Three Seven

Something about that 7 that I just don’t like… I’m pretty okay with aging, I’m resigned to the fact that it’s the price we pay for getting to live. An unfair price? Probably, but it’s one that’s built into the lease.

Still, that 7 is a sharp and jagged number, it doesn’t feel lucky. I think that that 7 is an angular little signpost that points out the now short slide into 40. And seriously, how the fuck can I be that close to 40? I feel that I’m still walking around with an adolescent mind most of the time. I feel like I’m just getting started.

Some age related things that have, coincidentally enough, come up in conversation with friends that are considerably younger:

For the majority of my high school years, the music I listened to was on cassette – CD’s were brand new. The first CD I ever bought was Echo and The Bunnymen’s self titled.

I remember when John Lennon was shot. I also remember my babysitter hysterically crying when Elvis died.

I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater when it was originally released. Also The Empire Strikes Back. Also Star Wars (the second time I saw it was at a drive in, in the back of an El Camino).

The first computer that I used, in grade school, had a cassette tape drive.

My best friend’s older brother taught me how to Do The Hustle when I was 5 and disco was still quite the rage.

Anyways, another year down and a pledge for striving to hold onto at least a little childishness for the duration.

All That Glitters Is Gold

Christmas was pretty low key and nice. I slept in a bit, but did get up with that same sort of prickly excitement in my belly that I once got with opening presents as a child. We made some breakfast, put Kickers down for a nap after he beheaded a pop-up book chicken that besides being pop-up has the added benefit of a crowing sound effect, and then lay on the couch and watched The Simpsons Movie.

We also got a taste of a white Christmas when it snowed for about an hour, never accumulating, but somehow striking that perfect Christmas string.

We then went on over to Mandy and Jason’s for Christmas dinner and more than a few holiday shots. Good dinner, good drinks, good friends, no family to thoroughly mess things up; a pretty awesome day all said and done.

Coming back to work this morning was a bit of a thorn in my side, if said thorn got to my side by being first shoved down my throat by a greased up fist and then pushed through the system by a razor wire toilet plunger until wiped up by a paycheck and daintily placed in my side. I was telling someone earlier that I have been in the workforce for nearly 20 years at this point, but school has ingrained it into me that the week between Christmas and New Years should be an absolute shut down. One thing that did sweeten the morning was a forwarded You Tube clip.

I watched an 8 year old play the outgoing solo of Stairway with an accuracy that put any number of dorm room stoners to shame. But then for hours I’ve had “Stairway to Heaven” stuck in my head – and then the opening keyboard lines to “Misty Mountain Hop”. It reminded me of a story from when I was working at a gas station back in those early days of the above mentioned years in the workforce.

I would like to tie it up and say it’s a delightful example of a Christmas miracle, but I would be a liar.

At the gas station, there was an older Iranian man named Fazol who worked the full service pumps. He was a kind man who would occasionally let his passions get the better of him, but a sweet man. One day I was listening to the wonderfully originally titled “Get The Led Out” on one of LA’s rock format stations when Fazol came in with a customer credit card. I looked him in the eyes and said, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”

Fazol looked at me with questioning eyes for a moment and then said, “is this Shakespeare?”

“As close as we get here Fazol,” I replied.

Fazol took it upon himself to learn this little gem, and would often enter the snack shack section of the station and do his recitation with a heavy Farsi accent and it always sounded something like, “starvay to hauven.” Oh, how that made me happy to see a sixty-something Iranian immigrant quote Led Zeppelin with such measured dedication.

Then It's Love

A gentleman with an impressive fro stopped me on the way in this morning. Well, technically he stood staring at me with a stony grin at the corner until I removed my headphones and looked at him.

“Jesus loves you,” he said. He then put out his hand and seemed ecstatic when I shook it. He put his other hand on mine and wished me a Merry Christmas.

I began to wonder if there was something about me that signaled this guy that Jesus loved me, perhaps something in my aura, or a look on my face, maybe the way I walked in time to The Cure’s “Speak My Language”. Then I wondered if maybe Jesus told this fella that he loved me. Something like, “Hey, that guy in the headphones and long coat? I love him. Go tell him I love him.”

It was a nice gesture, a bit presumptuous, but nice. And the guy spreading the news had a smile that made me a bit glad I could a recipient of the news he wanted to tell me.

Have a good Christmas y’all, if’n you’re into that sort of thing.

Lost Boys

The train of thought that took me to Alex and B: I was listening to “Drugs” off of Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and made me think of Jimson Weed. That’s odd in itself as there are so many other drugs to go to first, but in the sort of half sleepy state I was in, I was thinking that the song did a good job of conveying the sometimes startling come on of some drugs, and from what I hear, the mighty and dangerous Jimson Weed has a serious come on. I’ve never partaken and the only person I know about that has is Alex.

Alex and B were a pair of brothers who lived a couple of apartments down from me in Chico. They were from Bremerton, the town of my birth, and they looked nothing alike. Alex sort of looked like a young Kurt Cobain, lost eyes, longish blond hair. B (or Brian) had short hair, a much darker complexion and always wore a baseball cap. Their behaviors matched their appearances in a way that was almost comical, that in some of my stonier moments made me wonder if they weren’t picked out by sitcom casting.

B was into watching some sports, drinking some beer, smoking some weed. He was loose and comfortable with the ladies, loose and comfortable with everyone. He would have been a great example of a nice, basketball playing, frat guy had he been in a frat.

Alex seemed a little uncomfortable being Alex. Also sweet, but seemed to hide behind whatever crazy amounts of inebriation that he could find. Painfully shy in some ways, when he stood next to B’s comfortable social interactions it made that stand out even more; something I’m sure Alex could feel in an almost physical way.

All done up on something, Alex and a friend of his visiting from out of town had bought a beef tongue at the Safeway, drew a face on it and nailed into a patch of grass that divided two sides of the apartment’s parking lot. There was also a sign that said something like, “Beware of Doctor something or other!” But the “something or other” was a name. Anyway, the point of that story, much like the original act itself, is questionable.

During spring break that year, when nearly the whole of a college town evaporates, I was alone in the apartment. Alex was also still in town and came over one night to sit and smoke on the patio, drink ourselves silly. At some point Alex went over the Drunk County line and into All Kindsa Fucked Up Land. He looked at me with clouded eyes that begged understanding. “You know what I’m talking about,” he slurred. I told him that unfortunately I did not know what he was talking about. He then began a rant that had the same amount of coherency as I do medical training; none. I tried hard, head full of Henry Weinhard’s, to make out at least a couple of key words, but language for him had moved onto some sort of freeform jazz babble performance. He stood silent and swaying for a second, again giving me look that seemed to plead for me to get what he was saying, before he took a header into the wooden planter box that held Amy Lou’s precious Iris’. I picked him up, made sure his head wasn’t bleeding, and carried him back home where I put him in a chair. Realizing there was a chance of him John Bonhaming himself to death, I then moved him facedown on the couch and went back home.

There was also the drunken mountain bike trip he took with my neighbor Rob. Rob called me and asked if I could drive out to Bidwell Park and pick up Alex as he’d crashed his bike. I drove out to the more remote and unpaved portion of the park to find Alex leaning against a fence with a windbreaker draped over most of his shirtless torso. I checked to see if he was okay, he removed the windbreaker to show a number of road rash patches, a nice divot of flesh missing from his side, and what appeared to my non medical trained ass as a broken collarbone. We got him loaded into the car and I headed down from the park and over to the clinic when in a hysterical panic he made me promise not to take him to the clinic. “We’ll just go home and put hydrogen peroxide on everything,” he said all wide eyed and shaky voiced. Trying to remain patient and calm, I let him know that hydrogen peroxide wasn’t going to reset that bump on his shoulder that was most likely a piece of broken bone. The more I insisted on taking him for medical assistance, the more wild and panicked he became. I decided to calm him down and take him home where B and his friends could help me talk him into going to the clinic. He eventually did and came back to my place later, complete with reset collarbone and opiate glazed eyes, and apologized for bleeding in my Honda.

I left Chico after a year of formidable debauchery and lost track of both Alex and B. I’m sure B’s out there in the world doing it fine and easy as always. I hope Alex is out there doing okay. I hope he made it through rough patches to find that sweet and funny man that he was.

How I Met My Sister-In-Law

I once again ran out of time for a proper posting, so instead here's a picture of yours truly that was sent to me last night. It made me laugh after an audition that felt less than spectacular. It was much needed, thank you Terri.

Yeah, that's me in a sparkly blue dress and pigtails. Moving a bed... The first time my sister-in-law laid eyes on me it was while I was onstage in this get up.

Hope to be back tomorrow.

This Wheel Shall Explode

You can probably file this under too much information, a TMI if you're abbreviation minded. Be warned, and put down that bagel dog, there's about to be some potty humor.

So Saturday, Beth was going out, I was going to stay home with Kickers and I'm thinking, "What do I want for dinner on a home alone Saturday night?" Then I thought, "If they knew the Death Star was coming, why didn't they evacuate the Yavin Rebel base? I understand the logistics of moving an entire base, but at least get the people out of there." And then I thought, "I'm really into "This Wheel's On Fire" off the first album by The Band. I mean I like the bluesy, sort of dirge-like take Dylan does, but there's an energy to The Band's version that is palpable." Then I reigned it back in and thought about dinner.

A salad, thought I, a glorious salad with red bell pepper and cucumber and toasted pecans. Perhaps some parmesan, and some breaded white meat chicken. So I went to the store and picked up some breaded chicken for this glorious salad of mine, but unbeknownst to me at the time, I picked up the blazing hot, Buffalo wing style chicken tenders. "No problem," I continued to think to myself, sidelining myself long enough to think that there may be a need for medication with all of this inner monologue, "I'm not a baby. I can handle the heat." And handle it, I did.

And then came Sunday.

Sunday morning I awoke with a little condition I like to call "Hot Ass in the Morning", or HAIM, again for those of you who are abbreviation minded. Coincidence that the acronym is the same as the last name of one of the Corey's? I think not.

Now, I used to get a little Hot Ass in the Morning after drinking Henry Weinhard's in college, but you expect some collateral damage after drinking a case of cheap, "hand crafted" beer. But this... My god, Sunday it was like crapping broken glass; broken glass made of lava and sharks - small sharks to be sure, but bitey and all aflame. That'll learn ya to go for Buffalo spice chicken tenders as a midnight snack while you're home alone watching The Departed, I thought. Then I started singing "This Wheel's On Fire" just to distract myself from the pain.

This case of HAIM added a little unpredicted zest to my audition Sunday morning, which coincidentally enough was for a stage adaptation of the Corey Haim film Prayer For The Rollerboys. I decided to use it as a character trait.

All Shook Up

It was a nice domestic scene; Riley was in his chair, chowing down on Cheerios and little Satsuma orange slices. I was going all Brando on him, putting the Satsuma peels in my mouth and grunting like a gorilla. It took it as far as to get up from the chair and stumble into the tomato patch we keep in the kitchen, falling down dead. Riley then charged me with a pump spray can of DDT that I was unaware we even had, or that he could lift and operate.

While I lay there being coated in harmful pesticides, I overheard on the TV some Elvis facts. I was told that about the Christmas trees in Graceland and from what I could hear they were showing us pictures of them, including one where the star on top touched the ceiling. “Holy sweet freakin’ Jeebus,” I said to myself. “All the way to the ceiling?”

I was having a difficult time trying to figure out what Elvis product they were attempting to tie this into. Is there a newly packaged version of Elvis songs coming out conveniently at this Christmas season?

And then I learned that Elvis loved Christmas soooooooo much, that he would put up his decorations right after Thanksgiving and leave them up until his birthday in January. It’s funny how history gets rewritten when it comes to the much loved and famous. The folks at entertainment news may see a love for Christmas, I see lazy and whacked out on Percocet.

I mean they never talk about how Graceland used to be decked out as an all terrain hunting ground, a safari in the south, where Elvis would set legions of people to run free just to hunt them down with all manner of rifles and blow darts. They never talk about how he made clothing and furnishings out of his victims’ skin and bones. It’s never mentioned how he bred rats in his Graceland laboratory and tried to nail down a bigger, better Black Plague.

No, it’s always this hip swinging, Cadillac buying, velvet painting model version of Elvis that we’re told about.

Damn revisionists.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Paint A Vulgar Picture” by The Smiths.

Frustration Row

Work’s a bear right now. Literally, I am being paid to roll around on the floor with a great big, clawlicious grizzly bear. Trying? Sure. Time consuming? As if work were the lead singer of Quiet Riot and time was cocaine. And if I were to write SAT questions, man the world would be a different place. I try to make a game of this job: for every time I get away from Rusty the Bear without a chest full of snarling snout, I get a point. For every head of cabbage I toss into his mouth, another point.

Well, that was a complete fabrication. I do not get the pleasure of bear wrestling for a paycheck, I try to cushion the blow of incompetence above me to those below. But work is particularly busy right now, thank you well placed holiday shopping season.

I feel that I don’t hide my frustration well. Actually it’s difficult for me to hide many of my feelings, if I’m excited by something you will more than likely see me jumping up and down on someone or something – more than likely having dropped trow. But it seems sometimes folks can’t see the frustration.

Not that other people should necessarily care when I’m frustrated. Why the hell would they? But I think that large parts of my frustration are fed by not being able to properly express my frustration. Say at a staff meeting your ADD addled boss is tossing out ideas and plans and processes that are annoying, uncalled for and/or dumb, and your frustration level is getting to be as such that exaggerated sighs aren’t going to vent it enough before you rough up a coworker with the business end of a Pentel EnerGel pen.

I’m suggesting a device.

I’m suggesting one of those helmet’s with the flashing lights on top, like a one man (and granted, bad) rave. My thought is that once that frustration gets close to a breaking point, I flip a switch, everybody’s made aware that I have hit a limit and I get up and out before the yelling and flailing fists happen. The light helmet does its thing with what I imagine to be a red light, but green could be quite nice, and that’s the cue for others to think, “Hey, condition critical for Billy. I’m lucky it’s not the bad old days where he’d jump up on the table a knee someone in the face.”

I think this would be less distracting in meetings than my initial ideas of the bullhorn or giant steel gong.

And back to work…


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Polly’s Into Me” by Black Francis.

More Songs About Buildings And Food

We did a little house hunting yesterday afternoon, and I feel that I learned a few things about myself. One of these things being that I really like “Mess With Time” off of Built to Spill’s You In Reverse.

That was something I kind of knew already, so not a great example.

Perhaps a better example would be learning that I do, in fact, know the things I like; and one of these things is not townhouses. Also realizing about myself that I may say things that people take personally, I feel that I should say that I do not find the liking of townhouses a personality flaw – if you like them we’re gold, we just disagree.

The journey started with a fairly forgetful house, one story box with a roof, which is in the price range we can work with – which is to say small and in a semi-questionable neighborhood. It was small to be sure, it felt smaller than our apartment, and had pretty low charm factor. What it did have was a sizable backyard and a separate 2 car garage that was roughly the size of the house. I wasn’t thrilled, but I thought to myself, “If this were all there was in all of Seattle that we could afford and move into, I could definitely make it work.”

Not exactly resounding praise, but I feel positive.

Then we looked at townhouses. They were nicely appointed with pretty kitchens and hardwood floors, but no character whatsoever. It felt like taking any sort of charm out of the apartment we were living in, and then piling it into 3 layers. The view from the bedroom on one of them was actually the construction site of what will no doubt be more shitty condos, no less than ten feet away. No yard… The third townhouse, complete with beige carpet, a fireplace that would have been smoking hot to a swinging bachelor round abouts ’72, and a nailed in 2x4 keeping the door to the garage closed as the current owners meth-head son had been squatting in there, was giving the two of us bad flashbacks of Orange Country. The realtor gave a look of bemused curiosity when we made it clear that our memories of Orange County weren’t all blow jobs and donuts.

I was depressed, very. The prospects seemed to be getting as dim as the 4 o’clock winter sky. The realtor had mentioned showing us a place that had cropped up in the listings, but was too small. She was waving it off, but the consensus was that we were out already, let’s take a look.

A none too crowded street and small bungalow set off from it by a good sized front yard. Cute from the outside, but going in knowing it was small I wasn’t terribly excited. I got inside and just on entering the door got the feeling. You know the feeling? The feeling that this is in fact home?

It’s something that I can’t explain easily, but when I see it in my head, the perfect house, it’s pretty close to this. Built in the 30’s/40’s and everything about it I just fell in love with. And if it were just Bif and I living in it, it probably would be home. It was just too small to make it work with the baby – and it breaks my heart a little bit. Those walls of fantastic texture due to years of painting and repainting, those window frames, that tiny little eating area, the wooden deck down to the back, the unfinished basement… It’s not meant to be mine, but felt like it may have been in another life.

Over beer and tots at Six Arms, I did feel hope - mixed in with the bittersweet taste of losing a place that was never mine. It gave me hope that there will be house that works for us with the right size and yard and character, hope that again I would walk into a house and already be home. I realized about myself that I will sacrifice a fair amount of comfort for character.

Ask Me

Why I think Journey sucks so damn hard, go ahead and ask me. And I will present to you:

Exhibit I.

Which stands for the internal bleeding I feel like I'm suffering when I see this picture.

Moisture Is The Essence Of Wetness

It’s an odd feeling to see the national news talk about how bad the weather is where you are. We got some rain up in here yesterday. And some mudslides, some city streets opening up under cars, some major flooding, some 100 mile an hour winds on the coast. We remained pretty okay up on Capitol Hill, but it was, without a doubt, one of the wettest days I’ve ever witnessed.

*Insert “your mom” joke here.

I was reminded, as I watched the parking lot outside my work window turn into a white capped wading pool, of a temp job I had in San Francisco. It was during the winter of aught two and SF was getting a nice hit of wet winter itself. We were living in an apartment that had the fun little amenity of a bathroom sink that made like a geyser of cold, dirty water whenever it rained with some intensity. Combine this with a less than useful landlord who was upset that they couldn’t charge us $1500 for rent when they bought the place as we were already living there, and I had a lot of late nights, ankle deep in runoff, trying to mop up a bathroom.

But I digress. After being laid off, I scored a posh temp gig (and by posh I mean, well, not posh) at a self storage facility. Duties were to include: filing, answering phones, renting spaces and apparently calling renters whose units had been flooded when the biblical deluge hit 13th and Duboce.

Man, it was messy. This place started taking on water like it had hit an iceberg (and my heart did, in fact, go on). The owners, who I had never seen before this time, came rushing in to shout orders to poorly paid minions with wet/dry shop vacs. They decided it would be a good idea for someone to call the soon to be upset renters, with treasures so cherished they were locked away from home, and let them know that their belongings were probably now ruined. This would be a good job for the temp they decided.

This is probably a good place to mention that the day prior to this, I got the phone call informing me of a real job. This day, Wet Friday I like to call it, would be my last there at the self storage place.

So I started calling people. I got a lot of sad stories about record collections and files and grandma’s goose down quilt, I got to talk to some very upset people. And then one guy who was bat shit pissed. He screamed, he swore, he made vague and unpleasant accusations about my mother’s good standing in the community.

I have dreams, I do, about my final days at jobs I don’t like. Most of them involve telling off people that I’ve had to keep quiet to for too long. There was a customer I had to deal with at a company in Florida that was so awful that it made me want to throw up when I had to call her. I promised myself that on my last day at that job I would call her up and make liberal use of the C word until she either began crying or someone drug me away from the phone, cackling and shouting obscenities. But I never actually do or say the things that I dream of. But:

After listening to this guy rant at top pitch for a good five minutes, I quite calmly said to him, “Sir, I’m a temp here and it’s my last day. You are yelling at the wrong fucking guy.” I then hung up the phone, walked out to the swamp that was the bottom floor of the units and told the owners good luck and good bye.

It still feels good…

Talkin'

Let’s talk winter. We got the first snow of it on Saturday while the apartment was crowded with well wishers for a one year old. In that crowd were four little ones just hittin’ the low end of double digit months. It was like having a troop of chattering monkeys scampering about, cute monkeys to be sure, but I kept expecting them to bust out roller skates and cigars.

‘Cause that’s what monkeys do, which makes me wonder where they saw it. It doesn’t really and I’m already derailed two lines in.

Party was called on account of the birthday boy wearing himself out running laps around the apartment. The gates of the baby corral were thrown wide and he was taking full advantage. So much so that the tiredness came on all out of the blue and he began spontaneously falling and half crying and sort of lamely punching the floor – which is exactly what I do when I’m tired. So with the combo of an early nap time and snow that began to come down as if cloud giants in nighties were having a pillow fight, people filed out.

I took it upon myself to get out a couple of times for walks in the falling snow. I like being out in it, not driving in it mind you, but strolling. I like that almost painful cold. I like that those flakes seem to absorb sound. I like that the snow takes the leafless, dormant trees (which honestly can get a bit depressing) and turns them into something majestic. By morning the accumulation had been turned back to water, like a really lame magic trick, and the slightly entertaining snow has been replaced by not at all entertaining driving rain and the promise of 50 mph winds.

Now, let’s talk Chez Gaudy. Fuck Disneyland, CG is the happiest place on earth. It’s a heady combination of cozy, warm, good food, phenomenal cocktails and friendliness that makes me love it always and forever. You walk by it, and if you didn’t know you would not think it’s a restaurant. It’s almost as if someone turned a good sized apartment into an eatery and it works. The food: explosive goodness with every bite. The drinks: carefully concocted and designed to get you a little fast and loose with your clothing and sense of tact. The staff: all kinds of awesome. And if you’re lucky enough to be there when Greg is, you’re in for a good night. Here’s a guy who gets off on making sure you’re having a good time in his place. He’s like a mad, roaming stand up and it feels as though he’s been your friend for years. He’s 8 kinds of inappropriate, has sat at our table to have drinks with us, and was the other night telling a story of how he was playing a drinking game which involved smacking one of the patrons. I sort of have a man crush on him.

Now, let’s talk Spinach Artichoke Parmesan dip. Has nothing to do with the others above, but I love it and how. I have had numerous conversations about filling up swimming pools with substances not meant for swimming pools (corn chips, jelly beans, Jello brand pudding), but seriously the thought of filling a swimming pool with Spinach Artichoke Parmesan dip and diving into kind of gives me a stiffy.

I’m also all hot on balsamic reduction right now. It’s time to sign off.