Tag: me

waving from the peanut gallery again

So there’s this woman I met at a party a couple years ago, and have talked to by email maybe three times since. I got a crush on her when we met and we got along okay but it was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to be my pal or anything. But I thought she was so cool! Pretty close to my age, did a lot of interesting things and had an unusual background, smart and fun and full of surprises. The kind of person you just feel good after meeting. And then I forgot about her.

Because of one of the movies I knew she’d helped make came up in the conversation tonight, I e-stalked her tonight to see what she’s about. Shit. No wonder she was out of my league. Not only does she have three real degrees from a good school, but she’s produced about 10 movies and has her own movie company. I guess I should feel privileged that I got to buy Tupperware from her.

Reminds me of the last such person before that, who was a consultant type I met at a job. She had a Harvard Econ degree and had already sold out of one company and bought a house in L.A. and was attractive and fun and nice and wildly successful and whoosh off she goes on the wondertruck!

Hello there, ladies. I am a system administrator who tells funny stories and cooks a good quiche. Have some coffee.

No one could say that she was left up on the shelf

Some of us never get over the childhood desire for the impossible. I remember a book I read as a kid, colorfully illustrated without words, in which some children get magical christmas presents of unknown origin. The presents turn out to be strange jumpsuits with backpacks on them. When they are put on and a button on the chest is pressed, the backpacks sprout wings and the children fly off.

The kids soar over beautiful green farmland and towns, land and visit friends, get ice cream, fly some more, and finally return home happily exhausted. When they wake up the next day, the magic flying suits are gone, and in fact never were; it was all a dream.

This is a terrible cheat. Not only is it a nasty trick to use the “it was all a dream” trick anywhere, but the author of this book didn’t have the balls to let the poor kids have their science fiction flying suits of the future in a work of fiction! I remember being really upset by the end of that little book.

Throughout childhood I had a series of impossible dreams: toys my parents could never buy, mostly. As I got older I wanted various Cool Stuff that was out of my reach: the ultimate bicycle, various electronic items, eventually a computer. I would make elaborate lists of the exact specifications of things I would never have. It’s not that I was a demanding child; quite the opposite! I was almost always too polite to ask for anything, and just hoped that someone would notice my obsession with the current golden dream and present it to me.

But I had a talent for wanting the unreachable. I wasn’t often satisfied; one bicycle and a walkie-talkie set stand out as dreams fulfilled. Rosebud! O my Raleigh 10 speed, and the little walkie talkies with the separate microphone that was so cool.

As the Apostle says, now that I think as a man I put away childish things. My toy planning now is limited to the occasional configuration rampage on an auto maker’s or computer company’s website. I don’t like to play the “if I won the Lottery” game or read books about how to become the CEO of a company. That stuff feels immature, silly.

But if there’s a woman I know who’s unavailable, I’ll fall for her whether she’s attached, uninterested, or just emotionally inaccessible. Reliably and fatally, I’m attracted to whomever won’t reciprocate: ice queens, people who live far away, people in love with someone else, and people who just aren’t interested.

And when I think about solving my problems I need to fix everything, now and forever; I insist on total cures for my ills and freedom from every demon that dogs me. I can hold up some ridiculous image of future perfection and call it a goal, and I’m being serious.

And when I let my mind drift and imagine some kind of happiness like that, I always next imagine betrayal and failure. Clearly I’d be dumped by anyone I wanted, obviously any success at defeating my troubles would blow back in my face sevenfold once I told myself I’d won. I build tragic ends to every daydream.

There’s life lived with nose pressed to the glass. The flying suits never arrive, and if they did it was all a dream. Real life is more like marching than like flying, and that’s never suited me.

Childhood Tales: The Plants I Hated

  1. Algerian Ivy:

    The back of the house and half the front were covered with ivy in about a three foot thickness. It grew at about an inch a day. Dark chambers inside the ivy contained black widow spiders, rats, ants, grass fleas, worms, and probably gigantic poisonous snakes. The ivy secreted ichor that melted paint and stuck to everything. Stuff rolled into the ivy caves and didn’t come back, especially toys. Anything that spent time in the ivy turned into a damp, foul-smelling version of itself. My earliest garden chore was trimming back the ivy and prying the more tenacious bits off the stucco and concrete with a dull table knife. When my father finally decided that the ivy had to go, an army of landscaping guys with power tools, chemicals, and fire spent a week fighting it. To this day the smell of Algerian ivy makes me slightly ill. I noticed last week that our neighbor’s ivy is crawling over our garden shed towards the house. It’s time for chemicals, fire, and power tools.

  2. Bottlebrush:

    At one side of the house, looming over the carport driveway, was a gigantic bottlebrush plant. Beautiful red cone-shaped flowers made of a million little hairs stretched out. And oozed some kind of sticky goo that instantly stained any object. When skating into the carport, if I cut it just a little too close I’d sideswipe a bit of bottlebrush and suddenly be coated with Nature’s Pigmented Airplane Glue. It was my job to cut this thing back, and when I did I always got a nice raised rash on my skin everywhere it touched.

  3. Bird of Paradise:

    At the corner of the house seven or eight of these tropical jungle plants lived. Their “flowers” looked like the Toucan Sam of the vegetable kingdom, or like an early prototype for the banana: long pelican beak-like boats of leaves with colorful petals protruding. They slowly produced a stinking greasy liquid which dripped down the plant. As the goo dripped, the “flower” rotted from the inside. Flies and ants gathered, and a miasma of South Sea decay rose into the air. I was assigned to hack off these diseased protuberances and heave them into the trash, in the process covering myself with insects and plant spooge.

  4. Bougainvillea:

    This is an awfully pretty bush, with shiny spiky leaves. We had several in the back yard and one in front next to the bottlebrush. Bougainvillea has very long, sharp thorns. As the plant grows older, the thorns get longer, and wider, and stronger. Its blooms and leaves obscure the thorns pretty well, so that when you’re in the process of wiping out on a skateboard you can easily forget, in the heat of the moment, which plant you’re about to belly-flop into. It hurts so, so very much to slam into a bougainvillea, or to be heaved into one by another kid. Hey, guess what one of my other tasks was? I learned very early on to borrow Dad’s gloves when I was told to clip this one.

I liked the cherry tomatoes and the basil and mint I grew. I liked the calla lilies and the tangerine trees and the big pine, and the palm that was a bitch to cut back but big and beautiful. And I even liked the cactus, which was spiky and dangerous but honest about it; you couldn’t fault a cactus for stabbing you, it was your own damned fault. But I still hold grudges about those others.

I just want to see under the sink

I’ve been shopping online for flashlights today, and found what I needed. In the process I temporarily had to enter the insane world of flashlight geeks.

Because the flashlight is a phallic symbol, and because shining a light in someone’s face is a dominance display, flashlight geeks are primarily male. They live in a Tom Clancy world of military fantasy in which the guy with the best gear wins. Let’s read this description of the SureFire E2D Executive Defender:

An advanced technology Xenon lamp that produces a spot-free beam so intense it can momentarily blind an attacker (four times more lighting power than a standard two D-cell flashlight), and its crenellated Strike Bezel™ allows it to be used as a last-ditch impact weapon. Constructed from aerospace-grade aluminum coated in a super rugged military-specification finish, the pocket-size E2D Defender also features an optically-coated Pyrex® lens; high-energy, ten-year shelf-life lithium batteries; a steel pocket clip, and law enforcement-style click-on/off momentary switching for blinding flashes or emergency signaling. A patented lock-out tailcap allows the light to be locked in the off position to eliminate accidental activation when stowed away

And here it is:

flashlight

$105.

Even better is the M3 Turbo Combatlight, a “Special Operations Flashlight”:

The SureFire M3T is a specialized illumination tool designed to project a tightly focused beam of intense white light at greater ranges than the standard M3 CombatLight . Featuring a 2.5-inch TurboHead reflector to tightly concentrate the beam for longer-range applications, the M3T is CNC machined from aerospace-grade aluminum and coated in a military specification Type III hard-anodized finish that is so tough the knurled handle of the M3T can be used to saw through the aluminum of lesser flashlights. Powered by three lithium batteries (10-year shelf life), the M3T CombatLight™ produces 125 lumens of light for over an hour, or 225 lumens for 20 minutes with the included ultra high output lamp (that’s 15 times the output of a typical 2 D-cell alkaline flashlight). Like all lights in SureFire’s Special Operations Series, the M3T features a shock-isolated bezel/lamp assembly that can withstand the repeated recoil of a large caliber weapon. The M3T also features unique switching originally developed for law enforcement- twist for constant on, or depress the tailcap button for momentary illumination or emergency signaling.

flashlight

$330. I really like the detail that it can saw through “lesser flashlights” in case an actual flashlight dicksize war occurs.

Don’t get me wrong. I like flashlights! I enjoy bright things, and technology, and geekery. And I need flashlights, because I’m always looking behind a computer to see where the damn cable went, or opening my front door when the porch light is blown out, or some other task. So I ordered a new keychain flashlight, because mine broke. It wasn’t $105, and I believe its aluminum is below aerospace grade and not coated with military spec flashlight coating from the special military flashlight coating plant. It is a lesser flashlight.

I hope I never have to have a flashlight fight with someone who’s geared up with the best of the best, though. I’d totally lose.

The growth has been amazing.

I know a lot of guys name their penises. I’ve never done that. I just decided to call mine “google”. That way I can laugh like Beavis & Butthead whenever the company or the website is mentioned, or talk about “checking Google” etc. Minutes of fun await me.

Also, as eyeteeth just pointed out, lol “googlewhack”.

The Theory of the Leisure Suit Class

Living in Newport Beach has always been strange, and has always been getting stranger. Satire fails us, as daily life teems with situations and images that are so outrageously perfect, they seem to have been dreamed up by a particularly unsubtle socialist film maker to hammer in some point. Welcome to Michael Moore’s Real World Newport Beach. Some recent examples:

  • Driving past one of the local high-class night clubs, I see that among the stretch Hummer limos and AMG Mercedes, someone has backed out his $250,000 Lamborghini and is revving and clutch-popping hopelessly, trying to get his thoroughbred Italian supercar to go into first gear. I stop and watch as our hero wrestles with his prancing bull. Finally he achieves traction and hurtles out onto the boulevard in a cloud of tire smoke.
  • At a street corner, a cop is handcuffing a middle-aged Mexican man whose bicycle lies on the ground next to him. Behind them, another middle-aged Mexican man is holding up a sign that says INDULGE YOURSELF LUXURY APTS with an arrow on it, and waving the sign at passing cars.
  • At the local shopping mall, it is Tuesday at 3 pm, and the place is full of young marrieds without employment buying everything that glitters. One thirtyish man in a $2000 suit, sculpted hair and spray-on tan, is saying loudly into his cellphone “Yes. It has to be on a yacht, that’s where we’re making the sale. The presentation is on a yacht, and I don’t know the dress code yet, but you are going to be there.”
  • At Target. A small, nervous man dressed in a $200 Aloha shirt, cargo shorts, and a very shiny pair of Timberland hiking boots is gazing at a barbecue that is eight feet long and costs as much as a used car. His wife comes up behind him and says “Do the utensils match?” and he says “Of course! OF COURSE!”

My mom is sick. It’s just some digestive bug but when someone is 76 it makes me nervous, plus she never gets these. There’s something about the illness or weakness of parents that’s still very psychologically undermining even in adulthood; it shouldn’t happen.

stomping grounds

The Diedrich coffeehouse with the patio will close down. The building is collapsing. The thing hasn’t made money in forever. It’s big and relaxed and welcoming, and that’s over in this part of the world, killed by high land prices and spreadsheets. There’s a new one a block away that’s small and Starbucksy and all spreadsheet-optimized for profit. Push push push the yuppies through the revolving door. The big wide patio is a relic. I assume that they’ll announce that it’s going to be remodeled, close it, and never reopen it.

This makes me sad, because I’m the kind of person who attaches to places far too strongly. I get terribly emotional about places I’ve been, and not just the pretty ones or the ones where I was happy. I get sort of misty thinking about Kansas City and I only lived there for 9 months on a contract job, fer chrissakes. I imagine myself returning to the site after it’s torn down and morosely standing around looking at the Junta Juice or Yiffy Lube or whatever goes there in a couple years.

Five years ago I knew this guy D., friend of Greg’s. D. was a really nice, smart guy. He was that Alternative Pierced Guy with the weird beard: tall and thin, soft-spoken, deferentially pleasant. He was really into Greg’s band so I saw him a lot, and we’d talk a little about music or art, both of which he knew a lot about. D.’s particular interest was clothing, and he opened a vintage clothing store. He didn’t just have good taste; he was hard-working, understood how to run a store, and totally committed to doing this right. I believe it was in Silverlake; I never went there. He had an eye for that stuff and girls loved his taste, and he was doing well.

Then came the surprise. This scary guy started hanging around the store all the time, and he didn’t fit. He was a hardcore criminal recently released from prison for the latest in a series of violent crimes. He was covered in nonironic tattoos of dire significance and almost always drunk. He’d just show up, 40 in hand, and talk to D. in what was intended as a friendly manner, and scare the shit out of him. The guy was foul-mouthed, racist, misogynist, usually angry, and always in search of money. He scared the girls away. Business went to hell. Any suggestion that he might find somewhere else to hang out enraged him, and threats were made. Even if he left the store itself, he’d always be around within about a block, ready to come back. The last I heard, D. had finally closed the store, almost entirely because of this crappy Cape Fear remake he’d been pushed into.

And why was Mr. Ex Con there at all? Because before D. got that space it had been a crappy liquor store, bars in the cash window and all, where Sideshow Bob here had spent many a happy day in the years before he got that big sentence. When he got out it was time to go back and have him some fun again! There was a new business there, but it was still the same corner. This wasn’t Cape Fear; Poor D. had wandered into the retail version of the hotel in The Shining.

I’ve heard a possibly apocryphal story that in rural Kenya, the trick played on new people in town is to sell them cheap land for their new houses. People are enthused; they get acreage with water access and good soil, and it’s so cheap! A year later they find out they’re on the track of an elephant migration. The elephants come through the same places each year, and they don’t let anything get in their way. There are a lot of them. Things get… …flat.

I wish I was an elephant.