The scenes don’t seem quick to change.
And the people keep keeping the same lines propped up for “the ready” to grab and read. I feel for the ones on the inside. The outside. The ones that everyone forgets until they’re getting gone. The Machine’s leftover parts. The fuel for fires of relentless progress and the reason for books that preach blind justice. I feel for them the same way I feel for a fourteen year-old girl in Sudan. A distant, yet ever-present Janjaweed prospect. A part of a system of take-and-taken where they’ll never, never ever, by the design of the thing, ever see a fair dealing of cards. Off suit every time. I don’t see victims. I see a machine at work. A fantastic machine, with cold and smooth edges. Lots of blinking lights. Input-output-throughput-execution-results. I don’t see the bending over. I don’t see the “sudden abandonment”. I see no given targets. I don’t see any new hatred.
I see the same scenes that dance in history books, flowered-up with partial and ultra-partial language. The language of The Machine. The Machine's preferred language.
The Machine’s been working like this forever. Forever and ever. And The Machine sees no color, region, or time as an important context. Everyone has been on every side of The Machine because The Machine knows no loyalties. The machine cares not. The machine only knows what it has always known to do: maintain The Machine.
I feel. I feel for the burgeoning intellects of twentysomethings in rural Idaho that read the interweb and pray on it like gospel. As if CNN has anyone’s interest in mind but that of The Machine. As if anyone holding out on being moved has anything in mind but The Machine. As if stories of raped babies and sewage sammiches were trying to be hushed by The Machine. As if the Bush regime IS The Machine. As if The Machine would ever bother stooping to such pointless levels. It needs no evangelism. It needs no figurehead. It needs no purpose.
It is its own purpose.
The scenes don’t seem quick to change.
And the people keep pouring over the same frames… whether paper or screen, scroll or minstrel, tablet or blimp. They’ll consume the output given proper throughput, processing the results by the tick-tocking of the execution schedule. They take as it’s given. They empathize at The Taken, as if it were their experience when in fact the opposite is more true. The experience is what is taken from The Taken. That is The Machine doing the bidding of itself, for the benefit of the unknown majority. Double-dealing amongst everyone so that turns are taken, and The Taken from one time are the voyeurs of another.
The Machine needs no friends. Only the apathy of its voyeurs and the spite of its enemies.
From Pampers to lost dogs to bloated forms to reunited families to suicidal cops to feces-flooded toilets to horrendous heat to that saved baby to the blanketed wheelchair that obviously seats the dead to “gunmen” and mobsterish playground bully stories of hospitals under siege to Astrodome Bedouins given open-bar privileges to the family that took in that darker and less fortunate family to the reworking pump systems to the bus driver that drove that family from Minnesota straight out of the mouth of hell to the cholera, e coli, West Nile, and pages that list each threatening “itis” that currently cooks over cobbled streets. When The Machine speaks, listen close to not miss a beat. Not a dime.
But allow a brief pause for thanks. For but a second, that Bourbon Street is still dry. And that five years from now there will be the most powerful frozen brain demolisher ever made, offered from tattered and wretched street booths... and it will be named the Katrina Hurricane, served from pink vessels resembling the form of an empty soul, sucked through a straw forged from the nightmares that stream from the minds of fourteen year-old Janjaweed prospects. The Machine will name it as such. The Machine names all things of wanton nature. All things of traded value. All things of lost value. All things.
The scenes don’t seem quick to change.
They never do.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Thursday, September 01, 2005
PART 2 of Work in Progress
This is a continuation of this post from last week. I shall be out of pocket for a bit, so feel free to actually read any of this whenever your job gets insufferable.
We pushed through the rain toward the bay, back to Broadway. The Chinatown trash, stacked in messy piles all along the curb was starting to topple under its own rain-soaked weight and fall into the gutter to migrate down Grant. We moved with it.
We entered the first open bar to seek refuge from the trash and weather. It was a stately place, with a long well-carved bar that covered half of the entire left wall. The ceilings were somewhere near twenty feet up, and were covered in pressed tin plaques with highly ornamental brass chandeliers looming below. The walls were a tasteful red, with stained bead-board running a good three feet up from the wooden-plank floors. Barstools and tables dotted the entry with a pool table and juke box in the rear. There were perhaps ten people drinking merrily at the bar, and the bartender greeted us as we walked in. “Come on in out of the rain and warm up!” She wore a cheery, dimpled smile and her face was daintily framed by locks of curly brunette hair. She was petite, and she was the only one behind the bar.
Two shots of whisky were in order, just to get the flavor of death from our mouths. It took another beer to completely cleanse the ill taste of that evil Ng Ka Pi from our palates. Once that was taken care of, we set our minds to conquering the pool table in the back. Red felt, full size, with top-notch pool cues. There were already some balls on the table, but there was no one back there but one lone fellow who was lazily flipping through the selections on the juke box. He had a slight build, average height, draped in an oversized team jersey with bright-white K-Swiss kicks. He seemed thoroughly busy with music selection, and uninterested in the pool table. So I pulled out the racking triangle and began to herd the balls my way.
“What the fuck are you doing man?” The juke box was not his only interest. He was obviously miffed, but he was not aggressive in any way. Being drunk enough to forget that some questions are purely rhetorical, I continued to pull balls while I answered.
“Oh, we’re here from out of town. You know, came in to play some pool. Why? You want to play or something?”
“We WERE playing.” Hm.
I continued to disregard him, as if he was just being a nuisance. I have no idea why I continued that way, but I did. “We? Who else are you playing with?” As if he could not possibly be playing alone, with a severe psychological disorder where his personalities would play each other for control over his conscious self. Or something like that.
“With Steve, at the bar. He’s getting drinks. We were playing a game here.”
Oh, I see. Semantics and shit.
Steve walked up to punctuate the last comment. “Here’s your water Carlos, you fucking fag!” Steve had obviously been drinking as much as we had. Either that, or they were related. An even further possibility was that Carlos was indeed homosexual, and did not mind being slighted for it. Actually, I was up in the air on the whole matter. I just wanted to play pool.
Carlos looked over at me, as I continued to rack the balls. “I’m drinking water because I don’t want to get all fucked up before we ship out tomorrow. Steve’s crazy.”
Ah, Navy. Made sense. Steve dove right into sloppy-handed introductions, which are my specialty.
“Hey man! What’s up? I’m Steve, just here to play a little pool and get a little pussy before we go to Japan tomorrow.”
He was significantly taller than his counterpart. And much more professional in his appearance. Early twenties, black shoes, fitting jeans, untucked polo shirt, nice gold watch and a buzz cut to match Carlos’s.
We all exchanged introductions. For the next hour or so we played games of pool. Carlos remained sober and aloof while Steve, Vance and I traded rounds of shots until we were slobbering drunk.
Periodically we would step out into the night to catch a smoke. Each time we went outside, we met up with an older gentleman named Charles, who was obviously a member of the rather large population of homeless in the area. Mid forties, heavy-set African American with graying hair, heavily stained clothing, and the crustiest set of lips I have ever had the displeasure of watching as he rambled on and on about himself. Between requesting cigarettes he entertained us with stories about his past, and all the amazing things he was supposed to become before an unspecified injury caused his pain killer addiction.
“I used to throw these barbeques back in the day. Danny Glover used to come over just for my ribs. They were that fuckin’ good man! Danny goddamn Glover, I’m tellin’ you!”
His stories always involved famous people hanging out with him in weird situations. He would sit with Tom Hanks during church. He and his cousins were in a high school play with Magic Johnson. Or John McEnroe would stop by his place to watch videos from time to time. I pressed him on the whole Danny Glover claim, just to see how far he would push it.
“Danny Glover came over to your house for barbeque? Did he ever live here in San Francisco?”
He stuck to his guns like a champ. And even though his defenses were as empty as the initial claims that required them, I really had (have) no reason to doubt his sincerity in believing the lot of it.
“Oh yeah man. My barbeques were famous. They came from all over. It’s in the sauce, you know. Like the best crack you ever had! Sharon Stone, Robert Redford, Eddie Murphy, all them used to show up for my Sunday ribs. I was THE KING! Danny used to call me all week to make sure I was still doin’ it. ‘Yo Chuck, you still doin’ the ribs this Sunday, ‘cause I gots to get me some of that!’ And I’d say ‘you know it Dee!’ ‘cause we were tight like that, back in the day. You just DON’T KNOW man.”
He was right. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about most of the time. I was flammable drunk, and he was spilling lots of strange stories about tangential relationships to rather famous people. But I kept pretending to listen.
As the night progressed, and our trips out front to smoke and talk shit with Charles happened with increased frequency, he got bored with convincing us of how many famous people he used to feed, and decided that we should all sing some songs.
Because he used to be in choir with Lionel Ritchie, or some such nonsense.
“You know what? You know what you guys need to do?”
Steve and I had no idea what would be said by this man. “Nah, Charles. What?”
“You got beautiful young voices. And beautiful young voices have to SING!” And with that, he raised his hands up in the air and turned slowly while drawing out “SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!”
Then he stopped to face us, motionless. “Beautiful voices must be heard. It’s your DUTY.”
With such a fantastic presentation, how could we not? Three smokers, sloppy drunk out in front of a bar at two in the morning, in the rain? The only thing we were missing was the incoherent off-key butchering of some rail yard bonfire tune.
He started by deducing who was what. Vance and I were tenors, Steve was the soprano, and Carlos was told he was bass before he muttered a single word. It did not even make sense that Carlos was out there because he certainly did not smoke, and he was sober enough to have the sense to keep dry inside. But there he was, the reluctant bass in a corner choir, led by a homeless addict.
Under Charles’s arm-waving direction, we destroyed the same two bars of “Chain Gang” in between dodging back inside for more shots. Eventually, Vance was asked to stop because he really could not hold a tune, and Carlos wised up and kept inside where it was warm and soul-free. So there we were. The three of us. Steve, me, and our crazy director, shouting at the top of our lungs down Broadway, bellowing the deep pains of the imprisoned by way of slave-song.
My memory of the session is filled with overwhelming emotion. I honestly thought we were good, and was honored to be part of something beautifully irreverent. It was inspiring, even it sounded atrocious.
I was so impressed with what I thought was his talent for voice training, that I invited him into the bar for a drink.
“Fuck it Charles, let’s go inside and get a whisky man! It’s cold and I’m thirsty!”
Charles hesitated at first, but then agreed with a grin. “Ah, yeah. Yeah! A drink’d be nice!”
I figured he was a recovering alcoholic, and that was the reason for his staggered response. He must have been overcome by our wonderful performance and wished for a single celebratory drink to mark his success as a street-trio director.
Straight to the bar I went and ordered four whisky cokes. The bartender, with her curls dangling down, did not register my order. Her eyes were fixed on the door I just staggered through. Steve was struggling at the entrance with Charles, I could see jittery motion from the corner of my eye. The mood in the bar had obviously taken an uncomfortable turn, and I was having trouble understanding what was souring the situation. The bartender, still staring at the door where Charles and Steve continued to fumble with each other, asked me with a flat tone, “did you invite him in here?”
I turned to follow her eyes and saw Steve with a look of irritated shock on his face, hands up in a non-threatening manner, stepping back from a slowly disrobing Charles. “Goddamn it’s hot in here WOMAN,” he bellowed while tugging at his shirt.
“I, uh, yeah. He’s in here with us.”
She set her vibrating eyes on to mine. “I don’t want his ass in here.” Then she leaned forward and whispered “he threatened to…”
“I’LL KILL YOU BITCH!!!” Charles was visibly angry, but not moving a whole lot. Just sort of shuffling in place, not but five feet from the door. Steve moved toward him with the obvious intention of calming him down.
The bartender, matter of fact, “that’s why we don’t let him in here.” Then she yelled out over my head. “You get your fucking ass out of here Chuck or I’ll call the cops again, and they’ll fuck you up even more!”
I had no idea what was going on around me, but it was not pretty. Suddenly, all the patrons at the bar rose from their stools and made two menacing steps toward Charles. Steve put an arm on Charles’s chest and stood between him and the drinking mob. “Whoa! I got him, no problem here folks! We just came in for a drink! No trouble here!”
Charles was not making things any easier.
“FUCK YOU BITCH! AND FUCK THE GODDAMN POLICE TOO! I’M GONNA KILL YOU BITCH!”
We were obviously in over our heads. It was time to reverse the damage we had inadvertently done. “Forget the drinks, we’ll get him out of here. No problem.”
“You do that.” She was more irritated with the whole exchange than she was intimidated.
Steve, Vance and I shuffled Charles back through the door while Carlos watched with his hands in his pockets, and the booze crew returned to their seats at the bar. Charles continued to hurl threats and slurs back over his shoulder as we pushed him back out into the night. He bolted from our grips and made his way down the street, still yelling about police brutality and the potential murder of a certain “bitch bartender whore!”
He was right about the duty to sing when you have a beautiful voice. But he was not so clear on what one should do if their voice is less than pleasant. I suppose he was too close to the problem to have formed useful advice for that end of the spectrum.
We shrugged it off, had an awkward smoke, and re-entered the bar to continue drinking. Apologies were made, stories of Charles and his drunken disasters were told, and then last call punched us in the collective, limping liver.
Out on the street again, we said our goodbyes and good-lucks. Vance and I made our way back to the hotel, falling down on and spreading the garbage that littered the slimy surface of Grant St. I do not remember entering our hotel room, but I have splintered memories of jumping on the beds, knocking over a side table, and kicking my luggage like a football across the room (presumably to get it through the window and down into the street, which was rather distant from brilliant, but whatever).
A beautiful voice should indeed be used. Lucky for us, such beauty is in the ear of the beholder.
We pushed through the rain toward the bay, back to Broadway. The Chinatown trash, stacked in messy piles all along the curb was starting to topple under its own rain-soaked weight and fall into the gutter to migrate down Grant. We moved with it.
We entered the first open bar to seek refuge from the trash and weather. It was a stately place, with a long well-carved bar that covered half of the entire left wall. The ceilings were somewhere near twenty feet up, and were covered in pressed tin plaques with highly ornamental brass chandeliers looming below. The walls were a tasteful red, with stained bead-board running a good three feet up from the wooden-plank floors. Barstools and tables dotted the entry with a pool table and juke box in the rear. There were perhaps ten people drinking merrily at the bar, and the bartender greeted us as we walked in. “Come on in out of the rain and warm up!” She wore a cheery, dimpled smile and her face was daintily framed by locks of curly brunette hair. She was petite, and she was the only one behind the bar.
Two shots of whisky were in order, just to get the flavor of death from our mouths. It took another beer to completely cleanse the ill taste of that evil Ng Ka Pi from our palates. Once that was taken care of, we set our minds to conquering the pool table in the back. Red felt, full size, with top-notch pool cues. There were already some balls on the table, but there was no one back there but one lone fellow who was lazily flipping through the selections on the juke box. He had a slight build, average height, draped in an oversized team jersey with bright-white K-Swiss kicks. He seemed thoroughly busy with music selection, and uninterested in the pool table. So I pulled out the racking triangle and began to herd the balls my way.
“What the fuck are you doing man?” The juke box was not his only interest. He was obviously miffed, but he was not aggressive in any way. Being drunk enough to forget that some questions are purely rhetorical, I continued to pull balls while I answered.
“Oh, we’re here from out of town. You know, came in to play some pool. Why? You want to play or something?”
“We WERE playing.” Hm.
I continued to disregard him, as if he was just being a nuisance. I have no idea why I continued that way, but I did. “We? Who else are you playing with?” As if he could not possibly be playing alone, with a severe psychological disorder where his personalities would play each other for control over his conscious self. Or something like that.
“With Steve, at the bar. He’s getting drinks. We were playing a game here.”
Oh, I see. Semantics and shit.
Steve walked up to punctuate the last comment. “Here’s your water Carlos, you fucking fag!” Steve had obviously been drinking as much as we had. Either that, or they were related. An even further possibility was that Carlos was indeed homosexual, and did not mind being slighted for it. Actually, I was up in the air on the whole matter. I just wanted to play pool.
Carlos looked over at me, as I continued to rack the balls. “I’m drinking water because I don’t want to get all fucked up before we ship out tomorrow. Steve’s crazy.”
Ah, Navy. Made sense. Steve dove right into sloppy-handed introductions, which are my specialty.
“Hey man! What’s up? I’m Steve, just here to play a little pool and get a little pussy before we go to Japan tomorrow.”
He was significantly taller than his counterpart. And much more professional in his appearance. Early twenties, black shoes, fitting jeans, untucked polo shirt, nice gold watch and a buzz cut to match Carlos’s.
We all exchanged introductions. For the next hour or so we played games of pool. Carlos remained sober and aloof while Steve, Vance and I traded rounds of shots until we were slobbering drunk.
Periodically we would step out into the night to catch a smoke. Each time we went outside, we met up with an older gentleman named Charles, who was obviously a member of the rather large population of homeless in the area. Mid forties, heavy-set African American with graying hair, heavily stained clothing, and the crustiest set of lips I have ever had the displeasure of watching as he rambled on and on about himself. Between requesting cigarettes he entertained us with stories about his past, and all the amazing things he was supposed to become before an unspecified injury caused his pain killer addiction.
“I used to throw these barbeques back in the day. Danny Glover used to come over just for my ribs. They were that fuckin’ good man! Danny goddamn Glover, I’m tellin’ you!”
His stories always involved famous people hanging out with him in weird situations. He would sit with Tom Hanks during church. He and his cousins were in a high school play with Magic Johnson. Or John McEnroe would stop by his place to watch videos from time to time. I pressed him on the whole Danny Glover claim, just to see how far he would push it.
“Danny Glover came over to your house for barbeque? Did he ever live here in San Francisco?”
He stuck to his guns like a champ. And even though his defenses were as empty as the initial claims that required them, I really had (have) no reason to doubt his sincerity in believing the lot of it.
“Oh yeah man. My barbeques were famous. They came from all over. It’s in the sauce, you know. Like the best crack you ever had! Sharon Stone, Robert Redford, Eddie Murphy, all them used to show up for my Sunday ribs. I was THE KING! Danny used to call me all week to make sure I was still doin’ it. ‘Yo Chuck, you still doin’ the ribs this Sunday, ‘cause I gots to get me some of that!’ And I’d say ‘you know it Dee!’ ‘cause we were tight like that, back in the day. You just DON’T KNOW man.”
He was right. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about most of the time. I was flammable drunk, and he was spilling lots of strange stories about tangential relationships to rather famous people. But I kept pretending to listen.
As the night progressed, and our trips out front to smoke and talk shit with Charles happened with increased frequency, he got bored with convincing us of how many famous people he used to feed, and decided that we should all sing some songs.
Because he used to be in choir with Lionel Ritchie, or some such nonsense.
“You know what? You know what you guys need to do?”
Steve and I had no idea what would be said by this man. “Nah, Charles. What?”
“You got beautiful young voices. And beautiful young voices have to SING!” And with that, he raised his hands up in the air and turned slowly while drawing out “SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!”
Then he stopped to face us, motionless. “Beautiful voices must be heard. It’s your DUTY.”
With such a fantastic presentation, how could we not? Three smokers, sloppy drunk out in front of a bar at two in the morning, in the rain? The only thing we were missing was the incoherent off-key butchering of some rail yard bonfire tune.
He started by deducing who was what. Vance and I were tenors, Steve was the soprano, and Carlos was told he was bass before he muttered a single word. It did not even make sense that Carlos was out there because he certainly did not smoke, and he was sober enough to have the sense to keep dry inside. But there he was, the reluctant bass in a corner choir, led by a homeless addict.
Under Charles’s arm-waving direction, we destroyed the same two bars of “Chain Gang” in between dodging back inside for more shots. Eventually, Vance was asked to stop because he really could not hold a tune, and Carlos wised up and kept inside where it was warm and soul-free. So there we were. The three of us. Steve, me, and our crazy director, shouting at the top of our lungs down Broadway, bellowing the deep pains of the imprisoned by way of slave-song.
My memory of the session is filled with overwhelming emotion. I honestly thought we were good, and was honored to be part of something beautifully irreverent. It was inspiring, even it sounded atrocious.
I was so impressed with what I thought was his talent for voice training, that I invited him into the bar for a drink.
“Fuck it Charles, let’s go inside and get a whisky man! It’s cold and I’m thirsty!”
Charles hesitated at first, but then agreed with a grin. “Ah, yeah. Yeah! A drink’d be nice!”
I figured he was a recovering alcoholic, and that was the reason for his staggered response. He must have been overcome by our wonderful performance and wished for a single celebratory drink to mark his success as a street-trio director.
Straight to the bar I went and ordered four whisky cokes. The bartender, with her curls dangling down, did not register my order. Her eyes were fixed on the door I just staggered through. Steve was struggling at the entrance with Charles, I could see jittery motion from the corner of my eye. The mood in the bar had obviously taken an uncomfortable turn, and I was having trouble understanding what was souring the situation. The bartender, still staring at the door where Charles and Steve continued to fumble with each other, asked me with a flat tone, “did you invite him in here?”
I turned to follow her eyes and saw Steve with a look of irritated shock on his face, hands up in a non-threatening manner, stepping back from a slowly disrobing Charles. “Goddamn it’s hot in here WOMAN,” he bellowed while tugging at his shirt.
“I, uh, yeah. He’s in here with us.”
She set her vibrating eyes on to mine. “I don’t want his ass in here.” Then she leaned forward and whispered “he threatened to…”
“I’LL KILL YOU BITCH!!!” Charles was visibly angry, but not moving a whole lot. Just sort of shuffling in place, not but five feet from the door. Steve moved toward him with the obvious intention of calming him down.
The bartender, matter of fact, “that’s why we don’t let him in here.” Then she yelled out over my head. “You get your fucking ass out of here Chuck or I’ll call the cops again, and they’ll fuck you up even more!”
I had no idea what was going on around me, but it was not pretty. Suddenly, all the patrons at the bar rose from their stools and made two menacing steps toward Charles. Steve put an arm on Charles’s chest and stood between him and the drinking mob. “Whoa! I got him, no problem here folks! We just came in for a drink! No trouble here!”
Charles was not making things any easier.
“FUCK YOU BITCH! AND FUCK THE GODDAMN POLICE TOO! I’M GONNA KILL YOU BITCH!”
We were obviously in over our heads. It was time to reverse the damage we had inadvertently done. “Forget the drinks, we’ll get him out of here. No problem.”
“You do that.” She was more irritated with the whole exchange than she was intimidated.
Steve, Vance and I shuffled Charles back through the door while Carlos watched with his hands in his pockets, and the booze crew returned to their seats at the bar. Charles continued to hurl threats and slurs back over his shoulder as we pushed him back out into the night. He bolted from our grips and made his way down the street, still yelling about police brutality and the potential murder of a certain “bitch bartender whore!”
He was right about the duty to sing when you have a beautiful voice. But he was not so clear on what one should do if their voice is less than pleasant. I suppose he was too close to the problem to have formed useful advice for that end of the spectrum.
We shrugged it off, had an awkward smoke, and re-entered the bar to continue drinking. Apologies were made, stories of Charles and his drunken disasters were told, and then last call punched us in the collective, limping liver.
Out on the street again, we said our goodbyes and good-lucks. Vance and I made our way back to the hotel, falling down on and spreading the garbage that littered the slimy surface of Grant St. I do not remember entering our hotel room, but I have splintered memories of jumping on the beds, knocking over a side table, and kicking my luggage like a football across the room (presumably to get it through the window and down into the street, which was rather distant from brilliant, but whatever).
A beautiful voice should indeed be used. Lucky for us, such beauty is in the ear of the beholder.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
The Whole is Hotter Than the Sum...
The heat here is tremendous. And by “tremendous” I mean: absolutely fucking awful. It’s old-folks-death hot down here. That means that my air conditioner has been running like New Orleans water pumps for the past month. Which leads to budget-blowing electricity bills. Which then ends up with Craig pulling out his hair because his bill is astronomical, yet he still sweats like a slave when he sleeps. What. The. Fuck?
There are multiple problems that are contributing to this issue. None of them are in and of themselves ruinous in terms of ambient home temperature, but they all join forces like the fucking Voltron of hell-heat and cook my crib. A Reese’s Peanut Butter cup MELTED on my kitchen counter last night. It’s so badass… I just… fuck. It’s not good in any way.
Here's my list of fabulous contributors to the ruinous crib-heat:
Shitty windows. Man, I cannot stress enough the importance of avoiding two-bit window panes and frames. This aluminum, no seal bullshit with rice-paper-thin glass on the market today is just plain garbage. I can feel the heat pouring in all around the opening, like an open oven. I already caulked and sealed the edges, but there’s nothing I can do for the frame structure itself. ‘Tis hopeless, unless replaced. Damnit. I am considering thick-ass drapes to just block that shit out entirely. That or a wall of bricks. Fuckin’ windows.
Crooked door frames. Either my back door, or its frame, is rhomboid in shape. That means I have great seams all around it. At the base, you can see daylight peeping through. It’s awesome. The bugs LOVE it until they get inside, realize it’s magically HOTTER indoors, and subsequently die where my girlfriend can get upset at seeing their up-ended carcasses in the kitchen. It’s super sweet. Like eating an old tennis ball.
Hot-ass lighting. Light bulbs, whether anyone registers it or not, emit heat. For serious? For serious! That’s why northerners will place a plugged-in bulb on top of their car batteries over night, during the winter. To keep the battery heated, so it won’t die. So having lights on at the crib is like having little heaters going, all over the place. So I’m switching to low-watt bulbs and stumbling around in the dark more often. Good times.
Electronic shit. All electronics produce heat. VCRs, TVs, computers, microwaves (no shit Craig? Yes, no shit!), alarm clocks, battery chargers, blah-blah-blah. Just like the lights, these are little heaters, spread all over the place. The more you have, the more heat is produced. And if you cluster these things (entertainment center), you have a full-blown space-heater in your crib. Might as well be a fireplace. So I unplug that shit when it isn’t in use.
Cooking. NOTHING heats up a crib faster than boiling some water on the stove while baking a cake. The humid, hot air created by that process is mad-intense. If you are like me, and do not have a real stove hood (mine sucks the air from the stove top and exhausts it to the ceiling, not to an outdoor vent. It’s brilliant), then the heat created by cooking just kicks it with you. Your whole place becomes a broiler. There is nothing that can be done about this within reason. Sure, you could cut a hole in your roof and install a vent yourself (good luck with that) or just stop cooking altogether. Just eat cold cuts and hot dogs fresh from the package. Life would be bad either way.
Showering with any degree of heat. This is a given. I remember when I stayed with friends in New Orleans (bless the souls of that city) a few years back, in an apartment with NO air conditioning, in 100+ heat… fucking miserable. We only took cold showers. Cold water to wash dishes. Cold-cold-cold. If they had a hot water heater, we never used it. Fuck that. But even at my crib, a mildly cool shower produces enough heat and humidity to make the house unbearable for a few hours. It gets mighty tropical in there. Rather nasty and sticky. Almost impossible to sleep in.
Alright. Enough crying. I’m done with this topic. Just had to vent for a minute or two. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Any tricks of the trade you may know, or whatever. “I’d piss on a sparkplug if I thought it’d do any good”…
There are multiple problems that are contributing to this issue. None of them are in and of themselves ruinous in terms of ambient home temperature, but they all join forces like the fucking Voltron of hell-heat and cook my crib. A Reese’s Peanut Butter cup MELTED on my kitchen counter last night. It’s so badass… I just… fuck. It’s not good in any way.
Here's my list of fabulous contributors to the ruinous crib-heat:
Shitty windows. Man, I cannot stress enough the importance of avoiding two-bit window panes and frames. This aluminum, no seal bullshit with rice-paper-thin glass on the market today is just plain garbage. I can feel the heat pouring in all around the opening, like an open oven. I already caulked and sealed the edges, but there’s nothing I can do for the frame structure itself. ‘Tis hopeless, unless replaced. Damnit. I am considering thick-ass drapes to just block that shit out entirely. That or a wall of bricks. Fuckin’ windows.
Crooked door frames. Either my back door, or its frame, is rhomboid in shape. That means I have great seams all around it. At the base, you can see daylight peeping through. It’s awesome. The bugs LOVE it until they get inside, realize it’s magically HOTTER indoors, and subsequently die where my girlfriend can get upset at seeing their up-ended carcasses in the kitchen. It’s super sweet. Like eating an old tennis ball.
Hot-ass lighting. Light bulbs, whether anyone registers it or not, emit heat. For serious? For serious! That’s why northerners will place a plugged-in bulb on top of their car batteries over night, during the winter. To keep the battery heated, so it won’t die. So having lights on at the crib is like having little heaters going, all over the place. So I’m switching to low-watt bulbs and stumbling around in the dark more often. Good times.
Electronic shit. All electronics produce heat. VCRs, TVs, computers, microwaves (no shit Craig? Yes, no shit!), alarm clocks, battery chargers, blah-blah-blah. Just like the lights, these are little heaters, spread all over the place. The more you have, the more heat is produced. And if you cluster these things (entertainment center), you have a full-blown space-heater in your crib. Might as well be a fireplace. So I unplug that shit when it isn’t in use.
Cooking. NOTHING heats up a crib faster than boiling some water on the stove while baking a cake. The humid, hot air created by that process is mad-intense. If you are like me, and do not have a real stove hood (mine sucks the air from the stove top and exhausts it to the ceiling, not to an outdoor vent. It’s brilliant), then the heat created by cooking just kicks it with you. Your whole place becomes a broiler. There is nothing that can be done about this within reason. Sure, you could cut a hole in your roof and install a vent yourself (good luck with that) or just stop cooking altogether. Just eat cold cuts and hot dogs fresh from the package. Life would be bad either way.
Showering with any degree of heat. This is a given. I remember when I stayed with friends in New Orleans (bless the souls of that city) a few years back, in an apartment with NO air conditioning, in 100+ heat… fucking miserable. We only took cold showers. Cold water to wash dishes. Cold-cold-cold. If they had a hot water heater, we never used it. Fuck that. But even at my crib, a mildly cool shower produces enough heat and humidity to make the house unbearable for a few hours. It gets mighty tropical in there. Rather nasty and sticky. Almost impossible to sleep in.
Alright. Enough crying. I’m done with this topic. Just had to vent for a minute or two. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Any tricks of the trade you may know, or whatever. “I’d piss on a sparkplug if I thought it’d do any good”…
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Work in Progress...
This is a piece of what it is that I'm currently working on. Just to give you something to read while you either wait for someone to post something interesting, or something interesting happens at your work.
11am, the alarm shouts at me for the third time. Vance is already showering and his things are all packed up and ready for departure. I take note of this, admire him for being so prepared, and fall back asleep.
Fifteen minutes later, he is shaking me awake, somewhat violently.
“Come on. Get up. I already called around to find us another place to stay. It’s close. Like, ten blocks tops.”
“Sweet. Anything with a better view would rock.” I fully intended to keep on sleeping after firing off my support.
“No man. Get your ass up. Check-in is at noon, and I told them we’d just go there instead of reserving anything over the phone. First come, first serve. So get the fuck up.” He was not messing around, so I did as was requested.
Ten minutes later, we were wandering through Chinatown with our luggage in tow. Showers are overrated. The scene was vibrating with activity. The streets were as I would imagine the streets of Beijing: narrow strips of pavement with shops crammed on top of one another, knick-knacks and touristy crap spilling out over the sidewalks. The Jenga-like designs of their porcelain Buddha displays seemed intentional, as if to beg some clumsy Clevelander with a fanny pack to topple them to the pavement. “Ahhhhh, you buy all now!” Bustling bodies were everywhere, the smell of business was thicker than egg-drop soup. We made our way through the gauntlet to our next set of beds at Grant Plaza, Chinatown. Fourth floor, corner room with a bay window that overlooked the intersection of Grant and Pine.
The view was absolutely amazing. To our right it was the pretension of a modern downtown city, high rise apartments and skyscrapers. Straight forward was the almost Guang Zhou provincial look of Chinatown. To the left was a hint of coastline, giving me the feeling that we might be staying at Mouth’s house, somewhere in the Goondocks.
Our bags properly stowed, and deuces properly deposited, we hit Grant to explore the city.
We made our way east, through the edge of Chinatown and toward the bay. It was a perfect day, with scattered clouds and the temperature threatening to break seventy. With mild winds kicking up off the ocean, over the city to the bay, we wore jackets to fend off the chill. I learned that in San Francisco, it is always necessary to have a jacket or sweater handy. Much like the desert, regardless of the temperature during the daytime, it gets brisk, if not downright cold come evening. Best to be prepared for anything whenever you plan nothing. We had no real schedule for the day. “Wandering around” was the only thing we penciled in.
There was a stumpy tower off in the distance, not too far ahead of us that caught our fancy. Coit Tower to be specific. But much to Vance’s irritation, my memory would not allow me to remember the name. I could remember the letters, somehow, but could never quite get them in the right order. So with every mention of “Cito Tower”(that’s “sea-toe” instead of the proper “coy-tuh” spelling and pronunciation), I could feel the heat coming off of Vance’s head, as his ultra-rational mind struggled to figure out how many times, in an hour, he would have to correct me before he would be forced to adopt my letter-scrambled spelling. Just to avoid a meltdown. This was not, by far, Vance’s first run-in with my inability to remember such details, but it is the most memorable for me because we actually had to stop walking at one point for him to give me a stern talking to. It was the only kind-of-argument we had on the entire trip. It was special like that.
“So, how old is this Cito Tower, anyway?”
“The Coit Tower?”
“Right, Coit. Whatever. How old is it?”
These types of questions, by me, were interspersed with other conversations we had as we strolled through the narrow streets. He had actually read the travel manual, so I was depending on him as a source of information. Simply repeat the above three lines of dialogue, with a different question attached, every ten minutes. It always started with “so, ______ (how tall is, who built, etc..) this Cito Tower, anyway?” After about the tenth repetition, Vance, understandably, lost his cool. His teeth were clenched, as were his pumping fists, as I (as best I can) remember.
“Dude. It’s not Cito, it’s COIT. COIT, COIT, Coit. Four letters. It isn’t that hard to remember.”
“Sorry man, jeez. I just can’t seem to get that to settle in, you know?”
“No. No, I don’t know.” Vance is the kind of guy who if he told you he remembered the name of the nurse who delivered him as a baby, by her nametag, you would not be surprised. So it stood to reason that he would consider my memory slippage dubious at best. He continued his pro-memory crusade. “I think you’re doing it on purpose. Either that or you’re just not trying.”
Me, with slight indignance, tempered with consideration, “not trying? Well what the hell am I supposed to do? Make a flashcard for the fucking thing?”
As an aside: Later on in life, my inability to remember insignificant details blossomed gloriously into full-blown forgetfulness. Vance has been steadfast in his opinion that I am either intentionally forgetting things, or just not trying hard enough to remember them. I am far too close to the problem to say for sure whether or not his diagnosis is correct, but he has not been wrong about much in the fifteen years I have known him. Take that for what it is worth,
We made it to Coit Tower, climbed up the thing, and peered out onto the beautiful city of San Francisco. There are no proper words to describe such a visually explosive city. Splendid, fantastic, scenic, a gift from the Gods, whatever. Nothing fits right. The architecture is fantastically mixed in age, with ultra-seventies high rises peaking out next to sleek pieces of high-design, high-tech contemporary buildings, which are surrounded by stone buildings which appear to be about a century in age. And the best part is that the city seems to sit on the peak of a mild land-ridge which separates the bay from the open ocean. So everything is tiered downward. From the bay, you literally look UP at the city. Impossible to describe how much there is to see and take in. Especially since both of us grew up in Houston, where the entire incline of the (rather expansive) city is probably one foot, north to south. It makes a city as topographically interesting as San Francisco that much more fascinating.
Pictures were taken, artistic shots were attempted (got lots of thumb close-ups), and then it was time to return to the streets for more wandering. It was decided that we should check out Fisherman’s Warf, which is on the bay. If I had known what a tourist disaster that place was, I probably would not have gone. But it was there, so we had to check it out.
On our way to the wharf, we zig-zagged through private courtyards, between and amongst the squeezed and stacked architecture of the area. Multi-million dollar town homes with rooftop decks. We scrambled up stairs and on to private patios, just to see how the other side lived. As expected, they live quite well. We were not pretending to BE them by invading their spaces. That would be psycho. We were more… criminal, I suppose (but not literally). More like, casing their cribs, but in a really lazy way. We just walked right up and sat on their patio furniture, taking inventory of their outdoor wealth. Lots of thickly-painted wicker atrocities, pastels, rustic wind chimes, and all the other Home and Garden bullshit one would expect to find littered on the patio of a wealthy person’s second home.
We continued this type of invasive tourism until we hit the bay and found the fabled Fisherman’s Wharf, the big-ass pier.
Standard fare for any city that understands their tourist market. It is indeed a pier. A long, well-developed pier that looks more like an amusement park than it does a place where longshoremen would crank out crabs and unload barges from faraway lands. Clowns wandering around making balloon animals, some dude doing parlor tricks, cotton candy and lots of trinket shops. A big, wooden cash vacuum. The most notable part of that experience was us coming upon the largest dog I had ever seen. It was a Saint Bernard, and it was living with horse-like proportions. I would estimate it to have been somewhere near one hundred fifty pounds, with feet the size of mine and a panting mouth, capable of swallowing whole watermelons. While moving through the crowd, trying to leave the pier, we stumbled upon the laying creature as it was being assaulted by three slobbering toddlers. The kids were hanging on the thing like baby possums, shrieking and yanking. The dog just sat there, panting rhythmically and staring up at its owner without any sign of emotion. I almost expected it to start digging as if trying to remove fleas, to shed the diaper-wrapped irritations climbing on it. But no. It just sat there, with amazing patience. My only guess is that when you are that large of an animal, nothing really threatens you, so there is no need to be defensive. You could put a yoke on that thing and plow fields, or pit it up against bears in a cage match and sell tickets, but it was someone’s loving pet. Perfectly content to kick it in harmony with strangers’ babies. A gentle, hairy giant.
Seriously, the dog was the only cool thing about that stupid pier. I would try to wax philosophic about the place, but it has no soul or depth. Well, unless you consider the exchange of four dollars for a spun-ball of wispy, blue-colored sugar to be deep and somehow meaningful. I have since heard that a favorite activity of many visitors to the pier is to go out to the tip, where the seals are basking on rocks and wooden floats, to give the creatures names. I have no idea why this is so entertaining for people. The seals have no interest in being named, and if they could speak, they would probably tell all the gawkers to fuck off. Maybe I am all alone in that opinion. It matters not.
By the time we left the pier, the sun was setting and it was threatening to rain. We walked straight back to the hotel and suited up for a night of heavy drinking. The previous night had allowed for limited results in that regard, and we intended to tip the scale back to our favor.
I was in no mood to take it easy on the booze. “Let’s just start in the first bar we hit. That way, we won’t feel like we left out any options.” Vance was down with the plan. “Yes. Let’s not waste any time trying to figure out the nightlife around here, and just make it ourselves.” With our brotherhood-in-booze renewed, we entered the first bar we came to, as agreed. Good thing too, as it was starting to rain.
It was a small place off Grant, not but two to three blocks from our hotel. The signage was mostly Chinese, but the neon out front read “Li-Po” with “cocktails” underneath. Perfect. The interior was well-worn and reeked of stale liquor. I could almost feel the history of the place, the faint smell of dragon chasers and Shanghai attempts. There was a Trent Reznor look-alike standing at the bar, hunched over and chatting with a mid-thirties Cantonese bartender. Her hair was long and her rougher facial features were softened by the soft-red, cave-like lighting of the interior. They were both somewhat startled at our entrance, and the fellow immediately made his way past us to the door to watch the rain fall.
We sat down and ordered some Seven and Sevens to start things out right. After a couple of those, amongst some minor banter with the bartender about how no one really drinks Seven and Sevens anymore, Vance and I noticed a set of strange looking liquor bottles on a shelf above the bar. The bottles that were labeled, were done in Chinese. Some bottles were completely blank, with just sealing wax over the caps. They appeared to be there more for show than anything else, but still, always a curious drinker, I was intrigued.
“Pardon me, but what the hell is in those bottles?”
She was genuinely interested in the question, “oh, those are the real deal. Chinese liquor and wines.”
“Oh really? So, are they for sale?”
She obviously anticipated this question, and intended to head me off at the pass. “They’re an acquired taste. You probably won’t like anything you try.”
“I’ll try anything twice, if it doesn’t kill me the first time.” I thought I was being witty. But really, I was just playing into her hands.
“Alright. I won’t bore you with the wines, and just go straight to the good stuff.”
“Good stuff?” Oh, I was extremely pleased to hear those words.
She brought down a Chinese-character-tattooed clay bottle with a bunch of twine wrapped around the neck. “This, gentlemen, is Ng Ka Pi.” She pronounced it “Nung Kah Pee”, and claimed it was a traditional Cantonese liquor, distilled from something abnormal, which I neglected to register because I was so fascinated with how ancient it looked. The cork did not “pop” when she pulled it off.
“Yes! Let’s drink THAT, whatever it is!” Vance and I were both excited to taste this exotic, potentially illegal-to-serve elixir. She poured three shots and left the jug on the bar. It was bourbon brown, but had no odor. We clinked glasses and downed them like cough syrup.
The taste was absolutely horrid. A strange mixture of dirt and sugar, with just a hint of pepperminty nastiness. It had a most ruthless demeanor, abusive, as it felt like someone was ice-picking my gums while pouring battery acid down my esophagus. Mine almost came back up, but my teeth stopped the flow, and I re-swallowed, giving myself a double-whammy. After I shook my head and let out a “whoooooo!” I noticed she was already setting up three more. I stared with dreamlike concentration as she poured, feeling like I was developing tunnel vision. I could feel massive sets of brain cells perishing as the shot ran roughshod through my bloodstream and my liver let go of a single tear.
But there was no turning back. The second set was topped off and ready to bring pain. Suddenly, I felt like we were in a really shitty drinking contest, where the chosen liquid was vomit juice and the prize would be mental retardation. Unfortunately for me, it became a game of pride. And even though those games are lost once they begin, I was incapable of resisting the challenge. I could see the guy at the door grinning as we touched glasses and pounded the second round down. It went down with more ease, since the first shot had prepared my throat for the ill-flavored shock. No regurgitation.
But my sight was threatening to go out. I looked up to my left to see Vance, in a shadowy haze, wincing and wiping his mouth. He, too, had resigned himself to see the thing through. Regardless of the inevitable and immediate damage to vital organs. My right leg was twitching uncontrollably, probably to combat a sudden onset of shivers.
She was laughing while setting up the third round. Specifically, she was laughing at my reaction to the first two. “You alright there? I told you it is an acquired taste.”
My response was delayed, as I was trying to regain clear eyesight by way of frantic rubbing of my sockets with my sweaty palms. “Oh, I remember what you said about the taste. This is what it looks like when acquiring it. I mean, fuck, this stuff is… my god it’s nasty.”
Again, she must have expected my reply. “You get used to it! Cheers!”
With the third round down, I wanted to get the hell out of there. With each shot I was losing functionality and she was obviously going to continue this punishment until we either walked out, or got carried out. I wanted my night to last a little longer, and I wanted my drinks to taste significantly better. But really, my failing eyesight and freaked-out right leg were starting to make me feel mortal. And feeling mortal went against the whole point of drinking in the first place. We had to invent a gentleman’s exit. Some way to save our livers from immediate and acute failure, yet maintain some face even though it was obvious that she was handing us our own asses in shot glasses. One of us needed to pretend to get an urgent phone call that would pull us out of there. That, or one of us needed to prod the other and say something like “dude, we’re already thirty minutes late to meet those chicks from the strip club at that place. We seriously gotta go now. It’s been fun! Thanks crazy lady!”
But before any shoot-from-the-hip plan could get rolling, yet again, she anticipated my next move. “So, is that it guys?” She was not pouring a fourth round. In fact, she was putting the cork back on that bottle of wet death. She just pulled that rug right from beneath us. No chance to save face at that point. “Uh, yeah. We uh, need to meet some… yeah. I guess we’re done here.”
Damn. Punked out. Oh well. Sometimes, it is much better to take an experience for what it is: a losing proposition. And then abandon it like a ripped condom.
11am, the alarm shouts at me for the third time. Vance is already showering and his things are all packed up and ready for departure. I take note of this, admire him for being so prepared, and fall back asleep.
Fifteen minutes later, he is shaking me awake, somewhat violently.
“Come on. Get up. I already called around to find us another place to stay. It’s close. Like, ten blocks tops.”
“Sweet. Anything with a better view would rock.” I fully intended to keep on sleeping after firing off my support.
“No man. Get your ass up. Check-in is at noon, and I told them we’d just go there instead of reserving anything over the phone. First come, first serve. So get the fuck up.” He was not messing around, so I did as was requested.
Ten minutes later, we were wandering through Chinatown with our luggage in tow. Showers are overrated. The scene was vibrating with activity. The streets were as I would imagine the streets of Beijing: narrow strips of pavement with shops crammed on top of one another, knick-knacks and touristy crap spilling out over the sidewalks. The Jenga-like designs of their porcelain Buddha displays seemed intentional, as if to beg some clumsy Clevelander with a fanny pack to topple them to the pavement. “Ahhhhh, you buy all now!” Bustling bodies were everywhere, the smell of business was thicker than egg-drop soup. We made our way through the gauntlet to our next set of beds at Grant Plaza, Chinatown. Fourth floor, corner room with a bay window that overlooked the intersection of Grant and Pine.
The view was absolutely amazing. To our right it was the pretension of a modern downtown city, high rise apartments and skyscrapers. Straight forward was the almost Guang Zhou provincial look of Chinatown. To the left was a hint of coastline, giving me the feeling that we might be staying at Mouth’s house, somewhere in the Goondocks.
Our bags properly stowed, and deuces properly deposited, we hit Grant to explore the city.
We made our way east, through the edge of Chinatown and toward the bay. It was a perfect day, with scattered clouds and the temperature threatening to break seventy. With mild winds kicking up off the ocean, over the city to the bay, we wore jackets to fend off the chill. I learned that in San Francisco, it is always necessary to have a jacket or sweater handy. Much like the desert, regardless of the temperature during the daytime, it gets brisk, if not downright cold come evening. Best to be prepared for anything whenever you plan nothing. We had no real schedule for the day. “Wandering around” was the only thing we penciled in.
There was a stumpy tower off in the distance, not too far ahead of us that caught our fancy. Coit Tower to be specific. But much to Vance’s irritation, my memory would not allow me to remember the name. I could remember the letters, somehow, but could never quite get them in the right order. So with every mention of “Cito Tower”(that’s “sea-toe” instead of the proper “coy-tuh” spelling and pronunciation), I could feel the heat coming off of Vance’s head, as his ultra-rational mind struggled to figure out how many times, in an hour, he would have to correct me before he would be forced to adopt my letter-scrambled spelling. Just to avoid a meltdown. This was not, by far, Vance’s first run-in with my inability to remember such details, but it is the most memorable for me because we actually had to stop walking at one point for him to give me a stern talking to. It was the only kind-of-argument we had on the entire trip. It was special like that.
“So, how old is this Cito Tower, anyway?”
“The Coit Tower?”
“Right, Coit. Whatever. How old is it?”
These types of questions, by me, were interspersed with other conversations we had as we strolled through the narrow streets. He had actually read the travel manual, so I was depending on him as a source of information. Simply repeat the above three lines of dialogue, with a different question attached, every ten minutes. It always started with “so, ______ (how tall is, who built, etc..) this Cito Tower, anyway?” After about the tenth repetition, Vance, understandably, lost his cool. His teeth were clenched, as were his pumping fists, as I (as best I can) remember.
“Dude. It’s not Cito, it’s COIT. COIT, COIT, Coit. Four letters. It isn’t that hard to remember.”
“Sorry man, jeez. I just can’t seem to get that to settle in, you know?”
“No. No, I don’t know.” Vance is the kind of guy who if he told you he remembered the name of the nurse who delivered him as a baby, by her nametag, you would not be surprised. So it stood to reason that he would consider my memory slippage dubious at best. He continued his pro-memory crusade. “I think you’re doing it on purpose. Either that or you’re just not trying.”
Me, with slight indignance, tempered with consideration, “not trying? Well what the hell am I supposed to do? Make a flashcard for the fucking thing?”
As an aside: Later on in life, my inability to remember insignificant details blossomed gloriously into full-blown forgetfulness. Vance has been steadfast in his opinion that I am either intentionally forgetting things, or just not trying hard enough to remember them. I am far too close to the problem to say for sure whether or not his diagnosis is correct, but he has not been wrong about much in the fifteen years I have known him. Take that for what it is worth,
We made it to Coit Tower, climbed up the thing, and peered out onto the beautiful city of San Francisco. There are no proper words to describe such a visually explosive city. Splendid, fantastic, scenic, a gift from the Gods, whatever. Nothing fits right. The architecture is fantastically mixed in age, with ultra-seventies high rises peaking out next to sleek pieces of high-design, high-tech contemporary buildings, which are surrounded by stone buildings which appear to be about a century in age. And the best part is that the city seems to sit on the peak of a mild land-ridge which separates the bay from the open ocean. So everything is tiered downward. From the bay, you literally look UP at the city. Impossible to describe how much there is to see and take in. Especially since both of us grew up in Houston, where the entire incline of the (rather expansive) city is probably one foot, north to south. It makes a city as topographically interesting as San Francisco that much more fascinating.
Pictures were taken, artistic shots were attempted (got lots of thumb close-ups), and then it was time to return to the streets for more wandering. It was decided that we should check out Fisherman’s Warf, which is on the bay. If I had known what a tourist disaster that place was, I probably would not have gone. But it was there, so we had to check it out.
On our way to the wharf, we zig-zagged through private courtyards, between and amongst the squeezed and stacked architecture of the area. Multi-million dollar town homes with rooftop decks. We scrambled up stairs and on to private patios, just to see how the other side lived. As expected, they live quite well. We were not pretending to BE them by invading their spaces. That would be psycho. We were more… criminal, I suppose (but not literally). More like, casing their cribs, but in a really lazy way. We just walked right up and sat on their patio furniture, taking inventory of their outdoor wealth. Lots of thickly-painted wicker atrocities, pastels, rustic wind chimes, and all the other Home and Garden bullshit one would expect to find littered on the patio of a wealthy person’s second home.
We continued this type of invasive tourism until we hit the bay and found the fabled Fisherman’s Wharf, the big-ass pier.
Standard fare for any city that understands their tourist market. It is indeed a pier. A long, well-developed pier that looks more like an amusement park than it does a place where longshoremen would crank out crabs and unload barges from faraway lands. Clowns wandering around making balloon animals, some dude doing parlor tricks, cotton candy and lots of trinket shops. A big, wooden cash vacuum. The most notable part of that experience was us coming upon the largest dog I had ever seen. It was a Saint Bernard, and it was living with horse-like proportions. I would estimate it to have been somewhere near one hundred fifty pounds, with feet the size of mine and a panting mouth, capable of swallowing whole watermelons. While moving through the crowd, trying to leave the pier, we stumbled upon the laying creature as it was being assaulted by three slobbering toddlers. The kids were hanging on the thing like baby possums, shrieking and yanking. The dog just sat there, panting rhythmically and staring up at its owner without any sign of emotion. I almost expected it to start digging as if trying to remove fleas, to shed the diaper-wrapped irritations climbing on it. But no. It just sat there, with amazing patience. My only guess is that when you are that large of an animal, nothing really threatens you, so there is no need to be defensive. You could put a yoke on that thing and plow fields, or pit it up against bears in a cage match and sell tickets, but it was someone’s loving pet. Perfectly content to kick it in harmony with strangers’ babies. A gentle, hairy giant.
Seriously, the dog was the only cool thing about that stupid pier. I would try to wax philosophic about the place, but it has no soul or depth. Well, unless you consider the exchange of four dollars for a spun-ball of wispy, blue-colored sugar to be deep and somehow meaningful. I have since heard that a favorite activity of many visitors to the pier is to go out to the tip, where the seals are basking on rocks and wooden floats, to give the creatures names. I have no idea why this is so entertaining for people. The seals have no interest in being named, and if they could speak, they would probably tell all the gawkers to fuck off. Maybe I am all alone in that opinion. It matters not.
By the time we left the pier, the sun was setting and it was threatening to rain. We walked straight back to the hotel and suited up for a night of heavy drinking. The previous night had allowed for limited results in that regard, and we intended to tip the scale back to our favor.
I was in no mood to take it easy on the booze. “Let’s just start in the first bar we hit. That way, we won’t feel like we left out any options.” Vance was down with the plan. “Yes. Let’s not waste any time trying to figure out the nightlife around here, and just make it ourselves.” With our brotherhood-in-booze renewed, we entered the first bar we came to, as agreed. Good thing too, as it was starting to rain.
It was a small place off Grant, not but two to three blocks from our hotel. The signage was mostly Chinese, but the neon out front read “Li-Po” with “cocktails” underneath. Perfect. The interior was well-worn and reeked of stale liquor. I could almost feel the history of the place, the faint smell of dragon chasers and Shanghai attempts. There was a Trent Reznor look-alike standing at the bar, hunched over and chatting with a mid-thirties Cantonese bartender. Her hair was long and her rougher facial features were softened by the soft-red, cave-like lighting of the interior. They were both somewhat startled at our entrance, and the fellow immediately made his way past us to the door to watch the rain fall.
We sat down and ordered some Seven and Sevens to start things out right. After a couple of those, amongst some minor banter with the bartender about how no one really drinks Seven and Sevens anymore, Vance and I noticed a set of strange looking liquor bottles on a shelf above the bar. The bottles that were labeled, were done in Chinese. Some bottles were completely blank, with just sealing wax over the caps. They appeared to be there more for show than anything else, but still, always a curious drinker, I was intrigued.
“Pardon me, but what the hell is in those bottles?”
She was genuinely interested in the question, “oh, those are the real deal. Chinese liquor and wines.”
“Oh really? So, are they for sale?”
She obviously anticipated this question, and intended to head me off at the pass. “They’re an acquired taste. You probably won’t like anything you try.”
“I’ll try anything twice, if it doesn’t kill me the first time.” I thought I was being witty. But really, I was just playing into her hands.
“Alright. I won’t bore you with the wines, and just go straight to the good stuff.”
“Good stuff?” Oh, I was extremely pleased to hear those words.
She brought down a Chinese-character-tattooed clay bottle with a bunch of twine wrapped around the neck. “This, gentlemen, is Ng Ka Pi.” She pronounced it “Nung Kah Pee”, and claimed it was a traditional Cantonese liquor, distilled from something abnormal, which I neglected to register because I was so fascinated with how ancient it looked. The cork did not “pop” when she pulled it off.
“Yes! Let’s drink THAT, whatever it is!” Vance and I were both excited to taste this exotic, potentially illegal-to-serve elixir. She poured three shots and left the jug on the bar. It was bourbon brown, but had no odor. We clinked glasses and downed them like cough syrup.
The taste was absolutely horrid. A strange mixture of dirt and sugar, with just a hint of pepperminty nastiness. It had a most ruthless demeanor, abusive, as it felt like someone was ice-picking my gums while pouring battery acid down my esophagus. Mine almost came back up, but my teeth stopped the flow, and I re-swallowed, giving myself a double-whammy. After I shook my head and let out a “whoooooo!” I noticed she was already setting up three more. I stared with dreamlike concentration as she poured, feeling like I was developing tunnel vision. I could feel massive sets of brain cells perishing as the shot ran roughshod through my bloodstream and my liver let go of a single tear.
But there was no turning back. The second set was topped off and ready to bring pain. Suddenly, I felt like we were in a really shitty drinking contest, where the chosen liquid was vomit juice and the prize would be mental retardation. Unfortunately for me, it became a game of pride. And even though those games are lost once they begin, I was incapable of resisting the challenge. I could see the guy at the door grinning as we touched glasses and pounded the second round down. It went down with more ease, since the first shot had prepared my throat for the ill-flavored shock. No regurgitation.
But my sight was threatening to go out. I looked up to my left to see Vance, in a shadowy haze, wincing and wiping his mouth. He, too, had resigned himself to see the thing through. Regardless of the inevitable and immediate damage to vital organs. My right leg was twitching uncontrollably, probably to combat a sudden onset of shivers.
She was laughing while setting up the third round. Specifically, she was laughing at my reaction to the first two. “You alright there? I told you it is an acquired taste.”
My response was delayed, as I was trying to regain clear eyesight by way of frantic rubbing of my sockets with my sweaty palms. “Oh, I remember what you said about the taste. This is what it looks like when acquiring it. I mean, fuck, this stuff is… my god it’s nasty.”
Again, she must have expected my reply. “You get used to it! Cheers!”
With the third round down, I wanted to get the hell out of there. With each shot I was losing functionality and she was obviously going to continue this punishment until we either walked out, or got carried out. I wanted my night to last a little longer, and I wanted my drinks to taste significantly better. But really, my failing eyesight and freaked-out right leg were starting to make me feel mortal. And feeling mortal went against the whole point of drinking in the first place. We had to invent a gentleman’s exit. Some way to save our livers from immediate and acute failure, yet maintain some face even though it was obvious that she was handing us our own asses in shot glasses. One of us needed to pretend to get an urgent phone call that would pull us out of there. That, or one of us needed to prod the other and say something like “dude, we’re already thirty minutes late to meet those chicks from the strip club at that place. We seriously gotta go now. It’s been fun! Thanks crazy lady!”
But before any shoot-from-the-hip plan could get rolling, yet again, she anticipated my next move. “So, is that it guys?” She was not pouring a fourth round. In fact, she was putting the cork back on that bottle of wet death. She just pulled that rug right from beneath us. No chance to save face at that point. “Uh, yeah. We uh, need to meet some… yeah. I guess we’re done here.”
Damn. Punked out. Oh well. Sometimes, it is much better to take an experience for what it is: a losing proposition. And then abandon it like a ripped condom.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
She Knew it Had to Rain.
It’s not like she wasn’t aware of what was going to happen. She knew that as soon as she signed that form, that the trigger was pulled. She knew they’d be after him. They’d find him. And then he’d find her. She knew that, going in, on the front end. The end of the front, rather.
What she didn’t bargain for was how it was going to make things easier. How her sleep would be so much more sound and deep, once she had set the blind-fear catching machine on its way. How the inevitability of it all was more comforting than it was ominous. Before, she had no idea when or where the strike would occur. On the toilet, while shaving her legs, because the back door had obviously been used that day. The fashion of the arrival. A midnight window shattering constructed from a mis-ironed shirt, a failed interview, a jewelry box, and a pint of bourbon. She had clue: not, as to what shape it would be delivered. Like a claw-back hammer to the piano that was passed down from her grandmother, with the delicate fingers of a virtuoso… Mangled with torn ends and ripped corners. Like everything else that she lived and breathed for the past five years.
But now, she could easily see the clouds rolling in from the horizon. Sure, they were dark, and sure to bring her life to a compressed and beatless halt. But at the very least, she had the sunlight in front of her until then. The clock was ticking, as it was before, but she felt it was finally readable. She finally had a watch to monitor. She actually HAD time, and she planned to kill it.
It’s never easy to be on the run. It’s never easy to admit to being on the run. And it’s damn near impossible to put an end-cap on the running experience, after you’ve done it for so long. And the machine wanted the details. The machine wanted to know the whys-hows-whats of every scenario that lead up to the running. They wanted her to “discuss” it. As if it would ever be something to splay out over and between an afternoon tea, on some veranda in the Hamptons, let alone a cold room with dated recording equipment in downtown Detroit. No place fit the discussion. The discussion hardly fit itself.
Discussing it becomes akin to the task of breathing bagged smoke. In a pitch-black hall closet. Without even a “hello” before it broke down all around her. It’s not like she didn’t remember her grandmother’s beautiful fingers, the blades that they were, and how those blades sliced the air as they danced through wondrous concertos, endlessly complex movements, and irreverent man-problems. It’s not like she didn’t wish for hands like those, hands to catch those smoky clouds before it broke down all around her. Like it always did. “It’s not like you didn’t fucking know what would happen if you left the fucking air conditioner on all goddamn day, you stupid whore!!”
But it’s not like she wasn’t aware of what was going to happen. It was obviously going to rain.
What she didn’t bargain for was how it was going to make things easier. How her sleep would be so much more sound and deep, once she had set the blind-fear catching machine on its way. How the inevitability of it all was more comforting than it was ominous. Before, she had no idea when or where the strike would occur. On the toilet, while shaving her legs, because the back door had obviously been used that day. The fashion of the arrival. A midnight window shattering constructed from a mis-ironed shirt, a failed interview, a jewelry box, and a pint of bourbon. She had clue: not, as to what shape it would be delivered. Like a claw-back hammer to the piano that was passed down from her grandmother, with the delicate fingers of a virtuoso… Mangled with torn ends and ripped corners. Like everything else that she lived and breathed for the past five years.
But now, she could easily see the clouds rolling in from the horizon. Sure, they were dark, and sure to bring her life to a compressed and beatless halt. But at the very least, she had the sunlight in front of her until then. The clock was ticking, as it was before, but she felt it was finally readable. She finally had a watch to monitor. She actually HAD time, and she planned to kill it.
It’s never easy to be on the run. It’s never easy to admit to being on the run. And it’s damn near impossible to put an end-cap on the running experience, after you’ve done it for so long. And the machine wanted the details. The machine wanted to know the whys-hows-whats of every scenario that lead up to the running. They wanted her to “discuss” it. As if it would ever be something to splay out over and between an afternoon tea, on some veranda in the Hamptons, let alone a cold room with dated recording equipment in downtown Detroit. No place fit the discussion. The discussion hardly fit itself.
Discussing it becomes akin to the task of breathing bagged smoke. In a pitch-black hall closet. Without even a “hello” before it broke down all around her. It’s not like she didn’t remember her grandmother’s beautiful fingers, the blades that they were, and how those blades sliced the air as they danced through wondrous concertos, endlessly complex movements, and irreverent man-problems. It’s not like she didn’t wish for hands like those, hands to catch those smoky clouds before it broke down all around her. Like it always did. “It’s not like you didn’t fucking know what would happen if you left the fucking air conditioner on all goddamn day, you stupid whore!!”
But it’s not like she wasn’t aware of what was going to happen. It was obviously going to rain.
Friday, August 12, 2005
So, Like I Was Sayin'
Since I am FAR too lazy to think up and post some story today, I am going to be a bastard and just link to my four little posts on Austinist. That's right, I'm all kinds of uninteresting like that.
Side note: there is NOTHING "sophisticated" about a wine hang over. Just in case you thought there was. It's a sham, lie, and wild fabrication that needs to die. Okay, so I was the only one under that impression. Whatever.
My first little story is an ode to the Migas served at Curra's here in Austin (all articles are Austin-in-relation, so that we stick to the point of the site, dig?). If you don't love to eat chorizo when hung over, then go to the next article. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The second story is an open letter to my home-away-from-home, Club Deville. I got some shit for this, as many are under the (hideously) false impression that Deville is little more than a watering hole. To them, I say "up your ass, commies", because they are wrong. That, and I have no tact or sense of responsibility to the feelings of my fellow man. So sweet. POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!
Numero three-o crashed and BURNED as an article, since no one fucking read the entire thing. They read the first paragraph and bailed on it. It starts out sounding like I am honestly going to make some pork taquitos, which is utterly ridiculous because I would probably burn my right arm off AND taquitos are like, ten fucking cents at the super market (big ol' bags of 'em are sold at Fiesta! So Delicioso!). Why would I bother to make my own? That's just... whatever. The beginning makes it sound like I am, but then the script flips and the predictable happens. All in the name of pointless silliness. I really liked this one when I typed it. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!
Installment number four… I don’t think anyone even read it, which is fine, I suppose, since that would bring the paycheck-to-readership into parity. This is a description of a true Austin happening. In some ways, it is a pretty standard and mundane happening, which I was trying to shine up with some tricky word-play and extraneous description. But, as the old philosophic and clichéd question goes: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to pee on it, will the bears do it? I, for one, certainly hope they would pick up man’s slack. So philosophical, so deep. My brain hurts now. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRNNNNN!!!!
Don’t fuck up your weekend by watching reality TV all day. I’ll be in Houston to pick up a pick up. Getting it back here might be a ill-fated journey of broken timing belts and tire-changings. Hopefully I will have no interesting stories, but will still be alive, come Monday.
Word to that.
Side note: there is NOTHING "sophisticated" about a wine hang over. Just in case you thought there was. It's a sham, lie, and wild fabrication that needs to die. Okay, so I was the only one under that impression. Whatever.
My first little story is an ode to the Migas served at Curra's here in Austin (all articles are Austin-in-relation, so that we stick to the point of the site, dig?). If you don't love to eat chorizo when hung over, then go to the next article. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The second story is an open letter to my home-away-from-home, Club Deville. I got some shit for this, as many are under the (hideously) false impression that Deville is little more than a watering hole. To them, I say "up your ass, commies", because they are wrong. That, and I have no tact or sense of responsibility to the feelings of my fellow man. So sweet. POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!
Numero three-o crashed and BURNED as an article, since no one fucking read the entire thing. They read the first paragraph and bailed on it. It starts out sounding like I am honestly going to make some pork taquitos, which is utterly ridiculous because I would probably burn my right arm off AND taquitos are like, ten fucking cents at the super market (big ol' bags of 'em are sold at Fiesta! So Delicioso!). Why would I bother to make my own? That's just... whatever. The beginning makes it sound like I am, but then the script flips and the predictable happens. All in the name of pointless silliness. I really liked this one when I typed it. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!
Installment number four… I don’t think anyone even read it, which is fine, I suppose, since that would bring the paycheck-to-readership into parity. This is a description of a true Austin happening. In some ways, it is a pretty standard and mundane happening, which I was trying to shine up with some tricky word-play and extraneous description. But, as the old philosophic and clichéd question goes: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to pee on it, will the bears do it? I, for one, certainly hope they would pick up man’s slack. So philosophical, so deep. My brain hurts now. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRNNNNN!!!!
Don’t fuck up your weekend by watching reality TV all day. I’ll be in Houston to pick up a pick up. Getting it back here might be a ill-fated journey of broken timing belts and tire-changings. Hopefully I will have no interesting stories, but will still be alive, come Monday.
Word to that.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Just Like Camp. Damnit.
I’ve been showering in my back yard for the past two days, and it has not been as sweet as I had initially imagined it. In my mind, I would go out there, fire up the hose, get all wet and soapy, and naked chicks would just pop out of nowhere, excited by my wet-skinned manliness .
Needless to say, it didn’t quite go down like that. More like, my 40-something neighbor pulled up in his Volvo and was like, “hey, uh, Craig. You know I have kids that play out here, right? What the hell are you doing?”
I’m sure you’re wondering the same thing. Well, for any judgmental assholes out there, I am not some exhibitionistic, lecherous cretin (well, I'm not lecherous anyhow). I was wearing my sweaty-ass jogging shorts on both occasions, because I’m sensitive to the gag reflexes of my neighbors. I have been re-grouting the tile in my shower, which takes 48 hours to cure, and I run four miles every other day. I HAD to clean my stankin’ ass, my kitchen sink is far to small, and the front yard seemed like a wholly inappropriate place to take care of my personal hygiene. Even though, my neighbors cut hair and wash their babies on their driveways. DOMINO, MOTHERFUCKERS!
We’re a tight community like that, but not tight enough for me to suds-up out front.
I got to take my first normal shower in two days, this morning. Oooooh it felt good. Warm water. My razor. Privacy. No more summer camp livin’ for me. But last week, pre-re-grout, the outdoors seemed like a reasonable option when compared to the moldy disaster that was my shower. You see, about a year ago, I noticed that the grout between the base shower pan and the wall tile was chipping out. Well, grouting is a pain in the ass (as evidenced by the backyard showering) so I said fuck it, and just bought some sealed caulk for the job. That shit dries over night. Presto! A year went by, and that caulk line turned into a dreadfully moldy filthy-shit line. Prest-nasty-o!
Stop, vomit time!
So I pulled all that shit out, bleached the affected areas, and re-grouted it. Now it needs to be sealed. That’ll take another 24 hours to cure. Sweet. Let’s hope the mosquitoes aren’t ravenous this weekend.
Damn I need a nap. And a million dollars.
Needless to say, it didn’t quite go down like that. More like, my 40-something neighbor pulled up in his Volvo and was like, “hey, uh, Craig. You know I have kids that play out here, right? What the hell are you doing?”
I’m sure you’re wondering the same thing. Well, for any judgmental assholes out there, I am not some exhibitionistic, lecherous cretin (well, I'm not lecherous anyhow). I was wearing my sweaty-ass jogging shorts on both occasions, because I’m sensitive to the gag reflexes of my neighbors. I have been re-grouting the tile in my shower, which takes 48 hours to cure, and I run four miles every other day. I HAD to clean my stankin’ ass, my kitchen sink is far to small, and the front yard seemed like a wholly inappropriate place to take care of my personal hygiene. Even though, my neighbors cut hair and wash their babies on their driveways. DOMINO, MOTHERFUCKERS!
We’re a tight community like that, but not tight enough for me to suds-up out front.
I got to take my first normal shower in two days, this morning. Oooooh it felt good. Warm water. My razor. Privacy. No more summer camp livin’ for me. But last week, pre-re-grout, the outdoors seemed like a reasonable option when compared to the moldy disaster that was my shower. You see, about a year ago, I noticed that the grout between the base shower pan and the wall tile was chipping out. Well, grouting is a pain in the ass (as evidenced by the backyard showering) so I said fuck it, and just bought some sealed caulk for the job. That shit dries over night. Presto! A year went by, and that caulk line turned into a dreadfully moldy filthy-shit line. Prest-nasty-o!
Stop, vomit time!
So I pulled all that shit out, bleached the affected areas, and re-grouted it. Now it needs to be sealed. That’ll take another 24 hours to cure. Sweet. Let’s hope the mosquitoes aren’t ravenous this weekend.
Damn I need a nap. And a million dollars.
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