obvious, but I didn't want to see my friends either. Why not? Well, they'd naturally ask me how I'm doing, and the short answer is that while I hoped I would start garnering gobs of money and gratification right away, it seems the money will take a little more time. But I'm having stressful and scary fun right now—I'm alive, in a word. And that's plenty. But it takes some explanation and sounds a little defensive even if it's true, and I didn't want to go into it.
So I just slipped in, and walked quietly down the corridors to the office I needed. I'd glance in the cubicles, and it was exactly like the last time I'd been there, four months ago&8212;the same people in the same little booths, sitting in the same chairs, staring at the same monitors. It was like a science fiction film of humans trapped in a horrible collective entity, like the Borg. Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated! No more day or night, no more passage of the sun or moon across the sky! No more leaves falling, no more wind and snow, no more new leaves in the spring! Time is dead! No more volition or hope! You are part of the machine! Resistance is futile!
Now, this is silly, I know. They could all have been simply fizzing inside with creative joy. There's nothing sinister about an upright posture and rapt attention to the tools of your trade, after all. But it did bring home to me how I, myself, had sat at a desk, looking at a screen, for—this is hard to say—fourteen years. My hair went gray, in that time. I went from early middle age to—well, I became even more middle aged. No intellectual stimulation, no excitement, no innovation, no invention, no accomplishments (this is overstating but not completely wrong), no fun, no dreams. Fourteen years just spun away, because I had a pretty good job with Fridays off in the summer.
Sheesh.
Well, anyway—better late than never! Scary fun beats sleeping your life away like Rip Van Winkle, so I'm much better off. And friends, if you're reading this, that's how I'm doing. Sorry I didn't say hi the other day. Let's have lunch! On you!
By the way, Star Trek was not the first or best evocation of mindless collectivism. My man T.H. White wrote The Sword in the Stone the first book of The Once and Future King, in 1938, and in it the young Arthur is transformed into various animals as part of his education by Merlyn. The ants are a mindless collective, and White is brilliant at showing what that would be like to live in and more, what it would feel like if you succumbed to the mindlessness yourself. It was 1938, after all, and people seemed to be losing their minds all over the place.
2/15/07
Let Them Eat Food
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." That's the lead of an article by Michael Pollan that came out in The New York Times January 28. Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, does not, of course, mean with his first two words that food is what you should eat as opposed to, say, sawdust or tin foil. He means you should avoid processed food as far as possible. So it was a pleasure yesterday to have a lunch of lentil soup and cornbread that I made by myself, entirely from scratch. The soup was thick and rich, and I'd put in plenty of carrots and celery and cooked it until the meat was just coming apart. I used to put a lot of cumin in my lentil soup, but now I'm only putting just enough for you to notice something unusual. If this lentil soup could talk, in other words, it would talk with a barely perceptible trace of an intriguing foreign accent.
The cornbread is simple cornbread, but I'd never made it from scratch before. It takes a couple of minutes more effort than doing it from a mix, but you get way more gratification from it. I felt capable, I felt like I could take care of myself, because I had provided myself with this plain, traditional bread. I baked yeast breads, years ago, but they never gave me that Robinson Crusoe, I-can-manage feeling—probably because they were so incredibly delicious, warm and fragrant out of the oven, that I devoured them in a gustatory orgy that prevented my having any thoughts at all while the frenzy was on me. That soup and cornbread yesterday weren't quite that extravagantly delicious, but they were deeply satisfying. It was bitter cold outside, the wind blowing, but inside my warm home I was eating food. Not from a pouch, or a can, or a cardboard box in the freezer—I was eating real food, from the earth and my own hands. I haven't read Pollan's whole book or the whole article either, but I certainly have the read the first two words and I have to say that so far I couldn't agree with him more .
2/14/07
Box Office
I'm mildly concerned about my "unique visitors" count so far this month. Maybe everyone's hunkering down for February, cutting back on the blog-reading and such in favor of—I don't know, making soup or quilting or something. But frankly I'm wondering if my strategy of pondering life's little revelatory moments and avoiding the type of sludge served up by the all-Anna-Nicole-Smith-all-the-time media isn's a formula for slow death. So just for today, I'm going to do what (famous blogger) Lileks does and work in about a billion mass-culture references so Google will look on me with favor. But in my own style, of course. Sort of the way Bruce Springsteen did "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" in his own way, I'm thinking. So here we go...
First of all, one is told that the new Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is out. This is not a huge event that I anticipate all year, the way some English wine enthusiasts have beaujolais nouveau helicoptered over as soon as it's available every November. You recall how Roman conquerers would have a guy in the chariot with them whispering "remember, you are mortal" during triumphal parades? Well, I look at those stunning 19-year-olds and I hear a voice whispering, "Oh, like you've got a shot with that." The little voice goes on to say that should such a woman, in the grip of a severe Oedipal complex or some other dysfunction, decide that she liked the cut of my jib after all, she'd still want to go out clubbing. I think I'd rather join a monastery than go out clubbing; the monastery would, at least, be quieter and less smoky. No, my friends, I noticed years ago, as middle age settled on me like a gentle snowfall, that I was starting to perceive women that age as children—disturbingly attractive children, but children all the same. But thank heavens, I found that to compensate, I had developed a Frenchman's ability to appreciate what they call "a woman of a certain age." If Ségolène Royal is elected president of France, the phrase will probably be tossed around quite a bit. And there may also be speculation about whether Ségolène Royal and Meredith Vieira were separated at birth, but that's another matter.
One of my Sierra Club acquaintances just sent around a news story about a whale that was rescued from a tangle of crab lines by volunteers. This was laudable, especially because it was dangerous, and the remarkable thing was that the whale circled the divers afterward and nudged them gently in what certainly seems like an expression of gratitude. And I know I've said this before, but this time I really mean it: I'm cutting whale out of my diet completely from this day forward.
I'm cutting out parrot out too. If a parrot can say more than 900 words, and use them to convey meaning, well, it starts to seem like cannibalism, doesn't it? That parrot could give you a better conversation than lots of people who've sat next to you on airplanes. It just wouldn't be right. But what, I hear you cry, will I do for protein? Shucks, that's no problem. Eggs and fish. And occasionally, when I can get it, venison.
Full disclosure: Yesterday I referred to the cowardly stowaway in the old "Lost in Space" show as "Dr. Robinson," which you all immediately are chorusing is actually the family's name. The infamous W., editor that she is, called me up and said, by way of hello, "It's Dr. Smith, you idiot." I actually kind of liked that—it made me feel like a Seinfeld character:
KRAMER: Jerry, are you blind? He's a writer. He said his name was Sal Bass. Bass, Jerry! Instead of salmon, he went with bass! He just substituted one fish for another!
JERRY: Look, you idiot, first of all, it's Salman, not salmon!
Well, that's as many mass-culture references as I can come up with today, and if I'm going to get anything constructive done today, not to mention lucrative, I've got to start now. Bye!
2/13/07
Fire and Ice
Not to go on about it but it's Valentine's Day and I'd like to wish a wonderful one to everyone who isn't a big sourpuss. There's a tire place a couple of towns over that has a sign: "Show Her You Love Her With a New Set of Tires." And if tires really are what would show you that you're loved then I hope that's what you get. Personally I'm not sure. Tires might say "I want you to be safe" but your tires should be good already. Don't wait until February 14th to have good tires. And as a token of love, tires seem a little prosaic, a little practical to me. They don't tell me I'm special. They only tell me I have a car.
A car is what you might as well not have, in these parts anyway, on this particular Valentine's Day. It started up with freezing rain and sleet last night, and it's supposed to keep going until midday today. That's a lot of ice on the ground. It strikes me that winter weather really would prefer to be rain or snow, and when ice falls out of the sky for 18 hours or so, it's one of those rare instances like when a nickel falls on the floor and lands standing on its edge.
It's on days like this that I miss TV. I used to love to put it on and listen to their near-hysterical reports coming in from this traffic choke point or that suburban main street, all saying the same thing: the weather's nasty. They'd poke their mikes at the driver's windows, and the drivers would say that it was slippery but if you took your time it'd be OK. I thought this morning about why I enjoyed their nonstop frenzied reporting, the pointless carrying on about a thing everyone knew about and could only endure, and I realized it was like on the old Lost in Space show from back in 1965. Dr. Smith was the treacherous coward, always losing his cool in dangerous situations, and the others—even the little kids—would just give him a glance and get back to dealing with it. And of course you identified with them, right? Not with Dr. Smith, the big crybaby. He was a counterpoint to their courage. And maybe that's why it's nice to hear the television folks carrying on with their all-day coverage of ongoing events in what's really just a typical, run of the mill snowstorm, something that everyone in a temperate zone gets familiar with by the time they're three or four. You listen to them for a minute while you take the last sip of your coffee and pull on your boots and gloves, put the scarf around your neck, and grab your hat. It's in the script that we stoically go out and dig the car out. It's in the script that they scream and yell and act as if the world is ending. And we look great by comparison. And if you'll excuse me, I have to shovel my walk.
2/12/07
Snow Was General
The infamous W. called today to ask if it was snowing here in town. I gave her a hard time about it—she lives about five miles away, and the weather isn't likely to be that different here—but when people call about the weather it's really about fellowship. Or boredom. Or something. But at any rate, we gabbed for a while, and I noticed that she always says "I yam" something, not "I am." So I thought I'd investigate.
"Did you listen," I asked, "to a lot of Popeye cartoons when you were little?"
"No," she said.
I thought for a while. Then I had a brainstorm.
"Did he," I asked, "listen to you?"
I heard from another friend down in Wilmington who's working at home, enjoying the way it's snowing. It's pleasant, very cozy, to work while it's snowing. I've always felt that way. A cup of tea, a cat, and the snow falling outside while you work. I supppose I'd rather be skiing in Gstaad, but as long as I can't, this will do nicely.
(Four hours later) It's sledding weather! This is the kind of snow that packs down into a perfect sledding surface. I poked my head out the door after working out and prior to digging the car out to get groceries, and even though it was dark I heard kids yelling and scraping noises, and I thought about sledding.
But, of course, it's dark.
And I'm 51.
And more to the point, I haven't got a sled.
But I remember sledding, right? I mean, the idea of going sledding isn't completely gone from my mind. That has to count for something.
2/11/07
That—That Thing
You don't have to be Pavarotti, or Picasso. That magical thing that happens when something creative is going on at even the most rudimentary level is really something. Yesterday, for quite literally the first time in decades, I sat down and played a little music with another human being. A friend wanted to do some playing, and I went to his house (he's got an incredible baby grand) and he got his bass out and we tried a few jazz tunes we both thought would be easy. Needless to say I'm a little rusty. But it was like when a kid's learning to ride a bike—there were moments when, although a lot of wobbling was going on, the tune was actually rolling forward across the pavement. And I don't care how jaded you are, when you're actually making a little music, it's something. Maybe you sing in a church choir, and you all learn the tune and suddenly the voices are blending, and that thing happens, when people sing together. The total is much, much more than the sum of the parts. It's the same with art and writing and everything else—something in us just wants to do that, to make creative things happen, and the magic starts up very soon in the process. Not mastery, not excellence, oh, my, no. You've got to pay the dues for that. But that thing—that doesn't take long at all.
Humans have done music and art and poetry it since our cave days. All cultures have it. That's why I always, always tell people that if they have the slightest inclination to learn to draw or paint, or play an instrument, or try their hand at writing or whatever it is, do it. Don't feel like you have to get incredible at it. How can I explain this to you, if you haven't experienced it? Look, have you ever made a paper airplane? It's easy, right? You don't have to go to engineering school. You just make a couple of folds, extend your arm, and suddenly that little creation starts to float along by itself, defying gravity. It's like that.
So if you always wanted to play the cello, or whatever, go ahead. Take it far enough so that thing happens. Because it will. And if you stop at that point and never play the damn cello again, you'll still be better off for it, bigger inside, a defier of gravity. You may only play "Yankee Doodle" on a penny whistle, OK? But your little melody will roll out like a bicycle, float in the air like a paper plane, and be magically there for a moment, before it's gone again.
2/10/07
Civilizing Influences
When I was a kid, my home county provided business for a few decent Continental restaurants, but for anything else you had to go into Philadelphia. My hometown, West Chester, couldn't even sustain a decent Chinese restaurant. Then a whole bunch of well-heeled carpetbaggers moved in and built housing developments as far as the eye could see, and suddenly we had what is euphemistically called a restaurant renaissance. These are the same wherever they're found. Up like mushrooms spring a crop of new restaurants in a mixture that I supposed is fixed by federal law: Thai, French-Asian fusion, Japanese, Mexican and southwest, and New American cuisine, or as I call it, Yuppie Chow, a school in which chefs strive to be considered imaginative in a way that's perfectly predictable: grilled chicken breast on bed of polenta with mango-raspberry reduction, garnished with watercress and pine nuts, or something along those lines.
Nothing is wrong or bad about this. But it's nice to go to someplace like New York, where I was yesterday, and go to the Neue Galerie's Café Sabarsky. They have a variety of Austrian dishes there, with waiters dressed as they would be in a fin de siécle Viennese café. The offerings include goulash, strudel, spaetzle and so forth, and you feel like you're getting something special because no matter how eclectic your local restaurant renaissance may be, I guarantee that Austrian cuisine isn't strongly represented. And there's the sense of old-world civilization you get, too. It's soothing. The museum is one of those immense mansions, elegantly appointed, and there you are, surrounded by tons and tons of solid masonry, and if you're not fussy about the anachronism of it you can imagine that Mozart is proposing a toast a few tables over and Gustav Klimt is just paying his bill.
At any rate, it's a special place. I was actually eating in the lower level, the Café Fledermaus, which is a little less elegant and a little more crowded, but that was fine too. The sense of civilization was just as strong, with a dash of boisterous jollity in the mix. A family was eating across from me, and as they were leaving their daughter, who was about three, hovered near my table before making a snatch and succesfully carrying away a slice of bread from my bread basket. The mother apologized ruefully, and I gave her that look of amusement and understanding you use in such situations, perfectly all right, no problem at all, as benevolent as Santa Claus. I'd have done the same thing in a Chuck E. Cheese, of course. But at the Neue Galerie it came even more naturally—it's just what you do, you know, when you're feeling especially civilized.
2/9/07
Clear Night
I was in a pretty bad mood last night when I arrived at a party for that friend who's moving to Montana. I'd wanted to have him and some other friends over for dinner, and hadn't gotten it arranged, and now it was too late. My life generally has been muddled and disordered, my mood sour and worried and dejected.
But the party was in a beautiful home, full of light and warmth and cheer. Everyone's going to miss this guy, and nobody minded saying so, but we didn't have to go on and on about it, it was understood. People asked him if he was excited, and he would say that it hadn't sunk in yet. Having moved recently myself, I told him that it was probably going to be weird, seeing his house empty after his stuff was packed, and that the memories of the past ten years would inhabit it like ghosts. But in a few weeks or so, Montana would be the new normal. He agreed. "Humans are pretty adaptable," he said.
So we hung out, watched fishing videos on the TV—we all met because one of us ran a fly tackle shop years ago—and ate and drank and laughed and told stories and stood around by the fire outside, even though it was bitter cold. At one point the hosts brought out a cake with a candle, and we all sang "Happy Montana to You." The time rolled away, and before long I had to leave, because I had a busy day coming up. So I said goodbye, and felt honest regret, and went to my car.
I got home and parked, and got out, and then stood there and looked up at the stars. It was cold, and they stood out brilliantly. The little town asleep around me on the ground, and the stars looking down. And somehow I felt like everything was all right. The stars just are, I thought. Some think they intercede on our behalf, and some say they look down pitilessly on human suffering and do nothing. I understand both views, but last night they were just there. They aren't there for us, or against us, I thought. They just are. And for some reason that was the most peaceful moment I'd had in some time. It didn't seem bitter, the cold, it was just a frosty, clear night. I stood looking up for a few moments, the house keys in my hand, and then went in.
2/8/07
News You Can Abuse
Years ago I first discovered Weekly World News, a supermarket tabloid that presents fictional news stories that are often truly funny. My own favorite headline is "World War II Bomber Found on the Moon." With a photo, of course, to back it up. It was there to give you a chuckle, and that's a good and useful thing.
I also remember from long ago a TV ad for U.S. News & World Report. It was a stark, austere ad: A guy stands there, a very serious-looking dude with horn-rimmed glasses who frowns at you as if he's about to tell you that if you're late one more time you'll be written up. The ad didn't really need more than that, because the message was clear: U.S. News & World Report was for very serious people. If you're a no-nonsense, go-getter, get-things-done kinda guy, this is your newsmagazine.
And this is how things should be. No mixed messages, OK? Two ends of the spectrum, complete nonsensical just-for-laughs crap on one end, and serious information on which you should base things like investments and declarations of war on the other. And life was good. Until CNN.com came along. I started checking it years ago, in the quixotic belief that it would make me better informed about what was going on in the world each day. And I just can't break myself of the habit, but I hate myself for not breaking the habit, which makes the habit an addiction, and addiction is bad. Let's see what the news is today, shall we? Just a few headlines from today, because I need to do some things. "Review: 'Hannibal' bites the big one." Get it? Most amusing. Another: "Actor in Grey Poupon ad dead at 72." Are you feeling better informed yet? A third: "Fat dog skateboards down Arizona streets." Earlier they'd called it a "drooling" dog. Perhaps that was part of an early, overexcited report and couldn't be confirmed by reliable sources in a position to know. Maybe it's a dog-bites-man thing, being rare and all? Well, let's see. Hmm—67,600 pages about skateboarding dogs. Maybe it's rare in Arizona. I don't know much about Arizona.
But see, this bothers me. I don't remember wishing for infotainment. I never sat around at loose ends, wishing that something would happen to infotain me. I enjoy being entertained, of course. Could be anything—if you can play the accordion, or walk on your hands, or whatever, I'll be an appreciative audience. And I like to be informed, too. I'd like for the horn-rim guy to be around so I could ask him which I should worry about more, asteroids or Iran, and what I should do based on that knowledge. (I do get U.S. News in the mail every week. Solid news and rockin' photography, IMHO.) I just wish that the line between news and entertainment were a little clearer. But I wish a lot of things.
2/7/07
Panning
I used to watch the Three Stooges when I was little, and I thought they were pretty funny. Thought, is the operative word there. But I did wonder, the other day, what it would be like if Ken and Ric Burns started mining the Stooges oeuvre to find the insights about America, the deep significance of it all, and I came up with this...
2/6/07
Snow Trouble. Snow Trouble At All.
I've come to think that my cheapie Wal-Mart ceramic heater is so shoddy that it's infectious. It has started to short out the circuitry for every room I use it in, so the other night I unplugged it. About twenty minutes later, the entire house went out. Instant darkness. I groped my way downstairs, got a flashlight, and came up and lit up a lamp and a candle—better than cursing the darkness!—and then went outside.
A section of my block and a couple others was dark too. It was about 10:20 p.m.; there were lights on around us, but we were a little island that had been pushed back a century or so. It was a strange feeling; I wondered how cold it would get in the house as the hours went on, and I knew perfectly well that nobody was coming to help us out. I've lost power for days, and it's an inconvenience. And that night it was bitter cold, and standing out there in my stocking feet, I had some compassion for people who have far more serious problems and nobody to help them. It was dark, and very still, and bitter cold, and I was alone. How much colder would it get in the house, I wondered, as the night went on?
But of course such thoughts help propitiate the Power Gods, and the lights came back on in about an hour and a half. Last night it snowed, and I woke up early, while it was still dark. I put my fist on the windowsill and rested my head on it, looking out at the street. A streetlamp lit the area softly, the way the moon would. Cars covered with a layer of snow, like sleeping buffalo. Windows lit here and there, away up the alley opposite. Everything as still as in a Christmas carol. Security and peace restored, but still remembering the night before, and resolving at least to give a few dollars to an aid organization. And I shoveled the neighbors' sidewalks this morning. It was only an inch, you could just run the shovel up and down like it was a dog and you were taking it for a walk. One lady was out, and thanked me. I told it was nothing, and if there were eighteen inches of snow on the ground it might be a different story. But when you suddenly feel a little more interdependent than usual, helping other people shovel seems right, somehow.
2/5/07
Prince's Rain
The Super Bowl party last night was lots of fun, although I hardly paid attention to the game. It was a mixed bag of people, all of them from the staff of the local library and attendant significant others. For me, the most interesting part was seeing Prince after all these years. It was like seeing an old friend after a 20 years' absence who, it turns, out, looks great. I played his music when I was in bands as a kid, and admired him greatly. I just happened to read a review of his performance, and everyone is officially pleased, and they were particularly pleased that there were "no wardrobe malfunctions."
Which was interesting, because it wasn't quite that simple. I don't have to remind anyone of the incident referred to, but it was instructive to compare the performances, certainly. Two years ago, Janet Jackson either a) pulled a sophomoric, Girls Gone Wild sort of silly stunt, or b) failed to correctly manage a tamer version of same (she said amid the controversy that she was supposed to be revealed in a red bra). Either way, it's a "meh" moment, a non-controversy, a tempest in a C cup. She wanted to—I don't know, get attention or something, but all she did was make herself look like a college student, drunk on Hurricanes at Mardi Gras, lifting her T-shirt to flash the cheering yahoos on a hotel balcony. Everyone saw what happened with her and said "What was that all about?"
Now Prince, on the other hand, is a far more imaginative and clever person. He's always been obsessed with sex, but in an interesting and different sort of way—the erotic element of life is always there in his work, but it's not the kind of juvenile, smirking, leering sort of thing you hear in Howard Stern, say. It's more like the guilt-free fascination with Eros that led the ancient Greeks to put statues of Priapus in their gardens. At least, that's how it seemed to me when, at one point in the performance, a large piece of cloth like a ship's sail was hoisted aloft in the pouring rain as Prince played his custom guitar with the arrow-pointed neck. In one of the most imaginative little bits of stagecraft I've seen in a while, they projected his shadow on the cloth, and he appeared to have a giant, pointed arrow thrusting arrogantly from his midsection. You had to know what's what to get the joke. In other words, the joke was a little wit-bomb that went off in your own head if you had the necessary understandings. A little kid wouldn't. As they used to say, the naughty aspect was left to your imagination. This was just a little naughty, but very clever and very funny, and getting the joke allowed you to share in the cleverness a little. I happened to be sitting up front near the TV, checking out the show, and when this was going on I turned to look at everyone else in the room, and they were all roaring with laughter.
2/4/07
Warriors
I'm not a fan of any sports team, because I don't know of any that are fans of me. What have they done for me, you know, that I should watch them play and buy their trinkets and be sad if they lose? The ultimate case in point is the Indianapolis Colts, who are playing today in something called a Super Bowl. In the United States on Super Sunday you go to people's houses and eat chicken wings and watch television commercials. In between the commercials, as a kind of filler, is a football game. Anyway, the Colts used to play for Baltimore (a charming grubby town), you know, and the Baltimoreans simply adored them. And then, one snowy March night, the team packed itself into vans and sneaked away to Indianapolis. Just sneaked away! They just left Baltimore cold, to get more money somewhere else, like a cheap, faithless floozy in a noir film. The Baltimore football fans have since found new love with the Ravens, whose name suggests an association with Edgar Allan Poe, who lived and died in Baltimore. Maybe that means the Ravens won't up and leave, but I wouldn't count on it.
Personally, if I were a Baltimorean I would forget about football entirely and mostly be a fan of the film directors and hometown boys John Waters, who's most famous for Pink Flamingos and is an extremely amusing person, and Barry Levinson, both of whom are fond of the city and feature it extensively in their work. They know you, the good and bad, Baltimore, and they love you. If you want my advice you should love them back and live happily ever after, but if you want to throw your money at some football team and fly flags from your car for the whole season and paint yourself colors and all that, well, it's your life.
2/3/07
Eggspedition
I want to get eggs fresh from a farm today, and suddenly it's become a problem. I went to Pennsylvania's Buy Fresh, Buy Local site this morning, and it was down. Damn! Thrown back onto my own resources. The supermarket? No. They have fancy-dancy eggs, with higher Omega-3 amounts and all sorts of printing on the box, including what you see here:
But of course, at a supermarket, freshness is never guaranteed and I don't think it's even especially desired. (Shelf life, that's what supermarkets prize.) You'll notice that they specify that the eggs come from hens. I thought this was one of those absurdly obvious things you say without thinking, the way you might mention about some celebrity that you "met him before he died," you know? Then I thought about it—maybe they mean the roosters are carnivores. I had a rooster as a pet once, which was something of an education for a suburban kid. (Why is a long story.) My rooster would follow me around, either because of my innate charisma or because it thought I was its mom. Other people it would peck the hell out of—unless you've been to a cockfight lately, you may not know how aggressive roosters can be. But I still had trouble imagining exactly what sort of meat the rooster would be given, and how it would go about eating it:
And now I'm going to get ready to leave and search for fresh eggs, preferably from a real farm. If I can solve the carnivorous chicken questions I've raised here, I'll let you know.
2/2/07
Media Ocrity
Well, it's Candlemas, and it's Groundhog Day, and it's Friday, and if you're reading this you're alive and things might get better, you never know. So at least one of those things should give you a reason to celebrate.
Now, let's see what's going on in the big world today. I often say this blog is not a running commentary on our shared and mediated culture, that it's a desperate, rearguard attempt to draw some attention to actual, literal life in the concrete, nonmedia world. Why should this effort be made? Well, let's look to the media themselves and see if we can find a reason:
Well, I see that CNN.com, which I won't link to because the links go dead, reports that a New York city council member has proposed that ultrathin models be banned. While not in favor of anorexia myself, I think we can safely say that the greater societal ill is ultrafatness. If you go in any Wal-Mart or supermarket today, you're likely to see a row of little motorized scooters waiting by the front door. These are not there for the use of ultrathin models who are weak and shaky from lack of nourishment. (But if you're reading this and you're an ultrathin model, please go to Philadelphia and get help.)
And then there's l'affaire Aqua Teen Hunger Force. First you heard there was a bomb scare in Boston that tied up the whole town, and then you heard it was a hoax, and then you heard the presumed bombs were actually boxes with lit-up cartoon figures called "Mooninites" from the abovementioned animated television show. Now, isn't it true that the instant you heard that these figures are characterized by an upraised middle finger, you knew it was the work of dopey young men? To my mind, they did something truly wrong, something so wrong that we all, me and everyone, should search our consciences about it and resolve not to commit the same sin: They were unfunny. Everyone involved was. The show—I checked it out so you don't have to—does not sparkle with wit, wicked or otherwise. And guys, the upraised finger just doesn't merit attention today, it's not an épater le bourgeois rupture of small-minded restriction that displays your artistic rebellion or whatever. It's just lame and sophomoric, guys. I wish I had a tenth of a penny for every time someone managed to sneak an upraised middle finger into a photo in a high-school yearbook. I mean, the vice president of the United States goes around talking with spurious, sophomoric frat-boy toughness,, dropping the f-bomb on the Senate floor, OK? My suggestion on how to stand out as a guerrilla marketer: Don't be sophomoric. Don't be crude and stupid and vulgar, and especially don't assume that silliness and incongruity invariably produce humor. It's silly and incongruous to tell reporters that you won't talk about the panic you threw a city into, that you'll only talk about '70s haircuts. But it isn't funny. Funny is when a reporter asked Paul McCartney what he thought of the campaign in Detroit to stamp out the Beatles. Paul said, "We're going to start a campaign to stamp out Detroit." They asked John, "How do you feel about teenagers imitating you with Beatle wigs?" and he said, "They're not imitating us, because we don't wear Beatles wigs." And when a reporter said, "Who in the world would the Beatles like to meet more in the world than anybody else?" Ringo, possibly the wittiest of them all, said, "The real Santa Claus." So my advice to Messrs. Stevens and Berdovsky is that if you're young and brash and suddenly notorious and you want to joke around with reporters and demonstrate your cleverness, well, fine, but I have to warn you, the bar's been set pretty high.
2/1/07
Ordinary Oddballs
I think every properly arranged neighborhood should have a household of oddballs in it. In To Kill A Mockingbird, that role was played by the Radleys. My own neighborhood eccentrics live about four doors up the street from me. There are three generations in one small house, which is unusual enough: an older couple, a middle-aged one, and a son who could be 17 or 24, I can't tell. He doesn't seem to go to school or work, he's just always around. They own a very large garage at the end of the block, so they're always walking up and down the alley between it and their house. They migrate down there every morning; what they do there is a mystery. Then later in the day they straggle back again. I see them taking their trash out; the middle-aged couple and their son have a certain furtive air, and dart suspicious looks around them. The older couple are more approachable, and I met them soon after I first moved in. They were walking a toy poodle they call "Pepe." We chatted a bit, they learned my name, and we hail each other occasionally in the alley.
The middle-aged couple is a different story. The woman is superficially friendly, but not in any way open. You could easily imagine her peering at you disapprovingly from behind the curtains. The man came down the alley once, and we got talking. Like all the rest of them, he dresses in dowdy, nondescript clothes that seem like hand-me-downs. He's balding, with stringy hair meandering about vaguely across the top of his skull, and he seemed like one of those disreputable and potentially dangerous types who are only tenuously connected to their society. I introduced myself and offered my hand for a shake. He took it diffidently, smiling a distant, faintly cruel smile at me, and saying nothing. The silence lengthened, until finally I had to say, "And you are...?" He divulged his name, and we talked a little, about nothing, really, but the longevity of Toyota Camrys, and then he drifted away.
He'd reminded me of a guy I had met years before, outside a shabby little hotel I was staying at in Montreal. This guy was similarly dressed in nondescript clothes, wore glasses, had disheveled, graying hair, was skinny, of average height, and conducted himself with a certain odd intensity, like the kind of drifter who's really a serial killer. We had gotten talking, and I mentioned that the night before I had walked down a nearby avenue and was surprised to find it full of hookers and skinhead punks, cops on horseback and stripper bars. This guy grinned broadly.
"Sometimes," he said slowly, "places like that have a charm all their own."
Brrr! It was broad daylight on a busy city street, but I felt like backing away—a cold wind with a strong whiff of evil on it had blown through my psyche. Something about that dude was not right, people. And my one neighbor brought him to mind, that time we sort-of-but-not-really talked. I don't think or feel that he's evil, or anything, but he's in his own world. "I have very little of Mr. Blake's company," the poet's wife once told a friend. "He is always in Paradise." I don't think my neighbor is in Paradise, but even though we had talked for several minutes I'd really had very little of his company.
And then there's the son. Still with the drab clothes, but a perfectly normal looking kid, if you focus on him. Which you don't, somehow. He's there for a minute, like a sparrow flitting on a fence, and then he's gone. He's on his way from someplace to another, and he glances about himself carefully. I never see him with friends. I never see him lazing around, just hanging out. Always some little chore, and then gone. There's something off about him, something guarded and private. It's a family trait, it seems. But then this morning, I noticed him coming down the alley. It was snowing, not hard, just a mist of tiny flakes swirling around. The kid had a hooded sweatshirt with a quilted jacket over it, but I saw the jacket was partly unzipped. The poodle Pepe was riding along inside the jacket, his head poking out, and the little creature seemed warm and happy, just taking in the scenery. Now, as I say, when you don't know what people do at home, you imagine things. That kid could be an insatiable cannibal, for all I know. He could go home and change into his warlock robes and conduct a Black Mass that would shrivel your brain if you saw it and leave you a gibbering idiot, fit only for the insane asylum. But just for the moment in the snow there, with the little dog peering brightly from out of his jacket, the kid didn't seem all that evil to me. Mildly and harmlessly eccentric, maybe—like another guy on this block—but a nice person. As Atticus told Scout, most people are, when you finally see them.
© Copyright 2007 by Matt Freeman. All Rights Reserved.