xtcian

katrina and the waves

8/31/05

To answer Ken Sumka's question from a few days ago, I told Tessa the day Katrina hit that every paper would have this headline. Two days later, only the Brits had thought of it, so it appears that we are getting older and nobody remembers our little novelty songs anymore.

This has to be one of the worst weeks in the news in recent history: to wit, 1000 people were trampled to death in Baghdad, and Hurricane Katrina is turning out to be the most devastating natural disaster we've ever known, soon to trump the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

This is a perfectly dreadful time to get political, and while Bush has no control over the weather, all I really wanted him to do was act Presidential. In fact, I'm desperate for him to do so, but instead, we got this picture yesterday:

And that's not all. I mean, I know this is going to enrage the conservatives who frequent this blog, and I can hear the chorus of "you'll blame the Republicans for anything" and all that shit, but the facts show that Bush systematically railroaded and under-funded every attempt to fix the system of dykes and levees around New Orleans. They cut New Orleans flood-control funding 44% to pay for Iraq, and the National Guard is busy getting blown up in the Middle East, thus there weren't enough troops to stop the looting and help find survivors.

Shit, why do I even bother finding those links? It's all too unbelievably sad. I lived through September 11th with my girlfriend-now-wife Tessa in downtown Manhattan, and I'm here to tell you that this is way worse. In the final tally, almost as many people will have died, and the blow to America's history - and culture - is incalculable.

God loves to kill poor people, and this disaster was no exception. The two neighborhoods I lived in for a short while - the French Quarter and the upper Garden District - were largely spared, but the poor parts of the Ninth Ward - pronounced "nite woid" if you met someone from there - are under water.

[Quick digression... the true Cajun accent sounds exactly like a very ugly Brooklyn dialect. The Acadians - refugees from France and then Nova Scotia - settled in two places during the 18th century, around New York City, and in the bayous of the Gulf Coast (some of them stayed in Maine, hence "Acadian National Park"). "Acadian" became "Cajun" down south, and the two peoples evolved very differently, but the accent remained the same. My old girlfriend from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi sounded exactly like a cab driver from Flatbush.]

With all the people dead, homeless and suffering, it seems hopelessly self-involved to bemoan your own loss, but New Orleans was truly a place where I first felt freedom in all its guises, where anything could happen, and later on, when I had some money, it usually did. God, the architecture was so beautiful - you could wander down the wrong street and yes, you might get your ass kicked, but the shotgun houses lining the roads were so heartbreakingly cool. Even the ones in disrepair just made you want to spend a year there fixing them. Now those blocks are gone.

at Audubon Park last year - I have no idea what is there now

We should have been more prepared than this. If this is any indication how America will respond to large disasters, man-made or from nature, then we're going to have to get really good at kissing certain towns goodbye. What the hell have we been doing for the last four years?

Now comes the big questions on whether or not to rebuild - some people think the entire city should be abandoned forever. Even if you do fix it, who would insure a city lying so far below sea level? I say that's bullshit. If we can grow babies in petri dishes and record quasars from the Big Bang, we can sure as fuck rebuild New Orleans and devise a pump system that can withstand a Category 5 storm. A category 6 storm even, god dammit.

I'm in absolute mourning, and I'm done blogging for the week. Why did a storm have to take away such a wonderful place? How is New Orleans under water and yet Dallas sits pretty? Up the East Coast, in Atlanta and Charlotte, rumors of "America is out of gas" is causing panic, with cars snaking around the block. Since 9/11, we have always waited for the other shoe to drop, but perhaps it is a huge shoe that gently drops for years. I was reminded of the brilliant line from Marlowe, when Dr. Faustus asks the Devil how he got out of hell. "Why, this is hell," the Devil replies, "nor am I out of it."

Michael Jordan hits gamewinner against Georgetown, New Orleans Superdome, 1982

me and Tessa at Saints game in the Superdome ten months ago

refugees in the Superdome yesterday

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swaddlers size 2

8/30/05

That's the thing about getting all hot and bothered on the blog; you can always post pictures of the baby when things get a little too steamy. And after a day like today, which was very difficult, it was so wonderful to come home to our little trooper. She just started sleep training - our own version of Ferberizing, I guess - and is doing really well, even though her cries are pure anguish for us. She always stops pretty quickly, however, and goes fast asleep, and I feel like I can hear the air crackling with her learning. It's hard to describe.

Anyway, here are some pics from the last week or so... first off, I'm glad we gave birth to a chick that really appreciates a good road trip, you know, so we can burn more fossil fuels as a family. As long as it doesn't go more than 4-5 hours:

In New York last week, Lucy met (what I hope to be) one of her future best friends, as Laurie and George Gilmore gave birth to the beautiful little Polly:

Tessa's mom Sandy came this last weekend, so I thought a little genetic documentation of recessive blue eye genes were in order:

And I know babies cry, and La Lux is no exception, but she really is a happy kid most of the time, and makes her parents feel so unbelievably blessed. Lucy, if you ever read this years from now, I want you to know that you bring your mom and me an insane amount of joy every waking hour.

it's just the sleeping hours that could still use work

back that ass up

8/29/05

This just in: FLEET WEEK, the musical penned by Sean, Mac and Jordana, won Best Musical in the New York Fringe Festival 2005. Over 1600 people went to see it, even in the hastily-set-up show on Saturday, 1500 of which do not even know any of us. That, my friends, is an incredible feat, especially given that they wrote FW as an act of revenge, since their equally awesome show "Lucretia Jones" was snubbed last year. We were so excited that we dropped shit on the floor in Venice, CA, three-thousand miles away.

Which begs the question to a select few out there: why the hell didn't you go? Since I'm not really involved, I can be the asshole, much like the party-giver who realizes - after a great throwdown - that several of his best friends hadn't bothered to attend.

Here's the thing about experiences: if you don't have them, you don't have them. That play went up six times, and that will probably be it; the specificity of the event will never be replicated. You can TiVo a show, you can re-read a book, but there are some things - like live theater - that exist entirely within the construct of Buddhist ephemera.

I'm calling all of you out, and I'm calling myself out too. Once you have a kid, your energy level for any exertion outside shoveling food into your own mouth dwindles to a trickle. You have to FORCE yourself to stay with the flow of culture and the exchange of ideas, and you must always err on the side of adventure. Yeah, yeah, I know, "easy for me to say" and all that crap, but that's just the river in Egypt makin' you squawk.

Dearest friends, I am thousands of miles away from you right now. Eventually I'm going have another big party, or perhaps someone else will bother. If you don't come, you will be, in the words of one commenter describing me during one of my C-list celebrity sermons, a giant, quivering, pink, pearly pussy.

I've ranted to you before about this and I am far from perfect, but your life is not a goddamn dress rehearsal. When you get ass cancer or when half your body doesn't move anymore, or you're stuck at Fuckwood Springs Elderly Shitbox Centre barfing away the last of your existence, you're going to bloody well wished you saw FLEET WEEK.

a tropical depression

8/28/05

Yes, long-time readers will know I responded to New Orleans' possible hurricane in much the same fashion last year when Ivan was heading towards Louisiana (complete with picture of my hair that Tanya makes fun of), but as of this writing, we could be looking at one of the worst storms in history barreling down on my favorite town in America.

I once made a terrifically bad Photoshop example of what would happen if a 25-foot storm surge poured over the 18-foot levees and engulfed the French Quarter:

click for bigger

...and I'm sorry, but I just don't think I could live in a world without the Verti Marte, the Café du Monde, the Joan Good jewelry store and basically every other dive frequented by my friends since we first discovered the place in 1987. In fact, Tanya, here's my hair on that trip:

To think those waters behind me are now threatening millions of people fills me with dread - perhaps red-state Florida and Louisiana will think twice about voting Republican given that the G.O.P. still doesn't believe in global warming, which will make storms like this even more commonplace. I'm amazed nobody has tried to make that a campaign issue, but I suppose it's just too easy to discredit scientists in our budding theocracy.

I once wrote a screenplay where a hurricane is shoved out of the way of New Orleans, ask me about it sometime. The worst hardly ever happens in these big storms; pray to your favorite float queen at Mardi Gras that America's most interesting town is spared.

we're all one, and life flows on

8/25/05

Chapel Hill quietly (or not so quietly, if you were turned to 89.3 FM) lost an icon today, for this is the fabled day in history that Jay Murray left Chapel Hill. Those of you who missed 1991-2005 at Carolina can only guess at how unfathomable today is, as Jay was the eternal, steadfast beacon of hope (or at least indie-rock slackerdom) and the last of us still leading an active social life in Chapel Hill. Except for Annie, and that's Carrboro, gents.

Jay's fame as the eternal student eclipsed most other fictionalized accounts of other people who never left college, indeed, he eclipsed my own attempts when we made the Pink House movie based tangently on his (and my) circumstances. He had already been a grad student for nine years when we began filming, and that was a while back. People used to ask me if Ben Folds' song Steven's Last Night in Town was about me, but I always said it was about Murray.

Jay and I share the same birthday (May 26) which made for great parties when we lived together at the actual Pink House. We had, however, drastically different tastes in music, which led to all kinds of shit-talking in the kitchen after 2am. I found his radio show - and WXYC in general - to be the most pretentious, unlistenable crap south of free-form jazz.

Many songs sounded like a refrigerator falling down an endless set of concrete stairs. Those guys would play anything and everything, as long as it was guaranteed to make me want to claw my face off. One time, me, Scotty and Jay got into another WXYC dust-up, and I bet Jay $20 that we could turn the radio on that second, and it would be something ghastly.

He did, and to my triumph, it was a recording of a guy counting backwards from two-thousand. No lie. Ask anyone.

The farther away I am from Chapel Hill, however, the more I came to appreciate the anything-goes sensibility of WXYC, and even began to listen to it via the Web (it was the first radio station streaming on the internet EVER). I began to view it as a strong antibiotic: you don't want to use it every day, but I'm glad it's there when I need it.

And Jay, who has tape-recorded every single 6-hour shift he's ever done, became the standard-bearer for the musical roads less traveled. Mike Johnson, whose XYC show came right after the inimitable Grant Tennille, once went on a road trip with Jay, who left the radio on 89.3 all the way up the coast just to see who else was sharing the frequency. Annoying, but in a way, quite endearing.

He got his doctorate, so his last radio show was today, and then he'll make his way to New York City, only a decade or so after the rest of us. I called him up at the station this afternoon, and just to rekindle an old debate, I requested a Beatles song on behalf of me, Scotty and Chip - the three souls forced to listen to Jay's show ON TAPE for hours in the Pink House kitchen.

His last song was "Within You, Without You" from Sgt. Pepper, which acts as a fitting tombstone to the Jay Murray Era. God speed!

Dave Surowiecki, Scotty Bullock, Jay Murray, Pink House 20s party, 1997 by Lars Lucier

everyone's a captain kirk

8/24/05

One obvious by-product of our zany Hollywood sojourns is the frequent spotting of stars past and present in pretty much every place we go. We've dealt with many kinds of stars - from last year's Naked TV show, which had people on the brink of fame - to Lucy's unbelievable amount of flirting and smiling with currently-hot Rachel Weisz and Famke Janssen last week.

The other sort of celebrity is one whose star has faded, and obviously, they're the most populous. You see them sitting at the next table at lunch, pulling up to the stoplight in an old BMW, even yakking it up in a bar with a few similarly ex-famous friends. American culture cruelly calls these people "has-beens," but today Tessa decided that she thinks being a "has-been" is actually quite nice. She figures it absolves you of past experience and allows you - if you let it - to get on with the next phase of your life.

I'm with her on that one, because the snarky assholes who always go on about "has-been" are never-weres themselves, most likely having never distinguished themselves in any field except sarcasm and schadenfreude.

The same goes for music snobs talking shit about "one-hit wonders": they have one more hit than you ever had, you sniping butthole. Sure, you can denigrate Nena and Animotion all you want, but they also have a nice platinum record hanging in the hallway if you ever want to visit.

I say be nice to your has-beens; they put themselves out on the line for you, brought happiness to your younger, less cynical self, and ask for nothing in return but a simple nod and smile in their direction. Oh, and maybe the upper right-hand box on Hollywood Squares.

oh, zone

8/23/05

The site traffic on this blog - and I imagine, on all blogs - takes a huge hit in these waning weeks of August, and to be honest, I'm usually gone right now anyway, with my family filling in. Since we're stuck with each other this August, I'd like to do a little prerequisite Bush-bashing just to keep my anger muscle erect. You know, you liberals, if you don't keep your righteous indignation member throbbing every few weeks, it's liable to fall off.

To wit: something incredible happened at Harvard last week. They took normal skin cells, and transformed them into stem cells. This little anecdote, missed by many, may well end up the biggest piece of news in the early 21st century (but of course, we're distracted by Ali G getting dragged into the ocean by bodyguards because he tackled Pamela Anderson during her DOG'S WEDDING).

Now, the Bush Administration hates science, especially when it proves that fetuses don't feel pain until the last weeks of pregnancy, or, say, that humans and apes descend from a common ancestor. But all this science-bashing goes away when they see a political opportunity to stall progress in the name of some far-off advance in technology.

Now that Harvard "made" stem cells, right-wing wackos are saying that we should go ahead and stop funding of fetal stem cells because the shit will soon be growing on trees. Never mind that the Harvard technology could take decades. In the meantime, all you people with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, macular degeneration and complete paralysis can FUCK OFF in the name of conservative deal-brokering.

Bush has done this before. By hyping futuristic hydrogen fuel-cell cars with one hand while handing Detroit the mushiest, least-effective energy bill possible, he has mortgaged my daughter's future. Hydrogen fuel cell cars, despite breathless reports by occasional science magazines, might not be energy savers for another two decades. In the meantime, his administration has shown ZERO interest in hybrid vehicles, which could start saving the planet NOW because... well, fuck it. You know why.

Again, this shit isn't funny anymore. To quote Morrissey, as one should in these situations, "it's too close to home, it's too near the bone."

audi alteram partem

8/22/05

Okay, let's take care of some flotsam, shall we? Sometimes you want to write a blog about a bunch of stuff with no obvious connecting thread, and that's just not the way I like to do things. Oh well. Here goes:

1. FLEET WEEK was reviewed by the New York Times. When you read the actual article, it seems as though there's no actual opinion there, but given the brutal invective hurled at other Fringe shows ("tangle of awkward clichés," "side-splitting laughter is not on the menu," "only partly satisfying") I think we're lucky to get out alive. Besides, with a little creative ellipsing, Lindsay can do this:

"well-written...'On the Town' meets 'Queer as Folk'." - The New York Times

And if you ask me, that's pretty goddamn good.

2. Remember how I told you about this entry, which has become the last trading post for Jarts™ on the planet? One of the comments needs to be reprinted here:

The Lawn Game Jarts was invented by my mothers uncle, Dr. Lawrance Barnett in Fort Edward, New York. Dr. Barnett was a Dentist that made his money in the Stock Market. The Jarts were MFG in his Barn for years. He later gave the Business to his Step Son, Robbie Barnett, whom had two Mfg plants in South Glens Falls NY. Even though the box gave all proper warnings a person threw a Jart wildly in the air, it came down taking a minors eye out. Against Robbies lawyers advice he settled with the people and set up a precedense and was sued by almost anyone who owned a set. It was and is a fun game and very safe if one follows the directions.

That, my friends, is awesome.

3. Oft-commenter Lyle, your friend and mine in Bangkok, is starting her own blog. If I had the link, I'd put it here, but hopefully she'll add it in the comments section. By the way, if you have a blog and you want people to know about it, feel free to use today's entry to broadcast your warez. Pretty soon I'll get around to having a blogroll on the side of this page (you know, besides my family) as well as a FAQ for all you Nervous Nellies, Looky-Loos, Noodges and Buttinskis.

4. We're starting the Ferber process in a few days; our sanity dictates it. Lucy is only a week past four months old, but we think she can handle it. The current sleep situation isn't do her any favors, and it's a wonder Tessa can still operate heavy machinery given her deprivation. These are the days, when you're 25, you laugh with disgust at adults with kids. Fortunately, this is also the day I laugh with disgust at myself at 25.

5. I took Latin, but never came across this:
"post hoc ergo propter hoc"
It's a great phrase meaning "after this, therefore because of this," - or, in other words, it's the fallacy "since B came after A, then A must have caused B." God, I'm dying to use it.

Oh, looks like I just did! TEE HEE!!!

lose it in the front

8/21/05

We're back in Los Angeles after a whirlwind tour of NYC, and I have to say it's really nice being a tourist in your own town. You know where everything is, you get to see everyone you want, and you leave before the contempt of your familiarity kicks in.

Opening night of FLEET WEEK was a stunner. Ovations at the end, and a huge swell of adoring throngs in the street. My take is this: I think you could use FW as a proving ground for your friends. If they find it offensive, then you can dump them with a clear conscience. I was prepared for a lot of foppish double-entendres (and got them), but there is a core of sweetness at the center of this musical that separates it from the snark that is the benchmark of the Fringe Festival.

Sean (in purple shirt) outside after the show

Mac's book is solidly funny, and Sean has written two of the best songs of his life (I can't remember what they're called, but see the show and tell me which two you think they are). But I have to call out my sister-in-law Jordana, who has written the best lyrics of any show south AND north of Christopher Street, and that includes YOU, Broadway. There are so many little turns-of-phrase so clever that, to borrow a line from Pee Wee Herman, you forget to laugh. If someone bothers to post the show's lyrics to the Web, you must peruse them at your leisure. Not safe for work, by the way.

Reviewers have always taken delight in savaging innocent works of art, and the critics of my generation (save Va. Heffernan, natch) seem to be so self-loathing about their brethren's crop of creative endeavors that they go out of their way to piss on any parade within their purview. If the reviewers came to opening night of FW, saw the joy in the audience around them, and resolved to put a stop to it, then they can try and do that.

No reviews have come out yet, but it's a dreadful pity that so much is at stake with the single, variable, objective opinion of one audience member. If they loved it, then we'll trumpet it from the top of the Chrysler Building. If not, then Sean, Jordana, Mac, Lindsay and the cast need to know they accomplished what they set out to do. Tessa cried with pride during each song (despite it being a comedy) and I smiled for 1.75 hours.

In the last few years my friends and family have teetered on the edge of wild success without a tipping point. I hope this summer proves to be the tiny shove that gets us all where we need to be.

cake at the after-party

hallways and highrises

8/18/05

Twenty years ago today, my life changed irreparably for the better. Everything has been different since that day; dreams were given a shot, the motions of my current life were sprung, and my fate veered utterly into bliss. It was the day my dad drove me to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the first time, set me in front of Hinton James dorm, and drove away.

I had never visited the campus, barely knew where Chapel Hill was, and chose a South Campus dorm because it said it had a computer center. The "computer center" turned out to be four dusty green-screen terminals from the UNIVAC experiments of the late 1950s, shoved next to the washing machines.

My mom had slipped eighty dollars into my pants pockets for good luck; on that first day, I took a shower in the dorm, and when I got back to the room, the money was gone. I called my friends from high school, basically in tears, and promptly made them all afraid of going to college. It was 104 degrees, and air conditioners were illegal.

My roommate didn't show up for another two weeks, and when he did, he plopped his hunting rifle on the bed and muttered something in my direction. It would be the only time he spoke to me that semester.

That afternoon, twenty years ago today, I began the slow walk from Hinton James to the main campus to take my C-TOPS tests, and I noticed a pair of Reeboks and Benetton shorts idling alongside me. A beautiful girl with a heavenly Georgia accent introduced herself to me (a girl? a PRETTY one? talking to ME for no reason?) and told me her name was Kendall: I promptly fell in love. She would be in my wedding party eighteen years later.

A few days on, I was practicing "O My God" by the Police on my bass in my dorm room, and a handsome fella knocked on my door and said he liked it (a guy just came up to my door? complimenting me? someone with friends of his own?) and he told me his name was Bud. Later that month we would finish 2nd in the Hinton James Talent Show by playing "What I Like About You" (the winner was a girl who whistled "Saving All My Love For You"). Bud and I would live together, on and off, for the next ten years, and we would be in each other's lives for another ten after that, either in person, or here in the blog.

Bud introduced me to Jon and Chip, and well, that's already been documented. From there, I'd go on to join a brotherhood that counts as my best friends to this day, start writing in earnest, eventually bring my brother into the fold (which now provides his entire social/work life) and... oh yeah, I would meet a crazy blonde chick in 1987 that would become the true love of my life.

UNC, I know people don't get you unless they've gone to you. I know it's impossible to describe what you mean to me without making non-grads groan, the same way I feel about fans of far-off baseball teams. All I can say is that you saved me from desolation, probably saved me from suicide, provided me Dean Smith's way of thinking, gave me almost all of my friends, introduced me to the creature of woman, imbued me with an infinite store of confidence, and most of all, gave off the ecstatic whiff that anything great was not only possible, but probable.

That all began twenty years ago today, and I'm not so far gone to know that life and fate hang by gossamer strings that could have swung a variety of directions. That I landed in your neck of the southern woods continues to be an unforgettable blessing.

Kendall and me February '86, February 2005

recycle - TO THE EXTREME!

8/17/05

I caught wind of some of yesterday's discussion while sneaking a few downloads before takeoff, and it struck me as one of those conversations that will be going on until the end of time. Funny, because we were on an airplane from LA to NYC, which is always going to be fodder for beginning comedians until the end of time as well.

I have never once complained about a lawyer or a doctor - as a profession - because I never knew doing so was an option. We have all agreed to live in the early 21st century together, and with it comes two things that nobody can change: there are going to be lawyers and doctors, and they will always view each other like Itchy and Scratchy.

I used to think that law school was what you did when you ran out of ideas; it was the universal default setting for the person who had foundered a bit in those bizarre years just out of college and needed some structure. That hasn't particularly jibed with reality, as I quite love all my lawyer friends.

As for doctors, it seems so impossibly hard to become one that my squibbling is totally unnecessary - if you don't like a particular doctor, there are 50 more who will fit the bill. A lot of the time it's just about their bedside manner, and how much they can fake for you at any given time.

The one thing I have noticed is not interchangeable is dentists. There is some really inferior dentistry going on out there, and you truly get what you pay for. You are not saving any money in the long run by going to a local guy who doesn't cost much: it just means a root canal in 3.5 years, and THOSE SUCK.

By the way, it's excellent to be back here in New York, actually sleeping in Manhattan for the first time since we moved to Brooklyn more than three years ago. We craigslisted a little flat on Bank Street very near the Fleet Week theater, but even closer to the cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery. Those in the know understand how important that is.

By the way, Lucy was an absolute princess the whole way over America. Occasional commenter Jody K. once told me something about babies like her, and man, he was right. It's great to have the back half of the plane on your side. The halo is ever bright, and the penumbra is euphoria.

the binary Bastille

8/16/05

We're packing up to go to NYC for a few days, so by the time you read this, we will be 39,000 feet in the air, hopefully enjoying a smooth ride (DEAR GOD, I HATE TURBULENCE, LOVE IAN) and praying for our baby to be a good girl for the trip (DEAR LUCY, NO SCREAMING ON THE PLANE, LOVE, YOUR PARENTS). I guess you just have to be a Buddhist about plane trips with infants and the insane amount of shit you have to bring along. I will admit, however, I'm psyched to get back to New York for a few days for Fleet Week, hoops, and doing blue cocaine bumps off the belly of a transsexual hooker in the Lower East Side.

While we were sorting socks and getting the new Harry Potter onto the iPod, Lars Lucier sent me a link about today's mob scene at the Richmond International Raceway, as thousands of people almost killed each other trying to get their hands on $50 used iBooks. Men were trampled, baby strollers were destroyed, and one woman peed on herself lest she give up her place in line. 17 people were treated for heat exhaustion, and overall it was the best day for Apple Computers since Steve Jobs painted the iMac tangerine.

The crowd was predominantly minority and poor, which reminded me a little of the digital/analog metaphor I was working on a few months back: namely, this "mob scene" was on the wrong side of the binary divide, and was making sure they - and their families - had a chance at joining the ranks of the quasi-digerati.

Think about it: a 4-year-old iBook still gives you the opportunity to surf the web, buy online, research through Google, apply for jobs, find a place to live, learn word processing and typing... all (at least today in Richmond) for fifty bucks. If I were poor and couldn't afford a piece-of-shit Dell PC, you bet I'd be in that mob scene, trampling over old people to get my family a computer. Shit, I'd buy three if I had a few dimes to rub together.

The people in that hot mob knew what was at stake. It's too bad the local cops didn't, as they had to call in another squadron with riot gear. This early example is easy to ridicule ("hee hee a chick wet herself") but I wouldn't be surprised if the "digital divide" in this country didn't get more violent as the have-nots are increasingly fucked by a culture that is leaving them in the dust. This was not an act of violence, it was an act of revolution by twelve thousand disenfranchised souls, and it was a looong time coming.

flurbtbtbtbt

8/15/05

Look, I'm telling you right now, I might wipe my nose on my napkin. If there's nothing else in sight, and I can do it clandestinely, what do you care? It's made of cloth and as long as I don't make any noise, I don't see why it's always such a big deal.

Would you rather I lie? Pretend to sneeze and then just go ahead and do what I was going to do anyway? No. I'm honest about it. You don't need to inspect my napkin. Why don't you just go on with your conversation?

And you, little Indian girl. Yes, you, the one at Dollis School in London when we were eleven. You stared at me for an entire week when I first got there, and finally I said what??? and you said "You put your cup over your face when you drink."

So I don't tip my head back all the way. So my glass goes into my face. I didn't even know there was a rule for that. And we were eleven! And it was my first week there, an American in London, couldn't you have been a little nicer?

By the way, I am going to blow on my food to cool it down. I won't do it at any of you, but I'm going to do it regardless. And eating soup? The spoon will head toward me when I do it. I know pushing the spoon away from you is supposed to be good manners, but frankly, it feels wrong and looks stupid. It looks self-aware. If you do it, I'll just stare and wonder why that sort of shit is so important to you.

Okay, so I'll surrender to your goddamn chopsticks. At this point, using chopsticks when we have a perfectly good fork lying around - this is post-Bronze Age, you know - seems stupid, but I'll try. But if I drop it, I'm using my fingers. Same goes for those big, messy rolls called "The Samurai" or "The Leafy Dragon." I just don't care what you think anymore. It's not like I fart. I don't. In fact, if you show me someone who pushes the spoon away from them, I'll show you a world-class farter.

I'm glad we had an opportunity to talk about this.

norman the stormin' mormon

8/14/05

I always loved this diptych of my brother Kent, as it is the perfect metaphor for him - he was incredibly happy to be in the photo studio until the bright flash of the first picture totally freaked him out and made him cry for the second. He is the Sensitive Buddha. It was his birthday this weekend, so this blog goes out to him because I didn't really know what he wanted on Amazon.

As I've oft said before, Kent introduced me to some of the main things that have held fast in my life: the Beatles, XTC, early bizarre poetry, the Odd Bodkins cartoons, Monty Python and I believe he sent me the first or second email I ever received in July 1993.

He once wrote a story about working the backhoe at a cemetery in mid-winter Iowa that was part of the reason I wanted to be a writer. He also sustained a burn injury at his Burger King job - "french frying" his hand - that was so grotesque that I swore I'd never work in fast food. Although I've held numerous jobs worse than fast food, I have never set foot near a fryer in my life.

NYC, 1991

One of the worst memories of my childhood was being sent to awaken him in his basement room after he had been beaten up near the post office in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I was expecting a black eye and some scratches, but I found a teenager purple with wounds and both eyes bloated shut; it was a vicious, cruel thrashing that gave me daydreams of revenge for twenty years.

He is the kind of big brother that makes you want others to have siblings; part of the reason we named our baby Lucy Kent was because we hoped she could be as cool to any future brother or sister that the original Kent was. If she inherits his magnanimity and half his bizarreness, I'll consider it a genetic success. When he was a little kid, Mom told him that airplanes were kept in hangars. So later that night, she went into his closet, and all his toy airplanes were hung up on the clothes hangers. That story breaks my heart every time.

Kent doesn't live near us and probably never will. He'll continue to dispense advice and devastating breakbeats from his home in Iowa City long into the future. He doesn't really see the need for the big city like we do, another in a long line of white flashes that will only bum him out in the second picture.

I will say this, though: Kent, we love you. So stop fucking smoking, you goddamn retard.

apple orchard near Mt. Vernon, IA, 2004

okay so you're elvis or something

8/11/05

Ten Things Created in the Last Ten Years I Could Do Without

1. The Hummer - What a gargantuan piece of shit this car is, a testament to cock in its utter lack of nuance, a fuck-you mobile that extends its middle finger to the ozone as it thrashes down the freeway guzzling 400 gallons of ego per mile. Hummer owners, I'm calling you out: what is your problem? This shit isn't funny anymore.

2. DVD navigation - How can we invent a game like Dance Dance Revolution, fix the Hubble telescope and fit 10,000 songs on a machine the size of a cigarette box... and still I can't get anything to work from the "menu" of any DVD? You can't fast-forward DVDs like VCRs used to; more often than not, you end up skipping to the end of the goddamn movie. Also, they don't allow you to skip the FBI warning - what is this, Communist Kamchatka?

3. 2.4 GHz Wireless Telephones - Hey, I've got a great idea: let's take the bandwidth that already has every garage door opener on it, not to mention every single internet wifi signal, and PUT A PHONE ON IT TOO? That way, you can be sure to fuck up the internet for everybody living within 200 feet of you, which in Manhattan means about 60 folks trying to check their email. Oh, and make the phones kind of suck, too.

4. Shamelessness - You might have hated Clinton for getting a blow job, and you might have hated his wife for trying to get you health care, but at least they had shame. When I think of modern Republicans, I'm reminded of the scene in "Goodfellas" when Henry Hill describes the "Fuck you, pay me" ethos of mob goons. This government has a trademark on cruelty, brazenness and self-righteous dunderheadedness.

5. Cell Phone Service in Los Angeles - Can someone please tell me why I'm paying for this? How can the 2nd largest city in America have worse cell phone coverage than rural Iowa? And don't tell me it's because the mountains; if they did it right, the mountains would actually help. If you wonder why movies are so bad right now, it's because nobody creative can ever finish a conversation.

6. "Strappleberry" flavor - I can take "tutti-frutti" and "mixed berry" flavor, but "strappleberry" sounds like a focus-group name that allows you to actually taste the Polysorbate 60 sliding down your throat. It also sounds like an anal fungus sore. You know it does.

7. "That Don't Impress Me Much" by Shania Twain - It isn't that Shania Twain does these little spoken-word coos to begin each song (like "uh-huh!" or "come on, girls!"), it's that "Impress" has several spoken sections like "okay, you're Brad Pitt" that are so ear-screechingly awful that I want to claw my own forehead off from utter twee. Also, this song mentions someone who is too smart, too good-looking, or too in love with his car(?) to have the "touch," as if those things were mutually exclusive. Plus, she's Canadian and Canadians should know better.

8. Magnetic tags in pants - Please, cashier, can you just remove these motherscratchers when I buy them? I'm really sick of setting off the alarms in other stores because you didn't snip off the ferrite coil stitched into my crotch.

9. Dook's and K's 3rd Championship - I know we - CAROLINA, that is - just won it all, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to go back and erase 2001. It makes perfect sense that a year that saw the illegal instatement of a frat boy as President and the worst terrorist attack in American history would also see a Dook championship. I'm just happy that the world seems to have righted itself from those awful, awful times.

10. Blogs - Hello? IS THIS THING ON?!?

i got 2nd highest score in Galaga

8/10/05

Tonight we celebrated our anniversary by getting lobster at a place called "Lobster" and then trekking onto the Santa Monica Pier to ride the ferris wheel. I should also mention that getting Tessa onto something like a ferris wheel is no mean feat, as she dislikes shit that throws your body around in the name of fun. Personally, I crave that sort of thing unless it's on an airplane, and then St. Xanax can take care of the rest.

We've had to be very Buddhist about the last couple of days; this town can throw your mood around like a rubber superball. The problem with speculative careers - as opposed to the obvious paycheck on Friday - is that it can raise a lot of feelings you haven't experienced since high school.

All we can do is "the next right thing" and "keep our side of the street clean" and "have faith obliterate fear." I would say "I'm the piece of shit the world revolves around," but then you'd know where I get all my aphorisms.

By the way, can I just say again how much Lucy liked Caesar's Palace?

she's going to be trouble in there eventually

inchworm, measuring the marigold

8/9/05

Two years ago this second, Tessa and I were trying to eat creamed corn out of a plastic vat while sitting in a hot tub. We had just gotten married a few hours before, had the reception of a lifetime, and now we were at our B&B eating the dinner that was packed by the catering staff.

Bizarrely, the caterers didn't really know what we meant by "pack us a late-night picnic for after the party," so they sent us tubs of food without any silverware, and no drinks. The B&B was shut down for the night, so we were on our own: we filled thirty tiny Dixie cups full of water, got in the hot tub, and just plunged our hands into the food, getting it everywhere. When I think of my wedding, I'll think of many incredible things, but one of them will be the swirls of corn cascading through the hot tub jets.

Now we've been in California a while, and I'm acutely missing all the friends and family we had in our barn two years ago tonight, but Tessa and I have each other, and she takes the pangs out of any longing. She has only gotten more beautiful, more funny, and more interesting with age.

Brain-dead American comic strips like They'll Do It Every Time and The Lockhorns have made 125 years of jokes about forgetting your anniversary, and, I guess, having a wife that runs after you with a rolling pin, but I'm a big fan of anniversaries. The first year was apparently "paper," and this year is "cotton," and I've had things worked out for both.

Before we had Lucy, we were worried that our entire lives would be eaten up by talking about... um, y'know, Lucy. We made an agreement sometime in March that when the baby was born, we would reserve an hour at night for brat-free discussion (we already had the rule "no talking about work-related shit during the half-hour before sleep" anyway). It turns out that life is much more fluid than our best intentions, and we either obsess over Lucy or we don't.

We have two elements to our marriage that keep us really happy: we don't let anything fester into resentment, and we have remained extremely pliable. In other words, never go to bed mad, and don't get too caught up on where your bed happens to be that night.

I love being married to this chick, man. She's stunning in so many ways. Two years have sped by in some respects, but they've also felt like warm oceans of time. And even though it may seem a little self-involved, I picked some random pictures of us to put on the blog today. After all, this will someday be little more than a public scrapbook for my daughter, and because my parents never really loved each other, I know how important it is to show her two people who do. Quite terribly, in fact.

mother of Pearl

8/8/05

small portion of the official picture

Well, I never thought I'd be caught dead in one of those family reunion T-shirts - they always end up in the bargain bin at the second-hand store purchased only for irony (I have a shirt for the Seltzer Family Reunion, Wisconsin 1999 for similar reasons) but I have to say, this time I felt pride whilst wearing the colors.

Despite the average Mormon's penchant for constant reunions, our Worsley side of the family (descended from my grandma Klea) had their last real get-together in 1986, when I was 19 years old. Since then, the extended family has grown by at least 50 more kids, and I swore by the end of this reunion in Altamont, UT, I'd try to name at least 75% of them accurately.

It's hard to explain our family to anyone else, but suffice to say that my cousins' kids, husbands, wives-in-law and anyone who is remotely related to us is thrown into the great mix and accepted as pre-ordained. Aunts once removed frequently work with their nephews-in-law. It's really quite terrific, as I truly adore my cousins, and their kids usually end up as cool as they are.

Lucy and her second cousin Chandler

First, a thing about my extended Mormon family. As I've said before, I don't find their beliefs any more irrational than anyone else's, including mine. They are not the "Mormons" you read about in "Under the Banner of Heaven" - they are not polygamists, and they aren't ruling anybody with a patriarchal fist. If anything, the women rule the roost in my family; hell, for all the talk of multiple wives, they've actually had more husbands.

The polygamy rap is really quite stupid - the numbers of actual polyamorous families in Utah is always sensationalized beyond reality, and they're all excommunicated anyway. People often mention "the bigamists up in the hills," which used to confuse me as a kid, thinking that wives and altitude had to be related. My family has nothing to do with that end of LDS thinking, and after the last forty years, have become as open-minded as most people in the West Village.

Well, maybe not the West Village, but certainly Paramus, New Jersey.

Kent, Melissa, Lucy

I was especially psyched Kent's family, including my sister-in-law Melissa, and nephews Sean Patrick and Lucas made the trip, as it was the first time they got to see their first real Williams cousin Lucy, and of course, Kent got to hang out with his namesake. Too bad she was such a grumbly-boots during the official pictures, or else it would have been cute.

My family has always been about putting on a show, so Saturday night we had the talent portion of the evening (now you know where I get it, fellow Jartaculees) and I sang a song that I wrote on Grandma's deathbed and the rest of the kids clanked whisks, pots and spoons to "I Am a Fine Musician."

The Dork Brigade, headed by Steve, Kent, Sean Patrick and Lucas, managed to throw everyone into awe (or deep sleep) by reciting the alphabet backwards in under 10 seconds, and naming every state in the Union in under fifteen. Sean Patrick also named every American Senator, which takes longer than you think.

The essence of these reunions is simple: you look around the room at these 85 people and find yourself awash in the buzz of shared experience and shared DNA. We all just really like each other. Or at least I like everybody, and they're all talking shit about me right now.

the late-'60s brigade: cousins Mark, Vince, Jana, me - countless photos of us in bathtubs together

Most importantly, Lucy got to meet her Auntie Donna, the matriarch of our family. Now 86, there is a small chance Lucy will have anything but the tiniest wisps of memories of her, even though Donna is trucking very healthily into her autumn. At the church service held Sunday morning, we sat on the mezzanine to take in the scene, and Lucy listened very intently to Auntie Donna's words. Lucy probably won't understand how much that will have meant to me.

Utah is an odd place, and despite my unflinching line of history that rests in those mountains, I have no desire to live there. But a jaunt into the valley to breathe the joy of a huge family is an incredible intoxicant. Well, actually, intoxicants aren't permitted by the Mormons, but the high is still delightful.

two great tastes that taste great together

8/7/05

breastfeeding and the Las Vegas Strip

utah saints

8/4/05

No real internet at the reunion - more after the weekend!

i hit at fourteen, i tellsya

8/3/05

Man, why didn't anyone tell me about the Free Baby Pass earlier? All Tessa and I did was book a humble non-smoking room deep in the bowels of Caesar's Palace. So we took Lucy to the front desk to check in, and she gave this face to management:

Next thing you know, they gave us the Corner Penthouse Suite for the same price! There's seven rooms in this thing! The room for just the toilet is so large that you can't reach the phone on the wall from the toilet.

So I stayed downstairs in the casino and turned $40 into $201 via poker and blackjack (I will try craps on the return, thanks to Tregen). I figured Lucy might as well learn how to do all this too, so we set her up to play. I can tell you one thing: this chick might have landed us in the penthouse, but she's terrible at the slots.

putting one's eye out

8/2/05

The pity about Hollywood and the blog is this: the more interesting our days get, the less I'm able to write about it. I'm fairly sure that if we get involved in any of the projects currently on the table, I'm going to have to do one of three things:
a) ask four of you (or somebody) and make this blog a more varied forum, like Kos or BoingBoing, and have each person (plus me) write a certain day of the week
b) keep writing the blog but avoid talking about the entertainment industry (which would be BO-RING)
c) stop keeping this blog altogether and erase all the archives and hope nobody clicks on the Google cache.

That said, I can still write whatever I want for now, and I can say that the last few days has seen the most incredibly insane exciting patch of good fortune - work-wise - since the War of 1812. I know Los Angeles can give you a drug and take it away from you just as easily, but when you're on a high, even the smog looks lovely.

Thus it's a perfect time to go to Vegas, baby! Or at least go to Vegas en route to my family's first massive reunion since our Gramma left this earth in 1996. Tomorrow we're packing the Prius full of our desert survival baby gear and zipping our way through the hottest place on earth en route to Altamont, Utah, where 85+ of my cousins, aunts and uncles will be gathered to sing songs, have sack races, and give each other the stomach flu.

I'm bringing along a tiny bit of my favorite Scotch so my older brothers and I can take a break at night from the games of Rook, and I'm also bringing a nice, pristine set of Jarts™ lawn darts. Y'see, this blog entry from 2004 has become the internet's de facto Jarts trading post, since they're not allowed on eBay or Yahoo. I'm happy to oblige, and occasionally I'll pick up an extra set if the seller sounds nice.

The last time I played Jarts™ in earnest was at my Aunt Marilyn's house in 1976, so maybe she'll think it's cool that I brought some back from the past. Or I'll be run out of the reunion on a rail, it could go either way.

I know you're always supposed to "bet on black" at the roulette wheel, but why am I always tempted by red? Any other gambling advice you'd like to share?

nouveau cane

8/1/05

Sorry to lame out, but today I had to get a enormous filling in tooth number 12 in Beverly Hills, then battle traffic to Santa Monica, where I spent two more hours getting a root canal. My head is splitting with pain, and the 3-Advil trick isn't doing anything. Weirdly enough, the tooth is fine: it's just everything else.

I left before Lucy got up from her morning nap and got home after she went to bed, so I didn't see her at all today, dammit! So I'll just post a picture for myself.