xtcian

in french, chat, chapeau

7/31/06

For the first time in about a year, and for the first time in her toddlerhood, one of Lucy's parents is spending the night away from her. And surprise! It's not me! That's right, Tessa went to Texas to spend a couple of days with her ailing grandmother Nonnie (actually named Lucille, which is where Lucy got her name) and for Monday and Tuesday, I am a Swingin' Bachelor Single Parent.

Without the confines of my stuffy marriage for two days, I decided to get some serious ya-yas out. Lucy has been eating nothing but BEEF TALLOW and FUNNEL CAKES covered in MRS. BUTTERWORTH and I have been indulging in a Major Freakout!!!

A few things:
- Man, people sure are picky about calling the police! Just because we had more than fifty people in our house tonight and Deee-Lite was cranked to 120 decibels. Whatever happened to bigtime dance jams? If the floorboards aren't bendin', it ain't a party, copper!

- I was told that if you spill an entire bottle of Everclear on the floor and light it on fire, the flames will be violent but nothing gets burned. Man, is THAT wrong.

- Who knew whores were so expensive? It's always "that'll be extra" and "that's not covered in our agreement." I assumed that ladies of a certain moral character would have some wiggle room, but no dice.

- The new paint job I did in the living room looked cool while the opium lasted, but now that it's wearing off, I'm not so sure. It's not really Tessa's "style" and I'm not sure if she's going to "like it."

- Lucy loves birds, so I started a small quail farm in the guest bedroom. OUCH they're stinky! AND LOUD! And now we have fleas. But I'm the Best Dad Ever, right?

Oh well, one more day of single parentin' left. Just in time for our "Cleaning the House Montage Scene" with "Number One (Man in the Making)" or "Maniac" playing in the background. Cue shots of Lucy and Dad taking time out of repainting to get into a paintbrush fight! And then rolling out the new carpet and giving each other a HIGH FIVE!

requiem aeternam dona eis

7/30/06

I started several blog topics today, but I just can't. I know it may sound precious and silly, but after seeing pictures of those dead toddlers being carried out of the rubble of Qana today, I've had it. Go ahead, conservatives, make fun all you want. But I'm utterly heartsick over the way every piece of this Middle East mess has been conducted.

I imagine Lucy in all of those little children's faces. There was a time when I could read a story like today's, be suitably horrified for about five minutes, and move on. Those days are over.

New Yorkers, while cleaning up the charred remains of their compatriots downtown in late September 2001, were noticeably reticent about going to war, any war. We saw firsthand what happens, we were breathing the air, we were washing soot out from behind our ears for weeks. You'd think we were the ones crying out most for revenge, but all around us you saw people clamoring for peace.

I've had it. I'm going to join my brother Kent as a pacifist Quaker. Perhaps not a pure pacifist, but Pragmatic Pacifist (look it up if you're interested). I know Israel has to defend itself and root out terrorists, but nobody will ever convince me - or any other sensitive living creature - that the only way to do it is through blowing 37 children to bits. Don't anyone dare say that war has casualties, and they are regrettable. Fuck you in advance if this is you default setting. Your heart is diseased, and mine is damn near broken.

hey hey, the clouds are whey

7/27/06

The above poster, stuck on an Athens, GA wall in 1982, is the greatest show I never saw. While I was studying for Mr. Marchionda's biology test at the age of fourteen, my Ultimate Dream Show featuring my favorite band in the world - along with REM at the height of their awesomeness - was being played about 400 miles away. The "English Settlement" and "Murmur" tour. I can barely stand it even decades later.

A few weeks after this, Andy Partridge of XTC freaked out on stage and never toured again. REM became what they became. But today's CODE WORD is a question for you: What would be your dream double-bill concert? It has to be a show that could have existed, or did exist - no mixing two different genres or disparate time periods, like pairing George Gershwin with De La Soul (although that sounds pretty awesome).

Sing!

i'll have the regular and keep 'em comin'

7/26/06

I really miss drinking, and I say that as somebody who can still drink. I keep a bottle of Macallan 18 in the cupboard and usually something else in the freezer (like Chopin vodka, or something equally snooty) but the dropoff of alcohol consumption in my life over the last six years has been gargantuan and dramatic.

In Chapel Hill, as many of you will remember, there was a will, a way, and a place to get drunk every night of the week. These nights tended to change every year or so, but in 1990, it was Ham's on Monday, Groundhog's on Tuesday, Players/Club Zen on Wednesday, Molly's on Thursday, and the list goes on and on. Each of you can fill in the names from your own college towns, but we had no problem getting actually drunk five or six nights a week.

One day a guy came into our fraternity, most likely at the behest of the Inter-Fraternity Council in a desperate attempt to keep Fun in existence without the requisite lawsuits (a move that failed, but that's another story). This man was some sort of Alcoholic Counselor, and told us "if you drink to get drunk more than twice a year, you are probably an alcoholic." A nice enough guy, but his message was insanely stupid, as it only made us go out and do fourteen tequila shots in his honor a couple of hours later.

At Club 510, where Salem and I lived at the beginning of the 1990s, we used to have two kegs of Goebel's ($40 each!), stashes of vodka, bourbon and wine - and Salem used to concoct vats of kamaikaze shots, going around to the party guests and getting them each to take a ladle. It was par for the course, and I remember all hangovers (such as they were) easily cleaned up with two Tylenol Sinus pills.

I loved the culture of drinking, perhaps because I came so late to the party. My first actual sip of alcohol came in Jon Vaden's dorm room in Lewis when we were freshman. He had gotten his roommate Bradford to buy us 2-liter bottles of Sun Country Wine Cooler, and thus Jon, Chip, Bud, me and whomever girls we could wrangle from Cobb Dorm would come over and play a card game called EGDAP (Everyone Get Drunk and Puke).

Those particular drunks were the best I ever had, innocent and free of agenda, and I spent the next fifteen years trying to feel like that again. I came close (Dook game in '92, my bachelor party) but soon felt the effect of diminishing returns. By the time I was 30 and living in Beachwood Canyon, drinking felt like a luxury I could no longer stomach.

These days, I have to:
a) decide I'm going to get drunk
b) take two Chaser™ pills
c) take one Zantac
d) imbibe alcohol
e) drink one glass of water per drink
f) cancel all plans for the next two days.

I mean, it's usually worth it, but the spontaneity factor is pathetic. The Chaser pills do work in removing the "feel like death" element of the next day, but it can do nothing for the fatigue.

But on a Wednesday night like this, with both my awesome wife and my unbelievably fantastic daughter already asleep, I think about the nights that began at midnight and ended up four fingers down a bottle of Midori. I remember all those great liquors we kept around the house: Kahlua, Goldschlager, cinnamon schnapps, Jack Daniels, Cuervo 1800, even Jaegermeister. You are not gone, not forgotten, merely truncated. I will visit you again like my old friends; every few months, so we can still howl at the moon and behave terribly.

I'd caption this pic from '89, but you all know who you are!

meditation xvii

7/26/06

God dammit, yesterday's comments were awesome, but there is so much there worthy of righteous indignation and garment-rending anger.

Stop me if I'm misrepresentin', but did some of you really say there is a meaningful cadre of industries that stand to benefit from global warming hysteria, and THAT'S how the pro-environment agenda gets its energy? You have GOT TO BE KIDDING.

For every one small company that sells backpacks that recharge your cell phone, there are HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of companies that benefit from things going the way they always have (McDonalds, Union Carbide, Halliburton, Unilever, etc etc etc.). British Petroleum has a nice solar department, but it accounts for... what, .0001% of their revenue?

To even hint that there are a powerful group of industries that stand to benefit from lying - or exaggerating - the threat of global warming takes a staggering lack of perspective. It's like the elephant claiming an ant blocks his view.

As for Democrats seizing it as a wedge issue, first of all, that's mostly crap, and second of all, Republicans can never blame any other political entity for exploiting a wedge issue again, given the utterly shameful way they've gone after homosexuals, people of color, and 9/11 widows. "Democrats needed something scary"? This is coming from the people that brought us Saddam's "mushroom cloud" and telling us that if Kerry was elected, "we'd get hit again"? Do you guys have any idea of the murderous hypocrisy at work here?

Climate change transcends politics, and is quite simply a matter of survival. The wave of black water doesn't give a shit if you're liberal or conservative, and while you send for whom the bell tolls, your estate is being washed away. For those of us trying to do something about it, why can't you just say thank you?

seriously, Lucy and I are wondering what your problem is

guelphs and ghibellines

7/24/06

Okay, I have a question. It can be asked about pretty much any heated topic, but let's take global warming, because it's near and dear to our hearts. Namely thus: Why are you conservatives so hellbent on keeping the rest of us from trying to save the Earth? I just don't get it. Every time I bring up global warming, climate change, or tangential topics like corporate responsibility, you immediately try to discredit the data, ridicule the messenger, obfuscate the topic, throw your hands up in despair, or chuckle like we're poor saps who just don't get it.

I mean, exactly what dog do you have in this fight? Why is the concept of climate change so threatening to you, as if it's some kind of deadly misinformation that must be sublimated at all costs? If you don't believe it's happening, well, I think you're being ignorant and making my kids pay for your laziness, but I can grudgingly respect your decision. What I don't get is why you don't just ignore the calls for environmentalism; instead, you fight them with everything you've got. There has to be something else afoot.

Are you afraid of losing money, personally? Will certain stocks you own go down in value if the world starts trying to act responsibly? Or does the thought of a hundred good years of capitalism taking this planet to the brink fill you with so much guilt that you have to deny global warming in order to sleep at night?

Is it cognitive dissonance? Is the news so overwhelmingly bad that you are willing to retreat into the first pair of open arms who tells you that everything is going to be okay?

This may raise guffaws, but I think the best thing about being a liberal is a constant self-questioning search for truth. Yes, American culture since Reagan has vilified liberalism/progressivism, but the truest among us always sets aside chunks of time to doubt our beliefs. It's why we lose a lot, why we dabble in nuance, and why we let conservatives scream louder. But I think 99% of liberals would be more than happy to learn global warming was bullshit, if shown evidence.

Conservatives fascinate me; when proof of their mistakes are shown, they usually just believe it even harder. Witness the last six years, probably the biggest, quickest breakdown of governmental competence since the Great Depression, and still our president has the temerity to give us headlines like Bush Sees Mideast Strife as a Step Toward Peace.

So I need to know: are you discrediting thousands of scientists and a near-unanimous global consensus that man is causing the CO2 rise, making the Earth unsustainably hotter just because you're a conservative, and that's what conservatives think? If so, I would have thought better of you. That's not choosing a position, that's just choosing sides.

don't tell me to calm down

7/23/06

So, let's see...

1) Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, apparently has enough support to fire an endless number of rockets into Israel and even has the capacity to destroy ships. Conversely, Israel is blowing Lebanon back into the 15th century, with massive civilian casualties, entire families being vaporized, and a blank check from the rest of the world.

2) Iraq is in full-blown civil war, and the situation has gotten so bad that the Sunnis are asking the Americans to stay. Which they are, and when we're not dying in waves, we're dying on average about one soldier a day. That's one of your high school classmates, worse off than you, going to serve and coming home in a box. Once a day. For a war based on utter lies.

3) The power is out in New York City, St. Louis, and all over California. Temperatures from yesterday and today have shattered records. 2006, so far, has been the hottest year in recorded history, and estimated to be the hottest year in 400 years. What was in second place? Last year.

4. Gas is the most expensive it has ever been in this country, going over $3 a gallon. This absolutely kills low income families not lucky enough to live in a place with realistic public transportation (pretty much everywhere not called New York, Chicago, Seattle and Washington D.C.)

5. Bush just spent his first veto on the only ray of hope to come out of this year's political fiasco: a real stem cell bill passed by the Senate. Paraplegics, those with ALS, Parkinsons, macular degeneration and Alzheimers are all told to fuck off. By the way, one out of two men (and 1/3 of women) reading this blog will get cancer if current rates persist. If your cure does not come in time, you will know who stopped it.

6. Rent The Corporation. We watched it last night, and while it can be literal and heavy-handed, you will not come away unaffected. It is so depressing that it made me want to curl up with Tessa and Lucy and never leave our bed.

7. Which we can't do, because Lucy is so uncomfortable with her heat rash on her back and arms because of the weather. Watching her writhe in misery absolutely floors me - I just want to take all of her pain away (fortunately, hydrocortisone did the trick).

These are desperately bad times, no matter how comfortable you feel. You may like your job where you're reading this, you may find your home office or laptop a little piece of serenity, but the world is in mid-disaster. Things move slow enough not to be noticed, but they're happening. You're living history, you just don't know it. They didn't know it in 1066, 1215, 1512, or 1848. They didn't know it when the medieval sickness came from Italy, they didn't know it when Noah began pounding.

I'm reminded of two quotes, one from George Orwell:

"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

And of course, this from Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus":

FAUSTUS: Where are you damned?
MEPHISTOPHILIS: In hell.
FAUSTUS: How comes it then, that thou art out of hell?
MEPHISTOPHILIS: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.

ambrosia in, garbage out

7/20/06

To: The NEA (National Endowment for the Arts)
Re: Proposal for Funding Grant
From: Ian W. representing Lucy K. B-W.

Gentlemen-

It has come to my attention that you have funded incredible works of art in the past, including the Shakespeare in American Communities program and the NEA Jazz Masters. I also read that you have occasionally funded projects dealing with human excrement.

Sure, you must be thinking, that is so 1996! Andrew Serrano's Piss Christ is yesterday's papers. But my daughter Lucy begs to differ.

Yesterday morning around 4am, she became dissatisfied with an ill-fitting diaper, and took it off in her crib. What happened next could only be described as a "shitsplosion". By the time we arrived around 6:45am, there was very little in the room that hadn't been soiled: walls, sheets, draperies, the bumper, the rails, several stuffed animals and various other surfaces were dealt with in a Jackson Pollock-like artistic frenzy. Even former NEA-grant-receiver Karen Finley - the chocolate-smeared woman - would have been proud.

While throwing away most of her bedding, and indeed, most of that part of the room, I began to think: am I throwing away an accidental masterpiece? A testament to our culture and our times? As my wife and daughter spent forty-five minutes in the shower, I began to think "perhaps!"

So I ask you now: how about supporting the arts for the littlest Americans? Let's start early with this generation, so they should know performance art when it happens. After all, won't somebody PLEASE think about the children?!?

Your most humble svt.,
etc., etc., etc.
IRW.

garbage in, ambrosia out

7/19/06

The Latest in the Who Gives a Shit Dept:

Hey, I took apart my Mac Mini! Y'see, I want to do some demo songs and create GarageBand tracks with the ol' pre-2006 Mini, but the hard drive was too slow. You know what I'm screamin', right? So I got a 7200rpm drive and tackled the crazy amounts of screws and wires and delicate motherboards and after two hours of sweating bullets, I did it!

That shit is not so easy, my friends. Watch forty-five seconds of this video if you don't believe me. My brother Kent once said I was shitty at computers, you know, back in 1993 or so, and I've been trying to prove him wrong for thirteen years. In your FACE, chaircrusher!

Anyway, so I created a "sparseimage" in SuperDuper, then connected the xtcian-refurbished Mac Mini to my Powerbook and the LaCie hard drive, and it's cloning as we speak! How did I do that with only one Firewire port, you ask? Well, I also used the Firewire 800 port with a Firewire 400 connector. Pretty sweet, huh? Huh?

Wait, where is everybody?

HELLO?

state tree: longleaf pine

7/18/06

Tonight we went to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (yes, that academy) for a low-key yet inspiring party for this years crop of bright-eyed Tar Heels trying to make it in Lalaland through the UNC Hollywood Internship Program. I wish everyone could see how much fun these folks were having, exactly the sort of thing we would have LOVED if it had existed in 1990 when some of us tried coming out here the first time.

Of the things UNC has now (but didn't when I was there): air conditioning, drop/add by phone, THE INTERNET, and this Hollywood Internship Program. First off, the internet. Can you imagine how much easier everything is with Google? I was one of the last classes to graduate before the internet came to Carolina, and I remember actually having to go to the frickin' library to research something. The book would inevitably be gone, and I'd be stuck on the sixth floor of Davis wondering what the fuck I was going to do about my paper due in eight hours.

I don't say this like other old farts say stuff about "kids today." When old people kvetch about kids' manners, or their dress, or their technology, they're usually complaining about something that had evolved differently over the decades. The internet, however, exploded onto UNC in the course of about two years and I just missed it by a matter of eighteen months or so. Unbelievable.

Anyway, this internship is awesome - lots of these UNC grads get internships with other Carolina alumni, gigs in major movie production houses, TV studios and whatever else we can rustle up for them. They have that wide-eyed excitement of being in Hollywood, and as one of them said, "escaping from the boondocks" (she was from Salisbury, NC).

This is my old fart rant, and it is 100% true: when I came to LA in 1990 and looked for a job, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and drove gas prices out of my reach. Not being able to find employment, I subsisted on a brick of cheddar cheese and Branola wheat bread for two weeks (I know I've said that before, but it feels good to type). Finally, through my angel of mercy John Altschuler (who was also there tonight), I got a gig at New Line Cinema as their first intern. Three weeks into the job, I got rear-ended by a reggae drummer in a white truck that gave me whiplash and totaled my car. Weeks later I was back in Chapel Hill, wondering what the fuck went wrong.

These UNC program interns will be spared that fate, and from the looks of a few of them, they'll be producing some of your favorite movies and TV shows in 2012. But I don't begrudge them a centimeter; it's right for each successive generation to have a slightly easier time, and while my adventures in Hollywood have been occasionally horrific, I wouldn't trade one second of the Wild Teacup Ride that got me where I am.

at Mallory May's house just before leaving, May 1990

dressed in tricolour and phrygian cap

7/17/06

My sweet darling, wonderful little Lucybug:

Last week, without any of us knowing it, you turned fifteen months old. Admittedly, when it get past a year, the "every three months" thing starts to get a little silly (along with mothers introducing us to their "twenty-five-month olds" - sheesh) but I wrote to you every season of your first year, and I thought I'd do so again.

I won't say much, because words barely express the kind of joy you spread around each world you stumble upon. Sure, you have an "annoyance scream" that sets off car alarms three counties away, but most of the time you run around with your hands in the air, babbling happy new-found syllables of increasing complexity.

I started a list of words you were using, but I gave up, because you repeat everything and know shit we never taught you. The other day, I decided to test you and asked where my "lips" were. You grabbed my mouth and laughed. I have no idea where you could have learned this, other than "the street."

above: with her Grandpa. below: with her great-great Auntie Donna

We're starting to get invitations from people we don't know - playmates from your afternoons in the park, boys from the Kidnasium (which sounds, to me, like "kidney museum"). I come home from a day in the writing cellar to find your scribbles pasted to the refrigerator by your babysitter Laura, along with little objets d'art. You are having this experience completely outside of me and your mother, and it's obvious you're learning both Spanish and English in miles per second.

About the Spanish thing. Laura is Hispanic, and your mom is fluent, but I have no idea what the hell any of you are saying. I do know, however, that you say "fruta" wrong, because it's a little rude to scream "PUTA!" at the nice Mexican ladies who are selling fruit at the Farmer's Market.

When you learn new words and squeal with delight - like you did this weekend with "buildings," "truck," "signs" and "outside" - it's like I'm experiencing the nascent joy of language right there with you. When you grabbed my racquet and said "tennis," we both jumped up and down and danced.

You eat everything in sight but seem to gain no weight. Your mother says it's like living with a teenager on the high school football team. The only thing you don't seem to like is cheese, but it doesn't stop you from saying it all the time. I understand, I love saying "cheese" too. It just feels right, doesn't it?

I could do without the constant wardrobe changing - ever since you learned the concept of "off," you want to try on everything you own in rapid succession. It really becomes an opera, especially with shoes. Sometimes I'll be rocking you to sleep, and you'll be silent for ten minutes, then suddenly look deep into my eyes and say "shooooes..." dejectedly. It's truly sad, but I always laugh so hard that we have to start all over.

People ask us about being parents, and whether or not we like it, and we're always a bit cagey with our response. This rigmarole is not for everybody, and I admit, even with extensive training and a huge sea-shift in my circadian rhythms, the mornings are still agony. You need the patience of Job, Ruth and Lot. I know several people who should not even consider it. But what we can say is this: we're not sure about being parents, but we absolutely LOVE being your parent.

What was it we used to say when looking for a date in college? Smart, funny, and relatively cute? Well, you seem smart enough, and I suppose you're something of a cutie-boots, but JESUS ABOVE you make us laugh ALL DAY LONG. And for that, I'd like to thank you most of all.

Love, Daddo.

one pill makes you larger

7/16/06

My cough progressed to the point where serious drugs were needed to combat it, and serious drugs it got. Armed with a vial of gold liquid called Tussionex Pennkinetic, I read the directions: one-half to one teaspoon, and thus I erred toward the latter. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but like many weekend nights have proven, a little patience was all you needed.

They said Tussionex Pennkinetic would knock you out, but I think they meant "make you go to sleep." It knocked me out alright, but in the 1966 sense of FUCKING GROOVY, MAN! I ingested the medicine at 11pm; by 1am I had re-written three old songs in my head, changed the beginning of one of our scripts, mentally constructed a new house by our farm, and pretended I could fly.

By 3am, I had "gone to bed," but it was a mere formality. My mind and core were racing so much that I had to throw open the window and let some air in. It was a state of euphoria, of everythin-a-gonna-be-all-right that I hadn't experienced in about ten years, and maybe since the Grateful Dead came to Chapel Hill in 1995 and dispersed opium throughout the Research Triangle.

Thank god it was Tessa's morning with Lucy, because when I came to at 11am, I had to be reminded what part of the country we were in. The hangover, always the dealbreaker with my drug experiences, was so intense that it was actually nostalgiac, reminiscent of those Sundays in North Carolina at the age of 24 when you'd let the Purple House boys talk you into having that last bottle of Mad Dog Platinum.

For my part, I had no idea how effective standard tussin abuse can be (or if that's what I was doing) but I can assure you, as wonderful as it was, it will be several years before I try it again. I haven't stepped outside my body in so long that stepping back in was unbelievably painful. That gold liquid is fools' blood.

prudence never pays

7/13/06

The Black Adder said "hope springs eternal," but I really thought I'd shuffled off the dead skin of hope right around the time this country re-elected that smirking chimp back into office. When I wrote that American Coastopia thing all those years ago, it was not a call to arms, it was dying wish, a middle finger stuck out the back car window as we sped on to other worlds. I will never have faith in the American electorate again; this country just got too big, too fat, too stupid, lazy and gullible to be trusted.

Despite wanting to move somewhere else - you know, a place where gays might get treated like real people, where folks practice a shred of environmentalism, and where the government isn't run by a combination of twisted, cynical bloodlusters and "End of Days" Christians - we decided to stay here. We kept paying our taxes, thus funding a war that was reprehensible to our every pore, even occasionally shopping at malls. We had a baby. We also got emergency supplies, escape routes, "camping on site" plans, learned infant/adult CPR, bought into solar power and arranged a contingency pack in order to ride out whatever might be coming.

On a day like this, when the fucking world is going out of control (see Lebanon, Israel, North Korea, Darfur, Iran - and that's just today's headlines) it feels therapeutic to be living so near the ocean, as if you could just wade out chest-deep, close your eyes, and pray for it to pass.

We have the worst possible people in charge at the worst possible time. Today in the car, Tessa and I were telling each other how nice it might be one day, to look back upon these years as the political/theological/environmental Dark Ages and how quaint it will all seem. I can't wait to laugh about it, because living through it is so often a fuckin' nightmare.

So why, in the midst of all this tragedy, did I get a miniscule twitch of excitement about the 2006 elections? The smallest glimmer of hope, like a phosphorescent glow at the bottom of a black ocean?

I read the polls and it seems like the Democrats have a good chance at taking back the House of Representatives, and even an outside chance at the Senate. And for the first time in my life, a candidate from my actual place of residence can help make the shift. I've half-resolved to go door-to-door for the entire month of October to help Kirsten Gillibrand beat that anti-intellectual, big-city-hatin', scandal-baitin', not to mention predictably sexist Republican J. Sweeney for the House seat.

Again, I'm wondering why. I'm done, I keep telling myself, I'm done with it. I'm learning other languages, hell, Lucy will know at least three so we can all emigrate if needed. I'm running every other day, lifting weights with a trainer. I want to learn the drum solo from "Wildest Dreams" by Asia. Why do I glance back a politics, consider rekindling my faith, when I know it's just going to be so ugly again?

chartreuse journalism

7/12/06

Still sick, but thought it would be a good time for some news bulletins:

- first off, oft-commenter Deb is pregnant! Mazel tov and much joyous congratulations for another baby joining the brood!

- I saw oft-commenter Kaz at drinks the other night, and she's super cool, boys. Turns out we knew each other two other ways besides this blog.

- Tessa and I went to a '70s Party the other night, even though we didn't have any period clothes per se...

- I've been asked for years for a blog-together of some sort, and if you can plan to be in NYC in late August and enjoy seat-of-your-pants theater, we might be able to make that happen.

- I searched for months, and finally found the perfect "sunburst" style 1950s wall clock for our living room. Ebay rocks!

runs on a C battery!

- After 14 years of loyal service, my sister Michelle's cat Fezzik passed away and gave us some of Michelle's best writing. Please visit and say a few words to a little animal you never knew.

- Comments are open to any pertinent - or preferably, mundane - news you have to offer!

it was all a dream

7/11/06

Yes, I know I seem to get sick all the time, but the truth is, I just happen to always tell you about it. This time, I was nursin' my old momma back to health over the weekend, and in doing so got sleep-deprived and caught some virus, and it's all so unbelievably fascinating you can't stop reading this sentence.

But sick I am, and besides, the summer always seems to take its toll on blog readers. Coincidentally, it's also the time we need to be serious about our $$$ writing, so forgive me in advance if I don't appear to be taking your entertainment needs seriously. There's only so many leftist rants this pill-popping stooge can muster when the afternoons are this long.

But I do have a question for today: What was the best plot twist you ever saw on a television show? Something you didn't see coming, but was so inevitable and thrilling?

I know how you folks roll, so the Worst Plot Twist can also be mentioned. Let your mind wander!

neither second nor removed

7/10/06

We can finally tell the biggest news to hit our family since fifteen months ago: my brother Sean and his wife Jordana are preggerz! This is especially awesome because Lucy and TBD Williams will be cousins only eighteen months apart, which is vast in the early going, but inconsequential only a few years later. The male cousin I was closest to was Mark Christensen, and he was fourteen months older:

me, my cousin Mark, Sean, 1974

Either way, cousins are the absolute best. You have all the trust and benefits of a family member without the fights, and there is a shared experience in your familiar that makes for excellent holidays and reunions (and for us, a kick-ass basketball squad in the mid-'90s). My childhood friendlessness is boringly well-documented on these pages, but my cousins - Mark, Doug, Julie, Kathy, Michelle, Jennifer, Wendy, Melissa, Buffy, Vince, Todd, David, Jana and the rest of them - provided salvation. Even now, thirty-five years after being in bathtubs together, we still see each other a lot.

four different families represented: Mark, Vince, Jana, me in 2005

On a more immediate note, there is a shared experience between Tessa, Jordana, Sean and me - and Kent and Melissa in retrospect - that is impossible to describe. You will no longer have to search for the words of your depth of feeling; your brother will know it inherently. And not to brag, but Tessa is the best-researched baby-advice-giver I've ever seen in action. She never offers anything unsolicited (first-time parents eventually get allergic to that) but if you ask her a question, she knows the answer and the store where it's located.

In beginning our late brood, Sean and I are finally, after many years, establishing what we hope to be the truss rods of our future Extended Family, a desire germinated in Mormonism and weathered by agnosticism. This does sound a little patriarchal, as if either of us had the final say in this matter (we didn't, and don't), but there is definitely a desire in me to recreate some of the amazing sense of belonging that I felt around my cousins.

Sean, with his attention to the tiniest heartbreaking details and oceanic empathy, will be a natural father. Jordana, with her keen emotional radar, her ability to experience emotion and intellect simultaneously, and the unbridled love she files under "Worry," will be a fabulous mother. This is a baby that will be adored, that will be welcomed into this world with a fully-conscious huzzah.

Now, all they need is a name better than Esteban House MD Williams and they'll be cooking with grease.

all Alpha's sons shall be

7/7/06

I was asked to join a fraternal-like organization this year, and while I can't give away any details, it has got me thinking about the nature of any particular Group or Phenomenon that has managed to last hundreds of years. There are societies that have been around since the 1700s, there are sororities that have outlasted every prediction of their demise, and there are hoops games that have been going on at my court on Mulberry Street for six years... and they all have things in common.

My rules for success in any fraternal or societal endeavor are as follows:
1) The group must be mutually selective.
2) The group in question must have an alarming turnover rate.
3) The turnover rate must be high enough to enrage/disappoint/alienate older members.

Being mutually selective is easy - it just means that your group only has people that didn't care for any alternatives. This was particularly true of my fraternity at Carolina (Chi Psi), a membership that was primarily composed of guys that wouldn't have felt comfortable anywhere else. Nobody ever had to choose between us and the DKE house, because there was virtually no cross-social pollination between those two groups.

The same goes for the hoops game on Thursdays. It's a particular kind of game, not too slow, not too fast, that would flummox beginners but bore varsity athletes. You learn within the first forty-five seconds if the pace is right for your skill set. The Pink House, too, was a case study in self-selection.

HOWEVER - the "alarming turnover rate" is a little more difficult for people to grasp, because it requires members of a certain beloved society to relinquish control, and nobody likes doing that. We had fights that lasted until four in the morning over the future of our fraternity, furious battles waged by people who now can barely remember they were there.

Tessa hosted an evening at The Moth in late 2000, and it was a wild success, featuring Patti Griffin and Josh Shenk. The Moth has continued to pack audiences in the hundreds, and remains a cultural force in New York City. However, if you were to take a snapshot of the audience at Tessa's Moth, and compared it to a snapshot of last month's Moth, I predict a crossover of less than one percent.

The only way for a group to remain viable is to completely gut the membership on a seemingly-often basis, and hope the underlying structure is strong enough to withstand the influx of people who don't give a shit about the past. The Moth's underlying structure? Excellent storytelling on an emotional tightrope. The Mulberry hoops games? Slightly laid-back basketball in a gorgeous setting. Chi Psi? Young people who temporarily love the idea of brotherhood, along with a little bit of drinking and easy mixers with lots of gorgeous Southern women.

Chip, Ricky Bell and me, Chi Psi Coffehaus, 1989

The names all rotate, and the elders always complain about how much better things used to be back in their time, how they had kegs in the dorms, how everyone was so much smarter and funnier. But their disillusionment is an important fuel in getting them to move on, so that the greater organism can breathe.

I keep this in mind as I try to create my own traditions, in hoping that a flexible guest list and constant new blood always influxes our farm and our various Jartaculars. If the day comes when someone tells me they used to be so much better, I'll know they'll be around forever.

inoculation

7/6/06

So, a bizarre triptych of deaths have occurred: Kenneth Lay sits through a federal trial that accuses him of defrauding half the country; he summarily dies. Before him, E. Pierce Marshall fights Anna Nicole Smith for the billions she goldigged out of his father and loses; he summarily dies. And then the bizarre news of Jon Benet Ramsey's mother dying of cancer far earlier than one ought to.

Which leads to an ancillary question for today's CODE WORD: have you ever done something in your life, or been through an event, that you believe has taken years off your life? Being a smoker and Staying in a Job You Hate are possible examples, but has there been anything more metaphysical (or completely obvious)?

I have a possible answer, but will wait for it to percolate.

wrinkle in time

7/5/06

Dear Cell Phones,

You all suck. Seriously.

My mom and I were walking from the Rose Café to our little bungalow in Venice. We turned north on Pacific Street, and after ten seconds heard a crash. A white truck had tried to speed through a red light, hitting two cars in the process, and then came barreling toward us at about 40 mph sideways. It went airborne for the last few feet, smashing into the sidewalk where we had been only seconds before.

If I had ordered another muffin, or if Mom had tied her shoes after getting her food rather than at the counter, both she and I might not have seen this evening. This blog would stop, and my last entry would have been a nice picture of my daughter and my sister.

Or perhaps I would have been seriously injured, and though I survived, maybe the trauma would have rendered me utterly pedestrian. Anything could have happened. We dodged an unbelievably huge bullet, and would not like to get that close again for a long, long time.

But Cell Phones, may I say it again? You suck. When I tried to dial 911 from my Sprint phone, I got a recording that circuits were busy, and then it hung up. When I tried again, it wouldn't even connect. My mom tried on her Verizon phone, and got static. She tried again, got someone, and they cut her off before she could tell them anything.

Cell Phones, I included a question at the Quiz Show for this year's Jartacular: Which cell phone company is the worst? Christopher "Chip" Chapman got it right: ALL OF THEM. Everyone's talking about ring tones and games and "mobile apps" and "movie content" and all that shit, but why don't you start small and do something simple... I don't know, like "letting someone actually complete a conversation while driving in Los Angeles."

On the day your country needed you most - September 11, 2001 - you conked out in the most pathetic, useless way possible. There were about four working cell phones in Manhattan that morning, and that's reprehensible. You can't be counted on for national emergencies, nor a three-car pile-up on a random street corner.

I guess you would have been useful in 1987 when I was trying to track down Jon, Chip and Bud at some girl's room in Cobb Dorm. And I guess I might not have frozen my ear off at the pay phone in December 1985 when my parents broke the news they were getting divorced. Also, I like playing Scrabble on my Treo.

But you are the weakest when we most need you. You can ringtone fuckin' Rascal Flatts and Rihanna songs and help 10th graders gossip about boys in biology class, but you couldn't help me and my momma. Maybe we're asking too much of you. Maybe you're just little square pieces of plastic that can't bear the weight of our reliance. If so, just tell me, and I'll stop giving you all those hundreds of dollars each year.

I'll go back to the land line, and maybe even get rid of the answering machine, the microwave and my ATM card as well. I recall 1975 being a fun time on my little red Huffy, digging tunnels in the dirt behind my garage, and slurping orange Push-Ups at Tot Lot. Just say the word if the future is coming on too fast.

when in the course of human events

7/4/06

Anyone who has driven from San Francisco to Los Angeles on Interstate 5 all evening will know why a blog is impossible to write this evening, but my sister Michelle wanted a picture of her with La Luz, so here goes!

hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day