Like most other technology, the Internet was largely the province of government, geeks and pornographers for its first few decades of existence. You had to be either remarkably forward-thinking and skilled or else uncommonly desperate to see naked ladies to be willing to deal with the yards of phone line and appalling load times associated with getting information from a computer in Iowa to the one in your den.
Then, also like most other technology, the Internet started to gain a bit of momentum. Most folks had heard of it. Some people had even used it. "You've got mail" was a clever catch phrase and not something that drove every self-respecting Webhead within earshot to go jump off the roof. When pressed, officials allowed that perhaps one day, socializing and even trade might take place over servers rather than counters. Mainstream people were hopefully anxious and cautiously optimistic in a way they hadn't been since World War II ended. It was a period I like to call the '90s.
Now the Internet has ceased to be technology and has become a necessity. At some point when we weren't looking, it moved past the espresso stage and became more like water .. it's not a luxury, it's a basic human need.
That fact was reinforced this year by a Dec. 24 article in the UK's Guardian newspaper. For years, Christmas shopping has increasingly been done online, but for the first time ever, it looks as though Internet sales are actually cutting into store's face-to-face take.
"The predicted Christmas rush for last-minute presents was decidedly muted yesterday, as shoppers appeared to have stayed away instead of making for the high streets," wrote reporter Jo Revill. "Even in London's Oxford Street, the barometer of shopping frenzy, retailers' hopes of a final spree on the last full day of trading looked feeble, as the pavements proved easy to navigate."
The bottom line is that if your business wasn't wired this year, you lost money, period. Of course, it's the rare enterprise that doesn't have at least some Internet presence these days. But 15 years ago, who would have guessed that this thing would become the cornerstone of everybody's marketing plan?
Apple's iPod is largely responsible for this. I just got my first one, and now I'm facing the very real possibility that I may never again buy a music recording that exists in the physical realm. Anything that Beethoven or Bob Dylan ever did can be broken down into a numerical sequence, filed away and then injected directly into the human ear canal. This is the first step into science fiction: Merchandise has become an abstract concept. And yet I'm strangely fine with that.
The clincher came on Christmas Eve, when I walked into my grandfather's living room and saw my parents competing in an online word game using a pair of wireless-enabled laptops. It's not that my parents aren't tech savvy, it's just that neither of them has ever been big fans of video games or the Web. I can recall a distinct lack of sympathy when I used to complain about losing at "Rise of the Triad" or "Goldeneye" back in the day. (In fact, I can recall people making me turn the game off entirely.) But now I could clearly see my dad struggling with the urge to pitch his computer across the room when someone started running up the score on him in "Bookworm." It was awesome.
But that's when I realized that I was looking at the situation the wrong way. They might as well have been playing Monopoly, for all the excitement involved. The only folks who still see the Internet as a cutting-edge phenomenon are those of us who were the right age to jump on board in the early days. For everyone else, for those older or younger than us, it's just something you use when you need it and forget about the rest of the time, like ATMs or automobiles.
The part that tickles me is that my grandpa worked in computers for much of his life and continues to follow them closely. He probably saw this Internet thing coming in about 1982 but didn't tell anybody because they wouldn't have believed him. I'd wager that he's the only 80-year-old in America who got into a debate about Bluetooth networking over Christmas dinner with his grandchildren and soundly beat them both. So whenever somebody whips out their newest electronic gadget at family gatherings, it usually takes him about five seconds to recognize the principles at work and suggest ways to make the thing work better. Maybe that's why I'm still so fired up about technology that's now commonplace .. while everybody else has moved on to the next big thing, I'm still trying to catch up to good old granddad.
......
This year I'll try not to drink so much. This year I'll try to stand up straight. This year let's live like mfarley@register-pajaronian.com never lived before. This is our year for sure.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
The truth comes out
(From the Register-Pajaronian)
When I found myself buying a matched pair of martini glasses imported from Hawaii, I knew things had finally gone too far.
For years before I moved here, I'd heard that Santa Cruz was one of those places that changed a person. Some folks seemed to believe it was a life-defining experience, like visiting the Wailing Wall or the Vatican, except with drugs. Others saw it more as an insidious liberal influence that could flare back up without warning throughout the rest of a man's life, like political malaria. Either way, people were sure I wouldn't make it six months out here without going native.
I was skeptical. In a lot of ways, I fancy myself to be of the George W. Bush school of personal development: I'll be the same guy on Wednesday as I was on Monday, no matter what happens on Tuesday. You may call it shallow, but we refer to it as "resolute." Anyway, it was going to take a lot more than moderate winters and a few girls that looked good in bathing suits to knock me off my course, whatever course that was. I was prepared to take my chances with the hippies if it meant never having to use a defroster again.
Everything started out normal. For months I ignored the panhandlers on Pacific Avenue and made fun of the Umbrella Man. I studiously avoided discussions about the University of California regents and refused to learn the clever acronyms and noble aims of activist groups. I resisted the urge to decorate my apartment as though it were a surf shack. And above all, I did not wear flip-flops or wifebeater undershirts in public. I was a pillar of Nevada values (now there's an expression you don't hear very often) being smothered by a tide of beach bunnies.
As they so often are, the first cracks in the levee were almost imperceptible. I started taking a more lackadaisical approach to shaving and went longer between haircuts than I had since "MacGyver" was on TV. I'd walk down to the water and spend 15 minutes watching the waves before I realized that I had no real reason to be there.
I sank deeper. First, I visited the Mystery Spot and brought home a souvenir sticker. Later, I got angry when I heard they were building a new Safeway on 41st Avenue. Then, to my abject horror, I caught myself whining about tourists from "over the hill." Who was this new guy, this pseudo-local yokel who thought the folks who lived 30 minutes from the beach instead of 2 were second class citizens? And yet, I couldn't keep from wondering "Why can't those yuppies go surf someplace else?"
I found clarity while Christmas shopping. Throughout my life, I've had a tendency to buy others gifts that I'd like to have myself, which explains why my sister used to get a lot of Bad Religion albums and my dad owns most of the "Calvin and Hobbes" library. I thought I had it beat, but as the woman behind the counter at Zen Trading Co. aded up the tax on a pair of tiki bar martini glasses Monday afternoon, the contrary evidence turned me pale.
What are my loved ones getting from me this year? Island-themed cocktail ware, obscure South American literature and a CD from KPIG 107.5 FM. Good lord, I've become a Santa Cruzan. Welcome me to the fold with warm embraces, brothers and sisters, for now I am truly one of you.
•••
It's Christmas time again. Time to be nice to the people you can't stand all year. I'm growing tired of all this Christmas cheer. You people scare me. Please stay away from my home. If you don't want to get beat down, just leave the presents and then leave mfarley@register-pajaronian.com alone.
When I found myself buying a matched pair of martini glasses imported from Hawaii, I knew things had finally gone too far.
For years before I moved here, I'd heard that Santa Cruz was one of those places that changed a person. Some folks seemed to believe it was a life-defining experience, like visiting the Wailing Wall or the Vatican, except with drugs. Others saw it more as an insidious liberal influence that could flare back up without warning throughout the rest of a man's life, like political malaria. Either way, people were sure I wouldn't make it six months out here without going native.
I was skeptical. In a lot of ways, I fancy myself to be of the George W. Bush school of personal development: I'll be the same guy on Wednesday as I was on Monday, no matter what happens on Tuesday. You may call it shallow, but we refer to it as "resolute." Anyway, it was going to take a lot more than moderate winters and a few girls that looked good in bathing suits to knock me off my course, whatever course that was. I was prepared to take my chances with the hippies if it meant never having to use a defroster again.
Everything started out normal. For months I ignored the panhandlers on Pacific Avenue and made fun of the Umbrella Man. I studiously avoided discussions about the University of California regents and refused to learn the clever acronyms and noble aims of activist groups. I resisted the urge to decorate my apartment as though it were a surf shack. And above all, I did not wear flip-flops or wifebeater undershirts in public. I was a pillar of Nevada values (now there's an expression you don't hear very often) being smothered by a tide of beach bunnies.
As they so often are, the first cracks in the levee were almost imperceptible. I started taking a more lackadaisical approach to shaving and went longer between haircuts than I had since "MacGyver" was on TV. I'd walk down to the water and spend 15 minutes watching the waves before I realized that I had no real reason to be there.
I sank deeper. First, I visited the Mystery Spot and brought home a souvenir sticker. Later, I got angry when I heard they were building a new Safeway on 41st Avenue. Then, to my abject horror, I caught myself whining about tourists from "over the hill." Who was this new guy, this pseudo-local yokel who thought the folks who lived 30 minutes from the beach instead of 2 were second class citizens? And yet, I couldn't keep from wondering "Why can't those yuppies go surf someplace else?"
I found clarity while Christmas shopping. Throughout my life, I've had a tendency to buy others gifts that I'd like to have myself, which explains why my sister used to get a lot of Bad Religion albums and my dad owns most of the "Calvin and Hobbes" library. I thought I had it beat, but as the woman behind the counter at Zen Trading Co. aded up the tax on a pair of tiki bar martini glasses Monday afternoon, the contrary evidence turned me pale.
What are my loved ones getting from me this year? Island-themed cocktail ware, obscure South American literature and a CD from KPIG 107.5 FM. Good lord, I've become a Santa Cruzan. Welcome me to the fold with warm embraces, brothers and sisters, for now I am truly one of you.
•••
It's Christmas time again. Time to be nice to the people you can't stand all year. I'm growing tired of all this Christmas cheer. You people scare me. Please stay away from my home. If you don't want to get beat down, just leave the presents and then leave mfarley@register-pajaronian.com alone.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Blood and guts revisited
When "Starship Troopers" came out in 1997, it was a science fiction movie. With giant bugs, interstellar warfare, shockingly beautiful protagonists of both sexes and large guns, it was a summer blockbuster that got by on flash, and that was fine. I liked it pretty well.
I saw it again on TV the other night, and it was suddenly political allegory. I don't know how I missed it before — maybe because in 1997, the idea of ill-equipped teens fighting in a large-scale desert war based on fraudulent intelligence was still pretty alien. But knowing what we know now, it's hard to see the movie as anything but a war commentary.
In the early minutes, the main character, Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), is trying to figure out whether he wants to join the military or go to college. The decision is a source of friction between him and his family, because there are increasing reports of skirmishes between Earthling troops and an insect-like alien race. Rico eventually joins up, largely to impress a girl who has also enlisted, but is about to quit when "the bugs" launch an audacious attack on his hometown, killing his family and many of his civilian friends.
And so the earthlings rush to war. As you watch soldiers in their late teens and early 20s get rushed through basic training before shipping out to fight an enemy they have only seen in propaganda films, it's a little strange. When it becomes obvious that Earth's leaders have plans beyond simply defending the homeland, it's downright unsettling. And when Rico's unit realizes that the body armor they've been issued is not strong enough to stop the bugs' pinchers, you start to wonder if director Paul Verhoeven wasn't just a little bit psychic.
Almost everything in this silly, gory shoot-'em-up has since come true. In the film, female soldiers are sent to the front lines along with the men, and romance blooms between firefights. As a significant percentage of the young adult population joins up, Rico begins running into ex-girlfriends and former teachers in the course of his duties. This is starting to happen today, when it seems as if half the people you meet have a relative or friend who has been overseas.
The battles in the movie are nothing short of horrific. At the time, a lot of critics bashed "Starship Troopers" for being obsessed with suffering and violence, and Verhoeven's patriotism was even called into question because he showed earthling troops accidentally killing each other in the heat of battle. Viewing the movie today, the most striking thing about the friendly fire sequences is that the military actually announces them to the public and holds someone accountable.
This is not to say that the movie is a great one. Anyone without a high tolerance for splashing alien blood would do well to steer clear, as would anyone who has an aversion to action movie clichés. But for the average citizen, "Starship Troopers" is definitely worth a second look, if only to marvel at how it took less than a decade for U.S. foreign policy to make a surreal orgy of gunplay and dismemberment look like serious political commentary.
I saw it again on TV the other night, and it was suddenly political allegory. I don't know how I missed it before — maybe because in 1997, the idea of ill-equipped teens fighting in a large-scale desert war based on fraudulent intelligence was still pretty alien. But knowing what we know now, it's hard to see the movie as anything but a war commentary.
In the early minutes, the main character, Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), is trying to figure out whether he wants to join the military or go to college. The decision is a source of friction between him and his family, because there are increasing reports of skirmishes between Earthling troops and an insect-like alien race. Rico eventually joins up, largely to impress a girl who has also enlisted, but is about to quit when "the bugs" launch an audacious attack on his hometown, killing his family and many of his civilian friends.
And so the earthlings rush to war. As you watch soldiers in their late teens and early 20s get rushed through basic training before shipping out to fight an enemy they have only seen in propaganda films, it's a little strange. When it becomes obvious that Earth's leaders have plans beyond simply defending the homeland, it's downright unsettling. And when Rico's unit realizes that the body armor they've been issued is not strong enough to stop the bugs' pinchers, you start to wonder if director Paul Verhoeven wasn't just a little bit psychic.
Almost everything in this silly, gory shoot-'em-up has since come true. In the film, female soldiers are sent to the front lines along with the men, and romance blooms between firefights. As a significant percentage of the young adult population joins up, Rico begins running into ex-girlfriends and former teachers in the course of his duties. This is starting to happen today, when it seems as if half the people you meet have a relative or friend who has been overseas.
The battles in the movie are nothing short of horrific. At the time, a lot of critics bashed "Starship Troopers" for being obsessed with suffering and violence, and Verhoeven's patriotism was even called into question because he showed earthling troops accidentally killing each other in the heat of battle. Viewing the movie today, the most striking thing about the friendly fire sequences is that the military actually announces them to the public and holds someone accountable.
This is not to say that the movie is a great one. Anyone without a high tolerance for splashing alien blood would do well to steer clear, as would anyone who has an aversion to action movie clichés. But for the average citizen, "Starship Troopers" is definitely worth a second look, if only to marvel at how it took less than a decade for U.S. foreign policy to make a surreal orgy of gunplay and dismemberment look like serious political commentary.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Eddie Rodriguez lives!
Rumors of officer's demise greatly exaggerated
WPD captain likely departing for a new job, but not the great beyond
By MATT FARLEY
of the register-pajaronian
While an obituary bearing his photograph appeared Thursday in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Watsonville Police Department Capt. Edmundo Rodriguez is not dead, Capt. Kim Austin said Thursday.
"It was certainly news to him," Austin said of Rodriguez, who is on leave. "(Capt. Manny Solano) was in touch with him today and he seemed fine."
Austin said Solano contacted Rodriguez and then the newspaper as soon as he noticed the article, which displays Edmundo Rodriguez's picture alongside an obituary for Watsonville resident Edward M. Rodriguez, who died Nov. 29 at the age of 83.
"It was just a mistake, based on how similar their names are," Austin said. "We've been getting e-mails from other agencies checking to make sure that everything's OK."
Police Chief Terry Medina said he had fielded several phone calls, e-mails and voice mails regarding the obituary.
"The calls started pretty early this morning," he said. "I even got a call from the mortuary. They wanted to make sure I understood it was not their mistake."
Still, Medina shrugged the gaff off, noting that he was more concerned for the family of the real Edward M. Rodriguez.
Once it was confirmed that the photo was run in error, the jokes started. Officers and other WPD staff could be heard offering laughing condolences in the department hallways.
"It was sort of funny because he was the public information officer," one officer said. "He had more contact with the media than anybody."
Rodriguez recently became the focus of added coverage after WPD announced Nov. 29 that he is expected to leave Watsonville this month to take over as chief of the Marina Police Department.
Sentinel staffers declined to comment on the matter other than to confirm that the obituary was an error and that a correction was forthcoming.
Meanwhile, Austin said that the department was ready to forget the incident and move on.
"Basically, we're ready to let this one die," she said with a grin.
WPD captain likely departing for a new job, but not the great beyond
By MATT FARLEY
of the register-pajaronian
While an obituary bearing his photograph appeared Thursday in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Watsonville Police Department Capt. Edmundo Rodriguez is not dead, Capt. Kim Austin said Thursday.
"It was certainly news to him," Austin said of Rodriguez, who is on leave. "(Capt. Manny Solano) was in touch with him today and he seemed fine."
Austin said Solano contacted Rodriguez and then the newspaper as soon as he noticed the article, which displays Edmundo Rodriguez's picture alongside an obituary for Watsonville resident Edward M. Rodriguez, who died Nov. 29 at the age of 83.
"It was just a mistake, based on how similar their names are," Austin said. "We've been getting e-mails from other agencies checking to make sure that everything's OK."
Police Chief Terry Medina said he had fielded several phone calls, e-mails and voice mails regarding the obituary.
"The calls started pretty early this morning," he said. "I even got a call from the mortuary. They wanted to make sure I understood it was not their mistake."
Still, Medina shrugged the gaff off, noting that he was more concerned for the family of the real Edward M. Rodriguez.
Once it was confirmed that the photo was run in error, the jokes started. Officers and other WPD staff could be heard offering laughing condolences in the department hallways.
"It was sort of funny because he was the public information officer," one officer said. "He had more contact with the media than anybody."
Rodriguez recently became the focus of added coverage after WPD announced Nov. 29 that he is expected to leave Watsonville this month to take over as chief of the Marina Police Department.
Sentinel staffers declined to comment on the matter other than to confirm that the obituary was an error and that a correction was forthcoming.
Meanwhile, Austin said that the department was ready to forget the incident and move on.
"Basically, we're ready to let this one die," she said with a grin.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Nor a drop to drink
A couple of weeks ago, the confederacy of dunces that runs my apartment complex stuck a note on my door informing me that, due to mysterious plumbing issues, the bathroom sink would be shut off "until further notice."
In the past, I have put what you might call undue strain on my relationships with landlords by freaking out about these things too soon, and it never ends well. So I decided to give it a few days and see how things shook out before I composed a response and delivered it to the front desk via high-speed brick.
As the days wore on, I started worrying about the ambiguity of the note. "Until further notice," could be a very long time, and the fact that they seemed unsure of what exactly was wrong with the plumbing made me nervous. After 10 days, I strolled by the office, just a neighbor stopping off to say hello.
"It's cooling right down, isn't it?" I said to the woman at the desk, smiling in a non-confrontational manner. "Hey, while I'm here, do you happen to know when I can expect the water to come back on over in building 137?"
She looked up from her computer, sighing so I could tell how busy she was.
"Is that the one where the vanities aren't working?" she asked. Vanities. That's what bathroom sinks are. Instruments of vanity. If I were a real man, I'd be more than happy to keep shaving in the kitchen.
"That's the one," I said. She asked me if lived upstairs and I said I did.
"Well, they probably won't have to do any jackhammering in your room, then," she said.
This was exactly why I hated landlords in the first place. I rested my palms on the desk and concentrated on keeping my voice even.
"That's encouraging," I said. "Does that mean there's going to be jackhammering someplace else?"
"Oh, my, yes," she said, eyes wide. "Lots of work to be done. I think you can expect water by Christmas, but I wouldn't invite any guests over if I were you." She followed this last with a little grin and turned back to her keyboard, the matter closed.
"So I'm brushing my teeth in the bathtub for the rest of the year? I don't think that's in my lease," I said.
"Of course not," she said, and my foolish heart leaped in my chest. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. "The rest of the water will be off after this week. You won't be able to use the bathtub. You'll be sleeping here, and that's pretty much it."
I know how hard it is to be the hired help, because I've been hired help for all of my working life. Sometimes your boss does bad things and leaves you to tell the customers about them, and no matter how much they yell at you, there's nothing you can do for them. That was what was happening here, and I didn't want to yell at this woman and become one of the jerks I'd hated for so long. But I was not about to let this one slide.
"You can't just turn all the water off," I said, desperate now. "That's, like, why people have apartments .. so they can shower and cook. Where's your boss?"
"Oh, don't worry, he'll be in touch," she said. "He..s really taking an interest in this problem. He might even come by on Monday to talk to you guys. He appreciates your patience."
"Can I stay at his house?" I asked, but she had already gone back to her desk. I started to storm out, already plotting vengeance, when she called me back.
"Mr. Farley?"
"What?"
"Your December rent is due." She gave me a big smile. "And I'm happy to say that I've been authorized to deduct the water surcharge from your total."
So this is where we stand. Maybe my landlord will descend from the sky like a bolt of lightning on Monday and make everything right, but unless he brings Crapos, the ancient god of plumbing, with him, I have a feeling I..m about to embark on an odyssey through tenant hell. If anyone has advice on circulating petitions, I'd love to hear it. Also, though professionalism prevents me from accusing my complex by name, if you're about to sign a lease in the Santa Cruz High School neighborhood, you might want to drop me a line.
......
She says it all without a thought in her head; she says it all and she's pressed up against me. A little something just to take off the edge. A little more and mfarley@register-pajaronian.com falls off the planet entirely
In the past, I have put what you might call undue strain on my relationships with landlords by freaking out about these things too soon, and it never ends well. So I decided to give it a few days and see how things shook out before I composed a response and delivered it to the front desk via high-speed brick.
As the days wore on, I started worrying about the ambiguity of the note. "Until further notice," could be a very long time, and the fact that they seemed unsure of what exactly was wrong with the plumbing made me nervous. After 10 days, I strolled by the office, just a neighbor stopping off to say hello.
"It's cooling right down, isn't it?" I said to the woman at the desk, smiling in a non-confrontational manner. "Hey, while I'm here, do you happen to know when I can expect the water to come back on over in building 137?"
She looked up from her computer, sighing so I could tell how busy she was.
"Is that the one where the vanities aren't working?" she asked. Vanities. That's what bathroom sinks are. Instruments of vanity. If I were a real man, I'd be more than happy to keep shaving in the kitchen.
"That's the one," I said. She asked me if lived upstairs and I said I did.
"Well, they probably won't have to do any jackhammering in your room, then," she said.
This was exactly why I hated landlords in the first place. I rested my palms on the desk and concentrated on keeping my voice even.
"That's encouraging," I said. "Does that mean there's going to be jackhammering someplace else?"
"Oh, my, yes," she said, eyes wide. "Lots of work to be done. I think you can expect water by Christmas, but I wouldn't invite any guests over if I were you." She followed this last with a little grin and turned back to her keyboard, the matter closed.
"So I'm brushing my teeth in the bathtub for the rest of the year? I don't think that's in my lease," I said.
"Of course not," she said, and my foolish heart leaped in my chest. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. "The rest of the water will be off after this week. You won't be able to use the bathtub. You'll be sleeping here, and that's pretty much it."
I know how hard it is to be the hired help, because I've been hired help for all of my working life. Sometimes your boss does bad things and leaves you to tell the customers about them, and no matter how much they yell at you, there's nothing you can do for them. That was what was happening here, and I didn't want to yell at this woman and become one of the jerks I'd hated for so long. But I was not about to let this one slide.
"You can't just turn all the water off," I said, desperate now. "That's, like, why people have apartments .. so they can shower and cook. Where's your boss?"
"Oh, don't worry, he'll be in touch," she said. "He..s really taking an interest in this problem. He might even come by on Monday to talk to you guys. He appreciates your patience."
"Can I stay at his house?" I asked, but she had already gone back to her desk. I started to storm out, already plotting vengeance, when she called me back.
"Mr. Farley?"
"What?"
"Your December rent is due." She gave me a big smile. "And I'm happy to say that I've been authorized to deduct the water surcharge from your total."
So this is where we stand. Maybe my landlord will descend from the sky like a bolt of lightning on Monday and make everything right, but unless he brings Crapos, the ancient god of plumbing, with him, I have a feeling I..m about to embark on an odyssey through tenant hell. If anyone has advice on circulating petitions, I'd love to hear it. Also, though professionalism prevents me from accusing my complex by name, if you're about to sign a lease in the Santa Cruz High School neighborhood, you might want to drop me a line.
......
She says it all without a thought in her head; she says it all and she's pressed up against me. A little something just to take off the edge. A little more and mfarley@register-pajaronian.com falls off the planet entirely
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The new meat market
(From the Register-Pajaronian)
Trader Joe’s grocery store is the new Studio 54.
Some of you may be confused, but that’s only because you’ve never been to the after-hours party that is TJ’s after the sun goes down. You have yet to experience the co-mingling of image- and socially-conscious single twenty-somethings that stop off for whey protein and obscure microbrew beer on the way home from working overtime at the office or on the way home from a late class. But you will, because I have seen the future, and it only comes in biodegradable packaging.
Forget your old man’s grocery store, with its soccer moms in decline and vacuum-sealed lunchmeat. That place sucks. Every time I go to that place, the one with the logo that looks remarkably like Superman’s, I’m more disheartened to see that they have no coffee counter, a barely cursory selection of organic food and radio traffic like something out of a sci-fi movie.
The intercom squalls to life as I walk through the door.
“Bwaaaak! Uh, Shane were gonna need some more people up here. There’s, uh, people trying to buy food. I’m not sure how to handle it. Over.”
No matter what time it is, they’re always calling for help that never seems to arrive. It’s actually quite sad. As I approach the seafood section, the situation takes a tuen for the worse.
“Shane, uh, we’ve got a problem. Epiphany and Taylor went to lunch and this woman picked out the only milk carton in the city of Santa Cruz with a leak in it and didn’t notice it for the three hours she’s been wandering through the store. I’m going to run it back to the case now and make a lot of people wait. Over.”
They never have unsalted almonds. Why would you ever salt an almond? As I wonder this, all hell breaks loose up at the check stand.
“Oh, Jesus, Shane! We’ve got a hull breach in sector three! Seal the cabin doors and prepare to repel boarders! All hands to the stock room! Close all checkout lines except the one with the broken barcode scanner!”
By the time I get up there, the staff has been overrun by a platoon of white people buying single-serving bottles of Jagermeister and 30-packs of Cup-O-Noodles. It’s all I can do to hew a path to my car and flee in disgrace while the horde gorges itself on the slowest baggers.
But Trader Joe’s is different. While I hesitate to call any organization with outlets in 18 states a grassroots operation, there is at least a sense that the displays and employees were not assembled in Iowa and shipped out as a single unit. Some employees have body alterations or haircuts that the church would not approve of. A lot of signs are done by hand. It’s all prefab hipness, but then what isn’t?
Because of all this, the store attracts a different clientele, and elitist or not, I like it. Especially at night, you tend to get kids with a couple of brain cells and credit cards to rub together. Most folks have chosen to put on a shirt with actual sleeves before going out in public, and I respect that. More often than not, customers can follow simple directions to find what they’re looking for, and if they can’t, they resist the urge to bring the place to a screeching halt by demanding someone go get it and place it in their hand. Sometimes — and this still shocks me — they will even ask a stranger, meaning a conversation may blossom.
I don’t believe for a second that the bosses in the Trader Joe’s boardroom have any concern besides making money. But at some point, somebody thought, “you know, if we do a little something to keep the place from feeling exactly like every other food outlet in the country, maybe people won’t treat it that way.” That small measure of imagination, along with the fact that they trust adults to walk around the shop with a cup of coffee without dumping it on the merchandise, has won my business. As Wal-Mart and its brothers strive to create a transaction where the customer is happy to be faceless, where he doesn’t talk to anyone, where he just feeds his money into a machine and walks out the door with his uniform Hanes T-shirt and bland, ready-to-serve Campbell’s soup, even a token gesture of individuality is a great one.
Meanwhile, I’m brushing up on the layout of my local TJ’s, because this fall, there will be a lot of coeds wandering around looking for the vanilla soy milk, and I’m just the guy to show them.
Trader Joe’s grocery store is the new Studio 54.
Some of you may be confused, but that’s only because you’ve never been to the after-hours party that is TJ’s after the sun goes down. You have yet to experience the co-mingling of image- and socially-conscious single twenty-somethings that stop off for whey protein and obscure microbrew beer on the way home from working overtime at the office or on the way home from a late class. But you will, because I have seen the future, and it only comes in biodegradable packaging.
Forget your old man’s grocery store, with its soccer moms in decline and vacuum-sealed lunchmeat. That place sucks. Every time I go to that place, the one with the logo that looks remarkably like Superman’s, I’m more disheartened to see that they have no coffee counter, a barely cursory selection of organic food and radio traffic like something out of a sci-fi movie.
The intercom squalls to life as I walk through the door.
“Bwaaaak! Uh, Shane were gonna need some more people up here. There’s, uh, people trying to buy food. I’m not sure how to handle it. Over.”
No matter what time it is, they’re always calling for help that never seems to arrive. It’s actually quite sad. As I approach the seafood section, the situation takes a tuen for the worse.
“Shane, uh, we’ve got a problem. Epiphany and Taylor went to lunch and this woman picked out the only milk carton in the city of Santa Cruz with a leak in it and didn’t notice it for the three hours she’s been wandering through the store. I’m going to run it back to the case now and make a lot of people wait. Over.”
They never have unsalted almonds. Why would you ever salt an almond? As I wonder this, all hell breaks loose up at the check stand.
“Oh, Jesus, Shane! We’ve got a hull breach in sector three! Seal the cabin doors and prepare to repel boarders! All hands to the stock room! Close all checkout lines except the one with the broken barcode scanner!”
By the time I get up there, the staff has been overrun by a platoon of white people buying single-serving bottles of Jagermeister and 30-packs of Cup-O-Noodles. It’s all I can do to hew a path to my car and flee in disgrace while the horde gorges itself on the slowest baggers.
But Trader Joe’s is different. While I hesitate to call any organization with outlets in 18 states a grassroots operation, there is at least a sense that the displays and employees were not assembled in Iowa and shipped out as a single unit. Some employees have body alterations or haircuts that the church would not approve of. A lot of signs are done by hand. It’s all prefab hipness, but then what isn’t?
Because of all this, the store attracts a different clientele, and elitist or not, I like it. Especially at night, you tend to get kids with a couple of brain cells and credit cards to rub together. Most folks have chosen to put on a shirt with actual sleeves before going out in public, and I respect that. More often than not, customers can follow simple directions to find what they’re looking for, and if they can’t, they resist the urge to bring the place to a screeching halt by demanding someone go get it and place it in their hand. Sometimes — and this still shocks me — they will even ask a stranger, meaning a conversation may blossom.
I don’t believe for a second that the bosses in the Trader Joe’s boardroom have any concern besides making money. But at some point, somebody thought, “you know, if we do a little something to keep the place from feeling exactly like every other food outlet in the country, maybe people won’t treat it that way.” That small measure of imagination, along with the fact that they trust adults to walk around the shop with a cup of coffee without dumping it on the merchandise, has won my business. As Wal-Mart and its brothers strive to create a transaction where the customer is happy to be faceless, where he doesn’t talk to anyone, where he just feeds his money into a machine and walks out the door with his uniform Hanes T-shirt and bland, ready-to-serve Campbell’s soup, even a token gesture of individuality is a great one.
Meanwhile, I’m brushing up on the layout of my local TJ’s, because this fall, there will be a lot of coeds wandering around looking for the vanilla soy milk, and I’m just the guy to show them.
Friday, May 5, 2006
The city that care forgot
(From the Register-Pajaronian)NEW ORLEANS — The thick glass doors slid shut behind us with a soft hiss, sealing us into a space about 15 feet square with an identical portal directly ahead. Outside, the city steamed under a low ceiling of gray clouds, leaving the few locals shambling along Carondelet Street soaked in sweat and glaring half-heartedly at each other. The piles of white trash bags that sat on almost every street corner had begun to sweat and tear, spilling chicken bones and beer cans onto the sidewalk. The smell, and I say this as a guy who lived in college dorms for three years without once picking up a toilet brush, was enough to make my gorge rise. Trash service, it seemed, had been sporadic at best since hurricane season.
After a dramatic pause, the second set of doors parted and a gust of air conditioning washed over us as we stepped into the hotel. The doors clicked immediately closed, keen not to waste one frosty breath on the wretches outside. A large marble lobby, several restaurants and clothing and souvenir shops occupied the first floor, and there was a lounge, a coffee bar and a gym upstairs. You could spend months here without ever having to face the city. Maybe that was the idea. There was even a FedEx store, for an occasional missive to those beyond the citadel walls. The brunette behind the front desk was the first white person I’d seen all day aside from my dad and the barista at a coffeehouse outside Baton Rouge.
After we got oriented, we set out for the French Quarter. Carondelet turns into Bourbon Street after it crosses Canal, so we were only a few blocks away. As we left, a valet warned us to keep our security cards with us at all times, because no one was being allowed inside without one after 10 p.m. There was another hotel across the street from ours, and the space between them was bustling with tourists and hotel workers, but after 100 feet we didn’t see anyone. Both sides of Carondelet were lined with huge old buildings, some with elaborate stonework or wrought iron fences, but they all seemed empty and quiet. One building with the word “SECURITY” chiseled into its high white face sported heavy new doors and perfect windows that mirrored the flat sky like the surface of a pond. Whatever they did there, they seemed to believe in truth in advertising. Other storefronts held signs for fried chicken and oyster po’ boy sandwiches, or plywood nailed over smashed windows, but they were all closed. It was just as well, because the overpowering low-tide smell rippling from the gutters and frequent dumpsters didn’t really give me a hankering for soul food.
We crossed Canal, a broad street with piles of garbage, pawn shops, liquor stores and T-shirt outlets stretching from the Mississippi River in one direction to some distant, invisible point in the other. Streetcar tracks dominated the center lane and locals walked and rode bikes right down them, seemingly confident that it would be a while before anything came clattering down the line. Here, there were a lot of people just standing around in front of wrecked storefronts. Some were obvious druggies, complete with lank hair, scabby arms and thousand-yard stares. Others were tough guys, glowering at anyone that walked by and swearing loudly, watching tourists carefully for some sign of shock or fear. We gave them none, and they quickly lost interest. Most of the people on Canal, though, were just normal folks whose livelihoods had washed away, and they had nothing left to do but stand around and sweat, waiting for help that increasingly seemed like it wasn’t coming.
A young black kid walked out of a corner market carrying a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” and I shivered in the heat.
•••
Displacement
The shopping mall was a few miles north of New Orleans on Interstate 10. It was a big place with several department stores and a food court and it was completely abandoned. The parking lot was blocked off and all the windows and doors were boarded up, but it looked as though looters had gotten to it nonetheless.
We got off the freeway at the next exit and discovered that the traffic signals were broken, which was OK because our rental was the only running vehicle around. Businesses with dirty brown waterlines stained 6 feet high on the walls stood open and dark, ransacked either by thieves or owners trying to salvage anything they could before walking away forever. One gas station had a sheetrock sign near the pumps proclaiming “We have gas!” in tall red letters. The prices still seemed fair, perhaps because anyone whose car survived Katrina had left a long time ago. Earlier, we’d seen thousands of waterlogged cars piled like cordwood near the Superdome, whose roof still gaped raggedly like a corpse’s mouth.
We drove through the neighborhood for 20 minutes and didn’t see a single occupied house. At a few, workers were stripping out insulation and tossing it into the street. At one neat white home, a man stood on his porch just staring at the watermark etched into his front door. A blaze of spraypaint seemed to indicate that no one had died in the home, so I guessed that was something. Other houses had different marks on them, and I hoped I was misreading them.
Ten miles further north, we started seeing boats scattered alongside the highway. They weren’t little fishing vessels, either. Most were in the neighborhood of 30 feet long, and one metal monster must have been nearly 200. Their presence was made more unsettling by the fact that we were almost a mile from the Mississippi. I didn’t like the idea of something that weighed 100 tons getting tossed around like a toy and then casually pitched into the bushes when God decided to let the water out of the bathtub. It made me a little nervous.
•••
Semester abroad
Tulane University had reopened a few weeks before we arrived in Louisiana, and, driving through campus, it seemed like any other school. As we sat in a coffee shop eating jambalaya, it was hard to believe that the campus had been flooded so badly that thousands of student records vanished and one of the best music archives in the country ceased to be. Not to mention, you know, the abject anarchy in the streets. Now, kids studied at poorly lit corner tables and fired off flirty MySpace messages via wireless connections and ordered jalapeño cheddar bagels lightly toasted. Better to be in here than out there, I thought. For once, it must’ve been nice to get back to school.
Later, we walked past Jackson Square in the Quarter. St. Louis Cathedral was open, but the square was chained shut. Even so, the breeze off the Mississippi cut the smell and heat here and the architecture was impressive in spite of the trash festooning the sidewalk and benches. Across Decatur Street, we bought cafe au lait and beignets under the green canopy at Cafe du Monde, an open-air eatery that was every bit as good as I’d heard it was. It was a few yards to the top of a rise overlooking the river, and we climbed the stairs. As I mounted the ridge, the wind swirled the powdered sugar from my snack and I held it away from my black shirt and looked up and suddenly there was the Greater New Orleans Bridge spanning the river.
The sky had cleared considerably and it looked like there were a lot of people driving into town. Looking up the street toward the Jax Beer building, I saw half a dozen restaurants with new health department certifications posted in the window along with notes indicating the date they’d reopen, and for a lot of them it was soon. I noticed that while a lot of the people milling around were visitors like us, many also looked like veteran coffee pourers, voodoo charm salesmen and schoolgirl-themed strippers. And while the tourists were walking around taking pictures and sadly shaking their heads, the locals were going on about their business, pausing only to sidestep the occasional sack of trash. It seemed like they’d been down before, and knew the way back up pretty well.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Making a fast break from productivity
(From Register-Pajaronian)
Whooo! It’s that time of year again! Time to put the brisket in the basket and let the horse out of the barn, baby! Time to body up in the paint and shank one from downtown!
Giving you an excuse once again to neglect your children between the Super Bowl and baseball season, it’s March Madness!
Sure, act like you don’t care. The numbers don’t lie, my friend. Studies have shown time and time again that up to $3 billion changes hands each year in betting on the NCAA basketball championships. Las Vegas casinos report seeing less than $100 million of that, which means the good old-fashioned office pool costs the American workingman more than Tom DeLay and Jeb Bush holding a referendum on gerrymandering at a Dubai massage parlor during tourist season. Experts say someone in your family has already made a wager on the tournament, and if it isn’t you, maybe you and your wife need to talk.
Of course, office pools are generally illegal, so if your boss hasn’t signed up, you’re going to want to be sure you don’t leave that envelope full of $20 bills and the list of participants just laying around on your desk. Sudden redistribution of capital makes The Man nervous.
Here at the R-P, a lot of that wealth is going to get redistributed to the Matt Farley Heat and Food Fund, a program started last year to help underprivileged editors live on the beach while evading their creditors, no matter what anyone says. See, I have an angle on this whole March Madness thing that simply can’t lose: I don’t follow basketball.
All these roundball fans get caught up in average minutes played and field goal percentages. While I understand the value of stats, it is possible that something could happen in a game without representing a new trend in the sport:
Commentator 1: "Well, Chris, the Crocs have never made it to the Big Dance when they were seeded greater than 4 and less than 9 when a point guard whose last name began with a vowel other than ‘A’ scored less than 7 points in the second round. I just don’t like their chances in this one."
Commentator 2: "Gotta disagree with you there, Steve. I think you’re forgetting about the ’87 squad. Jack Ericson put up just 5 points in the second round that year, and we all know how that turned out. But the question is, can Reshawn Ingalls break the Consonant Curse again this year, or will the Crocs be wrestled back into the swamp by the Voles’ strongman center Alex Tikimanuatu? That answer, and a lot of footage of sorority girls half your age, straight ahead."
Another problem I have with tracking stats is that there are roughly half a million college basketball teams in the country, and they let almost all of them into the tournament, and there are so many numbers to track that even the most enthusiastic fans don’t actually know what’s going on. Seriously, in real sports, a battle among 64 teams isn’t the playoffs, it’s opening day. Twice.
So, much like Barry Bonds in a press conference, I tried not to let the facts bog me down when I was making my picks this year. The first thing I considered is that most mascots in the NCAA are either wildcats or a guy with a big mustache, and I would select neither as long as I could help it. I’ve always thought teams at all levels needed more original mascots, and I’m still mad that the Jaguars and Panthers came into the NFL in the same season. It’s not enough to name a multi-million-dollar enterprise after a Little League team, you’ve got to do it twice in the same year using the same stupid mascot?
If I’m going to pick a team based on its mascot, it’s got to be original. The Boston College Eagles? Eh. The Wichita State Shockers? Oh hell yeah!
As you may know, I graduated from No. 5 seed Nevada. This presents an interesting philosophical question: Can I be totally disgusted with a school’s disastrous mismanagement and still cheer on its basketball program? I compromised and gave them an early win.
March Madness proves the inescapable fact that a man is capable of doing an amazing amount of work as long as it’s not the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. For instance, if I had applied as much strategery to this column as I have into my brackets, I probably wouldn’t be blowing my deadline right now. Over at the sports desk, I can only trust that the guys are using the vast resources at their disposal to make their work better, not to figure out whom to pick in the Arkansas-Bucknell game. And behind office doors throughout the building, men in ties are furiously scribbling away, muttering, "OK, so Farley picked Nevada in the first round..."
Whooo! It’s that time of year again! Time to put the brisket in the basket and let the horse out of the barn, baby! Time to body up in the paint and shank one from downtown!
Giving you an excuse once again to neglect your children between the Super Bowl and baseball season, it’s March Madness!
Sure, act like you don’t care. The numbers don’t lie, my friend. Studies have shown time and time again that up to $3 billion changes hands each year in betting on the NCAA basketball championships. Las Vegas casinos report seeing less than $100 million of that, which means the good old-fashioned office pool costs the American workingman more than Tom DeLay and Jeb Bush holding a referendum on gerrymandering at a Dubai massage parlor during tourist season. Experts say someone in your family has already made a wager on the tournament, and if it isn’t you, maybe you and your wife need to talk.
Of course, office pools are generally illegal, so if your boss hasn’t signed up, you’re going to want to be sure you don’t leave that envelope full of $20 bills and the list of participants just laying around on your desk. Sudden redistribution of capital makes The Man nervous.
Here at the R-P, a lot of that wealth is going to get redistributed to the Matt Farley Heat and Food Fund, a program started last year to help underprivileged editors live on the beach while evading their creditors, no matter what anyone says. See, I have an angle on this whole March Madness thing that simply can’t lose: I don’t follow basketball.
All these roundball fans get caught up in average minutes played and field goal percentages. While I understand the value of stats, it is possible that something could happen in a game without representing a new trend in the sport:
Commentator 1: "Well, Chris, the Crocs have never made it to the Big Dance when they were seeded greater than 4 and less than 9 when a point guard whose last name began with a vowel other than ‘A’ scored less than 7 points in the second round. I just don’t like their chances in this one."
Commentator 2: "Gotta disagree with you there, Steve. I think you’re forgetting about the ’87 squad. Jack Ericson put up just 5 points in the second round that year, and we all know how that turned out. But the question is, can Reshawn Ingalls break the Consonant Curse again this year, or will the Crocs be wrestled back into the swamp by the Voles’ strongman center Alex Tikimanuatu? That answer, and a lot of footage of sorority girls half your age, straight ahead."
Another problem I have with tracking stats is that there are roughly half a million college basketball teams in the country, and they let almost all of them into the tournament, and there are so many numbers to track that even the most enthusiastic fans don’t actually know what’s going on. Seriously, in real sports, a battle among 64 teams isn’t the playoffs, it’s opening day. Twice.
So, much like Barry Bonds in a press conference, I tried not to let the facts bog me down when I was making my picks this year. The first thing I considered is that most mascots in the NCAA are either wildcats or a guy with a big mustache, and I would select neither as long as I could help it. I’ve always thought teams at all levels needed more original mascots, and I’m still mad that the Jaguars and Panthers came into the NFL in the same season. It’s not enough to name a multi-million-dollar enterprise after a Little League team, you’ve got to do it twice in the same year using the same stupid mascot?
If I’m going to pick a team based on its mascot, it’s got to be original. The Boston College Eagles? Eh. The Wichita State Shockers? Oh hell yeah!
As you may know, I graduated from No. 5 seed Nevada. This presents an interesting philosophical question: Can I be totally disgusted with a school’s disastrous mismanagement and still cheer on its basketball program? I compromised and gave them an early win.
March Madness proves the inescapable fact that a man is capable of doing an amazing amount of work as long as it’s not the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. For instance, if I had applied as much strategery to this column as I have into my brackets, I probably wouldn’t be blowing my deadline right now. Over at the sports desk, I can only trust that the guys are using the vast resources at their disposal to make their work better, not to figure out whom to pick in the Arkansas-Bucknell game. And behind office doors throughout the building, men in ties are furiously scribbling away, muttering, "OK, so Farley picked Nevada in the first round..."
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
My husband acts like a man and other revelations
(From the Register-Pajaronian)
The sweetest gig around, aside from being married to Jessica Simpson, is being an advice columnist. True, the money and power are not as great as they might be in some other jobs, but in other jobs, you have to have skills and a work ethic, or at least charisma and nice abs.
Not so the advice business. Being an advice writer has all the advantages of being a writer (working in your pajamas, a built-in excuse for substance abuse) with none of the disadvantages (having to do research and give the impression of impartiality). All you do is go with the first thing that pops into your head, admonish the reader about selling themselves short and then point out a truism about human nature. Then you file your article and go find something else to do with the rest of your day.
If you're really good, you can combine the three ingredients in a single sentence. Observe: "It was wrong of you to be rude to your mother-in-law, but all people make mistakes .. even beautiful snowflakes like you." None of it actually means anything, but that's OK, because you're probably not qualified to be an actual life coach. What's important is that the readers can see realistic, complex questions neatly solved and feel good about it. Kind of like "Law & Order," except you can read it with breakfast.
Take this example from Tuesday's "Dear Abby:"
"The short story is, I slept with a married co-worker," writes "Confused and Ashamed in Minnesota." "I paid him to come to my house to hook up my computer, but when he arrived, everything but that happened." She notes that "he is a complicated mess" and that she is "confused by my need to be around this man." She closes by asking for help in "understand(ing) why I did this and com(ing) out of this with some self-respect."
These are all serious concerns. "Confused" clearly needs to work some things out, and anyone that helped her do that would be a hero. But that's not what Abby does, because the readers hate it when you tell them, "Dude, you really need to talk to someone." Believe me, I've tried it before.
Abby says "that kind of high can be intoxicating" (Sex can make you feel good? Shocking!), adding that "you didn't get what you really wanted and you know you sold yourself short. Rather than beating yourself up over this, use it to spur yourself into getting out and meeting eligible men." The solution is apparently not figuring out why you're drawn to unavailable guys; it's soldiering proudly on, emotional limp and all.
Then, just like Emeril Lagasse, Abby kicks it up a notch.
"If you paid him to hook up your computer and all you got was sex .. you know what that makes him." (Matt Farley..s hero, for one thing, but presumably something else, too.) "He owes you a refund, but don..t count on getting one."
Perfect. Abby seizes on the single least important aspect of the letter and makes it the big finish. Don..t worry that "Confused" sounds about as sophisticated as a 16-year-old when she talks about relationships. The important thing is that she gets her $20 back.
In light of all the second-rate guidance out there, I've decided to start giving my own advice. If anyone has questions about work, relationships, automotive repair, higher math, space travel or anything else, I'd be happy to pretend like I know what to do about it. Here's a sample, which I just made up, but could totally be real:
Dear Matt: Sometimes I feel like my boyfriend, "Ted" doesn..t care about what I have to say. When he comes home from work at night, I really like to talk to him about my day, including what I ate for lunch, how unreasonable my boss is and how my co-worker, "Missy," is trying to destroy me. I also like to talk about what we're going to have for dinner for at least 45 minutes and why he didn't answer his cell phone when I called this afternoon for at least 20. Sometimes while I'm speaking, his eyes roll back in his head and he locks himself in the bathroom. While I usually continue talking to him through the door, it makes me sad to think that he might not care about the chicken salad I had for lunch as much as I do. Is it just me, or is he being unfair?
PECKISH IN PAJARO
Dear Peckish: I get a lot of letters about this. Many men may give the impression that they would rather watch Monday Night Football than talk about their partners' co-workers, whom they have never met. However, with some open, honest discussion, you'll probably find that he just doesn't realize how interesting your day at the office was. I'd recommend waiting until Peyton Manning is winding up to throw a long pass, then getting between Ted and the TV before explaining what you'd eat for lunch if you had your boss' job. That will insure that you have his full attention. If Ted still won't listen, it may be time to consider seeing other people, such as newspaper writers.
......
Send your questions, confessions and love letters to mfarley@register-pajaronian.com.
The sweetest gig around, aside from being married to Jessica Simpson, is being an advice columnist. True, the money and power are not as great as they might be in some other jobs, but in other jobs, you have to have skills and a work ethic, or at least charisma and nice abs.
Not so the advice business. Being an advice writer has all the advantages of being a writer (working in your pajamas, a built-in excuse for substance abuse) with none of the disadvantages (having to do research and give the impression of impartiality). All you do is go with the first thing that pops into your head, admonish the reader about selling themselves short and then point out a truism about human nature. Then you file your article and go find something else to do with the rest of your day.
If you're really good, you can combine the three ingredients in a single sentence. Observe: "It was wrong of you to be rude to your mother-in-law, but all people make mistakes .. even beautiful snowflakes like you." None of it actually means anything, but that's OK, because you're probably not qualified to be an actual life coach. What's important is that the readers can see realistic, complex questions neatly solved and feel good about it. Kind of like "Law & Order," except you can read it with breakfast.
Take this example from Tuesday's "Dear Abby:"
"The short story is, I slept with a married co-worker," writes "Confused and Ashamed in Minnesota." "I paid him to come to my house to hook up my computer, but when he arrived, everything but that happened." She notes that "he is a complicated mess" and that she is "confused by my need to be around this man." She closes by asking for help in "understand(ing) why I did this and com(ing) out of this with some self-respect."
These are all serious concerns. "Confused" clearly needs to work some things out, and anyone that helped her do that would be a hero. But that's not what Abby does, because the readers hate it when you tell them, "Dude, you really need to talk to someone." Believe me, I've tried it before.
Abby says "that kind of high can be intoxicating" (Sex can make you feel good? Shocking!), adding that "you didn't get what you really wanted and you know you sold yourself short. Rather than beating yourself up over this, use it to spur yourself into getting out and meeting eligible men." The solution is apparently not figuring out why you're drawn to unavailable guys; it's soldiering proudly on, emotional limp and all.
Then, just like Emeril Lagasse, Abby kicks it up a notch.
"If you paid him to hook up your computer and all you got was sex .. you know what that makes him." (Matt Farley..s hero, for one thing, but presumably something else, too.) "He owes you a refund, but don..t count on getting one."
Perfect. Abby seizes on the single least important aspect of the letter and makes it the big finish. Don..t worry that "Confused" sounds about as sophisticated as a 16-year-old when she talks about relationships. The important thing is that she gets her $20 back.
In light of all the second-rate guidance out there, I've decided to start giving my own advice. If anyone has questions about work, relationships, automotive repair, higher math, space travel or anything else, I'd be happy to pretend like I know what to do about it. Here's a sample, which I just made up, but could totally be real:
Dear Matt: Sometimes I feel like my boyfriend, "Ted" doesn..t care about what I have to say. When he comes home from work at night, I really like to talk to him about my day, including what I ate for lunch, how unreasonable my boss is and how my co-worker, "Missy," is trying to destroy me. I also like to talk about what we're going to have for dinner for at least 45 minutes and why he didn't answer his cell phone when I called this afternoon for at least 20. Sometimes while I'm speaking, his eyes roll back in his head and he locks himself in the bathroom. While I usually continue talking to him through the door, it makes me sad to think that he might not care about the chicken salad I had for lunch as much as I do. Is it just me, or is he being unfair?
PECKISH IN PAJARO
Dear Peckish: I get a lot of letters about this. Many men may give the impression that they would rather watch Monday Night Football than talk about their partners' co-workers, whom they have never met. However, with some open, honest discussion, you'll probably find that he just doesn't realize how interesting your day at the office was. I'd recommend waiting until Peyton Manning is winding up to throw a long pass, then getting between Ted and the TV before explaining what you'd eat for lunch if you had your boss' job. That will insure that you have his full attention. If Ted still won't listen, it may be time to consider seeing other people, such as newspaper writers.
......
Send your questions, confessions and love letters to mfarley@register-pajaronian.com.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Stomping’s legal, but take it easy on the hair
(From the Register-Pajaronian)
The girls were all wearing shorts when it started to hail.
It was very cold on the sidelines of the University of California, Santa Cruz, rugby pitch. I don’t want to say bitterly so, because that might be exaggerating, but I had on my blue hoodie and favorite knit hat and was still unable to keep from shivering openly as the low morning rainclouds rose and lightened and eventually spat solid ice. My clothes soaked through just as a stiff breeze began whipping hail into my face. Most of the other spectators went scrambling for their cars. I thought, "The only way this could be worse is if I had to wear shorts and go crash into people for an hour."
Which is what the women’s rugby clubs from UCSC and San Jose State University were doing. My friend Emily played for San Jose State and I knew a couple of girls on the home team, and I’d been notified that only a real jerk would miss the game when he lived less than a mile from campus.
Not being a real jerk, I rolled out of bed minutes before kickoff on Saturday morning and drove like a maniac up Bay Street until I found the field.
The turnout was small. Aside from some 30 players, there were maybe six people standing around something that looked vaguely like half of a football field that had been marinated overnight in a mixture of sand, chalk and rainwater. We were high up on the hillside, and I could see clear out into the bay, which looked like a huge crescent of smoked glass. I picked a spot in the bog that I hoped was on the San Jose State side of the field and stood there, trying to look like I wasn’t dismayed at the absence of seating.
The UCSC coach, a big middle-aged guy who seemed to have surpassed solid and was approaching fat, watched me struggle with my sodden hood for a few minutes, then said, "Ah. Good day for it." He grinned and ran a hand through his damp hair. He had no hat or coat.
"It was 70 degrees this time last week," I said. I saw number 15 jog away from a group of girls doing passing drills and waved. Emily gave me a tight smile and a nod. Her movements were easy as she held her dark hair off her forehead so a teammate could tape it away from her face, but she wasn’t talking much, nor was anyone else on the pitch. Both teams looked very eager to either play or get in out of the cold.
"Hah!" the coach said. "Far too warm. This is the stuff. If you like to run early in the day, of course," he added, looking at me reproachfully.
By kickoff, about 20 people had arrived to watch the match. Most of them seemed to be regulars, and they were discussing with great enthusiasm things like tries and scrumming. I had thought I understood the basics of rugby, but after a few minutes of listening to a pair of women argue about a bogus "holdup" penalty in a previous game, I decided it would be best if I just watched and tried to piece the rules together from scratch.
Near as I could tell, there are two main positions in rugby: the, uh, rather stout forwards that wrestle for the ball and the smaller, quicker backs whose job is to snatch it up and run when it pops loose, which it did every minute or so in the wet conditions. That much was as I had expected. What I hadn’t expected was the unapologetic brawling that was part of every play.
I’m no chauvinist when it comes to contact sports. My sister played on a championship soccer team, I’ve dated a couple of moderately serious athletes and one of my best friends was the only girl on our high school wrestling team. My experience is that regular exercise and the odd body block do women at least as much good as they do men. (Incidentally, it’s also my experience that whoever decided it was socially acceptable to wear sports bras in public was a genius.)
But in rugby, when the ballcarrier falls, the play is not over like it is in football. They can still pass, so every time a player slipped in the mud, cleated players from both teams would converge on her and try to punch the ball out while she was down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sport that looked so much like a gang beating in my whole life. Still, the runners somehow kept getting back up.
After almost an hour in the cold, the game ended. I tried not to cheer, since San Jose State had lost badly and my joy could have been misinterpreted. The players were stretching out and talking loud and fast, gradually cycling from smashmouth jocks back to coeds worried about which top to wear at the bar tonight. If Kinzie were around today, I’m convinced he’d be studying that.
Emily was shaking all over when I hugged her. It looked like someone had stepped on her hand and possibly run on down her leg.
"You’re tougher than I thought," I said. "Want my coat?"
"Nope," she said through chattering teeth. "Numb anyway."
I nodded and gave her my hat, without asking this time. She gave me a look but put it on without comment.
As we walked to the parking lot, her sentences got less and less clipped. When we got to her car, she started rummaging around in the back seat, looking for a specific shirt among the several there.
"God, I need a shower. I have to work tonight."
I wondered how many of her coworkers, seeing her smartly dressed and carefully styled, would guess that about noon she’d been lunging through the mud for the pistoning legs of a girl built like a gun safe.
"Here, can you hold my bag?"
The traditionalism of the request, under the Title IX circumstances, made me grin.
"Sure," I said.
The girls were all wearing shorts when it started to hail.
It was very cold on the sidelines of the University of California, Santa Cruz, rugby pitch. I don’t want to say bitterly so, because that might be exaggerating, but I had on my blue hoodie and favorite knit hat and was still unable to keep from shivering openly as the low morning rainclouds rose and lightened and eventually spat solid ice. My clothes soaked through just as a stiff breeze began whipping hail into my face. Most of the other spectators went scrambling for their cars. I thought, "The only way this could be worse is if I had to wear shorts and go crash into people for an hour."
Which is what the women’s rugby clubs from UCSC and San Jose State University were doing. My friend Emily played for San Jose State and I knew a couple of girls on the home team, and I’d been notified that only a real jerk would miss the game when he lived less than a mile from campus.
Not being a real jerk, I rolled out of bed minutes before kickoff on Saturday morning and drove like a maniac up Bay Street until I found the field.
The turnout was small. Aside from some 30 players, there were maybe six people standing around something that looked vaguely like half of a football field that had been marinated overnight in a mixture of sand, chalk and rainwater. We were high up on the hillside, and I could see clear out into the bay, which looked like a huge crescent of smoked glass. I picked a spot in the bog that I hoped was on the San Jose State side of the field and stood there, trying to look like I wasn’t dismayed at the absence of seating.
The UCSC coach, a big middle-aged guy who seemed to have surpassed solid and was approaching fat, watched me struggle with my sodden hood for a few minutes, then said, "Ah. Good day for it." He grinned and ran a hand through his damp hair. He had no hat or coat.
"It was 70 degrees this time last week," I said. I saw number 15 jog away from a group of girls doing passing drills and waved. Emily gave me a tight smile and a nod. Her movements were easy as she held her dark hair off her forehead so a teammate could tape it away from her face, but she wasn’t talking much, nor was anyone else on the pitch. Both teams looked very eager to either play or get in out of the cold.
"Hah!" the coach said. "Far too warm. This is the stuff. If you like to run early in the day, of course," he added, looking at me reproachfully.
By kickoff, about 20 people had arrived to watch the match. Most of them seemed to be regulars, and they were discussing with great enthusiasm things like tries and scrumming. I had thought I understood the basics of rugby, but after a few minutes of listening to a pair of women argue about a bogus "holdup" penalty in a previous game, I decided it would be best if I just watched and tried to piece the rules together from scratch.
Near as I could tell, there are two main positions in rugby: the, uh, rather stout forwards that wrestle for the ball and the smaller, quicker backs whose job is to snatch it up and run when it pops loose, which it did every minute or so in the wet conditions. That much was as I had expected. What I hadn’t expected was the unapologetic brawling that was part of every play.
I’m no chauvinist when it comes to contact sports. My sister played on a championship soccer team, I’ve dated a couple of moderately serious athletes and one of my best friends was the only girl on our high school wrestling team. My experience is that regular exercise and the odd body block do women at least as much good as they do men. (Incidentally, it’s also my experience that whoever decided it was socially acceptable to wear sports bras in public was a genius.)
But in rugby, when the ballcarrier falls, the play is not over like it is in football. They can still pass, so every time a player slipped in the mud, cleated players from both teams would converge on her and try to punch the ball out while she was down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sport that looked so much like a gang beating in my whole life. Still, the runners somehow kept getting back up.
After almost an hour in the cold, the game ended. I tried not to cheer, since San Jose State had lost badly and my joy could have been misinterpreted. The players were stretching out and talking loud and fast, gradually cycling from smashmouth jocks back to coeds worried about which top to wear at the bar tonight. If Kinzie were around today, I’m convinced he’d be studying that.
Emily was shaking all over when I hugged her. It looked like someone had stepped on her hand and possibly run on down her leg.
"You’re tougher than I thought," I said. "Want my coat?"
"Nope," she said through chattering teeth. "Numb anyway."
I nodded and gave her my hat, without asking this time. She gave me a look but put it on without comment.
As we walked to the parking lot, her sentences got less and less clipped. When we got to her car, she started rummaging around in the back seat, looking for a specific shirt among the several there.
"God, I need a shower. I have to work tonight."
I wondered how many of her coworkers, seeing her smartly dressed and carefully styled, would guess that about noon she’d been lunging through the mud for the pistoning legs of a girl built like a gun safe.
"Here, can you hold my bag?"
The traditionalism of the request, under the Title IX circumstances, made me grin.
"Sure," I said.
Thursday, February 2, 2006
Come dinnertime, it’s every man for himself
(From the Register-Pajaronian)
I am a halfway decent cook.
For some reason, that surprises a lot of people. They see a single guy who works nights and whose interests seem to center largely on pushups, video games and mild workplace insubordination, and they think to themselves, "Now there’s a Taco Bell man if I ever saw one."
Not true. I will go straight into that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans until you can’t hear yourself think. Then I’ll chug all but the last half-inch of milk straight from the carton, put it back in the fridge, stack the dishes right in the sink without a rinse and leave your wife begging me for the recipe.
While a lot of the guys I went to school with have turned out to be passable chefs (either because their parents were progressive or because they finally got sick of dorm food), I know that a lot of our peers haven’t. It seems that while the average man’s cooking skills were on the rise for a while, many young guys have once again begun to consider kitchen illiteracy to be almost a point of honor and food prep something best left to women.
I disagree with this view on two counts: Firstly, knowing how to do a bit of everything is the mark of a self-actualized person. Secondly, if I had to rely on girlfriends for my meals, my life would consist of long periods of starvation punctuated by sudden bouts of violent food poisoning that can only be quelled by drinking increasingly obscure microbrews and moving out of the state.
I truly can be trusted to make dinner, though, if you would just stop standing behind me and tell me where you keep the spatulas. I’m brilliant with pasta (carbonara, anyone?) and solid on stir-fry and stews and casseroles that don’t involve more than six or eight ingredients. Good on most slabs of meat, too. Really. Go about your business. I’ll call you when it’s ready.
The thing is, I’m not exactly classically trained, so things sometimes go awry. For instance, I am big on one-dish affairs, which means if I can somehow blend the vegetable into the main course, I will do it whether it makes sense or not, side salads be damned. That’s fine when I’m dining alone, but some people apparently have an aversion to pan-seared ahi á la frozen corn.
I’ll also occasionally make unreasonable substitutions or additions to recipes. I blame this on my father, quite a good cook who is always adding impromptu drizzles of truffle oil or handfuls of chocolate chips to things partway into the process. His stuff always seems to work out, but somehow I always wind up stirring maple syrup in at just the wrong time and spending the rest of the day chipping ash out of the cookware. Should have gone with the molasses after all.
Cooking style is one of those things that seems almost genetic in the way it passes from parent to child, and the fusion of my parents’ methods in me has been something less than seamless.
When I lived at home, my mom would often plan dinners days ahead, paying careful attention to each family member’s nutritional needs as well as the delicate balance of flavors and textures (this on top of teaching high school and authoring a successful series of children’s books). On the appointed day, she’d hurry home from tutoring a disadvantaged student and spend several hours in the kitchen.
Then, about 5:15, my dad would call and say, "Matthew, this is your father. They’re having a sale at the grocery store. I need you to preheat the oven and get out all the marmalade. Have your sister open ‘The Joy of Cooking’ to the section on shark. Your mother isn’t making anything, is she?"
I’d look at the painstakingly crafted turkey tetrazini my mother was just pulling from the oven. Then I’d consider how cool sharks were. Then I’d say, "No, Daddy."
Today, I plan out several big dishes before I go to the store. Everything goes according to plan as I load my cart with steel-cut oatmeal, crisp bunches of spinach and various lean meats. Then I walk past a display and think to myself, "I bet it’s not that hard to deep-fry a banana. I could totally do it. I wonder if you can fry hamburgers. Or burritos. Hmmmm..."
And soon my shopping list has been abandoned in the produce aisle and my cart is filled with things I’ve never made before that require superheated oil or a creme brulée torch to be cooked properly.
Nature or nurture? One never knows with these things. In any case, you may want to stand back. I’m not sure what will happen when I put this on the fire, but with luck, we’ll be having Bananas Foster and blackened halibut for brunch.
I am a halfway decent cook.
For some reason, that surprises a lot of people. They see a single guy who works nights and whose interests seem to center largely on pushups, video games and mild workplace insubordination, and they think to themselves, "Now there’s a Taco Bell man if I ever saw one."
Not true. I will go straight into that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans until you can’t hear yourself think. Then I’ll chug all but the last half-inch of milk straight from the carton, put it back in the fridge, stack the dishes right in the sink without a rinse and leave your wife begging me for the recipe.
While a lot of the guys I went to school with have turned out to be passable chefs (either because their parents were progressive or because they finally got sick of dorm food), I know that a lot of our peers haven’t. It seems that while the average man’s cooking skills were on the rise for a while, many young guys have once again begun to consider kitchen illiteracy to be almost a point of honor and food prep something best left to women.
I disagree with this view on two counts: Firstly, knowing how to do a bit of everything is the mark of a self-actualized person. Secondly, if I had to rely on girlfriends for my meals, my life would consist of long periods of starvation punctuated by sudden bouts of violent food poisoning that can only be quelled by drinking increasingly obscure microbrews and moving out of the state.
I truly can be trusted to make dinner, though, if you would just stop standing behind me and tell me where you keep the spatulas. I’m brilliant with pasta (carbonara, anyone?) and solid on stir-fry and stews and casseroles that don’t involve more than six or eight ingredients. Good on most slabs of meat, too. Really. Go about your business. I’ll call you when it’s ready.
The thing is, I’m not exactly classically trained, so things sometimes go awry. For instance, I am big on one-dish affairs, which means if I can somehow blend the vegetable into the main course, I will do it whether it makes sense or not, side salads be damned. That’s fine when I’m dining alone, but some people apparently have an aversion to pan-seared ahi á la frozen corn.
I’ll also occasionally make unreasonable substitutions or additions to recipes. I blame this on my father, quite a good cook who is always adding impromptu drizzles of truffle oil or handfuls of chocolate chips to things partway into the process. His stuff always seems to work out, but somehow I always wind up stirring maple syrup in at just the wrong time and spending the rest of the day chipping ash out of the cookware. Should have gone with the molasses after all.
Cooking style is one of those things that seems almost genetic in the way it passes from parent to child, and the fusion of my parents’ methods in me has been something less than seamless.
When I lived at home, my mom would often plan dinners days ahead, paying careful attention to each family member’s nutritional needs as well as the delicate balance of flavors and textures (this on top of teaching high school and authoring a successful series of children’s books). On the appointed day, she’d hurry home from tutoring a disadvantaged student and spend several hours in the kitchen.
Then, about 5:15, my dad would call and say, "Matthew, this is your father. They’re having a sale at the grocery store. I need you to preheat the oven and get out all the marmalade. Have your sister open ‘The Joy of Cooking’ to the section on shark. Your mother isn’t making anything, is she?"
I’d look at the painstakingly crafted turkey tetrazini my mother was just pulling from the oven. Then I’d consider how cool sharks were. Then I’d say, "No, Daddy."
Today, I plan out several big dishes before I go to the store. Everything goes according to plan as I load my cart with steel-cut oatmeal, crisp bunches of spinach and various lean meats. Then I walk past a display and think to myself, "I bet it’s not that hard to deep-fry a banana. I could totally do it. I wonder if you can fry hamburgers. Or burritos. Hmmmm..."
And soon my shopping list has been abandoned in the produce aisle and my cart is filled with things I’ve never made before that require superheated oil or a creme brulée torch to be cooked properly.
Nature or nurture? One never knows with these things. In any case, you may want to stand back. I’m not sure what will happen when I put this on the fire, but with luck, we’ll be having Bananas Foster and blackened halibut for brunch.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
A fair trade
(From the Register-Pajaronian)
About three weeks ago, my car started having trouble going uphill. At first, it was just the odd lurch when I’d accelerate away from a stoplight that happened to be on a slope. By last weekend, the clutch could be heard slipping and howling unabashedly at the slightest hint of an incline. A problem, because my car is an automatic, and so had no clutch that I was aware of.
On Monday, I broke down (not literally, thank God) and crippled it into a transmission shop on Soquel Drive. A lot of people feel that auto mechanics are not a trustworthy bunch, but in my experience, they are as honest as anyone else in a profession that often has the customer over a barrel, such as lawyers and heart surgeons. You both know you need what they’ve got, so any bargaining on your part amounts to so much coyness. As the joke goes, we’ve established what you are, madam, now we’re just negotiating a price.
So, with my car suspended over my head on a lift like a geometry textbook in a bully’s hand, I signed the paperwork, which actually detailed a figure substantially less than I had feared, and was told to come back at 2 p.m.
I walked down into Soquel Village and bought some coffee and an egg-and-cheese croissant at the Ugly Mug. After I was finished, it was only 12:30, so I had more coffee and sketched out some column ideas on a brown napkin like the kind we had at my high school. One of the most endearing things about the Ugly Mug is that all the napkin dispensers have stickers on them reading "PAPER=TREES."
I thought about my car and found that I don’t give it enough credit. It’s a stunningly powerful thing, really, and I take it for granted most of the time. Without a car, I’d probably lose my job. My frequent impulsive daytrips to San Jose, Monterey and Half Moon Bay would have to stop, and going to see my friends back home in Reno would be out of the question.
I don’t love my car like some people do. I nearly loved my previous car, a Honda that was totaled when a legally reckless and possibly drunk driver drove into me in an almost perfect T-bone in Sparks, Nev., and blew my Honda across two lanes and up onto a curb. The insurance settlement was somewhere between vaguely insulting and rampage-inciting, leaving me with the unremarkable little Toyota I have now.
But as uninspiring as it is, I have to admit that I have flogged it mercilessly for more than three years and it still fires up each day at the first turn of the key, ready for more. The car carried me to class in Reno for a while, then it moved me to Las Vegas for a magazine internship, where it took a serious sandblasting and inched along Paradise Boulevard behind thousands of lost tourists.
Two months later, it took me back to Reno and ferried me about until I finished school and moved to Santa Cruz. In the interim, it suffered through an appalling number of trips to Lake Tahoe, the Bay Area and the Napa Valley. On a pair of 1,300-mile jaunts to northern Oregon and back, it narrowly kept a jaywalking deer’s six-point rack out of my body cavity at the expense of its own and recovered in time for a second run, only to have to cart its heartbroken captain all the way back to Nevada after an unceremonious (albeit appropriately overcast and drizzly) dumping.
The Toyota has seen passengers so drunk they couldn’t work the seatbelt release. It’s described spectacular circles on more icy parking lots and gamboled broadside into more snow drifts than I care to think about. It sat quietly in the parking lot of the college bar where I used to work while a strawberry blond and I sat less than a foot apart and poured our hearts out as the windshield fogged up against the night air and people waited for each of us somewhere else. We both looked straight out through the opaque safety glass at the back wall of the pharmacy next door the entire time and never at each other. It would have made things worse.
I looked up from my napkin, which was now covered in semi-legible notes. According to a clock on the wall, my car would be ready in half an hour, about as long as it would take me to hike back to the shop. I folded up the napkin and put it in my pocket and pushed my way through the screen door and onto the street. It had been a long trip to get here, and in spite of anything else I could say about it, my car had carried me most of the way. I figured a couple hundred dollars worth of work was the least I could offer in return.
About three weeks ago, my car started having trouble going uphill. At first, it was just the odd lurch when I’d accelerate away from a stoplight that happened to be on a slope. By last weekend, the clutch could be heard slipping and howling unabashedly at the slightest hint of an incline. A problem, because my car is an automatic, and so had no clutch that I was aware of.
On Monday, I broke down (not literally, thank God) and crippled it into a transmission shop on Soquel Drive. A lot of people feel that auto mechanics are not a trustworthy bunch, but in my experience, they are as honest as anyone else in a profession that often has the customer over a barrel, such as lawyers and heart surgeons. You both know you need what they’ve got, so any bargaining on your part amounts to so much coyness. As the joke goes, we’ve established what you are, madam, now we’re just negotiating a price.
So, with my car suspended over my head on a lift like a geometry textbook in a bully’s hand, I signed the paperwork, which actually detailed a figure substantially less than I had feared, and was told to come back at 2 p.m.
I walked down into Soquel Village and bought some coffee and an egg-and-cheese croissant at the Ugly Mug. After I was finished, it was only 12:30, so I had more coffee and sketched out some column ideas on a brown napkin like the kind we had at my high school. One of the most endearing things about the Ugly Mug is that all the napkin dispensers have stickers on them reading "PAPER=TREES."
I thought about my car and found that I don’t give it enough credit. It’s a stunningly powerful thing, really, and I take it for granted most of the time. Without a car, I’d probably lose my job. My frequent impulsive daytrips to San Jose, Monterey and Half Moon Bay would have to stop, and going to see my friends back home in Reno would be out of the question.
I don’t love my car like some people do. I nearly loved my previous car, a Honda that was totaled when a legally reckless and possibly drunk driver drove into me in an almost perfect T-bone in Sparks, Nev., and blew my Honda across two lanes and up onto a curb. The insurance settlement was somewhere between vaguely insulting and rampage-inciting, leaving me with the unremarkable little Toyota I have now.
But as uninspiring as it is, I have to admit that I have flogged it mercilessly for more than three years and it still fires up each day at the first turn of the key, ready for more. The car carried me to class in Reno for a while, then it moved me to Las Vegas for a magazine internship, where it took a serious sandblasting and inched along Paradise Boulevard behind thousands of lost tourists.
Two months later, it took me back to Reno and ferried me about until I finished school and moved to Santa Cruz. In the interim, it suffered through an appalling number of trips to Lake Tahoe, the Bay Area and the Napa Valley. On a pair of 1,300-mile jaunts to northern Oregon and back, it narrowly kept a jaywalking deer’s six-point rack out of my body cavity at the expense of its own and recovered in time for a second run, only to have to cart its heartbroken captain all the way back to Nevada after an unceremonious (albeit appropriately overcast and drizzly) dumping.
The Toyota has seen passengers so drunk they couldn’t work the seatbelt release. It’s described spectacular circles on more icy parking lots and gamboled broadside into more snow drifts than I care to think about. It sat quietly in the parking lot of the college bar where I used to work while a strawberry blond and I sat less than a foot apart and poured our hearts out as the windshield fogged up against the night air and people waited for each of us somewhere else. We both looked straight out through the opaque safety glass at the back wall of the pharmacy next door the entire time and never at each other. It would have made things worse.
I looked up from my napkin, which was now covered in semi-legible notes. According to a clock on the wall, my car would be ready in half an hour, about as long as it would take me to hike back to the shop. I folded up the napkin and put it in my pocket and pushed my way through the screen door and onto the street. It had been a long trip to get here, and in spite of anything else I could say about it, my car had carried me most of the way. I figured a couple hundred dollars worth of work was the least I could offer in return.
Thursday, January 5, 2006
Paris Hilton is a control freak, or how I spent my winter break
"That," Stephanie said, "might be the ugliest sweatshirt I’ve ever seen."
There were eight of us sitting around an intricate wicker table on a patio at the Wynn casino in Las Vegas. The chairs and lounges were also made from dense spools of wicker with big white cushions and were almost deep enough to stretch out on, so the group’s posture ranged from perching to sprawling. I had some coffee.
To my left, a broad reflecting pool with nude statues and huge bushy trees scattered around it led up to a textured wall a few hundred feet across with water streaming down its face. On my right were thick windows leading into boutiques and everyone was looking through one of them at a young guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt with a sparkling death’s head design on the back.
I didn’t think the gems were real diamonds, but they could have been, because the guy had walked in with Paris Hilton. They were carefully ignoring each other, but every time one of them rolled their eyes and gazed disinterestedly at something, the other would steal a furtive glance before resuming casting hopelessly about for something, anything, that didn’t just bore the hell out of them like everything else in this backwater town. Showing affection is the first step toward giving up control, I guess.
I was quietly pleased to note that Paris looked about like I’d expected and that she really did not have a very pretty face, a position I’ve maintained for several years now. Of course, she could probably have bought my love, but it would have taken more than a $1,000 hoodie with Ghost Rider on the back.
She didn’t rush outside and make an offer, so I drank some coffee and lounged back on the lounge and talked. I didn’t have a lot to say at the moment, but fortunately that’s one of the last things I consider before joining a conversation. After a bit, I realized that, with the exception of Stephanie and my buddy Ray, I hadn’t known anyone at the table more than three days and I already liked them. I wondered if that meant I was giving up control. Paris probably wouldn’t approve. I decided I could live with that.
It was a little overcast, cool for Vegas but sultry for most places, and a faint breeze made me glad there was a heat lamp above us. One of the girls was drinking a White Russian and I watched as thin veins of cream ran down through the Kahlua underneath. During a pause in conversation, I noticed that she was looking at me with her dark eyes slightly narrowed and the smallest of creases in her forehead, like she was trying to decide if I was sort of cute or sort of annoying. It seemed like a lot of people had been looking at me like that on this trip. I assumed the best and finished my coffee.
Later, we all went back to Stephanie’s house, where most of us were staying, to change clothes before we went to an Irish bar for a drink. We had to take turns in the bathrooms and got in each other’s way in the kitchen and had to jostle, bargain and wrestle to fit everyone into the car.
We piled out in front of McMullan’s pub and ambled inside. They didn’t have a table long enough for all of us, so we sat at the bar and took up most of its L shape.
As the bartender pulled taps and surreptitiously checked his hair in the mirror, it dawned on me that I had lived alone for four years and had never had company for more than a week at a time.
When I’d first let a room by myself, it had been because I was sick of racing for the shower every morning and finding other people’s underwear in the refrigerator when I got home from work. Now I was getting downright misty about it. I’d forgotten that living with someone not only makes you the first in line to give them a nice deep guillotine choke when they finish off the cereal without for Christ’s sake putting it on the shopping list, it also makes you de facto friends. As if you needed an excuse.
We had to lean way into the bar to get everyone’s glass involved in the toast, but no one complained. Stephanie and her boyfriend argued softly with big grins on their faces, which were very close together. Ray gestured emphatically as he explained the proper role of government in America to a tall guy from Chicago. The girls from New Jersey played up their accents and laughed. The girl with dark eyes sipped her Disaronno on the rocks and looked over at me. I gulped the head off the top of my Harp draft and smiled.
There were eight of us sitting around an intricate wicker table on a patio at the Wynn casino in Las Vegas. The chairs and lounges were also made from dense spools of wicker with big white cushions and were almost deep enough to stretch out on, so the group’s posture ranged from perching to sprawling. I had some coffee.
To my left, a broad reflecting pool with nude statues and huge bushy trees scattered around it led up to a textured wall a few hundred feet across with water streaming down its face. On my right were thick windows leading into boutiques and everyone was looking through one of them at a young guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt with a sparkling death’s head design on the back.
I didn’t think the gems were real diamonds, but they could have been, because the guy had walked in with Paris Hilton. They were carefully ignoring each other, but every time one of them rolled their eyes and gazed disinterestedly at something, the other would steal a furtive glance before resuming casting hopelessly about for something, anything, that didn’t just bore the hell out of them like everything else in this backwater town. Showing affection is the first step toward giving up control, I guess.
I was quietly pleased to note that Paris looked about like I’d expected and that she really did not have a very pretty face, a position I’ve maintained for several years now. Of course, she could probably have bought my love, but it would have taken more than a $1,000 hoodie with Ghost Rider on the back.
She didn’t rush outside and make an offer, so I drank some coffee and lounged back on the lounge and talked. I didn’t have a lot to say at the moment, but fortunately that’s one of the last things I consider before joining a conversation. After a bit, I realized that, with the exception of Stephanie and my buddy Ray, I hadn’t known anyone at the table more than three days and I already liked them. I wondered if that meant I was giving up control. Paris probably wouldn’t approve. I decided I could live with that.
It was a little overcast, cool for Vegas but sultry for most places, and a faint breeze made me glad there was a heat lamp above us. One of the girls was drinking a White Russian and I watched as thin veins of cream ran down through the Kahlua underneath. During a pause in conversation, I noticed that she was looking at me with her dark eyes slightly narrowed and the smallest of creases in her forehead, like she was trying to decide if I was sort of cute or sort of annoying. It seemed like a lot of people had been looking at me like that on this trip. I assumed the best and finished my coffee.
Later, we all went back to Stephanie’s house, where most of us were staying, to change clothes before we went to an Irish bar for a drink. We had to take turns in the bathrooms and got in each other’s way in the kitchen and had to jostle, bargain and wrestle to fit everyone into the car.
We piled out in front of McMullan’s pub and ambled inside. They didn’t have a table long enough for all of us, so we sat at the bar and took up most of its L shape.
As the bartender pulled taps and surreptitiously checked his hair in the mirror, it dawned on me that I had lived alone for four years and had never had company for more than a week at a time.
When I’d first let a room by myself, it had been because I was sick of racing for the shower every morning and finding other people’s underwear in the refrigerator when I got home from work. Now I was getting downright misty about it. I’d forgotten that living with someone not only makes you the first in line to give them a nice deep guillotine choke when they finish off the cereal without for Christ’s sake putting it on the shopping list, it also makes you de facto friends. As if you needed an excuse.
We had to lean way into the bar to get everyone’s glass involved in the toast, but no one complained. Stephanie and her boyfriend argued softly with big grins on their faces, which were very close together. Ray gestured emphatically as he explained the proper role of government in America to a tall guy from Chicago. The girls from New Jersey played up their accents and laughed. The girl with dark eyes sipped her Disaronno on the rocks and looked over at me. I gulped the head off the top of my Harp draft and smiled.
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