Merry Christmas, everyone!
First, credit where credit is due- the title comes courtesy of JOC. He would definitely want you to know that.
Mom and I just got back from midnight mass here in HMB. I've never attended mass here; there's only one church, and HMB is so provincial that I've always been a little skeptical about the likely quality of the mass. Since music is the part of church that I most enjoy, it's hard to find a church I will actually attend that's not in a big city, where there's enough local singing talent to put together decent music. So I was, as I said, skeptical going in.
Reality, it turns out, exceeded my expectations for how bad it would be. In order:
1) The pre-mass singing was, in a word, awful.
2) The pre-mass violinist was terrible in "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring", which is one of my favorite pieces ever. She was pleasantly mediocre for "O Holy Night". She achieved her greatest consistency in being quite distinctly flat in absolutely every note she ever tried to play in the upper parts of the register.
3) The mass did not appear to be rehearsed; people at times looked like they weren't sure what came next, and the musical director at one point polled the audience to see if anyone knew a particular Spanish carol that they really wanted to sing, but didn't currently have anyone who really knew.
4) The homily was awful. And when it was finally, blissfully, over, one of the other priests got up and gave it again in Spanish. It was much better in Spanish, since I couldn't understand most of it, and that priest spoke a lot faster.
Moments ago, as I was airing this complaint to mom:
Mom: You should become a deacon. Then *you* could preach...
Me: Ma, they're not going to let ME be a deacon.
Mom: I was talking to Father McCabe about this, and he said they'd never let you be a deacon either. You think too radically. He did, however, think you could be a Jesuit. They like to think radically.
Me: Mom, I'm single like 4 months and already you're trying to recruit me for the priesthood???
Mom: Not ME. Father McCabe. He said since you just dumped another girl, you should think about it.
Me: OK, I admit my situation is grim, but it's not THAT grim. Jeez.
5) After communion, one of the associate priests had disappeared (his chair was now conspicuously empty). The main priest just sat in his chair quietly, and the entire congregation sat there looking at him. Minutes passed. "What the hell is he waiting for?" was what was going through my mind, when finally one of the other priests jumped up and went to the microphone to explain what was happening. In Spanish. Apparently, it was amusing.
Finally, the back door of the church opened, and in marched Santa Claus. Or, technically, the missing priest, now back from his quick costume change and ready to march up to the little manger yelling "Hallelujah! Christ is here!!" He then made a big show of bowing several times to the little toy Jesus, and then exited the way he came, again shouting "Hallelujah! Christ is here!!".
Once he was gone, the main priest explained that Santa represented commercial christmas, and that the symbolism of seeing him bow to the baby Jesus was important.
Oy vey.
But it's over now. If we do christmas in CA again, I'll take mom up to the city for midnight mass. I'm not doing weirdo mass here again.
Just 4 days until I board a plane bound for Belize. I so need to get away from here for awhile.
Anyway, Merry Christmas to all! And to all, a good night!
Friday, December 25, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Things That Exist Only Because Women Exist, Part 1
Dryer sheets.
Seriously, no man would ever have invented such a thing.
I think of this because tonight, as I was throwing my laundry in the dryer, I was momentarily distressed to realize I had forgotten to throw in a dryer sheet. Prior to dating Keiko, I had never actually laid hands on a dryer sheet, but she felt very strongly about the importance of a fresh scent coming out of the dryer, and bought me some. Over the next year, I slowly evolved to the point where I am now- that it distresses me not to have a dryer sheet in my laundry.
This is what women do to you.
Nowadays, I leave the seat down, I at least strongly consider throwing away socks and underwear just because they have a few holes in them, I actually launder my sheets periodically, and I find myself distressed if I don't have dryer sheets.
I am but a shadow of a man anymore...
Seriously, no man would ever have invented such a thing.
I think of this because tonight, as I was throwing my laundry in the dryer, I was momentarily distressed to realize I had forgotten to throw in a dryer sheet. Prior to dating Keiko, I had never actually laid hands on a dryer sheet, but she felt very strongly about the importance of a fresh scent coming out of the dryer, and bought me some. Over the next year, I slowly evolved to the point where I am now- that it distresses me not to have a dryer sheet in my laundry.
This is what women do to you.
Nowadays, I leave the seat down, I at least strongly consider throwing away socks and underwear just because they have a few holes in them, I actually launder my sheets periodically, and I find myself distressed if I don't have dryer sheets.
I am but a shadow of a man anymore...
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thank goodness for moms
Mom arrives tomorrow for a week. As silly as I feel saying this, being a 37-year-old man and all, I really need her right now. It's not great for me to be alone in the house as much as I have been over the last couple of weeks. It will be great to hang out, have metaphysical conversations, and read books. Also, it's nice to come home to home-cooked curry, which is comfort food for me.
She leaves 12/27, and on 12/29 I leave for Miami, and then Belize. 6 days of tracking around the jungle with JJM and AC is exactly what I need- the chance to explore, be away from my life here, and remember what it's like to be have fun and be happy.
Then I have to come back and figure out how to really start building a life here. Lots to figure out where that's concerned.
But more on all that stuff later. Right now, thank goodness for mom...
She leaves 12/27, and on 12/29 I leave for Miami, and then Belize. 6 days of tracking around the jungle with JJM and AC is exactly what I need- the chance to explore, be away from my life here, and remember what it's like to be have fun and be happy.
Then I have to come back and figure out how to really start building a life here. Lots to figure out where that's concerned.
But more on all that stuff later. Right now, thank goodness for mom...
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The hearts that never played in tune...
That's a line from a song called "Aubrey", by Bread. It's a fantastic, if extremely mournful, song.
This is going to be one of those cathartic, mostly depressing posts. So, you might want to consider not reading it. I'd almost rather you didn't. Last time I wrote a post like this, L read it and strongly suggested I take it down, on the grounds that I shouldn't allow anyone to see me so emotionally stripped bare.
But the thing is, this blog is something I actually do for myself. I allow it to be publicly readable because my life is just wacky enough just often enough that I think it has the ability to amuse the small group of people who actually read it. And I've never regretted not taking down that previous post, because from time to time I read it to remind myself of what I was feeling then.
So, I'm writing another post like it tonight, to try and get out of myself the feelings that have left me all but paralyzed for the entire weekend. I need to get the feelings out, because I have to get up and function like a normal person tomorrow, but I want to remember through the years what I went through during this time.
And so this is it: your last chance, dear readers, to bail out before we do a deep dive into what LAJ once called "all my complicated glory". You've been warned.
Although Keiko and I broke up over 3 months ago, we have tried hard to be friends, and continued to gchat a little pretty much every day, and talk on the phone maybe once a week. That was a lot less communication than we used to have when we were dating, but both of us hate being single and I think were relying on each other to be a steady presence even as we confronted an uncertain future, and the need to start getting back out there and dating other people.
Recently, as Keiko started to get out there and start meeting people, (something markedly easier to do when you're 27, stunningly gorgeous, and in a town full of single twenty-somethings, than it is to do when you're 37, balding, and in a town full of software engineers), it had gotten harder for us. For me, it was hard to see her moving on, even though I knew it was the right thing for her. For her, I had only in the last month really done enough processing of our relationship to do the relationship post-mortem from my perspective, and that stuff was hard for her to hear. All of her relationship post-mortem stuff had come in the first month post-breakup, and although that stuff hadn't been easy for me to hear either, I'd listened to all of it and tried wherever I could to validate whatever she was feeling. I know the job I did was imperfect, but I think I did a reasonable job of that.
But the end result was that this last week we had a series of very hard conversations followed by a series of very painful emails. I was reminded anew of some important rules about email:
1) NEVER put in an email something that requires the reader to correctly supply complicated nuances of tone. What will happen, invariably, like a law of nature itself, is that the reader will hear in their mind that sequence of tones which is most directly *opposite* the ones you wanted them to hear.
2) When someone writes an email like that to YOU, remember that (1) as noted above, you are almost certainly getting the tones all wrong, and (2) whether you've got the tones right or wrong, NEVER respond to the email while you're still gripped by whatever emotions you're feeling. Slow it down. The emotional release you'll get from the quick response will last for the briefest of moments. The regret you'll feel about what you said, that you'll carry for the rest of your life.
In our last series of emails, both Keiko and I violated those rules repeatedly. As it all spiraled out of control, the last email she sent, late late Friday night, ended with "I think it'll be better for us if we were just exs who tried once and realized we didn't work as friends. I loved you passionately and I learned and grew so much from this relationship. Thank you."
I don't know if I've ever been so hurt by a couple brief sentences.
So, in clear violation of Rule 2, I wrote back that I was sad that she didn't want to be friends, but that I would leave her her space and wait 6 months before trying to give her a call to see how she's doing. Looking back, I wish I'd slowed it down more along the way. Who knows, we may well have come to this point anyway, but maybe not. We'll never know.
Now I confront the loss of Keiko a 2nd time. Losing her as a girlfriend hurt a lot, but losing her as a friend, confronting the possibility that we may never again share laughter or really know what's going on in each others' lives, I feel that loss a thousand times more strongly. In the end, we did not actually make great life partners for each other, for a number of different reasons, but we *did* actually make great companions for each other, and the loss of that companionship has left me, for the first time in my life, feeling deeply, deeply lonely.
I doubt that Keiko will ever read this post; I remember her saying a couple weeks ago that she couldn't read my blog anymore because it was just too painful for her. But Keiko, if you do end up reading this, this is what I would say to you now: I didn't do as good a job as I should have in the time I had you of loving and cherishing you as you do indeed deserve to be loved and cherished; I didn't communicate with you nearly as much as I should have, nor did I do enough work to understand your communication style; I think you looked to me for leadership in this relationship, and I totally abdicated that responsibility. That's a lot of different ways to have let you down, and I'm truly sorry for that. But I did grow to love you more deeply than I have ever loved another woman, and the 2 years we spent together are an important part of who I am, which means *you're* an important part of who I am. I will love and treasure that part to all the end of my days, and I hope that you will find it in your heart to do the same. And maybe, just maybe, one happy day 6 months or 6 years from now we will reconnect as friends, and once again find ourselves eager to share with each other what's going on in our lives. I know I will always be hoping for that.
Goodbye, my baby. May you one day very soon find the man who will love and cherish you as you deserve, and who will give you the simple, quiet family life that I know in your heart you desire. And through the years, if you should chance to think upon me, know that wherever I am, I am wishing you peace, love, and happiness...
Always.
This is going to be one of those cathartic, mostly depressing posts. So, you might want to consider not reading it. I'd almost rather you didn't. Last time I wrote a post like this, L read it and strongly suggested I take it down, on the grounds that I shouldn't allow anyone to see me so emotionally stripped bare.
But the thing is, this blog is something I actually do for myself. I allow it to be publicly readable because my life is just wacky enough just often enough that I think it has the ability to amuse the small group of people who actually read it. And I've never regretted not taking down that previous post, because from time to time I read it to remind myself of what I was feeling then.
So, I'm writing another post like it tonight, to try and get out of myself the feelings that have left me all but paralyzed for the entire weekend. I need to get the feelings out, because I have to get up and function like a normal person tomorrow, but I want to remember through the years what I went through during this time.
And so this is it: your last chance, dear readers, to bail out before we do a deep dive into what LAJ once called "all my complicated glory". You've been warned.
Although Keiko and I broke up over 3 months ago, we have tried hard to be friends, and continued to gchat a little pretty much every day, and talk on the phone maybe once a week. That was a lot less communication than we used to have when we were dating, but both of us hate being single and I think were relying on each other to be a steady presence even as we confronted an uncertain future, and the need to start getting back out there and dating other people.
Recently, as Keiko started to get out there and start meeting people, (something markedly easier to do when you're 27, stunningly gorgeous, and in a town full of single twenty-somethings, than it is to do when you're 37, balding, and in a town full of software engineers), it had gotten harder for us. For me, it was hard to see her moving on, even though I knew it was the right thing for her. For her, I had only in the last month really done enough processing of our relationship to do the relationship post-mortem from my perspective, and that stuff was hard for her to hear. All of her relationship post-mortem stuff had come in the first month post-breakup, and although that stuff hadn't been easy for me to hear either, I'd listened to all of it and tried wherever I could to validate whatever she was feeling. I know the job I did was imperfect, but I think I did a reasonable job of that.
But the end result was that this last week we had a series of very hard conversations followed by a series of very painful emails. I was reminded anew of some important rules about email:
1) NEVER put in an email something that requires the reader to correctly supply complicated nuances of tone. What will happen, invariably, like a law of nature itself, is that the reader will hear in their mind that sequence of tones which is most directly *opposite* the ones you wanted them to hear.
2) When someone writes an email like that to YOU, remember that (1) as noted above, you are almost certainly getting the tones all wrong, and (2) whether you've got the tones right or wrong, NEVER respond to the email while you're still gripped by whatever emotions you're feeling. Slow it down. The emotional release you'll get from the quick response will last for the briefest of moments. The regret you'll feel about what you said, that you'll carry for the rest of your life.
In our last series of emails, both Keiko and I violated those rules repeatedly. As it all spiraled out of control, the last email she sent, late late Friday night, ended with "I think it'll be better for us if we were just exs who tried once and realized we didn't work as friends. I loved you passionately and I learned and grew so much from this relationship. Thank you."
I don't know if I've ever been so hurt by a couple brief sentences.
So, in clear violation of Rule 2, I wrote back that I was sad that she didn't want to be friends, but that I would leave her her space and wait 6 months before trying to give her a call to see how she's doing. Looking back, I wish I'd slowed it down more along the way. Who knows, we may well have come to this point anyway, but maybe not. We'll never know.
Now I confront the loss of Keiko a 2nd time. Losing her as a girlfriend hurt a lot, but losing her as a friend, confronting the possibility that we may never again share laughter or really know what's going on in each others' lives, I feel that loss a thousand times more strongly. In the end, we did not actually make great life partners for each other, for a number of different reasons, but we *did* actually make great companions for each other, and the loss of that companionship has left me, for the first time in my life, feeling deeply, deeply lonely.
I doubt that Keiko will ever read this post; I remember her saying a couple weeks ago that she couldn't read my blog anymore because it was just too painful for her. But Keiko, if you do end up reading this, this is what I would say to you now: I didn't do as good a job as I should have in the time I had you of loving and cherishing you as you do indeed deserve to be loved and cherished; I didn't communicate with you nearly as much as I should have, nor did I do enough work to understand your communication style; I think you looked to me for leadership in this relationship, and I totally abdicated that responsibility. That's a lot of different ways to have let you down, and I'm truly sorry for that. But I did grow to love you more deeply than I have ever loved another woman, and the 2 years we spent together are an important part of who I am, which means *you're* an important part of who I am. I will love and treasure that part to all the end of my days, and I hope that you will find it in your heart to do the same. And maybe, just maybe, one happy day 6 months or 6 years from now we will reconnect as friends, and once again find ourselves eager to share with each other what's going on in our lives. I know I will always be hoping for that.
Goodbye, my baby. May you one day very soon find the man who will love and cherish you as you deserve, and who will give you the simple, quiet family life that I know in your heart you desire. And through the years, if you should chance to think upon me, know that wherever I am, I am wishing you peace, love, and happiness...
Always.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Questions some people out there really ought to spend some time pondering...
Question:
"Why is it colloquially called a 'fast lane', and not a 'set-my-cruise-control-to-5-miles-over-the-speed-limit-at-the-tail-end-of-morning-rush-so-as-to-effectively-block-all-the-people-who-are-running-late-and-would-love-to-be-doing-85-right-now lane?"
"Why is it colloquially called a 'fast lane', and not a 'set-my-cruise-control-to-5-miles-over-the-speed-limit-at-the-tail-end-of-morning-rush-so-as-to-effectively-block-all-the-people-who-are-running-late-and-would-love-to-be-doing-85-right-now lane?"
Sunday, November 22, 2009
A 1 minute conversation with my mother...
Mom: "What's up?"
Me: "Hey mom- I'm working on editing application essays that are due tomorrow for one of my students, and I'm basically behind in like every aspect of my life right now."
(pause)
Mom: "Is this new for you?"
Me: "I'll talk to you later mom."
Me: "Hey mom- I'm working on editing application essays that are due tomorrow for one of my students, and I'm basically behind in like every aspect of my life right now."
(pause)
Mom: "Is this new for you?"
Me: "I'll talk to you later mom."
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The Fisher King
I sometimes tell my students about "Gus's Threefold Path to Happiness". I always preface it by saying that there is more than one path to happiness, and you should always run screaming from anyone who claims there's only one path, because that person has an agenda, and whatever it is, it probably isn't in your best interest. Mine is just one possible path- I can't remember if I've written about it before, so here it is:
1) Learn to love people.
Not all of them individually- there are a LOT of assholes out there. But people in their messy aggregate. Because doing so keeps you optimistic, and makes your heart strong. Otherwise, you end up cynical and unhappy, and that's a terrible way to live.
2) Learn to love learning.
Because doing so keeps your mind strong, and because if you do, then you can never be bored, because there will always be something else out there to learn about.
3) Learn to love baseball.
Because it's a metaphor for life. Here are just a few of many ways in which this is true: you start at home, and you spend pretty much most of the game trying to get back home in one way or another. Like life, most of baseball is fairly routine, but if you learn to appreciate its subtleties, even the routine stuff is interesting in its way, and the routine bits are punctuated by moments of the greatest joy, and moments of the most crushing sadness and disappointment. Baseball, like life, is a curious mix of individual performance and performance of the others that individual relies on. And finally, as with life, you know precisely when baseball starts, but you have no idea when it is going to end. Sure, there's a statistical average length of a baseball game, and most games are going to be around that long, but sometimes games go into extra innings, and last a lot longer than you thought.
And sometimes, a game you were really excited to see gets rained out before it even really gets a chance to begin.
This is a story about one of those rainouts.
MK, who is one of the most amazing people I know, got married almost 2 years ago in NYC to Carrie, who is also amazing. Keiko and I went to the wedding and had a blast, as expected, since those two are always a riot. A couple months after the dinner party in CA where Ed almost killed himself, they discovered that they were pregnant with twins. Natural ones- no fertility treatments involved. From the beginning, it seemed like a tough pregnancy, but MK & Carrie fought through it with their typical wry senses of humor.
This summer, they found out they had Twin-to-twin Transfusion Syndrome. TTTS occurs when one twin is essentially starving the other by taking the lion's share of the nutrients in utero. This situation does not typically end well for one or both of the twins, but MK & Carrie went to Philadelphia to get a cutting edge surgeon to do an operation to try and save both twins.
And miraculously, it worked. Both twins made it through.
Thus, Fisher and Truman were eagerly anticipated. The plan was to keep them in until the 3rd trimester, and then get them out of there and into incubators. The surgery would serve to make it possible for them to live long enough to make it to the 3rd trimester.
And on October 15th, Fisher and Truman were born. Obviously, they were super primi babies, but they made it into the incubators, and we were all thrilled for MK & Carrie. They had many funny stories about it all, which MK blogged about. I will include the link to that blog at the end of this post. It's worth reading.
So began the wait to see how they would do in the incubators, and after a month, it seemed like they were doing well enough that talk began to shift to a discussion of when they would finally be able to come home from the hospital.
Then, on Monday, Fisher was diagnosed with necrotizing endocolitis (hoepfully I'm spelling that right). Basically, bacteria was eating his intestines. It was pretty serious, and no Tuesday they did a major operation to try and save him. As a result of his diagnosis, they also checked Truman, and he had a similar issue, but not nearly as advanced. In fact, it was caught early enough that he could simply go on antibiotics and not have to do an operation.
Fisher made it through the operation on Tuesday, but was looking at needing at least another one. And on Wednesday, in his mother's arms, surrounded by family, he died, barely more than a month old. But in so doing, he may well have saved his brother's life.
It is moments like these that can cause a person to wonder: what is the point of it all? Is it that there's no point at all, as many an atheist would claim? Or is it "God works in mysterious ways yada yada yada insert cliched judeo-christian nonsense here"? Or is it that somewhere out there, there is a vast reservoir of consciousness, which you can call God or whatever you want, and from that reservoir bits of consciousness come to earth and are born, in order to accomplish some task?
I don't pretend to have answers to such questions, but I do know that Fisher saved his brother's life, and in doing so, accomplished more of significance in his one month of life than many people will in their entire existences. I wish I had gotten to meet him- I assumed that eventually I would. His passing serves to remind us all that the most important thing of all is spending time with those we care about, because it is not given us to know how much time they or we have left. It's altogether too easy to forget that little lesson in the daily routine of life.
And so, Fisher, I bid you Godspeed, on whatever journey awaits you on the other side. I will look forward to meeting you there someday.
MK's Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Blog:
http://twintotwintransfusion.blogspot.com/
1) Learn to love people.
Not all of them individually- there are a LOT of assholes out there. But people in their messy aggregate. Because doing so keeps you optimistic, and makes your heart strong. Otherwise, you end up cynical and unhappy, and that's a terrible way to live.
2) Learn to love learning.
Because doing so keeps your mind strong, and because if you do, then you can never be bored, because there will always be something else out there to learn about.
3) Learn to love baseball.
Because it's a metaphor for life. Here are just a few of many ways in which this is true: you start at home, and you spend pretty much most of the game trying to get back home in one way or another. Like life, most of baseball is fairly routine, but if you learn to appreciate its subtleties, even the routine stuff is interesting in its way, and the routine bits are punctuated by moments of the greatest joy, and moments of the most crushing sadness and disappointment. Baseball, like life, is a curious mix of individual performance and performance of the others that individual relies on. And finally, as with life, you know precisely when baseball starts, but you have no idea when it is going to end. Sure, there's a statistical average length of a baseball game, and most games are going to be around that long, but sometimes games go into extra innings, and last a lot longer than you thought.
And sometimes, a game you were really excited to see gets rained out before it even really gets a chance to begin.
This is a story about one of those rainouts.
MK, who is one of the most amazing people I know, got married almost 2 years ago in NYC to Carrie, who is also amazing. Keiko and I went to the wedding and had a blast, as expected, since those two are always a riot. A couple months after the dinner party in CA where Ed almost killed himself, they discovered that they were pregnant with twins. Natural ones- no fertility treatments involved. From the beginning, it seemed like a tough pregnancy, but MK & Carrie fought through it with their typical wry senses of humor.
This summer, they found out they had Twin-to-twin Transfusion Syndrome. TTTS occurs when one twin is essentially starving the other by taking the lion's share of the nutrients in utero. This situation does not typically end well for one or both of the twins, but MK & Carrie went to Philadelphia to get a cutting edge surgeon to do an operation to try and save both twins.
And miraculously, it worked. Both twins made it through.
Thus, Fisher and Truman were eagerly anticipated. The plan was to keep them in until the 3rd trimester, and then get them out of there and into incubators. The surgery would serve to make it possible for them to live long enough to make it to the 3rd trimester.
And on October 15th, Fisher and Truman were born. Obviously, they were super primi babies, but they made it into the incubators, and we were all thrilled for MK & Carrie. They had many funny stories about it all, which MK blogged about. I will include the link to that blog at the end of this post. It's worth reading.
So began the wait to see how they would do in the incubators, and after a month, it seemed like they were doing well enough that talk began to shift to a discussion of when they would finally be able to come home from the hospital.
Then, on Monday, Fisher was diagnosed with necrotizing endocolitis (hoepfully I'm spelling that right). Basically, bacteria was eating his intestines. It was pretty serious, and no Tuesday they did a major operation to try and save him. As a result of his diagnosis, they also checked Truman, and he had a similar issue, but not nearly as advanced. In fact, it was caught early enough that he could simply go on antibiotics and not have to do an operation.
Fisher made it through the operation on Tuesday, but was looking at needing at least another one. And on Wednesday, in his mother's arms, surrounded by family, he died, barely more than a month old. But in so doing, he may well have saved his brother's life.
It is moments like these that can cause a person to wonder: what is the point of it all? Is it that there's no point at all, as many an atheist would claim? Or is it "God works in mysterious ways yada yada yada insert cliched judeo-christian nonsense here"? Or is it that somewhere out there, there is a vast reservoir of consciousness, which you can call God or whatever you want, and from that reservoir bits of consciousness come to earth and are born, in order to accomplish some task?
I don't pretend to have answers to such questions, but I do know that Fisher saved his brother's life, and in doing so, accomplished more of significance in his one month of life than many people will in their entire existences. I wish I had gotten to meet him- I assumed that eventually I would. His passing serves to remind us all that the most important thing of all is spending time with those we care about, because it is not given us to know how much time they or we have left. It's altogether too easy to forget that little lesson in the daily routine of life.
And so, Fisher, I bid you Godspeed, on whatever journey awaits you on the other side. I will look forward to meeting you there someday.
MK's Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Blog:
http://twintotwintransfusion.blogspot.com/
Friday, November 13, 2009
Hey, thanks for coming out!
Jeffrey was in town this past weekend...
I hadn't had a chance to see him since Keiko and I visited from NYC the summer I left. He's busy running his coffee shop in Richmond, which I highly recommend (Crossroads Coffee Shop). We'd been plotting a trip out to CA for him for a while, and finally we managed to engineer it.
Now, Jeffrey is one of my last single friends, so I had an aggressive plan of going out worked out. Thursday night we met up for dinner with my student Tim, and his wife and a couple of friends at an awesome place in Chinatown called R&G lounge. We ate and drank until pretty late, to the point where the only other people left in the place were the wait staff, who were having their own dinner by that point at the table across from ours. We put away several bottles of wine, and fortunately it was a long walk back to the car.
Friday I had to work a little, but then I came home and we plotted out a pub crawl in the Mission district of SF, which is supposed to be one of the up-and-coming-but-still-gritty areas of the city. We drove up to Daly City and then took the BART in the rest of the way, figuring that the BART wait/ride on the way back would be good sobering-up time.
Once in the Mission, we headed up Mission ave and started hitting pubs. The first place, we went to was a real neighborhood dive kind of place, and we had a couple drinks there that were decent, but nothing special. From there, we went to a much fancier place on the next block that looked like it would be a nice date place. Very nice atmosphere, etc. The crowd was a little older. The drinks, however, were still nothing special, just more expensive.
From there, we ended up in a super-crowded place with early 20-somethings. That place had fun energy, and the drinks were the best to that point. We nearly came to blows with some people over seats, which were very hard to come by, but then ended up talking to them for a while. The food looked very good.
From there, we wound up in a place called the Beauty Bar, which is the only place whose name I can remember anymore, although I think Jeffrey has notes written somewhere in his phone. The Beauty Bar had a nice, if small, dance floor and had good music. Also, the Jack and Coke I had was *strong*. At this point, I probably should have started to slow it down a little, but I didn't. Plus, I'd had different drinks in every place, so I had a lot of different kinds of alcohol swimming around in there, plus hadn't really eaten. Not smart.
Anyway, we enjoyed the Beauty Bar- it was a very good time, although I must say that it's not clear where the beauty is, because it wasn't in the decor or in the clientele. But we enjoyed the place anyway.
From there, we went to another place whose name I don't remember, before reaching 16th street, at which point I wanted to head over to the parallel street and work our way back down to the 24th street BART station. At that point we would have made a full circle.
On our way along 16th street, we passed an unmarked door which clearly had the sounds of a club emanating from behind it. Now, being who I am, I couldn't let an unmarked door go unexplored, and that's when I'm sober. By this point, I was fairly drunk, and NO WAY were we going to pass that up. I grabbed Jeffrey and said "WE'RE GOING IN HERE!"
I threw open the door and we stepped in. And everyone sort of stopped and looked at us.
One of the things you learn as you study ecology is that over time, populations in an area will fragment, and the different sub populations will evolve to take advantage of different tiny niches. Thus, as frogs move into an area, there will initially be just the one population, but then a million years later, you'll have 12 different related species of frogs, each of which has adapted itself to one specific niche in the area. The same thing happens with consumer products- for instance, someone invents shampoo, but then 100 years later, you have shampoo for blonds, shampoo for brunettes, shampoo for people with dry hair, shampoo for people with oily hair, etc. A million different types of shampoo, each for some niche in the market.
The same thing happens with human cultures, I think. For instance, take gay culture. In a city like, for instance, Richmond, VA, where the culture is extremely conservative, there are probably at most a couple gay bars, and pretty much anyone who's gay has to go to those few places. And keep it fairly on the DL, since the broader culture is still not very accepting of homosexuality. In other words, gay culture in a place like Richmond is not very well evolved.
Contrast that with a place like SF, which is more or less the global capital of gaydom. In SF, what you find is that gay clubs are all over the place, and as such have evolved into specialties. Like, for instance, this place we'd just walked into, which was clearly a hispanic gay bar.
Everyone looked at us. We looked at them. For a moment, it seemed like even the music had stopped, like you see on TV shows and in the movies. In that moment, I thought, "Oh well, we can't just walk out now."
So we stepped boldly in. And everyone went back to what they were doing.
We bellied up to the bar, where the bartender looked fairly amused to see us. Jeffrey was the only white person in the bar. I figure since I look Hispanic, they gave him a pass, and probably assumed we were, you know, together. I decided I needed a strong drink here, so I order a shot of Patron.
Also not a good decision, since I really needed to be slowing down the pace and the drink strength. But whatever, I had my shot. Immediately, I Mexican dude came over and started chatting me up. His English was limited, but we had a nice conversation for a while, until his friend dragged him away to go play pool. Honestly, I was a bit relieved.
Then a lesbian Chicana came up and we started talking. She explained right up front that she really liked girls, so we hit it off well since we have that in common. We talked for about 15 minutes, and then she went off and I turned to Jeffrey.
Me: "Wow, this is wild. Wasn't expecting this to be a gay bar."
Jeffrey: "Yeah, me neither. By the way, you know I'm gay, right?"
(pause)
Me: "Uh, what?"
Jeffrey: "Yeah, I've been slowly coming out to my friends over the last year or so. That's why i was bummed that I couldn't come out for the dinner party earlier this year. But, I figure there's never going to be a more appropriate time to come out than right now, so there you go. I'm gay."
(pause)
(I grab the last of my Patron and down it.)
Me: "Well, good on ya' for being who you are. Guess that explains why we're still alive in here- I look Hispanic and you're gay. We fit right in."
To be honest, it wasn't really all that surprising. Nacole had called that years ago. But I figured it's Jeffrey's right to be who he is, or to pretend to be whoever he wants, so I never asked or said anything about it, figuring if he had anything to say about it to me he eventually would. I just never would have guessed it would be in a gay Hispanic bar in SF.
(Joel on the phone the next day- "so wait, you were in the gay capital of the world, in a part of the city known for its gay bars, and you went into a bar with an unmarked door? What did you THINK was going to happen??" Me: "Why don't you shut up?")
So we had a nice conversation about what it's like to be gay in Richmond, how it had been coming out to people, etc. Then we finally left and headed to the next place, which was around the corner and which was refreshingly hetero (well, refreshingly for me, anyway). I only remember this place very dimly, and I remember ordering a Bay Breeze on the grounds that I should really stop drinking anyway. I don't remember actually drinking it, but I'm pretty sure I did.
From there, we went back down 16th st, because we were both completely wasted by this point, and we hadn't eaten so we were starving. Right across from the Hispanic gay bar was a taco place, so we went in there and I had an awesome chicken quesadilla while trying to remain seated in my chair, which seemed to be really unstable for some reason. After putting away the quesadilla, we decided that maybe we'd better call it a night, and went down the street to the BART station.
Amazingly, we didn't have to wait long for the BART, which doesn't run so often that late at night, and we got on needing only about 5 stops to get back to Daly City. However, the BART is not real gentle, and after rocking back and forth for a couple stops, we hit the Balboa Park station and I said to Jeffrey "We're getting off here."
Which we did. I collapsed in a heap on the platform, grateful that the platform was moving a lot less than the train had been. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be perfectly still, which is what I *really* needed at that point, and within moments I realized that puking was imminent. I hated the thought of puking all over the platform, so I started crawling for the edge so I could lean over and puke on the tracks. However, on the way there (the 4 feet along the ground that I had to crawl to get to the platform edge), I saw lights in the distance in the tunnel, and in a last brief moment of clear thinking, decided that maybe in my condition, being anywhere near the platform edge was maybe not such a good idea. So, I puked up my guts right there, a couple feet from the platform edge. But it was in clear view, so hopefully no one stepped in it. I feel real bad about that.
Stomach emptied, we got on the next train and made it the last couple of stops. Jeffrey drove us back, with me giving directions in what I guess was coherent enough fashion to get us there. Once home, I said thank you for a most interesting evening, and then went into my bathroom to spend some quality time driving the porcelain bus. And then I went to bed.
Thank god I didn't have to work on Saturday.
Saturday I'd planned another night out, but instead all we did was eat and eventually go see a movie. Neither one of us had the energy for anything else. That afternoon I checked my cell phone, because I learned after the night of Plaid's bachelor party that it's a good idea to check your phone the next day and see what you texted the night before. There were some eyebrow-raising texts from that night, and if I'd known about textsfromlastnight.com back then (thanks JJM for introducing me to that) I definitely would have had some things to submit.
Checking the phone Saturday, it looked pretty quiet, except there appeared to be a call from Alix that apparently I'd taken, but couldn't remember at all. I called her to see...
Me: "Uh, um, did we *talk* last night?"
Alix: "You're a very cheerful drunk, you know that?"
Me: "Uh, what did we talk about?"
Alix: "Why? Are you worried you said something you shouldn't have?"
Me: "What? Uh, no, I.."
Alix: "Ohmygod, you totally think I'm an idiot, and you're worried you finally actually said that to me!"
Me: "Ohmygod, can you stop being so goddamned insecure for 30 seconds and JUST TELL ME what the hell we talked about????"
Alix: "I actually called for some boy advice, which turned out to be very entertaining for me. And you totally think I'm an idiot."
Me: "As soon as my head stops hurting, I am going to kill you."
So we had a very mellow Saturday, which turned out to be exactly what we needed to recover. Here's the sunset:
Sunday I had to work a little in the morning, and then it was time to go to Max's 3rd birthday party. Jeffrey, being a mellow sort, was game to go, largely because I promised another pub crawl afterward. "Just remember there's going to be beer afterward," I said. So we headed over to the "My Gym" for a raucous afternoon of birthday celebration.
I don't know about you, but birthdays today seem to be a much larger production than they ever were when I was a kid. BTW, there's a part of me that can't believe that I write/say things like "Things are so different from the way they were when I was a kid." When did I become someone who says things like that?
Anyway, I don't remember having parties very often, and if I did, a couple people came over for some cake. And that was it.
Nowadays, birthday parties require hiring professional help, like the My Gym, or the Princess Ariel impersonator that Em had at her last birthday party. And there are lots of Activities, and birthday rides on the sled while all the kids sing happy birthday. And a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls. A zip-line! I want a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls for my 38th birthday, goddammit. But it was fun to see Max having such a good time. Jeffrey weathered it all well, and I got to catch up with some of Laura's family, which was nice.
After the party, which included our getting to take home 2 extra-large pizzas that turned out to be extra (they ended up feeding me for an entire week), Jeffrey and I headed up to the city for our second pub crawl, this time in North Beach.
This time, we decided to be a lot smarter about our pub crawling. For instance, we decided to hold the pacing to one place per hour, and no more than 2 drinks per place. Plus, we decided to allow for eating and drinking water along the way. As a consequence, I remember a lot more about the places we went, and I remember some of the conversations I had with people at the various bars we hit. They were all reasonably nice neighborhood bars; by the time we got through 5 of them, it was already getting close to midnight, and we had to drive back, and the rest of the places were on Broadway in the red light district, so we opted to save that stretch for another day. Best decision ever, especially considering I actually had to be at work in the morning.
Thus, the next morning I went to work- sadly, I had to work a lot of the day, but in the evening we went to Little Sheep Hot Pot, which is the best hotpot ever. And we got to play pool for a couple of hours too. Then I had to take Jeffrey to the airport, to bid him farewell. It was a great trip, and it was fun to be out and about- since virtually all my local friends are married with children, it's rare that I end up going out like that. And it was a good reminder that I am not 22 anymore, and I actually do need to manage how I drink if I want to be able to function in the slightest the next day.
But eh, I've always been a hardway learner. It's just how I'm wired...
I hadn't had a chance to see him since Keiko and I visited from NYC the summer I left. He's busy running his coffee shop in Richmond, which I highly recommend (Crossroads Coffee Shop). We'd been plotting a trip out to CA for him for a while, and finally we managed to engineer it.
Now, Jeffrey is one of my last single friends, so I had an aggressive plan of going out worked out. Thursday night we met up for dinner with my student Tim, and his wife and a couple of friends at an awesome place in Chinatown called R&G lounge. We ate and drank until pretty late, to the point where the only other people left in the place were the wait staff, who were having their own dinner by that point at the table across from ours. We put away several bottles of wine, and fortunately it was a long walk back to the car.
Friday I had to work a little, but then I came home and we plotted out a pub crawl in the Mission district of SF, which is supposed to be one of the up-and-coming-but-still-gritty areas of the city. We drove up to Daly City and then took the BART in the rest of the way, figuring that the BART wait/ride on the way back would be good sobering-up time.
Once in the Mission, we headed up Mission ave and started hitting pubs. The first place, we went to was a real neighborhood dive kind of place, and we had a couple drinks there that were decent, but nothing special. From there, we went to a much fancier place on the next block that looked like it would be a nice date place. Very nice atmosphere, etc. The crowd was a little older. The drinks, however, were still nothing special, just more expensive.
From there, we ended up in a super-crowded place with early 20-somethings. That place had fun energy, and the drinks were the best to that point. We nearly came to blows with some people over seats, which were very hard to come by, but then ended up talking to them for a while. The food looked very good.
From there, we wound up in a place called the Beauty Bar, which is the only place whose name I can remember anymore, although I think Jeffrey has notes written somewhere in his phone. The Beauty Bar had a nice, if small, dance floor and had good music. Also, the Jack and Coke I had was *strong*. At this point, I probably should have started to slow it down a little, but I didn't. Plus, I'd had different drinks in every place, so I had a lot of different kinds of alcohol swimming around in there, plus hadn't really eaten. Not smart.
Anyway, we enjoyed the Beauty Bar- it was a very good time, although I must say that it's not clear where the beauty is, because it wasn't in the decor or in the clientele. But we enjoyed the place anyway.
From there, we went to another place whose name I don't remember, before reaching 16th street, at which point I wanted to head over to the parallel street and work our way back down to the 24th street BART station. At that point we would have made a full circle.
On our way along 16th street, we passed an unmarked door which clearly had the sounds of a club emanating from behind it. Now, being who I am, I couldn't let an unmarked door go unexplored, and that's when I'm sober. By this point, I was fairly drunk, and NO WAY were we going to pass that up. I grabbed Jeffrey and said "WE'RE GOING IN HERE!"
I threw open the door and we stepped in. And everyone sort of stopped and looked at us.
One of the things you learn as you study ecology is that over time, populations in an area will fragment, and the different sub populations will evolve to take advantage of different tiny niches. Thus, as frogs move into an area, there will initially be just the one population, but then a million years later, you'll have 12 different related species of frogs, each of which has adapted itself to one specific niche in the area. The same thing happens with consumer products- for instance, someone invents shampoo, but then 100 years later, you have shampoo for blonds, shampoo for brunettes, shampoo for people with dry hair, shampoo for people with oily hair, etc. A million different types of shampoo, each for some niche in the market.
The same thing happens with human cultures, I think. For instance, take gay culture. In a city like, for instance, Richmond, VA, where the culture is extremely conservative, there are probably at most a couple gay bars, and pretty much anyone who's gay has to go to those few places. And keep it fairly on the DL, since the broader culture is still not very accepting of homosexuality. In other words, gay culture in a place like Richmond is not very well evolved.
Contrast that with a place like SF, which is more or less the global capital of gaydom. In SF, what you find is that gay clubs are all over the place, and as such have evolved into specialties. Like, for instance, this place we'd just walked into, which was clearly a hispanic gay bar.
Everyone looked at us. We looked at them. For a moment, it seemed like even the music had stopped, like you see on TV shows and in the movies. In that moment, I thought, "Oh well, we can't just walk out now."
So we stepped boldly in. And everyone went back to what they were doing.
We bellied up to the bar, where the bartender looked fairly amused to see us. Jeffrey was the only white person in the bar. I figure since I look Hispanic, they gave him a pass, and probably assumed we were, you know, together. I decided I needed a strong drink here, so I order a shot of Patron.
Also not a good decision, since I really needed to be slowing down the pace and the drink strength. But whatever, I had my shot. Immediately, I Mexican dude came over and started chatting me up. His English was limited, but we had a nice conversation for a while, until his friend dragged him away to go play pool. Honestly, I was a bit relieved.
Then a lesbian Chicana came up and we started talking. She explained right up front that she really liked girls, so we hit it off well since we have that in common. We talked for about 15 minutes, and then she went off and I turned to Jeffrey.
Me: "Wow, this is wild. Wasn't expecting this to be a gay bar."
Jeffrey: "Yeah, me neither. By the way, you know I'm gay, right?"
(pause)
Me: "Uh, what?"
Jeffrey: "Yeah, I've been slowly coming out to my friends over the last year or so. That's why i was bummed that I couldn't come out for the dinner party earlier this year. But, I figure there's never going to be a more appropriate time to come out than right now, so there you go. I'm gay."
(pause)
(I grab the last of my Patron and down it.)
Me: "Well, good on ya' for being who you are. Guess that explains why we're still alive in here- I look Hispanic and you're gay. We fit right in."
To be honest, it wasn't really all that surprising. Nacole had called that years ago. But I figured it's Jeffrey's right to be who he is, or to pretend to be whoever he wants, so I never asked or said anything about it, figuring if he had anything to say about it to me he eventually would. I just never would have guessed it would be in a gay Hispanic bar in SF.
(Joel on the phone the next day- "so wait, you were in the gay capital of the world, in a part of the city known for its gay bars, and you went into a bar with an unmarked door? What did you THINK was going to happen??" Me: "Why don't you shut up?")
So we had a nice conversation about what it's like to be gay in Richmond, how it had been coming out to people, etc. Then we finally left and headed to the next place, which was around the corner and which was refreshingly hetero (well, refreshingly for me, anyway). I only remember this place very dimly, and I remember ordering a Bay Breeze on the grounds that I should really stop drinking anyway. I don't remember actually drinking it, but I'm pretty sure I did.
From there, we went back down 16th st, because we were both completely wasted by this point, and we hadn't eaten so we were starving. Right across from the Hispanic gay bar was a taco place, so we went in there and I had an awesome chicken quesadilla while trying to remain seated in my chair, which seemed to be really unstable for some reason. After putting away the quesadilla, we decided that maybe we'd better call it a night, and went down the street to the BART station.
Amazingly, we didn't have to wait long for the BART, which doesn't run so often that late at night, and we got on needing only about 5 stops to get back to Daly City. However, the BART is not real gentle, and after rocking back and forth for a couple stops, we hit the Balboa Park station and I said to Jeffrey "We're getting off here."
Which we did. I collapsed in a heap on the platform, grateful that the platform was moving a lot less than the train had been. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be perfectly still, which is what I *really* needed at that point, and within moments I realized that puking was imminent. I hated the thought of puking all over the platform, so I started crawling for the edge so I could lean over and puke on the tracks. However, on the way there (the 4 feet along the ground that I had to crawl to get to the platform edge), I saw lights in the distance in the tunnel, and in a last brief moment of clear thinking, decided that maybe in my condition, being anywhere near the platform edge was maybe not such a good idea. So, I puked up my guts right there, a couple feet from the platform edge. But it was in clear view, so hopefully no one stepped in it. I feel real bad about that.
Stomach emptied, we got on the next train and made it the last couple of stops. Jeffrey drove us back, with me giving directions in what I guess was coherent enough fashion to get us there. Once home, I said thank you for a most interesting evening, and then went into my bathroom to spend some quality time driving the porcelain bus. And then I went to bed.
Thank god I didn't have to work on Saturday.
Saturday I'd planned another night out, but instead all we did was eat and eventually go see a movie. Neither one of us had the energy for anything else. That afternoon I checked my cell phone, because I learned after the night of Plaid's bachelor party that it's a good idea to check your phone the next day and see what you texted the night before. There were some eyebrow-raising texts from that night, and if I'd known about textsfromlastnight.com back then (thanks JJM for introducing me to that) I definitely would have had some things to submit.
Checking the phone Saturday, it looked pretty quiet, except there appeared to be a call from Alix that apparently I'd taken, but couldn't remember at all. I called her to see...
Me: "Uh, um, did we *talk* last night?"
Alix: "You're a very cheerful drunk, you know that?"
Me: "Uh, what did we talk about?"
Alix: "Why? Are you worried you said something you shouldn't have?"
Me: "What? Uh, no, I.."
Alix: "Ohmygod, you totally think I'm an idiot, and you're worried you finally actually said that to me!"
Me: "Ohmygod, can you stop being so goddamned insecure for 30 seconds and JUST TELL ME what the hell we talked about????"
Alix: "I actually called for some boy advice, which turned out to be very entertaining for me. And you totally think I'm an idiot."
Me: "As soon as my head stops hurting, I am going to kill you."
So we had a very mellow Saturday, which turned out to be exactly what we needed to recover. Here's the sunset:
Sunday I had to work a little in the morning, and then it was time to go to Max's 3rd birthday party. Jeffrey, being a mellow sort, was game to go, largely because I promised another pub crawl afterward. "Just remember there's going to be beer afterward," I said. So we headed over to the "My Gym" for a raucous afternoon of birthday celebration.
I don't know about you, but birthdays today seem to be a much larger production than they ever were when I was a kid. BTW, there's a part of me that can't believe that I write/say things like "Things are so different from the way they were when I was a kid." When did I become someone who says things like that?
Anyway, I don't remember having parties very often, and if I did, a couple people came over for some cake. And that was it.
Nowadays, birthday parties require hiring professional help, like the My Gym, or the Princess Ariel impersonator that Em had at her last birthday party. And there are lots of Activities, and birthday rides on the sled while all the kids sing happy birthday. And a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls. A zip-line! I want a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls for my 38th birthday, goddammit. But it was fun to see Max having such a good time. Jeffrey weathered it all well, and I got to catch up with some of Laura's family, which was nice.
After the party, which included our getting to take home 2 extra-large pizzas that turned out to be extra (they ended up feeding me for an entire week), Jeffrey and I headed up to the city for our second pub crawl, this time in North Beach.
This time, we decided to be a lot smarter about our pub crawling. For instance, we decided to hold the pacing to one place per hour, and no more than 2 drinks per place. Plus, we decided to allow for eating and drinking water along the way. As a consequence, I remember a lot more about the places we went, and I remember some of the conversations I had with people at the various bars we hit. They were all reasonably nice neighborhood bars; by the time we got through 5 of them, it was already getting close to midnight, and we had to drive back, and the rest of the places were on Broadway in the red light district, so we opted to save that stretch for another day. Best decision ever, especially considering I actually had to be at work in the morning.
Thus, the next morning I went to work- sadly, I had to work a lot of the day, but in the evening we went to Little Sheep Hot Pot, which is the best hotpot ever. And we got to play pool for a couple of hours too. Then I had to take Jeffrey to the airport, to bid him farewell. It was a great trip, and it was fun to be out and about- since virtually all my local friends are married with children, it's rare that I end up going out like that. And it was a good reminder that I am not 22 anymore, and I actually do need to manage how I drink if I want to be able to function in the slightest the next day.
But eh, I've always been a hardway learner. It's just how I'm wired...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
A birthday weekend in LA
It was JOC's birthday this weekend, and he had his birthday party in LA. He lives near Madera, which actually is in the middle of nowhere- pointing to where he lives on a map of CA actually lands your finger on an empty space west of Yosemite and just east of Madera. Which means, it's not convenient for *anyone* to get to, and hence the party in his hometown, Los Angeles.
One of the nice things about living in SF is that you can get plane tickets to LA on virtually no notice for $100 roundtrip. And that's before they build the supercool 200mph train that's going to run between LA and SF. It's scheduled to be done by 2018, which means that it might possibly be done by 2030, but I wouldn't put money on it.
So I hopped on a flight to LA. It was the usual story- couldn't get out of work quite when I wanted, so rather than take the train I had to drive, and drive fast, in order to get to the airport in time. But I still arrived at the gate a solid 20 minutes before takeoff, so it wasn't particularly close, for me anyway.
Once in LA, I picked up my rental car, which was a little Kia that was the absolute worst shade of puke-burnt-orange EVER (they ought to call it the Kia "Birth Control", because no way are you getting any driving a car like that), and headed to Paul and Terry's house, where the party was going to be.
Paul and Terry are awesome, and last time I was at their house, we had a six-degrees-of-separation moment when we realized that Terry was in Cats with the wife of one of my tutor friends from the NYC office. They are extremely generous people, and they have a great house for hosting parties.
I arrived around 630, and so I hung out with JOC and V and Paul and Terry, and helped set up a bit. And, then I fell asleep. I'd worked late the night before, and I'd had to get up early that morning to be in the office, plus I figured that any party involving JOC would go until the wee hours, so I took what was supposed to be a short nap, but turned out to be long enough that by the time I woke up, pretty much all the guests had arrived, and the party was in full force.
Since it was also United Nations day, people were encouraged to come as something relating to their favorite country. Generally speaking, I do not dress up, not since the Smurf Incident in 4th grade...
Up until 4th grade, I was pretty into the idea of dressing up on Halloween. But in 4th grade, my mom came home one day pretty close to Halloween and said she had bought me a costume. A Smurf costume, in fact. Since I liked watching the Smurfs on Saturday mornings.
Thing is, although I *did* enjoy watching the Smurfs on TV, I was also reaching that point in the development of any young boy where life was becoming extremely Darwinistic at school, and the last thing I needed to try and improve my survival probability was to show up dressed as a smurf. I mean, that's fine if you're obviously bigger than all the other boys, preferably in your grade and at least the next couple up, but that's seriously unwise if, just to pick something at random here, there are only 6 boys in your class and you are clearly the smallest one.
I explained all this to my mom. Well, OK, it was probably a little bit more like:
Me: "MOM! No WAY am I going to school dressed like a smurf!"
Mom: "What? I bought this costume for you! I bought it, so you are going to WEAR it. You LIKE the smurfs!"
What followed was variations on this exchange, right up until the morning of Halloween, which was a schoolday that year. We continued to have that fight even as my mom forcibly held me in place and painted my face blue, and put that stupid costume on me. She literally had to drag me out the door and stuff me into the car, and then when we got to school, I refused to get out. So there, on the street, in front of the other parents and the nuns, my mom had to reach inside the car and pull me out. I fought as best I could, holding onto everything possible, but ultimately I lost, and as soon as I was safely dumped on the sidewalk, my mom jumped back in the car and drove off.
What followed was a very, very long day. I won't describe it, except to say that it wasn't all that different from what you've seen on those nature shows, where the one smaller, weaker goat gets separated from the herd by the pack of ravenous wolves, and then the little goat valiantly gives its best shot at escaping before the story finally ends in a way which is not good for the goat.
Since that day, I have not dressed up for Halloween. Except for once in college when me and L and JH wore our costumes from the modern dance piece we were in (they were brightly colored silk pajamas) to the big Halloween party on campus. We declared ourselves to be The Three Tops, and we sang "My Girl" at the door to get in for free. But otherwise, I've avoided costumes.
Including at JOC's party. I looked up the colors I was wearing in the database of flags, and discovered that my colors matched the flag for Estonia, so I declared myself to be the representative from Estonia, but I don't think many people bought it.
There were some good costumes though, including Big E in a fez, and a girl who came as Angelina Jolie, complete with giant stick-on lips and a bandolier of little ethnic babies. That one won a prize.
In typical JOC fashion, the evening featured drinking and talking until the wee hours. By midnight, I was in the giant outdoor hot tub, and in fact I stayed put there until 4am, at which point I looked like a prune. But it was a wonderful night.
Sunday I got up and went to brunch with JOC and V and their families, in the same place where JOC and V got married. I hadn't been there since the wedding, and it was nice to see the place again. Many happy memories associated with that place and that weekend. We had a wonderful brunch, and afterwards I went out to Calabasas to visit Cara and Marty and Danny.
Danny is my unofficial godson, and he's in high school now, which is terrifying because I remember holding him in my arms as a baby when Cara brought him into the office so she could attend a big contract negotiation. He cried nonstop until he passed out, and then I was afraid to move him so I just sat there until long after I couldn't feel my legs anymore. And now he's in high school. I spent a few hours hanging out at their house and catching up, before heading back to Paul and Terry's to meet them and JOC and V for dinner.
After a wonderful Italian meal, we headed back to the hot tub, where once again we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, which was awesome, but which I paid a certain price for since I had to get up and be out the door at 6am in order to get over the hill to catch my flight out of LAX. I suffered through the rest of the day.
But enh, sleep when you're dead, and all that...
One of the nice things about living in SF is that you can get plane tickets to LA on virtually no notice for $100 roundtrip. And that's before they build the supercool 200mph train that's going to run between LA and SF. It's scheduled to be done by 2018, which means that it might possibly be done by 2030, but I wouldn't put money on it.
So I hopped on a flight to LA. It was the usual story- couldn't get out of work quite when I wanted, so rather than take the train I had to drive, and drive fast, in order to get to the airport in time. But I still arrived at the gate a solid 20 minutes before takeoff, so it wasn't particularly close, for me anyway.
Once in LA, I picked up my rental car, which was a little Kia that was the absolute worst shade of puke-burnt-orange EVER (they ought to call it the Kia "Birth Control", because no way are you getting any driving a car like that), and headed to Paul and Terry's house, where the party was going to be.
Paul and Terry are awesome, and last time I was at their house, we had a six-degrees-of-separation moment when we realized that Terry was in Cats with the wife of one of my tutor friends from the NYC office. They are extremely generous people, and they have a great house for hosting parties.
I arrived around 630, and so I hung out with JOC and V and Paul and Terry, and helped set up a bit. And, then I fell asleep. I'd worked late the night before, and I'd had to get up early that morning to be in the office, plus I figured that any party involving JOC would go until the wee hours, so I took what was supposed to be a short nap, but turned out to be long enough that by the time I woke up, pretty much all the guests had arrived, and the party was in full force.
Since it was also United Nations day, people were encouraged to come as something relating to their favorite country. Generally speaking, I do not dress up, not since the Smurf Incident in 4th grade...
Up until 4th grade, I was pretty into the idea of dressing up on Halloween. But in 4th grade, my mom came home one day pretty close to Halloween and said she had bought me a costume. A Smurf costume, in fact. Since I liked watching the Smurfs on Saturday mornings.
Thing is, although I *did* enjoy watching the Smurfs on TV, I was also reaching that point in the development of any young boy where life was becoming extremely Darwinistic at school, and the last thing I needed to try and improve my survival probability was to show up dressed as a smurf. I mean, that's fine if you're obviously bigger than all the other boys, preferably in your grade and at least the next couple up, but that's seriously unwise if, just to pick something at random here, there are only 6 boys in your class and you are clearly the smallest one.
I explained all this to my mom. Well, OK, it was probably a little bit more like:
Me: "MOM! No WAY am I going to school dressed like a smurf!"
Mom: "What? I bought this costume for you! I bought it, so you are going to WEAR it. You LIKE the smurfs!"
What followed was variations on this exchange, right up until the morning of Halloween, which was a schoolday that year. We continued to have that fight even as my mom forcibly held me in place and painted my face blue, and put that stupid costume on me. She literally had to drag me out the door and stuff me into the car, and then when we got to school, I refused to get out. So there, on the street, in front of the other parents and the nuns, my mom had to reach inside the car and pull me out. I fought as best I could, holding onto everything possible, but ultimately I lost, and as soon as I was safely dumped on the sidewalk, my mom jumped back in the car and drove off.
What followed was a very, very long day. I won't describe it, except to say that it wasn't all that different from what you've seen on those nature shows, where the one smaller, weaker goat gets separated from the herd by the pack of ravenous wolves, and then the little goat valiantly gives its best shot at escaping before the story finally ends in a way which is not good for the goat.
Since that day, I have not dressed up for Halloween. Except for once in college when me and L and JH wore our costumes from the modern dance piece we were in (they were brightly colored silk pajamas) to the big Halloween party on campus. We declared ourselves to be The Three Tops, and we sang "My Girl" at the door to get in for free. But otherwise, I've avoided costumes.
Including at JOC's party. I looked up the colors I was wearing in the database of flags, and discovered that my colors matched the flag for Estonia, so I declared myself to be the representative from Estonia, but I don't think many people bought it.
There were some good costumes though, including Big E in a fez, and a girl who came as Angelina Jolie, complete with giant stick-on lips and a bandolier of little ethnic babies. That one won a prize.
In typical JOC fashion, the evening featured drinking and talking until the wee hours. By midnight, I was in the giant outdoor hot tub, and in fact I stayed put there until 4am, at which point I looked like a prune. But it was a wonderful night.
Sunday I got up and went to brunch with JOC and V and their families, in the same place where JOC and V got married. I hadn't been there since the wedding, and it was nice to see the place again. Many happy memories associated with that place and that weekend. We had a wonderful brunch, and afterwards I went out to Calabasas to visit Cara and Marty and Danny.
Danny is my unofficial godson, and he's in high school now, which is terrifying because I remember holding him in my arms as a baby when Cara brought him into the office so she could attend a big contract negotiation. He cried nonstop until he passed out, and then I was afraid to move him so I just sat there until long after I couldn't feel my legs anymore. And now he's in high school. I spent a few hours hanging out at their house and catching up, before heading back to Paul and Terry's to meet them and JOC and V for dinner.
After a wonderful Italian meal, we headed back to the hot tub, where once again we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, which was awesome, but which I paid a certain price for since I had to get up and be out the door at 6am in order to get over the hill to catch my flight out of LAX. I suffered through the rest of the day.
But enh, sleep when you're dead, and all that...
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Beautiful days in HMB...
The sunset tonight
The movie of yesterday, which was utterly perfect weather:
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
What to do about all these wars...
Mom and I had a conversation the other day about Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan...
It's obviously a particularly charged subject for both of us, since both my brothers are in the military, they've served a combined 5 tours already and could conceivably serve more, and one has already been wounded over there once.
The particular trigger was a piece in the news about the possible decision to do a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan. There are a lot of places you can go to get a reasonable (or unreasonable) perspective on that, but here's mine:
The only actual threat to our physical security comes from terrorist cells, which are highly decentralized and aren't tied to any particular country. The only way to combat a threat like that is with absolutely superb intelligence. I argue that what we need is not 20,000 more soldiers in Afghanistan; what we need is 20,000 people who speak Arabic/Urdu/Pashto etc., who would be willing to do deep cover assignments in every major city in the Middle East, plus the major mosques in Western Europe and the U.S. That, plus better integration of efforts between existing U.S. intelligence/law enforcement agencies- don't forget that a couple different people in intelligence services flagged a couple of the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11, but the dots did not get connected, with the obvious tragic results. Note also that this intelligence was gathered just fine without a Patriot Act in existence to blithely gut our constitutional rights.
So, what's needed is not more military; it's more intelligence and better use of the information we have. Which brings me to:
Get the military the hell out of the Middle East.
If I were President, right now I would pressure the current Afghan and Iraqi governments to lease us land in a relatively removed part of each country for the next 99 years, a la Guantanamo. I would build serious bases in both places, and I would staff those bases with a couples of strike teams each. Then I would make the following international address:
"People of the world- listen up. First, to Iraqis: if you want to chop each other up based on something as trivial as whether you are Sunnis, Shias, or Kurds, fine. That's your business. Personally, I don't think it's a great idea, but whatever. Also, if you really would rather have a autocratic loon run your country, because life was just so awesome under Saddam and you just miss that life, fine. Also your choice. Personally, I recommend capitalism and democracy, because that seems to be working out a lot better than the alternatives pretty much everywhere, but we're not spending another goddamned dime trying to force either one on you. Do what you want.
What we're going to do instead is hang out here on our base, and we'll shoot anyone who comes near it. What we'll be doing on this base is closely monitoring your entire frickin' country for anything that looks like it might have even the tiniest little possibility of being a terrorist training camp or terrorist cell. Anytime we find such a thing, we'll go and totally destroy it. We will do this whenever we bloody well feel like it, and without any prior notice delivered to you.
Second, to you folks in Afghanistan- the same goes for you. We're going to hang out on the base here, and shoot anyone who comes near it. The moment we withdraw from the rest of your country, the Taliban are going to come flooding back. And if life under the Taliban is so goddamned awesome, then welcome them with open arms. Otherwise, I again recommend considering capitalism and democracy. In the meantime, we'll also be monitoring your country from our base, and anything that even hints of being terrorist-related will be destroyed. Again, we will do this whenever we want, with no notice given to whatever circus act you're calling a government at the time.
Finally, to the rest of the world- we're expanding our intelligence activities everywhere. Anytime we find a terrorist cell, we're taking it out, and then we'll let you know we did it. And frankly my dears, I don't give a damn about "national sovereignty". Believe me, if we take a terrorist cell out on your soil, we just did you a favor. Pakistan, that especially applies to you. Everybody clear? Great. God bless."
In the end, if people in places like Afghanistan and Iraq want to have shitty, oppressive, corrupt governments, they will. And life will suck for them as a result. People will die, immense quantities of human potential will be squandered, etc. But eventually they'll realize that life sucks, and that life doesn't suck in a lot of other places, and at that point they'll make progress toward better governance. But you can't do it for them, and the billions of dollars we're spending trying is just a tragic waste of money that would be better spent on jobs and infrastructure here, plus sensible assistance to countries that are actually making an effort not to be basket cases.
And don't even get me started on the wasted lives. I've more than once considered running for office solely because the prospect of losing a brother in one of these retarded wars makes me sick to my stomach. But so far, I've resisted the temptation.
Besides, this blog ensures my unelectability anyway...
It's obviously a particularly charged subject for both of us, since both my brothers are in the military, they've served a combined 5 tours already and could conceivably serve more, and one has already been wounded over there once.
The particular trigger was a piece in the news about the possible decision to do a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan. There are a lot of places you can go to get a reasonable (or unreasonable) perspective on that, but here's mine:
The only actual threat to our physical security comes from terrorist cells, which are highly decentralized and aren't tied to any particular country. The only way to combat a threat like that is with absolutely superb intelligence. I argue that what we need is not 20,000 more soldiers in Afghanistan; what we need is 20,000 people who speak Arabic/Urdu/Pashto etc., who would be willing to do deep cover assignments in every major city in the Middle East, plus the major mosques in Western Europe and the U.S. That, plus better integration of efforts between existing U.S. intelligence/law enforcement agencies- don't forget that a couple different people in intelligence services flagged a couple of the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11, but the dots did not get connected, with the obvious tragic results. Note also that this intelligence was gathered just fine without a Patriot Act in existence to blithely gut our constitutional rights.
So, what's needed is not more military; it's more intelligence and better use of the information we have. Which brings me to:
Get the military the hell out of the Middle East.
If I were President, right now I would pressure the current Afghan and Iraqi governments to lease us land in a relatively removed part of each country for the next 99 years, a la Guantanamo. I would build serious bases in both places, and I would staff those bases with a couples of strike teams each. Then I would make the following international address:
"People of the world- listen up. First, to Iraqis: if you want to chop each other up based on something as trivial as whether you are Sunnis, Shias, or Kurds, fine. That's your business. Personally, I don't think it's a great idea, but whatever. Also, if you really would rather have a autocratic loon run your country, because life was just so awesome under Saddam and you just miss that life, fine. Also your choice. Personally, I recommend capitalism and democracy, because that seems to be working out a lot better than the alternatives pretty much everywhere, but we're not spending another goddamned dime trying to force either one on you. Do what you want.
What we're going to do instead is hang out here on our base, and we'll shoot anyone who comes near it. What we'll be doing on this base is closely monitoring your entire frickin' country for anything that looks like it might have even the tiniest little possibility of being a terrorist training camp or terrorist cell. Anytime we find such a thing, we'll go and totally destroy it. We will do this whenever we bloody well feel like it, and without any prior notice delivered to you.
Second, to you folks in Afghanistan- the same goes for you. We're going to hang out on the base here, and shoot anyone who comes near it. The moment we withdraw from the rest of your country, the Taliban are going to come flooding back. And if life under the Taliban is so goddamned awesome, then welcome them with open arms. Otherwise, I again recommend considering capitalism and democracy. In the meantime, we'll also be monitoring your country from our base, and anything that even hints of being terrorist-related will be destroyed. Again, we will do this whenever we want, with no notice given to whatever circus act you're calling a government at the time.
Finally, to the rest of the world- we're expanding our intelligence activities everywhere. Anytime we find a terrorist cell, we're taking it out, and then we'll let you know we did it. And frankly my dears, I don't give a damn about "national sovereignty". Believe me, if we take a terrorist cell out on your soil, we just did you a favor. Pakistan, that especially applies to you. Everybody clear? Great. God bless."
In the end, if people in places like Afghanistan and Iraq want to have shitty, oppressive, corrupt governments, they will. And life will suck for them as a result. People will die, immense quantities of human potential will be squandered, etc. But eventually they'll realize that life sucks, and that life doesn't suck in a lot of other places, and at that point they'll make progress toward better governance. But you can't do it for them, and the billions of dollars we're spending trying is just a tragic waste of money that would be better spent on jobs and infrastructure here, plus sensible assistance to countries that are actually making an effort not to be basket cases.
And don't even get me started on the wasted lives. I've more than once considered running for office solely because the prospect of losing a brother in one of these retarded wars makes me sick to my stomach. But so far, I've resisted the temptation.
Besides, this blog ensures my unelectability anyway...
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Don't judge me...
I hate it when a stranger looks at you, and you know that right now they're judging you in some way.
I bring this up because mom is out here visiting right now, and the thing is, she fell in the grocery store last week. One of those big metal wheeled ladders that they use to stock the upper shelves was blocking the shelf that she wanted something from, so she tried to climb through it, tripped on the metal ankle-level bar, and smashed the side of her face in against one of the vertical supports. Gushed blood everywhere, had to get 4 stitches in the side of her face, and now is sporting a HUGE shiner.
Which means a number of things. First, it meant that our first activity together upon her arrival was for me to take her down to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation's urgent care facility to get the stitches taken out, since her doctor told her they should come out on what turned out to be her first day here. It had been almost 3 whole weeks since the last time I had to deal with a medical issue, so I'd been feeling a void in my life anyhow.
But it also means that whenever we walk up to a counter together, for lunch or something, people look at her, see her enormous black eye, and then look at me. And I can see them thinking. It's painfully obvious what they're thinking- "Oh my god, is he BEATING this poor old woman? Does he HIT her??"
After the first few times, I got so annoyed, I almost wanted to pre-emptively shout "SHE FELL IN THE STORE, GODDAMMIT!!", but let's face it- that isn't going to help. In fact, it's just going to make it worse. "Riiiiiiight," they'll think, "She fell in the store. Uh huh. Didn't Suzanne Vega write a song about that?"
Yes, she did. You probably remember it:
"My name is Mary
I fell in the grocery store
I live in Saint Loo-ee
You've probably never been there before.
If you see me
With a black eye
And I'm there with a
Shifty looking kinda guy
Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me, what it is."
And of course, it doesn't help that I look nothing like her, so it's not like people can assume I'm her son or something. People probably just think I'm some thug that's beating up an old woman for her social security checks.
The irony of that, especially with the grocery store connection, is that when I was about 3, my mom would often take me grocery shopping. My grandma always used to sing an old song called "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to me to make me go to sleep, and I really liked it, so while I was sitting there in the grocery cart I would amuse myself by singing that song at the top of my lungs. Despite how obviously adorable that is, my mom was a little embarrassed by the spectacle I made of myself, bellowing that song continuously, barely even stopping to breathe, so she would park the cart at one end of the aisle, and then walk up that aisle and down the next, grabbing everything she needed in her hands, all the while pretending like I wasn't her kid- like she really had no idea whose little brown kid that was belting out old showtunes. And it probably worked, since I look nothing like her.
But in the great cycle of life, we often switch roles with our parents, and now I find myself shaking my head embarrassedly at my mother's grocery store antics:
Mom: "So, I think this next year I'm going to focus on my health. I need to keep exercising and stuff. Then I'll figure out what I'm going to do next."
Me: "That sounds like a great plan, mom. A couple of steps toward that goal, that you might want to seriously consider, are: (1) not forgetting to take your damn medicine all the time, and (2) not doing stupid shit like climbing around a metal ladder like you're a frickin' chimpanzee, rather than ask the 23-year-old stock boy to move it for you. I think you should make those things part of your health strategy."
So for all you dear readers who have read the stories in this blog and wondered to yourselves: "Why the hell does he do such stupid shit all the time?", I have a simple, one-word answer for you:
Genetics.
I bring this up because mom is out here visiting right now, and the thing is, she fell in the grocery store last week. One of those big metal wheeled ladders that they use to stock the upper shelves was blocking the shelf that she wanted something from, so she tried to climb through it, tripped on the metal ankle-level bar, and smashed the side of her face in against one of the vertical supports. Gushed blood everywhere, had to get 4 stitches in the side of her face, and now is sporting a HUGE shiner.
Which means a number of things. First, it meant that our first activity together upon her arrival was for me to take her down to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation's urgent care facility to get the stitches taken out, since her doctor told her they should come out on what turned out to be her first day here. It had been almost 3 whole weeks since the last time I had to deal with a medical issue, so I'd been feeling a void in my life anyhow.
But it also means that whenever we walk up to a counter together, for lunch or something, people look at her, see her enormous black eye, and then look at me. And I can see them thinking. It's painfully obvious what they're thinking- "Oh my god, is he BEATING this poor old woman? Does he HIT her??"
After the first few times, I got so annoyed, I almost wanted to pre-emptively shout "SHE FELL IN THE STORE, GODDAMMIT!!", but let's face it- that isn't going to help. In fact, it's just going to make it worse. "Riiiiiiight," they'll think, "She fell in the store. Uh huh. Didn't Suzanne Vega write a song about that?"
Yes, she did. You probably remember it:
"My name is Mary
I fell in the grocery store
I live in Saint Loo-ee
You've probably never been there before.
If you see me
With a black eye
And I'm there with a
Shifty looking kinda guy
Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me, what it is."
And of course, it doesn't help that I look nothing like her, so it's not like people can assume I'm her son or something. People probably just think I'm some thug that's beating up an old woman for her social security checks.
The irony of that, especially with the grocery store connection, is that when I was about 3, my mom would often take me grocery shopping. My grandma always used to sing an old song called "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to me to make me go to sleep, and I really liked it, so while I was sitting there in the grocery cart I would amuse myself by singing that song at the top of my lungs. Despite how obviously adorable that is, my mom was a little embarrassed by the spectacle I made of myself, bellowing that song continuously, barely even stopping to breathe, so she would park the cart at one end of the aisle, and then walk up that aisle and down the next, grabbing everything she needed in her hands, all the while pretending like I wasn't her kid- like she really had no idea whose little brown kid that was belting out old showtunes. And it probably worked, since I look nothing like her.
But in the great cycle of life, we often switch roles with our parents, and now I find myself shaking my head embarrassedly at my mother's grocery store antics:
Mom: "So, I think this next year I'm going to focus on my health. I need to keep exercising and stuff. Then I'll figure out what I'm going to do next."
Me: "That sounds like a great plan, mom. A couple of steps toward that goal, that you might want to seriously consider, are: (1) not forgetting to take your damn medicine all the time, and (2) not doing stupid shit like climbing around a metal ladder like you're a frickin' chimpanzee, rather than ask the 23-year-old stock boy to move it for you. I think you should make those things part of your health strategy."
So for all you dear readers who have read the stories in this blog and wondered to yourselves: "Why the hell does he do such stupid shit all the time?", I have a simple, one-word answer for you:
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Stirring the Pot: Chapter 5: Gay Marriage
I saw today that DC is about to pass an ordinance making gay marriage legal in the District. The usual suspects in Congress will kick and fuss and try to block it, and will likely fail. Which is fine with me.
But on the larger issue of gay marriage, here's where I stand:
Governments should not be in the business of recognizing marriages. Hetero, gay, whatever, the government shouldn't have anything to do with that. The government should only recognize civil unions between any two consenting adults. Civil unions have all the legal benefits of marriage (or should anyway- I'd fix that too if it were not so), for instance, joint property, health and retirement benefits, etc, but avoid all the religious overtones that the word "marriage" carries with it. I'd have all governments stop issuing "marriage licenses" immediately.
This way, any 2 adults who want to make a commitment to each other can, and they can get all the benefits associated with that. And, people who want to include or exclude other people from a religious concept like marriage can be free to do so. In this way, society can be supportive of equal rights, and people who want to discriminate due to whatever their religious beliefs are can do so. Everyone gets to live the way they want.
But I doubt this is going to happen anytime soon.
But on the larger issue of gay marriage, here's where I stand:
Governments should not be in the business of recognizing marriages. Hetero, gay, whatever, the government shouldn't have anything to do with that. The government should only recognize civil unions between any two consenting adults. Civil unions have all the legal benefits of marriage (or should anyway- I'd fix that too if it were not so), for instance, joint property, health and retirement benefits, etc, but avoid all the religious overtones that the word "marriage" carries with it. I'd have all governments stop issuing "marriage licenses" immediately.
This way, any 2 adults who want to make a commitment to each other can, and they can get all the benefits associated with that. And, people who want to include or exclude other people from a religious concept like marriage can be free to do so. In this way, society can be supportive of equal rights, and people who want to discriminate due to whatever their religious beliefs are can do so. Everyone gets to live the way they want.
But I doubt this is going to happen anytime soon.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
I lost on Jeopardy, ba-by...
I got back from a quick trip to LA this week...
Ed called me the other day to tell me he was going to be on Jeopardy, and that none of his other friends would be able to come. So, taking a quick look at the schedule, I decided to skip out of town for 2 days and see him on the show.
Southwest is magical: on 24 hours notice, I got a round-trip ticket to LA for $29 each way. That is a thing of beauty. Ed and I agreed to share a hotel room, and I got a rental car from Advantage for $14/day.
All these arrangements went down Sunday night, which means all day Monday I was slammed, seeing people back-to-back-to-back until it was time to race out of the office in a desperate attempt to get to the airport on time. As veterans of this blog know, desperate attempts by me to get to the airport on time pretty much always end well; it's the times where I try to be responsible that inevitably lead to disaster. And sure enough, with some hyper-aggressive driving on the 101, a little bit of shuttle karma, and a short line at security, I managed to make the flight a full 20 minutes before takeoff. Another job well done.
I spent the 55 minute flight to LA trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. Earlier that day I gave an interview to a prospective tutor named Leyan Lo, who until 2006 was the world record holder in Rubik's Cube solving, at 11.13 seconds. He had me mix up a cube for him, and then had me time him. It took him just over 16 seconds, and I have to tell you, it was amazing to watch. He then proceeded to teach me how to solve it, and presented me at the end of the interview with some instructions for how to do it. It was huge fun to solve it there with him, but I wanted to see if I could retain the knowledge long enough to do it again on my own later.
The verdict: nope.
My dance teacher (perhaps somewhat ironically named Gaye) always used to say that you had to learn something 5 times before you really learned it. How to solve a Rubik's Cube appears to follow that rule. Even with the written instructions I got bogged down.
That said, he gave a great math and physics interview, so he's almost certainly coming on board.
Anyway, in short order we landed in LA, and the girl next to me, who had been with some amusement watching me flail even with step-by-step instructions in front of my face, wished me luck. I headed out to find the shuttle to Advantage.
Now, Advantage rent-a-car is like the opposite of Advantage Testing; Advantage rent-a-car appears to be the cheapest option out there, with a service level to match. I realized after waiting a while that because it's a very small operation, the shuttle might only come when they were actually expecting someone, which meant waiting another 20 minutes, and I hadn't remembered to write down the number of the place, only the reservation number. So I hit upon a Brilliant Idea.
My Brilliant Idea was this: rental car places are all located in pretty much the same area, so why bother waiting for the Advantage shuttle? I could just jump the next major car rental shuttle, and then just spot for the Advantage lot.
So, 10 seconds later I jumped the Hertz shuttle, and off we went. As we passed through a light, I saw a sign that indicated that Alamo and Advantage were up the road. So, when we pulled into Hertz, I got out and started walking.
And walking.
And walking.
And walking.
It turns out that LAX is bordered by a pretty large, slowly decaying, totally-deserted-at-night industrial area, which is sprinkled here and there with car rental companies. Not, it turns out, especially adjacent to each other.
Ed called me on the phone as I was walking through a little urban meadow of broken concrete and shattered crack vials, and asked what the hell was taking so long, because he was starving. I informed him that (a) I was starving too because I hadn't actually had time to eat that day, and in fact had last had a meal over 24 hours previously, and (b) was trying to focus on finding the goddamned car rental place.
At that point, I was saved by... wait for it... the Advantage shuttle. Not that it picked me up or anything, but I saw it go whizzing by, probably on its way back from the airport, where it failed to find me in this universe but presumably *did* find me in some of the other multitudes of universes in which I did smart, normal-people things like sit down and fucking wait 20 minutes, or, you know, write down the car rental phone number or something. I saw the shuttle disappear down a little side street.
I ran after it, and got to the corner just in time to see it distantly turning right. So I headed down that street for quite some time, and then eventually stumbled upon Advantage car rental.
Like I said, it's a small rental company, and probably doesn't get a lot of business at 9pm on a Monday night, so there were only 2 people working, and each one was helping someone. I was excited since there was no one ahead of me in line, figuring that that would imply a very short time until I was once again on the road in LA.
But, I guess when you're stuck at work on a Monday night, and there aren't many customers, your incentive is to go ve-e-e-e-e-e-ry slowly, as a means of alleviating the boredom. It took a solid 15 minutes before one of the 2 guys finished, and who knows how long they'd been helping these people before I showed up.
But I did finally get my little Hyundai Elantra, which made me nostalgic for Julio, my Hyundai Elantra with the stupid little spoiler that I had from 1995-2003, before trading it to Plaid for a pile of used science fiction books so his kid would have a car to drive. After all, I had just moved to NYC, and knew I wouldn't be needing a car for the foreseeable. I got in this newer, less charactered Elantra and headed for the Radisson in Culver City.
Once there, Ed and I greeted each as we are wont to do:
Me: "Yo dude, good to see you!"
Ed: "Yo dawg, what's up?"
Me: "Dude, I'm really fucking hungry. Let's get out of here and get some food."
Ed: "Me too. But first I have to finish dealing with my clothes here."
Me: "WHAT? You couldn't have fucking done that during the SIX HOURS you've already been here? Can't this wait?"
Ed: "Fuck you. Listen, I don't iron. What I do is hang my clothes in the bathroom and turn on the shower, and let the steam take care of most of the wrinkles. So I did that tonight. But then my brother called and I was on the phone with him for an hour and forgot that my clothes were in the bathroom getting steamed. I just got off the phone with him 2 minutes before you got here. Here, feel this shirt."
I feel the shirt. It is very, very, VERY damp.
Me: "Dude, you are fucking retarded."
Ed: "Hey- why don't you shut the fuck up and let me finish dealing with this, huh? How 'bout that?"
There are some days where I feel that, if Ed and I hadn't each become high-end tutors, we'd instead have become Vincent and Jules (John Travolta and Samuel Jackson) from Pulp Fiction.
So I waited for Ed, and then we headed off to Tito's Tacos. Mmmmmmm, Tito's. I don't know what Tito is doing there, but he makes the best damned taco-stand tacos on earth, bar none. We had a long leisurely dinner and played catch up, and then headed back to the hotel.
The next morning, Ed had to be on a 730am shuttle, so he had his wake-up call set for 530am. Now, for me there is no significant difference between the time it takes for me to get ready for a special event, and the time it takes for me to get ready normally. Basically the entire difference can be attributed to (1) putting on shoes that actually have laces and therefore need to be tied, and (2) tying a tie. So all that tying of stuff adds up to about 2 extra minutes tops.
For Ed, there is no significant difference between the time it takes him to get ready for a special event, and the time it would take a really really neurotic woman to get ready for the same event. I'm not sure why that is- I mean, he's not putting on makeup or anything. At least, I don't think he is; if he is, it isn't making him any prettier. The 2 hours of time he allotted was supposed to allow for him to have a leisurely breakfast, but he ended up only having time to grab coffee to go. Again, I'm not sure why that is- I had my head under my pillow, trying vainly to sleep through all his pimping and preening.
As a contestant guest, I was supposed to be at the studio at 1030am. So, I got out of bed around 1010, was out the door at 1020, and arrived at the Sony lot at 1030. Fortunately, the intake process for all the guests and just random people who wanted to be in the studio audience took long enough for me to park the car and join in. They made us buddy up with someone for the long walk through the forest of sound stages, and I wound up talking to the new husband of one of the contestants. They were also from NYC, and he was a biochemistry Ph.D., so I spent the walk trying to recruit him into Advantage.
Once in the studio, the guy who announces for Jeopardy explained how the day would go for us. They film 3 shows in the morning, take a mandatory 1-hr lunch break, and then film 2 more shows. So, an entire week of Jeopardy happens in 1 day. Alex Trabek simply goes backstage and changes suits in the break between shows, and then also comes out and takes questions from the audience. That's the stuff I remember being told. Now, Ed swears that he was told by the Jeopardy folks that we, the contestant guests, were ALSO told not to look at, try to communicate with, or otherwise acknowledge the future contestants, who sit in the section next to us while they await their turn up on the stage, on the grounds that the Jeopardy folks need to ensure that there's not even a snowball's chance of any cheating occurring.
I guess, in retrospect, that would explain why, when the contestants filed in and starting sitting down in the section next to us, and I started waving, flashing 2 thumbs up, and smiling encouragingly at Ed, all the other contestant guests seemed oddly restrained, and Ed seemed, well, sheepish.
Ah well. I, uh, may have drifted in and out a little bit during that spiel at the beginning. And following directions has never been one of my core competencies anyway.
I brought some ACTs with me to work on, anticipating that there would be a lot of down time. But actually, there surprisingly wasn't. But I also used the paper I brought with me to keep score of how many answers I knew all throughout the day, just to see if I had any chance as a contestant myself. Basically, it broke down like this:
science/geography/vocabulary: 5/5
history/literature/current events: 2/5 - 4/5
fine art/music/sports: 1/5 - 2/5
anything with movies, TV, or celebrities: 0/5
And with that last one, that's 0/5 *every* *time*. And it's not like I was guessing wrong, and then saying "oh right, I should have known that!" I mean, the questions get read, and I have blank, Homer Simpson stare. Then the answer is announced, and I *still* have blank, Homer Simpson stare. The answers didn't mean anything more to me than the questions.
Game 1 started with a male returning champion, and a woman originally from upstate NY who now lived in LA and was a patent attorney, and someone else challenging. LA woman managed to knock off the champion in a relatively well-contested match.
Then, 2 members from the contestant pool were chosen at random to come up and take the stage to challenge LA woman in Game 2. No Ed though, and no Roopa, who was the wife of biochem dude. Interestingly, as I had bonded with her husband, I could see that Roopa and Ed were sitting next to each other and had apparently bonded as well.
LA woman, whose house had burned down a couple months before in one of the SoCal fires, dispatched both those challengers pretty handily. 2 more contestants were chosen at random for Game 3. Still no Ed and no Roopa.
Game 3 was marginally better contested, but still ended in a pretty convincing victory for LA woman. Now it was time for lunch. Contestants were kept sequestered in the dining area for Jeopardy staff, while we were told to walk off the lot and forage. So I found some Japanese food in a minimall across the street, and came back to discover that I was apparently late (they made me leave my cell ph in the car so I had no way of keeping time, but was *sure* I hadn't been gone that long), and so I had to run across the Sony lot by myself. Fortunately, I remembered the way back and got to the studio just as they were closing the doors.
Which was good, because Ed was up for Game 4, along with a woman from South Dakota somewhere. Ed and LA woman went at each other like heavyweight fighters, leaving Dakota girl in the dust. They went into Final Jeopardy tied at $9600 apiece, with Dakota girl in a distant 3rd at $2400. The category was "Pulitzer Prize for Drama".
Uh oh.
Right away, I knew this was going to be trouble. Ed's not a big drama buff, and had it been me up there, I would have bet $0 and hoped that LA woman got it wrong, simply because I would estimate my probability of getting a Final Jeopardy question in a category like that correct to be less than 1%.
Ed, however, true to his nature, went balls-out and bet it all. And... got it wrong. Meanwhile, both the women got it right, and so he finished 3rd. LA woman won again. It was an exciting game though, and it will air on 10/29. Ed was the most entertaining contestant that day by far though, so I recommend watching it even though you know the final outcome overall.
After the game, Ed came back out to sit next to me. Roopa was one of the 2 called up to battle with LA woman next in Game 5. We watched her finish 3rd also, while a dude from New Bedford knocked off LA woman. Then the day was done, so we headed out, back to the hotel...
Ed: "I need to be drinking. Now. Make it happen."
Me: "OK, I'm on it."
So we dropped off stuff at the hotel and headed down to Santa Monica. I took us to Yankee Doodles on the promenade, because I always enjoyed drinking there back in the days when I was in advertising and was expected to go to events in bars to schmooze with buyers.
So we drank and played pool for a couple hours before going to dinner at Father's Office on Montana with our friends Scholzeey and Allegra, who work in the LA Advantage office, and whom we have known since they joined the NYC Advantage office in 2004. They are a lot of fun, and we talked well into the night. It was good that they were there, because the entire night up until that point had been Ed lamenting the fact that knowing just one more question was the difference between having $1000, and having $19,200 and the pride of being a Jeopardy champion. He can be a little obsessive, and so I was glad we were able to at least mostly get his mind off of it.
I woke up the next morning with a headache that I recognized as being the thing I always end up with after a night of drinking with Ed. He and I had booked our flights out that evening, in case he had won a few games in a row, so we had a whole day in LA to kill. We didn't end up getting out of the hotel until noon, and so after a hearty anti-hangover breakfast, we went down to State beach and spent a couple hours laying out. It was so nice to just lay out on the sand. Then we hit the Beverly Center, and then Versailles for some Cuban food.
Of course, this story can't end without my noting that true to form, we spent too long at dinner, and wound up having to race through west LA to drop off the rental and get to LAX in time for our flights. But, with some aggressive driving and a short line at security, we both made it. So I wished Ed goodbye, and thanked him for a most entertaining couple days...
Me: "Dude, it was great seeing you! And thanks for another interesting story..."
Ed: "You know what would have made it an even more interesting story? Winning 19 thousand dollars. FUCK! fuckfuckfuck."
Me: "Dude, seriously, you've got to stop that."
Ed: "Dude, I'm over it. I'm fucking over it. Don't worry about it."
Riiiiiight.
Ed called me the other day to tell me he was going to be on Jeopardy, and that none of his other friends would be able to come. So, taking a quick look at the schedule, I decided to skip out of town for 2 days and see him on the show.
Southwest is magical: on 24 hours notice, I got a round-trip ticket to LA for $29 each way. That is a thing of beauty. Ed and I agreed to share a hotel room, and I got a rental car from Advantage for $14/day.
All these arrangements went down Sunday night, which means all day Monday I was slammed, seeing people back-to-back-to-back until it was time to race out of the office in a desperate attempt to get to the airport on time. As veterans of this blog know, desperate attempts by me to get to the airport on time pretty much always end well; it's the times where I try to be responsible that inevitably lead to disaster. And sure enough, with some hyper-aggressive driving on the 101, a little bit of shuttle karma, and a short line at security, I managed to make the flight a full 20 minutes before takeoff. Another job well done.
I spent the 55 minute flight to LA trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. Earlier that day I gave an interview to a prospective tutor named Leyan Lo, who until 2006 was the world record holder in Rubik's Cube solving, at 11.13 seconds. He had me mix up a cube for him, and then had me time him. It took him just over 16 seconds, and I have to tell you, it was amazing to watch. He then proceeded to teach me how to solve it, and presented me at the end of the interview with some instructions for how to do it. It was huge fun to solve it there with him, but I wanted to see if I could retain the knowledge long enough to do it again on my own later.
The verdict: nope.
My dance teacher (perhaps somewhat ironically named Gaye) always used to say that you had to learn something 5 times before you really learned it. How to solve a Rubik's Cube appears to follow that rule. Even with the written instructions I got bogged down.
That said, he gave a great math and physics interview, so he's almost certainly coming on board.
Anyway, in short order we landed in LA, and the girl next to me, who had been with some amusement watching me flail even with step-by-step instructions in front of my face, wished me luck. I headed out to find the shuttle to Advantage.
Now, Advantage rent-a-car is like the opposite of Advantage Testing; Advantage rent-a-car appears to be the cheapest option out there, with a service level to match. I realized after waiting a while that because it's a very small operation, the shuttle might only come when they were actually expecting someone, which meant waiting another 20 minutes, and I hadn't remembered to write down the number of the place, only the reservation number. So I hit upon a Brilliant Idea.
My Brilliant Idea was this: rental car places are all located in pretty much the same area, so why bother waiting for the Advantage shuttle? I could just jump the next major car rental shuttle, and then just spot for the Advantage lot.
So, 10 seconds later I jumped the Hertz shuttle, and off we went. As we passed through a light, I saw a sign that indicated that Alamo and Advantage were up the road. So, when we pulled into Hertz, I got out and started walking.
And walking.
And walking.
And walking.
It turns out that LAX is bordered by a pretty large, slowly decaying, totally-deserted-at-night industrial area, which is sprinkled here and there with car rental companies. Not, it turns out, especially adjacent to each other.
Ed called me on the phone as I was walking through a little urban meadow of broken concrete and shattered crack vials, and asked what the hell was taking so long, because he was starving. I informed him that (a) I was starving too because I hadn't actually had time to eat that day, and in fact had last had a meal over 24 hours previously, and (b) was trying to focus on finding the goddamned car rental place.
At that point, I was saved by... wait for it... the Advantage shuttle. Not that it picked me up or anything, but I saw it go whizzing by, probably on its way back from the airport, where it failed to find me in this universe but presumably *did* find me in some of the other multitudes of universes in which I did smart, normal-people things like sit down and fucking wait 20 minutes, or, you know, write down the car rental phone number or something. I saw the shuttle disappear down a little side street.
I ran after it, and got to the corner just in time to see it distantly turning right. So I headed down that street for quite some time, and then eventually stumbled upon Advantage car rental.
Like I said, it's a small rental company, and probably doesn't get a lot of business at 9pm on a Monday night, so there were only 2 people working, and each one was helping someone. I was excited since there was no one ahead of me in line, figuring that that would imply a very short time until I was once again on the road in LA.
But, I guess when you're stuck at work on a Monday night, and there aren't many customers, your incentive is to go ve-e-e-e-e-e-ry slowly, as a means of alleviating the boredom. It took a solid 15 minutes before one of the 2 guys finished, and who knows how long they'd been helping these people before I showed up.
But I did finally get my little Hyundai Elantra, which made me nostalgic for Julio, my Hyundai Elantra with the stupid little spoiler that I had from 1995-2003, before trading it to Plaid for a pile of used science fiction books so his kid would have a car to drive. After all, I had just moved to NYC, and knew I wouldn't be needing a car for the foreseeable. I got in this newer, less charactered Elantra and headed for the Radisson in Culver City.
Once there, Ed and I greeted each as we are wont to do:
Me: "Yo dude, good to see you!"
Ed: "Yo dawg, what's up?"
Me: "Dude, I'm really fucking hungry. Let's get out of here and get some food."
Ed: "Me too. But first I have to finish dealing with my clothes here."
Me: "WHAT? You couldn't have fucking done that during the SIX HOURS you've already been here? Can't this wait?"
Ed: "Fuck you. Listen, I don't iron. What I do is hang my clothes in the bathroom and turn on the shower, and let the steam take care of most of the wrinkles. So I did that tonight. But then my brother called and I was on the phone with him for an hour and forgot that my clothes were in the bathroom getting steamed. I just got off the phone with him 2 minutes before you got here. Here, feel this shirt."
I feel the shirt. It is very, very, VERY damp.
Me: "Dude, you are fucking retarded."
Ed: "Hey- why don't you shut the fuck up and let me finish dealing with this, huh? How 'bout that?"
There are some days where I feel that, if Ed and I hadn't each become high-end tutors, we'd instead have become Vincent and Jules (John Travolta and Samuel Jackson) from Pulp Fiction.
So I waited for Ed, and then we headed off to Tito's Tacos. Mmmmmmm, Tito's. I don't know what Tito is doing there, but he makes the best damned taco-stand tacos on earth, bar none. We had a long leisurely dinner and played catch up, and then headed back to the hotel.
The next morning, Ed had to be on a 730am shuttle, so he had his wake-up call set for 530am. Now, for me there is no significant difference between the time it takes for me to get ready for a special event, and the time it takes for me to get ready normally. Basically the entire difference can be attributed to (1) putting on shoes that actually have laces and therefore need to be tied, and (2) tying a tie. So all that tying of stuff adds up to about 2 extra minutes tops.
For Ed, there is no significant difference between the time it takes him to get ready for a special event, and the time it would take a really really neurotic woman to get ready for the same event. I'm not sure why that is- I mean, he's not putting on makeup or anything. At least, I don't think he is; if he is, it isn't making him any prettier. The 2 hours of time he allotted was supposed to allow for him to have a leisurely breakfast, but he ended up only having time to grab coffee to go. Again, I'm not sure why that is- I had my head under my pillow, trying vainly to sleep through all his pimping and preening.
As a contestant guest, I was supposed to be at the studio at 1030am. So, I got out of bed around 1010, was out the door at 1020, and arrived at the Sony lot at 1030. Fortunately, the intake process for all the guests and just random people who wanted to be in the studio audience took long enough for me to park the car and join in. They made us buddy up with someone for the long walk through the forest of sound stages, and I wound up talking to the new husband of one of the contestants. They were also from NYC, and he was a biochemistry Ph.D., so I spent the walk trying to recruit him into Advantage.
Once in the studio, the guy who announces for Jeopardy explained how the day would go for us. They film 3 shows in the morning, take a mandatory 1-hr lunch break, and then film 2 more shows. So, an entire week of Jeopardy happens in 1 day. Alex Trabek simply goes backstage and changes suits in the break between shows, and then also comes out and takes questions from the audience. That's the stuff I remember being told. Now, Ed swears that he was told by the Jeopardy folks that we, the contestant guests, were ALSO told not to look at, try to communicate with, or otherwise acknowledge the future contestants, who sit in the section next to us while they await their turn up on the stage, on the grounds that the Jeopardy folks need to ensure that there's not even a snowball's chance of any cheating occurring.
I guess, in retrospect, that would explain why, when the contestants filed in and starting sitting down in the section next to us, and I started waving, flashing 2 thumbs up, and smiling encouragingly at Ed, all the other contestant guests seemed oddly restrained, and Ed seemed, well, sheepish.
Ah well. I, uh, may have drifted in and out a little bit during that spiel at the beginning. And following directions has never been one of my core competencies anyway.
I brought some ACTs with me to work on, anticipating that there would be a lot of down time. But actually, there surprisingly wasn't. But I also used the paper I brought with me to keep score of how many answers I knew all throughout the day, just to see if I had any chance as a contestant myself. Basically, it broke down like this:
science/geography/vocabulary: 5/5
history/literature/current events: 2/5 - 4/5
fine art/music/sports: 1/5 - 2/5
anything with movies, TV, or celebrities: 0/5
And with that last one, that's 0/5 *every* *time*. And it's not like I was guessing wrong, and then saying "oh right, I should have known that!" I mean, the questions get read, and I have blank, Homer Simpson stare. Then the answer is announced, and I *still* have blank, Homer Simpson stare. The answers didn't mean anything more to me than the questions.
Game 1 started with a male returning champion, and a woman originally from upstate NY who now lived in LA and was a patent attorney, and someone else challenging. LA woman managed to knock off the champion in a relatively well-contested match.
Then, 2 members from the contestant pool were chosen at random to come up and take the stage to challenge LA woman in Game 2. No Ed though, and no Roopa, who was the wife of biochem dude. Interestingly, as I had bonded with her husband, I could see that Roopa and Ed were sitting next to each other and had apparently bonded as well.
LA woman, whose house had burned down a couple months before in one of the SoCal fires, dispatched both those challengers pretty handily. 2 more contestants were chosen at random for Game 3. Still no Ed and no Roopa.
Game 3 was marginally better contested, but still ended in a pretty convincing victory for LA woman. Now it was time for lunch. Contestants were kept sequestered in the dining area for Jeopardy staff, while we were told to walk off the lot and forage. So I found some Japanese food in a minimall across the street, and came back to discover that I was apparently late (they made me leave my cell ph in the car so I had no way of keeping time, but was *sure* I hadn't been gone that long), and so I had to run across the Sony lot by myself. Fortunately, I remembered the way back and got to the studio just as they were closing the doors.
Which was good, because Ed was up for Game 4, along with a woman from South Dakota somewhere. Ed and LA woman went at each other like heavyweight fighters, leaving Dakota girl in the dust. They went into Final Jeopardy tied at $9600 apiece, with Dakota girl in a distant 3rd at $2400. The category was "Pulitzer Prize for Drama".
Uh oh.
Right away, I knew this was going to be trouble. Ed's not a big drama buff, and had it been me up there, I would have bet $0 and hoped that LA woman got it wrong, simply because I would estimate my probability of getting a Final Jeopardy question in a category like that correct to be less than 1%.
Ed, however, true to his nature, went balls-out and bet it all. And... got it wrong. Meanwhile, both the women got it right, and so he finished 3rd. LA woman won again. It was an exciting game though, and it will air on 10/29. Ed was the most entertaining contestant that day by far though, so I recommend watching it even though you know the final outcome overall.
After the game, Ed came back out to sit next to me. Roopa was one of the 2 called up to battle with LA woman next in Game 5. We watched her finish 3rd also, while a dude from New Bedford knocked off LA woman. Then the day was done, so we headed out, back to the hotel...
Ed: "I need to be drinking. Now. Make it happen."
Me: "OK, I'm on it."
So we dropped off stuff at the hotel and headed down to Santa Monica. I took us to Yankee Doodles on the promenade, because I always enjoyed drinking there back in the days when I was in advertising and was expected to go to events in bars to schmooze with buyers.
So we drank and played pool for a couple hours before going to dinner at Father's Office on Montana with our friends Scholzeey and Allegra, who work in the LA Advantage office, and whom we have known since they joined the NYC Advantage office in 2004. They are a lot of fun, and we talked well into the night. It was good that they were there, because the entire night up until that point had been Ed lamenting the fact that knowing just one more question was the difference between having $1000, and having $19,200 and the pride of being a Jeopardy champion. He can be a little obsessive, and so I was glad we were able to at least mostly get his mind off of it.
I woke up the next morning with a headache that I recognized as being the thing I always end up with after a night of drinking with Ed. He and I had booked our flights out that evening, in case he had won a few games in a row, so we had a whole day in LA to kill. We didn't end up getting out of the hotel until noon, and so after a hearty anti-hangover breakfast, we went down to State beach and spent a couple hours laying out. It was so nice to just lay out on the sand. Then we hit the Beverly Center, and then Versailles for some Cuban food.
Of course, this story can't end without my noting that true to form, we spent too long at dinner, and wound up having to race through west LA to drop off the rental and get to LAX in time for our flights. But, with some aggressive driving and a short line at security, we both made it. So I wished Ed goodbye, and thanked him for a most entertaining couple days...
Me: "Dude, it was great seeing you! And thanks for another interesting story..."
Ed: "You know what would have made it an even more interesting story? Winning 19 thousand dollars. FUCK! fuckfuckfuck."
Me: "Dude, seriously, you've got to stop that."
Ed: "Dude, I'm over it. I'm fucking over it. Don't worry about it."
Riiiiiight.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
You know you're retarded when...
...you cut your nose shaving. Your nose.
At this point in my life, the entire surface area of my body divides into:
1) Places that should have hair, but don't,
2) Places that shouldn't have hair, but do, and
3) my nose
But I was in a hurry, and downstroked and nicked the side of my nose, right on the cartilage, which means it bled slowly and forever. I mean, _forever_. Half an hour later, it showed no signs of stopping, and I was beginning to wonder if I'd become a hemophiliac. I drove all the way to work pressing a wet rag to the side of my nose. Fortunately, it did manage to stop bleeding before I died of exsanguination.
Dammit.
At this point in my life, the entire surface area of my body divides into:
1) Places that should have hair, but don't,
2) Places that shouldn't have hair, but do, and
3) my nose
But I was in a hurry, and downstroked and nicked the side of my nose, right on the cartilage, which means it bled slowly and forever. I mean, _forever_. Half an hour later, it showed no signs of stopping, and I was beginning to wonder if I'd become a hemophiliac. I drove all the way to work pressing a wet rag to the side of my nose. Fortunately, it did manage to stop bleeding before I died of exsanguination.
Dammit.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Goodbye, cruel summer
Equinox in 2.5 hours. At that point, the summer of 2009 is over. I will not be missing it.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Princess Diaries, Chapter 4
I babysat the other day for Kate and Max, while LAJ attended a meeting at their co-op school. Dima was on a business trip to Moscow, so I, the cavalry, arrived around bedtime to see if I could mind the kids for an hour and a half.
Kate is 4 and Max is 2, and a year ago if Laura left even so much as the room, Max would cry and cry, while Kate would be pretty nonplussed. Somehow, in the last year, the roles have started to reverse a little.
I set up in the kids' bedroom, ready to read stories, but poor LAJ had to basically peel Kate off of her leg in order to leave. And so, Kate commenced an operatic demonstration of the immense agony of separation. It was really something to behold. For a few minutes I waited to see if she would calm down, but she had some real stamina. So I began reading Max a story in Russian.
Now, my Russian is extremely rusty, and even in a book for a 2-year-old there will be a lot of words I don't know. So, I kept having to slow down to sound out words. It turns out that it's even *more* boring to be a 2-year-old listening to an adult sound out words than it is to be an adult listening to a 4 or 5 year old sound out words. Max all but said, "Dude, you're the adult here- why can't you read?"
So, I could see him starting to lose focus, and watch the show Late was putting on, which, to be fair, was a pretty impressive show. Finally Max turned to me and said, "Can you help my big sister?" I looked at him and said, "Well, I think she still needs to be sad for a while. But she'll be ok."
Hearing this, Kate calmed down for a moment, the better to overhear what was being said about her. But once she realized I was done, she let out the longest, highest-pitched wail I have ever heard. I actually laughed. I said, "Kate, you sure are working awfully hard over there. Doesn't that take a lot of energy?"
At this, she started to crack a smile mid-wail, before then realizing that she was breaking character, and resuming a full-throated wail. At this, Max turned to me and said, "Can you help my big sister, PLEASE?"
After a couple vain attempts to persuade Kate to abandon the histrionics, Max looked at me and said, "Maybe we can wait for Mommy in the TV room." I thought that was a perfectly good solution, so we invited Kate to join us, and then headed into the TV room. The wailing stopped as soon as we were down the hall.
But she never did join us. After 10 minutes in the TV room, we went back to the bedroom to discover that Kate had climbed up into her bed and fallen asleep. I guess it really did take a lot of work to be sad.
Max, however, had not burned up any energy on theatrics, and he proceeded to motor around the TV room for an hour. At the end of that, he suggested we wait in the living room, on the sofa. So I joined him there, and immediately felt exhausted. He was wide awake and alert though, and verified that each passing car was not mom's car.
After a while, I turned to him and said, "Aren't you just a little bit tired? It's getting late." Max's response: "No."
And so we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Verifying cars the entire time. Finally I asked again (because I was starting to fall asleep), "Are you SURE you're not the least bit tired? You could lay in your bed and wait for mommy there." Max's response: "No."
He did, however, suggest we move to the kitchen, where he proceeded to demolish all the ham and cheese left over from dinner. And that's where LAJ finally found us- sitting at the kitchen table eating ham and pondering life, as men are wont to do. He was very excited to see her.
Honestly, I have no idea how parents manage...
Kate is 4 and Max is 2, and a year ago if Laura left even so much as the room, Max would cry and cry, while Kate would be pretty nonplussed. Somehow, in the last year, the roles have started to reverse a little.
I set up in the kids' bedroom, ready to read stories, but poor LAJ had to basically peel Kate off of her leg in order to leave. And so, Kate commenced an operatic demonstration of the immense agony of separation. It was really something to behold. For a few minutes I waited to see if she would calm down, but she had some real stamina. So I began reading Max a story in Russian.
Now, my Russian is extremely rusty, and even in a book for a 2-year-old there will be a lot of words I don't know. So, I kept having to slow down to sound out words. It turns out that it's even *more* boring to be a 2-year-old listening to an adult sound out words than it is to be an adult listening to a 4 or 5 year old sound out words. Max all but said, "Dude, you're the adult here- why can't you read?"
So, I could see him starting to lose focus, and watch the show Late was putting on, which, to be fair, was a pretty impressive show. Finally Max turned to me and said, "Can you help my big sister?" I looked at him and said, "Well, I think she still needs to be sad for a while. But she'll be ok."
Hearing this, Kate calmed down for a moment, the better to overhear what was being said about her. But once she realized I was done, she let out the longest, highest-pitched wail I have ever heard. I actually laughed. I said, "Kate, you sure are working awfully hard over there. Doesn't that take a lot of energy?"
At this, she started to crack a smile mid-wail, before then realizing that she was breaking character, and resuming a full-throated wail. At this, Max turned to me and said, "Can you help my big sister, PLEASE?"
After a couple vain attempts to persuade Kate to abandon the histrionics, Max looked at me and said, "Maybe we can wait for Mommy in the TV room." I thought that was a perfectly good solution, so we invited Kate to join us, and then headed into the TV room. The wailing stopped as soon as we were down the hall.
But she never did join us. After 10 minutes in the TV room, we went back to the bedroom to discover that Kate had climbed up into her bed and fallen asleep. I guess it really did take a lot of work to be sad.
Max, however, had not burned up any energy on theatrics, and he proceeded to motor around the TV room for an hour. At the end of that, he suggested we wait in the living room, on the sofa. So I joined him there, and immediately felt exhausted. He was wide awake and alert though, and verified that each passing car was not mom's car.
After a while, I turned to him and said, "Aren't you just a little bit tired? It's getting late." Max's response: "No."
And so we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Verifying cars the entire time. Finally I asked again (because I was starting to fall asleep), "Are you SURE you're not the least bit tired? You could lay in your bed and wait for mommy there." Max's response: "No."
He did, however, suggest we move to the kitchen, where he proceeded to demolish all the ham and cheese left over from dinner. And that's where LAJ finally found us- sitting at the kitchen table eating ham and pondering life, as men are wont to do. He was very excited to see her.
Honestly, I have no idea how parents manage...
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Why I Love Half Moon Bay, Pt 7
1) Because of the sunsets:
9/11/09
Here's the movie from that day:
2) The little surprises you occasionally come across while biking
Yesterday morning I came across the Google maps guys, biking along the cliff trail with a cart in tow that had cameras mounted all around it. They're getting video footage of all the bike trails. So, I biked up right behind it and mugged for the cameras for a few seconds. So, hopefully whenever anyone clicks the ground-level view of the HMB beach bike trail, there my ugly mug will be.
On a different day a few weeks ago, I came around the bend at one of my favorite trees to discover a modeling shoot. Models in tiny black bikinis and sky-high heels being made to hang around the trees like a band of superhot simians. It was wonderful. It's so awesome to be male; the simplest things can make a whole day seem better: unexpectedly stumbling upon a troop of bikini models, having a particularly satisfying bowel movement, scratching yourself.
I love living here.
9/11/09
Here's the movie from that day:
2) The little surprises you occasionally come across while biking
Yesterday morning I came across the Google maps guys, biking along the cliff trail with a cart in tow that had cameras mounted all around it. They're getting video footage of all the bike trails. So, I biked up right behind it and mugged for the cameras for a few seconds. So, hopefully whenever anyone clicks the ground-level view of the HMB beach bike trail, there my ugly mug will be.
On a different day a few weeks ago, I came around the bend at one of my favorite trees to discover a modeling shoot. Models in tiny black bikinis and sky-high heels being made to hang around the trees like a band of superhot simians. It was wonderful. It's so awesome to be male; the simplest things can make a whole day seem better: unexpectedly stumbling upon a troop of bikini models, having a particularly satisfying bowel movement, scratching yourself.
I love living here.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Aftermath
It's been 3.5 weeks since Joel moved away and Keiko and I broke up.
Both these things have caused significant changes to day-to-day life. In the last few weeks I've been trying to make the adjustments.
On the Joel front:
- I have come to realize that fully 90% of the edible things in this house got here through Joel. After throwing out all the things in the fridge that were in various states of decomposition, which took quite some time, and then throwing out all the things I would never in a million years eat myself (e.g., fake chicken nuggets- Joel is a vegetarian that hates fruit, while I am a carnivore that hates vegetables and loves fruit. Between the 2 of us, as Joel once observed, there is no food that one of us won't refuse to eat), the entire contents of the refrigerator, not including condiments, were:
a few eggs
a small chunk of cheddar cheese
some prosciutto
2 apples
some fresh oregano (teetering on the edge of decomposition, but I rounded up. Probably more accurate to label it "some not-particularly-fresh oregano")
- on a related note, Joel and I were roughly comparable in terms of our willingness to allow things to slowly decompose in the fridge.
- the house is less lively without Kona bolting around it. She and I liked each other, although we were not madly in love the way she and Joel are. Through patient tutoring, we learned such commands as:
"Move it!"
"Do NOT go out that door!"
and
"PLEASE hurry up and poop already!"
We also worked hard at, but experienced much more limited success with:
"OK, look, you are NOT going to stop and sniff EVERY goddamned planter in the city of Palo Alto."
- On the plus side, I've slowly begun to turn back the tide of Kona hair that threatened at times to engulf the house. Kona is nature's perfect machine for converting air into hair. "But wait," you say, "isn't it *food* that she turns into hair?" No, no, Kona tuns food into a super-sticky substance that enables her hair to resist the washer, the dryer, and the vacuum cleaner (which she always had a particular hatred for).
So far, the way I'm winning the war is with the one thing stronger than Kona-hair: tape. I take pieces of tape and stick them to the chairs/sofa/etc. and then remove them. Basically, I'm giving my entire house a full Brazilian.
- I've always preferred having a roommate to living alone. It's more interesting, and keeps you in the habit of making little compromises. When you live alone, you never compromise on anything, which is not good practice for eventually being with someone.
I have had a lot of roommates over the years, ranging from the unmitigated disaster (Alana), to the eventual-best-friend-for-life (Laszlo), and everything in between. I got the beach house assuming I would never have a roommate, only because at this age I think I've passed the point where I can mentally tolerate the idea of posting an ad on Craigslist and having some random person move in. So it was a surprise to end up with Joel as a roommate, and he was a very good one. Considerate, and always good company, even in those moments when he was grumpy. And given that Joel is a 90-year-old man trapped in a 35-year-old body, that was a non-trivial number of moments.
On the Keiko front:
It's weird when you suddenly go from having someone you can tell anything to, no matter how mundane, to not having that person. And then longer that person is around before they aren't anymore, the harder is the adjustment. It gives a tiny, tiny glimpse into why when one half of an elderly couple dies, the other so often follows soon after. There's something incredibly powerful about having a constant companion.
Technology only amplifies the effect, it seems to me. Keiko and I had a gchat window open basically all day every day, and so any time something jumped into either's head, we would tell the other. Again, the sudden shift to not having that is incredibly dislocating.
For the most part, I've just buried myself in work. My GMAT student flew in from TX, and we had a week of hardcore all-day prep. I was wiped out at the end of every day. And last week Kiddo was here for a week of hardcore all-day math camp. More on that shortly. Being so busy has helped keep the amount of day-to-day sadness manageable.
Odds and ends:
Kiddo was my original student. We are entering our 7th consecutive year of tutoring together. I started with her when she was in 8th grade, and now she's starting her sophomore year at Stanford.
Over the years, she's become like my little sister. Keiko and I attended her graduation, and I stopped charging her family years ago. I help her because she's Kiddo, and I want to see her do well.
So, this year Kiddo is going to be taking multivariate calculus, and econometrics, which is a stats-intensive class. After last year's challenges finding a regular time that she would show up for lessons, I suggested that she come out a week early and do hardcore math camp all day. I'd backfill some of the stuff she only barely got in single variable calculus, plus teach her the stats stuff ahead of the class. She always has done better when she learned something first from me.
But it turns out Stanford doesn't let you move into the dorms early unless you want to pay a million dollars a day, and when she said she wanted to do the math camp but had no place to stay, I said that PROVIDED she got 150% approval from her parents, she could stay at the house. After all, there are empty bedrooms, and she's my other little sister.
Her parents approved, and so, for a little over a week, I suddenly had a teenage daughter. And let me tell you, having a teenager is a pain in the ass. You have to get them out of bed in the morning, because they sure as hell will not do it on their own, possibly making you late to work, and you would think that by the age of 19 they will have acquired minimal skills like ensuring that they've eaten something. But that turns out to be a naive hope.
Last Sunday, Kiddo had a particularly hard time getting out of bed, and I wound up late to the SF office for my first lesson. I was bailed out by the fact that that student is also chronically late, but I was annoyed. I put Kiddo out in the kitchen with some precalculus problems to work on while I did the lesson, and then gave an interview to a prospective tutor. When I came out of the interview, I looked around. No Kiddo.
I checked my phone, and there were several missed calls from her. So I called back, and she picked up and said the following:
"GusI'msosorrythepainwassobadtheparamedicsarehereI'matthe
conveniencestorearoundthecornerIneedyoutoPLEASEcome!"
(click)
oh god.
So I ran downstairs and around the corner, and sure enough, the paramedics were loading her into an ambulance. So I ran up and explained who I was, and they told me to get in. And off we went to St. Francis hospital. On the way, I had to text my student and tell him not to come down to take his last practice test before the real exam. Very, very professional. Sigh.
So we get to the emergency room, and they take her in. Eventually I join her in the room and along with the ER physician, finally hear the story:
Apparently, her period started about an hour before. She started experiencing cramps, so she went down to the convenience store to get some advil. While there, the cramps suddenly became the worst she's ever experienced in her life, and she basically passed out in the store, causing the convenience store dude to freak out and call 9-1-1.
What follows is a litany of questions from the ER physician, which went something like this:
Are you pregnant? Where is the pain located? Are you pregnant? What is the pain on a scale of 1-10? Are you sexually active? No? Well, do you think you might be pregnant? Are you on any kind of medication? Should we do a pregnancy test?
And after that was an extended discussion of teenage girl menstruation, which I am of course not going to reproduce here, principally because this is my written memory and I'd like to forget everything I had to hear about what teenage girls go through biologically. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, women are complicated.
After the doctor left, Kiddo looked at me and said: "I'm sorry you had to hear all that. But thank you for being here. I just don't understand why he was so obsessed with whether I'm pregnant. How much clearer could I be that there is _no_ _possible_ _way_ I am pregnant??"
To which I said:
"Uh, look, Kiddo, think about where we are, and what these people must see all the time. Here you are, rushed in here with symptoms very much consistent with recently becoming pregnant. And you're rushed in here, 19 years old, accompanied by a 37-year-old "family friend" who can't tell them your social security number or your address, other than "it's that building at 14th and Avenue A." 9 times out of 10, this situation is EXACTLY what they think it is. This just happens to be the one time where the situation is exactly what WE say it is. But they don't believe that, and they're probably right not to."
Kiddo: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-h."
So, after an IV, oxygen, and some pain medication, Kiddo was discharged, and we went to get some food (I hadn't eaten since the day before, and she hadn't eaten since the drive into the office). By the time we got back to the office, she was feeling a little better, so she did more math while I got the rest of what I needed done. My student couldn't come down to the office anymore, so we eventually went home.
Her mom thanked me for being there at the hospital with her. I told her I was just glad she was OK. I've never actually killed a student, though I've been tempted on occasion, and I certainly didn't want her to be the first.
A couple days later, Stanford re-opened for the year, and I drove her down to school, along with her giant suitcases full of "books" and "shoes". I had no idea that lead shoes were in this year, but I can infer that based on the total weight of her suitcases.
And with that, my brief time as the guardian of a teenage girl ended. It was actually nice to be busy, and to have the company at the house, but it really underscored how woefully ill-prepared I am to be taking care of anybody. But I'm hopeful Kiddo got a little more self-sufficient from her time staying at the beach house, if for no other reason than she would have starved to death otherwise...
Both these things have caused significant changes to day-to-day life. In the last few weeks I've been trying to make the adjustments.
On the Joel front:
- I have come to realize that fully 90% of the edible things in this house got here through Joel. After throwing out all the things in the fridge that were in various states of decomposition, which took quite some time, and then throwing out all the things I would never in a million years eat myself (e.g., fake chicken nuggets- Joel is a vegetarian that hates fruit, while I am a carnivore that hates vegetables and loves fruit. Between the 2 of us, as Joel once observed, there is no food that one of us won't refuse to eat), the entire contents of the refrigerator, not including condiments, were:
a few eggs
a small chunk of cheddar cheese
some prosciutto
2 apples
some fresh oregano (teetering on the edge of decomposition, but I rounded up. Probably more accurate to label it "some not-particularly-fresh oregano")
- on a related note, Joel and I were roughly comparable in terms of our willingness to allow things to slowly decompose in the fridge.
- the house is less lively without Kona bolting around it. She and I liked each other, although we were not madly in love the way she and Joel are. Through patient tutoring, we learned such commands as:
"Move it!"
"Do NOT go out that door!"
and
"PLEASE hurry up and poop already!"
We also worked hard at, but experienced much more limited success with:
"OK, look, you are NOT going to stop and sniff EVERY goddamned planter in the city of Palo Alto."
- On the plus side, I've slowly begun to turn back the tide of Kona hair that threatened at times to engulf the house. Kona is nature's perfect machine for converting air into hair. "But wait," you say, "isn't it *food* that she turns into hair?" No, no, Kona tuns food into a super-sticky substance that enables her hair to resist the washer, the dryer, and the vacuum cleaner (which she always had a particular hatred for).
So far, the way I'm winning the war is with the one thing stronger than Kona-hair: tape. I take pieces of tape and stick them to the chairs/sofa/etc. and then remove them. Basically, I'm giving my entire house a full Brazilian.
- I've always preferred having a roommate to living alone. It's more interesting, and keeps you in the habit of making little compromises. When you live alone, you never compromise on anything, which is not good practice for eventually being with someone.
I have had a lot of roommates over the years, ranging from the unmitigated disaster (Alana), to the eventual-best-friend-for-life (Laszlo), and everything in between. I got the beach house assuming I would never have a roommate, only because at this age I think I've passed the point where I can mentally tolerate the idea of posting an ad on Craigslist and having some random person move in. So it was a surprise to end up with Joel as a roommate, and he was a very good one. Considerate, and always good company, even in those moments when he was grumpy. And given that Joel is a 90-year-old man trapped in a 35-year-old body, that was a non-trivial number of moments.
On the Keiko front:
It's weird when you suddenly go from having someone you can tell anything to, no matter how mundane, to not having that person. And then longer that person is around before they aren't anymore, the harder is the adjustment. It gives a tiny, tiny glimpse into why when one half of an elderly couple dies, the other so often follows soon after. There's something incredibly powerful about having a constant companion.
Technology only amplifies the effect, it seems to me. Keiko and I had a gchat window open basically all day every day, and so any time something jumped into either's head, we would tell the other. Again, the sudden shift to not having that is incredibly dislocating.
For the most part, I've just buried myself in work. My GMAT student flew in from TX, and we had a week of hardcore all-day prep. I was wiped out at the end of every day. And last week Kiddo was here for a week of hardcore all-day math camp. More on that shortly. Being so busy has helped keep the amount of day-to-day sadness manageable.
Odds and ends:
Kiddo was my original student. We are entering our 7th consecutive year of tutoring together. I started with her when she was in 8th grade, and now she's starting her sophomore year at Stanford.
Over the years, she's become like my little sister. Keiko and I attended her graduation, and I stopped charging her family years ago. I help her because she's Kiddo, and I want to see her do well.
So, this year Kiddo is going to be taking multivariate calculus, and econometrics, which is a stats-intensive class. After last year's challenges finding a regular time that she would show up for lessons, I suggested that she come out a week early and do hardcore math camp all day. I'd backfill some of the stuff she only barely got in single variable calculus, plus teach her the stats stuff ahead of the class. She always has done better when she learned something first from me.
But it turns out Stanford doesn't let you move into the dorms early unless you want to pay a million dollars a day, and when she said she wanted to do the math camp but had no place to stay, I said that PROVIDED she got 150% approval from her parents, she could stay at the house. After all, there are empty bedrooms, and she's my other little sister.
Her parents approved, and so, for a little over a week, I suddenly had a teenage daughter. And let me tell you, having a teenager is a pain in the ass. You have to get them out of bed in the morning, because they sure as hell will not do it on their own, possibly making you late to work, and you would think that by the age of 19 they will have acquired minimal skills like ensuring that they've eaten something. But that turns out to be a naive hope.
Last Sunday, Kiddo had a particularly hard time getting out of bed, and I wound up late to the SF office for my first lesson. I was bailed out by the fact that that student is also chronically late, but I was annoyed. I put Kiddo out in the kitchen with some precalculus problems to work on while I did the lesson, and then gave an interview to a prospective tutor. When I came out of the interview, I looked around. No Kiddo.
I checked my phone, and there were several missed calls from her. So I called back, and she picked up and said the following:
"GusI'msosorrythepainwassobadtheparamedicsarehereI'matthe
conveniencestorearoundthecornerIneedyoutoPLEASEcome!"
(click)
oh god.
So I ran downstairs and around the corner, and sure enough, the paramedics were loading her into an ambulance. So I ran up and explained who I was, and they told me to get in. And off we went to St. Francis hospital. On the way, I had to text my student and tell him not to come down to take his last practice test before the real exam. Very, very professional. Sigh.
So we get to the emergency room, and they take her in. Eventually I join her in the room and along with the ER physician, finally hear the story:
Apparently, her period started about an hour before. She started experiencing cramps, so she went down to the convenience store to get some advil. While there, the cramps suddenly became the worst she's ever experienced in her life, and she basically passed out in the store, causing the convenience store dude to freak out and call 9-1-1.
What follows is a litany of questions from the ER physician, which went something like this:
Are you pregnant? Where is the pain located? Are you pregnant? What is the pain on a scale of 1-10? Are you sexually active? No? Well, do you think you might be pregnant? Are you on any kind of medication? Should we do a pregnancy test?
And after that was an extended discussion of teenage girl menstruation, which I am of course not going to reproduce here, principally because this is my written memory and I'd like to forget everything I had to hear about what teenage girls go through biologically. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, women are complicated.
After the doctor left, Kiddo looked at me and said: "I'm sorry you had to hear all that. But thank you for being here. I just don't understand why he was so obsessed with whether I'm pregnant. How much clearer could I be that there is _no_ _possible_ _way_ I am pregnant??"
To which I said:
"Uh, look, Kiddo, think about where we are, and what these people must see all the time. Here you are, rushed in here with symptoms very much consistent with recently becoming pregnant. And you're rushed in here, 19 years old, accompanied by a 37-year-old "family friend" who can't tell them your social security number or your address, other than "it's that building at 14th and Avenue A." 9 times out of 10, this situation is EXACTLY what they think it is. This just happens to be the one time where the situation is exactly what WE say it is. But they don't believe that, and they're probably right not to."
Kiddo: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-h."
So, after an IV, oxygen, and some pain medication, Kiddo was discharged, and we went to get some food (I hadn't eaten since the day before, and she hadn't eaten since the drive into the office). By the time we got back to the office, she was feeling a little better, so she did more math while I got the rest of what I needed done. My student couldn't come down to the office anymore, so we eventually went home.
Her mom thanked me for being there at the hospital with her. I told her I was just glad she was OK. I've never actually killed a student, though I've been tempted on occasion, and I certainly didn't want her to be the first.
A couple days later, Stanford re-opened for the year, and I drove her down to school, along with her giant suitcases full of "books" and "shoes". I had no idea that lead shoes were in this year, but I can infer that based on the total weight of her suitcases.
And with that, my brief time as the guardian of a teenage girl ended. It was actually nice to be busy, and to have the company at the house, but it really underscored how woefully ill-prepared I am to be taking care of anybody. But I'm hopeful Kiddo got a little more self-sufficient from her time staying at the beach house, if for no other reason than she would have starved to death otherwise...
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Einmal ist keinmal
Do you ever get the feeling that life is a series of endlessly repeating cycles?
I do.
It has been a summer of loss. In May I almost lost my roommate to an idiot driving a Zipcar. In June I almost lost my mother to heart issues. In July I did lose my father. Two nights ago I lost my girlfriend Keiko. And today I lost my roommate to a new life in DC, working for the OPM.
It's too soon for me to really write about what happened with Keiko. There was no proximate cause for our breakup. Nothing dramatic happened. But we were over 2 years into our relationship, and had just kind of reached That Point. And we failed to make it past That Point. Entirely due to me. I mean, 100% due to me. She was supportive, sweet, and loyal for over 2 years, and still I ended up hurting her terribly.
Basically, if you are a close friend of mine (and let's face it- if you're actually reading this blog, you probably are), then I have done 1 or more of the following things to you:
1) deeply hurt you
2) significantly disappointed you
3) completely failed you
4) nearly killed you
This is one of those days where I realize anew that it is a blessed miracle that I still have any friends at all.
Shara found this picture, and I feel like I should have it near me at all times:
Danger!
Tonight, after coming home early and crashing for a long while, I got up, put on my swim trunks, and walked down to the sea. I'm not especially religious in any kind of particular way, and praying's not really my thing, but I walked a little ways into the water and knelt in the surf, and prayed. I prayed for 3 things:
1) for Keiko, that she be granted healing, peace, happiness, and a man who will be as supportive, sweet, and loyal as she is, and sooner rather than later,
2) for healing between the two of us, that we may remain meaningfully part of each other's lives even though we're not dating anymore, and
3) forgiveness: for once again failing so spectacularly in my most basic life goal of having a net positive impact on the world, and on the people around me; for being so deeply, tragically flawed; and for being so pathetically unable to rise above those flaws.
At that point, I had to cut it short. It had taken several minutes to articulate those points, and you might not realize this, but Pacific Ocean water in the SF bay area at 11pm is, in a word, frigid. Another couple of minutes, and my testicles would have ascended straight into heaven. The other things I would have asked for will have to wait for another night.
Tomorrow morning I will wake up more alone in this beach house than I ever have been, in the 2 years that I have lived here. But I chose this path, and I will just have to hope that I have the strength to follow where it leads. I guess we'll see.
I do.
It has been a summer of loss. In May I almost lost my roommate to an idiot driving a Zipcar. In June I almost lost my mother to heart issues. In July I did lose my father. Two nights ago I lost my girlfriend Keiko. And today I lost my roommate to a new life in DC, working for the OPM.
It's too soon for me to really write about what happened with Keiko. There was no proximate cause for our breakup. Nothing dramatic happened. But we were over 2 years into our relationship, and had just kind of reached That Point. And we failed to make it past That Point. Entirely due to me. I mean, 100% due to me. She was supportive, sweet, and loyal for over 2 years, and still I ended up hurting her terribly.
Basically, if you are a close friend of mine (and let's face it- if you're actually reading this blog, you probably are), then I have done 1 or more of the following things to you:
1) deeply hurt you
2) significantly disappointed you
3) completely failed you
4) nearly killed you
This is one of those days where I realize anew that it is a blessed miracle that I still have any friends at all.
Shara found this picture, and I feel like I should have it near me at all times:
Danger!
Tonight, after coming home early and crashing for a long while, I got up, put on my swim trunks, and walked down to the sea. I'm not especially religious in any kind of particular way, and praying's not really my thing, but I walked a little ways into the water and knelt in the surf, and prayed. I prayed for 3 things:
1) for Keiko, that she be granted healing, peace, happiness, and a man who will be as supportive, sweet, and loyal as she is, and sooner rather than later,
2) for healing between the two of us, that we may remain meaningfully part of each other's lives even though we're not dating anymore, and
3) forgiveness: for once again failing so spectacularly in my most basic life goal of having a net positive impact on the world, and on the people around me; for being so deeply, tragically flawed; and for being so pathetically unable to rise above those flaws.
At that point, I had to cut it short. It had taken several minutes to articulate those points, and you might not realize this, but Pacific Ocean water in the SF bay area at 11pm is, in a word, frigid. Another couple of minutes, and my testicles would have ascended straight into heaven. The other things I would have asked for will have to wait for another night.
Tomorrow morning I will wake up more alone in this beach house than I ever have been, in the 2 years that I have lived here. But I chose this path, and I will just have to hope that I have the strength to follow where it leads. I guess we'll see.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Dreams from my father (my version)
Today would have been my dad's 74th birthday.
My strategy for getting through the process of laying him to rest was largely to not deal with the matter on an emotional level, but rather to avoid dealing with it as much as possible, and just get through the process. I process things primarily over time, in story form, and so this post will be my way of processing through the experience.
Consequently, I issue the following warning: this post may well be unreadable.
Now, I *never* guarantee readability in my posts; this blog serves as my written memory, and hence is really organized only for me. LJ mocked me a few days ago, saying she could quote precisely how long I napped for on the Cabo trip. OK, fair point, I may have gone a little overboard on the petty details in those posts, and probably do in my posts in general, but again- this is my memory, and you plumb it at your own peril.
Still, I feel compelled in this case to warn you that this post in particular may be unreadable, even in comparison to whatever its baseline level of unreadability is. So, you really should stop reading. Now. Seriously, stop. Quit reading. This instant.
Okay, fine.
Have it your way.
You were warned.
You brought this on yourself.
Don't blame me.
It is odd to think that, at age 37, I will shortly be the age that my father was at the point of my earliest memory of him. Parents always seem godlike when you're a little kid, and it weird to try and reconcile that image of godlike power with how totally clueless about life I feel right now.
Because my father was raised in India, he carried with him a certain set of expectations for how his oldest son would behave. My mom noted in her eulogy that my dad tried to live out his failed dreams through his children. I think I can credibly claim that this burden fell most heavily on me, due to an Indian cultural expectation of filial piety, especially from the oldest son.
Consequently, since his dream had always been to be a doctor, my childhood was sprinkled with things like Fisher Price doctor sets, with toy stethoscopes, etc., and trips to the hospital where he worked. He was never a chatty guy, but he did drop hints about medical school. Bear in mind that these memories are occurring when I was in the 4-8 year old range.
When I was approximately 7, my dad decided to give me a leg up on medical school by teaching me chemistry. He had an office in the house, and I would study the periodic table while he worked there, and he would quiz me on it. By the end of 2nd grade, I had memorized most of the table, including names, symbols, and atomic numbers. Later, I discovered that all the other boys had spent time with their dads doing things like learning to throw a ball, but at the time I assumed that everyone was learning the periodic table.
It was also during this time, hanging out in my dad's home office, listening to Haydn all day, that I began one of my most ambitious projects: writing down all the numbers. In order. In neat little columns, page after page.
If I had to boil my entire life down to one observation, it's that I was somewhere in the 12 thousands before I concluded that it might be time to abandon this project.
When I got a little older, it was time for science fairs. Since my parents were both in medical roles, they had lots of ideas for projects. One year I did a project that had something to do with growing bacteria in cultures, although I've long since forgotten what that one was specifically. Another year, I did one called "Salivary Amylase and Aging." That one probably came from my dad, who did geriatric biochemistry research.
That project featured my wandering around asking people to spit into test tubes, recording their ages, and then taking the samples back and running them through a spectrophotometer to analyze the amount of amylase present. Less amylase makes it harder to digest food, and then hypothesis was that older people produced less amylase, making it harder for them to properly break down food, adversely impacting digestion.
Note that while all we had in the house was one 3000 year old TV that was the size of a refrigerator and was crammed with about a billion vacuum tubes, one or another of which was blowing out approximately every 90 seconds, forcing weekly trips to the Radio Shack to replace them, we had things like functioning spectrophotometers just lying around the house.
All this, of course- the chemistry lessons, the medical research science projects, the doctor sets, the trips to the hospital, was designed to produce a son committed to medicine as a profession. So the most fundamental way in which I disappointed my father was that I never got excited about medicine. I learned the chemistry, but never particularly enjoyed the subject. I played with the doctor sets, but much preferred playing with cars, trucks, and blocks. I did the science projects, but never got particularly excited about them. And I hated being in hospitals. I still do. I hate the look of them, I hate the smell of them, and I especially hate the feel of them. I knew medicine was off the table by the time I was ten, and that really disappointed him.
My dad also had a very specific idea about his role in the family. He seemed to see his role as twofold: being the provider, and being the discipliner. Everything else he left to my mom. Included, therefore, in "everything else" was pretty much all of the housework, and pretty much all of the child-raising. Given that there were 4 of us, that was a fair amount of housework and a fair amount of child-raising. Both I and my sister did a lot of babysitting and childcare while still children ourselves as a result.
One day when I was about ten, while I was watching Saturday morning cartoons and quietly minding my own business, my mom came thundering into the room. Now, mom is usually pretty mellow, so I was caught off guard by her intensity. She reached down, grabbed me by the collar, dragged me to my feet, wagged her finger in my face, and said:
"YOU... are NOT going to be a helpless male like your father!!"
And with that, she dragged me down to the basement and taught me to do laundry. I also learned cooking and cleaning. And, I'm proud to say, I'm not a helpless male like my father apparently was. Although, to this day laundry is by far my least favorite house chore.
In his role as disciplinarian, my father saw justice as something swift, corporal, and not subject to any negotiation or explanation. Once, when I was nine or ten, I was sitting on the front porch as two dudes walked by. Our neighborhood was not particularly good, but we had a fire station on our block and that mitigated some of the effects of the broader area. Still, drugs were fairly rampant, and it turns out that these two dudes were smoking a joint, passing it back and forth between them.
Now, I was still too young to know that's what was going on; it's just obvious in retrospect that that's what was happening. What I observed that day was one of the dudes dropping the joint, and then the other calling him a "bitch" as he stooped to get it, and then both of them guffawing and heading on their way.
What my nine-or-ten year old brain took away from that scene was that "bitch" was a funny thing to call someone. So the next day, at dinner, when my sister was annoying me, I called her a bitch, expecting this to be quite funny. So I was very surprised when an instant later I was decked across the face. My dad played a lot of tennis in his life, and he had a pretty good forehand. Or so I infer, based on how incidents like this one felt.
This is the kind of thing that has, I think, forever saddled me with a certain antipathy toward authority. A simple request not to use the word "bitch", coupled with a short explanation, would have sufficed, but instead I got decked without warning. Authority in our family was heavily concentrated in my dad, and this was how justice was typically meted out. Consequently, I have a very strong reaction to people who exercise authority in ways that seem unjust or arbitrary.
Dinner in our house tended to be relatively early; 6 or 630 typically. I was allowed to play on the block relatively unsupervised, with the expectation that when my mom called out the window that dinner was ready, I'd be close enough to here and come in. And once we finished dinner, I was not allowed to go back outside.
In the summertime, because we ate dinner so early, there was often substantial daylight left after dinner. And JD and Dustin, the two boys on the block that I played with, were both allowed to be out basically until dark. So one day, in the summer before 7th grade, I hit upon the idea of slinking out the back door after dinner was over, thinking I would just play with JD for an hour or so and then come back in. It would still be well before dark, and who would notice?
So, an hour later, when I tried to get back in the back door, I discovered it was locked. We never actually locked the interior door, so I was totally surprised. I tried coming around the front, and that was locked too (which was not surprising). I started to panic a little. I went around back, and was forced to start knocking and yelling. No one came. I stood there pounding on the door and yelling for a while. Our house was not that big, so I knew they could hear me.
Finally, the door opened, and my father stood there, holding a piece of molding that you use when two pieces of paneling meet in the corner. It was fairly thick, yet fairly flexible. I knew I was in big trouble.
Prior to that point, I'd never gotten punished with anything more serious than a belt, but I have to tell you: molding is extremely effective, if causing pain is your goal. It hurt like hell. All the while as he took it to my backside, he yelled at me for violating his rule about not going back outside. Again, no discussion, no opportunity to explain that I had stayed very close to the house, that I was aware they were concerned about my safety and had therefore taken pains to make sure I was back well in advance of dark, etc.
When it was over, he sent me to my room. Not long after that, mom came up to the room. I was quite upset, and she held me and said she wanted me to know that no matter what happened, I could always come home.
I didn't say much at the time, but I often thought about that over the ensuing years, and I remember thinking even that day that I was being given something of a mixed message. I mean, I'd been deliberately locked out, preventing me from coming home even if I wanted to, and then I'd been pretty thoroughly switched, which didn't exactly make coming home seem like the most attractive option in the world.
In his role as a provider, my father was much more successful. He came to this country essentially with nothing, and managed to eventually earn a comfortably middle-class living for his family. But it was a long climb up, and my parents often stressed out a lot about money. But my father was pretty careful to make sure that we kids never saw any of that; they had most of their money talks in the kitchen with the door closed after we had gone to bed. But there was only one bathroom in the house, and it was right next to the kitchen, so over time I learned that if I came downstairs at night and saw the kitchen door closed and the light on, mom and dad were having a Money Talk.
From 6th through 8th grade, I participated in an after-school math program run by an independent group called MEGSSS (Math Enrichment for Gifted Secondary School Students), which was math for super, super geeky kids. It was a 6 year program, and by the time I was in the 3rd year, I was easily the dumbest kid in the class. It was hard, but I loved it, and a lot of the math we did in that class I didn't see again until I was an junior/senior yr math major.
Unfortunately, the program cost money, and it was way the hell out in the county. We only had one car, which my dad let my mom use while he took buses to work every day, and with my sister also getting involved in after school activities, plus my two little brothers, the logistics of keeping me in the program started to look grim.
Plus, year 4 coincided with my beginning high school at SLUH. I had spent the last 2 years at a public magnet school, which obviously helped on the economic front, but the St. Louis public high school system is among the worst in the country, and so I was headed to a private school, which meant significant tuition costs.
One day, as I came down to use the bathroom, I heard my mom and dad having a Money Talk. The subject concerned my continued participation in MEGSSS, how we could possibly afford to keep me in it and high school at the same time, and how, even if we did somehow find the money, we could possibly get me to and from it. I sat outside the door listening for quite some time, and finally heard my dad say, “Well, if he wants to do it, education is important and we’ll just have to find a way.”
A few days after that, my mom approached me to ask me what I thought about MEGSSS, and whether I wanted to sign up again for the 4th year. I loved the program, and knew it was special, but I also knew, from my father’s (as always, totally unspoken) example, that a man provides for his family. Period. To the best of my knowledge, he never once hesitated to make any sacrifice he felt was necessary to provide for us. And so I knew what I had to say:
Me: “Enh, I don’t really care one way or the other. It’s kinda a lot of work, and I don’t know if I’ll have time this year since I’m going to be in high school, and SLUH is supposed to be good.”
Mom: “WHAT? I thought you *liked* MEGSSS!”
Me: “Sure, it’s OK. I mean, I’ve enjoyed it OK. But it’s kinda boring and a lot of work, so it’s OK with me if I don’t attend it.”
With a little more reassurance, my mom was convinced. I still remember how visibly relieved she was at my words. And so I knew I’d done the right thing. It’s the first time I can remember thinking in my head that I needed to be a man.
The second time occurred a little more than a year later.
In my neighborhood, which was relatively poor, I was part of a small group of street urchins that roamed around on our bikes, mostly bored and doing nothing in particular. None of us came from families of any meaningful economic wealth, and so none of us ever carried money around. Nevertheless, we often got hungry during the day, and one thing I learned from the gang was that you could walk into any small convenience store, plunk down 5 cents to buy a piece of gum or something, and walk out with a couple other small items tucked away in your pocket for consumption later. It was something we all did, and none of us referred to it as “stealing.” It was simply “taking.” And it was The Way Things Are.
At the time, if you had asked me if I thought stealing was wrong, I would have looked at you as though you were crazy and said “duh.” But in my 11, 12, 13, 14 year old brain, “taking” was something different. It was The Way Things Are. Our lives went on, the convenience stores’ lives went on, and no one seemed harmed. So I just picked up along the way a bit of a minor shoplifting habit.
When I got to high school, where there weren’t going to be any more subsidized school lunches, I was given an allowance of $10 a week to fund buying any food not originating in the house. Even in 1987, $10 a week was tricky to get 5 lunches a week out of, and I was often hungry by the time I left school. There was a National supermarket just a block away from home, and so I would stop there on the way and often nick something to tide me over until dinner.
Again, if you had asked me if what I was doing was right, I would have shifted around uncomfortably and eventually said “no.” I mean, I knew I would get in trouble if I got caught. But no one ever got caught, and the National was so giant that it would never miss a pack of Starburst, or a Hostess Cinnamon Roll. No one got hurt. Life seemed to just keep on keeping on. It was The Way Things Are.
Plus, by employing this strategy, I got access to much yummier stuff than I could possibly have ever found around the house, where we weren’t even allowed sugared cereal, and even better, this way I never had to ask for any more money. I felt very deeply that asking for any more money represented failure on my part, an unforgivable weakness and inability to sacrifice. So I found a way to replicate the results of sacrifice, without actually doing the sacrificing. Remember, I was using 14-year-old logic: don’t have to ask for more money, get free candy, this is The Way Things Are. That was about the extent of my reflection on the issue. (There’s a good reason 14-year-olds should not be tried as adults.) Anyway, it seemed like a win-win at the time.
Until the day I finally got caught.
I still remember standing there in the baking aisle of the National, surreptitiously sticking a pack of starburst AND a cinnamon roll down my pants while pretending to examine bags of sugar (oh, the irony). As I turned to go, I saw a woman’s head peering around the end of the aisle suddenly vanish. If I had been a smart criminal, I would have immediately divested myself of the stash. But it never occurred to me that there might be plainclothes detectives guarding the store against urchins like me, and I chose to just try hightailing it out of there. I made it halfway out the door before feeling two hands grab me by the collar and yank me back in.
She dragged me into the back office of the National, where there was a uniformed security guard, a giant black man, waiting. They proceeded to do a whole good cop-bad cop routine on me. The woman said she wanted to call the cops and have me sent down to the station, charged with theft, and sent to jail. The security guard said, “You want to send him to jail for trying to steal a piece of candy and a doughnut?” Meanwhile, I was shaking, and so terrified I couldn’t even cry. Jail actually didn’t sound half bad, I remember actually thinking that, because I couldn’t bear to think what would happen when he found out. And very, very deep down, I was ashamed, and couldn’t bear to think what my parents would think of me.
In the end, they just called my house and made my mom come up to the store and get me. She was mortified. As we walked home, she said “I can’t not tell your father about this.” I couldn’t say anything. I was still too ashamed and terrified to say much of anything.
When we got home, she sent me to my room. I waited in there for what seemed like a week, but was probably only an hour or so. I eventually heard my dad come home, walk up the front steps like he always did, hang his coat on the coat rack downstairs, and then open the door to the hallway and head toward the kitchen.
Silence followed.
I started sweating.
Suddenly, I heard the hallway door explode open, slamming into the wall, and I heard my dad hit the steps at a dead run. His feet were hitting the steps hard, and in the couple seconds it took for him to make it up the flight, I thought to myself, “Stand up and take it like a man.” So I stood up from my bed (I had been sitting on the edge), and turned to face the door as it blew open and my dad came running in.
“Dad, I…” I started to say.
And then he gave me a full forehand right across the face. With full forward momentum. It knocked me over onto the bed. Then he set upon me, and for the first few blows I tried to parry a little, but then I just went fetal and absorbed the blows. While he was hitting me, he was yelling at me about how I’d disgraced the family name, and showed no appreciation for the sacrifices he had made.
It’s true what they say, that when something like that is happening, your mind just disengages and goes somewhere else. It’s like it was happening to someone else, and meanwhile I wondered in my mind why he wasn’t asking me *why* I’d done it. It didn’t seem to occur to him at all to inquire as to what I had been thinking. I mean, I knew I’d done something stupid. I was totally ashamed of myself. But even as I’d done something retarded, part of my thought process had actually been to try and be less of a burden on the family. And I wanted to tell him that. But I never got the chance that day.
Eventually, he just tired himself out, I guess. He got up and stalked out, saying only that I’d better not come downstairs, because he didn’t want to see my face. For a long time, I just lay there on the bed, still in the fetal position. I don’t remember anymore how long it was until I started crying.
When that part was over, what remained was anger. I was really pissed off. I was especially pissed that he seemed most concerned about the family name, and not at all about what I might have been thinking. I remember as I lay there vowing never again to do something so foolish- not because he’d told me not to, but rather because I knew that I might have gone to jail, and going to jail would mean jeopardizing my ability to get out of that neighborhood. The other kids in our little group of street urchins, none of them ever graduated high school, and I don’t know if any of them ever made it out of the neighborhood. But my dad had also instilled deep within me the idea that education was the way you bettered yourself, and made a better life for yourself and for your family. And I was determined to get out of that crazy house, out of that crazy neighborhood, and on to some place where no one knew I’d once been a common petty thief. And so I never shoplifted again.
During my junior year, I dated for a while a girl named Dawn. The drama that was my story with Dawn will have to wait for another day, but one Friday night her parents were not coming home, and she invited me to spend the night at her place, presumably as a major tactical move in what was ultimately her failed quest to take my virginity. I did enjoy her attempts, though, and so I agreed. I figured it would be easy; I often spent weekend nights at Plaid’s, and I knew he would cover for me.
Thing is, this was the age before cell phones, and when I got the invitation early that evening, I tried calling over to Plaid’s house. He wasn’t home, so I talked to him mother. I told her to tell Plaid NOT to call my house that night. I even made her repeat exactly the message to give to him, so that I could verify that she had it right.
You can probably see where this is headed.
The next day, when I got home, my dad asked me where I’d been the night before. Which was odd, since I’d told him I was spending the night at Plaid’s, and he’d never asked a follow-up question before. So I repeated my cover story. That’s when he said:
“Well, then why did Plaid call here last night, and then say you weren’t with him? Where the hell were you?”
(pause)
“Uh, I was at Dawn’s.”
I expected at that point that I would have the shit kicked out of me. I braced myself for it. So I was totally caught off guard when all he did was sadly put his face in his hand and mutter:
”I can’t believe you would just lie to me, right to my face. Get out of here- I can’t even look at you.”
I’ll never forget how… disappointed… he looked. He didn’t seem angry at all- just sad. And that made me feel worse than I ever did any of the other times I was ever in trouble. If I had to define a moment in time as the lowest my relationship with him ever was, it would be that moment.
Of course, little more than a year later I graduated from SLUH, and headed off to Pomona College. In part because of the academic performance expectations he and my mom had always set, I did well enough to go to a very good school. I went to Pomona intending to double major in physics and psychology. I enjoyed physics, and my father, grudgingly accepting that I wasn’t going to do pre-med, was willing to compromise and accept the only real second-place career option: a Ph.D. in a hard science. Psychology seemed fairly useless to him, but as long as it didn’t distract from physics he could ignore it.
At Pomona, I was happy in school for the first time since maybe 4th grade. I loved it there. I got involved in a million different things, and slept on average maybe 4 hours a night most of the time, with the occasional crash that caused me to sleep through a morning of classes. There were so many different things I got involved in that I was pretty overextended, and as a result my grades were not especially great- I graduated with a 3.06. So for four years, my dad and I had the same discussion of my college career: he argued that I should stop doing “all that other stuff” and just focus on physics and my grades in that. That conversation was pretty much the only one we had.
As college drew to a close, I applied half-heartedly to physics Ph.D. programs Univ of Washington, UC Davis, Univ of Illinois, and… … one other place that I can’t even remember anymore. Illinois rejected me, then UW rejected me, then UW rejected me a 2nd time a week later with a different letter, as if I hadn’t gotten the message the first time. JOC and I threw a party at our room every time I got rejected, so the upside was that we got 2 parties out of it. Whatever the other place was also rejected me. But then UC Davis accepted me, and even gave me a fellowship. But I decided to defer for a year because I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to do it. Once I actually had an acceptance, I realized that I’d really only applied for a Ph.D. because it was my dad’s expectation.
I wound up selling TV advertising time at Katz in Los Angeles, where I managed to put together a successful sales career, despite having been that kid who was supposed to go out selling candy bars to raise money for my school, and after knocking on 100 doors in the neighborhood, ended up selling exactly 1 candy bar, to my mom, because she felt sorry for me. Integrity and honesty in negotiations turned out to be a primary competitive advantage of mine, and I learned those things from both my parents.
Although he didn’t especially approve of my decision not to go to graduate school, my dad never stopped providing for me. I graduated from college with nothing- no money, no particularly marketable skills, no car, etc. As a graduation present, he gave me the 2nd car, which he had gotten while I was in school. And though I tried hard not to ask for money, and mostly succeeded, I knew he would have given me money without hesitation if I needed it.
It was while I was working at Katz, selling TV advertising time, that my dad had his stroke. It was the week before my birthday, and I had a pretty somber birthday party. I made dinner, and people hung out with me until it was time for me to go to the airport and head to St. Louis.
Everything about my relationship with my dad changed with the stroke. Like many people, I knew intellectually that everyone dies, and consequently, eventually my parents would die, but I was not prepared for this reminder of his mortality. I felt particularly ashamed that our relationship at that point had been virtually nonexistent; I saw him when I came home, and we had the usual conversation that implied that I was wasting my time on the path I was on, but other than that there wasn’t much. And that was really more my fault than his.
In reflecting on the 37-year-long relationship that I had with my father, I don’t know if I will ever stop being disappointed in myself that it took his nearly dying to make me start to truly appreciate him, and to tell him that I loved him. For all his limitations, he loved me honestly, and within the scope of parenting as he understood it, did a good job raising us. Many of my most fundamental qualities, both good (a deep desire to provide for the people I love, virtually irrespective of sacrifice), and bad (a deep-seated inability to articulate the feelings that cause me to want to provide for the people I love), I get from him.
So thank you, dad, for helping make me the person I am today. I will miss you in the years ahead.
I love you.
My strategy for getting through the process of laying him to rest was largely to not deal with the matter on an emotional level, but rather to avoid dealing with it as much as possible, and just get through the process. I process things primarily over time, in story form, and so this post will be my way of processing through the experience.
Consequently, I issue the following warning: this post may well be unreadable.
Now, I *never* guarantee readability in my posts; this blog serves as my written memory, and hence is really organized only for me. LJ mocked me a few days ago, saying she could quote precisely how long I napped for on the Cabo trip. OK, fair point, I may have gone a little overboard on the petty details in those posts, and probably do in my posts in general, but again- this is my memory, and you plumb it at your own peril.
Still, I feel compelled in this case to warn you that this post in particular may be unreadable, even in comparison to whatever its baseline level of unreadability is. So, you really should stop reading. Now. Seriously, stop. Quit reading. This instant.
Okay, fine.
Have it your way.
You were warned.
You brought this on yourself.
Don't blame me.
It is odd to think that, at age 37, I will shortly be the age that my father was at the point of my earliest memory of him. Parents always seem godlike when you're a little kid, and it weird to try and reconcile that image of godlike power with how totally clueless about life I feel right now.
Because my father was raised in India, he carried with him a certain set of expectations for how his oldest son would behave. My mom noted in her eulogy that my dad tried to live out his failed dreams through his children. I think I can credibly claim that this burden fell most heavily on me, due to an Indian cultural expectation of filial piety, especially from the oldest son.
Consequently, since his dream had always been to be a doctor, my childhood was sprinkled with things like Fisher Price doctor sets, with toy stethoscopes, etc., and trips to the hospital where he worked. He was never a chatty guy, but he did drop hints about medical school. Bear in mind that these memories are occurring when I was in the 4-8 year old range.
When I was approximately 7, my dad decided to give me a leg up on medical school by teaching me chemistry. He had an office in the house, and I would study the periodic table while he worked there, and he would quiz me on it. By the end of 2nd grade, I had memorized most of the table, including names, symbols, and atomic numbers. Later, I discovered that all the other boys had spent time with their dads doing things like learning to throw a ball, but at the time I assumed that everyone was learning the periodic table.
It was also during this time, hanging out in my dad's home office, listening to Haydn all day, that I began one of my most ambitious projects: writing down all the numbers. In order. In neat little columns, page after page.
If I had to boil my entire life down to one observation, it's that I was somewhere in the 12 thousands before I concluded that it might be time to abandon this project.
When I got a little older, it was time for science fairs. Since my parents were both in medical roles, they had lots of ideas for projects. One year I did a project that had something to do with growing bacteria in cultures, although I've long since forgotten what that one was specifically. Another year, I did one called "Salivary Amylase and Aging." That one probably came from my dad, who did geriatric biochemistry research.
That project featured my wandering around asking people to spit into test tubes, recording their ages, and then taking the samples back and running them through a spectrophotometer to analyze the amount of amylase present. Less amylase makes it harder to digest food, and then hypothesis was that older people produced less amylase, making it harder for them to properly break down food, adversely impacting digestion.
Note that while all we had in the house was one 3000 year old TV that was the size of a refrigerator and was crammed with about a billion vacuum tubes, one or another of which was blowing out approximately every 90 seconds, forcing weekly trips to the Radio Shack to replace them, we had things like functioning spectrophotometers just lying around the house.
All this, of course- the chemistry lessons, the medical research science projects, the doctor sets, the trips to the hospital, was designed to produce a son committed to medicine as a profession. So the most fundamental way in which I disappointed my father was that I never got excited about medicine. I learned the chemistry, but never particularly enjoyed the subject. I played with the doctor sets, but much preferred playing with cars, trucks, and blocks. I did the science projects, but never got particularly excited about them. And I hated being in hospitals. I still do. I hate the look of them, I hate the smell of them, and I especially hate the feel of them. I knew medicine was off the table by the time I was ten, and that really disappointed him.
My dad also had a very specific idea about his role in the family. He seemed to see his role as twofold: being the provider, and being the discipliner. Everything else he left to my mom. Included, therefore, in "everything else" was pretty much all of the housework, and pretty much all of the child-raising. Given that there were 4 of us, that was a fair amount of housework and a fair amount of child-raising. Both I and my sister did a lot of babysitting and childcare while still children ourselves as a result.
One day when I was about ten, while I was watching Saturday morning cartoons and quietly minding my own business, my mom came thundering into the room. Now, mom is usually pretty mellow, so I was caught off guard by her intensity. She reached down, grabbed me by the collar, dragged me to my feet, wagged her finger in my face, and said:
"YOU... are NOT going to be a helpless male like your father!!"
And with that, she dragged me down to the basement and taught me to do laundry. I also learned cooking and cleaning. And, I'm proud to say, I'm not a helpless male like my father apparently was. Although, to this day laundry is by far my least favorite house chore.
In his role as disciplinarian, my father saw justice as something swift, corporal, and not subject to any negotiation or explanation. Once, when I was nine or ten, I was sitting on the front porch as two dudes walked by. Our neighborhood was not particularly good, but we had a fire station on our block and that mitigated some of the effects of the broader area. Still, drugs were fairly rampant, and it turns out that these two dudes were smoking a joint, passing it back and forth between them.
Now, I was still too young to know that's what was going on; it's just obvious in retrospect that that's what was happening. What I observed that day was one of the dudes dropping the joint, and then the other calling him a "bitch" as he stooped to get it, and then both of them guffawing and heading on their way.
What my nine-or-ten year old brain took away from that scene was that "bitch" was a funny thing to call someone. So the next day, at dinner, when my sister was annoying me, I called her a bitch, expecting this to be quite funny. So I was very surprised when an instant later I was decked across the face. My dad played a lot of tennis in his life, and he had a pretty good forehand. Or so I infer, based on how incidents like this one felt.
This is the kind of thing that has, I think, forever saddled me with a certain antipathy toward authority. A simple request not to use the word "bitch", coupled with a short explanation, would have sufficed, but instead I got decked without warning. Authority in our family was heavily concentrated in my dad, and this was how justice was typically meted out. Consequently, I have a very strong reaction to people who exercise authority in ways that seem unjust or arbitrary.
Dinner in our house tended to be relatively early; 6 or 630 typically. I was allowed to play on the block relatively unsupervised, with the expectation that when my mom called out the window that dinner was ready, I'd be close enough to here and come in. And once we finished dinner, I was not allowed to go back outside.
In the summertime, because we ate dinner so early, there was often substantial daylight left after dinner. And JD and Dustin, the two boys on the block that I played with, were both allowed to be out basically until dark. So one day, in the summer before 7th grade, I hit upon the idea of slinking out the back door after dinner was over, thinking I would just play with JD for an hour or so and then come back in. It would still be well before dark, and who would notice?
So, an hour later, when I tried to get back in the back door, I discovered it was locked. We never actually locked the interior door, so I was totally surprised. I tried coming around the front, and that was locked too (which was not surprising). I started to panic a little. I went around back, and was forced to start knocking and yelling. No one came. I stood there pounding on the door and yelling for a while. Our house was not that big, so I knew they could hear me.
Finally, the door opened, and my father stood there, holding a piece of molding that you use when two pieces of paneling meet in the corner. It was fairly thick, yet fairly flexible. I knew I was in big trouble.
Prior to that point, I'd never gotten punished with anything more serious than a belt, but I have to tell you: molding is extremely effective, if causing pain is your goal. It hurt like hell. All the while as he took it to my backside, he yelled at me for violating his rule about not going back outside. Again, no discussion, no opportunity to explain that I had stayed very close to the house, that I was aware they were concerned about my safety and had therefore taken pains to make sure I was back well in advance of dark, etc.
When it was over, he sent me to my room. Not long after that, mom came up to the room. I was quite upset, and she held me and said she wanted me to know that no matter what happened, I could always come home.
I didn't say much at the time, but I often thought about that over the ensuing years, and I remember thinking even that day that I was being given something of a mixed message. I mean, I'd been deliberately locked out, preventing me from coming home even if I wanted to, and then I'd been pretty thoroughly switched, which didn't exactly make coming home seem like the most attractive option in the world.
In his role as a provider, my father was much more successful. He came to this country essentially with nothing, and managed to eventually earn a comfortably middle-class living for his family. But it was a long climb up, and my parents often stressed out a lot about money. But my father was pretty careful to make sure that we kids never saw any of that; they had most of their money talks in the kitchen with the door closed after we had gone to bed. But there was only one bathroom in the house, and it was right next to the kitchen, so over time I learned that if I came downstairs at night and saw the kitchen door closed and the light on, mom and dad were having a Money Talk.
From 6th through 8th grade, I participated in an after-school math program run by an independent group called MEGSSS (Math Enrichment for Gifted Secondary School Students), which was math for super, super geeky kids. It was a 6 year program, and by the time I was in the 3rd year, I was easily the dumbest kid in the class. It was hard, but I loved it, and a lot of the math we did in that class I didn't see again until I was an junior/senior yr math major.
Unfortunately, the program cost money, and it was way the hell out in the county. We only had one car, which my dad let my mom use while he took buses to work every day, and with my sister also getting involved in after school activities, plus my two little brothers, the logistics of keeping me in the program started to look grim.
Plus, year 4 coincided with my beginning high school at SLUH. I had spent the last 2 years at a public magnet school, which obviously helped on the economic front, but the St. Louis public high school system is among the worst in the country, and so I was headed to a private school, which meant significant tuition costs.
One day, as I came down to use the bathroom, I heard my mom and dad having a Money Talk. The subject concerned my continued participation in MEGSSS, how we could possibly afford to keep me in it and high school at the same time, and how, even if we did somehow find the money, we could possibly get me to and from it. I sat outside the door listening for quite some time, and finally heard my dad say, “Well, if he wants to do it, education is important and we’ll just have to find a way.”
A few days after that, my mom approached me to ask me what I thought about MEGSSS, and whether I wanted to sign up again for the 4th year. I loved the program, and knew it was special, but I also knew, from my father’s (as always, totally unspoken) example, that a man provides for his family. Period. To the best of my knowledge, he never once hesitated to make any sacrifice he felt was necessary to provide for us. And so I knew what I had to say:
Me: “Enh, I don’t really care one way or the other. It’s kinda a lot of work, and I don’t know if I’ll have time this year since I’m going to be in high school, and SLUH is supposed to be good.”
Mom: “WHAT? I thought you *liked* MEGSSS!”
Me: “Sure, it’s OK. I mean, I’ve enjoyed it OK. But it’s kinda boring and a lot of work, so it’s OK with me if I don’t attend it.”
With a little more reassurance, my mom was convinced. I still remember how visibly relieved she was at my words. And so I knew I’d done the right thing. It’s the first time I can remember thinking in my head that I needed to be a man.
The second time occurred a little more than a year later.
In my neighborhood, which was relatively poor, I was part of a small group of street urchins that roamed around on our bikes, mostly bored and doing nothing in particular. None of us came from families of any meaningful economic wealth, and so none of us ever carried money around. Nevertheless, we often got hungry during the day, and one thing I learned from the gang was that you could walk into any small convenience store, plunk down 5 cents to buy a piece of gum or something, and walk out with a couple other small items tucked away in your pocket for consumption later. It was something we all did, and none of us referred to it as “stealing.” It was simply “taking.” And it was The Way Things Are.
At the time, if you had asked me if I thought stealing was wrong, I would have looked at you as though you were crazy and said “duh.” But in my 11, 12, 13, 14 year old brain, “taking” was something different. It was The Way Things Are. Our lives went on, the convenience stores’ lives went on, and no one seemed harmed. So I just picked up along the way a bit of a minor shoplifting habit.
When I got to high school, where there weren’t going to be any more subsidized school lunches, I was given an allowance of $10 a week to fund buying any food not originating in the house. Even in 1987, $10 a week was tricky to get 5 lunches a week out of, and I was often hungry by the time I left school. There was a National supermarket just a block away from home, and so I would stop there on the way and often nick something to tide me over until dinner.
Again, if you had asked me if what I was doing was right, I would have shifted around uncomfortably and eventually said “no.” I mean, I knew I would get in trouble if I got caught. But no one ever got caught, and the National was so giant that it would never miss a pack of Starburst, or a Hostess Cinnamon Roll. No one got hurt. Life seemed to just keep on keeping on. It was The Way Things Are.
Plus, by employing this strategy, I got access to much yummier stuff than I could possibly have ever found around the house, where we weren’t even allowed sugared cereal, and even better, this way I never had to ask for any more money. I felt very deeply that asking for any more money represented failure on my part, an unforgivable weakness and inability to sacrifice. So I found a way to replicate the results of sacrifice, without actually doing the sacrificing. Remember, I was using 14-year-old logic: don’t have to ask for more money, get free candy, this is The Way Things Are. That was about the extent of my reflection on the issue. (There’s a good reason 14-year-olds should not be tried as adults.) Anyway, it seemed like a win-win at the time.
Until the day I finally got caught.
I still remember standing there in the baking aisle of the National, surreptitiously sticking a pack of starburst AND a cinnamon roll down my pants while pretending to examine bags of sugar (oh, the irony). As I turned to go, I saw a woman’s head peering around the end of the aisle suddenly vanish. If I had been a smart criminal, I would have immediately divested myself of the stash. But it never occurred to me that there might be plainclothes detectives guarding the store against urchins like me, and I chose to just try hightailing it out of there. I made it halfway out the door before feeling two hands grab me by the collar and yank me back in.
She dragged me into the back office of the National, where there was a uniformed security guard, a giant black man, waiting. They proceeded to do a whole good cop-bad cop routine on me. The woman said she wanted to call the cops and have me sent down to the station, charged with theft, and sent to jail. The security guard said, “You want to send him to jail for trying to steal a piece of candy and a doughnut?” Meanwhile, I was shaking, and so terrified I couldn’t even cry. Jail actually didn’t sound half bad, I remember actually thinking that, because I couldn’t bear to think what would happen when he found out. And very, very deep down, I was ashamed, and couldn’t bear to think what my parents would think of me.
In the end, they just called my house and made my mom come up to the store and get me. She was mortified. As we walked home, she said “I can’t not tell your father about this.” I couldn’t say anything. I was still too ashamed and terrified to say much of anything.
When we got home, she sent me to my room. I waited in there for what seemed like a week, but was probably only an hour or so. I eventually heard my dad come home, walk up the front steps like he always did, hang his coat on the coat rack downstairs, and then open the door to the hallway and head toward the kitchen.
Silence followed.
I started sweating.
Suddenly, I heard the hallway door explode open, slamming into the wall, and I heard my dad hit the steps at a dead run. His feet were hitting the steps hard, and in the couple seconds it took for him to make it up the flight, I thought to myself, “Stand up and take it like a man.” So I stood up from my bed (I had been sitting on the edge), and turned to face the door as it blew open and my dad came running in.
“Dad, I…” I started to say.
And then he gave me a full forehand right across the face. With full forward momentum. It knocked me over onto the bed. Then he set upon me, and for the first few blows I tried to parry a little, but then I just went fetal and absorbed the blows. While he was hitting me, he was yelling at me about how I’d disgraced the family name, and showed no appreciation for the sacrifices he had made.
It’s true what they say, that when something like that is happening, your mind just disengages and goes somewhere else. It’s like it was happening to someone else, and meanwhile I wondered in my mind why he wasn’t asking me *why* I’d done it. It didn’t seem to occur to him at all to inquire as to what I had been thinking. I mean, I knew I’d done something stupid. I was totally ashamed of myself. But even as I’d done something retarded, part of my thought process had actually been to try and be less of a burden on the family. And I wanted to tell him that. But I never got the chance that day.
Eventually, he just tired himself out, I guess. He got up and stalked out, saying only that I’d better not come downstairs, because he didn’t want to see my face. For a long time, I just lay there on the bed, still in the fetal position. I don’t remember anymore how long it was until I started crying.
When that part was over, what remained was anger. I was really pissed off. I was especially pissed that he seemed most concerned about the family name, and not at all about what I might have been thinking. I remember as I lay there vowing never again to do something so foolish- not because he’d told me not to, but rather because I knew that I might have gone to jail, and going to jail would mean jeopardizing my ability to get out of that neighborhood. The other kids in our little group of street urchins, none of them ever graduated high school, and I don’t know if any of them ever made it out of the neighborhood. But my dad had also instilled deep within me the idea that education was the way you bettered yourself, and made a better life for yourself and for your family. And I was determined to get out of that crazy house, out of that crazy neighborhood, and on to some place where no one knew I’d once been a common petty thief. And so I never shoplifted again.
During my junior year, I dated for a while a girl named Dawn. The drama that was my story with Dawn will have to wait for another day, but one Friday night her parents were not coming home, and she invited me to spend the night at her place, presumably as a major tactical move in what was ultimately her failed quest to take my virginity. I did enjoy her attempts, though, and so I agreed. I figured it would be easy; I often spent weekend nights at Plaid’s, and I knew he would cover for me.
Thing is, this was the age before cell phones, and when I got the invitation early that evening, I tried calling over to Plaid’s house. He wasn’t home, so I talked to him mother. I told her to tell Plaid NOT to call my house that night. I even made her repeat exactly the message to give to him, so that I could verify that she had it right.
You can probably see where this is headed.
The next day, when I got home, my dad asked me where I’d been the night before. Which was odd, since I’d told him I was spending the night at Plaid’s, and he’d never asked a follow-up question before. So I repeated my cover story. That’s when he said:
“Well, then why did Plaid call here last night, and then say you weren’t with him? Where the hell were you?”
(pause)
“Uh, I was at Dawn’s.”
I expected at that point that I would have the shit kicked out of me. I braced myself for it. So I was totally caught off guard when all he did was sadly put his face in his hand and mutter:
”I can’t believe you would just lie to me, right to my face. Get out of here- I can’t even look at you.”
I’ll never forget how… disappointed… he looked. He didn’t seem angry at all- just sad. And that made me feel worse than I ever did any of the other times I was ever in trouble. If I had to define a moment in time as the lowest my relationship with him ever was, it would be that moment.
Of course, little more than a year later I graduated from SLUH, and headed off to Pomona College. In part because of the academic performance expectations he and my mom had always set, I did well enough to go to a very good school. I went to Pomona intending to double major in physics and psychology. I enjoyed physics, and my father, grudgingly accepting that I wasn’t going to do pre-med, was willing to compromise and accept the only real second-place career option: a Ph.D. in a hard science. Psychology seemed fairly useless to him, but as long as it didn’t distract from physics he could ignore it.
At Pomona, I was happy in school for the first time since maybe 4th grade. I loved it there. I got involved in a million different things, and slept on average maybe 4 hours a night most of the time, with the occasional crash that caused me to sleep through a morning of classes. There were so many different things I got involved in that I was pretty overextended, and as a result my grades were not especially great- I graduated with a 3.06. So for four years, my dad and I had the same discussion of my college career: he argued that I should stop doing “all that other stuff” and just focus on physics and my grades in that. That conversation was pretty much the only one we had.
As college drew to a close, I applied half-heartedly to physics Ph.D. programs Univ of Washington, UC Davis, Univ of Illinois, and… … one other place that I can’t even remember anymore. Illinois rejected me, then UW rejected me, then UW rejected me a 2nd time a week later with a different letter, as if I hadn’t gotten the message the first time. JOC and I threw a party at our room every time I got rejected, so the upside was that we got 2 parties out of it. Whatever the other place was also rejected me. But then UC Davis accepted me, and even gave me a fellowship. But I decided to defer for a year because I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to do it. Once I actually had an acceptance, I realized that I’d really only applied for a Ph.D. because it was my dad’s expectation.
I wound up selling TV advertising time at Katz in Los Angeles, where I managed to put together a successful sales career, despite having been that kid who was supposed to go out selling candy bars to raise money for my school, and after knocking on 100 doors in the neighborhood, ended up selling exactly 1 candy bar, to my mom, because she felt sorry for me. Integrity and honesty in negotiations turned out to be a primary competitive advantage of mine, and I learned those things from both my parents.
Although he didn’t especially approve of my decision not to go to graduate school, my dad never stopped providing for me. I graduated from college with nothing- no money, no particularly marketable skills, no car, etc. As a graduation present, he gave me the 2nd car, which he had gotten while I was in school. And though I tried hard not to ask for money, and mostly succeeded, I knew he would have given me money without hesitation if I needed it.
It was while I was working at Katz, selling TV advertising time, that my dad had his stroke. It was the week before my birthday, and I had a pretty somber birthday party. I made dinner, and people hung out with me until it was time for me to go to the airport and head to St. Louis.
Everything about my relationship with my dad changed with the stroke. Like many people, I knew intellectually that everyone dies, and consequently, eventually my parents would die, but I was not prepared for this reminder of his mortality. I felt particularly ashamed that our relationship at that point had been virtually nonexistent; I saw him when I came home, and we had the usual conversation that implied that I was wasting my time on the path I was on, but other than that there wasn’t much. And that was really more my fault than his.
In reflecting on the 37-year-long relationship that I had with my father, I don’t know if I will ever stop being disappointed in myself that it took his nearly dying to make me start to truly appreciate him, and to tell him that I loved him. For all his limitations, he loved me honestly, and within the scope of parenting as he understood it, did a good job raising us. Many of my most fundamental qualities, both good (a deep desire to provide for the people I love, virtually irrespective of sacrifice), and bad (a deep-seated inability to articulate the feelings that cause me to want to provide for the people I love), I get from him.
So thank you, dad, for helping make me the person I am today. I will miss you in the years ahead.
I love you.
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