The Beautiful Game (Take A Dive)

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My daughter is a group leader for a company that hosts international students spending a summer vacation in the San Francisco area and this year’s crop hails from Spain.  Usually regimented with a detailed agenda of activities that daily lead them to and fro amidst the iconic cultural and recreational experiences the city has to offer (those which can be enjoyed by a ‘sorry, you’re not legally old enough to drink that here‘ crowd) the timing of the World Cup in South Africa has created new resume skills she can point toward: flexibility and creativity.  Yesterday’s Germany vs. Spain semi-final match is the classic case in point.  Scheduled to be near Fisherman’s Wharf for most of the day making the rounds of the T-shirt shops, wax museum, crab stands and lounging sea lions, the group of twenty five or so high-school-aged hormone factories made it known they’d gladly boycott the tourist zone trinket shops and anchovy-diving mammals for the chance to see their country play a potentially historic World Cup match (a win would put España in the final game for the first time ever)– but with an 11:30am local time start to the match the challenge became where to land a group so large but unable to open a beer tab.  There was talk of a restaurant for a long lunch but my daughter has worked as a server and quickly realized filling an entire section for two hours during the rush with “I’ll have a Coke and we’ll split an order of fries” kids just looking to kill time while their national team spends a couple of hours running around an acre and a half looking for one or two good chances to score a goooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal would draw instant ire from any fellow “hey, I work for tips and you’re killin’ me” wait staff.  Raging [teenaged nationalistic] hormones aside, she just couldn’t do it to a fellow restaurateur.  These are the moments a father lives for….  Hearing her share her dilemma with a friend, my semi-annual contribution to the ‘Daddy is old but Daddy can be wise’ pile came to me almost immediately:  re-route the pilgrimage from Pier 39 to Civic Center Plaza and hang out with the homeless for a couple of hours.

People will tell you that San Francisco is a lot of things– good and bad things alike and we could argue which is which– but one thing hard to dispute is that San Francisco is a world-class city, a world-class destination, and one of the most cosmopolitan places on Earth.  The city is only seven miles by seven in its entirety and quite manageable on foot.  If you’re a tourist, the best time to visit San Francisco is October when the inland summer heat that draws the fog in from the sea during the summer months has calmed and San Francisco weather and temperature seem more like a Côte d’Azur Mediterranean vacation than an Arctic expedition (though if you’re a sweatshirt vendor you still prefer those summer tourists who arrive thinking California is one long Malibu row of lifeguard stands with bikinis and surfboards and tans).  In July a trip downtown might be pleasant and comfortable but it just as easily might require a parka and ski goggles for the foggy mist and chilly winds as you walk along Market Street.  There’s just no predicting unless you look at the forecast a hundred miles away in Stockton or Sacramento.  One thing you can predict, though, is that whatever neighborhood you frequent in San Francisco on any given day, you’ll find plenty of tourists speaking plenty of languages and staring at guidebooks.  It’s that assurance that tourists will congregate that made me think to send the kids off to Civic Center Plaza– normally a place reserved for street people and derelicts (who, surprising to many, aren’t always the same thing).

San Francisco is a good civic host and we try to make people feel comfortable and welcome (if you don’t believe that, ask every homeless person you meet here where they came from…).  As part of making people feel welcome and still encouraging them to get out and enjoy the city and spend those hard-earned Euros and Pounds, and Yen, the Parks and Recreation Department decided to install a huge screen TV in Civic Center Plaza to allow a public place for people to watch the various World Cup soccer matches (a rumor that the most vocal of the homeless population threatened a class-action suit against the city for not providing adequate access to the World Cup experience is unconfirmed though it certainly soundslike a San Francisco kind of case).

The World Cup at SF City Hall

Regardless of motive, San Francisco (like Seattle and other progressive cities) made the World Cup a massive public event and did so in a way that minimized the inevitable spike in public drunkenness normally associated with a major sporting event in this country.

The kids from España yelled and screamed and cheered for most of the 93 minutes it took for their team to outplay, embarrass, and summarily dispatch the German team.  The score was 1-0 but in fairness it wasn’t this close.  The match never really seemed like the Spanish team was in jeopardy of losing– they played aggressively and spent most of the match on the offensive side of the pitch (see, even old Daddy’s can learn new phrases).  There were the usual player flops– mysterious ‘sniper shots’ where a player suffers what must appear from one angle as a brutal foul but from another reveals absolutely no contact was made– but I never noticed any bad enough to warrant the ridiculous stretcher team dragging the [malingering] bad actors from the field of play only to see them pop up laughing on the sideline.  I used to think the NBA was ridiculous for allowing players to flop on a foul.  NBA players are babes in the woods compared with their counterparts in the World Cup.

My daughter writes today that she had to phone a host family father and ask permission to enter his home looking for one of the exchange students who failed to show up on time for a scheduled trip to see Alcatraz Island.  After an hour of holding up the group from departing they found him asleep in his bed at his host family home.  Clearly the post-game celebration sapped all his strength.  Either that or he doesn’t own a parka.  I hope he wasn’t flopping for the crowd.

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there

Scott McKenzie — San Francisco (1967)

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Thorny Problem (In a Seedy Area)

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I love where I live and after 25 years here, this is now home.  But living near San Francisco, like living close to any major urban area, means living with blight and bad neighborhoods filled with filth and decay, and the challenges these bring with them are inevitably just around any corner.  The occasional nice coat of paint and freshly-trimmed lawn only serve as misdirection for the eye and deflect from the real ugliness settled just below the surface waiting to explode and overtake the area.  Where I live is considered middle-class and by almost anyone’s standards a decent place but heading off in any direction there are rundown patches in need of redevelopment and rejuvenation and they are always closer than I’d like to think.  Certainly wealthy areas are within easy distance from me but more of the landscape is filled with neighborhoods closer to falling away from being fabulous than fabulous acreage on the rise.  When I shut out the lights and crawl off to bed, bad seeds are still out there never sleeping and are working to bring my neighborhood down.  Every municipality wants to think they can fight back the blight and maintain civic pride and encourage well-groomed properties.  And pockets of well-maintained and well-manicured landscape do, in fact, exist– but they are becoming rarer and rarer as the creep of seedy infestation encroaches on the periphery of what was once pristine and beautiful.  People in general just don’t care for their communities as they perhaps once did and the effects of this benign neglect are starting to appear obvious to even the casual observer.

There is a theory that addressing quality of life crimes quickly in a community, such as litter, graffiti, and broken windows, will discourage additional more serious crimes from taking root there because the neighborhood maintains a sense of pride in itself and residents remain vigilant toward preventing escalation of the negative influences.  If you repair the first broken window quickly enough, the logic says, vandals aren’t as inclined to see the building as an opportunity for additional mischief whereas leaving the window visibly broken actually encourages additional vandalism.  Eventually the building becomes a target for vandals, for more significant damage, and for break-ins.  Left unattended, the damage fosters an area where squatters, rats, and litter thrive.  It isn’t hard to see how an otherwise decent neighborhood can deteriorate relatively quickly into one far less desirable simply by being inattentive when small problems are first noticed but not dealt with quickly.  With that in mind, pull weeds.  Specifically, pull yellow star thistle– and pull it from the hills and ridges and trails around Mt. Diablo near my home.

Centaurea solstitialis, the yellow star thistle weed, is the broken window in the open space neighborhood.  Highly invasive, it came here in the mid-1800′s from Europe in contaminated agricultural seed and has spread across virtually every open space area in the western United States [it has been reported in all but 6 of the lower 48 states].  One report has it as the dominant flora on over 15,000,000 acres in California alone and it can quickly crowd out the native plant species and overtake entire hillsides by outcompeting native vegetation for water and essential nutrients [it has a taproot that can often reach more than three feet underground in search of moisture].  Even during hot, dry summers and droughts, yellow star thistle can thrive.  Left unchecked, it will become the predominant vegetation wherever it takes hold.  The plant is toxic to horses and painfully sharp if stepped on or brushed against creating a sever puncture wound.  Areas overtaken by this weed can become impassable within a few short growing seasons.

Eradication is unlikely but control and elimination of the weed within specific areas is possible.  Because the seed isn’t normally wind-borne, spread occurs primarily from animal and human activity carrying the seed from site to site.  This means a conscientious weeding program is possible over limited areas.  Once the plant has gone to seed, these remain viable and can germinate normally for three growing seasons.  Weeding before the plant has matured to the point of bearing seeds can, if performed diligently, actually remove an infestation.  Fixing the broken windows early and often can prevent the decline and degradation of the entire neighborhood!

A handful of volunteers near where I hike with my dogs have taken it upon ourselves to push back the invasion, if only to push it off a dozen or so key acres of treasured nearby hillside and ridgeline.  In our little way, we’re trying to keep control over the quality of life crime before the neighborhood sinks into accepting the invader as a natural part of the landscape and merely stops hiking up there.  I’ve spent more hours this year weeding than walking but I’m at least optimistic for the future– maybe one of these years we can claim we’ve pushed back the yellow star thistle hordes but I suspect it will be more like we’ve learned to peacefully coexist as long as we both stay on our respective sides of the tracks.

However far we travel
Wherever we may roam
The center of the circle
Will always be our home

John Lennon – Cleanup Time (1980)

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Swing (and a Miss)

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After my daughter was born I teased often with folks that she and I already had sat down for a long talk together and that we had agreed [for her benefit] she shouldn’t date boys until she was, oh, say about 30– a talk and an agreement she conveniently failed to remember somewhere early during those young teen years when boys start hovering and fathers start practicing their mean faces while secretly worrying too much.

How many frogs until...?

She has dated some fine young men over the years but like most women, she has brought home her share of frogs.  My wife and I have generally agreed in our assessments of the men she’s dated [extending the courteously-generic 'men' to supplant the needlessly goofy-sounding 'boys' term that certainly applied to most of them].  We were right about a few of the ‘Daddy doesn’t approve’ guys and we were right as well about a few of the ‘nice guy, but…’ types that we knew were headed for a quick exit from her [and our] lives.  Our expression in those instances was “He’s not the one…” and I often had to say this to remind my wife that the current infatuation was a fad and would be disappearing soon– words she took comfort in on more than a few occasions.  My daughter has often disagreed with our assessments, disagreements which promptly landed me in the role of the bad guy Dad for delivering pronouncements of disfavor [Moms seem to somehow get a pass when these judgments are vocalized-- even if they themselves initiated them-- likely because most Moms have kissed a few frogs themselves and share some secret frog-kissing wisdom, usually unspoken, with their daughters].  Still, despite my fatherly pronouncements and evil-eyed first date glances, my baby girl and I have always been close and she has unexpectedly shared some of the significant milestones in her life with me and helped me feel like she is and will always be “Daddy’s little girl” despite my really knowing better.  She was ‘Daddy’s little girl’ whenever she wanted my support on something versus her Mother [on those few occasions where she couldn't get her way outright] or whenever she needed me to cook up a nice meal and crack open a good wine to make a favorable I-have-a-nice-family-at-home impression on ‘date boy’ du jour [a trick my son also learned for those rare occasions when it played to his advantage to appear grounded and familial and admit to some girl he actually had parents somewhere out there].

I like to think we raised them right and usually they give me reasons to think we succeeded.  The older they get, the more demonstrably respectful they become of us– a sign they learned most of the things we tried to teach them and a testament they have the capacity to apply these patterns in their own lives.

Because this one doesn't require quarters...

I think they’ve arrived at that adult place where they appreciate us as parents too; they’re old enough to make comparisons of how their friends’ parents behaved raising their kids and to appraise the pros and cons between our parental styles.  We show favorably, I think.  They don’t avoid spending time with us now and that’s a compliment– we must not be so awfully bad if they’re still dropping buy for an occasional meal, a pantry raid, or cup of coffee and a chat downtown.  Either that or the washing machine here works dramatically better than the one at their place….

Today is Memorial Day and though he didn’t fall in service to our country, my father-in-law did serve admirably as a B-17 pilot during WWII.  I’m drawn to remembering him especially on days we honor our veterans.  Unlike my own father, he never had a son to play catch with, to teach car maintenance and tool safety and household fix-it projects, to fish or play golf or go hunting or whatever it is that binds a father with a son during those early years growing toward manhood.  By the time we met, I was already well-formed with those skills and though I had a lot of growing up left to do, it wasn’t too challenging to see what kind of man I was likely to become as I ripened.  He gave me every indication he approved of me dating his daughter, appreciated how I cared for her, and was delighted she had finally found me and cast away all of those earlier frogs.  When we spoke about me marrying his daughter he seemed proud that he would soon be able to call me his son– and I believe, when the time came, he was, in fact, proud to give me that label.  He often asked for my help on a project or for advice on some household improvement he was contemplating– I was both handy and frugal and he appreciated both traits– even when he probably knew already which path he was planning to take.  On political and more intellectual topics, he sought my opinion and listened intently to the rationale I might have for holding them.  I, for my part, never took his acceptance for granted– he was a kind man who invited me into his home and into his family openly and made me feel welcome every day thereafter and I respected him in a way that’s hard to describe.

I played golf this morning with my daughter’s significant other [well, at his suggestion we went to a golf course with clubs in hand-- any resemblance between golf and the swings actually made on the course was purely coincidental] and I fully expected he might initiate one of those “I’m serious about your daughter” conversations that telegraphs to me he’s getting up the nerve to propose to her formally what she’s already long ago decided will be the outcome of their relationship.  My daughter and I have always teased that, modern sensibilities notwithstanding, the old-fashioned protocol still calls for the young man to come to the father and have that ‘May we have your blessing” conversation we both know matters only as a formality to bless the decision she’s already made– it makes us both feel like we actually had a ‘relevant’ opinion in the whole matter.  Why is it that the beautiful princesses always know before we frogs do what’s going to happen?

We left the course after shooting only nine holes– between his blister from gripping the club [was he tense for some reason?  Perhaps...] and my flailing at the ball only to ‘give up and pick up’ before completing most of the holes– a beer and a sandwich and the Giants game seemed a better use of our male-bonding time.  It really wasn’t much better.  The Giants were shut out, the sandwich gave me heartburn, and the beer was… well, the beer was fine so I suppose it was marginally better than the golf.  The subject of my daughter and anything resembling a conversation I had with her mother’s father thirty years ago over a round of similarly ugly golf [sans the blister] never came up.  I don’t even know if it was ever a part of his actual plan for the day or if the golf outing was merely a golf outing.  We agreed that the next time we might consider a day in the sun the venue would probably not be a golf course and I’m OK with that– my game is beyond awful and it’s embarrassing to look so hopelessly lost at something.  He claims that bowls is easier than golf– but he played on the English Nationals’ team as a junior player for several years.  Oh I can’t wait to be humiliated at that!

Still, if the call comes and I’m asked by this or some other frog to have a male-bonding afternoon somewhere, I’m thinking I’ll make sure it’s something where an unfortunate blister and me looking pathetically inept aren’t likely to bring about a swift ending to the day.  I have to give him time to figure out what to say and when to say it.  That courtesy was extended to me and I most certainly need to do my little choreographed part in this old-fashioned pas de deux.

Some day somebody’s gonna ask you
A question that you should say yes to
Once in your life

Old 97′s – Question (2001)

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Political Boners (Cutting Stupidity Off At the Pass)

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Snagglepuss

As so many times before, I was approached yesterday outside the local supermarket by a clipboard-wielding, hand-waving signature-gatherer trying to fill a petition to get some proposition or another on the upcoming ballot. He tried to corner me into a fast signature on my way in to the market and was there strategically angled preventing my quick getaway, loaded cloth grocery bag in hand, as I made my way out. After confirming yes, I was in fact, a registered voter he launched into his pitch but got only about half his sentence out before I cut him off short. “Yes, or no, will this petition end up with a proposition on the ballot?” He confirmed it would and as he did I made my exit– stage right– with the trailing remark over my shoulder that I wasn’t going to sign anything that ended up creating another ballot proposition– that the entire initiative process was ‘stupid’ and a waste of mine and the state’s time. He seemed stunned, really shocked, I could think such a thing– but it’s true: the initiative process in California is a waste of time, money and energy, and I won’t contribute toward adding another ballot proposition no matter how good the idea because, in addition to propagating useless drivel that winds up tying up the courts and the law-making system, it emasculates my elected officials and renders them impotent! I don’t know what it was he was gathering signatures for and I don’t care– I’m disgusted with the waste of effort that has become the initiative process in this state.  I don’t want my elected representatives to feel impotent and useless– I want them hot to trot and filled with a raging desire to represent me like stallions and mares in heat when they create legislation.  I want them to produce!

Fending off these unwanted advances isn’t new.  A long time ago I created my own personal telemarketing and donation-seeking non-proliferation treaty to minimize the pitches ["I support good causes but I never give or buy at my front door or over the phone-- there's just too many of you and only one of me--so if you want to catch my attention, mail me your crap and I'll look it over and decide"].  If you’re already at my door or already have my phone number, getting the mailing address should be easy and if you’re serious about your cause, a stamp isn’t much to spend to get my attention.  Still, I’ve had to put a hard stop on these paid political activist signature-gatherers who snare you outside places where you’d just as soon not be interrupted. I’m sure their theory is that a quick mindless signature is 30 seconds out of your life– it’s easier to just sign whatever they hold in front of you and move on than it is to understand the merits of the argument and engage in a discussion.  But they’re being paid by someone to get the initiative qualified, not supported, so a ‘quantity, not quality’ rule makes discussions and critical thinking moot during these signing sessions. But that’s precisely what’s wrong with the whole process– anyone with a little money can almost anything on the ballot where a little more money can make even the most ridiculous ideas seem palatable if people aren’t paying attention.  And people don’t.  There’s no requirement that a ballot proposition be intelligent, well thought out, even necessary [much less constitutionally sound or able to withstand legal challenge] before it’s voted upon statewide and enacted through this initiative process– and that’s just stupid. The hurdle for inclusion on the ballot is ridiculously low– I swear with enough money and a decent campaign team a ballot initiative could be passed in California to get Charles Manson his own taxpayer-supported private three-bedroom condominium, with servants and a great view, full visitation rights for Squeaky Fromme and a private chef built somewhere inside the California prison system. With a few hundred thousand signatures and a good tagline like “Help Rehabilitate Our Children: Keep First Time Offenders Away From Murderous Sociopaths” Californians would approve this! Because people often only listen to the tag line and the buzzwords and don’t do any critical evaluation, so almost anything can be pitched favorably.  That, to me, smacks of Massah tellin’ the slaves how to think– good for keeping them down but not so good for expanding their freedoms.

The company I worked for straight out of college, PG&E– a good company and one I harbor no ill feelings toward– placed an initiative on the upcoming June ballot which is so self-serving and manipulative it’s beyond ridiculous and the ‘pitch’ they’re using publicly makes it an even bet or better to pass. Somehow, after getting 694,354 signatures to qualify the measure [and spending at least $2,199,794 just to get those Safeway hand-wavers waving] this measure is being positioned as an expansion of rights for California citizens rather than the public sanctioning of a quasi-monopoly corporation to limit competition by legislative fiat. They call Proposition 16 the “Taxpayer’s Right to Vote” initiative and, together with the estimated $35M in campaign funding PG&E will contribute, it re-writes the state constitution to limit municipalities from spending money to enter the electric business [a potential customer loss for PG&E] or to expand their current municipal operations without first getting a two-thirds majority to authorize that specific expansion via a local election. From PG&E’s vantage point, this makes perfectly good sense and is a great use of the initiative process– spending $40M or so now to limit competition constitutionally is a great investment toward future profits! But really, a taxpayer’s right to vote? We voted already! We elected the public officials and we pay these folks to research and decide what’s in the public interest on an ongoing basis.

Mr. Rogers

Things that don’t make sense for whatever reason have a way of coming around economically and socially over time [can you say 'same-sex marriage' for me, neighbor? I know you can!] and it’s a dangerous limitation of freedom to use the constitution to lock us into a ‘current day, current norm’ social and economic mentality. The world changes and we have to evolve with it– even big corporations and social bigots.

My beef is not with PG&E– if I were still a stockholder I’d be thrilled with what they’re trying to do to make my investment more valuable. My beef is with the bastardization of the initiative process and the dilution of the value of elected officials. My complaint is with a system that effectively rewards voter laziness and subverts the democratic process to promote such narrow and self-serving ends. My frustration is with the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of lemming voters who will remember the proposition’s tag line in June [and little else] and vote without understanding or appreciating how their ‘rights’ will have been infringed upon by a marketing team and a corporate Board of Directors protecting their shareholder equity. Whether the proposition is a good idea or a terrible one, the branding of it as a ‘right to vote’ initiative insults my intelligence and waters down the value of the votes I place for my local public officials– a Yes on 16 vote is effectively saying that my elected public officials are too stupid or too corrupt to evaluate and perform a fair and unbiased appraisal of any future policy decision involving municipal public power and that the public must be protected from such public officials.

The California legislature fails annually to produce an on-time budget and wastes months each legislative session before reluctantly vomiting up a plan most know immediately will fail and will displease more than please. They fail because the system as constructed now is almost assured of failure: initiatives have mandated specific programs and funding and removed the decision-making authority from the decision-makers leaving lemming legislators to represent those lemming voters! Why elect public officials at all if everything of substance they’re charged with considering will ultimately be placed before the voters for mass approval and the ability to lay the hard decisions back in the lap of the voters? Personally, I was never afraid of career politicians and thought term limts were short-sighted.  I don’t want my leaders ‘grazing the Capitol’ just coming up to speed when they’re booted out.  I want my elected officials to become dedicated public servants willing to invest the energy into being smarter about most issues than I have the time to be myself– that’s why I elect them to the job in the first place!

Lemmings Jumping Into The Sea

I have the sense that by signing a petition outside the grocery store I’m fostering the impotence of my elected legislators.  By allowing them to skirt tough decisions and simply not perform as leaders renders me, somehow, just as impotent at driving the democratic decision-making process.  I’m thinking of getting an initiative on the ballot that would have all elected officials vetted for stamina and vitality before inauguration, assign them salaries that increase exponentially based on legislative productivity [like the best stallions and mares] and make them go on record with a vote publicly outlining their position before tossing any decision back to the electorate as a ballot initiative.  I’m thinking of calling it the “No Geldings” proposition and using a tagline like “No Castration Without Representation” initiative.  I think it has a chance, if I can get up for the signature drive needed to qualify.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds

Bob Marley – Redemption Song (1980)

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Getting It Right (Magic Beans)

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I’ve been saying for years that every once in a while I screw up and do something right. The examples of this are many: dropping out of college after my freshman year to regroup and reassess my life [private college tuition without direction is bad; public school tuition with motivation is good], eventually going back to finish school [making pallets from 6 to 2 then working at a sanitarium from 3 to midnight is bad; living near the ocean and finding the love of my life is good], and changing direction away from medicine [having to have a prostate exam is, uh, bad; not being the one giving the prostate exam is, uh, good].

Hey Rocky, watch me pull this rabbit from my hat!

Every decision you make in life is a chance to get it right– an opportunity to select wisely and have something positive and desirable and good happen. The corollary, lesser-known of course, is that decisions are a chance to demonstrate once again how the glass is sometimes half-empty instead of half-full, how things can have a less than perfect outcome despite your best intentions, and how every decision in life is also a potential catastrophe in waiting– an opportunity to screw up miserably without even seeing it coming. For most of us, getting it right isn’t as easy as getting it wrong no matter how hard we try to anticipate trouble and no matter how well we think it through– even though statistically getting it right versus getting it wrong should have identical probabilities. I passed my statistics class, but I’m reasonably certain doing so was another example of screwing up and getting it right. If you go by sheer volume, I’ve probably been wrong a lot more than right, but when it really counted I’ve somehow managed to pull a rabbit out of my hat [Hey Rocky!] and get lucky.  If a fool and his money are soon parted, at least make sure the parting happens over something worthwhile. This fool and his money [this pile of shekels anyway] somehow got it right this time, and the parting was anything but sweet sorrow.  I’d gladly throw piles of money away every time if I could always luck into getting it right like this time.

I’m a decent cook– not a chef but a pretty good cook– and I’ve been blessed with the ability to taste something and recognize key ingredients and the memory to recall flavors after having tasted them once or twice. While I’ll never acquire a true connoisseur’s palate (nor a connoisseur’s budget), I have acquired a kitchen persistence which allows me to dabble with elements of a dish and make modifications to my mistakes until I get it right (or until I make it taste acceptably close).

Amaretto Cheesecake

The first time I tasted an Amaretto cheesecake was after lunch at a small restaurant in the early 1980′s. I baked three that evening, modifying each until I got one to turn out the way I wanted, and I used that learning a few years later to win the Bobby Crocker Bake-Off– a function we had been invited to by neighbors who that evening discovered I was usually a good person to bring around at a potluck [I'm the same way with golf:  my 'game' isn't particularly well-rounded and my drives off the tee are abysmal but I can almost always be counted on to drain the important putt that keeps momentum going so I'm good on a scramble team]. Like my tee shots, there are obvious kitchen tasks I screw up routinely but I can pull a surprise or two out of the bag when I really need it.

The surprise, this time, wasn’t a kitchen task when it started out but did land me squarely back in the kitchen for hours afterward.  As part of her Christmas, I arranged a special weekend getaway built around things my wife would find magical.  She loves the ballet and has danced since childhood, continuing to enjoy adult classes twice a week where she has a social network of other dancers who have maintained a healthy dance regimen and who, like her, will probably be dancing into their eighties [on replacement hips, I'm sure, but dancing nonetheless].  She passed that love on to our daughter– who developed late and maintained a dancer’s body long enough to earn every summer at the School of American Ballet starting at twelve.  While our daughter opted for college and ultimately decided not to seek a professional contract and the dancer’s lifestyle, others from her early days at SAB did.  Some of those dancers are now quite accomplished and some are at the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle.  One is the son of a woman my wife has danced with for decades.  The Christmas surprise was to be a spring visit to Seattle to see the ballet, secretly meet up with that friend, soak in the city, and dine once again at Tilth with my brother and his wife.  Totally by happenstance, the best part of the ‘surprise’ turned out to be the daily updates my bride received via Facebook from PNB on rehearsals, artist interviews, and the setting of the choreography in anticipation of the performances.  As good as the trip might be, she became progressively more excited about seeing the company with every web update in the weeks before the show.  I’ve seen kids in candy stores with dollars in their hands who didn’t smile as big as she smiled every afternoon watching a snippet from the preparations for the performances she would eventually see live on stage.  She might say it wasn’t the single best gift she ever received but given the weeks of anticipation and the daily joy from all the webcasts, it was definitely the best [and longest] gift I ever watched her unwrap.

The ballet was everything expected and more.  We enjoyed a session after the performance with the Company’s director and one of the young women our daughter had known in New York talking about the choreographer, Ulysses Dove.  The weather all weekend was perfect.  Our dinner was incredible.  We had eaten at Tilth on our last trip to Seattle and this trip we made it a point to return and make sure the fantastic food we had enjoyed before wasn’t just an aberration because we were too hungry one evening, too enamored with ’being there’ in the Emerald City, or too cavalierly appreciative of the Oregon Pinot Noir that softened our palates that first visit.  I made the reservation for four back in November when I secretly started planning the surprise trip, knowing my brother and my sister-in-law would appreciate the menu and could serve as unbiased witnesses to validate or dispel our glowing reviews. Certainly the highlight of the trip was the ballet evening, Three By Dove, but the highlight of the meal, this sitting anyway, was the beans. Not the sablefish, not the scallops, not the phenomenal fennel ice cream or even the olive oil cake. It was the beans. White beans, flageolets served as a cassoulet, smoked for what must have been hours over apple wood logs– so rich in smoky flavor you’d swear there was a pound of bacon in every bite but made as a strictly vegan plate– with oven-roasted tomatoes, black trumpet mushrooms, and [ooh] a drizzle of black truffle oil instead of truffle butter [to keep the dish vegan not that we cared-- I cook with butter because, after all, we're not heathens!].  Like A Cote where my daughter is rapidly becoming an established foodie and certified wine snob, Tilth expects every server in the place to know every ingredient in every dish, where it was grown, raised, or caught [since everything is either certified-organic or wild and the ingredients are all sourced from local farms], how it was prepared, what it tastes like on the palate and what specific wines will marry well with each dish so nothing you taste in one bite will disturb the inherent goodness of any other taste from another. Hearing about each dish is a mouth-watering experience but admittedly can become tedious– dissecting the DNA of a meal so precisely can be pretentious and quite Frasier-like [it is Seattle, after all].  Still, if something is that incredibly tasty, I’ll suffer the consequences and ask for details and Lindsay, the well-informed foodie with a flair for making details interesting, happily obliged. We shared a glass of wine my brother had been saving for us [I find sharing something not found in the restaurant's cellar with our server is a great way to assure superb service] and she shared the chef’s secrets for making the magic beans– my brother and sister-in-law and wife listening with interest to her description but me memorizing every detail as if they were the secrets of the universe.

At Auberge du Bon Terroir

Tilth is not my favorite restaurant– the honor for that goes to a small establishment in a tiny village in the Loire valley we have returned to three times over the years and which I insist on visiting if we set foot in France [being 'in' France, by definition, makes a trip to Muides close enough-- "...if we're going to take the train from Paris to Saint Jean de Luz, my only 'ask' is that we drive ourselves back-- it's only 680 kilometers-- so we can spend a day in Muides sur Loire and have a decent meal"]. Still, Tilth is memorable because there will be one thing you taste there each time you visit that is so superbly unique you’ll want to go home and try re-creating it [well, I will anyway]. I made the beans this week and they were good. I’ll make them again before summer is over and they will be better. I suspect by the time I make them three times they will be fantastic and a staple addition to my recipe list but we’ll have to wait a while to find out– even if I screw up and make them right by Fall we’ll have to pace ourselves.  There are only so many times you can eat beans before they start to lose their magic and I don’t want anything to take away from the memory of this trip.  I might not screw up and get the next one right so I need this one to be remembered as the one I did….

We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway

Carly Simon – Anticipation (1971)

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Living In The Past (When Living Was Easier)

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Nothing I’ve done professionally thus far gave me such day-in, day-out pleasure as my first job after college and as I recall the days, the moments, and the fascinating people from that time and that place I’m forced to wonder why.  There have been twists and turns along the way which landed me in more responsible situations, better-paid positions, more intellectually-challenging opportunities and in circumstances where I look back and wonder what fortunate wind must have blown me to that precise place at that precise moment but I’ve never quite been able to recapture the same feeling– maybe elation, I’m not certain– I felt during those first days getting started.

Sitting around Pat Fukanaga’s dining room in Isla Vista with the regular crowd at that last every-Monday night poker game– mostly History graduate students working on PhD programs– we drank to the company-paid moving van crew that showed up and boxed my life into a corner of a truck headed for Marysville, CA where the Yuba meets the Feather and my entry-level salary would put me well above the median income line for all of Yuba County [and for UCSB History graduate students as well].  My IV ghetto townhouse had one bedroom and a small bath above a studio-sized kitchen and living room combination downstairs.  When I moved in, I was the only white American in what felt like a United Nations test commune.  I spoke English, a detriment to getting to know most of the other neighbors.  The place cost me $325 a month, a lot to pay as a student back then but worth the expense to not have a roommate other than my dog [who never brought home a drunk bimbo sophomore and never left filthy dishes laying around in places not generally categorized as the kitchen sink].  When I moved out, there were even fewer who spoke English.  The place I rented in Yuba City, across the bridge from Marysville, was brand new and gorgeous [by my roach-infested Isla Vista standards] and cost $325 a month as well, the only thing my former and future homes had in common.  It had two good-sized bedrooms, two baths, a living room, a garage, a yard, and an indoor laundry room!  The appliances were all shiny and new– no grease fires from the residue of decades of previous Section 8 tenants– and the only major thing not provided in the kitchen was a refrigerator.  It took about a half hour to find the local Sears and another hour to buy a big almond-colored 20-cubic foot model [much bigger than I needed but I was making a point] and a washer and dryer for the laundry room so I’d never have to scrounge for quarters in the sofa again.

The Sutter Buttes

I worked in the shadow of the Sutter Buttes for Pacific Gas and Electric Company in the Colgate Division headquarters Marketing Department and reported to a man named Dennis Grilione, a great guy I wish I’d stayed in touch with as we got older.  He smoked Marlboro cigarettes I used to bum frequently and I’d often spend a lunch hour sitting in his office distracting him from whatever was occupying his attention where we’d share a ‘wouldn’t it have been great’ fantasy of having been born with some actual musical talent while his radio played great rock n’ roll songs.  Dennis was one of those prematurely balding guys, young but with a hairline that made him look older than he was, and I never really thought at the time how we were only about ten years apart– a lifetime when he was married with two young boys and a mortgage and I was single with a dog.  It didn’t take long to play catch up; Marysville is a small town with little entertainment and I soon added a wife, two small children, and a mortgage of my own.  Those ten years would be irrelevant at our ages now.

That three-story brick office building at 6th and E Streets is a furniture store now, assuming the recession hasn’t killed it off like so many other businesses in small, economically-depressed valley towns with a few incredibly-wealthy farmers and an awful lot of ‘everyone else’ types barely making ends meet.  I let my mind wander awhile thinking about that building:  Janeane Drolet sitting behind the old-fashioned switchboard and pulling a cord when someone called down for an outside line, June Gieselman and Candy Kane’s ‘try and stump the office’ chalkboard quiz questions on the Customer Service announcement board, the smell of Henry Silva’s awful cigars wafting from the break room mixed with the aroma of garlic floating up to the second floor as the back door opened and someone entered with bread from Louis Cairo’s (rue the day you went near Williams and didn’t stop at Cairo’s and worse yet didn’t bring back garlic bread for everybody– laced with butter and cloves juicy enough to ruin a dress shirt forever and guaranteed to ooze out your pores for at least a week), Alan Cook, tall and distinguished-looking, making the most angry customer calm and compliant, the tiny closet-sized office on the third floor where Cheryl Mancini ran the COMPRESS machine, Jerry Shipley’s storeroom basement where I hid my [by then] wife’s new bicycle so she wouldn’t find it in the garage before Christmas, and the rumble of the brick walls when an SR-71 fired up at Beale AFB 12 miles to the east.

The Young Marcia Elliott

I kept a black and white photo of my wife as a child in a frame on my desk (thirty years later, it still sits on the shelf right behind me) and I remember driving Betty Johnson, the Engineering secretary, crazy when she delicately fished around and commented on the ‘beautiful’ child.  For the longest time she was convinced the photo was of my ‘daughter’ [apparently I'm pretty good at teasing without giving the tease away and can seem quite serious even when I'm over-the-top laughing inside] and she perked up when I confirmed for her the rumors that I wasn’t married [which was absolutely true-- at the time].  She tried to set me up with her daughter but I was well down the planned walk to the aisle and never took the bait.  She stopped talking about her ‘single daughter’ after she once overheard me take an incoming call, obviously personal, from someone I had clearly spent a romantic weekend with somewhere [from the one side of conversation she could hear].  She later admitted she was put off from pursuing me entertaining her daughter because I had answered the phone with a loving “Hi, Mark!” and only later did she realize the pet name my mother-in-law had given my bride, Marcia, as a child.

My work kept me busy in the foothills of Sutter, Yuba, and Nevada counties, where I was free, mostly, to roam the dirt roads and hidden areas average visitors to the hills never saw.  I had keys to both PG&E locks, the common one given to anyone with a gate for cutting into the chain to allow meter readers and troublemen to pass and the less common one held by the rare few that gave access to the best fishing streams.  I knew everyone worth knowing and a lot of folks less worthy.  My daily tours took me well off the beaten paths and occasionally into places I regretted– I was shot at twice but never hit– and I knew the menus of the Loma Rica and Oregon House greasy spoons by heart [sausage and eggs meant less Mylanta than a burger], which pool table corners leaned favorably [Doc Willy's with the low ceiling], and where to get a Christmas tree every December [Dobbins].  I made friends and occasionally I made enemies [former County Supervisor Sam Shintaffer once got so angry at me for not being deferential enough to his demand to jump to the head of the queue for a power line construction to one of his rice pumps he called me, and I'll quote him since I'll remember this until I die, a "long-haired, fuzzy-faced, nuclear-powered, rapist queer" but it was morning and he wasn't really warmed up yet].  I had the good fortune to finally figure out a really creative way to get a lean line extension built to serve folks that had been living without power for years while the company bounced between ‘maybe’ and ‘no way’ they’d ever see poles.  I personally handled hundreds of right-of-way documents and they threw a barn dance in my honor after the lights went on.

Smartsville

I was one of the few that didn’t think the guy who bought the old town of Timbuctoo, near Smartsville, was crazy when he made a life’s passion out of trying to locate the old steel front doors to the Wells Fargo Bank to get his restoration going.  Gene Lambert, who worked for Bob Hill in the Land department, discovered the retired school teacher’s property line trouble when staking in the power lines to the man’s incredible octagonal hillside home built exactly where the realtor suggested.  Gene wasn’t a licensed surveyor and couldn’t sign officially so my conversation with the teacher went something like “I strongly urge you to hire a licensed surveyor to verify your property lines before you occupy the home.”  The man eventually negotiated a lot line adjustment with his neighbor and bought 6 of the most expensive [and useless, other than the view and the house built to capture it] acres in the history of the county.

When I left it was for what I thought was a better opportunity for me and my family.  I traded my brand new 3-bedroom, 2-bath $62K home with the fenced-in extra lot behind me that extended my property to the levee and the northern city limit for a $150K home with a smaller yard but an extra bedroom.  I traded my 2-minute commute from Nadene Drive to 6th and E for the 30-minute ride to Danville [it eventually took longer than 30 minutes just to get to the freeway on-ramp and that was before going anywhere].  I traded knowing everyone in and out of town [it seemed] and people suggesting I should run for city council for knowing the families on my cul-de-sac and a few others in the area.

There are only a few decisions I’ve made in my life that I can honestly say I regret having made.  I don’t think moving away was one of them– but I sure wonder from time to time what life would have been like if I’d have bought that ten acres I had my eye on in Browns Valley with the stream and the hillside and the nice building site looking out over the pasture and just set up life in the valley.

All the people we used to know
They’re an illusion to me now
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenter’s wives
Don’t know how it all got started
I don’t what they’re doing with their lives

Bob Dylan — Tangled Up In Blue (1975)

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Juice, Predictability, and the Flight of the Ball (Newton Revisited)

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Octomom

At some level or another, everybody gets their fifteen minutes of fame, but sometimes, it seems, those moments are wrapped around a singular event that captures the public’s attention and brands us forever.  A statement, an action or an inaction, a sudden ‘aha’ realization quick and bright as a lightning strike and we are forever changed, forever labeled, marked and tied together with that moment, that time and all that surrounds it.  Occasionally some of us rise to the occasion, recognize our moment, sense our opportunity, and we spin it to personal advantage [and milk it for all that it's worth].  But most of us never find that chance on any grand public stage and play out our fifteen minutes on a more familial scale, don’t receive the ‘right place at the right time’ casting call, or more likely don’t recognize our opportunistic moment when it and the world stage passes by.  Those of us who do demonstrate a unique skill others will never have the chance to perfect.  History, either recent or distant, is filled with examples of lucky ones struck by fate or circumstance married with opportunity and recognition who win historical or pop cultural Lotto [if you don't believe me, ask yourselves how many of you know the story of Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger, Octomom, or Balloon Boy Dad].  Branded hero, branded whack job, branded idiot scammer.

Isaac Newton [before the 'Sir'] established himself as a 17th century Lotto winner because an apple fell on his head and he did more than rub his melon and cuss loudly [for those of you scientific types, a+M=SI means little apple plus big melon equals scientific immortality].  He certainly must have cussed at least once and rubbed the old dome at least twice but he also recognized the boink on the noggin as something more significant than a mere apple falling from a tree.  From his considerations, he proposed three basic principles for motion:

1) ”An object in motion will stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force.”
2)  ”Force equals mass times acceleration” or “F = ma.”
3)  ”To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

The principle everyone tends to remember from these is this last one but, taken together, they go along way toward our understanding of classical mechanics.  He was talking about the physics of motion and together with his theories of gravitational pull– those well-considered contemplations from the aforementioned ‘apple and melon’ moment–  these three mechanical theorems explained earlier work by Johannes Kepler to help us understand how planets move in relation to each other [well, to help scientists and smart people understand really, not 'us' per se].  The important point here to remember is that Newton didn’t set out with the purpose of explaining Kepler– he merely recognized the various parts he was coming across had a connection and, with the help of an apple and a couple of Excedrin, he visualized them coming together into something useful to explain planetary motion– a scientific application of ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ theorem [a completely absurd statement easily refuted by scientists, mathematicians, and accounting managers but adhered to by Major League Baseball General Managers-- who are definitely not scientists, rocket or otherwise].  In other ball-striking parlance, when the cue ball strikes the object ball it moves.  Every time.  When it strikes left of center the object moves right and it does so without fail.  Hit right of center and the movement is directed left.  No exceptions.  Ever.  Nada.  A law of motion– and with it predictability of motion (how else were those guys in the movie Armageddon going to know they could reliably redirect the path of that asteroid and avoid a collision with Earth?).

Redirecting the flight of a thrown baseball is Newtonian.  Think about it– all three rules apply.  Hitting a round baseball with a round bat pitched by someone absolutely bent on preventing you from doing so is hard– and hitting for a high batting average is harder still.  Hitting for high average with home run power is incredibly difficult– generally considered among the hardest skills to master in sport (if not thehardest).  Good hitters study pitchers, their pitches and their motions, the flights and the tendencies and the situational timing of the balls they throw.  Great hitters out-guess and out-adjust great pitchers who are conversely studying and adjusting to them.  Give a great hitter a predictable pitch and watch it soar (as a Giants fan, I watched Barry Bonds for most of his Cooperstown-worthy career– some of those balls might still be soaring if scoreboards or stands hadn’t gotten in the way).

Roy Hobbs

Performance-enhancing supplements (illegal or otherwise) aside, watching great hitters hit remains a mystical experience for us because we can’t approach doing it anywhere near as well.  Juiced or natural, the skill of making squarely solid contact with a 97mph fastball, an 88mph slider, a 73mph curveball, or a change-up of any speed remains a pas de deux between the eyes and the brain of a superior athlete who then engages the rest of the body in a mechanical collusion toward impact.  A natural 410′ home run or a juiced 435′ home run is still a home run that required the skill of the batter to create the external force and drive it out.

In 1998 Mark McGuire broke the single season home run record of 61 held by Roger Maris for 37 years.  He did it with the aid of ‘performance-enhancing’ supplements– the juice — and everyone with a lick of sense suspected it at the time.  Players suspected, baseball executives and writers suspected, even fans suspected.  And good or bad for the game, fair or unfair to the integrity of the sport’s record books, whether or not steroid usage was rampant throughout the game, no real outcry was heard.  He played his last game in 2001 but remained silent about his drug use for almost a decade.  In 2005, when steroid use finally garnered some attention, McGuire made a fool of himself appearing before the United States Senate and avoiding a direct question about his supplement usage.  Only recently has McGuire finally, awkwardly, admitted to having used steroids during what he says were ‘some’ portions of his career.  And even that admission, couched in terms to suggest the use was centered around healing and recovery rather than enhancing performance, came across as less than forthcoming.  The general consensus around the game was that his hope for eventually securing a statue in Cooperstown was predicated on a cleansing of his PED past and a return to the game in some capacity where he could curry goodwill and build relationships with both current and future Hall of Fame voters– the folks who would decide his legacy.  What took so long?

Mark McGuire

Rebuilding what can be salvaged of McGuire’s legacy, and that of Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and all the other players innocent or guilty but somehow associated with the steroids era, will require time and patience.  Some players will move beyond the stain of scandal and reclaim adulation from their fans.  Others will probably never recover from the taint.  McGuire would do well to remember that he is the external force that has put his silence about his past into motion where, according to physics, it will remain a topic for the rest of his life.  Fans would do well to remember that force equals mass times acceleration– bigger players swinging with greater bat speed will yield longer home runs– but solid contact is still required and that particular dance still requires great vision and incredible timing, not strength.  We’re a forgiving people– perhaps along the way, a little salvation might be warranted for those baseball sinners appropriately seeking grace.  For everyone else associated with the game during the steroid era, especially those with Hall of Fame aspirations, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Hubris might keep the ‘body at rest’ from moving– but it likely won’t earn any Hall of Fame votes.  Anything predictable can be played to advantage.  If the Hall of Fame ‘moon and stars’ are going to come into alignment, the truth can be every bit as majestic as a towering home run.  Even a Barry Bonds home run.

Do what they say, say what you mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then one thing leads to another.

The Fixx — One Thing Leads To Another (1983)

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There’s No Such Thing As A Secret (If More Than One Person Knows)

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I read recently about a literary journal that sponsors a contest for the best six word memoir– a kind of stripped-down haiku form designed to tell a complete story in only six words and an amazing forum where the mind creates the actual imagery rather than the writer.  Included here is the microscopic essence of a story, the written DNA only with no descriptive to set the scene, no narratives to flesh out the tale–  nothing extraneous.  Here you find only the literary equivalent of a tender shoot emerging from the creative soil; here you must imagine that shoot growing tall, branching, flowering and developing the huge canopy of the Heritage Oak.  Properly written, the six word memoir can open the door to dozens of emotional chapters worthy of contemplation for readers with imaginations and the willingness to use them rather than be engaged by someone else’s.  Often cited as the tour de force for the genre, legend says that novelist Ernest Hemingway penned: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”  Down how many branches might that life story wander without losing emotional momentum?

The tabloid news of the week involves Tiger Woods and his 2:20am neighborhood car crash.  The rumors and gossip and prurient speculation began almost immediately as the story was released and quickly swelled from ’celebrity newsworthy’ into ‘celebrity stonewall’ before escalating into ‘celebrity dirty laundry’.  Having issued one of those non-descript public apologies a la Jason Giambi Woods now must seek to retreat behind the facade of a happy life and try and assess what happens next to one of the world’s most recognizable faces.  Hearing the story when it broke ["Tiger Woods seriously hurt in car crash!"] and being unable to escape it since ["Apparently, Tiger Woods' wife caught him playing that 19th hole."  Jay Leno] it made me think back across these several days of the story’s shelf life (thus far) and wonder if Tiger’s six word memoir just received the editor’s re-write from “History’s greatest golfer at every age” to “No such thing as a secret.”  The just published apology from Woods for ‘transgressions’ does little more than prove how true it is that everyone has human frailties of one sort or another and everyone’s story runs deeper than those truths we allow to be seen by the outside world and those we can only hope are the ones revealed to our respective publics.  Privacy used to be a social convention honored by both saint and sinner alike– there were always lines being crossed but even when stepping out and stepping over them they weren’t flaunted, were kept discrete, and were typically handled with healthy doses of tact and diplomacy.  The days of expecting and receiving privacy have passed.  They’re gone forever.  The public’s voracious appetite for scandal has given rise to a ‘right to know’ mentality that supplants the ’it’s nobody’s business’ mantra and even the most arrogant of personalities has to realize that there is no ‘getting away with it’ so long as the secret extends beyond a body count of one.  Sooner or later, as Capone suggested, “anybody is touchable.”  Tiger appears now headed toward a “strictly business” arrangement whereby a certain prenuptial agreement will be renegotiated to assure the stability of Tiger, Inc. and the revised six word memoir might more aptly read “Appearances can be deceiving– and expensive.”

There are plenty of good reasons we shouldn’t know directly, as Mel Gibson did in What Women Want, the innermost thoughts of others– civil society simply couldn’t exist if all our thoughts and deeds were publicly known and scrutinized.  What we imagine but don’t act upon becomes a danger if screened for risk by others.  What we do but don’t disclose becomes a danger if we, ourselves, screen for similar risk.  Emotions rapidly would escalate and we’d quickly disintegrate our interactions into a ‘kill or be killed’ cycle as we assessed the danger of knowing those private thoughts of others.  It’s useful to have secrets and it’s useful to maintain their integrity– society needs us to conform so societies can exist and we need to conform so we can stave off insanity.  We need to stay [roughly] within the lines, at least for appearances sake, so we don’t devolve into purely carnal beasts threatened by every other carnal beast we encounter.

The wolf pack press has descended upon a weakened, threatened Tiger with fangs glinting– but Tiger is Tiger and he will fight back.  Like the modern-day Daniel Day-Lewis character from There Will Be Blood, his six word memoir will become ”I have a competition in me” and we’ll see him try and do what he has always done: defeat– no, vanquish—that competition.  Tiger’s course mentality is cold and calculated, methodical and reptilian.  Like the python swallowing the pig, he will immerse himself in performing only the task at hand with no thought for the future or the past.  That eerie mental focus which shuts out distractions will take over and he’ll clam up tighter than ever with the public.  Otherwise, like the python, he will suffocate.

‘No such thing as a secret’ but I wouldn’t mind if we all could agree to turn off the cameras and just leave Tiger and his family to work on their private issues in private and make his memoir read something like ‘A man, like any other man.’

Your inside is out when your outside is in
Your outside is in when your inside is out

The Beatles — Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey (1968)

 

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Have You Heard The Good News? (Generalisimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead)

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When you repeatedly announce the obvious it has a tendency to distract attention from the overriding message— not in the same way as crying wolf, but perhaps equally as consequential and with a tendency to sometimes diminish a serious and complex message. The news media– particularly television news even more particularly local television news– have adopted an almost universal pattern over the last ten years of repeating stories constantly—often within the same broadcast– with only the most superficial of updates and typically little or no substantive change in the ‘news’ material being read. Where news programming on television used to be a unique slice of an otherwise diversified programming day’s content, the economic reality is that it’s far cheaper to hire talking heads to re-read stories until something new to read and re-read comes along than it is to devote creative dollars toward actual program development. The ‘news’ program which begins at 4:30am to tell me ‘traffic on the highways is great’ [as it should be at 4:30am] and stays in ‘read me the news mode’ until 10:00am repeating the same headline stories, traffic and weather updates [yep, folks, it's still cloudy and cool and headed for a crisp 63 today-- just like when I said it twenty minutes ago] keeps at it until traffic cycles through the inevitable ‘starting to see some back up and congestion’ phase before clearing and returning to an ‘all green and moving at the limit on the maps’ segment. Fourteen minutes of information can be spread across five and a half hours and separated only by ‘sponsored segments’ of paid for commercial endorsements made to look like a news reporter making an interview. Lather, rinse repeat—and of course repeat, repeat, repeat.

The same formula is being used with reality TV, getting real people to produce content essentially for free in hopes of winning the million-dollar prize or generating a career by gaining national exposure, or both (I replace the ‘perform’ with produce because performance implies some rehearsal or preparation and everyone knows reality TV is totally real, thoroughly unrehearsed, and never produced to a script). Reality TV is cheaper than hiring writers and actors paying residuals for content and creative talent– the hours of commercials can be woven and re-woven between a much less expensive kind of ‘predictable script’ content and people will still tune in to watch these less-expensive alternatives. The consuming public, so it would seem, doesn’t especially care about quality, variety, or even the occasional freshened-up re-write to an otherwise old story– we’ll tune in regardless and stay tuned in because we’re creatures of habit and we’re too lazy to change the channel, or because we’re too dumbed down to care that we’ve seen and heard all of this many times before. It’s not information, it’s mind candy and it soothes us. My local 10 o’clock news, an hour of ‘programming’ content, is usually good for about 14 minutes of actual ‘new’ anything– the rest of the allotted time is spent teasing what’s going to be revealed if we’d only just stick around through the commercials long enough to hear and see it when it happens. Why else would the weather guy come on at 10:28 with a 45-second weather report (it will rain or it won’t) that tells me to stick around for ‘more’ of the details coming up at 10:44pm—just in time to suck me along through the next long commercial break to catch the ball scores? And news, like the movie trailers today, all too often makes sure the tease is the best part, the real meat to the story, and usually informative enough that catching the rest of the piece is somehow unnecessary and a little disappointing when we see it because it merely repeats what we already knew, already heard earlier, and will continue hearing until the next news factoid comes along. For the evening news and for the coming releases, the intensity of the build up– creating anticipation– is usually more satisfying than the actual story or the soon-to-be-released movie. We’ve become a culture of headlines and cutlines and punch lines and sight gags with no real attention paid to the back story. Which came first, our short attention spans or the editing and sound bite delivery system that keeps feeding into them?

The San Francisco Bay Bridge closed this week after a 5000 lb. piece of steel and two suspension cables used for a recent repair failed and fell across several vehicles during the evening commute Tuesday evening. Miraculously, only a couple of minor injuries were suffered and everyone walked away alive. For the next 72 hours the headline news and the repeated updates have sounded strangely familiar: traffic is bad, folks. The commute is bad all over and it’s extending longer than it normally does. Freeways are busier than they normally would be at this hour and the open bridges are heavier than they typically are on days when the Bay Bridge isn’t closed.

Folks, I for one am stunned to learn these facts! In my wildest imagination I would have never guessed that the other bridges would be busier than normal and that the commute would extend longer as 300,000 cars a day are blocked from their typical route and seek alternatives to reach their destinations so as not to disrupt the flow of commerce. And today is Sunday, the fifth day after the bridge was closed and the fifth day the lead news story has been followed up with a similar story, almost identical each time it is read, announcing that the bridge ‘might reopen soon’ [perhaps within a couple of days!] once Cal Trans has determined the repair of the repair is safe. Every hour or two a press conference is held where crowds of television, radio, and the occasionally still-employed newspaper reporters gather around the spokesman for Cal Trans as he answers the same inane questions as before, with essentially the same words as before, and news stations interrupt regular programming of repetitious news to make proclamations that ‘the bridge is still closed, traffic remains snarled, and we might see it opened back up to the public within a couple of days’ if all goes well. Amazing! And so factual!

Eventually the bridge will reopen and traffic will revert to normal. The commute will still be virtually non-existent at 4:30am and will start to show signs of congestion as the public floods the roadways and highways trying to beat the rush, find parking, and make it through the queue at Starbucks in time to carry a low-fat Venti mocha with whip into the office and promptly clock in before 8:00am.

Chevy Chase

No one will seriously ask and no one will tell us why the bridge that collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake remains dangerously at risk of collapse 20 full years after the quake and will take at least 5 more years before construction is complete. No one will seriously ask and no one will tell us why the original cost estimate for a completely rebuilt eastern span, about $500M, will now cost somewhere north of $3.6B assuming no other major changes or delays occur before the scheduled 2013 completion date.  That would mean reporting the obvious and that might cut into the time allotted for news organizations to tell us that traffic is bad, the weather is cool, and details are only moments away.

Where is Chevy Chase when you really need him?

 

We can do the innuendo, we can dance and sing
When it’s said and done, we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that crap is king, give us dirty laundry

Don Henley – Dirty Laundry (1982)

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Use, Reuse, and Re-Purpose (Saving Some Things For Later)

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My garage hasn’t felt the four wheels of a vehicle on its floor in more than 10 years– the last one to visit my cluttered sanctuary of tools and scraps and boxes of parts of things long ago stored for future reuse was a decrepit old ’74 Volkswagen Thing my then teenaged son decided he was going to restore. The only things remaining of the Thing episode are a few oil stains and four authentic VW hubcaps stowed away on a dusty shelf somewhere. My garage stayed filled with miscellaneous Volkswagen flotsam and jetsam for about two years before my son’s restoration project fell short by a few thousand man hours of actual restoration and a few thousand dollars of serviceable parts. Predictably, it was ultimately added to the list of things that were never going to happen. He eventually sold it to a childhood friend of my brother’s– a friend with both the means and the motivation to make it look and run more like its original appearance—sort of a bizarre, canvass-topped ‘military-turned-commercial light duty’ extension of the quirky and more wildly successful VW Beetle. I had a ’71 Super Beetle in college—a great car I’ve missed driving. Mine had a sunroof—among the first of its kind, with a manual hand crank that was, for the most part, rain tight. I was always amazed at how much ‘stuff’ could be transported with a single car load if you only took the time to Rubik’s cube all the pieces into their proper geometric configurations inside [and occasionally outside] the Beetle’s cab. Mine was bright orange and had that ladybug look going down the road— no ladybug spots but a glistening paint job I kept well-waxed. I bought it for $1,700 used in ’76 and sold it for $2,300 in 1980 after dropping another 125K on the odometer. I was told when I bought it that if I’d religiously change the oil and adjust the valves every 3,000 miles it would run forever and I believe it. I sold it only because I had a truck for work and really needed the cash to pay for our wedding rings (mine engraved with the license plate number of that Beetle– 054BIM). The man who bought the bug was a manager for the company I worked at then—the same company my father-in-law worked at for his entire civilian career [I made it there for 7 years—they were a little more conservative than me and I just couldn’t envision becoming a lifer—a tactical error on my part I only now appreciate]. The manager gave the bug to his daughter to drive to and from home and college. 25 years later my wife ended up treating him as a patient and happened to mention his name to me because he mentioned the name of the company (from which he retired as a VP). I explained who he was and what significance he represented to her left ring finger and she carried the story back to him of how our lives had intersected 25 years earlier and 100 miles away from our current home over a pink slip and a set of keys. She described how, upon hearing her story, he had grown silent, almost shedding tears, before sharing that the ’71 Super Beetle had given them a long and fulfilled service before suffering a terrible highway crash late one evening. His daughter survived, but the Beetle—gone now except for these few memories. Even the engraved license plate number is gone—our original rings melted down and recast into new ones we later designed for ourselves. Hers now shows off a beautiful emerald cut center stone with baguettes; mine the several smaller brilliant cuts from her original engagement set.

That same garage served as an office for me when we first moved into the ‘too-small’ house with ‘good bones’ for expansion. The garage loft served as an attic storage area but with the simple addition of a couple of electric outlets and a phone line I was able to convert it into a 4 ½ foot tall office complete with desk, chair, fax machine, computer and printer—all of the functional necessities except sufficient height to stand up and stretch and just tall enough that a sudden startle could yield a rafter smack capable of delivering a mild concussion. Accessing the loft meant scaling like an orangutan from a back porch landing to the top of a storage compartment across a temporary safety rail built to assuage my ‘always-ready-to-fear-the-worst’ better half who remained convinced until we finished our addition and I relocated computer and fax and phone and files down into a ‘real’ office [meaning ‘ground floor’ I assume] that I would fall to my death while she was away running errands [if she was ever going to off me for the $183 in insurance money, I suspect that’s the way it would have looked to the cops]. Somewhere in this time frame I decided returning the loft to a useable storage area would be a lot easier if I simply rebuilt the back porch landing and added a new staircase up to the loft—a project well-received by all with a need to actually store anything up there. I’m guessing it won’t be quite as appreciated by some inspector who may someday decide my stair heights aren’t really up to code, but as with my Unabomber cabin-sized garden shed, I hope to be long gone before anyone of any authority asks questions like “How did this get here?” Keeping with the ‘that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” mantra, they’ve been there for as long as I can remember….

There’s a long history of re-purposing in my bloodlines—things as well as space. We needed a wine cellar. We didn’t need a hall closet. Problem solved. We needed a pantry. We didn’t need a laundry area in the garage. Problem solved. We needed a wedding set… well, you get the idea. My garage is a mess because I hang on to things that might be useful someday. I have a tendency to save things that most people would say are ‘junk’ because, for some reason, I see what they could become, rather than what they have been before. It’s the MacGyver gene and a fundamental difference between people—we don’t all get that gene in our DNA. Some of us can walk into a house and visualize what it could become if only a wall was moved, an opening opened, a room reconfigured, a flow redirected. Some folks [I’m not naming any names, Miss “Always-Ready-To-Fear-The-Worst”] need to see the mannequin to visualize things. It’s genetic. My father-in-law was that way—for years he went to Macy’s every holiday season and bought what was on the mannequin for my mother-in-law, regardless of whether it was in her colors or a style that particularly suited her, or was something she even might like. He knew she’d return it and select something else she preferred, he just didn’t know what that was or how to find out. He wasn’t a see the potential kind of person and visualizing beyond what was presented was, frankly, too risky for a decidedly risk-averse personality. I suspect that’s why we got along so well when his daughter introduced us—I was nothing like him and, therefore, no threat to alter his relationship with his little girl. I think at times he lived somewhat vicariously through me—I was the baby-booming risk-taker his depression-era values could never become. I was the assertive ‘just find a way’ personality that would have been a battlefield commission type if I’d ever found the battlefield. Where he was quiet and somewhat reserved in temperament, I was neither. It just wasn’t in our natures to be anything different. I miss talking to him and I miss seeing him smile at me when I would do or say something [usually around his wife and his daughter] that he knew he could never get away with doing.  He seldom let them see he was smiling encouragement at me, but he made darn sure I knew that he heartily approved.

He passed away just before Christmas a few years ago and, at his request, I respectfully re-purposed an old bottle of Courvoisier from forever being a china hutch decoration in the Duncan Phyfe cabinet in his dining room into becoming the final tribute toast he wanted to savor with his remaining living friends. He knew I’d been eyeing that bottle for nearly thirty years of after dinner moments at his house.  He never offered and I never asked, but in the last few years before he died he made his wishes known.  Maybe he really could see the potential in things and I just wasn’t paying enough attention at first.

Long may you run
Long may you run
Although these changes have come.

Neil Young – Long May You Run (1976)

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