Simon-ism of the day - Part III

Simon is a full-fledged member of the punk rock culture. Plays in a punk band, owns a ton of punk records, has been recording live punk concerts for years hoping to one day release them as a live punk collection, and it goes without saying that he has been hugely influenced by "The Clash." His band, until recently, has only ever released albums on vinyl. Real vinyl. As in those really thick LP's from days of yore, "not that flimsy plastic shit that hides all the bass." It took a lot of convincing on the part of his new label to put out their first CD.

"As far as I'm concerned," says Simon, "If you don't own a turntable, you're not really punk rock."

Simon-ism of the day - Part II

"It's the Dog's Bollocks."

The closest equivalent I suppose would be "It's the Cat's Meow" but really, in context, it comes off more like, "It's the fuckin' shit."

My friend the Brit

I've made a new friend at work. An editor named Simon. A jolly fellow who, even though he's lived in America these last twenty years, is still just as British as any you'll find outside of London. Thick lilting accent, wears soccer (sorry, football) jersies to work, and with his spiked hair looks like he just fell out of a Clash concert. And it's been a nonstop and thoroughly amusing anthropological study these last few days as I gleen more and more English-isms from him, which I will pass on to you now.

The first happened on the second day of the edit when Simon told me, "We're just waiting for the geezer to come in to record his V.O." So here I am expecting some old guy to come in the room when in pops some dude in his mid-thirties. After discreetly waiting for the guy to step into the soundproof booth I ask Simon, "I thought you said the voiceover guy was a geezer." Well apparently for the English a geezer is just our equivalent for "guy" or "dude." And if someone is a "diamond geezer" it means he's a really swell mate... not old gay fart.

On the third day, after showing Simon the multistep process needed to pull up a video source, he parroted the instructions back to me to make sure he'd gotten it right using the following narration: "Okay, so I do this, then that, click here, open that and boom, Bob's your uncle." Yes, that's right, 'Bob's your uncle' is British for, "There it is." Smashing.

Today as he sat around with us outside having a smoke before his session he got onto the topic of how much the rest of Europe hates the British. You think the world hates America, it's apparently a lukewarm emotion compared to their pure utter disdain for English fucks. That means whenever Simon finds himself in a bar in, say, Italy he is automatically viewed as the spokesman for the entire English people, forced to answer for just about everything from the Royal family to football rioters. And forget France, Simon won't even go there. "See ever since the war you Americans have somehow forgot what collosal pricks we all are." Apparently the Europeans have not had the proper distance to forget.

Funnily enough though, the Brits are surpisingly American when it comes to their vacations ('holidays' of course) in that, while they might travel to a foreign country, they look for places that are still, for all intents and purposes, very very English. Be it Holland, Spain, Germany, "They've got to have English food, English beer and they have to speak English. I'm on holiday mate. I'm not here for a cultural lesson."

They're all gems, I swear. I'll continue to post them as the come.

Coolness and puke do not mix

Everyone knows that becoming a parent changes you, often in ways you never expect. First of all, whether you know it or not, whether you accept it or not, once you have a kid, you are no longer cool. It just doesn’t happen. You can try and hang onto it, try and tell yourself and others, “Hey, I’m still the same guy I was before,” but no, it’s gone. All of it. The only thing to do is to reinvent yourself as a different kind of cool. You know the kind of cool where you know lyrics to Laurie Berkner and High School Musical songs. Nick Jr. cool.

Still the thing that changes most once you become a parent, is your level of tolerance for gross things. You obviously have to get past what a normal person’s gag reflex would be since you’ll be changing about nine thousand diapers per week. But it doesn’t stop there. What ends up happening is that grossness actually becomes a matter of convenience. That’s why you see mothers upending their infants, putting a nose to their diaper and sniffing. It’s just faster and easier to smell for poop than to undo a onesie, pull back the elastic on a Huggies and check to see if there’s something inside. When you see a dad pick a booger out of his toddler’s nose, the ick factor is simply more convenient than searching the house for one of those little bulb suction thingies—which said toddler probably hid inside the VCR anyway. This elevated yuck threshold obviously goes hand-in-hand with the loss of coolness I mentioned, because you simply cannot be cool while sniffing a person’s butt on a daily basis. It just doesn’t happen.

But this grossness thing reached new levels of abominableness when my entire family was recently sick with the flu. On one of those fun-filled nights my one-year-old, Jesse threw up on Lauren. But he didn’t just throw up on her. He threw up on her while he was nursing. You get that? He threw up… on her breast. This wasn’t just some relatively harmless baby spittle. This was full on, chunky, stomach flu ralphage. And do you know what Lauren’s response was? After her initial, knee-jerk, “aw gross” reaction, she quickly composed herself and said, “Okay, well at least it didn’t get on the couch.”

The couch? She has vomit on her boobs and yet she’s happy because it didn’t get on the couch? That’s how far we’ve come as parents—getting thrown up on has somehow become the preferable alternative to something else. When the hell does that happen anywhere else in life? Short of getting killed by an axe-wielding psychopath, how is getting thrown up on not the worst possible outcome of any social situation? I mean imagine you’re walking through the ethnic foods section of the supermarket and some guy just walks up and blows chunks all over you—lifting up your shirt and exposing your chest before doing so of course. Could you ever find a silver lining in that? Yet somehow, as a parent, having somebody puke all over your bare naked BOOBS is actually seen as a somewhat positive thing!

Man, I really hope my kids grow up to be rockstars because it would be a shame for them to siphon so much coolness out of me and Lauren and not put it to good use.

Mothers, please don't beat your babies

Allison and I were just chillin out tonight, listening to the Happy Feet soundtrack while we cleaned up her room, when she suddenly says: "This is the one where they don't beat baby girls."

That made me stop for a second. I was trying to remember a place in the movie where the penguins beat up the baby penguins. I know there was a part where the dad was worried that he'd drop an egg. But I don't remember them actually beating one of the babies.

"When do they beat the babies?" I ask.

"No they don't beat the baby girls I said."

I crinkled up my forehead trying to think what the hell movie she could possibly be talking about when I realized which song was playing. It was Nicole Kidman singing the Prince song, "Kiss." And that's when I realized what the first line of the song might sound like to the unfamiliar brain of a three-year-old: "You don't have to be rich to be my pearl," becomes:

"You don't have to beat baby girls."

Now my question is this: Is it weird that Allison understood that as a perfectly innocuous line?

Shooting little people RULES!

Damn I'm whooped. The fam and I just got back from a place in Pennsylvania called Peddler's Village. It's a very toursity place to go and buy lots of crap that you don't really need. Fortunately we didn't go for that reason. They also have a mini-amusement place there for kids called Giggleberry Fair which consists of a merry-go-round, a playroom full of dress up clothes, musical instruments, puppets, etc... But the coup de gras at this place is "Giggleberry Mountain" which is a GIGANTIC contraption made of nets, ropes, tubes, slides, and anything else you can imagine a kid might want to climb. It goes up for six stories!

Lauren and I took turns following Allison up and down this monster obstacle course. I've gotta say this about my kid: that girl is STRONG. She's climbing from level to level like it's nothing, often using nothing more than arm strength to hoist herself up. Because the place was built with little people in mind, it seemed to be harder on the adults than the kids and Allison was often having to wait up for US.

BUT, the best damn thing about this whole place, the thing that makes ME want to go back again and again: on the bottom two levels of Giggleberry Mountain are a series of air canons for firing little NERF-like balls, of which there are literally hundreds scattered here, there and everywhere. On the lower level there are canons that fire large volumes of balls up into the air and on the second level are swivel cannons that you use to fire at opponents on the other side of the well. Or you can do what I did and fire down into the well... into the crowd.

The best part is firing on those kids who have just walked in and don't quite realize what the room is all about. Out of nowhere a little ball suddenly plunks them in the head. They look up like, "What the fuck was that?" When they shrug their shoulders and look away, you blast them again. Seriously, how awesome is that? Where else in America can you go where it's actually okay, and even ENCOURAGED, that you shoot little kids in the head? Nowhere, that's where!

And I just want to say that I think I earned the title of "Funnest Grownup on the Muthafuckin Planet" tonight. Most parents were only shooting at their own kids. Well, my kid was off with her mother climbing nets. So I just started unloading on anyone who was at least six-years-old and within the lateral range of my cannon. At first they'd be like, "Holy crap, was that an adult who just shot me?" But after the second or third direct hit, they smartened up and started returning fire. By the time we finally moseyed on out of this place, I had a good twenty kids all ganging up to blast me with cannons or, when that failed, flinging them like baseballs and cheering like Mardi Gras whenever they pegged me in the face. No kidding, almost every single kid in that well was ignoring every other person at every other cannon and focusing all their firepower on me. It was like being on American Gladiators where I was the Gladiator.

It... was... AWESOME!

My Daughter: The Bad Influence

It’s amazing how ten minutes in kid world can so often become a microcosm for life in general and, if you look hard enough, a fast forward glimpse into what these little rugrats have in store for you. Lauren and I recently took the kids down to the pool for an afternoon and Allison made friends with a little boy who was there with his mom. At three years old, Allison has pretty much grown used to always being the youngest kid in a group, but this boy was only two and it was obvious from the first moment that he was in love with Allison and would follow her anywhere. Allison must have sensed this too, because she almost immediately began testing his loyalties.

Standing on the side the two of them would talk for a second, then Allison would spontaneously announce, “I’m going over there,” and run to the other side of the pool. The little boy would have a moment of hesitation where he would look at his mom who was standing in the water, then at Allison who was beckoning him from twenty feet away. Then, making the hard decision, he would run, with many looks back, to Allison. His mom and I would swim our way over to the two chatting kids just in time to hear Allison once again announce that she was going to go back over there and run in the direction from whence we had all just arrived, forcing the little boy into another hard decision.

Personally, I didn’t mind shadowing Allison all over the pool – that’s why we had come down here after all – but it was apparent this boy’s mom was tired and really didn’t feel like swimming back and forth just to follow her son while he followed a girl. When she and Lauren struck up a casual dialogue earlier, we’d learned that she had just had another baby about six weeks before and this was one of the first times she’d been able to get out of the house. But it was apparent her little boy was indeed prepared to follow Allison no matter how many times she ran away from him. And the more Allison scurried away, the less he looked to his mom for approval before pursuing. Sensing the mom’s lack of energy, I suggested to Allison that we stay in one spot. Not to be deterred, Allison immediately changed tactics and began subtly taunting her new little friend.

“How old are you?” she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be since she’d asked the same question a half dozen times already. It took the younger boy a few seconds to formulate his words and position his fingers into the correct number of digits to say, “I…two!” Allison would immediately shoot back, “Oh well I’m three!” After about the tenth round of this exchange with Allison asserting her numeric superiority, the boy actually started lying to sound better. “I…tree!” he said. Allison, knowing better (and knowing full well what she was doing I might add) would mock, “You’re not three! You’re two! I’m three!”

The mom, trying to keep her part in this whole thing as jovial and non-confrontational as possible stuck up for her son with a lame, “Oh he’ll be three in a few months won’t you buddy.” Allison looked at her, considering this for a moment, then looked at the boy and decided to taunt him another way. “That’s my daddy,” she said, pointing to me. “Your daddy’s not here.”

Oh crap. My stomach dropped. In five minutes time, she’d already progressed from a coy little game of cat and mouse, to throwing veiled insults at the boy, to now throwing veiled insults at his family. I was honestly rendered speechless. I couldn’t see scolding her over this. It was a perfectly normal three-year-old conversation topic after all and she wasn’t outwardly, blatantly mocking this kid by any stretch. But I knew better. We all did by this point. This wasn’t a mere casual observation on Allison’s part. It was a well-calculated dig hidden behind the mask of innocence. The boy’s mom once again spoke up in defense, “His daddy is at home watching his baby sister so mommy could go to the pool.” I jumped on this and rallied to the mom’s side, “Oh see, they have a baby just like us Allison. His daddy is home with the baby.”

Allison, already bored with this new line of dialogue, once again changed tactics. “I wanna jump, Daddy!” She shooed the little boy away with a flip of her hand then leapt three feet off the edge of the pool into my waiting arms. She looked back at her newfound puppy dog with a look that said, “See what I just did.” Earlier, before Allison and this boy became fast friends, he too had been attempting this same kind of stunt with his mom… only he didn’t so much jump into her arms as lean out until he was in contact with her hands, at which point he just kind of fell the rest of the way. I’m fairly certain Allison saw this and remembered it. Now, off the boy’s look of hesitation, Allison threw her arms around my neck, laid her head on my chest and said in a loud clear voice, “I love you, Daddy.”

That settled it. Even at two years old this kid knew that to impress a girl and steal her away from the current man in her life, he couldn't just match what she had done. He had to do it three times bigger and five times more dangerous. Just behind the ledge where Allison had jumped was a slightly higher ledge. Just behind that was a brick wall about two feet high. The little boy, who not ten minutes earlier had been afraid to jump from the ledge two inches above the water, was now attempting to climb the wall for a stunt that was certain to impress the cute little redhead who he was quickly falling in love with… if he didn’t split his head open in the process, of course. Fortunately, me, Lauren and the boy’s mom all had the good sense to stop him before he took a flying leap off Blind Man’s Bluff. One of us made up some lame but plausible excuse that would allow us to separate the kids before Allison could convince him to run away with her.

Like I said earlier, I’m so used to Allison being the youngest in a group of kids. By extension she’s almost always the shy follower, the one eager to please her friends… and even that is only when she isn’t deathly afraid of the other kids. But boy oh boy, I can already see that she is going to have the potential to be that girl who the other moms view as a “bad influence.” She speaks well. She’s sweet and courteous. She has a soft porcelain face that absolutely cries, “Innocence!” But let us not forget that fiery red hair and the temper that comes along with it. This kid is smart, shrewd, calculating. She’ll learn how to wrap people around her finger and use them to her liking. I only pray she uses them for good and not for evil. I don’t want to field phone calls from angry parents over why their son missed curfew. I don’t want to answer questions as to why one of Allison’s boyfriends ended up in jail over a dare. I really don’t ever want to think of my daughter as being that proverbial “Madonna and Whore” package. It does give me hope that when the boy and his mom finally left the pool, Allison watched him go, forlornly waving goodbye, and spent the next two hours sadly asking, "Where the boy go?" She really did love him. She just didn't know how to express it. Maybe we’ll just keep her away from the pool for awhile.

It's not like we were watching porn or anything

I don’t generally find myself having the same usual hang-ups with my daughter’s playtime that a lot of parents tend to have. I don’t freak out when she crawls in dirt, runs through puddles or climbs on things she’ll most likely fall off of. I have been the recipient of multiple double takes at the park where other parents stop dead in their tracks, wondering if I truly just said, “Sweetie why don’t you roll in this mud instead,” or “Honey if you’re going to throw rocks, throw them that way.” I’m equally lax when it comes to language. I don’t use the word “silly” to describe something when the word I really mean to use is “stupid” or “dumb.” I don’t shush Allison when she starts talking about “poopie” or “pee-pee.” I don’t give her timeouts for saying, “butt” or “crap.” Off those same double takes, I usually respond, “Hey that’s why those words are there… so she doesn’t say ‘ass’ or ‘shit.’” But a few weeks ago, even I found myself putting the kibosh on what is normally a fun and innocent game we play – all because I was afraid of what other parents might think. And justifiably so I think.

A little backstory on this game. Allison is at that age where she’s really learning how to manipulate words and language. Rather than simply parroting stock phrases that she hears from us, she’s realizing now that she has the ability to rework the structure of her sentences in order to elicit various responses. It’s simple stuff really, mostly substituting one word for another for comedic effect: “Twinkle twinkle little TIGGER. How I wonder what you CINDERELLA!” A turn of phrase like that will generally set off a good five to ten minutes of Allison and I trying to top each other with our zany substitutions. One popular version of this game is to alternate the names of various body parts into our base phrase of choice: “Oh no, I stepped on your… [foot, eye, elbow, chin].” Of course, because Allison is at the potty training age, and because she has a baby brother who gets his diaper changed about a thousand times a day, words describing the various male and female genitalia will inevitably come into play: “Oh no, I stepped on your… [butt, tushie, nipple, penis, balls].”

Like I said, I normally consider this to be a pretty innocent game, but a few weeks ago we were hanging out with my sister and her future in-laws when Allison suddenly decided to play. Unfortunately, the base phrase that she chose on this particular occasion was, “I want to kiss your…” Now she started off by saying “hair,” but I knew where this path would eventually lead. All I could think was that these people had met me once. They didn’t know what kind of person I was. Where was their mind going to go when Allison inevitably said, “I want to kiss your… [well, ya know].” Because I know where my mind would go: “Holy shit (because ‘crap’ would not be an adequate expletive in this situation), this guy is totally pedophiling his daughter.”

Now I didn’t want to create undue attention or perceived guilt by outright ordering my daughter to stop that now. So I tried laughing it off and saying, “No, you don’t want to do that.” But she persisted, thinking this was some new part of the game I’d just made up. “Daddy, I want to kiss your… beard!” Paralyzed and unable to think of any better diversion, I just laughed and said, “Naw!” hoping she would end it on her own. But no. “Daddy, I want to kiss your… neck!” At this point I asked her to come show me how she jumps off the kitchen table and we vacated the living room before the irreversible phrase could be uttered.

I realized that night that this is how most parents must feel when they see their three-year-old smearing mud on another kid’s clothes. Of course in that particular scenario there’s probably very little chance that the incident will result in jail time or child services being called into the fray. I really do still think the game is perfectly innocent, but holy crap.

Noxious fumes occur in realtime

Okay so I have had a scene from an episode of last season's 24 running through my head all freakin' week. Well, not ALL week, but more like several times a day every time I go up or down the stairs. Allow me to explain.

I've been working in New York this week where I spend my days in a building split between the 12th and 15th floors. Since the elevators are so damn slow, I just take the stairs each time. And seriously, I must make the trip four times every hour AT LEAST. Well these are service stairs and on the 12th floor side the stairwell passes through this little like vestibule area where they apparently keep their trash all day before emptying it at night. This room, obviously stinks to high heaven, so I have taken to holding my breath as I walk through it. I've gotten into a pattern. As I walk through the 12th floor and reach for the doorknob into the vestibule, I take a deep breath, walk through the stinky room, open the door for the stairwell and slowly let my breath out, trying not to breathe again until the door seals behind me. And then I repeat the process on my way back down.

So can the 24 fans guess which episode I'm thinking of? It's the one where they set off the VX gas cannisters in CTU and Jack and everybody else are holed up inside that glass room except for Sean Astin's character who is in another room with some nameless CTU agent. Sean has to hold his breath and run out to reset something on the computer so that the gas can vent out of the building, but that breaks the seal on their room and he and the other agent die as soon as they start breathing.

So seriously, every time, EVERY TIME I go through this vestibule, that scene plays through my head. It's like the garbage room is some kind of airlock, and I make sure to keep my breath held until the door seals behind me. If I've been moving around a lot and I'm shorter of breath, sometimes I don't make it and start breathing before the door closes, and I think, "Oops, you just breathed in the gas. You're dead now."

4 times roundtrip an hour for 9 hours times three days so far. That's nearly a two hundred times that scene has replayed in my head. That can't be healthy.

(bink-BONG...bink-BONG...bink-BONG...)

To whet your appetite

It's 1am, I'm exhausted and fried from editing all night. Don't have the brain capacity to edit anything else. But I also have two cups of coffee coursing through my veins and ain't falling asleep anytime soon. So I figured I'd be SEMI-productive and post a little sneak peak at what's to come in ROAD TRIP - WEEK FOUR. This snippet has a little bit of everything, history, narrative, commentary, self-righteous preaching. It's a good example of what you can expect, hopefully, within the next month when I, hopefully, post the final chapter of the Road Trip on my site.

So... enjoy.

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Caused by a freak surge of magma that cooled and fractured under the ground sixty million years ago, Devil's Tower is truly a sight to behold. Ribbed all around with deep grooves - like a paper fan turned into a cylinder - it stands alone, surrounded for miles by small hills and grassland, and looking as out of place in Wyoming as the Monument Rocks do in Kansas - which, as we recall, look as out of place as a desert in the state of Maine (which incidentally also exists). But where the Monument Rocks rise a mere seventy or so feet off the ground, this lone sentinel towers nearly nine hundred feet above you; looming, ominous and downright eerie.

According to a Native American legend, two young girls were out walking one day when a giant grizzly bear started chasing them. They ran from the bear for a while until they could run no more, at which point they stopped and prayed to the Great Spirit for help. That Old Guy really knew how to grant a wish because just as the bear was about to pounce on the two girls, the ground they were standing on began to rise and lift them into the air out of the grizzly's reach. Enraged, the great beast jumped and scratched at the new obtrusion, leaving behind his claw marks in the rock. Other legends suggest that the enormous supernatural bear still lives inside the monolith and has come to the aid of tribes against enemy war parties. Local tribes have variously named the site Bear's Lodge, Bear's House, Bear's Lair, Bear's Peak and Bear's Tipi. Other names included Aloft on a Rock, Mythic-Owl Mountain, Tree Rock and, interestingly enough, Penis Rock. The obelisk and surrounding area became a deeply holy place to more than twenty tribes who lived here. Every kind of sacred ceremony - funerals, prayer offerings, sweat lodge ceremonies, vision quests, sun dances - were performed here.

So I suppose it was only a matter of time before some white guy came along and desecrated the whole thing. And that's essentially what Colonel Richard Dodge did when he arrived with a regiment of soldiers searching for gold in 1875. He took one look at the strangely shaped mountain and called it "Devils Tower." And for reasons I wouldn't be able to fathom if they weren't so familiar and characteristic of over five hundred years worth of American history, that is the name they used when the tower was dedicated as the nation's first national monument in 1906. I suppose Devil's Tower just sounded cooler and was better for marketing, but could you imagine if somebody decided to rename the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, "Place of the Bastard"? What if we changed Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to "Satan's Ridge"? Or for that matter, how about if they changed the name of Stonehenge to "Jesus' Circle" or the Parthenon to "Trinity Plaza"? How long before somebody, religious or not, stepped up and said, "You know what, that's just not right."

There have been a few feeble attempts made by various Native American groups to have the tower returned to its original name, Bear Lodge. These have been met with resistance, anger and outright ignorance by people who are afraid the renaming is merely a way of masking a deeper agenda: namely returning control of the tower back to the local tribes. God forbid. But that fight has largely been buried and you'd have to do a fair amount of digging to read anything of substance about it. After all, nobody really wants to know about anything American Indians are trying to accomplish unless it involves building another casino.

No, when it comes to Devil's Tower, what interests people most - far from any minor Indian corpse-raping for the sake of preserving the Christian-American way of life - is the fact that this was the location where the aliens landed in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That's why we came here. Well, that's why I came here. Lauren could honestly have given a damn. But we'd just spent an entire week stopping at about every lighthouse along the Pacific seaboard, so now it was her turn to indulge my petty obsessions. I don't know why exactly I wanted to see Devil's Tower. I never really liked Close Encounters all that much and, to be perfectly honest, couldn't even remember what the movie's key location looked like. I think my motivations were more along the lines of simply being able to send postcards back to all my movie geek friends who would appreciate where I'd been. People who would recognize the location immediately and say, "Holy shit, I didn't even realize that was a real place!"

I was honestly expecting just another mountain. A lone mountain standing out in the middle of prairie, but a mountain nonetheless. Well even from a good ten miles away, it was obvious that Devil's Tower was not just another a mountain. Even the Rocky Mountains, which shoot straight up out of the plains, still have the everyday features of mountains; slopes, peaks, uniform angles. Devil's Tower on the other hand had an irregularly curved, almost logarithmic, pitch culminating in a wide flat top and looking more like the smokestack to a nuclear power plant than anything naturally occurring. But it's not until you get closer and see the tower's signature grooves, which really do look like they were put there by giant bear claws, that you begin to realize just what intrigued the Indians so much about this place.

There was nobody manning the Devil's Tower entrance station and we probably could have driven in without paying the ten-dollar fee, but we paid it anyway knowing somebody had to help keep the park service funded, since it certainly wouldn't be the United States government. Though in retrospect, I would much rather have given that ten dollars to any grassroots Native American movement who wanted only to reclaim something that means far more to them than it does to the Department of the Interior. The park road circles around the tower, passing alongside a rather large prairie dog town on the way, and ending at a parking lot and trailhead. After Lauren made use of the bathroom, we made our way onto the Tower Trail, a 1.3-mile loop around the national monument's main focal point.

At the risk of being annoyingly repetitive, a red flag went up in my head as soon as I saw how easily accessible from the parking lot this place was. It was like begging punks and interstate tourists, "Paint on me, litter on me, ruin me for everyone else." But Devil's Tower is saved from this fate by several factors. As I said before, this place is incredibly out of the way by most any standard. And unlike Yellowstone National Park on the other side of the state, there actually isn't that much to see here. There aren't dozens of turnouts each offering a different panoramic view of mountains, cliffs and canyons. There aren't bubbling mud pots or big holes that shoot water into the air at regular intervals. At Devil's Tower, all you get is the tower. And you can see that from your car from the main road. Most car bound tourists probably don't feel the need to walk over a mile around the big thing to get the idea. They drive in (shirking the entrance fee most likely) take a picture from the parking lot, maybe walk a few dozen feet into the trail to take a picture that isn't obstructed by trees, then head back to their car and back to the interstate less than thirty miles away. The tower is spared the disrespect of more committed tourists and vandals by a very natural, very formidable barrier: rocks. All around the base, separating the walking trail from the main tower by a good two hundred feet are piles and piles of boulders. You'd have to do some pretty serious, and often dangerous, scrambling to actually get to the tower and spray-paint or carve something onto it - which would likely be too small to see from the trail anyway - after which you'd have to climb your way back down without twisting an ankle.

The Tower Trail retained the perfect combination of convenience and beauty without the requisite ruination that usually accompanies it. Lauren and I enjoyed our leisurely walk, having the trail mostly to ourselves. The scale of this thing was truly impossible to express, much less capture on film, but I was determined to try. Under that guise of research and exhibition, I left Lauren on the trail and started scrambling up the boulder pile. It was as good excuse as any. The truth is, I love scrambling. I missed scrambling. It was an activity I had engaged in often during my time in California. One time while hiking through a desert canyon, I took a wrong turn that dead-ended into a tall mountain of boulders. Rather than attempting the tedious and probably futile process of retracing my steps and rediscovering the trail, I simply started climbing. Up and over the mountain on a more or less direct route back to my car. Sure, it was harder going, but it was way more fun than just trudging along on flat even ground. Lauren knew this about me, so when I suggested climbing to the top of the Devil's Tower boulder pile for the sake of a picture, she simply gave me a knowing smile and said, "Go ahead."

And so I climbed. I jumped. I scampered. I reveled. Up, up, up, I went as high as I could go without the assistance of climbing gear. From the trail, Lauren snapped a picture as close up as the camera's lens would allow, which showcased far better the scope of this place than any full length shot could have accomplished. At first glance, the picture just looks like a close-up of rocks at the tower's base. We often have to point out to others the tiny little person standing at the bottom of the picture. "Yeah, that would be me." Even at the very top of the rock pile, I was still a good fifty feet short of where the grooved part of the tower actually starts, a sheer rock wall preventing me from going any further.

I was surprised to find out that mountain climbing is actually allowed on Devil's Tower, and I have never wished more that I had taken the time and money to learn how to do it. How awesome it must be to scale that nearly vertical pitch. To make it to the top. To camp out high above the world on a throne the size of a football field. To share that kingdom with only the falcons and the eagles who nest up there as well. I can't imagine a more powerful feeling. I'm not sure what process is involved in the naming of a climbing path, but judging by some of the actual names in the trail register - Spank the Monkey; Calculus Affair; Pee Pee's Plunge; Ants On Angel Food; See You In Soho; Billie Bear Cranks the Rod - I suspect it is not the park service coming up with them.

We weren't able to see it, but there is apparently a metal rung ladder running the entire vertical length of the tower that has hung there for untold generations. Back in the days when this place still belonged to the Indians, it was considered a rite of passage, a sign of manhood to climb that ladder all the way to the top. No ropes, no carabineers, no room for mistakes. Just a solid steel set of balls and, I imagine, a strict warning not to look down. And after you actually got the top, manhood proven and all that, then you had to climb back down. My god, my palms are sweating even now just thinking about it. If that didn't get a brave laid back in the day, there was something seriously wrong with women in that society. Though it kind of makes you wonder, if the legend of this place is true, how did those first two girls get down from this thing after the giant bear finally left?

Hey, she could have said "schlong"

We’ve been getting Allison ready for what it’s going to be like when her baby brother, Jesse, arrives sometime in the next month. We, of course, are having a homebirth, so we’ve been telling her how mommy is going to be yelling and crying and making grunting noises, but that she’ll be okay because she’s just pushing Jesse out of her belly. Beyond that, we’re preparing her for what it’s going to be like with a new baby in the house, mainly the idea that he’s going to cry a lot and mommy is going to be giving him milk (which Allison calls “mooky”) to make him feel better. For the longest time Allison, who has been weaned for months now, kept telling us that she was going to share mooky with Jesse; “Jesse get ‘dis side and I get ‘dis side.” But we’ve finally gotten her to realize that, no, Jesse gets both sides and Allison gets chocolate milk and macaroni and smoothies and granola bars and yogurt raisins and stuff like that.

The one last thing we’ve been preparing her for is how Jesse is going to look different than she does, because Jesse is a boy and Allison is a girl. So we tell her, “You have a tushy, but Jesse is going to have a penis.” (I don’t know why we euphemized the girl parts and not the boy parts. “Penis” is just a cuter word than “vagina” I guess.) So she’s gotten really good at understanding the differences between boys and girls – since mommy is a girl, she has a tushy, but daddy and Jesse have a penis.

Well it was bound to happen eventually. I was at the playground with Allison a few days ago. She was on the swings when this older girl (four or five I guess) came over and wanted to give her a push. Pretty soon they were playing and talking and Allison told her she had a baby brother named Jesse. The girl brought Allison over to see her own baby sister who was sitting in her detachable car seat on one of the benches. Her mom was there and the little girl told her all about how Allison has a baby brother. I clarified and said, “Well, almost. He’s going to come out sometime around Christmas.” The mom… I’m sorry, let me clarify… the very hot mom and I started talking about all the stupid random things parents talk about, laughing and joking and whatnot while Allison and her daughter ran around playing together.

Well at one point they came back to look at the baby again and Allison said, “That’s your brother.” I corrected her, telling her that that was the girl’s sister because she was a girl. I then made the mistake of adding on, “But Jesse is going to be your brother because he is a boy.”

Do you already know where I’m going with this? Allison, well coached at this point, looked up at the mom (don’t forget, she was quite hot) and told her, “Jesse has a penis and daddy has a penis.”

The hot mom nodded her head and said the only thing a hot mom can say after receiving that type of information, “Um… oh… well… good…”

I think I handled myself well though. Rather than get embarrassed, or scold Allison for something that, let’s face it, we’ve been putting into her head and praising her for when she says it back to us, I looked the hot mom dead in the eye, and with no sense of irony whatsoever, said, “Yeah, you know, important information to have.”

Important information to have??? I’ve had several days to think over that response, and as dumb as it sounded at the time I have not been able to think of a better one that wouldn’t make it seem like I was trying to cover up some kind of illicit incestual pedophilia going on at home. Deadpan acknowledgement (of the fact that we were passing along important information to our daughter, not of illicit incestual pedophilia) was the best I could come up with. But you want to know what I’ve really been thinking about? Had I been a single dad (or a scumbag husband for that matter) and she had been a single mom (or again, I had just been a scumbag who didn’t care), I think I could have used that embarrassing little exchange as an icebreaker to try and… what’s the phrase they’re using these days… oh yeah – hit that. I really think it would have worked. I think if I was ever in that position where I was actually using my kid to pick up chicks, I would make sure to coach them so they’d just bring up penises in conversation. Mind you, I always have been a total dork when it comes to picking up women, so I’m not sure what my follow up line would have been to the whole tour de force “important information” opener. But hey, at least I’d have had a foothold.

Am I right ladies? Yeah you know it.

Better than a yellow ribbon

Maine is awesome.

Remember that commercial that ran during Super Bowl this year where a crowd of people in an airport starts applauding for a group of soldiers who are exiting their plane? I saw that exact scene recreated in the Bangor Airport earlier today (I was up in Maine for my high school reunion). My mom dropped me off at quarter of seven and as I made my way up the escalator to the security gate I saw several men in fatigues descending the stairs. I smiled and gave a nod to one of them as I passed by. I got upstairs and the security checkpoint for my gate hadn't opened yet (less than an hour before my flight was scheduled to take off mind you) so I just kind of hung back to wait and that's when I noticed the wave of camouflage coming toward me. Soldier after soldier came pouring out of the international arrivals terminal. Greeting them as they came were a group of maybe ten Mainers. They were shaking the hands of every soldier that came through the exit, saying good morning, thanks for your service, thank you for coming and God bless you. With time to kill before they opened up my gate, I joined the greeters - most of whom didn't appear to have any bags with them, but had apparently shown up at the Bangor Airport for the sole purpose of welcoming this battalion of troops to Maine - and I shook the hands of dozens of troops, thanking them as they came through.

It was a cool moment, though as our little line shook hands with the lo-o-o-o-ng line of soldiers, I started to laugh because it kind of reminded me of the lines we used to form after every baseball game in Little League where the two teams walk past each other, shaking hands saying, "Good game, good game, good game." At one point, I thought I'd be funny and said that to a cluster of the guys coming through, eliciting a small laugh. After about five minutes, the wave of khaki green broke for a few seconds and I slipped away to write this blog. But still the wave kept coming. Just kept coming. For perhaps fifteen straight minutes this small army kept on flooding out of the gates. And for that entire time, these Mainers, several of whom wore veteran hats, stood there and shook their hands. And as the wave trickled down to the final few soldiers, the whole group started clapping, and several others in the terminal joined in.

While I waited for my gate to open, all the soldiers, who outnumbered the civilians in the terminal 10 to 1, milled around making phone calls, taking pictures, browsing through the gift shops and talking to anybody who stopped to shake their hands. One old lady sitting near me asked a particularly young looking man in uniform where they were headed. He told them that they were an aviation squadron out of Texas and were on their way to Iraq. The lady gasped at that news, saying, "Oh my," and then asked him if he wanted to go.

With all the confidence and dignity that comes with wearing his uniform, the soldier responded, "Oh yes, I can't wait."

I wonder if this scene could have happened anywhere but in a small airport like Bangor. In big city airports like Philadelphia, would the people in town even know when a battalion of soldiers would be arriving? If so, would they have the motivation to show up at the airport to greet them? Would there even be a place to await them as they exited the plane. And would anybody in a big city have courage and/or compassion to not only shake the hands of every single soldier who came off the plane, but then start applauding in the hopes that others around them would join in. Somehow I don't think so. I don't think that's necessarily sad or indicates anything bad about the people who live in our cities since we're all encouraged to never make eye contact, much less interact with people or draw undue attention to yourself. So I don't think it makes these people or places bad.

It just makes Maine awesome.

(and the troops even moreso)

Now if only there had been naked women at stake

Who knew golf could be so exciting? Certainly not I. But I too watched with bated breath as this year’s U.S. Open drew to its dramatic conclusion and Phil Mickelson lost his tenuous lead and finished second to Australian Geoff Ogilvy. Though, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really care who won the tournament on Sunday so much as I cared that somebody won on Sunday. You see, I spent this past week providing Avid tech support for one of the sports networks up at Winged Foot Golf Course. Nineteen-hour days, early starts, late outs, and inundated on all sides by a sport that I absolutely despise. Not that it was really all that bad for me. Overtime pay aside, on-site Avid support done correctly really means a week’s worth of downtime. If you prep your systems the right way and keep them running properly, the editors should be able to work all week with zero problems, thus zero reasons for you to do anything technical for the duration of your stay. I spent the bulk of my week the same way I did during this job last year: sitting out in the shade, writing, reading books, eating awesome catering and hanging out with other engineers who had done their job correctly too. We laughed, we joked, we busted each others balls, we caught some of the World Cup here and there. The one thing we didn’t do much of was watch golf.

It’s a funny thing working as a TV engineer. Work is work and you get it where you can, and that often means working on shows that, while the rest of the country is salivating to get in on, you yourself could really care less about. I had zero interest in the U.S. Open and neither did the engineers around me. Not a one of us had watched a single minute of golf all week long. And yet, there we all were, a dozen or so of us, huddled around a tiny television monitor out in the TV compound hanging on every shot at the end of Sunday’s competition. Why you ask? It certainly had nothing to do with this Mickelson Grand Slam thing I heard people talking about. Our motives were entirely selfish. You see, the outcome of Sunday’s match would determine when we all got to go home.

If two players are tied at the end of the U.S. Open, an entire 18-hole playoff is conducted the following day. That means every editor, producer, truck guy, camera guy, sound guy, fiber guy and Avid guy has to stay an extra day to cover the event. And none of us wanted that. Sure the overtime had been good and I personally hadn’t lifted a finger since Monday, but it’s still a long week when you’re confined to one area the entire time and we were all ready to go home.

So no matter what the outcome, we didn’t care who won, just so long as the match didn’t end in a tie. Yet with only two holes left to play, that was looking more and more like a possibility. For the past several holes we’d all been routing for big Phil, simply because he was already in the lead and we wanted him to broaden that lead far enough to make a last minute rally by one of his competitors unlikely. But then on the 18th hole, Phil choked. He sliced his tee shot into the crowd where it actually bounced off the media tent behind the trees.

“Oh no.” The entire compound made a collective groan. His closest competitor, Olgilvy was only down by one stroke after his 18th hole. It seemed very possible that Phil would now need to spend an extra shot over par to get himself out of the purgatory where his ball had clunked down. Phil chipped the ball and it landed in the sand trap just outside the green. If he somehow sunk his next shot, he would hit par and win the match by a single stroke. But we all realized that the more likely scenario was going to be that he’d chip it up onto the green with one stroke and then put it in the hole on his next, effectively resulting in a tie for first place, and sentencing the entire compound to a day beyond what our bodies had prepared themselves to handle. I and my fellow engineers clustered around the TV, sending curses and jinxes of our own design upon Phil’s head. He spent a good thirty seconds practicing his swing, assessing his shot, and then let fly. The ball popped up out of the sand, landed on the green and rolled toward the hole. It was obviously off course, but if it stopped within a reasonable distance, we were all screwed. But it didn’t stop within a reasonable distance. It rolled and rolled and rolled… and then it rolled some more. With each additional foot it traveled from the hole, the cheer from our little band of engineers went louder and louder until the ball finally came to rest in the rough on the opposite side of the green.

It was unlikely that Phil was going to sink the shot from where he was now, but you never knew. Signs of the devil were wiggled in the direction of Mickelson. All he needed to do was miss one more shot and our Monday would be liberated. Once again he spent several seconds lining up his shot and practicing his swing before chipping the ball onto the green where it rolled a healthy six feet off course. Another, much louder cheer erupted. It’s probably the only time you’ll ever hear a group of people on a golf course cheer when a guy misses a shot. I don’t think that myself and that many people I’ve known have ever had so much riding on a single putt. It was truly a beautiful moment.

The energy in the compound, which is always a little sluggish by this point in the week, was immediately restored. Editors, producers, utilities, production assistants, everybody kicked into full gear, giving it everything they had… knowing that tomorrow they would be home. So on behalf of the entire TV compound at the U.S. Open, I’d like to express our congratulations to Geoff Ogilvy for your big win and our deepest thanks to Phil Mickelson for your colossal choke.

...played it 'til my fingers bled... was the summer of '69...

I got a guitar for Christmas this year (This year? It was 2005, so technically that was last year, but is that confusing?). My parents, in cahoots with both my wife and father-in-law – a guitar player and enthusiast of several decades – bought me a Fender guitar as a combination Christmas/Birthday present. I was honestly floored. I’ve talked about learning to play the guitar now for at least seven years. Every New Years Eve I say that one year that will be my resolution. Well this year (last year?) Lauren decided to help me get going on that resolution. When my mother asked what I wanted for Christmas, she told her “a guitar.” My father-in-law did the research and sent my mom all the info and she gave them the credit card.

Lauren had led me to believe very strongly that my mother was getting me t-shirts for Christmas, which didn’t seem odd to me because that’s about the only thing I’d really asked for this year. So when she (Lauren, not my mom) pulled out this very large box from my parents to open on Christmas Eve, I was a little bit perplexed. It obviously was not t-shirts. But what would they have gotten me that big? Some kind of camping gear? That didn’t seem likely. I’ve asked my mother on more than one occasion to stick to gift cards in that arena for fear of her buying the wrong thing. I tore off the paper off the present slowly until I saw the word “Fender” printed on a cardboard box. I looked at Lauren with a face that said something like, “Are you shitting me?” I didn’t want to get too excited, because I figured maybe they had just wrapped the present inside a guitar box. Lauren’s dad buys a lot of guitars, so it wasn’t a ridiculous notion. But when I opened the box, I saw that it was, for real, a guitar.

I started giggling. I think I just kept giggling all night. It was just so funny. After talking about it for all these years, I finally had a guitar (one that was mine) in my hands, which I was going to learn to play.

As it turns out, the first time I actually picked the thing up to play it wasn’t until this past weekend. For multiple reasons really. My mom, trying so hard to do the right thing, remembered that I was left-handed and bought me the left-handed version of the Fender guitar. She apparently forgot all the times I said I only write with my left hand, while everything else is right-hand dominant. Hey, she meant well… and she footed the fairly expensive bill too, so who am I to complain? I returned the guitar for a right-hander, and with the credit leftover (because leftie guitars are so much more expensive) I was able to get a hard case for it as well. After that came a series of away jobs that kept me busy through February. After that I had no idea how to actually string the guitar and I kept waiting for a moment for when my father-in-law was over so he could help me and show me the process. Of course, every time he was over, we all got busy and forgot about that silly little guitar sitting around collecting dust.

Well finally this weekend, after Allison’s second birthday party, the two of us found a few minutes to sit down together with the guitar. He showed me how to string it, which is both trickier than I imagined, and yet exactly as awkward as I expected it to be. After that we did a cursory first lesson where he showed me a just a couple of chords and we noodled around for awhile practicing hand positions and finger placement and whatnot. Again, it was exactly as awkward as I’d always imagined it would be at first. I found it nearly impossible to keep my fingers pressed down hard enough on the strings so they would resonate the way you’d want them to, without accidentally touching the other strings around it, causing them to buzz when I played. The higher, thinner strings were the toughest. I felt as though they were slicing right through my pinky and ring fingers as I pressed down. And of course moving between two different chords with anything resembling manual dexterity was an exercise in tediousness. But hey, I knew that going into this. I knew, and still know, that it’s going to take a ton of practice to get halfway good at this. In fact, that’s probably the reason why I put off this resolution for as long as I did. What if I got bored with it? That’s a pretty expensive resolution to give up after only a couple months of sucking? And even now, struggling through chords that didn’t sound right and made my fingers feel blistery, I again wondered if I’d have the patience to stick with it.

But then my father-in-law showed me two chords that were easy to switch between. I honestly don’t remember what the names of the chords were. But switching between the two was as simple as moving my middle and fore finger up and down a single string.

((STRUM)) A low acoustic coffee house sound came humming from the guitar.

((strum)) A slightly higher coffee house sound that sounded really cool following the first.

((STRUM)) The alternating chords, combined with a simple strumming in time, was actually starting to sound like a song I might know.

((strum)) Wow, I was actually making music.

Okay, I realized instantly, I am going to LOVE learning to play this thing. Every new chord that I figure out, and every combination that sounds like actual music and not just the random plucking of strings is only going to make me love this more. I’ve never played a musical instrument. I played the drums in high school… badly. But musicians, people who can make music with an actual instrument, have always intrigued and captivated me. And when I hear a sound that could actually pass for music coming from an instrument that I’m playing, it’s going to give me a charge every time.

And tonight, when I pulled out the guitar again for a few minutes, that charge came back. It took me a couple minutes to remember exactly where each of my fingers needed to be, but I eventually found the starting chord.

((STRUM))

((strum))

Wow, I thought yet again, I’m making music. If I ever get really good at this, I hope that sense of wonder never goes away – that incredulous, disbelieving sense of wonder at the fact that I am the one actually making music. Sure, tonight I kept having to stop and recheck my fingering, and sure the strings were buzzing as much as they were resonating, and sure after a few minutes of the same two chords back and forth it was obvious I was going to eventually drive my conspiratorial wife nuts with repetition. But that was okay. This was only my second day playing and I was making music!

And then it happened. The thing that made me realize I could never ever stop. Not now. My daughter came over to watch me play. She had been playing with her new Little Peoples playhouse, fully engrossed in what she was doing, when she just stopped and turned around. She watched me from across the room for a minute or so as I struggled to keep my chords sounding right. But then she got up. She picked up her little chair and dragged it over in front of me and sat down. She watched my fingers strumming and listened to the music that accompanied the motion. She just watched me without talking, without getting bored, without getting up to do something else, and without asking if she could have a turn – just watching and listening to Dad play. And it was awesome.



My next step is to go pick up an introduction to the guitar book from the local library and start learning all the basics: notes, frets, chords, blah blah blah. I’d like to have at least a rudimentary handle on a few key concepts before I start paying for lessons. I’m psyched. I can’t remember the last time I got really psyched for something new like this. I mean it’s a muted psyche-“ment”. Kind of that disbelieving psyche-“ment” I had when I first saw the word “Fender” on my Christmas present. I can’t help but keep giggling. I’m actually going to learn to play the guitar. I would do it just to keep feeling that pleasant bewilderment of knowing I’m the one creating music. But to see that look on my daughter’s face again, watching her dad play… man, that’s just going to be the most awesome gravy I could ever think of.

Insanity, one bubble at a time

There's just something about bubble wrap isn't there? It's such a great stress reliever. I mean it's not as therapeutic as other things like sex, drugs or breaking stuff. On the other hand, as far as cost goes, it's way cheaper than most of the alternatives. If you work in an office that gets anything via UPS or FedEx more than once a week, it's pretty much a guarantee that there will be sheets and sheets of free stress relief kicking around somewhere in the vicinity of the mailroom.

And I'll admit, I partake in the 'wrap as much as the next guy. I find it's good for about thirty seconds of mindless entertainment, though I approach it differently than most people. I actually don't derive pleasure from the dull popping noise each individual bubble makes as you squeeze it. My enjoyment is a bit more subtle. I like to gently squeeze the bubble with the thumb and forefinger on each hand until a second bubble starts to form on it. You know what I'm talking about? It kind of grows off the main bubble like a pimple. The plastic starts stretching out until the slightly cloudy material becomes perfectly clear and THEN it pops. And that pop, my friend, is ten times more satisfying than if you'd just callously gone at the main bubble like a thirteen-year-old who's just seen his first breast. The sound is a little bit higher pitched, like the sound of a cap gun, and it signifies that you applied just the right amount of pressure. Too much pressure and the main bubble pops with is signature dull snap. Too little pressure and the clear pimple you've formed just kind of fizzles out anticlimacticly with no sound at all. But executed precisely, that pimple cracks open with a satisfying BIH-TZ.

But even a sound as gratifying as that will, again, only entertain me for about thirty seconds before I go off in search of hookers, dime bags and old computer monitors. Not like some other freaks I have met in my life. There are some people in this world who view bubble wrap as some kind of metaphysical Rubix Cube. They concentrate on these bumpy pieces of plastic so intently that you'd swear they were trying to discern the secrets of the universe from the broken capsules. And they truly would spend all day popping these things if you gave them the chance and a Staples giftcard.

There was a girl I worked with at a production company in New York a few years back who had just such a fascination. And one day she got the motherload. We got a huge shipment of tapes or something in the mail, and protecting this cargo was a ten-foot-long, three-foot-wide throw rug of bubble wrap. And this chick went... to... town on this thing, alternating between popping a series of individual bubbles to taking a large handful of the sheet in both hands and twisting, eliciting a fast series of firecracker snaps. And mind you, she was the receptionist in our office. In the waiting room where she was conducting this occupational therapy were producers, a casting director and multiple actors preparing for their audition. But she just kept popping, cheerfully oblivious of the entire room staring at her in pissed off amazement.

A couple months ago, I was working late and ordered deliverly from a sandwich shop down the road. When the delivery guy got there, he spotted a rather large sheet of bubble wrap sitting on the table. After handing me my food, he said, "Oh wow, bubble wrap!" then picked it up and started popping the bubbles. Okay, no problem. I went into the next room to get the petty cash to pay for my dinner, figuring he would get his therapy in, then leave after I paid him. Well as I handed him the money, he didn't even reach out his hand to accept it. He just kept right on popping.

And then he said (and I swear to you this is verbatim and not at all embellished), "You gotta give me a few minutes man. I love this stuff. I had a sheet of this at my house last week and I spent like two hours popping it." (emphasis mine)

I laughed and said, "Oh, there you go," which is what I always say when I either don't care about what somebody is saying or think they're a complete freak but don't want to say so. In this case, obviously both situations applied. So I went over to my dinner, unwrapped my meatball sub, took the straw out of its paper and stuck it in my soda, took a drink, took a bite, took another drink and finally said, "Dude, you can take that with you if you want."

You'd swear I'd just offered him one of the expensive computers I was busy prepping. His face lit up and he gushed, "Really? Oh wow thanks man, that's awesome." He grabbed his tip and walked back to his car, popping with the utmost concentration the entire way. I locked the door behind me then went looking for porn on the internet.

You know I'd have a hell of a band

I think I would have loved being a musician. Whenever I've hung out with other friends who are musicians or heard the stories of people I know who have managed a band, the stories always fascinate me. The parties. The people. The lifestyle. The art. It all speaks to me. Spending a day in Nashville two years ago only fueled that feeling even more. I know that very few musicians make it big, but even the life of a struggling musician, the starving artist, appeals so much to me. I know it's not all roses - no artist's way of life ever is - but man it must be an awesome trip. If I had it to do over again... and had a shred of musical ability, I have decided I would move to Nashville and live the life of a singer-songwriter.

That's obviously not going to happen, but last night before Amy's show I got a brief, albeit meaningless, taste of what it might be like. I walked up to the counter at Milkboy Coffee and ordered myself an iced latte. Seeing me standing there with my red beard, my slightly shaggy and windblown hair which I've been growing out, and my groovy retro t-shirt, the chick working the counter asked me, "Are you playing tonight?"

For a split second, I was a musician. I was there man. I felt it through and through. And dude, it totally rocked. Then you know, I snapped back to reality and paid full price for my drink.

Operator... well can you help me send this text message...

Lauren and I got new cell phones a couple of weeks ago. Lauren’s sister Lisa had just upgraded her phone and told us about a sale that Verizon was having, so we went out and got a good deal on two camera phones that will allow us to take and send pictures and videos in addition to regular text messages. When we’ve talked about getting camera phones in the past, it’s always been seen as more of a practical device.

“Oh, this will be good if one of us is ever involved in a car accident. We’ll be able to take pictures of the scene for court.”

Well, it might have been that way if Lisa and Lauren hadn’t gotten the exact same phone with the exact same capabilities. Now the two of them, I swear, are like teenage girls, sending cutesy little messages back and forth all day long, shooting and sending pictures of everything they see, dressing up the pictures with pretty borders, attaching different ringtones to the pictures and typing the text messages to make it seem as though one of their kids wrote the sentiment.

One of them (I won’t reveal who) actually took a picture of her own butt and sent it to the other. Maybe they aren’t like teenage girls at all. Maybe the new phones are bringing out the teenage BOYS in them. “Hey Marc, lookit ‘dis. ‘Dat’s my BUTT! Heh, heh, heh!”

When they send something, it of course prompts the other person to call them back, and then they proceed to have an hour-long conversation. They sit up until midnight chitty chatting on the phone about this and that. Except instead of whispering about the boys they snuck a kiss and a trip to second base with behind the dugout, they’re gabbing on about their latest Tupperware parties and PartyLite orders. And rather than Lauren’s dad yelling at her for racking up the phone bill, it’s me, her husband yelling at her for going over her minutes.

But it’s the videos that are the most out of control. You can shoot fifteen-second videos with this camera and send those to your friends as well. I’ll even admit that it was fun for the first couple of days. I’d shoot a scene of Allison on the swings or throwing rocks at the neighbors’ kids and send it off to Lauren for a quick laugh. But these sisters think they’re Martin Scorcese armed with a cell phone. The thing about it is, it’s really all the same video. Fifteen seconds of one of the kids saying “Hi” to their aunt.

I can remember watching a busload of Japanese tourists one time taking pictures of just about everything. Except it wasn’t really everything. What it was was Mom and Aunt Lilly in front of the entrance sign. Then Mom and Aunt Lilly in front of the exhibit sign. Then Mom and Aunt Lilly in front of the restroom sign. Now just Aunt Lilly in front of the restroom sign. With Lauren and Lisa it’s kind of the same thing. Except here, it’s “Hi Aunt Lisa” on the slide. Then “Hi Aunt Lisa” in the car. Then “Hi Aunt Lisa” at the grocery store. Then “Hi Aunt Lisa” in no place special except for the fact that Allison is just being really cooperative with the camera this time around.

I’d get mad, but it really is very cute, the two of them. They think it’s the pictures of their kids that are adorable, but really, it’s the two of them who are just so precious. Like little boy-crazy girls with technology. Can’t wait to see our next wireless bill.