The Bam Bam Club (Old Men Can Be Babies Sometimes)

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My descent from middle-aged husband and father toward grumpy old man continues unabated.  I never expected to be the mean-spirited geezer in the corner house who yelled at neighborhood kids because they shortcut the sidewalk and trekked across the lawn; I’ve avoided being that guy so far (but for the record, I don’t live on the corner and my grass doesn’t extend far enough toward the walking edge of the roadway to be stepped on—there is no sidewalk in my neighborhood).  I admit to the occasional raised voice and sometimes a raised arm holding something—anything—that could be thrown at a fast-approaching vehicle speeding along the street but I’ve seen young mothers in the neighborhood do the same thing.  I don’t feel quite so ‘old-mannish’ about the fast cars when babies and toddlers are around. I’ve been known to glance in the direction of an attractive neighbor wearing a bikini top washing her car in the driveway from time to time but I don’t think I’ve ever let my gaze linger to the point of an ogle.  I do think pants on men and boys should be worn roughly at the hip level, with a belt, and not so low as to let anyone within eyesight simultaneously consider the top AND the bottom of your boxer shorts while out in public—pants worn that low just make you look like you dropped a deuce— and if that’s the attitude of a grumpy old man I guess I’ll have to wear the term gladly.  Generally I’d prefer to reflect on things which bring me joy and I expect as I age these will take center stage more and more when I contemplate things.  For now, however, I find I’m drawn toward laments—at this particular moment specifically, those silly tools that don’t function well and the demise of the ‘joyous find’ feeling you sometimes get while shopping.

Stereotypically, men don’t relish the shopping outing the same way women do.  We hunt—women gather.   We subdue things that graze and use them to satisfy our hungers (insert ‘manly man’ grunt here) so the mere act of meandering around a retail sales floor sampling possibilities is anathema to our ‘hunt-see-kill’ biological mandate.  Watch any couple shopping while ‘she’ makes a run through the Petites section and you’ll find ‘him’ navigating a 10 foot by 10 foot square of aisle tile near the perimeter, hawk-watching ‘her’ as she grazes in no particular [sensible] order looking for something ripe to harvest from the racks and displays and rows of things colored up like hanging fruits, nuts, and berries awaiting some peak of perfection known only to the gathering grazer– who, upon taking delight will move them quickly from their rack to the slickly-printed, double-handled, over-sized shopping bag engraved with the name of the particular grazing field of choice.  A man goes out in search of a buck, takes down the buck, and either field dresses the buck or carries it out of the woods on his shoulder.  He never passes up a satisfactory buck hoping another better, bigger buck with still greater points will come across his path.  Generally speaking, a 6-point buck tastes about the same as an 8-point buck and both should comfortably yield an acceptable (if not THE perfect) loincloth.

I don’t mean to suggest we men completely abhor the shopping experience or that there is nothing pleasant about it for us—only that the few small satisfactions for men have been mostly relegated to the hunt itself rather than the graze.  Occasionally there are the pleasant surprises when storming across the retail floor to snatch up the one specific item you know will be grazing calmly in its assigned section—properly positioned, the right size and the right fit certain, everything exactly as it should be on the shelf to maximize the speed of the hunt—only to find the prey marked down to half what would have gladly been exchanged to conclude the transaction and return to the cave with the fewest minutes possible spent on the task.  From time to time we follow willingly with her on a grazing expedition but these outings are never really about the graze itself and only occur when the real hunt has been completed, the cave has been stocked with all essential survival supplies, and the graze is really about showing enough interest in the Petites section to render the later use of the Bam Bam club unnecessary.  We do enjoy that look of absolute delight she gets when she stumbles across HER perfect loincloth in just the right color which fits in just the right places and also allows the use of a 15% off coupon.  The eyes wide open and smile from ear to ear look when discovering THE perfect hostess gift or birthday present for Aunt So-and-So knowing she’ll be warm and receptive having found her treasure is sufficient to keep us from wandering off to the hammers and saws section or the nuts and bolts aisle.  That look and her satisfaction with what she has finally harvested is magical and it’s what makes us endure the 10’ by 10’ floor tile box without chewing off our arms in disgust.

On our list of chores last weekend was a trip to the baby store, Babies “R” Us, in search of a suitable shower gift for an expectant co-worker of my bride—a graze which in earlier caveman days might have yielded that ‘look’ and perhaps eventually that satisfaction from time in the loincloth aisle well spent.  Recent development of new ‘grazing tools’ to better guide the harvest, however, might be killing off the ‘joyous find’ elation from locating THE perfect whatever-it-is.  Babies “R” Us has installed something called the “Baby Registry” to help us graze more efficiently (cue Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on the organ).

The Baby Registry is a tool designed to accelerate the grazing process, diminish the time required between graze initiation and muffled ‘joyous find’ shriek, and to dramatically streamline the pacing process inside the 10’ by 10’ perimeter tile aisle box.  At least, that’s what the tool was ‘designed’ to do.  What it does, however, is something far less useful.  The Bay Registry eliminates years and years of historic patterning whereby cave girl always made a nicely-wrapped copy of Goodnight Moon, Good Dog Carl, and maybe an Olivia book the standard ‘baby shower’ gift and replaces that patterning with 7 pages of ‘expectant mother’ selected items few cavemen or cave women can even identify without a bar code scanner.  Fewer still can find the whatever-it-is on the shelves.  Where the development of the registry tool, properly test-marketed for serviceability, might have been a great labor-saving device it now serves as a black hole entrance into a world made up of circuitous routes randomly meandered through aisles and aisles of diapers, Barbie dolls, Fisher Price labels and $650 BOB jogging strollers.  It seems to me in a world of relational databases and computerized inventory management the ability to reduce 7 pages of nearly unidentifiable junk into a short list of “we have this item NOW, at this price, currently in stock, and sitting on shelf D in Aisle 24” would be a fairly useful skill to develop.  And, in theory, a Baby Registry would do just that.  But when Mommy-to-be runs around the Mill Valley store with a scanner radiating periodic red glowing stripes for every “I want that” item she stumbles across, she’s creating a massive list of gimme gimme items on the grazing glide path of the Mill Valley store’s layout and shelf schematic– which wouldn’t be so bad if what she’s scanning on shelf D in Aisle 24 of the Mill Valley store was actually something stocked in the Pleasant Hill store and could be located.  Go to shelf D in Aisle 24 in Pleasant Hill– you’re not going to find the $25 baby kangaroo pouch thingy (THE perfect loincloth) but you will find the $650 double wide BOB jogging stroller!  You’d think a caveman could map the relational database to redirect you to where the kangaroo pouch lives— I mean he can track a buck from Mill Valley to Pleasant Hill if he has to– but you’d be wrong.  I’m sorry ma’am, you’ll need to graze a little longer down every aisle looking for that particular loincloth!  A tool is only useful if it simplifies the job and makes the task easier to accomplish.  If it doesn’t do that, we call it bric-a-brac or trinkets or baubles.  They’re in a different aisle.

And, for the record, those double-wide strollers don’t fit through the doors at Peet’s for her mocha fix when she’s done grazing.

 I need a hammer – a hammer – a hammer – a hammer
To hammer them down!

Bob Marley — Hammer (1978)

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Day After Day (And Sacrifices Must Be Made)

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The woman beginning her hike as I exited the trail with the dogs this morning was smudged with a dark charcoal-colored splash centered just above her eyebrows.  She reminds me that today marks Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent—a holy season I should probably understand with far greater depth than I do having been raised a Catholic but one I have only the vaguest of intellectual appreciations for.  With a couple of exceptions for weddings of friends (where attendance at Mass was a requirement for being ‘at’ the ceremony and thus being ‘at’ the reception) I haven’t participated in a Mass since the early Nixon years—when attendance at Mass didn’t really require much understanding of The Faith.  Simple blind allegiance and dutiful follow through reciting the “Holy, holy, holies” and the other rote-learned recitals was enough back then and may still be, for all I know.  The only real prerequisite was to fall in line, eat the biscuit (amazing how many Protestants have heard Dominus vobiscum as a warning against eating the communion wafer), and not blaspheme the Church (which, I think, meant ask no intelligent and certainly no controversial questions).  I asked no serious questions back then and was asked myself only one serious question (by my maternal Grandmother) before renouncing my confirmation name and the rights and prerogatives accorded me thereunder.  More than 40 years later those dozen or so years of Catholic indoctrination still has me questioning whether it’s the Church, The Church, the church and whether the power and prestige of the Holy Roman Church has made it Mass with the upper case or just mass.  I have often teased my bride and our many Presbyterian friends (many raised Catholic) that Catholicism is a ‘nice little pagan religion’ but I’m going with the upper case Mass from here on out in case I’ve somehow intellectually underestimated The Church’s reach.  Tonight before retiring I shall have a serious look under my bed in case some sinister Knight Templar or other Vatican boogeyman wishes me harm in my sleep—I generally like my chances in such demonic battles but we lapsed Catholics are a superstitious lot so I’ll cast a glance regardless and be ready just in case.

Supposedly the whole self-denial thing with Lent has symbolic meanings that match up with Christ spending 40 days fasting and rehearsing in the desert before going out on tour with The Apostles and ending up at that banquet gig—the one where Protestants eventually misheard their Latin and gained a waiter’s cautionary tale (seriously, “don’t eat the biscuit, dude!”).  Foregoing something desired and living without it for 40 days is a part of the whole shtick—you have to ‘give up’ something you would normally want and most likely could have otherwise enjoyed during Lent so it can be more gloriously enjoyed six Sundays later.  So no, kids, giving up Brussels sprouts for a few weeks when you actually hate them to begin with probably won’t be what you use to fill the old ‘self-denial’ check-off box on the Lent form.  It has to be something you crave and desire but also something that you consciously elect to do without.

I go through the whole self-denial thing formally once a year but not for 40 days and not during Lent.  I stop drinking for the month of January.  No wine, no beer, no single-malt—nothing.  I think of it as a version of a ‘cleanse’ even though scientists using my tax dollars tell me that my behavior inevitably is misguided as the average person who forgoes drinking in January drinks enough in February to make up for the sacrifice.  I can see that happening to some folks but I’m not one of them.  Our household drank 112 bottles of wine in 2011 (I know because I’ve kept a log of the names, dates, vintages, and so forth for years).  That’s an average of .307 bottles a day and that figure includes bottles with dinner guests (like the automatic extra twosome who join us at 7:00pm like clockwork every Sunday for family dinner and seldom refuse a crack at the ‘Daddy cellar’ and its delicacies).  In February we have averaged .217 so far with a few days left to make up the slack (which likely won’t happen as we stay ever more diligent about the one glass limit my bride places upon herself to control sugar and the ‘don’t make up for what I’m not drinking’ warning that shortly follows the sound of a cork popping in the kitchen).  Self-denial in January, we conclude, does not presuppose a binge rate recovery in February (at least within our little corner of the study sample population—though I concede our little contribution to the data may statistically be an outlier from the norm).  More likely a factor is that we aren’t cooking as many wine-worthy meals per week as we might have during other times of the year.  Fresh things I like to cook are just harder to come by in February and our schedules tend to get bogged down with fewer ‘sit-down and linger over a bottle and a meal’ opportunities than when the days are longer and the weather encourages an outdoor feast in the coolness of the evening.  I’m sure there are many good explanations but none sufficient to make me change the ‘give your liver a break’ January hiatus.

With Cabernet glass in hand, it occurs to me the economy is showing signs of a thaw and there are more positive stories on the news channels these days than we’ve seen for several years.  People are starting to feel a sense of hope again and, while there are still employment, housing, and overall financial challenges, the feeling that the nearly 5 year recession is turning around pervades.  Like most, we’ve dramatically scaled back our consumer spending.  The cars in the driveway are older than they likely would have been 10 years ago.  We eat out less often and we’re not as extravagant when we do go out as we once might have been.  There is no trip to Europe on the calendar (though there is desire and a need to cross the pond and visit the new in-laws on their home turf).  Sometime over the coming 40 days I have every intention of dusting off the most cherished bottle hidden in the cellar and popping the cork.  I’d rather drink it a few years too early than a few years too late and I’d like to feel that uncorking a treasure is symbolic of positive change in our lives, in our friends’ lives, and in the life of our country.

There’s an old bottle of Bordeaux down there looking a lot like a fatted calf to me right now.  It will not survive Lent and will not make the self-denial list.  I suspect I’ll cook something creamy and French whichever evening we decide to liberate St. Emilion and I suspect we’ll include rich and tasty treats with the meal– maybe chocolate and other worthy delicacies often foregone during Lent.  The Bordeaux won’t be served with fish and the dinner will include fresh, warm bread– probably a nice warm baguette and most definitely leavened.  I just hope the Sanguinis Christi tastes better with a baguette than with communion wafers.

I can’t live if living is without you
I can’t live, I can’t give any more

Badfinger – Without You (1970)

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Start Me Up (A New Voice)

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It’s the first month of the New Year and I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of person inclined to make New Year’s resolutions but lately I’ve been doing a kind of personal inventory of my life and realizing I want to make some changes.  We all have a mental picture of how we want to be perceived by other people—maybe as strong, or as intelligent, or charming, sophisticated, resourceful, mysterious and deep—something appeals to us about certain images and we want others to see them in us so, consciously or not, we promote those images and give them strength when we can.  What your sense of self looks like isn’t as important as the realization that you project one—sometimes overtly but usually subconsciously without really thinking about it.  Those tracks were laid down long ago and they’re now well-worn paths you navigate as if by instinct—like driving home from a long journey after too many hours on the road, you don’t always remember the particular checkpoints you passed on the route or the turns you took but you know you made them just the same as always because, lo, here you are at home thinking about not remembering that part of the trip.  It’s your personal mental auto-pilot.

The projection we make about our self-image also carries over into actions we decide to take or not take, behavior patterns we follow or don’t follow, and these are also usually less than consciously planned out.  But they bolster our desired self-image nonetheless.  There is a reason we do what we do, don’t do what we don’t do, and silently run through those subconscious scenarios when presented with conscious opportunities to change.  We all hear voices in our heads and lately I’ve been swapping out the old mental tapes I grew up with and their voice-over guy (who sounds remarkably like me) for a different voice in my head.  Where once the old tapes went off silently and automatically with mental lyrics I knew by heart in a voice I thought I knew to trust, now I’m listening actively and deciding if those lyrics still reflect a tune I want to be humming for the day.  And lately I’m trying to slow down the auto-play button and just concentrate on hearing the background noises and the little sounds that so often get muffled over and pass by so quickly I never get to hear them.  When I do, I’m recognizing a different voice-over guy in my head—a guy who sounds strangely similar to Dr. Phil—with a voice I can’t simply ignore.  Lately I’m expecting to hear my trusty and reliable “Yeah, but I just don’t do that” but when the sound comes through I’m hearing more of a Texas twang that sounds more like “How’s that been workin’ out for ‘ya?”  And lately the answer to the new voice has been saying things like “Not so well.”

I’m used to sitting down at the end of the year and using the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day to put the finishing touches on the business plan, to refine the lists of goals and objectives, and take a new look at the set of actions that will help goals and objectives be realized over the coming months.  I’ve often stayed in the office during that traditional vacation week while others went skiing or off to Maui or somewhere to visit family for just the purpose of using the quiet time you get while others are gone to finish off my thoughts about the coming year’s challenges.  But seldom have I extended those practices over to my personal  life and my plan for that beyond the workaday world.  This year I want to change that.  This year I’m making mental resolutions.  This time Texas twang Dr. Phil voice-over guy is in the band and turning it up to 11 and drowning out ‘old Chris’ voice-over guy whenever he tries to get a word in edgewise.  So far it seems to be working.

I want to work happier this year than last year—and that means working around real people every day rather than here from home and checking in by telephone once in awhile.  I want to appreciate what I accomplish more this year than last year—and that means performing more direct assistance to people where I know they are satisfied and pleased with the outcomes than simply selling someone the incremental widget and not knowing if they ultimately launched it, used it, benefited from it.  I want to be proud of the teammates I work alongside—and that means sharing the load and letting others take the lead and the bragging rights from time to time and carrying the load when they need a breather.  I want to support customers who want to be helped—and that means working with clients who already ‘get’ that what they had before wasn’t working for them and understand that changing is necessary (oh, hi there, Dr. Phil…).  I want to improve the level of conversation at home over our dinner table and have positive things to discuss and reflect upon instead of only complaints and frustrations—and that means not remaining in a toxic environment any longer.  And I want to say that I made a difference somehow—and that means redirecting a few of those old tracks and taking them in new directions where differences can still be made.

I don’t care about the title or the stature or even most of the typical things you’re supposed to care about when deciding where to work and what to do.  I just want to matter more to the people that matter.  How do you build that objective into your resume?

Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me

David Bowie — Changes (1971)

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Useless Boxes in the Attic (Sweep Off the Plate, Blue)

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I was average at best as a ballplayer but when I played I was primarily an outfielder—left and right mostly since I didn’t have the range you’d normally expect of a center fielder.  My jump on the ball was better from the right side and I had a strong arm accurate to third so my playing time ended up mostly on the right side of the diamond.  At one time or another I played every position on the field—usually a desperation move to cover the position since I was noticeably less skilled defensively the closer I got to the plate.  I had limited range at short, a stone glove at third, was passable turning the double play at second, and a serviceable first baseman for a right-hander.  The only place I was seriously awful was as a  pitcher.  Even on a bad team where you often fill a position void based on the strengths of others, I was never going to be written into the lineup as a pitcher under anything other than duress—I couldn’t find the plate if they put a napkin and silverware around it, served a sizzling rare steak, and opened and poured the wine there.  I was not and will never be a stud on the mound and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Back then I had the mindset and the competitive nature but not the tools– but for the lack of a pitcher’s arm and the inability to throw to a specific plate location at will, I would have made a terrific closer.  They say all the great closers have the uncanny ability to slow the game’s tempo, purge all extraneous crowd noise, take complete control of their thought process and focus sharp only in the moment– to put out of their mind completely the last pitch thrown and everything else that ever happened before that moment and concentrate purely and absolutely on the next pitch needed no matter what disaster preceded.  Just give one up?  No problem.  Bear down and concentrate and we’ll get this next guy.  Just made the pitch of your life and blue doesn’t give you the call?  No worries—he’s human.  He missed it and that’s part of the game—it’s going to happen.  Just put the next toss where he doesn’t have the stones to not give you the call and let’s get outta here.  Forget whatever has happened or whatever didn’t happen that should have and see only what lies ahead.  Compartmentalize all that emotion.  Park it away in a box somewhere so all you know and all you think about is what needs to happen right now, right here, at this precise moment.  Be in the now, make this next pitch right, and make the game and this moment yours.  Close it out.

I’ve always remembered having the ability to suspend thoughts and tuck them safely and quietly away for later so as to not deal with them in the now (though I admit I haven’t always demonstrated that particular skill set consistently, I have at times let random thoughts migrate from the safety of the tiny confined space between my ears to the less well-protected and wide path that traverses across my tongue, and I have on more than one occasion lived to regret allowing that path to be trod). The ability to compartmentalize thought is a double-edged sword—a useful tool in the shed when wielded properly with care and a cluttered and potentially deadly storage hazard otherwise.

The house isn’t especially cluttered when you walk through the front door but the closets and the garage and the shed I built for the garden can have the feel of a minefield.  I reclaim the garage a few times a year before it fills itself up with boxes of ‘please save this’ and remnants of ‘that might come in handy someday’ parts of whatever project crossed my path between cleanings.  The storage attic above the garage floor is a loosely organized chaos of ‘waiting for reclamation’ articles from every phase of our family’s lives.  There are things up there I know in my heart we’ll never touch again other than to finally discard them after a death or a move—but until either life change rolls along the boxes stay where they are waiting for final judgment.  That includes a lot of those long-unopened boxes in the attic but also a few of the well-packed away ones stored away in the attic between my ears.

Lately I’ve been noticing the memory full alerts starting to flicker and it occurs to me I might have to purge things instead of waiting for greater capacity to come along.  I have boxes tucked away that I’ve been dragging around with me for so long I forget what’s inside most of them.  One of my resolutions for next year is to send as many as I can off to the recycle bin and free up some space to lighten the load.  Whatever happened on that last pitch is over.  Time to focus on the next one and close this thing out.

Boy, you’re  gonna carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time
Boy, you’re gonna  carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time

The Beatles – Carry That Weight (1969) 

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Guarding the Herd (In the Moment)

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I suspect it had something to do with the napping deaf Aussie sprawled lackadaisically across my lap as she approached with a mug of herb tea but my wife mentioned this evening how she would like to be reincarnated as a dog.  I couldn’t agree more.  For the most part western religion and western culture in general shuns the notion of reincarnation—but being neither religious nor cultured I’m not so sure they have it right.  In religious terms reincarnation can be about growth and spiritual awakening, enlightenment attained through a series of incarnations allowing the soul or spiritual essence to mature toward a state of worthiness.  Leaving religion and philosophy out of it, I suppose you could make an argument for reincarnation with a nod toward science—the whole physics and conservation of energy thing (I assume the universe is a closed system eventually) could make for a line of reasoning since all that pent up energy in your body and mind needs to transfer itself to ‘something’ out there somewhere when you die.  I’ve thought about it but we really only have the whole space-time continuum thing working for us consciously in arrears (thanks, Einstein).  We grasp the concept of time going backward but we really only have a limited grasp of our forward momentum through time.  Using that backward-facing perspective, there are people from history I find interesting—fascinating even—and certainly more enlightened and aware than me who might be amusing to bolt through a few avatars with but I can’t fathom being reincarnated as a human—even a fascinating one—and living again with the same enjoyment as I would coming back and living as a dog.  The dog has nirvana wrapped up already and lives life without all the messy complications of rational thought.  I could probably do that.

Dogs don’t live lives of quiet desperation, have never read Thoreau, and don’t really judge you by whether you have or not.  Dogs merely love.  They wait patiently by the door until you return, bark anxiously as you turn the lock reinforcing for you their relief at your return, and lick your face with a passion humans do not know until you surrender and reward them with a biscuit treat.  Dogs don’t worry about the mortgage, don’t dwell on the past, and forgive almost instantly even the most egregious of your sins.  They don’t hold grudges and they don’t plot revenge.  You’ll never lie awake at night afraid to sleep or worried about what your dog thinks of you.

As I write this both dogs are asleep on their pillowed beds within reach of my ankles.  They’re herding beasts and they rest when the herd is carefully managed into as tiny a space possible and easily within their range.  Should I walk off and they awaken, I’ll be found—quickly and fervently—unless I leave the house and they don’t see it.  If I do, they’ll search every corner of the house, whimper and wonder, and eventually stand guard near the door—for days, if necessary.  Unless I’m traveling, it’s not possible to remain, for long, out of their sight and away from their reach.  We go out in public with a leash attached though they and I understand the leash exists primarily to make other people feel secure about being near them—they’ll never stray from my side for long and should they be tempted to forage out, they’ll quickly realize my personal herd must be protected and they’ll race to my side fulfilling their most important of responsibilities—assuring I don’t stray.  They are giving creatures programmed by nature to guard and guide me to wherever my destiny might lead.

Casper is deaf and cannot hear my breathing at night.  He compensates by nosing up near my nostrils as I sleep to feel me exhale.  He doesn’t mind waking me twice a night for a pre-dawn check of the perimeter and the occasional leg-lifted squirt to the plants—a warning to all who approach that he is on duty, freshly rested, and ready to stand between me and whatever might come calling in the middle of the night.  He’s beyond alpha in temperament and no one and no thing breaches the security of his domain without consent.  He knows he’ll have time for napping once the sun comes up and I’m safely corralled in my office with a mug of coffee and the morning scan of the headlines.  The older dog, Chip, has retired his nocturnal duties in favor of the other.  He’ll acknowledge the efforts as I lift the latch and throw open the French doors to the yard somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:30 and 4am but he’s old and wise and has learned my patterns and sleeps comfortable in the notion that I won’t stray from the herd during the night.  My deaf sentry, ever vigilant, will make certain of that.  For whatever his motivation– spiritual or otherwise– he’ll make sure I’m safe, well-loved, and that I will never stray far from him for long.  He seems to be guiding me spiritually along some uncharted path forward in time that leads, I hope, to that enlightened state he lives in patiently fulfilling his daily duties without concern for past or future just living happily and lovingly in the moment.  I wonder how many Thoreau-laced lives I will have to live before I am allowed to join him there on a pillow bed just adoring someone?  If he is my guide to the next world, I hope he remains with me there.

I suppose it must be similar to what the Queen feels with all those stoic London Guards surrounding Buckingham Palace—but even they go home to live lives of quiet desperation once relieved and I assure you no sentry has ever licked the Queen’s face as lovingly as Casper licks mine.

Bodhisattva

Would you take me by the hand

Steely Dan – Bodhisattva (1974)

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Possession (Father-of-the-Bride and Odyssey/Autumn)

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Odyssey/Autumn by JB Thompson

I didn’t start out as a collector but I now own 27 pieces of abstract art created by a relatively unknown artist, JB Thompson, the most recent a gift from my daughter and [now] son-in-law presented to me as gifts were being bestowed on maids of honor and best groomsmen at their rehearsal brunch this past Friday before the long-anticipated Saturday wedding.  We learned a few things about the British over that two-day span: it’s customary for the bride and groom to gift just about everyone related to the wedding ceremony something lovely and far more expensive than what Americans typically gift—including to the parents of the lovely couple—and when Brits show up for a wedding it is customary for the bar to be open and ready to pour before the ceremony starts (something I’ve never seen done at an American wedding).  Having ducked in to the room designated as ‘the bar’ for a brief moment with the groom seconds before the ceremony was to begin and, of course, not realizing how perfectly normal it is to carry a cocktail into the ceremony [and unaware that most of the other invited guests were already seated for the wedding drink in hand] I made the terrible faux pas of answering the question “Is this where the baaaa is?” with a short “It’s where it’s going to be…” before realizing virtually everyone in attendance not designated as the father-of-the-bride had already crashed the bar, loaded up for what they thought would be a long drought before the ceremony would release them back for a congratulatory libation and that denying these last-minute arrivals a quick snort was [albeit unintended] rude of me as a host [though, truth be told, the actual ‘marriage’ was actually quite short—the bride and groom, having attended numerous weddings together over the preceding years well-anticipated the fidget factor of their party-hungry guests and were sensitive to the will of the crowd].  To the charming folks, Diella and Danny and others, who were parched and sober 20 minutes longer than was absolutely necessary, I extend my sincerest apologies and plead only ignorance to the customs of a foreign land and beyond my myopic American frame of reference– it shall never happen again, and I hope we made up for it immediately following by getting you all as thoroughly lubricated as good taste and proper wedding etiquette would allow.  Did that mid-party bar reinforcement with extra Maker’s Mark earn me any forgiveness points at all?

The wedding was lovely, I fulfilled my escort obligations down the aisle without incident, and the party afterward was, by all accounts [other than the one my son made describing my dancing skills] a rousing success.  A good time was had by all, a better time was had by some, and only a couple of instances of ‘you’re NOT driving’ cropped up by celebration’s end [some folks just need to understand the premise ‘a little moderation tonight’ will save you from having the leather seats on the new BMW professionally cleaned tomorrow].  For those seven of you who somehow, when your cab failed to arrive and no wireless service could be secured to call for another, magically crammed your way into the half of my car not already filled up with decorative flotsam and jetsam in need of transport back to the bride’s home at the end of the evening, I apologize for the violation of the personal space rules of civilized society—it was that or leave you alone… in the dark… in a remote location… dressed in high heels and party dress… on Halloween weekend—did I mention it was dark?  That one of you seriously thought you might all hike the 5 miles from the Marin Headlands over the Golden Gate into San Francisco—in heels—makes me smile the knowing smile of a local who has just saved someone’s life in some fantastic way that will never be comprehended by the redeemed.  In keeping with the wedding’s theme, keep calm and carry on.

A nice touch was the tag team speech made by the two groomsmen—apparently the custom at British weddings is for the groom’s best men to make speeches more akin to flat out roasts of the groom, and virtually no subject or life embarrassment is off limits [a far more entertaining custom than the traditional boring speeches made by American groomsmen].  Sitting directly across the feast table from the groom’s mother, we watched her face change from absolute delight to sheer terror as the first wave of ‘best men’ remarks filled the microphone [yes, amplified so there could be no escape].   For my own part when the bride’s father’s turn arrived, I had prepared no remarks and merely spoke extemporaneously.  I had given thought to a direction each of the previous week’s mornings when my faithful dog awoke me for a trip outside during the 2 o’clock hour but none of these filled my mind when my turn to speak arrived.  The day before at the conclusion of the rehearsal brunch, I had driven a forgotten purse to my mother-in-law in another town—she and my sister and brother-in-law had driven nearly 30 miles before realizing they would need a credit card to check in to the hotel they decided to stay at near the wedding venue.  The music pouring out loudly during that drive through traffic ended up inspiring my remarks—not Dylan, or Springsteen or Neil Young, Joni Mitchell or Paul Simon or any of my generation’s great song writers.  I had expected to find some magic lyric to riff off for a toast but the lyric never came—only the title of a song by, of all people, a Canadian [which, when mentioned drew a  nice laugh from the mostly British and American guests].   All that evening and into the day of the wedding I was hearing the live and raucous version of Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession” running like an earworm through my brain—fitting that a Sarah inspired my thoughts for my Sarah on that special day.

I spoke of possession– the act, and possession– the state.  Wedding gifts had been arriving for weeks in advance of the ceremony and the whole notion of ‘things’ acquired and possessed seemed fitting.  But more important as the words flowed out was the state of being possessed—the feeling that overwhelms you when you are so deeply in love with someone else that the real treasure is not the ‘thing’ you share together but the feeling that no one in the world has ever felt what you feel, that no one has ever sensed what you sense, and no one has ever loved as you love.  And the real treasure is the moment each day that reminds you of that possession.  The 2 o’clock dog whimper that leads to a cold walk across the floor to the door followed by a return under the covers to a hand held for a brief few moments before you both drift back to sleep—a treasure of possession.  That moment during a walk in the hills when you realize your pace far outstretches hers and you turn to wait while she catches up, takes your hand for a few paces, and stays directly at your side until the trail forces you apart—another treasure.  That glance across the table when your eyes meet and you both realize simultaneously that this single moment in time—this incredible event evolved from all these peoples’ millions of other moments spent living lives around the world and somehow intertwined to be here on this one night in this one place for this one celebration—could only have happened because long ago in a different time and place those eyes were possessed with something far more valuable and far more lasting than any trinket gathered up and placed on a wall or a shelf or in a drawer.

The artwork I collect brings me joy and though it likely will never be worth the money I’ve spent gathering it up and framing it to be hung on the walls of our home, I treasure the chase and the smiles and nods of people when they realize so many pieces surrounding us while we dine are not random.  The world is not random, the people who come and go in our lives are not random, and the things we let possess us are not random.  There is an order to the universe and all we have to do is live long enough to appreciate it.  If you look hard enough into JB Thompson’s art, you’ll see the structure and the detail of an architect rather than the apparent chaos of what seems to be abstract and random.  Beneath everything build to last is a solid foundation, a well-drawn plan, skillful maintenance, and an appreciation for the thing itself that prevents anyone coming along and tearing it down.

Show me something built to last
Or something built to try.

The Grateful Dead — Built To Last (1989)

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Surrender To It (Then Paint It Black)

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The tile man arrived this morning to begin the job of renovating the master bathroom and delivering to us the clean white porcelain shower and interesting flooring I thought we were aiming for when we added the room onto our aging 1950 rancher a decade ago.

Navajo white

At the time we did our addition the bathroom was the one room where we mildly played out the Mars versus Venus controversy husbands and wives inevitably bump up against while engaged in construction projects—we knew we wanted hardwood flooring for most of the added on square footage since it would match the flooring throughout the remainder of our home but the flooring and color scheme for the bathroom became a source for debate.  For most of the new spaces the decision-making process was fairly straightforward.  Once we had a general theme for each room in mind the wall colors were easy to agree on and once we knew we were going to paint rather than wallpaper the negotiations simplified between her ‘final look’ vision and mine.  While there are infinite shades of color on the palette, there are only so many ways you can fundamentally disagree about paint on walls because paint, for all practical purposes, doesn’t generate a significant pattern or create a related image the way a papered wall does.  Both of us lived in student apartments in college and both of us remembered the landlords’ various admonitions—“you can do whatever you want with the walls as long as they’re patched and Navajo white again when you move out.”  The apartment where she lived when we met—the hangout where we played RISK all summer and drank homemade Kahlua cooked up in a turkey roaster—had a large curlicue-shaped design in brightly-painted colors but it was four coats of Navajo white before the landlord would agree to mail a deposit check after graduation.  We knew we wanted color on every wall and that Navajo white wasn’t going to be one of them.  Wood floors and pigment should have been easy for us and, for the most part, it was pretty painless finding our way to a consensus.  But the bathroom is an intensely personal space and settling it was different.  The truth, it seems, is more easily revealed when you step over the threshold into a bathroom.  Nothing remains secret for long in there.

The challenge of the bathroom probably started at birth and became pronounced somewhere during our early childhood and formative years.  Hundreds of miles apart and not to set eyes on each other for decades until college was nearly over, we were already, unknowingly, charting a path toward marital confrontation.  Maybe some brilliantly insightful kindergarten teacher could have noticed it—but likely not.  Even as all the signs were there visibly open and notorious, connecting the dots and recognizing the challenges to come would probably have been undetectable.  My finger painting of a house and a tree and a dog in the sunshine didn’t look terribly different than hers at that age but make no mistake about it– we ‘saw’ things differently in our mind’s eye and we still do.  She, the classic left-brained linear and analytical has a hard time visualizing what isn’t there to be observed; me, the classic right-brained random and intuitive glaringly comfortable with the subjective world and able to look beyond the ‘what is there’ and see into the ‘what could be’ if we only carved it out and made it so.  A recipe destined for kitchen clash if ever there was one.  Funny that, because on the evening of our first date we talked most of the night away with so many conversations about styles and types and looks and feels of houses and rooms we appreciated and it never once seemed like we didn’t see exactly the same ‘lifestyle’ in our minds.  The picture was probably the same deep down but the extraction of the image is always where things go a little wobbly: how the artist chisels a pretty girl out of marble is the difference between some tacky overpriced statuette on the buffet table adjacent to the stairway bannister and the Venus de Milo.  Execution is the thing.

She’s a lot like her father was—linear in approach.  We used to joke about him at Christmas because it was so easy to figure out what he would buy his wife for a gift—just walk through the nice dresses section of Macy’s and look at the mannequins.  He didn’t marry pieces into an ensemble—he bought the mannequin exactly as it had been presented by the retail floor designers.  His brain just wasn’t wired to see the possibilities and he accepted that these kinds of things were best left in the hands of the paid professionals.  It didn’t matter what the mannequin cost, he was buying it—a huge leap for a depression-baby with severe penny-pinching tendencies.  No matter really, I finally figured out.  His wife would be returning it shortly after the holiday and then spending hours shopping the clearance racks in search of the best possible bargain in the store to get what she actually wanted.  She got her way every time despite them dancing the dance that always ended up with the old familiar choreography.  He relented on things that really didn’t matter to him as much as he thought they should and she accepted his graciousness in making the attempt.  How he ever ended up with a turquoise-painted house, I’ll never know and never understand.  She must have hurt him terribly somewhere along the way because turquoise was his idea.  There’s the box, there’s being ‘in the box’ and then there’s a turquoise house making it hard to imagine ever even finding the box much less him having stepped out of it so publicly.  Turquoise paint was his rebel yell—a streak of fiercely independent, non-linear, walk-on-the-wild-side decision-making that she let happen for more than 40 years and several house re-paintings until finally changing the color to a benign shade of tan with brown trim after he passed away.

When the time came where a decision was needed and the bathroom’s look had to become a commitment and not a discussion we both reverted back to safe patterns long honed—patterns of behavior that have worked for us throughout our lives.  She pointed to a specific architectural magazine piece with a delightfully bright and airy bathroom style that would include her cast iron claw foot tub, salvaged from a turn-of-the-century remodel and fresh from a refurbishing with new porcelain and silver feet.  On the floors, small squares of celery-colored tile with butter-colored grouting that would flow out to cream and white wainscoting that drew the eyes to a picture window and garden foliage.  Mannequin in hand, I copied that magazine design exactly for her without another word as to possibilities and color schemes and “wouldn’t this be nice” suggestions.  Not always successfully, I’ve always tried to know, somehow, when it was time to turn away and concede the point.

Every month or so we visit my mother-in-law and do random chores that she’s no longer able to manage on her own.  Awhile back I was on the roof cleaning out rain gutters and preparing the downspouts for the upcoming rainy season.  I noticed a splash of turquoise paint around the base of the sheathing at the bottom of the chimney—a patch of color missed by the brown and tan boys that wiped out my father-in-law’s wolf howl paint job.  It made me smile and remember him fondly one more time and it reminded me how much I love my wife’s left brain ways.  I know whenever there’s a challenging decision we struggle with it’s only a matter of time before she gets her way.  She’s supposed to get her way– she’s the left brain and more linear and logical.  At least I know when I’m gone she’ll never paint our bathroom Navajo white.

And dreams of our moments together
Color my world with hopes of loving you

Chicago — Colour My World (1972)

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Puppy Love (She’s Cute But Just Shoot Me Now)

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Back in the Stone Age when I was in high school I hung around with a lot of different crowds and listened to a lot of different music.  Smart kids with their Beatles and their Stones and their Zeppelin; not as smart kids who paid good money for The Monkees and The Partridge Family; athletes and scholars and pep squad girls—Seals and Croft and America and Cat Stevens and Rod Stewart; Jimi Hendrix junkies and normal fun kids who listened to Marvin Gaye, James Taylor, and Carol King– and occasionally tough kids who proved there might be life after T Rex and Mott the Hoople and Gary Glitter and snoring their way through high school [albeit occasionally in prison].  A few of them went on to do great things—well, good and well-known things if not great.  A few went on to do things better not remembered or talked about.  For most of my time back then, my social circle was fairly diverse; thanks to a District pass as the editor of the newspaper I was a card-carrying member of the ‘I can get me and a few friends off campus any time I want to go to the beach’ club, a skinny-legged staple at the [far] end of the basketball team bench trying unsuccessfully to look like I deserved to be there, and, courtesy of summers as a solid, beer-drinking construction laborer my ‘work skills’ easily converted into evenings and weekends swilling Miller High Life or Michelob with my eventual Best Man, Roy, in a backyard shed converted into a multi-purpose photo darkroom, persistently rumbling quadraphonic concert hall, and permanently Bacardi 151-scented man cave.  There was a volunteer tree sprout beyond the shed and sprinkler range in the corner of that yard—a sprout  that survived for years on little more than piss and backwash from near empty bottles.  Now more than 35 years later, the tree is majestic, fully-canopied, and nearly 50 feet tall—a tribute to the nurturing nitrogen compounds created from rapidly recycled Michelob, pizza crusts, and the occasional beer barf [once again, I remind you, please do NOT puke in the direction of the quadraphonic turntable or the color enlarger].  Add the part-time job working for KEZY, the local Top 40 radio station to my diverse group of friends, schizophrenic co-workers, and related musical influences and you have a record collection entirely worthy of Sansui, Cerwin Vega, and Licorice Pizza.

We listened to a huge variety of things back then and everyone had an opinion as to what was better than what and who was like whom based upon what records they had in their collection.  If you listened to Elvis you were one thing–if you owned David Cassidy, another [you figure it out].   Kool and the Gang was good but if you had Parliament Funkadelic  and Otis Redding it was somehow better.  Your parents listened to Gordon Lightfoot if they were young, Paul Anka if they were a little older, and I remember houses where the only thing you heard besides kids screaming at each other was an Andy Williams or a Doris Day album.  Some houses never played the radio or stereo at all.  You tried to stay away from those places—they smelled like your Grandma’s house, had bowls of apples on the counter and almost never had Pepsi in the refrigerator.  In elementary school you traded marbles.  In junior high it was baseball cards.  By high school it was music.  I will totally trade you that Emerson, Lake, and Palmer for my Sounds of Silence [because I have another one at home, dude].  Morrison Hotel for Innervisions?  OK. Sure.  “But I feel guilty ripping you off like that ‘cause Innvervisions is gonna be a classic….”  To this day I maintain you’ll learn more about someone in 5 minutes by studying their iPod than chatting with them for an hour over a cocktail.  Every first date should start off with a mandatory iPod swap.  Both sides get to listen to the first 5 songs that pop out in the shuffle mode.  After that, if they want to continue the date—game on.  Not attracted to their music?  “Thanks but I have to go now.”  Buy you dinner first?  “Uh, let’s grab some coffee sometime, maybe.”  If guys could have had a way to be forewarned she was a Donny Osmond freak back then, maybe things would have turned out different.  “She was hot, man but I just couldn’t go for it.  Bad enough she owned The Archies, man, but when she whipped out the Portrait of Donny, man, I started to feel this pounding in my brain and I think it was a stroke, man.  Is that possible at my age?”  Clearly it wasn’t the Cerwin Vegas.  Maybe it was a Sugar, Sugar high.

For as long as I can remember I had at least one job and worked more hours than I played [which probably explains why so many ‘friends’ on Facebook are people I knew casually but aren’t necessarily the people I spent a lot of time with doing ‘fun’ things—if I wasn’t at work, I was probably decompressing with cold beers and the friends from work who had the same rotten schedules as I had].  I don’t know why I’m proud to say I never worked in a fast food joint [or any food joint, actually];  I was somehow always able to find other jobs that kept me out of a capped uniform and away from the deep fat fryer.  There were times that meant pushing a broom, mopping the floors, and scrubbing the toilets or cinching down mental patients for their periodic Thorazine shots but it was honest work and taught me the value of a dollar, the merits of self-improvement, and which orderlies to bribe with cigarettes as they strap you down on the gurney [I swear the minute those voices in my head start making sense I’m going out and buying a carton of smokes].  For a long time I worked full shifts at one job only to clock out and dash to another to make ends meet [I, apparently, had longer ‘ends’ than  most and eight hours of low-wages normally didn’t meet them sufficiently].  I made a deal with the folks at the sanitarium to let me start my shift a half-hour late every day since I had to ride a bike from the pallet yard across town to the hospital.  For some reason I always got the shitty clean-ups that happened on my wing—probably supervisory payback for coming in late every afternoon.  I didn’t really mind much—I was swimming in cash, I bought cassettes [an upgrade from the 8-track] three at a time, and my upper body was as buff as any Orange County surfer’s from chucking those pallets into stacks—nobody, including the crazies, messed with me.  Once you’ve used a Georgia-Pacific nail gun for eight hours running, it isn’t much of a stretch to jam a needle at the funny farm.

They didn’t play a lot of T Rex at the Guidance Center and most of the staff smoked menthol but the crowd walking the halls was certainly eclectic.  They grew up on Glenn Miller, the Fontane Sisters and Tennessee Ernie Ford.  I’m guessing they had their own ear worms and didn’t need anybody’s big ass speakers pounding in their brains.  Besides, most of them were already insane when Cerwin Vegas came around.

And if your train’s on time you can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay

Bachman-Turner Overdrive—Takin’ Care of Business (1973)

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Phylogenetics (Apparently Everyone Poops Except Berkeleyians)

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Chip and Casper

If we ever meet on the trail there’s a good chance I’ll have two Australian shepherds trotting alongside me– they’re good walking companions that never complain about the incline to the ridges, the weeds, their sore knees, or the occasional out-of-place something fallen from a mountain biker’s backpack or carelessly tossed by an inconsiderate hiker.  They are  herders and somehow biologically programmed to nudge my calves, redirect my path, circle around me persistently checking my gait, and make certain I don’t stray.  We walk the same trails and paths we’ve walked for years and they know to wait near junctions and trail splits for which direction we’ll take on any given hike knowing where the trails all lead and where the next decision point will occur based upon the route taken that day.  They know where water will be dispensed into my Sierra cup for them to lap up, where ponds might hold a late-season swimming opportunity and where they can stray off trail in an opposite direction from my path and still end up well ahead of me on the trail when I finally round the turn they know I’ll eventually round.  They are smart– among the smartest of breeds– and they understand patterns and routines.  They know I will wait patiently when they need to step off the trail for relief and they know I will dutifully pick up and pack out what they [apparently insensitively] try to leave behind.  And, unlike my genetically closer cousins, the Berkeleyians, they are forgiving of my little indiscretions on the trail and don’t think of themselves as flagrant lawbreakers.  They are dogs and they behave as dogs are prone to behave.  And because they behave as dogs do, if we ever meet on the trail there’s a good chance I’ll have a bag of something warm and brown and decidedly ‘not native’ looped over my belt awaiting transfer to the waste bins sitting near the improved entrances to our open space.

My Aussies don’t have opposable thumbs but they are smarter than most folks I know who do.  They don’t think of themselves as rude, selfish or irresponsible when they relieve themselves in the weeds [I suspect they secretly don't think much about the act at all].  They just do what nature calls upon them [and all of us] to do.  They are animals and, according to what I learned from a children’s book, everyone poops.  No big deal, right?  Well, apparently for a lot of folks it is a big deal that dogs [of all the animals on the planet] poop and apparently it’s an even bigger deal if we dog owners don’t immediately shield the rest of [the dog poop loathing human] society from that reality.  The case in point?  Cleaning up after your dog in the wild.

In the open space where we hike there are deer and coyotes and bobcats and other wild animal kingdom creatures big and small which daily poop on and off the trail.  No one complains about these indiscretions and no one wags a finger and mutters a tsk-tsk when hiking past what is obviously the remains of the day from a wild creature who knows no better than to flaunt the laws of common decency and defecate within sight of the trail only to fail at immediately removing the offending scat to a [biodegradable] bag made up of compostable corn starch.  Cows are grazed on these hillsides and neither they nor their owners choose to follow them proactively cleaning up the piles and piles of dung left after a small herd passes over the trails.  Horses boarded at nearby stables frequent the trails and are groomed and bathed and curry-combed lovingly at the end of every ride– but never once have I seen a rider dismount, tether his steed, and remove to a faraway container the massive piles of dung left blatantly along the trails where other walkers and joggers have to tread judiciously to avoid stepping in or slipping on the excrement.  On more than one occasion I’ve come across, in plain sight of trail walkers, scat remains with a distinctively human look to them [the most obvious clues of which were the strange proximity to the base of a tree or rock and the noticeable protuberance of a white paper-like substance, smeared with traces of the offending animal's manure, laying almost immediately adjacent to the droppings].

I maintain rules about cleaning up after my dogs wherever we go– including the open spaces and in the wild.  If the dog chooses to drop a deuce within eyesight of the trail, perhaps 25 feet in either direction, I go after it and carry it out.  If the dog chooses to bless some mustard weed patch [itself a non-native invader] well up the hillside I tip my cap to the God of plant nutrition and wish that little turd a happy journey back through the decomposition process.  There are times when I hike the ridge trails and my Aussie companions quickly fill the available compartments I’ve allotted for their carry-out baggage.  I handle it simply: if there’s enough bag to wrap around my belt and create a safe tote-sack that leaves one hand for the water and another to pick up a rock and scare off a rattlesnake, I carry the bag.  If not, the bag sits by the side of the trail for [at most] an hour until I pass back through on my exit route back to ‘civilization’ among the domesticated [and the humans].  I wasn’t the first to crack this genius code of saving the ‘carry’ for the return trip out but I admit I’m a willing co-conspirator when it comes to ways I can hike without the likelihood of busting a plastic bag full of dog shit all over my pants.  Apparently that habit offends the Berkeleyians and others who consider my temporary waste storage an affront to humanity and a gross violation of the littering laws.  The subject came up last week in a blog I read and commented on about scooping and the opposition was vehement.  Not carrying the bag– even though I return within the hour and always remove it permanently [oftentimes carrying out some other dog's treasure as well] is “…rude, selfish, and irresponsible.”

The whole thing slipped my mind until we traveled to a small dog-friendly B&B in the Santa Cruz hills this last weekend for a well-deserved anniversary getaway.  The innkeepers were friendly and treated our dogs well.  The place was rural but safely fenced along the perimeters with plenty of acreage and untended forest and garden areas where the dogs could find relief.  Our innkeeper pointed out that under no circumstances should the dogs be allowed to drop their plop on certain sections of the property– specifically those with grass [and coincidentally the areas looking most like the areas where I have trained my dogs to relieve themselves at home so I don't have to wash off the patios and walkways].  Naturally we tried our best to accommodate our hosts.  Naturally, our dogs followed years of conditioning and the pleasant sweet smells of a freshly cut lawn.  Despite my best efforts to entice them over to the woods, including feeding them out near the property perimeters so they’d be ‘right there’ at the time they were most vulnerable, they chose the grass.  And every time they did I sheepishly [I wonder where sheep squat] went for the scat removal tools and dutifully carried the offending piles off to the compost hole we had been directed to at check-in.  I made a good faith effort to be respectful and clean up everything and our hosts made a good faith effort not to seem obsessively crazy about animals and their poop habits.  We coexisted nicely.

Is it litter if it isn't removed immediately?

The last time I walked down Telegraph Avenue I was appalled at how filthy it was, even by Berkeley standards.  The sidewalks of Paris, known for being a minefield of dog droppings, have nothing on Berkeley.  The garbage is everywhere and the homeless population no longer seems to care whether they get access to a Starbucks or a McDonald’s restroom or an out-of-the-way alley when it’s time to relieve themselves.  I literally watched a man step up into a raised planter box within 3 feet of dozens of passersby, drop his [last washed in the 90's] jeans and squat in full view of anyone not too embarrassed to turn away their gaze.  No one said a word.  No one shouted at him to clean up the mess.  No one addressed him in any way different than if he had been an animal in the wild doing what animals do.  Until that happens and Berkeleyians start picking up the litter and the non-native debris in their own front yards and city streets, they can simply shut up and stay out of the areas in my town where I walk and perform my little indiscretions with a bag by the side of the trail for an hour.  Until that happens, I’m thinking we’ve merely evolved into different species and we should avoid each others’ habitats so as not to be offended by what we see in each others’ bad habits.

So you try to pick them all up
Little pieces falling in the dust
Little part of ash we don’t need
So leave it to be taken upon the breeze
The wind is always blowing

Gomez – Little Pieces (2009)

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Manipulating The Market (It’s a Rocky Road)

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Good marketing can be a thing of beauty.  Companies that dissect their targets into precise slivers of buy-ready prospects, feed them the exact messages needed to coax them over their purchase hurdles and march them willingly up the aisle toward a marriage of product and pocketbook and profits drawn from those cash exchanging action steps are magnificent to observe.  Seeing companies do it well creates respect and admiration.  They ‘get it’ and they pay attention to making sure that you ‘get it’ too—so much attention that you’re pleased to shell out your hard earned nickels and want to come back next time and renew those vows again— whether that’s a good decision or not.  A Diamond Is Forever.  Even if your love eventually falls somewhat short of that mark, you’d never actually consider giving her some other jewel when you pop the question, would you?  Just Do It.  What are you, a wimp?  Get off your ass, go outside, and do something!  You Deserve A Break Today (even if In ‘N Out really is what a hamburger is all about).  A little respite from your otherwise dreary life can be savored over two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.  It’s a great jingle and the tagline is somehow more inviting than In ‘N Out’s implied message that you should get over here, get your grub, gobble it down and then just please go away.  Nothing to see here, folks, and no reason to linger (a playground for the kids—are you insane?).  Hanging around only clogs the parking lots and the aisle for the next marketing marriage ceremony.  Good burger or bad burger, a match made in marketing heaven.  Even movies can be marketing genius.  Would you ever order a martini “stirred, not shaken” without looking over your shoulder to see if James Bond was frowning in your direction?

For some industries, the four P’s of the marketing mix—product, place, price, and promotion—have come under attack over the last few years as product and place have been carved away, homogenized, and shunted from relevance in favor of a more strict regimen of price and promotion gimmicks.  Can you think of a burger joint that doesn’t also serve the healthier alternative chicken-something and salad-something to make you feel better about the grease patty you came in for, a gas station without a mini-mart and a [liquefied coffee concentrate] espresso machine to save you a stop at that ‘other’ coffee place, a chain grocery store that doesn’t have a hot food deli counter, ‘warehouse’ bulk-packaged toilet paper, and one of those ‘other’ coffee places so you don’t have to visit the mini-mart?  The same products are lining the same too-narrow and too-high shelves as available square footage and product facings inside your grocer are set and reset to follow schematics built on last month’s sell-through data to maximize profits rather than service the store’s customer base with selection and quality.  New product introductions are too risky for most grocery companies’ financial models and consequently need to be subsidized by manufacturers willing to pay slotting fees offsetting the risk a product intro might not catch on quickly enough nor whet enough of the public’s appetite to warrant devoting space and energy to the offering.  Well-heeled manufacturers with healthy balance sheets pay the fees [kind of feels like extortion, doesn’t it?] and write them down as a cost of doing business while smaller, less capitalized producers struggle to be noticed amidst the smaller outlets with weaker distribution clout despite having superior products.  We buy the same things, eat the same things, and throw away the refuse from the same things like sheep being led because marketing has driven the ‘cost’ out of the business in such a way as to stifle uniqueness and limit the variety of competitors.  Nowhere has this been more evident than at my least favorite shopping experience: Safeway.

I have a strong suspicion the Chief Marketing Officer at Safeway is the devil and that the devil’s toolbox includes the Club Card.  How else do you justify and explain why green leaf lettuce costs $.99 a head on Thursday with your card, $2.99 the next morning, and then moves to 2 heads for $1.99 by Monday?  Did the growers change the pricing of those wilted boxes already sitting inside the massive warehouse out there near the Interstate?  How do you explain or justify the marketing genius of selling a half-gallon of ice cream [oops, excuse me, 1.5 quarts of ice cream in the newly-downsized packaging made to look like the old half-gallon containers] for $3.99 with a card but offer a $.25 discount when I buy 8?  Who besides Dick Van Patten or Betty Buckley buys 8 half-gallons of ice cream?  I bought one and paid full price.  The next week there was a different offer and you had to pay close attention to realize it—apparently I didn’t and ‘paid the price’ for it.  The same tags that announce you can BOGO (Buy One, Get One) at a particular price were hanging on the shelves by my favorite ice cream (I do, occasionally, shop the other aisles of the store).  Seeing a BOGO at $2.99 I grabbed two of the infamous 1.5 quart containers and headed to the checkout with my other items.  After ringing up the totals, I paid $2.99 twice.  What about the BOGO?  Buy one at $2.99 and get a pint, not a half-gallon, er, 1.5 quart container of something for free.  Would I like to return one item and go back and select a pint?  No thanks (dinner was on the stove but I was missing these couple of items and made a quick trip), I and should have read the details in the small 8 point font that was microscopically-inserted underneath the 44-point Buy One, Get One Free headline.  Somewhere the FTC is asleep at the wheel.

I needed a pint basket of strawberries recently—enough for a couple of sliced berries to go on a salad for two people.  Rather than fight my way across town and through the crowed Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck?) parking lot, I went to Safeway.  The only strawberries in the store—a four-pint flat priced at $6.99 with my card and a Buy One, Get Two Free offer.  Really?  I have to spend $6.99 to finish a recipe that requires 6 berries and take home three flats of berries or forfeit my Club Card Savings or else walk out and drive across town?  Call it what it is:  you overbought strawberries in flats, you’re afraid they’ll grow mold before morning, you’d prefer I take them home and throw them away with you pocketing my $6.99 than you throwing them away as a loss, and you have a pallet of pint-sized strawberries just beyond those swinging doors by the cheese and egg gondolas.

For the record, I paid the $6.99, took the strawberry flats home, trimmed them, blended them, and froze them.  The sorbet is delicious and the margaritas are still flowing, but Safeway still sucks!

Diamonds are forever
They are all I need to please me

Shirley Bassey — Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

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