Important Phone Care Note

From the user's manual for my fancy-ass new Razr: "Don't try to dry your phone in a microwave oven."

I'd like to meet the person who prompted this warning.

Thanks, Part 2

San Gimignano. Yeah, it's like that.

After I left Slovenia, I went by train to Florence, where Monique fetched me from Santa Maria Novella. My train ride--which required a transfer in Mestre--more or less encapsulated the Italian portion of my vacation as far as language went: I could more or less sort of vaguely kind of understood what was said to me ("Is that seat free?") and could more or less sort of vaguely kind of stammer and/or gesture something back, but if the interaction required me to use a verb, forget it. I don't do Italian verbs.

Luckily for me, Monique does, and did, which saved me a number of blank, grinning stares (I have no idea what you're saying, sir, but I can smile and nod) and ensured that we were able to do things like eat, rent a car, and secure housing when needed. She also put up with my mockery of "interesting" historical facts, braved the experience of driving standard not only on Italian motorways but also into the zonas pedonales of San Gimignano and Siena (not--I repeat, NOT--recommended), gamely tagged along on various wine tasting excursions, did the whole sightseeing thing in Tuscany even after a night of violent illness and general sleeplessness, and was good enough to celebrate my small linguistic successes (such as ordering a panino and purchasing gelato--again, sans verbs).

So thanks, Monique, for housing me, and skillfully operating that stovetop coffee maker, and pleading our case to the carabiniero in Siena, and translating Con Air for me a second time, and basically saving me from being one of the tourists I tried so hard to avoid. Mille grazie! (For the record, that's one of approximately twenty-seven things I know how to say in Italian; next trip I'm upping that count to at least forty-three.)

For Mike Zarkin, Wherever I May Find Him

It started like this: Val went on MySpace to look at Isaac's music page (or something) and somehow managed to find the page of someone who looked ridiculously like Bryan O'Neill, with whom we'd gone to high school and who Val had dated for a while roundabouts junior year. The page didn't use the creator's real name, though, so she showed it to me to get my take on whether it was actually Bry or not. (My assessment: yes. Yes it is.)

I then said, well, maybe he's also on Friendster and we can gather some additional clues. So I signed in and we searched for profiles that included "East Lyme." Bryan wasn't among them, but we did find a few other familiar faces, including Tracy, who had managed to find me and make me a friend sometime last year. (Are you following this? Good.)

So we looked at Tracy's page, and, this being the point of Friendster, looked at Tracy's friends--one of whom appeared, at least in cyberland, cute and charming in that delightful tallskinnyalternaboy way that I'm such a sucker for. We clicked through his photos and read his profile before signing off for the night.

I was surprised the next day to find notice in my Inbox of a message from this boy waiting for me at Friendster. He, of course, could see via the annoyingly addictive Who's Viewed Me that I'd looked at his profile, and he began his message, "Hello friend of Tracy." I replied. He replied to my reply. Continue that line.

He mentioned in one of his notes having just visited the source of our connection (i.e., the aforementioned Tracy), which led me to wonder how she's doing and where she is, and, in that moment of curiosity, to crack open my copy of the 1992 East Lyme High School Valhalla to see if she had signed it (no, at least not from what I could tell), and then to do a quick browse of photos and messages scribbled across pages.

And here's where Mike Zarkin comes in: there among the inscriptions from friends and classmates and acquaintances was a message from Mike, who, as I recall, was one of the school's resident conservatives, and a person with whom I frequently butted heads. We had many of the same classes, which gave us ample time to drive each other nuts, me the President of the ELHS Chapter of Amnesty International and Mike the one member of Don Bodwell's Poli Sci class who would stick up for the Republicans.

This is what he wrote:

Em,
Battling with you for the past four years of high school history and English has been great. It's always been a pleasure having you for a friend, even if we don't see eye-to-eye. I wish you all the best for the future, and I'm sure you'll go far. May you always see a thousand reasons to rejoice.
Love,
Mike Zarkin

Maybe it's PMS, or the jumble of emotions that always comes from looking backwards, or wondering whether the bits and pieces we heard about Mike after graduation (a tough time at college, a difficult exit from the closet, a return to East Lyme) were true, or some combination of the above, but reading his note made me sniffly.

I got sniffly because although one should never read too much into yearbook scribblings, I do believe that there was sincere benevolence in his words, and I can only hope (though I sort of doubt) that I had the maturity to write something even half as kind in his book.

I got sniffly because something catches in my throat when I wonder who and what I'd find if I went to one of my high school reunions--and who and what I wouldn't.

I got sniffly, Mike Zarkin, because although I've dodged my share of life's slings and arrows, I'm still amazed at all I have to be grateful: friends and family who love me fiercely, the chance to traipse around the globe, a strong and growing business, a gift with words, an intriguing boy in Portland, more goodness than I can really comprehend.

I still see a thousand reasons to rejoice, Mike, and wherever you are, I hope you do, too.

Thanks, Part 1

John, Adam, and Magda on Kanin

I recently returned from a two-week jaunt in Europe, the first portion of which I spent in Slovenia with my friend John, his ass-kickin' wife Magda, and their unspeakably cute son Adam. J and I had blazed a trail across much of southern Europe in 2002, and he was kind enough to offer to serve as host/interpreter/tour guide/source of entertainment this time around, too.

A damn good thing, too, as there's simply no way I would've survived in Slovenia without la famille Stephens. Not only don't I speak the language (beyond words which would allow me to call for ice cream, a stroller, an elephant, wine, or help), I don't drive standard, which would put me at the mercy of public transport, a sketchy proposition given my aforementioned lack of language skills. I also would've had to fend for myself in terms of shelter and foodstuffs, not to mention price computations (how many tolars is too many tolars?), sightseeing, and general cultural competence.

So J and M, try to imagine (can you imagine?) how grateful I am to you for your willingness to fetch me from Malpensa, ferry me back across the border, house me, feed me, drive me around the country, speak for me, entertain me, and generally welcome me into your home as if I well and truly belonged there. Thanks for being so unstoppably generous. I hope someday you'll bring the brood to SF/Vancouver and I'll be able to even begin to return the favor.

And to you, sweet little Adam, thanks for being the most charming and adorable howler monkey an auntie could ask for. I miss you to bits and pieces.

A thought

My upcoming international air travel has set a tiny, tiny seed of worry in my belly. I mean, the news from the world of aviation lately is not good; if it's not potentially deadly toiletries, it's an odd change to runway patterning in Kentucky that ends in disaster. J assures me that the hoo-ha over flying is much more subdued in the rest of Europe than it is in the UK, let alone the US, and adds that he's sure my flight from Frankfurt to Milan will be wildly uneventful. Fingers crossed, then, for the SFO-Chicago and Chicago-Frankfurt portions of my journey.

Anyway, I read a quote in yesterday's Times business section from some travelling businessman or other in which he said, essentially, that if airlines were ever to ban the use of laptops and other electronics on board, he'd need to be forcibly sedated in order to fly. This led me to think about the preponderance of laptops on any given flight, a good number of which must surely be either Dells or Macs. Given the recent spate of battery woes with both companies' machines, does it not follow that the probabilty of a laptop bursting into flames due to a faulty battery would be far greater than the probability of my (or anyone else's) shampoo or toothpaste serving as the base of an explosive?

Just a thought.

WebTV

A few weekends back, the founders of WebTV threw a 10th anniversary/reunion party for all of the company's original employees. It was amazing to see so many people who were once part of my everyday life, and to cast back to those years when the job was still really fun (our frequent complaining aside).

The day after the party, I started to do some (very soft) math, and realized that I can trace about 80% of my Bay Area friends (still here or far-flung) back to WebTV. Off the top of my head: Otis, Jed, DaveG, Jenney, Josh, another Josh, Geoff, another Geoff, Jeff, Eric, Renee, Erfert, Melissa, another Eric, yet another Eric, Stephen, Elissa, Kumi, Shayne, Daryl, Charlie, Sai, Sloo, Andy, Monica, Marcus, Joe, Jos, Chris, Scott, Adam, Deb.... No other aspect of my life--not childhood, not Vassar, not IFFCON, not NAPO--has netted me such a take.

Clearly, I had little enough love for what the company had become by June 2004 (which is to say, indistinguishable from the rest of Microsoft) to want out, and to make good on that desire. But it bears remembering that once upon a time, we got free lunch every Friday, and had knock-down, drag-out fun parties, and spent endless hours with our colleagues outside of the office by choice, and managed to hammer together a family of sorts here in SF that would become something so much greater than we imagined it would.

So thanks be to Steve, Phil, and Bruce. Thanks be to Braintrust for luring so many overeducated kids down to Palo Alto to answer phones or write e-mail. And thanks be to the dozens and dozens of people (you know who you are) who made the job what it was, and made it more than it might otherwise have been. In retrospect, I feel impossibly lucky to have been part of it all.

My vote for "Most Accurate Sound of Human Anguish, Troubador/Emo Category"

So, I know that Elliott Smith's "From a Basement on a Hill" was released posthumously, and may well have contained material that he never intended the world to hear. I also know there was (and may still be) some debate as to whether the knife-to-the-heart that did him in was self-administered or seen to by a second party.

But still: if there's any doubt that the poor guy was suffering some intense anguish, romantic or otherwise, before his demise, let a few listens to "Twilight" (off the aforementioned album) put it to rest.

The first couple of times my iPod shuffled the song to my attention, I thought, Sure is quiet (as well as Wonder if those are real crickets). Then it came into my ears during a run, and I actually listened to the lyrics. And damn if the combination of the dirge-like pace of the song, Smith's barely-above-a-whisper singing, and the words coming out of his mouth doesn't make for what might be one of the most angst-filled tunes ever.

There are countless downbeat songs out there, of course. (Did not master songster Billy Ocean once declare, "There'll be sad songs/to make you cry"?) But few of them sound like they've been pulled directly and painfully from someone's gut, and fewer still seem to be a desperate (if failing) attempt on the singer's part to stay on the good side of survival. "Twilight" does.

Elliott sings, "Because your candle burns too bright/Well, I almost forgot it was twilight./Even if I think that you are right/Well, I'm tired of being down; I got no fight." You can actually hear the desperate sadness, the achy giving up in his voice. I can't listen to the song now without thinking of it as a sort of unanswerable (and unanswered) plea, or a psalm of regret.

What you make of it

A number of factors lately (reading Flow, sighingly putting the whole K affair behind me, working with a client whose anger and sense that the world is against him seem to be the driving forces in his life, etc.) have increased my belief in the idea that, to a large extent, life is what you make of it.

That's an overly simplistic statement, to be sure, and you're free to lob at it whatever critical words you see fit, but in the end, it holds. There are so many things that are wildly beyond our control in life that in order to live with any sense of balance, purpose, and resilience, we really have to learn how to dust off our knees after a fall and get up again.

I spent a good chunk of the needs assessment I did with my client last night refuting (gently and constructively) his outright and implied claims that he's something of a helpless victim of the vagaries of his week. Normally, I don't go quite so heavy on the philosophical debating with clients, but this time I did--maybe because I was tired and my usual sense of restraint fell by the wayside, but more likely because any other recommendation I might make to him would be useless if he didn't let go of the world-against-me thing he seemed to be holding like a shield. I so strongly wanted him to start to understand that he has so much more power than he thinks he does to change what chafes.

At some point, I'm sure, I'll have to refer myself back to this post when I'm feeling like the rug's been pulled out from under me for the millionth time, or when I stumble upon a week filled with too many little glitches to deal with calmly and smoothly. But since last Thursday, when I officially watched something I'd been enjoying so much slip through my fingers, I've been more aware than ever that I can choose what to do here: flail and fight and rue what's wrong or get up and go on and find what's right.

I don't even have to think twice about it.

Vacated

For a week, I spent the better part of each day in shorts, a tank top, and flip flops, and the light sweaters I carted everywhere with me when I went out came to seem ridiculous for their unnecessity. I basked in my big and crazy family--parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmother--saw places I love, swam in the (still sort of cold) ocean, ate ludicrous foodstuffs, and generally forgot all that sucked here the week before I left.

But, of course, you can only stay blissfully away for so long, and last night I came home to a phone still on the fritz (small annoyance, but an enduring one), a To Do list that grew literally by the minute, the sinking (though not surprising) understanding that the days ahead must involve dealing with the K weirdness that cropped up before I left, and the even sinking-er sense that the chance of things turning out well on that front are anorexically slim.

As I cruised along the people mover in the United terminal as I headed out of town last Tuesday, something in me that had been unsettled and shakingly sad in the previous days started to calm, and I thought, Travel is a balm, always. And for me it is: regardless of where I go, a change in perspective almost always makes me feel whole again, at least for a while.

What I've yet to master, though, is how to come back home and keep hold of that wholeness, rather than splitting up again into so many parts. I don't know how to go about that, and I'm too busy to figure it out. So for now I can only do the next best thing: make it through the week, hope for some moments (if not hours or sweetly impossible days) of clarity, and look hungrily toward Europe in September.

Ugh

Do not add to the list of Ways I Enjoy Being Woken up at 2.30 a.m. "wrenching stomach pain, necessitating fetal positioning on the bathroom floor, which reminds me that I should spring for a new bathmat." What socked me so hard I can't say for sure, as last night was a laughably calm one that featured little more than perusal of last Sunday's paper and an 11 p.m. bedtime.

It must've been something I ate (mustn't it?), because I was tired but otherwise fine for the rest of the day yesterday, and the last wine to pass my lips did so circa 11.55 p.m. on Thursday. But cause be damned: I only know that dragging my sorry self around today has made me appreciate more than ever the fact that I'm normally functional, and can do things like finish an entire cup of Blue Bottle coffee or eat anything at all without fearing an unpleasant return.

Granted, being kicked on my ass has meant that I've essentially had a free pass to recline on the couch for hours with all but the merest soupcon of guilt, and it means I can return to that position shortly in the name of full recuperation, but still. I'm desperate to believe that I'll wake up tomorrow and this will all have passed, that my innards will settle down, that the thought of cheese or a burrito or chocolate or even a plum will not immediately send my stomach upside down. Here's hoping for a swift return to the gastrointestinally living.

Neko, live

Jenn and I went to see Neko Case last night at Bimbo's, and she didn't disappoint. I loved her when I saw here there last fall with the New Pornographers, but it goes without saying that there's a very different vibe to her solo stuff. Not having heard Neko sing before, Jenn turned to me after the second song and said, "Oh my god. I'm mad at so many people now for not making me listen to her earlier." I could only smile, pat her arm, and say, "Well, now you know."

Though I would've given a limb (well, ok, a toe or two) to hear "South Tacoma Way," the set list was impressive nonetheless:

A Widow's Toast
Favorite [immediate goose bumps]
If You Knew
Set Out Running
Star Witness
Dirty Knife [even creepier live]
I Wish I Was the Moon [momentary lapse into sniffles]
The Tigers Have Spoken
Maybe Sparrow
Margaret vs. Pauline
Buckets of Rain
Deep Red Bells
Hex
That Teenage Feeling
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
[something about Kansas and Utah, evidently by Randy Newman]
Furnace Room Lullaby
Hold On, Hold On
In California
I'll Be Around
Lady Pilot
[something about a fathom unknown by Shelby Lynne]
[Wondering when you'll come visit me]
John Saw That Number

(You can hear a decent approximation of a live Neko show at NPR's All Songs Considered, which features a show recorded in DC earlier this year. The whole R. Kelly riff may be one of the funniest inter-song rambles ever.)

Laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was warm

The two stunning days (and nights, even) of hot, sunny, actual summer-like weather we had last week were delicious and wonderful--and, of course, are now long gone. Yesterday morning was bright and blue but windy. We left the house in layers, and even before we'd gone the two blocks to Citizen Cake I was buttoning my jacket up to the collar.

It's just in me, I think, to ache for a summer that involves things like temperatures above the low 70s and the ability to wear sleeveless shirts and that wonderous and mystical thing called a warm breeze (rather than a pummeling arctic blast). Summer #10 here in San Francisco and still I chafe at having to put on another sweater when the night turns cold or forge head down through the wind tunnels that are the streets of the city.

So those sweet, rare days of heat, unadulterated sunshine, sticky skin, and exposed limbs are as precious as ever. Here's hoping for at least a few more of them before we ooze into fall a few months down the line.

Nightswimming

Jenney, Mike (Otis), Shayne, and Em post-dip; Ocean Beach, San Francisco, September 1999

Late summer 1999 was a rough season. Jos had died (unexpectedly, tragically, heart-wrenchingly) in August, the bloom was long off the rose as far as work was concerned, and I had stumbled through one too many impossible romantic relationship-type-things over the course of a few months.

Then we found out that DaveG was moving back to Baltimore, and whatever torn seams may have started to mend in my little world threatened to tear again. I didn't know at the time that his departure would be the first of many in the years to come; I only knew that it meant a quiet end to the particular flavor and feel and flow of the everyday that I'd grown used to.

His leaving meant no more Em-DaveG-Otis show at work and on weekends (not the SF version, at least), no more late-night donut football, no more marathon sessions at Mario's, no more of so much that we had come to take as a given. It was a crappy thing to contemplate.

There were a number of send-offs, including a particularly besotted evening at Dalva and Ti Couz, but the most memorable by far was the cable car on wheels party. Credit (or blame) for the idea goes to Dave's friend Will, who made sure we were all sufficiently plied with drinks both beforehand and onboard so we wouldn't protest too loudly about how riding on a cable car on wheels was such a touristy thing to do, and so far beneath the overeducated and erudite 20-somethings we were at the time.

Will's plan worked: we didn't protest. In fact, we had a great time. The sequence of the evening blurred somewhat between the Golden Gate Bridge and Twin Peaks, but at some point we stopped at both the Cliff House and the Beach Chalet (which, for the non-San Franciscans, are about a quarter of a mile apart overlooking Ocean Beach). At the former site, a spilled drink (whose? how?) led to sticky hands, which I then insisted we wash off not in the restrooms at the Beach Chalet but instead in the ocean.

How it happened that I convinced Jenney, Mike, Shayne, and Daryl to join me in this ridiculous plan, I can't say. Nor do I know anymore what possessed us to decide that a swim would be a fine idea--but we decided precisely that, and as it was still nominally summer and we were in San Francisco, we were dressed in warm and copious layers. The only option, of course, would be to take them all off.

So we did, and went running into the surf, shouting to each other across the waves and straining to see fellow bobbing heads in the (mercifully dim) moonlight. The water was, unsurprisingly, freezing, but I coaxed myself through the cold, thinking, This is for Jos, who did so much in so little time. Thinking, Let this be my new mantra: the more you live, the less you die. Thinking, Your mantra is from an ad for snowboards. Thinking, Well, what the hell.

Thinking thoughts I couldn't even fully form: What I know is changing, always. Something about endings, beginnings, letting go, dammit this water is cold, time for another beer.

We shivered ourselves back onto the beach, back into our clothes (pausing for a photo, of course), back onto the cable car on wheels, where our fellow passengers looked at us in disbelief. Snapshots from the rest of the evening show us grinning hugely, as if we had been snapped into pure happiness for a while by our bare, icy dip.

That swim, of course, didn't change the fact that Dave soon left--or that Shayne, Daryl, Jenney, Jed, Otis, and so many others would eventually follow. Nor did it kick my life in another direction, or bring me astounding clarity about things that seemed murky, or stitch up seams that were splitting.

All it did was net me a funny photo, a good party story, and the realization that sometimes there's nothing more worth doing than streaking boisterously into the unknown.

Walking in LA

Val and I went down to LA last weekend for a posh hotel evaluation, and when we weren't running through various tasks designed to test the reaction impulses of the hotel staff, we spent some time exploring the city.

We drove out to Santa Monica and Venice on Wednesday morning, strolled along Abbot Kinney Boulevard and sat in the sun in the courtyard of a sweet little cafe, drinking iced latte and tea and making a breakfast of tiny little French macaroons. Venice may be a hotbed of freaks, but we saw precisely none. Perhaps they're confined to the beach and the boardwalk, blocks and blocks away from the sleekly designed shops, offices, and restaurants that line Abbot Kinney and Main. Which was fine with us, as the Haight is always at our disposal should we feel the need for some hippie time; on the day in question, we did not.

The afternoon unfurled poolside (really, a hell of a way to while away the hours, and one I recommend, especially if a fancy lunch and a glass of rose are involved), and in the early evening (before the required visit to the lounge for the required two rounds of drinks), we turned ourselves out onto the streets of West Hollywood to forage for dinner.

We walked. We walked as briefly as possible down Sunset, then broke off onto a side street, which was impossibly, unexpectedly tree-lined, quiet, warm, sweet-smelling, and generally pleasant. We went quite a way, picking up La Cienega partway, which meant an end to the tree-lined-ness and all, but made up for it on the way back by avoiding major roads altogether.

On Orlando, I turned to Val and said, "You know, this lulls me into thinking that LA wouldn't be such a bad place to live." She concurred, and we went on to discuss the odd realization that we had yet to see or smell the grimy streets we're so used to at home. How could LA be so clean, so pleasant, so free of urine-stained sidewalks?

We went downtown the next day and found our answer: it isn't. As soon as we stepped out of the parking garage where we'd left our behemoth rental car and into the sunlight, we felt right at home. The sidewalks had that familiar patina of you-don't-want-to-know. We discovered that LA does indeed have a homeless population. The trees and explosively beautiful flowers and general sense of sweet SoCal charm we'd seen the night before were gone, replaced by concrete and shabby storefronts and odd smells. We could only smile and say jokingly, Ah, at last.

So we drove (of course, though it was a distance of a few blocks) to Little Tokyo, then got back in the car and headed once more for Santa Monica, passing what certainly seemed like the dirtiest and most run-down of the dirty and run-down on our way out of downtown. We had lunch in a cute, tiny cafe we'd seen the day before, then oozed into traffic to get to the airport and left all of LA behind.

In Which Our Heroine Narrowly Avoids Offending Her Fellow Californians

Having made my car a mobile advertisement by slapping some magnetic signs on the sides, I figured I'd step things up a notch by getting a vanity plate with something resembling my business name on it. I even picked out the special environmental plate, the extra fees from which would have benefitted eco-charities throughout the state.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I opened a letter from the DMV last week to discover that my request had been denied, because, and I quote, "California Vehicle Code, Section 5105(a), states, we must refuse any license plate configuration which carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency, or which may be misleading to some of our citizens."

The potentially offensive message I was petitioning to present? ORGLIFE. I have to assume here that the problem lies with the "org," which evidently brings to mind not "organized" (as I had hoped) or "organic" (despite our existence in what may well be the capital of same) or "organism" but "orgasm." So I guess there seemed to be a danger that my fellow Californians might see my tooling around in my very, very sexy '93 Toyota Corolla and assume that I was peddling unspeakable acts.

And, of course, we wouldn't want that, so I remain a randomly generated sequence of numbers and letters on a plain California plate, and the easily offended in the state can continue to frequent our highways and byways without fear.

Rize

My desire to do Rize justice by writing something even remotely smart or insightful about it is counterbalanced by my creeping exhaustion, the result of snapping awake shortly after 4 this morning and generally failing pathetically to fall back asleep. My eyes are burning and my fingers keep hitting the wrong keys and my brain pretty much shut off about an hour ago, but something has to be said about this film.

What saves Rize from being overwhelmingly feel-good treacle on the one hand or utter darkness on the other is both the believable humanity of its subjects and the excellent crafting of the film. The kids and young adults at the movie's core are determined to escape the bleak crappiness of what could be their fates as blacks in LA's less desirable neighborhoods not by means of drugs or gangs or violence but through an intensely physical form of dance.

It's amazing and uplifting to see them move; I often found myself watching with my mouth agape. They define themselves both by what they are--clowns/krumpers--and by what they're not--gangbangers, addicts, the parents who far too often let them down. For much of the film, it's possible to believe that something in the world is opening up to these dancers.

But Dave LaChappelle, the filmmaker, takes extreme care to temper that belief somewhat with proof that even the most transportive physical experience can't lift you entirely out of the mud. There's enough disappointment and senseless loss and heartache to bring you back from your music- and movement-fuelled high and remind you where the film is taking place.

Still, though, there is a sense of something unquashably hopeful here, as well as a familiar sense of awe at what amazing and creative and utterly new things can come from the worst of human experience. Just try to sit through the long, gorgeous, sunny final scene and reach the credits with dry eyes.

Musical Memory Lane

In what's become something of an annual event, I've spent a good chunk of today going through my cd's, copying to iTunes those that aren't there already, and posting the discs for sale on Amazon. As I'm no longer able to play cd's on anything but my laptop, I figure I should digitize all the music I want to keep and pass the originals along.

(Selling the discs is the lead-in to a complex justification of purchasing a 30G iPod to replace my trusty but out-of-space Mini, but that's a story for another day.)

It's fascinating to listen to some of this stuff again, especially since so many of these discs remind me acutely of specific times and places and people. That's a wildly unoriginal thing to say, I know, but it's also true. Poi Dog Pondering basically is Ian and Dave and 1990. Drivin' n' Cryin's Mystery Road so brings me back to countless hours of hanging out with Jeff and Chris in my room circa ninth grade that I can see the polka dotted wallpaper and can feel the eternally uncomfortable squishy red chair. And (What's the Story) Morning Glory? puts in my head a sharply clear picture of Ry and I editing our Hershey film in the basement of New England building late in 1995.

I feel like I experience this musical memory lane thing fairly often, so I should be beyond the point at which I'm at all surprised by it. But I remain sort of amazed by the extent to which my brain has, um, a mind of its own when it comes to music: with the first few notes of a song, my head just goes where it will, dredging up random bits and pieces from within itself that I doubt I'd ever come across again otherwise.

So Dookie is hours by the pool in Niantic with my first Discman--the kind you had to keep absolutely still and level at all times--and Ten is lying in the sun on Heather's floor in Seattle in March of 1992 and Murmur is spring break with G&P in Florida and all of it is worlds away, and right here with me.

Why He Hates Canadians

Having recently finished Will Ferguson's Why I Hate Canadians, I can sum the book up thus: he doesn't.

Oh, sure, he has some bitter things to say about separatist Quebecois, and cringes at the evident scourge that is general Canadian niceness, and relentlessly mocks Farley Mowat, and gets understandably pissy at those who rail against "hypenated Canadian identities" (e.g., Chinese-Canadian). But in the end, his real venom seems to be reserved for--wait for it--American Patriots.

Now, my grasp of American history is, by this point, fairly pathetic, and far be it from me to put up much of a defense of my country's oft-wrongheaded ways, but really? The Patriots? I suppose it would be anathema to American public school history class curricula to present a sympathetic view of the Loyalists, and perhaps that's why Ferguson's portrait of them seems so bizarrely soft, so weirdly one-sided. All I know is that reading his alternative view of the American Revolution raised in me the unusual desire to stand up against the Canadian view of things.

Why the vitriol? Is it because the Patriots were all truly the rich, misguided, raving assholes Ferguson makes them out to be, or is it because decrying the Revolutionaries almost automatically involves celebrating the Loyalists, who, not coincidentally, became some of the first European Canadians? Could it be that Ferguson doth protest too much?

I found the chapter on Loyalists-cum-Canadians especially irksome and amusing in light of the fact that it's closely followed by a chapter called "America Is Sexy," in which Ferguson outlines what he calls "the...five (5) axiomatic propositions of Canadian Nationalism vis-a-vis the Americans:

1. Boy, we hate Americans.
2. We really do.
3. Really.
4. I'm not kidding. We really hate them.
5. So how come they never pay us any attention?"
   

Another insightful Canadian shared something similar with me several years back, and I've always found it funny because it seems so painfully true. We Americans are apparently like the junior high school boys to Canadians' mature and sweet tween girls: they think we're overly loud and obnoxious and full of ourselves and immature and impoolite and sometimes kind of jerk-like and...hey! Hey! How come they won't sit at our lunch table? Hey! Where are they going? Don't they think we're cute?

Of course we think you're cute. But we're too enchanted by the brassy eighth graders who will laugh at our Beavis and Butt-Head references and make out with us behind the cafeteria during study hall to pay you much mind.

Ferguson's vaguely curmudgeonly reconsideration of the American Revolution (to which I can't help feeling the puckish desire to retort, Sorry, perhaps we, too, should still be tied to the crown of England) doesn't detract from the rest of his book, which is an insightful, interesting, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny ramble through various bits and pieces of Canadian history and culture. It was, all told, a painless--and even pleasurable--way to ingest some Canadiana, and I'm looking forward to reading his other stuff.

Two (Depressing) Views of the Sex Trade

Chugging along in my quest to catch up on good movies I've missed, I returned to Into Video last week and brought back Born into Brothels and Hustle & Flow. Only once I'd already checked them out did I realize they're both portraits of prostitution, though from radically different viewpoints.

Born into Brothels portrays a group of seven kids who, as the title suggests, were brought up in the red light district of Calcutta. Their potential salvation comes in the form of a photographer who believes these kids' lives are worth documenting in pictures and who gives them cameras and photography classes to that end.

Brothels won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 2004, and rightly so, I think: it's a stunning and thoughtful look at lives that are often abysmal but not without hope. It's painful to see these kids interact with the adults in their lives, a shocking proportion of whom slap them with swear-laden invective time and again. But amazingly, and much to their credit, the children largely stand up for themselves: one girl, having been roundly berated at the brothel well by one of the prostitutes, simply expresses shock at the woman's dirty mouth and politely carries her buckets back up the stairs.

It's imperative, I think, to watch the "where are they now?" feature on the DVD after watching the movie itself, because the follow-up softens the somewhat harsh ending of the film, showing that a few of the kids that seemed most in danger when the filmmakers left them have since moved on to better things. But the film on its own is a testament to a sort of superhuman strength--emotional, if not physical--that can be tapped into under the right (or, as the case may be, utterly wrong) conditions. It's a tiny flare of hope in a world of so much grief.

So what to make of Hustle & Flow? I so much wanted to love it, both because I was impressed with Terence Howard in Crash and because I'd heard him and H&F's director speak really eloquently about the film on "Fresh Air." But in the end, presenting a pimp as a sympathetic character is a tough sell, at least to this crowd.

I watched H&F with Dana and Jenn, who, by the end of the film (and for most of the "Behind the Scenes" feature) sat with their mouths agape, aghast at what was happening on screen. The movie is unabashed in its wish for us to care most about Howard's Djay, more even than we care about the prostitutes working for him; in "Behind the Scenes," the filmmakers come out and say that the film is one in which the women are meant to stand behind their men.

Fair enough, I suppose--it is a film about a pimp, after all, and the next strongest characters are the men helping him record the songs he hopes will be his ticket to a better life. But if it's hard out here for a pimp, it's even harder for a ho, and the movie doesn't even begin to go there.

Maybe I'd feel more fondness for Hustle & Flow if I'd watched it on its own, rather than the night after I saw Born into Brothels, when that film was still so fresh in my mind. And maybe I expected to much of Terence Howard (and Ludacris, for that matter) after Crash. I just know that, although I was willing to suspend judgment and keep myself open to the possibility of feeling sympathy for an unsympathetic character, the movie let me down. Here's hoping it's not Terence Howard's greatest legacy.

I Love Kayak

Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and your ilk: I'm through with you.

Sidestep and Mobissimo: I still like you, but maybe we should take a break for a while.

The travel search site that's the new apple of my eye is Kayak, which kicks everyone else's ass. It's more flexible than Sidestep, returns more relevant results than Mobissimo, and doesn't levy any crappy fees like the mega-mall sites. It lets you search a whole mess of airlines (or hotels, or cars, or packages), then gently scoots you directly to the site of the provider you choose--with the flight or hotel you selected ready and waiting for you to buy.

And though, like all new and different and scruffy and irreverent stuff on the web, it's surely bound to be snatched up by some goliath as soon as it gets popular enough, for the time being it remains new and different and scruffy and irreverent. (Witness the Labs page, described thus: "This is where we release experimental stuff. Try it out and let us know which tools are useful and which ones are stupid." What's not to love?)

I'm sure there's all sorts of technically brilliant stuff happening on this site--compendia of results from other sites, crazy RSS feeds of several stripes, some sort of IM interface something or other--that those more electronically inclined than I will appreciate. All I know is that when all other sites failed, Kayak found me a cheap flight to New York that didn't involve leaving from San Jose and/or flying overnight. For that, and for its general kick-ass-ness, I am smitten.

Wanderlust

Having sworn that my two-week European jaunt this September would pre-empt much of my other travel for the year, I now find myself to be something of a liar.

DC in May is still up in the air--maybe, maybe not, depending on the vagaries of my sort-of employer and the cost of plane tickets--but there will definitely be a New York excursion for about a week in early June, followed by a foreshortened Fam summer binge in July, followed perhaps by something Vancouver-ward if my bank account can bear it. So I've been spending inordinate amounts of time ping ponging back and forth between airline sites, trying to be wise in my ticket purchasing and ruing the fact that my $250 Boston ticket last month is a deal unlikely to be repeated for the remainder of the year.

Transportation logistics aside, I've also managed to lose myself for hours in researching hotels in Italy, which has made me realize that the (relative) grandeur of our 2002 accommodations is much less feasible in this post-corporate world I currently inhabit. But I'm looking, and making vague promises to myself about cutting back on other expenses (such as, um, well, something) to be able to fund another grand tour, and recalling fondly all of the amazing places J and I stayed last time around.

(For some reason, one of the memories that bubbles closest to the surface is our night in Nice, after a less-than-ceremonious arrival that included witnessing an attempted carjacking of the vehicle in front of us on our way into the city. But with wine and dinner and a stroll through the city, we got beyond that, and at the end of it all fell asleep in our stunningly nice room in a hotel whose name, if I'm not mistaken, included "Palace."

Still jetlagged, though--this was my third night abroad--I woke up early, spurred awake, no doubt, by the clamor coming from down the street, which filtered up into the room through the French doors that we'd left open for air. After tossing and turning for a few minutes, I got up to see where the noise was coming from, and determined that there were a clatch of workmen doing something or other involving jackhammers on the road below. I watched blearily for a while, then fell back into bed, and possibly back into some sort of sleep.

J woke to the same noise shortly thereafter, and, seeing my eyes flutter, asked, "What is that?" "They're doing some jackhammering down the street," I replied, to which he said, "How do you know?" "I got up and looked," I said. He then fixed me with something between disbelief and amusement. "I love that you got up to confirm the source of the jackhammering, and yet left the windows wide open.")

So I really should be writing the articles that have been tugging at my sleeve for the past few weeks, or tending to some vague stab at spring cleaning, or doing any of the dozens of other things that are relevant and pressing now. But it's all I can do not to lose myself entirely down the rabbit hole of travel to come.

Ludacris Made Me Cry

Last night I shuffled over to Into Video and returned with Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 2, Disc 1, and Crash (the 2005 version, not the crazy Cronenberg-Spader-sex-with-corpses version). I watched Curb first, figuring I'd coat my stomach with some delightful ridiculousness before the depressing punch of Crash. A wise move, as it turned out.

Crash was brilliant, and if there's ever been a more roundly damning portrait of race in America, I can't imagine what it might be. One of the extremely impressive things about the movie is that almost no one--with the possible exception of the locksmith and Sandra Bullock's Latina housekeeper--gets away without doing or saying at least something prejudiced, bigoted, or otherwise assholic. Almost all of the characters show an ugly side at some point.

Much of Crash is relentlessly depressing, but it's pulled back from the brink of being as much of a downer as, say, Amores Perros by a few moments of levity and by a small handful of vaguely heartening scenes. Time and again, things just don't turn out as you think they will, for better or (often) worse, and each of the characters confounds expectations by becoming either more human or less over the course of the film.

It's not giving too much away to say that Anthony, the character played by Ludacris, takes an unexpected turn from the moment we're introduced to him to the moment we see him riding on a bus toward the end of the film. Oddly, for all of the painfully sad or brutal or bleak events throughout the story, the only time I cried was when Anthony pulled his van--stolen under complex and fairly nasty conditions--to a corner in LA's Chinatown and opened the back door. I won't give away what happens or why it induced tears, both because doing so would spoil some of the richness of the intertwining story lines and because describing the moment in words doesn't do it justice.

Suffice it to say that the filmmakers don't let Anthony escape as a fully changed character--he's still a confused, hypocritical, messed-up kid--but they do let him feel a pinprick of something like mercy. It's a stunning, heartwrenching, almost hopeful moment.

Terrifying Offer of the Week

From an ad for the book Love Smart:

Ready to Star in Your Own Life?
Dr. Phil has written the script.

(Um, thanks, but I think I'd prefer something by Ionesco, or even Mamet.)

***
I should note that I came across this ad while reading--yes, it's true--O, the Oprah Magazine. For some reason, O has fascinated me for years now, though I only ever picked it up in the gym or during an airport layover when I could no longer bear the weight of The New Yorker and couldn't quite dip down to Us Weekly. But now I have my very own subscription, which somehow feels vaguely illicit.

It's a fascinating magazine. I assume that a good chunk of the readership also watches Oprah, which would suggest that a fair number of these women are stay-at-home moms with varying levels of disposable income. Yet O is *full* of products presented as "A few things Oprah thinks are just great" that seem well beyond the reach of many working families. These include a $200 Kate Spade gardening bag, $32 plates (yes, per), and $35 sets of cheese spreaders.

Perhaps the idea here is that there's a chunk of the magazine's audience who can easily afford all of these things (along with the heart-droppingly spendy purses, clothes, and shoes); a chunk who can shell out for a few of them; and a chunk for whom the magazine's product sections are purely aspirational.

Or maybe I'm the only one who finds a $168 t-shirt a ludicrous proposition, in which case I will vow from now on to avoid "The O List" and stick instead to Dr. Phil's tooth-achingly treacly column, Suze Orman's tough-love, you-go-girl financial advice, and the various other features of this rag that have such a mysterious draw for me.

Fame via Complaining

Yes! Witness my 7.5 seconds of demi-fame in KPIX Consumer Watch's Problem Solvers segment on license agreements. (Look for the clip called "Problem Solvers Tackles Software Issues.")

How suave I am as I note that it's not worth my precious drips of time to read EULAs when I install software! How charming as I maintain that I'd be happy to allow someone (or something) else to do the work for me, thereby freeing me up to pour another glass of wine and polish my seemingly spotless desk! And what impressive typing skills!

(Thanks, Joshy, for letting me be your star.)

EUROPE

Having done well for myself thus far this year, and itching as I am for a vacation that doesn't involve anything work-like, New England, or DC, I just bit the bullet and booked myself passage (in CONNOISSEUR class, natch--and free) to Europe for two weeks this September.

I haven't been out of North America since John and I went on our Epic European Adventure in the summer of 2002, and I'm achily excited at the prospect of returning to The Continent. Explaining to J recently why now seemed like a good time for a reprise, I wrote

You should know, J, that 2002 stands out as perhaps the best year for me in recent memory, in no small part because of my various travel adventures, including the Epic etc. Though I don't want to jinx myself or the ten months that spread out ahead of me, I will say that 2006 has been pretty swell thus far, and a return to EUROPE would only help this year clinch the title of Best Yet. I am determined to do what I can to get my ass on foreign turf.

It's true: though 2002 is still, in many respects, the year to beat, the past few months have signaled a possible return to balanced existence again after the annus rather horribilus that, by and large, was 2005. I hold out hope not that this year's trip to Europe will be a rehash of the memories I love so well of four years ago, but rather that it will bring a raft of its own stellar moments.

So, J, ass (&c) coming your way.

The California Dream

Before the Bay Area dipped into its (relative) cold snap a few weeks back, there were a few days that were so impossibly clear and warm--especially in the South Bay, where I've spent more than my fair share of time--that they made me wonder how I could ever even consider leaving.

Indeed, there's much to be said for our balmy mid-winter weather, which has always been one of my favorite things about living in Northern California. When it's possible to leave the house without a jacket, and perhaps to find yourself too warm regardless, it's easy to believe that you're living the sweet California dream, to fantasize about sun-soaked fields and genteel living and a sense of bright hope and all those other images that once made up the state's iconography.

The slightly less glittery reality, though, is that things are no longer quite as golden. You can still find the fields, but they're fewer and farther between, and broad swaths of the state seem to be losing them altogether. The genteel living is increasingly hard to come by as prices still (miraculously) climb, with no sign of drifting down. The hope sometimes seems to go as easily as it comes.

But maybe that's just the rain.

If/Then/Eh

The Globe and Mail's Leisure Weekend newsletter appeared in my Inbox on Friday with this little bit of unrendered code in the header:

// ehhhhhhhh if (!d) { var d = document; }

My code-reading skills are beyond rusty at this point, but I'm guessing the end result here was meant to be a subtle Canadianism, or perhaps a variable particular to the Great White North.

Kerouac

I went into the Main Library the other day to scavenge for DVDs (slim pickings, though I did check out "Tanner '88," which sounds somewhat intriguing) and was stopped short in the main lobby by a poster advertising the display in the gallery downstairs: Jack Kerouac's original manuscript for On the Road. Thinking that they couldn't possibly mean the manuscript--that crazy long scroll of type--I went down to investigate.

And damn was I wrong: it was indeed the manuscript, (partially) unrolled in all of its wild, uncorrected, paragraph-break-less, nonstop glory. I won't go so far as to call seeing it a religious experience, but it was undoubtedly an amazing treat, especially as I vaguely recall reading, a few years back, about there being such disputes as to the manuscript's ownership that it was doubtful it'd be seen again in public. (Though perhaps I have that backwards, as SFPL's exhibit would suggest.)

So I spent a long time down in the gallery, walking the length of the manuscript and reading bits and pieces as I went, checking out the related exhibits (Beats in SF, Ferlinghetti on trial for Howl, a map of North America with quotations from the book, a timeline of Kerouac's life), and grinning like a nutter. I find it so easy, always, always, to fall in love with the utter impossible romanticism of the whole Beat experience, and found myself looking longingly at the photos of North Beach in the fifties, thinking, I was born too late.

But that romantic ideal never holds for very long: the fifties in which Kerouac and Co. did good chunks of their writing were also the fifties in which a book like Howl could be (and, of course, was) confiscated for indecency, in which even San Francisco remained somewhat buttoned up, in which societal norms were worlds away from what they are now. And I can't imagine a better symbol of how the Beat dream imploded than the photo on display of a bloated and alcohol-weary Kerouac, circa 1967, looking years and miles away from his Sal Paradise heyday.

Still, it was amazing to see the original incarnation of a work that had such an impact on my early adult years (and that still makes me pine for a life I could never live), to look at the scroll (fragile now, but still legible, and still showing penciled-in markup) and lose myself for a while in imaginings of an era and a San Francisco and an artistic movement now gone.

It stayed with me--all of it--as I walked out of the gallery and back upstairs and out again into the relatively unromantic and un-Beat San Francisco of 2006.

We still need to create better software

I went to Office Depot yesterday intending to buy padded envelopes and managed to leave with three new pieces of software (along with a ream of paper, a flash drive, and the aforementioned envelopes), which I blame on the Turbo Tax promotion the store is currently running.

Though I haven't yet been able to psych myself up to actually install TT, I was excited enough at the prospect of being more anal than ever about my personal finances that I popped Quicken into the computer as soon as I got home. And, well, hmm.

Not having the benefit of much experience with earlier versions of the program, I can't say for sure whether Quicken 2006 represents much of an improvement, if any at all. I can say that it's somewhat underwhelming. The UI manages to be both too rudimentary and far too busy at the same time (a fact that's true, I might add, of perhaps a majority of applications on the market today), and though the start-up wizard did help me get my basic info entered properly, it still felt like it didn't take me far enough.

There are some odd quirks (slash bugs?), too. Why, for example, did something listed as a deposit in my bank register manage to morph into an expense category in the program's budget tool? How did Quicken surmise that I'll be $90K in debt by the end of the year? (I mean, yes, my rent is high, but not that high.) Why didn't it figure out that all "Usps" entries in my credit card registers should be standardized to "USPS," with an expense category of "Postage," after I told it multiple times?

I can write these frustrations off as part of a learning curve, and some of them, I imagine, will disappear in time. But what of QuickBooks, which I've been using for a year now with my business? Although I have Simple Start--which, as the name suggests, is as basic as you can go in the QB universe--I still find myself perplexed by some of its behaviors. Why, for example, does it list every invoice I've ever created as unpaid, despite the fact that I meticulously follow the program's prescribed formula for tying incoming payments to outstanding invoices? And why doesn't it recognize that credit card bill payments in my bank register are not new expenses in and of themselves?

When I mentioned to Otis yesterday that I'd installed Quicken, he replied that he'd tried to start using the program dozens of times and have given up in frustration again and again. Surely he can't be alone.

Nor can Intuit. How many creators of software (not to mention Web sites) track not just how many users they acquire, but how many of those people are actually able to use their programs for their intended purposes? Usability, user-centric design, and creating better user experiences may be the buzz, but how often are these practices truly and effectively put to use? Why are there still so many programs that are so full of small frustrations? (And why, dammit, does IE have such a problem with new windows stealing focus? It drives me to drink.)

I can't say I'm exactly aching to get back into the world of UX, but this morning, after wrangling with Quicken to download some credit card info, I found myself starting to design the personal finance program I'd actually want to use. And I began to wonder how many people I could lure away from Quicken (or Peachtree, or Microsoft Money)--how many people would breathe a sigh of relief at a program that focused on doing fewer things and doing them better (and more easily) rather than on doing a whole raft of things many people aren't interested in.

There are, I'm sure, millions out there who are drawn to bells and whistles, whether because they actually use them or because they merely think they should, or like the idea that they're there in the first place. But there also have to be millions more who want simpler programs that do basic tasks with a modicum of fuss. Who's designing for those people (yours truly among them)?

Passportage

Better than 1996's photo, for sure.

While going through immigration in Vancouver a few years back (it may have been late 2001, in which case I sort of understand), I was grilled by the agent whose desk I'd approached. He asked me where I was headed, how long I'd been in Canada, what I'd done while in Vancouver (Um, do I have to answer that? In detail?), where I worked, what my job title was, and on and on.

He held my passport open in his hand and kept looking from it to me, then back to the passport and back to me. Finally, he told me he was so skeptical because the photo in my passport looked nothing like the present me. "It's the bridge of the nose," he said. "Usually, no matter how much anything else about you changes, the bridge of your nose will still look the same, and yours doesn't."

I resisted the urge to snidely comment that perhaps the policy whereby adult US passports are valid for ten years was not a good one, as any number of people were bound to look different

When is an Ektorp not an Ektorp?

I've lately come off of a home improvement bender of sorts, which was spurred on by a number of things, among them the discovery of something mildew-esque on the backs on my sofa cushions.

In the immediate wake of this discovery, I went at said cushions with a sponge and my hairdryer, then realized a.) I probably was doing nothing beneficial at all, and b.) it's beyond time to get a new slipcover for my sofa, anyway. So I braved the crowds at Ikea (not as bad as anticipated, but still) and found an impossibly cheap ($21!) blue slipcover for the Ektorp loveseat I own. How thrilling! How pleased I felt with myself, having scored such a serious bargain (slipcovers normally go for $100 and up--why, I don't know)! How excited I was to come home, strip my sofa down, and re-clothe it in something new and mildew-free!

How very wrong I was. Because who knew, first off, that the Ektorp loveseat is not the same thing as the Ektorp SOFABED loveseat? (Yes, fine, it should've been obvious, but I was blinded by what I may have mentioned was a heart-stoppingly cheap price.) I figured I could work around that first hurdle somehow, preparing to get out some scissors and make alterations as needed. But then I discovered that even if I were to do some creative cutting, the damn cover was nowhere near the right size.

I mean, OK, Ikea. You sell stuff that's hardly of heirloom quality, and your product names are generally impossible to pronounce, and there's always something new and different happening within your walls. But did you actually modify one of your products just enough that no post-2004 slipcover will fit my 2002 sofa? Or has the Ektorp loveseat always been three-and-a-half inches shorter than the Ektorp SOFABED loveseat? And why do the back cushions seem to be exactly the same size? The mind boggles.

Luckily, I scored equally good deals on my new Ringum rug (yes, it's round), Limbo lamps, and Lots self-adhesive wall mirrors. But still, how utterly bittersweet to come so close to something that could've been so good and beautiful and right only to find myself foiled by Swedes.

2005

This morning, while steering with my knees as I drove up Sacramento Street, chatting with Ry on my cell phone, and trying to sip from a cup of hot coffee from S**r**cks (hey, someone gave me a gift card, so the joe was free), I realized two things: 1.) I am currently my own worst nightmare (though I wasn't driving an SUV, so perhaps not quite); and 2.) I am crazily happy.

Eventually I hung up the phone, put the coffee in my cup holder, and placed both hands back on the wheel, thereby ending #1 (own worst nightmare), but #2 still held fast. And, really, it wasn't just the caffeine jolt or the video game-esque thrill of driving the hills of San Francisco with no hands or even the hilarious joy of talking with Ryan, though all of those were quite pleasant. It was those things and the general sense of well-being that has trumped even my loopy exhaustion this month.

Because here, at the tail end of the year, it finally feels like some things that were up in the air for a long time have started to drift back down to earth, where I most need them to be. Though they may not (indeed, probably won't) stay down here forever, what matters is that they're here now. That's a sorely welcome relief.

When I went out for a run this evening, it was already dark; halfway down Dolores Street, it started to rain--not enough to get me wet, really, but enough to make me realize there was indeed water falling from the sky. For a while I tucked my head down and tried to quicken my pace. But then The Decemberists came up on my iPod, and I thought of laughing with Ry this morning, thought of two phone conversations I'd had earlier this week, of the utter joy (really, it was awesome) of my party this past Saturday, of the holidays with my family and friends in the week ahead. I thought about how far this year has brought me, and about what 2006 might hold.

And then, rain and the chance of looking truly starkers be damned, I actually raised my arms above my head, mouthed the words to the song coming into my ears, and ran with my head high, grateful and amazed and, here at the bottom of December, so much at peace.

Of Tookie, Death, and Redemption

I won't even begin to defend Stanley ("Tookie") Williams, one of the founders of the Crips gang, nor will I call into question his guilt. There may somewhere, somehow be doubts that he was responsible for the murders that landed him in jail, but those doubts aren't mine to raise.

What disappoints me about the fact that Williams was put to death by lethal injection last night (not 20 miles from here, natch) is that California--and the US as a whole--still sees capital punishment as a reasonable thing, despite its flaws and its somewhat ludicrous hypocritical nature ("We'll kill you to show that killing is wrong").

What disappoints me is that we as a society don't seem willing to let prisoners redeem themselves behind bars. Without question, the work Williams did while incarcerated to steer kids and teenagers away from the same gang life that did him in does not--will not, never can--excuse his senseless and violent crimes. But why couldn't we let that work be a sign of redemption, a sign that Williams became in prison a different man entirely than the one he was on the streets? Why can't we trust that sometimes (though by no means all the time) redemption within the criminal justice system is not only possible, but a sign that perhaps something in a prisoner's life is finally going right?

I can't speak for the families of Tookie Williams' victims; perhaps his death really did bring them a sense of finality, of justice served, of a wrong partially made right. Neither I nor anyone else not standing inside those families' skins can ever know for sure what it's like. But it would seem that the larger message sent by putting Williams to death was less one of justice and more one of hopelessness: if even Williams, who came so far from where he started, wasn't worth saving for the good he started (and likely would've continued) to do, what of the millions of others behind bars? Has our criminal justice system failed so completely that we've given up on all of them, too?

Yuk, yuk, yuk

OK, so I'm completely ripping this joke off from some guy's Craigslist post, but it's funny enough that it bears repeating.

A rope walks into a bar, takes a seat, and says to the bartender, "I'd like a beer please." The bartender, clearly angry, says, "No way. We don't serve ropes here." The rope, confused, walks out the front door. He stands there for a moment before, thinking there must've been some sort of misunderstanding, he walks back inside.

The rope sits down again, and the bartender immediately says, "What did I tell you? We don't serve your kind here!" He picks up the rope and tosses it out the window behind the bar.

Outside, the rope sees a bucket and decides to ask him what's going on. "Excuse me, bucket," says the rope. "Why does the bartender keep throwing me out? All I want is a beer." The bucket replies, "I don't know why he refuses to serve ropes, but I have a solution for you: disguise yourself and go back in. The bartender will never know."

"Thanks!" the rope says, pulling a few loose strands from his ends and tying them up before heading back inside. He sits at the bar once more and says, "One beer, please."

"Hey," says the bartender. "Aren't you that damn rope I keep kicking out?"

"Nope," says the rope. "Frayed knot."

(So it's no duck/hardware store joke, but it's close.)

The Temple Comes Down

Hayes Green temple in its cleaner days

En route to the post office this afternoon, I walked through Hayes Green (the mini park at the end of my street) to discover that David Best's temporary wooden temple was finally being dismantled and taken away, to which I could think only Thank God!

The temple, built of hundreds and hundreds of intricately cut pieces of wood, was assembled in the middle of the green early this summer to celebrate the completion of Octavia Boulevard and the birth of our new little park. For a long time, it was a gathering spot, a marvel for neighborhood residents and visitors alike, and a pleasant centerpoint for the park. Encouraged by the temple's creator, people covered it in often thoughtful, sometimes heartbreaking, generally tasteful graffitti.

But then the months wore on, and the interesting inscriptions were more or less obliterated by gigantic puffy-lettered, spraypainted tags. The wood got dirty. The surrounding benches and planters and sidewalks got tagged. The temple limped to the point of being more an eyesore than a sign of celebration, and was still attractive only from a distance or at night, when it was too dark to see any of the inscriptions clearly.

So I'm glad to see it go, though I'll no longer be able to refer to it as a landmark when giving directions to my house, and I'll sort of miss the sight of the spire from elsewhere in the neighborhood. But it wasn't meant to stay forever, no matter how much I may've grown used to it.

Otis

This summer, in preparation from his move from Boston to Manhattan with his partner, Otis (officially, Mike, but I can't remember the last time I actually called him that) donated his trusty Ford Escort (a.k.a. JewBaby, for reasons only Otes the Jew can explain) to charity. I happened to be in Boston on the day JewBaby got towed away, so Otes and I decided to recreate, for one last time, the drives to and from Palo Alto that used to be the currency of our days.

Commuting was hell--as, often, were our WebTV customer care jobs--but it either allowed or forced us to become alarmingly close friends. Many, many, many hours together in a small enclosed space meant that we could either get along or go nuts. We opted for the former. And we sort of went nuts anyway.

I think my favorite thing about Otis is that he and I can sometimes exist in a world apart--a world in which plastic fish sport dark sunglasses (see above) and plastic Godzilla toys have personalities of their own, in which "WFHMBWBGDDBF" makes perfect sense, a world in which there's almost no such thing as "too inappropriate."

I'm sure I've written before about how Otes has been an incredibly steadfast and supportive friend over the years, and has done more than his fair share of dealing with my demands and blotting my snotty nose when the latest disaster hits. I love him for all of that, of course, and find it much easier to go through my days knowing he's there when I need him. But I love him most for El Tapeworm, for FishyFishy and Goj, for chainsmoking French Canadian bears and aquaducks, for Jed Pictures and Nicaragwurm, for Angry Bunny and ah wah ah ow.

I adore him, in short, because he helps make my world a more deliciously ludicrous and insane place, and because I can scarcely fathom that world without him.

5K

This past Thursday, I ran my first 5K, the Virginia Run Turkey Trot.

I wanted to run on Thanksgiving both because it seemed like an excellent way of pre-burning a few of the thousands of calories I was sure to eat later in the day, and also because it was something new and different. Because unlike Christmas, which stays, by and large, the same from year to year, Thanksgiving has been something of a moving target.

For the first several years of my existence out west, Thanksgiving meant Seattle with Heather and Jon. And though the holiday morphed somewhat from year to year--the First Year, the Christopher Year, the Whole Mastromatteo Family Year, and so on--the feel of it stayed more or less the same: safe, comfortable, utterly familiar.

And then they moved back east, leaving me to find somewhere else to be on Thanksgiving. For the first year without them, I stayed in San Francisco, went hiking with Monique down on the Peninsula in the morning, made an apple pie, had dinner with a somewhat ragtag group around Monique's dining room table. It was a chill celebration, and wildly different from what I'd known.

The next year was wildly different again: to Greg and Sara's in Virginia, this time with G. in tow, for a long weekend of trying to get two worlds to come together, somehow, with varying degrees of success. And for a while, last year was shaping up to be more or less the same, until, at the last moment, it wasn't, and instead became something else altogether.

So this year I decided to run.

Out in Centreville, surrounded by hundreds of other people, I put my iPod on and ran. As I pushed myself to go as hard and fast as I could, I thought about beating the cold, and about passing as many fellow runners as possible, and about running through the burning in my lungs and the pull in my legs. And though my thoughts were largely limited to the music coming through my ears and throwing one foot in front of the other, I also thought about Thanksgivings past.

I ran for Heather and Jon, and for the pangs of missing I sometimes have both for them and for their past life out west. I ran for a clutch of friends once in SF and now (irretrievably) scattered. I ran for G., for Greg and Sara, for my parents, for Thanksgivings even farther back in which the whole family would congregate in Pennsylvania. And I ran for whatever might come next.

I crossed the finish line panting, sweat steaming off of me in the cold air, 26 minutes and 56 seconds after I started, 17th of 83 30-to-34-year-old women. Dad met up with me back at the starting point and we mingled with the crowd for a while before heading back to the car.

Then we went home to eat.

One year on

Monterey dolphins, November 2004

Last year around this time, Erfert had a half-birthday party on a whale watch boat off the coast of Monterey. I remember the day with a crazy sense of clarity, remember driving down from the city in the morning, remember listening to the tape with Rufus Wainwright's "One Man Guy" over and over and over again, remember the play of light on the water, the unmistakeable scent in the air.

And, of course, I remember feeling impossibly grateful for the chance to escape the emotional pit of hell that was late fall 2004.

We didn't actually see any whales on the cruise, but did see smatterings of other marine life, including sea lions and gobs of dolphins. For a long while, as we raced through the water, a clutch of dolphins rode along just off the sides of the boat, evidently, according to the captain, hitching the equivalent of a free ride in our wake. We humans bent ourselves over the railings to watch them, laughing in delighted disbelief as the dolphins rode and rode and rode with us.

It would be untrue in the extreme to say that the memory of watching dolphins frolic on what must've been one of the most beautiful days of the year was a salve and a sustaining force as I hacked my way through the year that unfolded. No memory on its own could get me through all that. But that mental image (and its physical counterpart) was a reminder that the world was deeper and broader and more full of wonder and possibility than I could really appreciate at the time.

And now, a year on, the memories of last November's suckiness have faded enough to become largely ignorable (if not exactly forgettable), and things seem to have settled into a new equilibrium, and I feel more at peace than I have for a long time running. Now, a year on, what floats to the top of the memory heap for that day on the water is the sense I got watching the dolphins that somehow, at some point, the emotional chop at the center of my life would subside, and there, under the calmed surface, I'd find something I hadn't known I was looking for.

The meth labs among us

Yes, yes, yes--I know that my body's expulsion of mucus is a way of ridding itself of toxins and speeding recovery. But still. There comes a point at which nose clearing and hacking and sneezing cease to be anything approximating therapeutic.

That point came for me last evening, so I went to Walgreens to score myself some Wal-bitussen or Wal-phed or other Wal-something that would, at least temporarily, dry things out and allow my hands to be tissue-free for upwards of five minutes. I propelled myself down the Cold/Cough Remedies aisle, picked up a few boxes to investigate whether they were what I needed, and, deciding they weren't, moved on a few feet.

And then I saw it: the wall of faux package fronts, each one bearing a picture of the product in question, its price, and the instruction to take it to the pharmacy counter--during regular pharmacy hours--to procure the real thing. Now, we've all heard about how pharmacies are taking measures to restrict the number of pseudoephedrine-containing OTC drugs someone can buy at once, given the ingredient's status as a necessary component of crystal meth, but it was jarring to see the practice in place at the corner Walgreens.

As I pulled a Wal-bi-something tag from the array and brought it to the pharmacist, several questions occurred to me: how does the pharmacy staff determine who does and doesn't get this stuff? If I were to come in at 8 p.m., would I be hopelessly out of luck in terms of buying a potion to quell my sniffles? Has every Walgreens store taken this measure, or does Hayes Valley seem like a particularly meth lab-prone neighborhood?

And, perhaps most astoundingly, how can it be at all economical to use a drug as expensive as, say, Benadryl as the base of what's supposed to be a cheap high? Have you seen the price of Benadryl lately? I have to assume that the other components of meth (which are, what?, Drain-O and kitty litter and antifreeze or something) are inexpensive enough to be able to make up the price difference.

Maybe it's my congested head talking, or the 60 mg of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in the dose of Non-Drowsy Day Time Liquid Caps I just took, but it seems a sad and sorry commentary on modern society that we've managed to make something as simple as cold medicine so wildly complicated. It's amazing to me that at the ripe age of 31, I can actually long for the good old days when it was possible to pluck a package of decongestants off the shelf and down a few with some oj and not have to give even a passing thought to how they might be put to nefarious use.

IM wisdom

Josh says:
the major benefit of an ivy league education is to be able to read jacquelin suzanne without guilt

...and the pursuit of happiness

Someone, for some reason, has deemed the second week in November Pursuit of Happiness Week. Who am I to argue?

Sure, this is wildly arbitrary at best--are we meant to unquestioningly accept our lots in life, however meagre, for the other 51 weeks of the year?--but still, setting oneself off hot on happiness' tale isn't a bad way to do battle against the painfully early Standard Time darkness that still, this week, seems like an aberration.

So, happiness, get your ass over here.

On the plus side of things this week: Friday and Saturday's unexpected treats, dim sum for Val's birthday on Sunday, a continuing supply of Canadian and German chocolate in the house, an upcoming wine rendez-vous with Alisa, and a full hour of Arrested Development last night.

On the minus side: some kind of cold-type thing creeping up on me, getting busted by the CHP for speeding on the Golden Gate this afternoon, the aforementioned hemmhoraging of daylight lately. Must continue pursuing happiness to keep further annoyances at bay.

Neko

If there's a better song to listen to than "South Tacoma Way" while lying face-down on the floor (hypothetically--I have not actually tested this, as all of my floors are hardwood) and thinking "[Insert Name of Emotional Mess Here] will pass soon, and hey, it could be worse, but auuuggghhhh," I can't imagine what it might be.

"STW" is brilliant for its twangy kinda-alt-country sound, and for its defiance of all sorts of lyrical conventions. There's a death at its center, but there are no black veils and better places and RIPs on the edges. Instead, there's an achy impatience with "stupid angels," a disdain of funerals, and the sort of slow, murky sadness and rage that are often the first things to bubble to the surface in the wake of an incomprehensible loss.

And of course there's Neko Case's soaring, gut-shaking voice, which makes lines like "I can't comprehend the ways I miss you" even more heartbreaking than they'd normally be. If ever I get the chance to see her perform this song live, I will be unabashed in my willingness to let myself get teary-eyed and snotty-nosed in public; it's a song so beautiful, pride be damned.

(As an aside, Bloodshot Records' description of Furnace Room Lullaby, the album on which "South Tacoma Way" appears, is perhaps the most apt summation I've read.)

JDS

A few weeks back, I popped over to my friend John's blog to read his latest chatterings and was dismayed to find a note saying he'd gone on hiatus due to a family emergency. I immediately wrote him a concerned e-mail (would've called, but he's in Slovenia, which mucks up both my sense of time and my phone bill) letting him know I was available as needed to do whatever I could, and sending my fervent hopes that the emergency had passed.

The worry I felt was of the sort that I reserve for my closest friends, which I consider John one of. That's a remarkable thing, that closeness, given that we've only actually seen each other twice, and have lived on the same continent only once, and then for a mere matter of months. Our friendship amazes me both for its strength and depth, but more than anything because of the fact that it was established entirely on e-mail.

Our history goes something like this: in August of 2000, J posted a funny and intelligent message on tautologies and road travel to Sinister, the Belle and Sebastian-themed mailing list to which we both belonged. Amused, I replied (directly to him),

This is just to say that your post may quite possibly be the best thing posted to Sinister ever. EVER.

Bravo. Write more. Please.

Right on, [Yes, I did indeed use this phrase, but the folly of youth excuses it]
Emily

This elicited a flattered response from him, and began a never-ending back-and-forth flurry of messages in which we discussed topics ranging from JD Salinger to Phil Collins to Argentine wines to edible innards of animals. We cobbled together an odd and entirely e-mail based but nonetheless durable friendship, and soon felt comfortable enough to seek and offer advice on various relationship and career and life choice matters. (Before leaving my job last year, I printed out vast swaths of our messages, which now serve as a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heart-rending, always fascinating look at a particular point in time.)

We met for the first time in the summer of 2002, when I flew to Europe and we spent two weeks traversing a goodly part of the southern chunk of that continent. We saw each other again that December, when we both happened to be in New England at the same time and met up for pad thai in Cambridge. We haven't seen each other since.

But J is one of the first people I turn to (electronically, but still) in the midst of life-crumbling moments, and through his blog, our e-mail exchanges, and the occasional letter or postcard, I feel like he's far closer than thousands of miles away. I've never met his wife or their son, but they both seem familiar to me. John and I used to live significantly different but not entirely dissimilar lives; now the similarities are so few as to be countable on a hand or two, but that seems to matter very little. He remains "J," I remain "E," and there feels like there'll always be at least one constant in the world.

For that I am grateful, and still now, four years on, fairly amazed.

The New Pornographers rock the house

Dana and I went to see the New Pornographers (along with Immaculate Machine and, glory be, Destroyer) at Bimbo's last night, and what a freakin' awesome show it was.

Bimbo's is perhaps San Francisco's best small-scale live music venue--more comfortable than Slim's, better laid out than GAMH--and we got there early enough to score one of the tables that ring the perimeter of the room. So we got to avoid the crush of the crowd (which becomes less and less appealing the farther you get from 25) and had the added bonus of being up on a riser of sorts, which allowed us to stand up and see clearly over everyone else's head.

Immaculate Machine (a new--and adorably young--group from Victoria) opened with a set of NP-inspired pop, with some hints of 80's New Wave thrown in for good measure. Destroyer was up next, featuring, of course, my current Inexplicable Musician Crush, Dan Bejar; though I kept telling Dana, "It's his voice! It's all about his voice!," she shook her head, perplexed, and said, "And here I thought I was the one who fell for guys who look they've just come off the street. (Fair enough: his hair is insane, he could really go in for a shave, and his garb suggested middle-aged Trekkie/former AV club leader. But it's all about the voice--the clarion, full, heavy voice. And that one widely disseminated publicity photo of him at a piano in which he actually looks sultry.)

Destroyer is something of an acquired taste, for sure, but I find the combination of Bejar's voice (and generally indecipherable lyrics) and the band's guitar melodies (Built to Spill-esque in their richness and catchiness) to be pretty infectious. So their set made me happy.

But, of course, what put me over the edge (and onto my feet) was the NPs, who were as catchy and funny and melodious as ever. As I had hoped, Dan Bejar joined them for a few numbers (increasingly tipsy each time he came out on stage as the night wore on), and though they didn't do "Broken Beads," they did do both "Jackie"s and "Ballad of a Comeback Kid," so I can't complain. It was the first time I'd seen the entire band play live together (Bejar didn't do the last two tours), which was delicious and wonderful.

Also great is the fact that they played twenty-four songs--essentially the equivalent of two whole albums--and did two encores, which included aborted covers of Led Zepplin, AC/DC, and Nirvana and ending with "Letter from an Occupant." All told, it was a brilliant, fun, sweet, exciting show.

Set list as follows:
Twin Cinema
Use It
The End of Medicine
Mass Romantic
Jackie, Dressed in Cobras
These Are the Fables
Three or Four
The Bleeding Heart Show
Ballad of a Comeback Kid
Falling Through Your Clothes
The Laws Have Changed
Streets of Fire
It's Only Divine Right
Stacked Crooked
The Fake Headlines
The Bones of an Idol
The Slow Descent into Alcoholism
Sing Me Spanish Techno
All for Swinging You Around
Jackie
From Blown Speakers
Miss Teen Wordpower
The Electric Version
Letter from an Occupant

Of Proust, "Bells On," and electronic downsizing

I.
One of the gifts I asked for (and received) for Christmas in 2000 was Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past in its entirety. I started to read it in early 2001, and made it to "Place-Names: The Name," the final chapter of Swann's Way. Then I defected.

For some reason, I was seized last week with the desire to try again. From the beginning. And this time, all the way through--all three volumes, all eight books.

There's something in me that gets determined to finish something, no matter how monumental, no matter how occasionally tedious, and then becomes willing to do so at all costs. Call it commitment, call it stubbornness, call it folly. I call it curiosity and determination.

And so, for the foreseeable future, I have a new bedtime companion: a sometimes insufferable, sometimes hilarious, always verbose French guy with something of a mother fetish. Should make things interesting.

II.
On various mix cd's that came my way from G. over the years, Sloan made an occasional appearance. Their "Penpals" is giddily silly, and "Deeper than Beauty" almost as much so (especially in the line "And your glasses, your hideous glasses," at the end of which you can actually hear the singer's voice crack with laughter).

But I don't think I'd ever heard "Bells On" before I downloaded it (and the rest of Twice Removed) from eMusic last week. It's another thing altogether: achy, angry, ever so slightly bitter, and, ultimately, resigned. All of which is to say: brilliant, and the perfect tune for the legions of angst-ridden and disaffected and sensitive who are drawn to Conor Oberst and his ilk.

I can't stop listening.

III.
Last Saturday night, as I was doing a final once-over of my house to weed out any final additions to my garage sale offerings of the next day, I decided that it was time for my stereo to go. It was a relatively gigantic thing--two cassette decks, a 51-cd changer, two large speakers--that, after the arrival of iTunes in my life, had gotten increasingly little use.

So I emptied it of cd's, dug up the user guide and remote control, typed up a description of it to post at the sale, and felt something in me lift. On Sunday, I sold the unit (for $45), rejoiced in the shelf space the stereo's absence revealed, and promptly bought an iPod dock/speaker set from Amazon.

Over the past week, I've been unloading relatively large swaths of my cd collection online, which has been oddly thrilling. It's the income, to be sure (ignoring the depreciation factor), but it's also an inexplicable sense of moving on and up, of simplifying without really sacrificing. And it's the thrill of finally being able to take advantage of technology's benefits: I may never give up my Filofax for a PDA, and may never feel the urge to do anything more with my cell phone than make and receive calls, but I will gladly trade my huge stereo and hundreds of cd's for a tiny set of speakers and a tiny green iPod.

Set out running

On the morning of September 11, 2001, after I got the first news that something had gone horribly wrong back east, I went out for a run with my Walkman and listened to the coverage on Morning Edition. I remember the morning in a crystalline way: hearing Bob Edwards stumble as he tried to make sense of the news of the Pennsylvania crash, my headphones filling my ears with disaster as I ran through the sunny streets of the Mission, stopping to water my garden plot and just thinking No No No.

I ran that morning because I wanted space to understand the magnitude of what had happened. I ran often in the days, weeks, and months that followed because I came to love that space, and the way air flowed into and out of my lungs as I moved, and the feeling that when the music in my ears was right and my legs were working together I could keep going forever, could close my eyes and run and run and run.

Just where I picked up running I'm not sure. I more or less loathed running as a kid, and stuck to walking and hiking throughout college, and never, as far as I can recall, ran in my early days in San Francisco. Perhaps it was G. who turned me on to it, or maybe it was something I'd turned to by necessity when the ellipticals and bikes were all in use in the gym. I only know that in 2001, I became a Runner.

Which I remained, off and on, for the following years. Earlier this year, though, I fell out of the habit, often running once a week or less, looking un-longingly at my sneakers as they sat unused on the mat in my front hall, feeling my legs soften. But then I came to my senses.

Now I'm back on the pavement, iPod in hand, ponytail swinging, legs moving in their impossibly graceful (and occasionally seemingly effortless) way, lungs more or less working as they should. And I've rediscovered that space--that space where regret disappears, where everything becomes possible, where all that isn't or can't or won't be slips away, at least for a while. There may come a day when my knees give out, or my lungs stop cooperating, or running and I fall out of love, at which point I'll have to set my sights elsewhere.

For now, though, it's all blissful, and I can only look forward to my next runs--like the one I'll get to take on Saturday afternoon when I'm back on the Vassar campus, and will have time to set out for the trail behind the field house, where it's quiet and calm and full of memory. I can't wait.

Ugh

On the cusp of sleep last night, I had a moment of worry as I thought, "Must put in application with CIC before my TEF results expire"--that is, make the final push to finish my Canadian residency app and get it in the queue before my French proficiency exam score reaches its use-by date next March.

But now there's an even larger fire prompting me to act: Rehnquist's death, and the resultant court-packing that looms large on the horizon. John Roberts is bad enough (and, really, all things considered in this Bush-y world, probably not nearly as crackpot a conservative as he could be), but good Lord are we screwed if Scalia or Thomas winds up as Chief Justice. It's painful to think who might get ushered in as the now-ninth justice.

Rehnquist was no liberal hero, to be sure, but he seemed to bring a measure of balance to a court that might've otherwise been in danger of listing ever more to the right. Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement was enough of a blow; Rehnquist's death just seems to obliterate whatever remainder of hope there might've been for a balanced court. How can the more liberal and centrist justices who remain possibly stand up to what's ahead?

ASAP, then: go sit for the photos needed for my application, and cobble together the money for the fees. Must get my paperwork on some CIC official's desk before another groundswell of discontent here inspires more likeminded Americans to do the same, before the application process takes longer than it already does. I can't bear the thought of being around to witness first-hand the demise of rulings on privacy and other rights and freedoms we're sadly sure to see the end of. They were great while they lasted.

William Rehquist and your balanced Supreme Court, RIP.