xtcian

7/6/02 There's an awful lot

7/6/02

There's an awful lot of "lying on lawns" going on lately, and I, for one, am submitting my approval. This is the third night in a row I've been expected to lie back on a lawn and behave socially, and I might make it a nightly ritual.

lying in Lime Rock, CT on July 5 for fireworks

lying in Lenox, MA on July 6 for the Tanglewood music festival

jesus, we're wearing the same outfits in those pictures

We didn't know who or what was playing at Tanglewood tonight, so it was a shocking delight to show up to see Itzhak Perlman play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, then get to hear them finish up with Respighi's Fountain and Pines of Rome. The greatest living violinist of our time, and easily two of my favorite pieces ever written. It rocked. The basketball equivalent would be like watching Michael Jordan play for a Heels alumni team.

It was especially cool because we had used so much of both the Fountains and Pines of Rome for the Pink House scratch soundtrack back in May, so Tessa recognized a lot of it. The "Pines" has an especially strong place in my heart because I felt it was the piece that best defined the intense charisma of my Dad. When he conducted it, he pulled a stunt with the trumpet and trombone sections during the "Pines of the Appian Way," by placing them in the loge and box seats for the giant groundswell effect of the Roman army approaching. On cue, he would whirl around and point at them in a tousled fury, and they would bleat forth in one of the most amazing aural experiences those yahoos at the Virginia Philharmonic would ever hear. It is one of the few great childhood memories of my dad that is unjaundiced by the vicissitudes of his character, the revelation of his transgressions, or the death of his myth.

7/5/02 One thing you can

7/5/02

One thing you can say about humans, they have a well-crafted sense of the absurd. As full of defense mechanisms as we are, we still love to celebrate holidays by aping the very things we hate the most. In England, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament, and the Brits respond every year by trying to blow up everything else. Americans live in fear of war on their own turf, but we celebrate our Independence with mock cannon fire and torpedoes racing across the sky in fireworks. I wonder how soldiers returning shell-shocked from WWI or even Vietnam – felt about the sound of fireworks; it must have freaked them out.

I adore fireworks, but the fourth of July has traditionally meant bad things for me last year I got a kidney stone and spent 15 hours in retching pain; in 1987 I broke up with Jane, sending me into a depressive tailspin; a few years later, Tracy and I effectively ended our relationship when we weren't prophylactically careful. The other 4ths seemed mostly hot and full of bad food at other people's houses. But this time I thought a lot about our country, and mostly felt guilty. I'd go into why, but it's nothing you can't hear from other bleeding-heart knee-jerk leftists still willing to write about such things. Suffice to say I wish we had a government with an ounce of compassion; a president that wasn't a right-to-life monkey; a populace that didn't hate fags; and decent cheese.

In a quirk indicative of the region, the fireworks were held today on the 5th of July, and half the Berkshires drove to Lime Rock, CT for the show. It was pretty awesome, and the sound of the loud white fireworks (you know, the ones that are there just for the bass response) echoed through the Taconic hillsides like Mahler's One Billionth Symphony. Tessa, Shelagh Ratner, Lindsay and I traded quips, and for about 6.5 seconds, I was a happy American.

But I don't allow myself such luxuries. Like a true whining wet blanket of pinko sentimentality, I wondered to myself, what is more America to you? These twinkling red lights:

Or these?

7/4/02 With the sweltering unabated,

7/4/02

With the sweltering unabated, we ditched the farm for a while and trucked down to the flooded ore pit next to Bish Bash Falls, where many of the locals had congregated for an intense holiday swim. We brought all the American items we could carry Fritos, a frisbee, Gatorade, Doritos and Coke. It was a decidedly un-precious 4th of July spent with ordinary farming folk, a far cry from what Sean and Michelle are doing right now in Napa Valley. It was sticky, people were yelling in different languages, and you could actually see young kids making those "summer acquaintance" relationships that you can take clear into college.

We brought the coolest thing, though. Baby Nora, child of Lorraine Tobias and Alex Draper, had her first public swim, and she was delightfully bewildered. The meanest strangers in the world smile at Nora. And you probably would too.

mom Lorraine, baby Nora, friends Nell and Jesse after a dip in the mine

7/3/02 There is a Heat

7/3/02

There is a Heat that feels like the inside of your Brain has been stuck in a Microwave, gradually rising to a Liquified, Boiling Magma from the center on out. Usually the copyrighted domain of Southern states like North Carolina, this kind of heat descended on the New York area today, and even the Berkshires were totally unbearable. When we got out of the car, sweat poured forth immediately, and I'm not even that much of a sweater.

We tried to install the air conditioners, but of course, the farmhouse's prissy little circuit breakers couldn't take Tessa's behemoths, leaving us with a couple of puny AC units and a lot of misery. My reaction to heat has always been a bit overwhelming; I don't know if it's the whole Welsh thing, or just that I'm High Maintenance Boy, but I really can't function past a certain point. Playing ball and getting sweaty is one thing, but sitting and talking while you begin to melt is quite another.

It made me think about the ways in which I need certain Products in order to be functional as has been cerebrum-numbingly documented here, I think a lot about some alternate future where we don't get the things we want. Here's a partial list of things that, if unavailable, would make me miserable:

1. air conditioning. Obviously. I know AC ruined Southern fiction and all, but how did Eudora Welty get any work done from June to September?

2. Celexa. Don't know if this is quite that big a deal, but a world without antidepressants strikes me as faintly hopeless. Then again, I'm not even sure how much a sea change has been in my life since April 10 when I committed to writing here every day. But not getting better would be very unhappy-making.

3. Afrin. I'm getting surgery for my deviated septum (caused by a trash can don't ask) but meantime I wouldn't be able to breathe without it.

4. Lactaid tablets. Sure, it's easy to make fun of "lactose intolerance," since it sounds so swooningly hypochondriachal, but if you really are lactose intolerant and have ice cream, you're fucked. These little tablets make all the difference, and I really love ice cream, so fork off!

5. Excedrin. What is it about the tantalizing mix of Tylenol, aspirin and caffeine that make Excedrins so good? Some people need coffee to survive the morning, I need two Excedrin.

6. Refresh Tears Eye Drops. Ever since LASIK surgery, my eyes were pretty dry – now with the damn sinus thing, they hurt all the time. Refresh Tears™ are cool, 'cuz you can use them all day long, unlike Visine, which makes you wait.

7. Really Good Basketball Shoes. And not just for playing, good hoops shoes can keep you dry in the rain, have great support, and are really soft where you need them. Back when I used to mull about such things on an hourly basis, I wondered what kind of shoes I'd be stuck in during a national emergency, and I always hoped it would take place on hoops day.

8. Access to the internet.

That's about it. I can do without that awesome Kiehl's body wash, the shaving cream with benzocaine in it, sugar cereals, those linen shirts I've been craving, Coke, American Crew Fiber hair stuff, the cell phone, Chelsea Piers and tuna. Even though I love all those things. You can probably even take away the hoops shoes, the Excedrin, the eye drops, the antidepressants - and I won't eat any dairy products.

But I need the Afrin and air conditioning, by God.

from the "How Does She Put Up With Me" dept.

7/2/02 In other people's blogs,

7/2/02

In other people's blogs, I usually find the mundane stuff to be the most interesting. Of course, this site got a huge bump in traffic because of the story of my proposal to Tessa which got picked up by the legendary Ev on his website, but for me, you don't always have to write something life-changing in order to be fascinating. I think the stuff The Gus writes down the street is better when he's dealing with extension cords and shitty neighbors.

So if mundane stuff is your cup of tea, here's a treat: I spent the entire day on the phone with Earthlink and Verizon. As I write this, I have DSL coming in on ALL THREE PHONE LINES. "Most people make do with one," I hear you say. No fucking duh! THAT'S why I was on the phone all goddamn day!

By the time the sun set, I had set up our new Earthlink service, got Verizon to give me a kickback of $147 (wow!), installed caller ID and a rollover line, cancelled Verizon DSL... and tonight, I can actually send email from my own computer. Notice to Verizon: your policy on sending email fucking blows. By not permitting residential customers to use any email address they damn well please in the "From:" field of sent emails, you are insuring that no patron with their own domain name - or an old email address they wish to keep sacred will bother to sign up. Earthlink doesn't care what your email address is, neither does Taconic Technology up at the farm - hell, Time Forkin' Warner didn't even care. Why do you? Don't you know that the internet views censorship, even the technical kind, as a disease, and finds a way to work around it? Tonight, I am a bacterium, and I just mutated into something more powerful.

Speaking of powerful bacteria, it is 90 degrees at night here in the city, so hot that John Lasala, his friend Melissa, Tessa and I abandoned our dinner at the un-air conditioned Prune and opted instead for Chez Es Saada, which rocked. We sat in the cool, cool basement and swapped stories all night, something I love to do with the esteemed Mr. Lasala. John is truly brethren, and it's even more amazing that he and Tessa went to Choate together back in the Bronze Age.

Afterwards, we concluded our East Village fandango by meeting Sean, Michelle and the Astoria boys at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, truly one of the more depressing holes in Manhattan. It reminds me of the bar George Bailey stumbles into during the nightmare Potterville sequence of "It's a Wonderful Life" I'd be surprised if they even had mixers like Coke and orange juice. It's the kind of place where you knock back three shots of Ol' Grandad after being fired from your job three days before Christmas. Funny, though, we always have a good time there.

resume your resumé

7/1/02

RESUME

Ian Williams
Brooklyn, NY

EXPERIENCE:

Writer/Director, The Pink House, a college comedy. 1999-present. Oversaw a disastrous production that included insane actors, a broken hand, the hottest two days in North Carolina history, a typhoon that washed away the set, a lightning bolt that nearly killed the art crew, and a lead gaffer who had gone off rage medication and threatened to slug Tessa. Due for wild success July 2005.

Senior Editor, That Internet Job. May 2000 - June 2001. Used one year of life going to meetings. Spent early months proffering hard-wrought ideas for $43 million business; spent later months on Napster downloading songs by The Little River Band. Laid off unceremoniously when it was clear that there would never be a website, and therefore my unique brand of penetrating sarcasm was unnecessary.

Writer, Famous Movie Trailer Company, Hollywood. 1998-2000. Wrote the ads for the worst movies coming down the pike. Deliberately lied about, misrepresented, and gave away the endings to various blockbusters.

Senior Editor, That First Internet Job. 1996-1999. Was part of original editorial team that created now-hugely-successful online city guide. Sold stock at 71 when everyone else was holding for 125; stock now at 19. Editorial integrity of site now replaced by monkeys; legacy ruined.

Contributing Author, 13thGEN Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail. Concocted half-baked theories about my generation straight out of college and stumbled into a bestseller. Used temporary generational fame to hoodwink tobacco company focus groups into adopting "flannel cigarettes."

EDUCATION:

Norfolk Academy, Norfolk, Virginia. Attended deeply-repressed military-style prep school and managed to turn 18 without ever kissing a girl.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Double-major in Music and Psychology, but don't have my diploma because I still owe them money. Spent most of time in Chapel Hill trying to have intercourse with various Pi Beta Phis.

SPECIAL TALENTS:

Good bank shot from 14 feet out; Morse Code at 35 wpm; can name most '70s AM radio hits in less than a second; deeply biting and unsolicited social commentary; long, self-involved bouts of self-pity coupled with occasional bursts of rage; French.

REFERENCES:

6/30/02 I know I'm a

6/30/02

I know I'm a dork, but at least I have the energy to be diverse. Other dorks geek out about one particular thing - you know, medieval war re-enactments, Heavy Metal Magazine, the band Rush but I am more of a dilettante, slightly dorking out over 20 things or so. I spray a fine sheen of nerd over my interests, which gives me the appearance of being curiously well-rounded, rather than vaguely creepy. I also have a moderately well-sharpened fashion sense, and can put most strangers at ease with a well-placed bon mot.

One dorkout of mine is an affinity for cartography, or the study of maps. Fortunately, Tessa shares this obsession (her mom even called her Miss Map in the '70s I reminded her that after next year, she'll be Mrs. Map), so she doesn't automatically recoil in horror every time I come up with something mappish to throw on the wall. To me, maps are a no-brainer; they're usually very pretty, lots of blues and greens, practical, and let you know your place in the world. Jackson Pollock said that he painted from within, because he "was nature," and nothing looks more like nature's desire for abstract entropy than a map.

See how silly Cape Cod looks, notice the Michelangelo/God finger touch of Gibraltar and Spain, the sexy way Africa and South America belong together. I pity the states Wyoming and Colorado, so square and mandated; give me the squiggles of North Carolina and the squashed-bug appearance of Maryland.

I mention this because we found a map in the barn yesterday (it will take us years to go through all the boxes in there) in the back of a book called "Manhattan 'How to Get There' 1941." Basically, it did the same thing X-Man does for New Yorkers carrying a Palm: give it the address, and it'll tell you the cross street. The "How to Get There" also gives you the bus or subway stop, suggesting that both were used just as frequently (not true these days). Laurie Williams looked up her address and said, "The 2nd Avenue bus to 6th Street yep, that's still how you get to my place." I'd say the book is probably about 75% accurate today.

It's the inaccuracies that are the fun stuff, and there's loads of streets that don't exist anymore, elevated trains going down 1st Avenue, and forgotten neighborhoods that are now the left turn lanes on the lower portion of 6th Avenue. It's the kind of book fellow dork Kevin would have on his Manhattan street necrology page.

One thing's for sure: when you hold this book, you suddenly feel the tight brim of a hat across your forehead, you look down to find yourself wearing a smart tie, and you're at the corner of 22nd Street and 4th Avenue, looking for a dame who wanted to meet at the five-and-dime counter next to the I.R.T. stop. It's 1940 and starting to rain, and things are about to get interesting.

the fold-out map of Manhattan, 1941

6/29/02 You forget how much

6/29/02

You forget how much you love the water until you go back into it. Even though it was utterly landlocked, Chapel Hill always found us in a boat, either in the verdant tree-overhangs of University Lake, or the obvious drowned forest of Jordan Lake. One way or another, we'd go fishing or tubing, or at the very least, steal away into a forbidden pool at another nameless apartment complex. We were in the water all the time.

It was this I remembered as our rowboat drifted from the silty edges of Rudd Pond; incongruously, it seemed funny that a place so far up in New England would have a name begging to be slurred by a Southern redneck. Try it yourself: "Rudd Pond." It's almost as bad as that street in Hoke County, NC called "Old Wire Road."

Willis, Laurie and Neal try to navigate through the grasping lakeweed

I would have enjoyed it more; nay, verily I would have enjoyed the entire day more if I hadn't felt like someone had hit me with the convex end of a shovel. Which segues perfectly into:

The Celextant, June 29, 2002

Upping the dosage of Celexa always brings on a bout of fatigue, but this particular episode turned from temporary guest into regular lodger. The fatigue I get in the late afternoon is unlike most I've known; it's not a tiredness in the regular sense, but an innate lazy weariness that seems unaffected by rest. I mean, I feel like I could sleep for 11 hours and still bump into shit all day.

I'm hoping that this too will pass - most problems attached to the drug have - but meantime, I'm kinda wishing speed hadn't proven to be such a killer, 'cuz I could use some right about now.