xtcian

sweepin' the... clouds away

5/29/08

Our plane took a rare turn over Manhattan whilst landing this afternoon, and I have to say... sometimes the beauty of this place is greater than anywhere else I've ever been. Sunny and 75, every child outside, every stoop populated, just one of those days so perfect it beggars translation.

click for bigger

eighty-eight keys, one door

5/28/08

Quick update to say our meeting was, um, kinda awesome. We're still a little neophytic at this, so sometimes we don't know what really happens at these things despite actually being there. Sometimes I really wish I could write in full detail about our job...

My bum-bum is going to hurt from sitting for 11 hours. I waved at about 730 of you from 35K feet; I assume you saw me.

the mind wanders, the thread drifts

5/27/08

Well, it's a good thing my moral environmental relativism is on overdrive, because we are doing something seemingly end-of-the-Roman-Empire in its gluttony: we're flying to Los Angeles and back to NYC over the course of one day. I can't say that's a normal Wednesday, but we got a called to a meeting that, well, you just don't say "no" to. You interrupt your Antarctic trek, leave lots of blubber for the huskies, and get your ass to Hollywood.

So look above you today, all blog readers, because I will fly over each and every one of you and tip my hat.

Which leads me to the CODE WORD question for the next two days: are you there? Are you around for the next few months? The summer is hell on blogs (rightly so) and I'd like to know if we're all in this kayak together, or should we agree to meet again when the sun is not as beckoning?

'cuz i'm stuck like glue

5/21/08

I was in love with my piano teacher's daughter. She was in my French class in 9th grade, and every Wednesday I rode the bus with her to Virginia Beach, got off on the same stop, and walked with her to her house.

This would imply there was the vaguest intimacy between us, and there was decidedly not. Even though our entire 9th grade class was 99 people, and her mom was a celebrated musician in a town where my dad was the symphony conductor, I got the feeling she could scarcely conjure my name. When I got off the bus with her, I'd walk twenty paces behind, faking a problem with my shoe or my backpack, to relieve her of the burden of pleasantries.

That was the only kind of romantic love I'd ever known – being so positive that my crush would find me laughable, that I'd deliberately keep myself completely out of the running. Forget about "the fear of rejection"... as far as I knew, I was from a different universe without a common language or genitalia, and approaching a girl seemed like breaking the laws of physics.

Carolina changed all that, and the repercussions of so many years in romantic utero came back to haunt me, but I digress.

One night I finished my piano lesson around 8pm, went to the foyer, and did something known to my family as the third circle of Hell: waiting for my mom to pick me up. She was, on average, about 45 minutes late each time, but it could vary wildly. So I settled into the vestibule bench.

Upstairs, I could hear the piano teacher's daughter put on a 45 single, and before long, "My Guy" by Mary Wells conducted through the walls. Not being from the kind of family that would have played 20-year-old Motown hits at home, it was the first time I'd ever heard it, and thought the chord progressions were pretty cool. After the song ended, I heard the daughter walk over to the record player and play it again.

The second time, I noticed some of the lyrics:

No muscle-bound man could ever take my hand
From my guy-
No handsome face could ever take the place
Of my guy-
He may not be a movie star, but when it comes to being happy,
We are.

On the third and fourth time she played the song, I began to think I could be that person, the one who isn't handsome, the one you can't help love anyway. She didn't want any of the boys I saw her with at school, not the lacrosse players or the wealthy studs she'd known since kindergarten – she wanted the guy who sneaked up on her, the one she adored despite all logic.

By the seventh or eighth time, I was sure of it. Each time the song ended, I could hear her bare feet walking across her room, the same number of paces, carefully taking the record player needle and placing it back at the beginning. She was trying to conjure this "guy" – didn't she know he was sitting twelve feet below her?

By the tenth time, I was beginning to wake from my reverie. Where was my mom? Why was she always doing this to me? By the twelfth time, I began to feel sorry for the piano teacher's daughter – doesn't she crave at least a little variety in music? Could I actually be in love with someone who could listen to the same song that many times in a row?

By the time my mom's headlights pierced the darkened raindrops of the foyer window, I had heard "My Guy" sixteen times in a row. I got into the car, and my mom apologized for making me wait, and then asked "how do you like the piano teacher?"

"She's fine," I said, "but her insane daughter drives me up the wall."

the dodgeball diaries

5/20/08

I would like to begin today's blog with the first page of a book proposal I wrote five years ago. Here it is:

Hey you!

You may never be happy. You may save the world.
And this book is for you.

What followed was a proposal: nine mapped-out chapters, the book's audience, the tone, the logistics, everything you needed to understand both scope and humor. I'd been doting on this idea since about 1996, collecting newspaper clippings, taking notes, writing bits of chapters, interviewing great geeks of our time. I even designed massive graphics, including a chart of every kind of nerd (Dungeon Master, 2nd violinist, car enthusiast, ham radio operator, college radio DJ, etc) placed on a spectrum with cool visuals.

I'd gone back into the 19th century and mapped all dorks and their journey to the present, touching on racial stereotypes, the blessing of being ostracized and the curse of being loved. I was going to write the history of dorks in America.

Elizabeth Wurtzel's then-recent cover of her book "Bitch" looked like this:

So we thought it'd be funny to make a book called "Dork" with a cover like this:

and yes, that is a slide rule and a calculator watch

It's always good to accompany a book proposal with one of your articles appearing somewhere else, so I pitched a nerd-flavored idea to Salon, which ran a week later (see a less-funny edit here). My awesome lit agent sent the proposal to the big publishing houses, and... well...

"Hasn't this been done before?"
"We really don't think a book on 'nerds' will sell at this point."
"It feels like familiar territory."
"We don't really know what this book is about."

This was during my Year of Career Failure™ anyway, so the responses were unsurprising, but INFURIATING nonetheless. No, there was no other book on dorks/nerds/geeks released in the last decade, certainly none with my angle. And they "didn't know what the book was about"? What part of "the peculiar history of dorks in America" was so fuckin' hard to understand?

Here we were, in the middle of a huge culture tectonic-shift that gave the technically-minded and socially-inept more power than any could ever imagine... and they didn't see a book in there? In disgust, I threw my proposal in the drawer, and within weeks, we were summoned to Los Angeles to do this fascinating thing called "write for television".

I have oft whined about getting scooped on my projects, a phenomenon that has happened so many times now that I've almost stopped caring. But yesterday I saw something that made me actually clench my fists: one of the hot new bestsellers on Amazon is American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent. Currently ranked #2 in the Social Sciences bestseller list, and the subject of a glowing article on Salon, the place that had run my nerd story so many years ago. My article is even linked at the bottom of the page.

The only sound worse than sour grapes is a kitten being strangled. So I'd like to err on the side of graciousness, as it's obvious Benjamin Nugent is a very good dude and has written a great book. And there's some succor in knowing I was right: there was a book there, and it was going to be a hit.

But for chrissake, what does a spaz gotta do to get a blowjob around here?!?

carpathia arrives safely

5/19/08

When it comes to columnists, I'm sort of a "ya get what ya pay for" shopper – Maureen Dowd is going to use Maureen Down phrases, Dave Barry is going to be slightly obvious and then sneak up and say something brilliant, and Ann Coulter is going to eat her own mother. But Bill Kristol, recently hired by the New York Times, has now crossed over into Bafflingly Terrible territory.

The idea that the NYT needed a conservative columnist is further proof how antiquated and behind-the-eight-ball mainstream media has become. It's an effort to "cover all the bases" in a world that has largely left that sort of tokenism behind. And it'd be one thing if Kristol were any good at the job, but his recent column contained another whopping factual error, the kind that gets you demoted/fired at any newspaper unless you hide behind the translucent curtain of the "opinion" page.

This is the third completely avoidable error from Kristol since he took the post; not content with being ideologically bankrupt, he has to undermine himself with "facts" that never happen. That's the problem with conservatives who fancy themselves Serious Intellectuals© – so much of their analysis is of the "I make my own reality" genre that it never holds up under scrutiny. If I were one of you actually smart right-leaners, I'd be pissed off.

The thing that riles me, however, is that Kristol's presence at the New York Times is a destructive force at a paper I have always loved. I'm speaking purely on my behalf, having not talked to my friends at the NYT, but there's something slightly disgusting about Kristol's tenure, especially given how the Times embarrassed all journalism on the build-up to W's Iraq War. I mean this in all seriousness: Matt from the comments section would do the job 50,000 times better, and I'd be happy to write the recommendation.

I realize my own contribution to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times probably didn't enter Pulitzer consideration in 2004, but at least I got all my Harry Potter facts straight. Plus, I got letters from kids all around the world!

The scuttlebutt on Bill Kristol is that his dad Irv was best friends with Abe Rosenthal, and Abe's son Andy happens to be the New York Times' opinion page editor. I'm all for nepotism if the charmed subject happens to be great – hell, nepotism gave us JFK, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, and an NBA full of Tar Heels. But in this case, it just makes the NYTimes look like a bunch of amateurs - and if the Old Gray Lady starts shopping at Kmart, we have naught but the New Yorker and Cat Fancy to foment our dreams.

give us those nice bright colors, give us the greens of summers

5/18/08

I warn you now, today's blog is going to be slightly technical, but it's something all of you are probably dealing with eventually: digitizing or scanning your old pictures. Longtime reader Tim H. asked me how I was able to pull so many old pictures out of my ass (actually, he phrased it much nicer) because he wanted to start an archive of his own.

First off, let me say this – scanning pictures has to be one of the most tedious, bullshit jobs in personal computing. Nobody has made it particularly easy, and after about five full-page scans, I'm usually so benumbed that I have to be pried off the floor with cooking spray. There are certainly no consumer-priced scanners that whip through pictures like a mimeograph; most force you to load each pic individually.

I wonder if I caught it

Most of my old shots come from three or four "scanning jags" over the last six years, when I decided to grin and bear it for about five hours each, and even then, I've only scanned about 3% of the total. It's gotten to the point where I've taken digital pictures of some of my old photos (like I did with this one), which is easy as long as your digicam is set to Super High Resolution and you haven't been drinking coffee.

I've used Epson scanners since the very beginning, because they've always integrated seamlessly with the Mac, and they don't dump a bunch of software onto your computer like HP and Canon do. If I were to buy a scanner now, I'd get one with an automatic document feeder (ADF) like the Epson Scanner Perfection 4490 Office version, because it'll also turn batches of documents into PDFs.

The rest, at least for me, is just feeding and Photoshop. I went to the Lars Lucier School for Photoshop; he taught me the 10 basic rules of the game in 1997, and I've never forgotten them. I know, as a Mac fanboy, I should be using iPhoto or (god forbid) Aperture, but I love PS and would be nowhere without the "Save for Web & Devices" command, which is how you see my pictures on this blog. If Lars wants to pipe up and give his 35-second PS tutorial, it's better than any book.

As for workflow, I do my old pictures in batches, fitting as many into the 8.5X11 space as I can, scanning them as one file, and separating them later. This can be a pain in the ass when you have a strict naming convention like I do, and you'll tend to forget which pictures you have unless you're extremely attentive, but it saves you hours.

Lars says 300-350 dpi is enough resolution to archive photos, and print copies that have a shot at looking like the original. That may sound proletarian to you cinephiles out there, but anything more, and your eyes will glaze over with boredom as drool empties out of your mouth.

There's always sending your photos away and having some company do it for you, but I don't think I could mail pictures from the early '70s without being utterly devastated when Fedex loses my shit again. I'm sure there's a more elegant solution to archiving your photos – maybe iPhoto is better now, maybe there's a scanner that makes it all too easy – but I'll leave it up to studio audience for a better idea.

On a personal note, Tim H. needs this info because he just lost his younger sister and would like to start a photo project to remember her by. Tim, I just want to say that my family would like to give yours all the warmth in the world, and I hope I can be of service in some tiny way.

we rock these grooves to be self evident

5/15/08

An amazing thing happened today: California legalized same-sex marriage. Of course, it's more complicated than that (the CA supreme court actually declared any previous gay marriage bans unlawful under its Constitution) but the upshot is the same, and a lot of people are celebrating tonight. I know I've said this forty times before on this blog, but it's important for straight couples (like us) to be vociferous about this, as nobody can claim that we're doing it out of self-interest. This is a goddamn human rights issue.

The famed 19th-century Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker has one of my favorite quotes: "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one... And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice."  Your personal cynicism can be measured precisely by how much you believe that quote to be true. Are we on an inexorable path towards enlightenment, or are bursts like this just random flashes of light in mankind's circular death march?

Theodore Parker lived just before the Civil War, and was discussing slavery, but the argument holds. I have to believe we are heading towards enlightenment, even with the repulsive fuck-monkeys currently occupying the White House, or else there's really no point to any struggle, or, for that matter, teaching your kids anything but survival.

The Declaration of Independence said "all men are created equal", but I like to think of America as having one golden rule: Thou Shalt Not Be Punished for Things Beyond Your Control. That was slavery's essence - punishing those babies who were born black by making them lifelong indentured servants. It defines "sexism", and now, "homophobia". The next frontier, of course, is "beauty", but we're still a long way from considering the irredeemably ugly or morbidly obese as anything but punchlines.

Once you get past the chokingly ill-educated, insanely stupid argument that homosexuality is a choice, from then on, YOU MUST provide gays and lesbians every last protection under the law, and allow them to call their partnerships "marriage" or "civil unions" or "Sapphic trysts" or whatever the hell they want. Just like you can. End of story. Because, like I said, in this country, we don't punish people for choices they didn't make. There's a name for places like that.

Inevitably - INEVITABLY - a bill will be put before the government, or a referendum on the ballot, that will declare same-sex marriage illegal, and it will be sponsored by some of the most morally-repugnant lowlifes in politics and organized religion. I have trouble fathoming most conservative and Republican behavior, but going after gays is truly sickening. It's one thing if you truly believe in unprovoked war, or unfettered capitalism, or denying climate change... but there's a special place in hell waiting for those who punish homosexuals for daring to get married. The vindictiveness is astonishing.

Religious conservatives could be trying to end poverty (like Jesus) or preaching tolerance (like Jesus) or spreading a message of love (like Jesus), but they'd rather spend their time going after fags. Forget the cruelty; it doesn't even make sense in terms of time management. How do these people manage to block off their calendars? I work freelance and take Dexedrine, and there's no WAY I could squeeze that much gay-hating in the week.

Hopefully, this will seem quaint to those reading from the future. It will have long been settled: homosexuals are married, just like different races get married, just like two left-handers get married. The moral arc of history may be bending towards justice, but man - it's a jagged, horrible, tooth-chipping ride.

our friends Jason and Tim hug after their ceremony at City Hall, Valentine's Day 2004

you got your pisces in my capricorn

5/14/08

Big Meeting® tomorrow, so I only have time for this: Happy May Birthday to Salem (today), Chip (Sunday), my awesome wife (last Friday), my brother Sean (last Sunday), Uncle Dennis (yesterday), li'l Hank Drucker (three on the 28th) and yours truly on the 26th.

Space below reserved for all shit-talking to Tauri and Geminis.

mother dear, don't let them shoot my kite down

5/13/08

LFMD asked me what I did for Tessa for Mother's Day, and since I've never been one to shy away from boring the ever-livin' snot out of my readership with my various projects, I thought I'd share this year's adventures as well. Tessa actually benefits - or is possibly short-changed - by her birthday falling so close to Mother's Day, so I've had to work to separate the two.

For her birthday on Friday, I got her a batch of peonies, because seriously, is there anything on Earth that smells better? I also got her all the flavors of her favorite jam, which is damn near impossible to find in America since Whole Foods stopped carrying it: the delectable Fior di Frutta:

It contains no sugar, but each flavor is insane: wild blueberry, strawberry, Seville orange, plum, peach, apricot... good god, they're amazing. But the big present was something I saw at Salem's wedding.

I found a lady who makes really nice backgammon tables, the kind with the board inlaid into the top so your dice don't sputter across the room. Since Tessa always played backgammon with her dad, I thought it'd be cool to start up again (and teach Lucy as soon as she stops swiping the pieces). The table won't be ready until late June, so I got her a little magnetic backgammon game for nine bucks in the interim so I can learn not to suck.

As for Mother's Day, I've had this idea for a while... we have no real outside seating at the farm except for a brick patio that has been destroyed by countless winters and errant snowplows. I noticed the barn had an ancient door - unused for a hundred years - opening up into the yard, and so I got to thinking.

what it looked like

what it looks like now

what it will look like (thank you, Photoshop)

I thought it'd be great to build a little deck for us to watch the sunset when we're 104. I'm doing it all myself with concrete piers and pressure-treated wood, and it was totally inexpensive - the only real cost is the offset umbrella, but I can't stand those patio umbrellas that don't move, don't shade, and fall over on kids.

So there you have it. Is it love or Dexedrine? Oh, gentle reader, can't it be both?

mmmm forbidden loafers

5/12/08

Oh man. Just when I was about to get something done, I found Like.com and their selection of men's shoes. I am now about to go down the rabbit hole.

So if you had to choose one pair to get right now, gents or ladies, which would it be?

the davie popular

5/11/08

A few transitions happening at our glorious alma mater, and all three bear mentioning. And I'm not even talking about the excellent Holden Thorpe being named Chancellor of UNC, which is a big deal for those of us in his age group. I watched a Heels game in a hotel room with Holden, and he is not only a top-notch leader for Carolina, he also knows when Tyler isn't moving across the paint to provide secondary defense.

But here's our personal stuff. First off, Tessa and I are beyond over the moon that our nephew Sam applied to UNC in the hardest admissions year in history and GOT ACCEPTED!

me, Lucy and Sam at the Morehead sundial, March 2007

We can't wait to be Creepy Aunt 'n' Uncle™ coming down to Chapel Hill every weekend we can, thoroughly embarrassing Sam until he has to sit us down and say "look, I really love you guys, I do, but..."

Passing Sam on I-95 on his way out of North Carolina is our mentor (and minister) Peter Kaufman. This is a huge loss for UNC, and it's doubtful they even know it yet. After battling the administration for a long time, the University of Richmond made him an offer nobody could have refused, and thus he's taking his show up to Virginia, where we hope to keep teaching his class each year.

Peter introduces Tessa, March 2004

The term "dying breed" is thrown about like a sad cliché, but that's what Peter is: a true iconoclast that held thousands of 20-year-olds under his sway, if only for a few months. He is not the most political, or politic, teacher in the world, and no doubt left many of his colleagues throwing their books across the room after some arguments.

But these colleagues weren't fit to carry his water; and now that I'm in a position to give money and time to UNC, I can call things the way I see them. Peter was a huge feather in Carolina's cap, a published, brilliant thinker with huge swaths of expertise and huge swaths of doubt. At our wedding, when he shouted out his benediction in ancient Hebrew, it felt as if the words fell from the sky in glorious rapture. His absence on the quad should be mourned.

The Kaufman Benediction made Chopin freak out

And lastly, our buddy Ehren graduated from Carolina today. But here's the thing - he actually left school many years ago and was finishing by correspondence. His very sweet girlfriend Tammy planned a surprise party at a park in Brooklyn and a ton of friends showed up at noon to celebrate his commencement.

Lindsay and Ehren at the farm, September 2005

Problem was, Ehren was not there, and couldn't be reached by cell phone. Nobody knew where on earth he was, and as more people gathered, the weirder it got. Turns out he had attended a bachelor party for another Carolina grad the night before, and the rumor was they were still opening bottles of tequila at 4am. He finally surfaced later in the afternoon.

Thus Ehren not only missed his original graduation back in the '90s, but also missed his surprise graduation today due to tequila, which, in my book, is PURE ROCK AND ROLL. I raise a shot of Don Julio 1942 Anejo for Ehren's effervescence, I raise a glass of ancient wine for Peter's constancy, and I raise an ice-cold Coca-Cola (like Roy has) for my nephew Sam's initiation into the fold that has kept us warm for lo so many years.

blue is not blue, red is not red

5/8/08

Eventually we won't be so political on this blog, but for now, it's like crack and we can't seem to stop. My brother Kent wrote something I'd like to post below, but first, I had a moment in the car today that perfectly encapsulates why this election is so charged for me. It's tiny, I admit, but here goes:

Rebuffing calls for her to quit from most Democrats who are capable of simple math, she said "I believe all fifty states should be counted... they told me to quit after Iowa, and then I won New Hampshire, and then we had big victories on Super Tuesday, and then I won Texas and Pennsylvania, and I was never supposed to win Indiana!"

And so, in one quote, Hillary summed up why I can't stand her brand of politics. The "all fifty states" comment is about Michigan and Florida, and all of you know why counting those votes - or even clamoring for them - is reprehensible on her part. The "quitting after Iowa" is not even accurate; nobody called for her to quit, but that's not even the point. We are in a very different place right now, after Obama's huge lead in delegates and popular vote, so the two situations aren't remotely comparable. That's like justifying a box full of Krispy Kremes by starting out with a Diet Coke.

Going further, Hillary did not "win" Texas. Obama got more delegates there, and that's what counts in a primary. And of course, the kicker is Indiana, where she had polled ahead by double digits for months before the primary.

You can call this sort of behavior "playing the game", "hard-nosed politics", "asinine cherry-picking", "egregiously disingenuous" or even "lying", but all I know is that I'M SICK OF IT. Is Obama a saint incapable of fault? Of course not, but in all the mud-slinging, I've never heard him rattle off a laundry list of half-baked bullshit and tried to sell it as reality.

You may think his mantra of "hope" is half-baked, sure, and you might mistrust his flowery oratory, but he's not trying to pull a fast one. You can opt in or opt out of his message, but he's not trying to alter your perception of truth for his gain. That is what we've endured for eight years, it's what Hillary has shown us for eight months, and I just can't stand it anymore.

If you think I'm an asshole now, take a look at an entry from four years ago when we were going through Bush-Kerry. I had a pretty silly theory about the Martha Stewart verdict and Democrats, but I did think that Americans were eventually going to tire of The Lie. I just thought it would happen sooner.

Anyway, here's the mystical, magical, Buddha of our family, Kent:

***

OK, my man Obama said we should have a national dialog about race.
Here I go into the breach.

Commenter Matt recently said: "There's no difference between voting
for someone just because he's the same color as you and voting against
someone because he's not."

So first let me rebut that: Group Solidarity is not the same as
Blanket Prejudice.   Matt was also disappointed that black voters went
over 90% for Barack, out of what he presumed was 'racial solidarity.'
That is oversimplification to the point of caricature and stereotype.

As any African-American person will tell you, a person who has a
father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas is not someone with whom
they would automatically feel a affinity.   Obama's book "Dreams From
My Father" is substantially about his struggle to find a cultural
identity for himself.   He is a man who as a young adult chose to
identify with African-American culture, and to live and work in a
black community.  Given his background, education, and even the words
he uses and the accent he speaks with, Barack Obama does not
automatically strike many African-Americans as "one of them."

I've no doubt that many, if not most, black folks are thrilled to be
able to vote for an African American candidate for President for the
first time.  But if you actually look at what has happened this year,
his popularity with African-Americans came because the Clintons
engaged in what many African-Americans viewed as race-baiting.
Hillary Clinton lost her support in the African-American community by
her own actions. Barack Obama never had their support as some sort of
birthright.

Barack Obama is winning the black vote overwhelmingly for three
reasons: 1) Hillary Clinton alienated black voters by her own words
and deeds. 2) Barack Obama showed he was a viable candidate by winning
races in very white states. 3) Black voters have found a way to
identify with Obama.  Yes he's a brown skinned son of Africa, but more
than that, his message is one of a country united to solve our
problems -- an inclusive coalition where diversity is celebrated.
Barack Obama describes the United States as the sort of place
African-Americans have always wanted to live: someplace where they're
judged by the content of their character and not the color of their
skin.

Barack Obama doesn't get a free pass from anyone, especially from
African-Americans.  In fact African-Americans are arguably his
toughest audience.  If you're African-American, and your family
background is culturally African-American, and the majority of the
people you associate with are African-American, you will know one
thing for sure:  Dark skin confers no special qualities on those who
wear it.  Black folks know black folks they love, they hate, they
trust, they distrust, they fear.  In other words, if you're
African-American, other African-Americans are as individual as
snowflakes to you. If you aren't a fool, you trust no one just for
being black.

Now I'm a white guy from Iowa.  I'm not a spokesman for black folks,
by any means.  I was raised by my mother not be racist, but I'm always
going to know capital B Black Culture from the outside.   I do know
this: as a White American, I'm the default.  My skin color confers
upon me a whole array of unearned entitlements in our culture.  I'm
the guy that could shoplift with impunity while the salesgirls at the
Mall are following the black folks around the store.  I can't presume
to know what it feels like to stand out as a minority member in
society.  Well I can,somewhat, when I'm in black neighborhoods in
Chicago or Detroit, but if black folks were treated by white with the
kindness and hospitality I've experienced in those neighborhoods, we
wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Since I'm 50 years old, I'm old enough to remember the Civil Rights
struggles of the 60s, and the assasination of Martin Luther King was a
huge event in my childhood.   I can only hope that my own children who
learn about the struggles of the past as history, not a lived-through
trauma, will be part of a multicultural society, where people are more
comfortable with each other. All of the old ideas and prejudices over
skin color are meaningless.   Being African  American, or European, or
Asian is much more about Culture than race. Culture is something about
which one can learn. Culture is something that you can share. Cultures
can get all mixed up together and form new Culture.   To cling onto
divisions and categories of the past is to not see the world as it is
in front of your eyes.  Yo Yo Ma is (arguably) the best 'cellist in
the world, Keith Richards backs up Chuck Berry, suburban white kids
get obsessed with Japanese Anime, and my African-American friend Dave
from Detroit  is obsessed with early 90s British Shoegazer bands.
We're all individuals and unique and it's about time we really do
start judging people as individuals.

arachibutyrophobics anonymous

5/7/08

I was up at 5:45am in New York in order to attend a meeting at 3pm in Beverly Hills, and the flight was, according to one of the flight attendants, "one of the bumpiest he could remember". Which makes me feel really good, because (as old-timers here might recall) I used to be so petrified of flying that I'd drive the Prius back and forth across the country. And today's flight? Didn't bother me AT ALL, in fact, I barely remember any turbulence as I slept.

This is a huge victory for me personally, because once those phobias set in, especially as we age, they can calcify to the point of no return. Sometimes, it's not the fears of childhood that are the most devastating, it's the ones you come to later, long after your emotional elasticity has hardened. Coming back from an adult phobia is incredibly hard work, but it's really worth it: the feeling of accomplishment is as good as any aced test or Xmas bonus. I still have to cling to rigid behavior and slightly OCD habits to keep me sane, but there is some freedom therein.

So in my exhaustion, today's CODE WORD is: what is a personal phobia that you are currently enduring, or a fear that you overcame at some point in adulthood?

spelling relief

5/6/08

You know who I like? My nephew Sean Patrick Williams. We got this last night at 10:15pm from Kent:

They still haven't called Indiana yet, but an important number for us: Obama with 71% in Monroe County. This is where Sean has been working 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for the past month. It's not a victory he can claim by himself, by any reasonable measure. But I'm his father, so I'm not reasonable. I think it is all because of him. We are very, very proud of how hard he has worked for the Obama campaign. More than that, we're proud of how he went about it -- everyone in the Bloomington office could not say enough to us about how great Sean was. Don Griffin, the pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Bedford, IN where we went to church Sunday, greeted us like long lost family, because of how much he liked Sean.

You know what else I love? My peeps, baby:

So what do you think should happen now?

because your mother said so

5/6/08

By no means am I presenting the following list as remotely original, insightful or revolutionary... but we've been collecting a few thoughts about toddlerhood and I was wondering if any of you parents out there had noticed similar things about your little munchkin.

1. Their rules for English are better than English's rule for English. Beyond Lucy's "fourteen, fiveteen, sixteen" and "they relax, I relack", her everyday grammatical mistakes are always based on logical extrapolations from other "normal" words, which kinda makes us, the "good" English speakers, the foolish ones.

2. If you think putting a toddler to bed later makes them sleep later, you will both be exhausted in short order. That rule may work for us, but stretching bedtime into the night almost always pays diminishing returns. For Lucy, I think there's a sleep cycle that ends in the 4am to 5:30am region, and when she's able to cross that gap with another sleep cycle, she's able to saw toothpicks until 7:30am. If for some reason, she goes to bed late, that sleep cycle happens at 5:30 to 6am, and she's up for the day (but overtired and therefore absurd).

3. They do not come by their value judgments instinctively; they get them from you. In other words, if you make a big deal about the letter G and the letter J making the same sound, they will get slightly more confused, because it's apparent that you think it should be confusing. This can be expanded to much larger issues - I'm convinced that if we woke up one morning and either Hank or Ankle were floating at the top of their aquarium, I could simply say "they died - it's like going to sleep and never waking up" and that would be that. Lucy also seems unbothered by the fact that she loves and protects two fish and then eats other fish for lunch.

4. Birthdays are not about presents, they are about the possibility of cake.

Breakout™ - you needed the Atari paddle wheel

5. Parenting is more like the old video game Breakout than you might imagine. You can never stop your kid from doing what they really want to do, but if you're quick, you can deflect their wishes with a particularly edgy distraction. In doing so, they'll bounce off their 5-minute obsession en route to chaos somewhere else - but at least it's a chaos you suggested. For Lulu, when she used to get incredibly upset, Tessa used to leap up and say "let's go look at the lemon trees!" Now it's a little more complicated, like me inventing a quick story about some lost cats, but it'll still keep her from drawing on the couch with markers.

just after her first birthday - she'd already walked to me twice, which made it worse!

6. The real epiphany is not when they first walk, or say "mama" or any of that: it's the day they're first able to tell you what hurts. I think Lucy was 15 months or so when she told us one night "My ear hurts." And from that day forward, my friends, parenting gets a LOT easier.

i was just thinking about you

5/4/08

Whenever I don't have my camera, I'll take pictures with the cell phone, but the nature of that business means they don't ever get into the right folders, and thus languish for months. I discovered pics of Lucy as an infant on my Treo about three weeks ago. Anyway, here are some interesting moments in the life of being my phone:

my mom's first day with Hildy in November

our niece Katherine tells Lucy a story on our kitchen floor over Xmas

I try to get out of an incredibly bad lie on a bizarrely warm November afternoon in Queens

convenience store in Fresno, CA... both views on Nazis are represented, you know, if you can't decide

in the locker room during Salem's wedding

Lucy is making a VERY IMPORTANT POINT...

...which, of course, is exhausting

sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines

5/1/08

When your life has almost no meaning, you shape your existence around the tiniest cues, imbuing them with meaning that nobody else could fathom. Like the obsessive-compulsive - who counts stairs, holds her breath at stoplights or makes sure he has an even number of paces en route to the bathroom - a young, depressive misanthrope without a regular job will let almost anything become touchstones to his structure.

In the late-90s, when (as XTC sang) all my schemes came to a humiliating end, I drifted into that world, able to subsist on the dying entrails of a freelance life and keeping a vampiric schedule. But I was always too much of a control freak to go completely to pot (although I tried that too), and thus gave myself arbitrary vespers. Both were in the form of lost digital watches.

Somewhere in my mom's apartment in New York, there lurked a digital watch in an unpacked box, stuffed in some drawer, god knows where. At precisely 2:43am every night, the alarm would go off, and since I was up late writing, I'd hear it every time. Thus 2:43am became my witching hour thereafter; I was not allowed to start any project after that time, and if I was currently engaged in writing my tortured novel or playing Tetris, 2:43am meant it was time to wind down.

Transitively, there was also a digital watch buried deep in my own stuff where we lived in Hollywood. The alarm was set permanently to 12:04pm. I actually tried to find this particular watch with zero success, but after a while, I stopped looking: my days had an end, and now they had a beginning. True, when Daylight Savings Time came and went, there would be odd shifts, but the theory held.

I stuck to the 2:43am and 12:04pm rule for years, long after one watch's battery, then the other, died deep in their respective storage bins, their mystery leaving as it had come. I mean, who sets their alarm for such bizarre times? Anyway, by Y2K, I'd gotten a real job and had to abandon that schedule... but still, once in a while, I'd see a clock read 2:43 and think of an old friend.

Now Tessa has a digital watch that goes off in our bathroom every day at 3:17pm. What the hell am I gonna do with that?