Oh Dave! Now

July 5, 2010

Ingredients of a Foodie

Filed under: Food — Oh Dave Now @ 8:37 am

I read recently that Howard Junker, in the ZYZZYVA Speaks blog, made a list of the top ten annoying groups in San Francisco, and number 10 on the list was foodies. It hit me in the gut like a White Castle hamburger. I hate labels, but I would, I’m afraid, have to count myself in that group. “Hi, my name is Dave, and I’m a foodie.” At least he put us at the bottom of his list. Depressed, I opened my desk drawer at work and mechanically lifted into my mouth TGIF Potato Skin Chips, one after another until my tongue turned red and white from the “seasonings.”

The word “foodie” was coined by Paul Levy and Ann Barr and used in the title of their 1984 tongue-in-cheek manual, The Official Foodie Handbook. Gourmet food critics, they used it to derisively refer to yuppies that obsess about the latest food trends, celebrity chefs, and restaurants. (A few years ago, Levy posted an interesting blog in which he reflects upon the term.) Over the last 25+ years, food has become a hobby for all income levels, fueled by TV shows like Top Chef and the merchandising of chefs Wolfgang Puck, Martin Yan, Rachel Ray, etc., etc. The pursuit of good eating has helped to increase awareness of nutrition, historical value, place of origin, and method of production.Specialty food markets like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s are everywhere. Everyone and their mother post their opinions about restaurants on Yelp. Buffets in Las Vegas are outnumbered by hip eateries and theme restaurants. Local upscale restaurants are selling ready-to-eat meals at Bay Area CostCo’s. Betty Crocker has a line of gluten-free cake mixes.

The definition of a “foodie” can nowadays mean anyone who enjoys what they choose to eat and pursues their next meal with passion, whether said food is a five-course gourmet meal or the preference of the Angus Deluxe from McDonald’s over the pedestrian Big Mac.  But I have high standards for myself. If I’m going to be a foodie, I want to be the best foodie I can be. And people-pleaser that I am, I certainly don’t want to be seen as annoying to the random blogger. As foodie self-doubt and insecurity creeps in, I am compelled to submit myself to a full analysis.

Good Foodie Bad Foodie Better Foodie
Can’t wait to read the Food Section in the Sunday and Thursday San Francisco Chronicle. Don’t subscribe to any food magazines or blogs. Should clip and save the Chron’s Taster’s Choice column and seek out the Hall of Fame winners. And perhaps expand my sources of food information!
Almost always read nutrition/ingredient labels and choose products low in trans fats, preservatives, mystery chemicals, sodium, and processed sugars. Sometimes you just got to have a Snickers or Ball Park franks. Some mass-market products like Dinty Moore Beef Stew have no artificial ingredients listed on the label so that’s a plus. But a dedicated foodie would distrust where the meat and vegetables came from.
Usually buy organic, but not necessarily local, produce at the supermarket. Don’t shop at Farmer’s Markets. Too crowded, too many booths with the same wilted produce, too haphazard. And I sometimes wonder if a vendor didn’t just buy that box of strawberries at CostCo and is passing them off as farm-fresh. Consider subscribing to Farm Fresh to You organic produce service. Or starting a plot at the community garden. Or getting to know the vendors at one of my local farmer’s markets.
Prefer leaf lettuce and mixed greens over iceberg lettuce. Sometimes resort to bagged lettuce. Wash bagged lettuce, even when it says it’s triple-washed, because with e-coli and salmonella going around, you can’t trust any farmer or manufacturer. Be in total control of what goes into my mouth and body.
Hardly ever use French’s mustard. Grey Poupon Dijon mustard, made by Kraft Foods, is the only “gourmet” mustard I like on a regular basis. Try making my own mustard that suits my taste and texture preferences.
Love cookbooks and trying new recipes. It’s been a long time since I’ve invented my own dishes, using creativity to combine available ingredients. Trust my instincts more and don’t be afraid to cook without a recipe. Especially when it’s just for Eric and me—if it doesn’t turn out, I can always put it in the produce recycling bin or the organic composter.
Thanks to my mother’s influence, I enjoy cooking and baking from scratch as much as possible. I like being in control of my ingredients, and it’s not that much extra work. Sometimes I use frozen peas and corn, and canned soup and broth. If using pre-packaged foods, get organic, low-sodium brands.
The original Joy of Cooking is my primary go-to reference book. I frequently don’t follow the time-consuming techniques exactly. Update my cookbook library by consulting the Foodie Cookbooks list on Amazon, so I can cook amazing food using the latest and greatest—but time-saving—techniques.
Have made fresh aioli—it’s the best. Most often buy Best brand of jar mayonnaise. Try specialty mayonnaise and aioli from local markets.
In the past year, have twice made one of my favorite dishes, cassoulet—a hearty and delicious baked French casserole of white beans, rich sauce, and a mélange of sausages and meats. But horrors, I took a shortcut and used frozen duck confit—pieces of duck legs and thighs that are marinated in fat and seasonings. A friend’s brother makes duck confit from scratch once a year, a grand process that takes several days. Incidentally, the frozen confit was available at CostCo for half the price of that at a local gourmet grocery store. Come on, next you’ll want me to make sausages from scratch too. Maybe when I’m retired and have unlimited time on my hands, I can abide by the sacred preparation of cassoulet. Either that, or travel frequently to Paris—the Brasserie de l’Ile St Louis serves a cassoulet that brought me to tears.
Enjoy going on wine-tasting day trips; belong to Chateau St. Jean wine club. I know what tastes good to me, and what tastes like vinegar, but haven’t fine-tuned my wine-tasting vocabulary or palate. Plus as I age, unlike the wine, I’ve soured towards drinking wine very often at home. Pop the cork 3-4 days a week and have a half glass of red wine—with dinner not before so I don’t get such a buzz. Savor the nuances and vocalize confidently.
A cup of fresh-brewed, sustainably-grown, organic coffee can be divine. Aromatic, earthy, flavorful. Not living close to a neighborhood café, most mornings I jumpstart with Taster’s Choice Gourmet Roast instant coffee. It’s quick and there’s no messy cleanup. Consider getting a one-cup coffee maker. At the Westin-Tabor hotel in Denver, they have Starbucks coffee in individual serving pouches for the Wake Cup system. Too much caffeine for me but great flavor, even if it isn’t freshly ground.
Always read in detail the Chron’s annual Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants magazine and keep as a reference. Most of the restaurants are expensive, and we usually only go to them on birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentine’s Day. Visit the restaurants that most appeal to us, and don’t go hog-wild every time. Some are casual enough where entrees can be shared.
Subscribe to the Chron’s Inside Scoop SF column to stay on top of the latest local restaurant openings and closings. And grieve when our favorite restaurants, like Citron, suddenly close. How many bar/gourmet pizza joints do we need in the Bay Area? Seems a new one opens every week and they’re wildly popular. The last one we visited, well-reviewed everywhere I looked, was cramped, noisy, and everything was super salty, in order to keep the specialty drinks flowing. Start my own restaurant called “Pizza-Less Paradise Bistro.”
Use Open Table to make reservations whenever possible and read diner reviews. Also read reviews on Yelp before trying a new restaurant instead of relying just on newspaper reviews. Hardly ever post my own restaurant reviews online. Most diner reviews are too subjective to take without a huge grain of kosher sea salt. The things some people complain about are ridiculous, while others wax poetic about their great meal after having had several drinks when anything would taste good to them. Accept that posting my simple review may be helpful in the overall average rating of a restaurant, which is really the useful barometer of diner reviews.
Avoiding national chain restaurants has always been a personal conviction. When I was younger, I had the energy to hold out in unfamiliar cities until I could search out the local food coop or the lone organic café. On trips outside of big cities, sometimes I give in to fast food and chains out of fatigue and poor planning. Many chains have become hip to the foodie revolution and serve some pretty decent meals. If you’re selective, you can survive the indignities of laminated menus and assembly-line preparation. I’ve enjoyed some tasty meals at Pasta Pomodoro, Chipotle, Rainforest Café, and Chili’s.
Have a decent understanding of French, Italian, Spanish, and German food terminology and can roughly translate menus. Cringe when I see “with au jus” or apple pie “with a la mode” on a menu and hope their cooking skills are better than their language skills. Don’t judge a book by its cover because great chefs have a language all their own. Still, perhaps I could offer my editing/proofreading skills in exchange for a free meal.
Frequently order the salumi and cheese platter. It’s basically cold cuts and curdled milk but with my nose high in the air, it smells so refined. Don’t ever buy salumi for homemade sandwiches. Instead buy Hormel lunch meats. But they’re Hormel’s Natural Choice preservative- and nitrate-free line of meats and bacon.
I know who Alice Waters is and respect her legacy and efforts to promote organic, locally produced food. The dark side of Alice Waters is that she’s an exotic meat eater. I’ve never dined downstairs at Chez Panisse because you have to make reservations months in advance and the menu is unpredictable—would you want to get stuck eating boar’s neck soup? Become involved with Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation, which is dedicated to improving national school lunch programs. Locally, the Edible Schoolyard, a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom, teaches public school students about organic gardening and eating.
Trusted in the chef at a French restaurant and ordered the chef’s choice appetizer platter. The waiter looked at me dumbfounded when I didn’t eat everything on the platter, including fresh oysters, which I’m sure were exquisite. No one should have to eat something, no matter how inspired the chef’s creation is, if it could make them sick. Due to digestive issues, I won’t eat raw fish, fresh oysters, calamari, blue cheese, raw beef, raw onions, or jalapeno peppers.
Moan and swoon after a bite of something amazing. Most recently, it was a warm edam cheese soufflé at La Folie in SF, and Sticky Toffee Pudding at a dinner party. Too often I rush through meals without savoring every bite, or at least not verbalizing my experience. Make an effort to fine-tune my palate and describe the flavors with the skill of a celebrity food writer. Use chopsticks with every meal–I find that they force me to regard every morsel intimately, and my skill with chopsticks also makes me feel superior to fork-using diners.
Shared food with strangers in a restaurant. The arugula salad at Wood Tavern in Oakland is amazing. Eric offered a taste to the friendly woman of a certain age at the next table. In exchange, she put pieces of her roast chicken onto our bread plates. We all hugged at the end of our meals. I prefer to have my own table, instead of sitting at community tables which have become a popular trend. Before going to a community-style restaurant, have a drink or glass of wine somewhere else first, so when I arrive, I’m ready to commune with strangers. Be open to not just embracing other foodies, but to publicly embracing the foodie that I am and always will be. Face it, once you’ve tasted “Seared Liberty Farm Duck Breast with Duck Confit Shepherd’s Pie, Wild Hedgehog Mushrooms, and Spiced Cider Jus,” there’s no turning back.

June 20, 2010

Show Me Your Privates—Part 2

Filed under: Family,Privacy,Travel — Oh Dave Now @ 7:23 pm

What you missed in Part 1:  On a trip to Minneapolis and Madison, Eric and I dodged an onslaught of privates up in our grilles—hidden rental car charges, bathroom fans, family transitions, and bouncing cleavage.  You should read Part 1 first. Or forge ahead, knowing that as guests in homes and lives, we navigated around our hosts’ varying “privacy settings.” A selective shout-out of what I saw continues…

Come Over to My Place

With Friday night’s bacchanalian celebration and my flirtation with J still fresh in my memory, on Saturday night we went to see another J—my friend for 30 years—and his newly renovated Victorian house in a neighborhood not far from popular Lake Calhoun, a non-stop parade of joggers, cyclists, and sunbathers. Following a house tour, we sat at the granite counter bar in the kitchen, sipped vodka-cranberry juice cocktails, and visited while J prepared appetizers and dinner. At around 6 p.m., his partner T came home from work and joined the reunion.

While oo’ing and ah’ing over the amazing renovation they had done, we devoured a plate of baked cocktail wieners wrapped in bacon and sprinkled with brown sugar (yum!). Then we moved to the dining table for a meal of salad and red curry chicken over jasmine rice that left us pleasantly stuffed to the point of blurry contentment. But the night was far from over. We were meeting my family near the U of M campus to see a local band, in which my niece’s boyfriend was the drummer. J and T decided to shower and change clothes, so Eric and I took a quick walk down to the lake. It was around 8:30 p.m. but still sunny and warm. As we waited to cross the narrow road that circled the lake, a thin, dark-skinned boyish man came up alongside me and smiled. I smiled back but then turned to cross and go down a stairway to the beach. Eric and I stood at the edge of the beach and looked over the lake at the sunset as people streamed behind us on the bike path.

Suddenly, the thin man came up alongside me and said in a quiet voice, “Do you have a boyfriend?” I had had enough drinks to be amused by his forwardness and replied with bravado, “Yes, he’s right here, we’re boyfriends,” gesturing at Eric. The young man went on to explain that he was from Guyana and lived a few blocks away—he told us the intersection. His boyfriend was in New York for the weekend to attend his son’s college graduation. The man never came right out and said it, but clearly he was inviting us over to his house, or rather, his sugar daddy’s house, for an impromptu sex party. I said we were visiting some friends nearby—deliberately not telling him on which street—and were leaving shortly for a concert. He wouldn’t leave us alone so I finally said we had to go back to our friends. Before we could get away, he said he’d be going to the gay bars downtown later and hoped to see us there.

We made our way back to J’s house, looking back to see if Miss Guyana was following us because if so, we schemed to take him on a roundabout route. We ducked quickly into J’s house and locked the door. J was surprised to hear about our encounter. The first thing he asked was “You didn’t tell him where I lived, did you?” We assured him we didn’t. The last thing he wanted—really!—was a pushy young man invading his privacy and coming to his door uninvited.

We never made it to the Gay 90s bar downtown after the concert, though we tried. The concert by Dessa and her band at a really cool venue, the Varsity Theatre, was great (my guess is she’ll become a national pop star—check her out). Traffic downtown at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday was insane. After a couple of attempts to get near the bar, we gave up, called J to say goodnight, and went back to the suburbs.

Between a Hill and a Rock Place

In Madison we stayed with Eric’s sister and brother-in-law. It was our first time staying with them and they made us feel at home for a short but relaxing visit. There is a lot going on in their lives right now, which they discussed with us in confidence. One key situation will be decided in a court-of-law so any discussion of it is moot—if there were a jury I wish I could be on it. For now, I’ll pretend I’m sequestered and can’t discuss it.

During the day they were working so Eric and I played tourist and infiltrated two famous private homes. First stop was a guided tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and architectural college outside of Madison in Spring Green. The house is called Taliesin (Tally-ESS-in), which we learned is Welsh for “shining brow.” Wright picked the name because it refers to the open hilltop that the house is wrapped around. He was a leader in architecture that blends in with the environment. Most architects would have plunked the house down on top of the hill. Wright was highly influenced by Japanese architecture so the stone exterior is long and low to the ground, with a nearly flat roof. Inside, the doorways and entry ways were low, in order, we were told, to keep people from gathering in those spaces—Eric at six foot tall had to duck. But main rooms like the living room, family room, and bedrooms had high ceilings and many windows to view the river and valleys below. The tour guide explained that Wright tried to use local materials for his designs. In the case of Taliesin, begun in 1911, that meant, to our repulsion, a lot of plywood for walls, floors, and built-in book shelves and benches. Elegant and imposing on the outside, the inside details of Taliesin were kind of tacky, even horrifying, by today’s building standards.

The history of the house is similarly notorious. The private lives of Taliesin were splashed across the headlines in 1914 when a bi-polar servant went berserk. He set the residential half of the house on fire and murdered seven people, including Wright’s beloved mistress Mamah, with an axe before poisoning himself. Wright was working in Chicago at the time or he might have been one of the victims. The house was rebuilt, burned again in 1925, and rebuilt again to its present layout. Both the house and the college at Taliesin are interesting structures and the grounds are spectacular, well worth a visit if you’re ever in Spring Green.

After lunch and shopping at the visitor center, we drove on to the House on the Rock, an attraction advertised on the freeway but about which we knew nothing. After the grand opera of Taliesin, the House on the Rock was like stopping at a honky-tonk after the show, albeit an incredibly humongous honky-tonk with flashing red lights and gaudy decor. I had the sense of not only entering the privacy of a man’s home, but also of his warped and fascinating mind.

The House on the Rock was conceived by a local named Alex Jordan who had or raised a lot of money to build a bizarre house. On a rock. Hence, the clever name. The House. On the rock. Get it? He built his house on a rock and called it—the HOUSE ON THE ROCK. Subtle. More importantly, he amassed collections of Americana that are unrivaled. The tour is divided into three sections. We only had time to do section three, which omitted the actual house but included a couple of cavernous warehouses that housed the “largest carousel in the world” in one, and three large pipe organs in another. (Eric, who has a degree in organ, was in heaven!) Why he built all this is never really explained, other than noting that he didn’t want to explain his reasons. He wanted people to experience the collections in their own way. Well, after walking through darkened warehouses on winding paths, ramps, and stairways, what I experienced was sadness for an obsessive compulsive personality. But I respected and marveled at his preservation of unusual artifacts of another time and way of life.

The warehouses didn’t have much rhyme or reason—the carousel and organs may have taken up the center and focus but interspersed helter-skelter were stacks and stacks of kettle drums, suits of armor, carousel horses, copper distillery vats, and antique horse-drawn buggies and sleighs. To see the assortment and details of the ancient sleighs—close enough to touch them—was thrilling. His collection of more than 250 fully outfitted dollhouses and dozens of model circuses were arranged orderly enough. But there were no display cards to explain their history.

One room had hundreds of shoe-box size mechanical displays—you push a button to set them in motion. For example, Jonah rocking back and forth on top of a bucking whale. A small plaque on the waves beneath the whale was inscribed “One of our beautiful diamonds will make a whale of a difference.” We figured out they were used to entice window shoppers to enter stores to buy jewelry during the 1920s-1950s.  The coffee-table book we bought later calls these devices Baranger Motions.

If there was a map to the collections, we weren’t given one. Other visitors breezed past us and the dollhouses and circus tents, but wouldn’t you know it, they all stopped to study the collection of guns and weaponry, a section that we pushed through quickly.

The vastness of this man’s private collections (and the confinement) became overwhelming. “Enough,” we said. “TMI.” It took effort to get up and out of the depths of the exhibits to the exit. I would have liked to have seen the house and some of the other collections, so we will probably go back on another trip. I found out later that my younger brother had visited the House on the Rock once, doing all three tours, but he deliberately kept that fact a secret—he felt ripped off because it was so disorganized. He was afraid that if he told family or friends he had visited, they would take it as a recommendation, visit themselves, and then “punch him in the stomach” for making a bad recommendation.

I’m not keeping it a secret because the cost ($28.50 a person for all three tours—ticket good for a year) was pretty reasonable, considering how much tickets to Avatar 3D and Disneyland are. Just don’t expect to witness the elegant and innovative mind of Frank Lloyd Wright—or Walt Disney for that matter—when you visit the House on the Rock. This guy must have smoked some really good stuff starting in the 1950s all the way through to the 1980s.

Back to the Bubble

My brain was similarly muddled with sensations by the end of our memorable trip. My account of it is guaranteed to be the truth, even if I didn’t list out all the private line items (like on our rental car agreement). In fact, I came away with a better appreciation of protecting privacy. It’s not just a simple matter of etiquette. It’s acknowledging that in our complex world and lives, it’s not necessary to always have full disclosure. Behind every door and every face—every landscape—is a rich abundance of private experience and thought.

As mates, Eric and I travel in a kind of “bell jar” of privacy that most couples enjoy. We automatically respect one another’s boundaries. We maneuver through the world and our lives with an unspoken agreement and understanding that no matter what, we are connected. Beneath our physical beings and the faces and personalities we reveal to the world in general, we know there is a lot more going on. We know this without needing to elaborate on it. We give one another status updates but accept that there is a limit to what is necessary and appropriate to share and uncover. Just knowing every individual and household is rich with mystery and treasure is enough.

And the winner of the 2nd Annual Del Marcus Golf Open is…

You’re probably dying to find out how the family golf tournament—the main purpose of our trip—turned out. Great! The t-shirts—designed by my niece’s drummer boyfriend—were excellent. The weather was muggy and cloudy, but it didn’t rain as predicted. Nine golfers, nine holes, and the trophy this year went to…me.

I don’t play golf often, but I practiced at the driving range and on a short course in Oakland a few weeks in advance. I think I figured out the secret to hitting the ball straight. I know what point of my swing to pay attention to so I don’t chop, slice, or hook. I began the tournament with one of the best drives I’ve hit in a long time—and shot par on the first hole. Four strokes compared to about eight the year before. On the 93-yard fourth hole, we had predetermined that a prize would be given to whomever got closest to the pin on their drive—I won that prize too as I was the only one to land my drive on the green.

Was my score the best of the day? Not exactly. To determine the trophy winner we use a formula to calculate a handicap, based on the scores of three holes, picked randomly after the round. One of the three happened to be my worst hole of the day, which ended up being in my favor.

But you don’t need to know all of these behind-the-scenes gory details. As far as the history books go, I’m holding the trophy this year. That’s really all anyone needs to know.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad! Love you and miss you.

June 12, 2010

Show Me Your Privates—Part 1

Filed under: Family,Privacy,Travel — Oh Dave Now @ 8:35 am

Dollar Rental Car needs to change its name, to something like Dollars Unlimited. Eric and I just got back from a jam-packed visit with family and friends, and we had rented a car to get around Minneapolis, Minnesota and for a side trip to Madison, Wisconsin. When Eric made the car reservation, the quoted price on Travelocity for a week’s rental was $168.72. The online receipt says “We’re sorry, but the price breakdown is not available at this time. Your total price is guaranteed.”  Further down under “Instructions and Policies” it mentions that there may be charges for optional services and fees. That’s an understatement. Our final cost for the car rental was $335.75, a difference of $167.03, almost exactly double our “guaranteed price.” The breakdown for a really crappy Kia Optima is absurd though typical:

Weekly rental                                               109.31
GPS (part of original quote)                          59.95
Add’l Driver (we requested) ($9.99/day)      59.94
Frequent Flyer Surcharge—we weren’t
    getting credit for any miles ($1.50/day)      8.00
Customer Facility Charge—making us
    pay for the facility at which our car is
    not taking up space while we’re
    renting it? ($3.25/day)                               19.50
Energy Recovery Fee ($0.45/day)                   2.70
APCONRECFEE (??) (10%)                        23.99
State Tax (7.275%)                                        20.62
Vehicle License Fee—can we at least
    get a personalized plate at this
    price? (5%)                                                 14.17
Rental Tax (6.20%)                                        17.57

The young pretty customer service representative was personable and chatty as she processed our rental, hiding the fact that she was the instrument of fiscal deception. At the head of a long line, we quickly signed off on the agreement and collected our car, not looking at the charges until we were in the garage.

We travel enough to expect to pay extras—such as $23 to check one bag on Delta—but when hidden charges double the quoted price, it is difficult to budget. This is a situation where “too much information” is not only acceptable but preferred. My brother, who travels more frequently, said our total was typical for a week’s rental. Nonetheless, this standard practice of drawing in customers with an attractive bargain or base price, and then once they’re in the door, slapping on new charges is a little white lie that makes me see red.  If we had complained, they might have given us a break even though they were probably covered by the fine print.

The sticker shock got me thinking about secrets both business and personal. In personal relations, however, you can’t demand to speak to a manager if you’re not satisfied with an interaction or suspect someone isn’t being completely upfront. Out of respect for their privacy, we don’t usually confront someone if we think they’re lying about alleged drug use, cosmetic surgery, or sudden weight loss. Conversely, if someone puts all their personal cards on the table, you can just deal with it, support them, say “TMI”, or leave the room.

Throughout our recent trip Eric and I were guests, welcomed into other people’s homes and lives, and I was aware that the border between what’s public or private information was constantly shifting. The Facebook controversy over privacy settings was fresh in my mind so I was noticing offline when people were guarding their privacy or respecting mine. I define “private” as that which we choose not to reveal, that which remains unspoken but isn’t completely hidden from view. Eric and I are fairly private people—my Facebook settings are conservative, more so than a lot of my friends.

I want to demonstrate how I experienced this issue in real situations on our vacation without blowing the cover of our hosts. Perhaps the safest approach is to give them the same level of privacy that they maintain in their lives. I consider myself sensitive to being able to accurately witness and interpret the subtext in Shakespeare and personal relations. Sometimes it could be my imagination. But then, as we drove along two-lane county highways in Wisconsin through green rolling hills and farmland, I was reminded of my training. On family road trips I entertained myself with what I call the “drive-by invasion of privacy” game. On long stretches of unfamiliar roads and passing through small towns, I would peer out the window and focus on spotting secret activities. In rural areas I tried to spot animals that were lurking in the trees and bushes. In inhabited areas, I liked to catch people in yards and gas stations in the act of arguing, kissing, falling off their bike, or, like the animals, lurking in the trees and bushes. I’d shout out to my fellow passengers what I had seen but usually it was too late for them to see it for themselves.

When I’m visiting with family and friends in their homes, I don’t deliberately play this game of seeing past the surface and extracting the underlying, private details. In fact, we tried to be good guests and discreetly keep private things private, whether it’s our stuff or our hosts’. Adhering to these “privacy settings,” I give a selective shout-out of what I saw.

The Good Guest

In Minneapolis, we stayed with my older brother and his wife who had recently become empty nesters. (I used to stay at my dad’s house, but the Minneapolis leg of our trip was primarily to attend the 2nd annual family golf tournament and barbeque in memory of my dad, an avid golfer who passed away two years ago.) The guest room at my brother’s house was well-appointed, and we had our own bathroom.  Because of this I spread my toiletries across the counter, even my…Rogaine. Cat’s out of the bag now…my older brother is the only male in my family with a full head of hair, an unspoken point of sibling rivalry. I didn’t want him to know of my efforts to grow more hair because I’ll never grow enough to top him. But it wasn’t likely he’d be using our bathroom so I didn’t keep the Rogaine hidden—when I do, I sometimes forget to use it.

Of our bathrooms at home, only one has a fan, but in newer homes like my brother’s, every bathroom has a fan. White noise gets on my nerves so I use bathroom fans sparingly, but when our hosts were home, I always turned the fan on to mask any disturbing noises I might make. Eric and I both worried if the walls were thick enough—if we turn on the bathroom fan or flush the toilet in the middle of the night, will it disturb our hosts? Eric’s snoring kept me awake—I wondered if they could hear it across the hall through two sets of closed doors? I was too tired in the mornings to ask my brother.

Near the end of the trip, it unexpectedly came to light over pizza that my brother won’t be an empty nester for very long. It’s an unfortunate turn of events for several reasons which are none of your or my business so I’ll keep the details private. Though our hosts were embarrassed that their private business was exposed, I was flattered that they trusted us enough to discuss the issues with us. I felt like a part of their nuclear family for a few moments instead of the far-flung extended family member I am.

Silenced by a Glass Too Full

My younger brother has been going through a lot this past year and has admirably weathered it. He stopped drinking, changed his diet, committed to an exercise regime, and lost over 40 pounds. He’s become a poster boy for good health at his job. I’m jealous of his glass-half-full attitude, an attitude I’ve attempted to emulate but I keep getting wet when the glass spills. Over the phone he’s been very open and positive about his impending divorce and preparations to sell their house. We were sad to hear about the divorce as we’ve enjoyed many visits and outings with him and my sister-in-law over the 16 years of their marriage as well as watching their kids grow up. Eric and I had planned to have lunch with him, his young adult son and daughter, and my older sister at Three Squares restaurant, a local spot whose name reminded me of an inmate’s rationalization of jail as free room-and-board, i.e., “three squares and a cot.”

We drove over to my brother’s to hang out for awhile before lunch. I looked forward to having private time to offer him support and counsel. As we approached the house, we were surprised, pleasantly, to see him in the living room window holding his smiling nine-month-old granddaughter, whom we had yet to meet.  She is really cute with a great personality. Instead of simply hanging out, we sat on the living room floor and played with the infant who was taking her first steps—she gleefully stumbled over to Eric’s hands but avoided me, perhaps because of my beard. It turned out that my brother’s soon-to-be-ex-wife had the day off too, and she and her 21-year-old daughter from her first marriage were sorting through boxes of children’s books, apparently in preparation to sell the house. I resisted the urge to inquire, and frankly was hesitant to discuss any of what was going on, afraid I would get too emotional.

At the restaurant we had a very filling meal and a fun visit catching up with my sister and my niece and nephew. To keep his personal and professional lives separate, my nephew has an alter ego called DJ Three a Day and just finished self-producing a slick CD of rhythm tracks. My niece/goddaughter is looking into attending school for fashion design in a West Coast city very near Eric and me but we didn’t talk about that at lunch—or during the short trip—and I can’t talk about it here either. There is much to coordinate in private first. Besides, talking about it too much might jinx it.

After lunch, Eric, my brother and I went to the Dollar Store to get prizes for the family golf tournament. We split up to scour the merchandise—at one point I heard a loud fart in the next aisle and called out to my brother, “I heard that.” He came around the end and replied with a grin, “You weren’t supposed to—I thought if I snuck off I could relieve some of the pressure from lunch.” In brotherly confidence, I admitted I had done the same once I had the aisle to myself. We finished our shopping, and unlike our rental car, the items really were a dollar each and a few were perfect, golf-related prizes.

Letting a lot, but not all, hang out

On Friday night, we were invited to celebrate our friend T’s 51st birthday in downtown St. Paul. Even though the celebration was in mostly public places, there was a lot of openness about personal issues. T wasn’t being coy about his age since a few weeks earlier he had learned that he had gone into remission after several months of chemotherapy. T and his male partner W had gathered eight of their friends for happy hour at a gay bar, dinner at a restaurant next door, and home-made cupcakes at a nearby condo. It was a joyous, in-the-moment celebration.

We were a half hour late due to rush hour traffic so the rest of our party had a head start on drinks. Their friends, strangers to us except for one, welcomed us warmly into the celebration. T and W made a point of moving down to our end of the table so they could visit with us, the out-of-towners. They talked some about the challenges and emotions they had gone through, but with an “it’s-behind-us-now” candor and relief. Then W casually pointed out the sexual orientation of their eight friends: there were two straight single women, a straight couple, a single straight man, a single gay man, and a gay couple. Counting T and J and Eric and me, there were 7 gays, 5 straights. From our end of the table, the straight man in the couple looked like he could be gay; he had such a cute, boyish face. As the night progressed and I saw him stand (6’6” maybe?) and walk and interact, he was more obviously straight.

T showed us a photo on his phone from another party when one of the women had flashed her cleavage. That prompted her to do a live re-enactment in mock sensuality. After dinner, another of T’s friends, who reminded me of the blonde comedian, Amy Poehler, from Saturday Night Live, was having us over for the cupcakes at her condo a few blocks away. Throughout the night, “cupcakes” became the cue for all of the women in our group to press up and show their cleavage—and what lovely cleavage it was. Late in the evening, dollars bills came out and found their way into the cleavage, particularly when “Cocoa” arrived at the condo. “Cocoa,” a term of endearment but not her real name, was a full-figured, demure black woman who went around the room and greeted each guest with a warm hug and a friendly kiss on the lips. What could I do but enjoy it?

Before all that, we had dinner next door to the bar at Sawatdee, a Thai restaurant that had prepared a long table for us. “Amy” was a marketing consultant for malls, etc. and apparently knew the restaurant’s owner, a gay Asian man, perhaps as a client. They treated us like royalty, plying T with several complimentary birthday drinks, and encouraging our raucous behavior. “Amy” divvied up the bill per our separate orders and it was the least expensive group dinner I’d ever attended—I wondered if she had gotten a deal from the owner but it wouldn’t have been polite to ask. The meal ended with the entire restaurant staff passing around vodka lemonade shots to our table and singing “Happy Birthday” to T. I’m getting teary remembering it.

At “Amy’s” gorgeous condo we lounged around and ate the most delicious, moist chocolate cupcakes I’ve ever had. After a long day, I was fairly quiet and mostly observed, not making a lot of effort to interact with the others or assert my personality. Eric and I hugged and kissed T and W frequently. We said our farewells to “Amy” and “Cocoa”. I made a point to hug T and W’s friend J, one half of the gay couple, whom I had sat across from at dinner. I thought he had a beautiful, perfect face that was enhanced by his completely bald head. When I hugged him I whispered privately, “I enjoyed looking at you across the table.” He beamed as we separated and I turned away. Eric and I went out the door and left the revelers behind. I figured that I would probably never see J again.

TO BE CONTINUED

May 16, 2010

A Little Crisis Happened on the Way to the Blockbuster

Filed under: Uncategorized — Oh Dave Now @ 5:31 pm

Let me tell you a story. A true story. Simply put, it goes like this.

I had a light, easy day at the office. Eric had a challenging, frustrating day at school where he teaches. We talked over the phone in the afternoon, and he asked me to prepare his favorite new homemade dinner, Chicken Piccata. I stopped at the market on the way home and got the ingredients. It was delicious and we ate off of trays in front of the TV. By this time I was exhausted and just wanted to veg. I set my tray on the coffee table. Either my foot or our dog Nia’s nose nudged the tray and it slid off the table. The plate—with residual sauce of butter, wine, lemon juice, capers, parsley, and chicken fat—fell onto an expensive area rug, staining the rug and my leather slippers.

Perturbed, I jumped up out of my recliner, shooed the dog away, and started blotting the rug with a paper napkin. While Eric guarded the rug stain, I searched the house upstairs and down for Resolve stain remover. Couldn’t find it, must be out. Found an all-natural substitute, wetted a paper towel, and dabbed at the stain.

After taking Nia out for her walk, I played ball with her, downstairs from the accident. I threw the ball to the top of the stairs and she ran up to get it from the TV room. I heard a sound like she had stopped to chew on the ball for a moment as she is accustomed. When she didn’t come back down, I raced up the stairs. She had gone back to the treated stain—obviously not treated enough—and had eaten a hole in the rug!!

I blew up, yelled at her which sent her scurrying, and yelled down to Eric who was in his office and who came up to see the tragedy for himself. Nia got sent directly to bed. Eric and I bemoaned another incident of dog-driven household décor destruction and blamed each other—he blamed me for knocking the tray off the table, I blamed him for not replacing the Resolve when it ran out. I vowed never to make Chicken Piccata again. After pouring, not dabbing, more stain remover on the area around the hole, I got ready for bed at 9:00 p.m. and took the newspaper to bed. The lead article was about devastating tornados in Arkansas that had destroyed not just expensive rugs but several hundred entire homes. Just then, Eric came in and apologized for getting upset, that it was really a minor thing. Maybe we could superglue some of the rug fibers into the hole. The dog was just being a dog—we would have to be more careful in the future no matter how tired we were.

Cute story, isn’t it? But there’s not enough to it to turn it into a novel, a feature length movie, or a TV series. No, to really grab attention and box office, it would have to be taken to an extreme. Perhaps turn it into a story about:

A sexy high school cheerleader (that would be me) goes out on a first date with the star basketball player who takes her to a fancy restaurant. She orders Chicken Piccata—as the waiter sets it down, it slips off the plate and in slow motion, falls onto her new pink dress from Ann Taylor. The whole restaurant explodes in chaos. Apologies are given, dinner is ruined. The hot couple storms out. In the parking lot, the basketball player strangely eyes the Piccata stain on the dress. As soon as they get in his Humvee, he transforms into a wolf with yellow eyes and drooling fangs. He eats a hole through his date.

I bring this up to illustrate the writer’s dilemma. Writers are taught to “write from their experience,” at least I was in school. And yet, there has to be conflict, major conflict. Fiction in any form can be described as showing how people act under crisis so most fiction tackles extreme situations. Even stories about seemingly everyday life tend to ratchet up the dramatic or comedic predicaments—soap operas and “The Office” come to mind.

The problem is most people, including writers, lead generally mundane, uneventful lives in that we’re not out thwarting terrorists from setting off a dirty bomb in Times Square or rescuing hot babes clinging to the edge of a cliff. Certainly there are people who have experienced kidnapping, murder, courtroom trials, war, natural disasters, and serious illness; and write about those experiences. More likely, writers take their day-to-day experiences of falling in love, raising children, training pets, running a household, forging a career, or going on vacation; and with imagination, exaggerate their experiences into major crises. It isn’t false to do that because as my story about the hole in the rug shows, what was really a minor crisis felt in the moment like a major tragedy. I know what it feels like to be in the middle of a catastrophe even if I’ve never fought in a war or been chased by dinosaurs (not counting dreams).

As a reader or viewer, I also know I would be more engaged by cannibalism than a hole in a rug. Nonetheless, I sometimes wish I could write about something important to me without feeling I have to take it to epic, end-of-the-world proportions. When you break down well-known extremist drama and literature to their possible (in my mind anyway) seeds of inspiration, it can still be interesting. From the basest instincts, what ethereal masterpieces may have come.

Oedipus Rex—heir to throne unknowingly kills his father and marries and sleeps with his mother. In real life, Sophocles, a plebian with messianic tendencies, was a “sensitive” boy who didn’t click with his father, a successful Type-A businessman. His father wouldn’t let him attend the nude Olympics in which Sophocles’ BFF Demetrius would be throwing the shot put. To make matters worse, Sophocles’ birthday gift to his mother, a Greek vase engraved with an original fawning poem, was outdone by his father’s gift, a surprise trip for two to Crete. For revenge, Sophocles fantasized about posing as a towel boy and drowning his father in the deep end of the Parthenon baths. Then he would have his mother, the only woman he’d ever get close to and his biggest fan, all to himself.

Romeo and Juliet—star-crossed lovers from feuding families carry on a reckless, secret affair that due to poor communication ends tragically for the teens but brings the families together. Young Will Shakespeare had it bad for his first cousin Catherine. Three years his senior he hung on her every silly word, enraptured and fascinated by her bulging corseted bosom which had developed early for a 14-year-old. Try as he might to hide his affection, no cod piece was big enough to contain his secret, and his parents forbade him to play with her around the May pole. His uncle had hit the big time with the season’s crop, and he flaunted it by buying rounds at the local pub, while Will’s father struggled to make ends meet. Their sibling rivalry decreased the number of family functions in which Will saw Catherine. Despondent, Will skulked around the dirt roads and pastures of Avon, plotting to get out of the dead-end town, maybe to some place exciting like Italy where no one could tell him who he could and couldn’t love, mostly due to the language barrier.

Mary Poppins—a dictatorial banker and father gets a lesson in humility from a magical, too-good-to-believe English nanny for his two quiet but impetuous children. Author P.L. Travers, who at the time had to hide her female identity in order to get published, was constantly scolded by her parents for her flights of fancy. “Stop your daydreaming and do something useful, like count the eggs in the chicken coop. And while you’re at it, feed those damn birds or you won’t get tuppence from me!” But she couldn’t help it—no matter what menial task she put herself to, into her mind delightful—dare I say “merry”—thoughts would pop in. So she started a series of novels to basically catalog her imagination that just wouldn’t quit. Having moved from her native Australia to England and Ireland to make her mark as a writer, she struggled to adjust to the constant rainy weather and the omnipresent umbrella. She brilliantly turned the cursed accessory into a thing of whimsical flight, inspiring scores of children to injure themselves by jumping out of trees with an umbrella in failed attempts to fly like their heroine.

Gone with the Wind—Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara connives to maintain her way of life amidst the turmoil of the U.S. Civil War, torn between romantic notions for do-gooder Ashley Wilkes and carnal satisfaction with rogue Rhett Butler.  Poor Margaret “Peggy” Mitchell—an Atlanta newspaper columnist who no one took seriously. She’d show them! Okay, sure, she had never finished college. It wasn’t her fault! She had been forced to quit and return home to take over the family household after her mother’s untimely death. Such rotten luck. Eventually she had gotten out of the house before the jazz age passed her by and had some fun, flirting and cavorting with young beaus. She thought she had made a good match with her first husband “Red”—who knew he was a bootlegger and an abusive alcoholic?! The best revenge? Marry his best friend and best man, that’s what! Fiddle dee dee, Peggy was determined to crank out an epic potboiler that would shut them all up. An especially traumatic episode from her childhood, when their pug Miss Melanie had a difficult labor delivering four puppies, could be a useful plot device, as God was her witness. Thank goodness she had taken notes while her crazy-as-a-loon Uncle John O’Mara rattled on his tall tales of fighting in the Civil War. Wait! Her notes! They’re gone! Darn that lazy-good-for-nothing maid—she left the window open and the wind blew them all away!!! Oh dear, oh dear, when will it all end?

A Streetcar Named Desire—disgraced, aging Southern lady Blanche Dubois intrudes upon her poverty-stricken little sister in New Orleans where Stella’s dumb jock husband Stanley abuses them both, driving Blanche insane. Openly gay author Tennessee Williams actually knew a Stanley Kowalski, whom he met at a shoe factory. Williams’ father had forced him to withdraw from his highbrow studies at the University of Missouri to go to work on the assembly line. Disgraced and mortified—and “off track” from his true desires, Tennessee was reduced to repetitively threading shoelaces which drove young Tennessee nuts and stained his delicate hands. The saving grace was salivating over hunky Stanley, who strutted up and down the factory aisles in a sweaty white tank-top, heaving large crates of shoes onto his broad, muscular shoulders and deliberating flexing his biceps in front of the sissy boy oddly named after a state. Tennessee was further intrigued by Stanley’s size 12 boots and his startling habit of yelling at the top of his lungs, “Cruella!” whenever he set down a crate of shoes.

Star Wars—Young Luke Skywalker learns the ways of the Force from master Obi Wan Kenobi and fights Darth Vader and the dark side, with help from two robots, a princess, and renegade smartass Han Solo. Writer/director George Lucas, nicknamed “Luke” by his high school buddies, had dreamed of becoming a professional racecar driver, but just after graduating from high school, he was in a serious car accident. From his hospital bed, he introspectively realized that he hadn’t trusted his instincts, and had gone right, when he should have gone left, and was thereby Forced off the road. “Luke” rebound and went to film school, puttering around with animation and short films with robotic intensity. Taken under the wing of renegade, smartass auteur director Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Finian’s Rainbow, Lucas formed his own film company and hired an oddball crew of studio rejects. A diabetic, he fought to control his energy—one moment he was lethargic and weighed down by gravitas, the next, fueled by massive cinnamon rolls, his blood sugar would spike to hyperspeed. A hard-nosed trooper with obvious balls, Lucas soldiered on against Hollywood skepticism and against all odds, hit the mark with a beloved film that blew up box office records. He continued with a Star Wars sequel, no wait, a trilogy, or maybe that should be a double trilogy, with prequels. Having run out of decent source material, it went on too long and just kind of petered out, with superfluous scenes, forced lame cleverness, this, that, you know. And after starting out so well. Oh, well. Now what?

April 25, 2010

When Husbands Are Away

Filed under: Uncategorized — Oh Dave Now @ 6:10 pm

This past Saturday my partner Eric was helping coordinate an all-day singing festival—he left the house at 7 a.m. and didn’t expect to be home until 9:30 p.m. On these occasions I can’t help but revert to teenage impulses. Party! Road trip! Junk food and stupid movies!                                

My only responsibility was to walk our dog Nia three times: morning, afternoon, and early evening. It cuts up the day but I could deal with that. Maybe I would take her with me on a day excursion to who knows where. I started thinking a few days in advance about what I would do on my “day off.” When I went grocery shopping on Thursday, I considered what I could get for my bachelor meals, an opportunity to feast on things that he won’t eat such as asparagus, mushrooms, tofu, or fresh trout. I settled on a dinner of grilled bockwurst (the pale white kind of sausage), a salad with lots of tomatoes, and for dessert something I love and he despises: rhubarb crisp.                                

I checked the local movie listings to see what Saturday matinees were playing. I went online to find out what time my favorite 9-hole golf course opened in case I wanted to go out and play a quick practice round by myself. I left a message with my friend Michael to see if he wanted to get together for brunch, a hike, or go to the movies.                              

And then Friday night I had the sleep of the damned due to residual anxiety from the work week. I probably got five hours of good sleep at the most. With a cup of coffee in hand, I saw Eric off to his festival right before 7 a.m., and then thought about going back to bed. I took the dog out for her first walk of the day and noted that the grass was very wet with dew, not great for an early morning round of golf. I dispensed Nia’s breakfast of kibble and while she gobbled away I considered my options. Frustrated by a poor night’s sleep and the appearance of a new cold sore, I did what any sane person would do with a day to their self—hours of manual physical labor.                               

It started with changing a light bulb. (Doesn’t it always?) It’s one of those difficult-to-change bulbs where part of the fixture has to be disassembled. It went more smoothly than I expected. The fixture is hanging over the kitchen sink and had been installed three or four years ago when we remodeled. The electrician had measured and marked with a pencil on the ceiling above the sink. We’ve been meaning to touch up that section of ceiling ever since and had finally bought a can of paint a few months earlier. It was a task on our spring break to-do list that still hadn’t gotten done. I hesitated. I wanted to have some fun today—I would still have the afternoon to watch a DVD or purchase an on-demand movie. It wouldn’t take that long to paint a 4 by 1 foot section of white ceiling. And it would sure surprise Eric.                                

I went to the garage to find the paint. However, it was in a cupboard that is blocked by our Wriggly Wranch worm composting bin made of hard black plastic which stands on four spindly legs attached only by plastic clips. The clips are missing from two of the legs so moving the bin results in at least one of the legs splaying out, and the bin threatening to fall over. The bin consists of three crates that stack inside one another—the top is filled with mulch and compost that a colony of worms feeds on. The middle is filled with worm castings, a technical term for worm feces—looks like potting soil and can be added to the real stuff. And the bottom is filled with water enriched by the seepage of nutrients from above, ie., the worms’ liquid and solid waste matter. There is a spigot to dispense the liquid into a pitcher for pouring onto the garden beds.                              

A leg did fall off but I managed to scoot the bin and hold the legs on at the same time. I still couldn’t get the cupboard open far enough so I got my car keys and backed up my car out of the garage a few feet, moved the bin some more, and got the cupboard open. I confirmed that the new quart of paint matched the color code for the original kitchen paint. I made several trips back and forth to the kitchen with prep and painting tools: two sizes of masking tape, a new plastic drop cloth, a roll of masking plastic, paint roller and pan, a small brush, a mixing stick, a couple of new paint rags, and an aluminum step ladder. I couldn’t find sandpaper anywhere and I remembered having designated a spot in the cupboard as “sandpaper storage.” Obviously, Eric had used it and didn’t put it back in the right place. I almost aborted the whole operation, considered just getting the painting done without doing proper preparation of the surface, but decided to look around the garage for a third time.                               

I found some electric sander paper that I could use by hand. A light bulb went off. I stopped and looked over the peg boards with tools such as an electric drill and saw. There was a black case I didn’t recognize—I took it down and opened it to find an electric sander—and all the sandpaper you would ever want! (Even the paper that doesn’t work with an electric sander, Eric.) I sort of remembered we had bought an electric sander at one point but how often does one use such a thing? A couple of times in a decade?                                

The gig was back on so I changed into grungy shorts and t-shirt, old sneakers, and a backward baseball cap. I found some safety goggles and masks and went to the kitchen with renewed determination. I was amped at finally getting this task done. I decided to take some photos to show Eric so he wouldn’t feel left out of the whole process—it was something we had planned to do together.                               

As the day progressed, I kept taking photos. When Eric finally got home at 9:30 p.m., while he ate a late dinner of bockwurst and broccoli that I prepared for him, I ran a slide show (modeled after the TV program “24”) of my approximately 12-hour-long day’s adventures.                               

            

         

09:53 am

10:00 am

10:44 am

                   

10:52 am

          

10:53 am

10:56 am

11:40 am

          

I had finished the painting and some of the cleanup when there was a loud crash in the garage. I found the compost bin sitting flat on the concrete floor, all four legs thrown helter-skelter. Worm juice was splattered on the cupboards and pooling on the floor. Before taking a photo, I quickly wiped up the noxious brown liquid but you get the idea.                         

11:59 am

I had had it with that damn bin, something our former gardener had talked us into before we fired her, and it wasn’t being fully utilized. I kept hitting it with my car, it blocked the cupboard, and those cheap legs were worthless. The thing was too heavy for me to lift and reattach the legs one by one, not to mention more liquid would leak out. I looked around for some wooden blocks we used to have that it could sit on. Instead I found six cinder blocks stacked in the opposite corner and decided to relocate the bin out of my way forever. It could sit on the blocks and the legs could be retired, having outlived their usefulness. But the corner was filthy with leaves, dirt, and cob webs so I had to sweep it out. I managed to separate the bin’s three crates and carry them one by one to sit on the blocks in the corner.                        

        

12:07 pm

                    

 I decided I may as well finish sweeping out the entire garage, another leftover task from spring break. The paint had to dry before I could finish the kitchen cleanup anyway.                     

        

12:14 pm

                            

 I went in from the garage to find Nia waiting for her afternoon walk.                           

       

12:45 pm

        

 Time for lunch–I heated up a frozen enchilada pie.                           

       

1:36 pm

                    

Back to the kitchen to do post-painting cleanup. While I did that, I blasted several vinyl records I haven’t played in years, music that would disturb Eric if he was home.                              

2:19 pm

Though I had moved some items away from the area near the sink and covered the counters with a drop cloth, a lazy susan and its few dozen kitchen utensils were covered with dust from two minutes of sanding so I had to wash every one and completely clean out one corner of the counter. I also wiped down the front of every cupboard, the stovetop, and foot-mopped the floor with a wet rag.    

3:15 pm

    

    

3:16 pm

                           

When I went to get the mail, it really bothered me that the driveway and front patio were full of fallen leaves and pine needles from recent windy days. I didn’t want that to get into my clean garage.                             

3:45 pm

         

But first there were some branches hanging over the front steps that needed to be trimmed.                        

3:56 pm

4:16 pm

4:17 pm

         

I dried the dishes and put everything back into place so Eric wouldn’t know until he saw the slide show that  I had done the painting.                      

4:21 pm

         

I finally had time to relax in the sun before taking a shower.                             

4:26 pm

        

Then I decided to start a new jigsaw puzzle so Eric wouldn’t think I had slaved all day long.                             

5:50 pm

         

I was running out of time. And getting a little hungry. So I began preparing my strawberry-rhubarb crisp.                             

6:50 pm

                    

And dinner.                             

7:10 pm

                    

While I ate dinner, I started a DVD from my collection of James Cagney movies.                             

7:30 pm

        

And finally, dessert was ready!                     

8:00 pm

It was warm, bubbly, sweet and delicious. I had mixed my favorite hemp granola in with the flour and sugar topping and it was totally awesome, dude. Though Eric doesn’t like rhubarb it was also really sweet, offsetting the usual tartness, so I saved him half. The phone rang, he filled me in on the festival, and then I got his dinner ready while he drove home. The day was over, and it was good.  

*********  

To Eric’s credit, he noticed as he drove into the garage that I had trimmed the tree, swept the front patio, and swept the garage. And he thanked me for it as soon as he walked into the house. I had aired out the house enough that he didn’t smell the new paint and was genuinely surprised when I started the slide show. He was delighted I had finally finished the painting task.  

He had had a very long, chaotic day at the singing festival, a constant scramble of dealing with late accompanists, no-show judges, and a rock band—part of another campus-sanctioned festival—performing outside the SF State building where youngsters were singing classical art songs so the singers had to change rooms and then change back later. He was a good sport to watch the silly slide show of my self-contained day after his had been so all-consuming.  

He didn’t know—perhaps I failed to tell him—that I had designated a storage place for the sandpaper. He had thought it logical to keep all the sandpaper together in one place in the electric sander case–I’ll gladly keep it that way so we both know where to find it. He was glad I had crafted a sturdy solution and out-of-the-way place for the composting bin. He has yet to try the rhubarb crisp but maybe if I reheat it and wave it under his nose he’ll succumb.  

It’s fun to have a day to myself once in awhile, but believe me, I wouldn’t want to go it alone every day without my chosen husband, no question.   

April 11, 2010

What Should I Watch/Read/iPad Tonight?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Oh Dave Now @ 5:33 pm

Last night I touched another man’s iPad for the first time, and today I am consumed with a mix of envy and lust. It sure is a sexy toy. I say toy because it’s primarily for recreation, as opposed to a tool for pro(fessional) creation. He had a $5 app (that’s short for application in case you’re out of the loop) that showed the constellations and as you move the iPad it changes to show the sky in whatever direction the iPad is facing—and we were indoors. Stargazing without the barriers of cold air, clouds, or city lights.

He demonstrated the free book, Winnie the Pooh, which comes with the book reader application. Not only are the original drawings on the page in color, but when you brush your finger on the touch screen from right to left to turn the page, the page curls and stays in place as you move or stop your finger—the pages are even see-through with the previous page’s text shown in reverse through the back of the turning page. That’s creative and inspired engineering.

I have been following the newspaper accounts of the release of the iPad, the sales figures, the positive reviews, and it certainly got my interest but I didn’t rush out to be the first in line for several reasons with which I am struggling today. First is the cost, $500 to $800 depending on the amount of memory and type of Wi-Fi connectivity. Second, the iPad is essentially an oversized iPhone, minus phone calling features and I haven’t gotten an iPhone because I couldn’t justify it. I hardly use my cell phone except in the car, I do not text much, and while the iPhone has a cool interface and features, I don’t have a lot of free time where I’m sitting around on a train or a bus and could utilize the features. In short, for me an iPhone would not be a must-have useful tool—it would be a toy that I would have to set aside time to enjoy, like a set of golf clubs, a deck of cards, or a board game.

I was one of the first to get a Macintosh computer back in 1986 and for several years I got swept up by manic upgrade fever. It was an exciting time with the beginning of PageMaker and desktop publishing, email and the world wide web as they called it then. I was one of the first to thrill at digital scanning and the first version of PhotoShop. I kept upgrading my operating system and applications, added more memory, subscribed to magazines, attended Mac user meetings, and attended MacWorld to feed the addiction for the latest and the greatest. Eventually the passion faded, a business went belly up, and I grew tired of spending money on upgrades that didn’t have a lot of wow factor. At the end of last year I contemplated upgrading my slow and outdated iMac but for half the price I did what was once unthinkable—I got a powerful Gateway PC with Windows 7 and a 21” high-definition letterbox flat-screen monitor that can easily double as a TV. I’m very happy with the non-Macintosh computer I have now.

But now out of the blue the iPad comes along to sweep me off my feet when I wasn’t even looking for it–I haven’t had this feeling and passion for a piece of hardware for many years. The iPad beckons me to return to the Apple way of computing canoodling. Why not give in to the temptation? I don’t have a personal laptop, just the one issued by my employer and they block all the fun stuff and have it set up so they can monitor your usage whenever you turn it on and connect to the internet, even outside of the office and the corporate network. But do I really need a new technology love in my life? Is that how I want to spend my leisure time? I have so many entertainment choices already via technology. It’s no longer as simple as sitting down in front of the TV at 7:00 p.m. to watch Jeopardy and if you’re not there on time you’ll miss something. I don’t miss any programs because I didn’t get to the TV in time or miss a movie because it has already left the theatre—now I miss entertainment opportunities because there are too many to choose from and I don’t have time to enjoy them all. When I want to unwind and read, watch TV, see a movie or listen to music, these are some of the choices I know that I have without an iPad:

Current TV

  1. Live Comcast Cable (with commercials—usually only during the Super Bowl or Oscars)
  2. Digital Video Recorder (DVR) recorded programs (I bought one of the first DVRs in 2000, ReplayTV which is now part of DirectTV satellite service and not as well known as TIVO, its only initial competitor—but I always liked Replay’s interface better than TIVO’s.)
  3. Comcast On-Demand (box)
  4. Comcast Fancast Xfinity (on-demand online)
  5. Hulu.com (online)
  6. iTunes.com (download to PC)

Movies

  1. DVD Collection
  2. Netflix DVDs (we have the two-at-a-time plan and they frequently sit on the coffee table for weeks)
  3. Netflix Instant Play (streaming over the internet, on a PC but usually through our blu-ray DVD player, which is connected to the internet, to our 61” TV)
  4. Vudu Rental or Purchase (through our blu-ray player—movie service like in hotels)
  5. CinemaNow Rental or Purchase (through our blu-ray player—movie service like in hotels)
  6. Live TV
  7. Recorded to DVR from cable movie stations like HBO or Turner Classic Movies
  8. Comcast On-Demand (box)
  9. Comcast Fancast Xfinity (on-demand online)
  10. YouTube Movies (on PC and through blu-ray player)
  11. iTunes (download to PC)
  12. Movie Theatre (I almost forgot to put it on the list!)

Recorded Music

  1. Vinyl LPs
  2. CDs
  3. Cassette Tapes
  4. Digitized music collection—Windows Media Player
  5. Digitized music collection—iTunes Player (picky about what formats it plays)
  6. Digitized music—iRiver MP3 player (was never drawn to clunkier iPods)
  7. Internet music/videos—lastFM.com
  8. Internet music/videos—lala.com
  9. Internet music/videos—YouTube
  10. AM/FM Radio
  11. Internet Radio—AOL
  12. Internet Radio—iTunes
  13. Sirius XM Satellite Radio (car)
  14. Sirius XM Satellite Radio (online)
  15. Music Choice (Comcast cable)

That’s a lot of choices. If I didn’t list them all, I would forget about some of them. These are just the ones I’ve identified for myself—I know there are others (including pirated music and movies) that I’m not tuned into or don’t have the time or need to investigate. The above list also doesn’t go in to detail about TV programs, movies, and music I have read about and am interested in seeing—my Netflix queue of movies currently numbers 142 and some have been there for a couple of years. When am I going to watch all of those? On my deathbed?

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have a stack of books and magazines on my nightstand waiting and waiting for me to read. There are more in bookcases, even more in bookstores and libraries, new ones are coming out every day. When am I ever going to read them?

Whenever I have a free moment, on my new iPad, is what I’m thinking. Last week I had an acupuncture session and after inserting the needles, my acupuncturist asked if I’d like an eye pillow and an iPad? I raised my head and cried out, “Yes, both!” at the same moment he corrected his Freudian slip and replaced iPad with iPod (to listen to meditative music while the needles and I rest for a half hour). He smiled and said “make that two iPads.” For once he and I appear to be lusting after the same thing. How can I not take his slip as an omen that I should satisfy my desire?  I may have to forego a few acupuncture treatments so I can pay for it, but I think he’ll understand. I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPad has an acupuncture app to take the place of the missed treatments.

March 20, 2010

Do Not Look Back Ever Again

Filed under: Uncategorized — Oh Dave Now @ 9:53 am

In my desk drawer at work I keep a bag of Dove individually-wrapped “silky smooth dark chocolate Promises” and help myself to two or three or four for an afternoon pick-me-up. On the inside of the wrappers are printed words of wisdom submitted by people from around the country (click here if you want to submit your own). One platitude I’ve unwrapped repeatedly is “Keep moving forward; don’t look back” from Sally in Griffith, Indiana. I wish I could, Sally, but thanks to you I keep having these déjà vu moments.

Sally was probably mimicking and referencing Bob Dylan’s philosophy (or was it Boston’s?) from the 1967 concert tour documentary “Dont Look Back.” Of course, Bob now hosts the “Theme Time Radio” program on Sirius/XM satellite radio in which he plays and comments on old, old songs. Yesterday it was songs about places around the world and he played a catchy ditty from 1953 by the Four Lads called “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”:

Take me back to Constantinople
No, you can’t go back to Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it, I can’t say
(People just liked it better that way)

So I can’t look to Bob Dylan as a role model for not looking back. Therapists, at their own expense, have also told me to stop dwelling on the past and look to the future. So to avoid turning into a pillar of freshly ground sea salt, let me predict that Lady Gaga will advise in 2011 to:

Turn on the lights, baby
The sun is arised, hey ee
Time to pee, you see
And flee, woo wee.
P-p-p-p-pee
Fl-fl-fl-fl-flee

By the time you read this, I’ll be onto something else but if you comment on it, then I have to stop moving forward and think about what I wrote in the past in order to respond. It’s a dilemma, this philosophy of looking to the future and not living in the past. My literalist nature and unflailing commitment to my choices entails that I take everything to the extreme. My “Oh Dave Now’ entries have been in most cases my memoirs. Not today, my friends, today is about tomorrow.

But first I need to turn my back on the past which contains a whole lot of history. On the global level there are scores of ancient buildings, books, lives long gone that I will shun.  Byb bye, Bible, Koran, Dead Sea Schrolls. There will be no point in visiting dusty museums filled with the likes of Picasso, Rembrandt, Van Gogh. I won’t be reading any more of my favorite plays by Shakespeare or George Bernard Shaw, for starters. It can be argued that as long as I see a live performance of their masterpieces, then I’m living in the present and looking forward. But their language is so not hip and modern that within five minutes I’ll feel like I’ve traveled back in time (not to mention the memories they’ll conjure).

On a personal level I’ll want to start by cleaning out my closet and buying all new clothes, a simple act that will snowball by stimulating the economy and creating a new era of prosperity. My new duds will attract new, fashion-forward friends who will hang on my every word as they admire my crisp, fresh designer knockoffs from Marshalls and Ross. I will never set foot in a Goodwill or Salvation Army again except to unload my old crap.

Last year I started a photo album project of indexing piles of old photos that went back to grade school. I selectively started laying them out chronologically in several albums. Into the trash bin! There haven’t been enough rainy days to work on them anyway. In the future I won’t be writing (or reading) any holiday letters that regurgitate the past year’s highlights. No more reading buried Facebook news feeds over a day old.

I have hundreds of music CDs and a collection of over 165 movie DVDs, all of which I can load into bags and sell at Berkeley’s Amoeba Records that they can then resell as used to people who live in the past. I only bought DVDs of movies I had already seen more than once because I knew I would want to see them again. But they’re old movies! With dead actors! Zzzzzz. I’ll need to remove Turner Classic Movies from my favorite channels menu, along with TV Land. You were funny in your time, Lucy, but you are old, old news. “The Golden Girls” are dead to me.

No more recorded music, movies, TV. If I’m going to be serious about looking forward, I will only permit live performances into my life. If a band covers an old song by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, I will walk right out of that club and find musicians who only compose and perform new music.

When the HR department tells me it’s time for my annual performance evaluation, I will only fill out the questions about my future goals and where I see myself in 3-5 years. It’s pointless to evaluate and rate what I did in the past, not only my successes but also my screwups. It’s the achievements and screwups in the future that matter. Reward me—or don’t—for those!

I believe in paying taxes to support the future of our country and community, but don’t ask me to look back at what I earned and spent in the past. I’ll budget out what I can afford and pay it in monthly installments from my paycheck and the IRS can take it or leave it.

This is going to be very liberating, I can see that. Everything in my life will be new—new challenges, new discoveries, new products, new experiences. It’s exciting! Sure, there may be boredom, sadness, frustration, and disappointment too, but those will be replaced soon enough as I move forward. As long as I don’t look too far into the unpredictable but ultimately inevitable future, I won’t freak out and be frozen by fear.

So let’s end this session and go out and see what’s next in our lives, both online and offline. Thanks for reading as I take this new direction. I’ll see you in the future and soon forget that this ever happened. Sorry if there were typos or grammatical mistakes this week, but I didn’t go back to proofread.

March 14, 2010

Word Processing Insider Intel

Filed under: Word Processing — Oh Dave Now @ 1:40 pm

I spend a lot of my time at work proofreading, editing, and reformatting technical engineering reports created in Microsoft Word.  Some are close to 100 pages. When they get to me, they’re supposed to be close to final, “clean,” and nearly ready to submit to the client. The authors and project managers question why it takes so long to get past me. Answer: because they are a formatting disaster.

These engineers may be experts in geotechnical surveys, transit security, real estate acquisitions, etc. but never learned basic word processing (let alone English grammar) even though they word process every day. I sometimes forget that what are second nature shortcuts to me, who has taught courses in MS Word, are mysteries to the general population. So I would like to share five (5) basic word processing atrocities I encounter and how they can be avoided.

1. Using the space bar for centering headings

The space bar should only be used to 1) add spaces between words and 2) add one or two spaces after a period (but please, never more than two–you really should count, consistently. See number 3 below for a tip on how to see how many spaces you’ve typed).

To align headings—use the paragraph center alignment button, not spaces. Your other choices are left, right, and left and right justified. Simply highlight your heading and click on the center alignment icon on the formatting bar. Voila—centered perfectly between the margins (provided you don’t have left or right indents set up for that line—look at the ruler markers to confirm).

 

 

2. Using paragraph returns to create page breaks

No, no, no!  If you use paragraph returns to make page breaks, there is no guarantee that other people who read your document will experience the same page breaks. It’s a waste of your time. MS Word spaces text and pages depending on the active printer it detects, i.e., the printer that you have set as your default. Printers have different limitations on allowable margins plus how they interpret fonts. Even when using a standard font such as Times New Roman, from user to user you can witness spacing variations in the same document when opened on different computers.

One trick is to export your Word document as a PDF so when you send it off, people will see the same page breaks and spacing that you see on your monitor. If you send them the Word document, you never know what they’ll see. What was a 30 page document on your computer, may become a 33 page document on their computer.

In any case, instead of using several paragraph returns (the Enter key), click your cursor in front of the word that you want to start on a new page, and use the Insert command to insert a Page Break (or type CTRL-Enter instead of just Enter).

3. Deleting hidden formatting such as page breaks and section breaks

Our reports have multiple sections whose page numbering is independent. For example, the executive summary is numbered from page i to page iv.  The table of contents starts at TOC-i and then the main document body is numbered 1 to 22, for example. Then appendices are numbered A-1 to A-4, B-1 to B-3 and so on.

To set up sections with independent page numbering, you have to insert Section Breaks instead of Page Breaks. For detailed instructions, see the MS Office website. There are other reasons to insert Section Breaks. One section can be Portrait page orientation, another can be Landscape. You can also have different margins and headers and footers from one section to another.

My main complaint is when I spend time setting up Section Breaks and page numbering and then writers edit the document and unknowingly delete the Section Breaks, which deletes all of the formatting, and I have to do it all over again. The simple solution is to turn on Paragraph marks so you can see where manual breaks have been created. You can do so temporarily by toggling the Paragraph formatting button, usually on the standard formatting bar:  ¶

Manual page breaks, a single line across the page, look like this: 

Section breaks, a double line across the page, look like this:


  To delete either, select the whole line and type the Backspace or Delete key.

When you turn on the Paragraph formatting button, you’ll also see codes for spaces, paragraph returns, tabs that were keyed, etc.

4. Using spaces for indenting

Lists
Using the space bar to try and line up a list of words or numbers creates an inexact wavy mess. Word has default left-aligned tab stops set up, usually every half inch. At the very least, all you have to do instead of using the space bar to indent text, is type the Tab key and see what happens.

If you are creating a list, you can use Word’s Bulleted List or Numbered List commands and the indents are built in. In my opinion, the default indents are too much so I end up changing them but for the novice, you’ll get better alignment than you will ever get with spaces.

Beyond that you would need to learn how to manually set tab stops (left, right, centered, and decimal) on the ruler. This allows you to type the tab key once to line up text at 2 inches in, instead of typing the tab key four times to get to 2 inches.

Paragraphs

If you want to indent the first line of a paragraph, instead of typing the standard 5 spaces from typewriter days, indent by .25 inches. To do so, position your cursor in the paragraph, and on the ruler, use your mouse to grab just the top half of the marker on the left side. Drag the top marker (the first-line indent marker) to the quarter inch mark.

 

 

5.    Inconsistent formatting

I often find that indents, bold, etc. have been done one way in one part of the document and then slightly another in another part, even though the formatting should be exactly the same in both places. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, and introduce inconsistencies, as you type along.  There are two easy ways to avoid repeating formatting steps.

First, you can copy an existing paragraph that already has the formatting you want, paste it into the new location, and then with the cursor, select the text and then type over it with new text.

Second, use Word’s cool Format Painter, which I use constantly.

To use it, first select and highlight the text or entire paragraph whose formatting you want to “copy.”  While the text is highlighted, click on the Format Painter icon (click once for one use of the formatting, double-click for multiple applications of the formatting).

Your cursor turns into a paint brush—drag the brush to paint over the text or paragraph you want to “paste” the format onto and release the mouse.

If you had double-clicked the Format Painter, it stays turned on and you can continue dragging and releasing over additional text and paragraphs. Caution: it will stay turned on until you click once on the Format Painter icon on the task bar.

These are a few basics to make word processing easier for you and less frustrating for your editors and readers. Word processors have a range of ways to format, from bad, to better, to best. I’ve given you enough information to go from bad to better.  For best, Word has much more sophisticated and complicated formatting options in its Styles and Templates features but most can get by without going into that detail. That’s what I get paid for.

March 7, 2010

Nowhere Near Ready for My Close-up

Filed under: Photography,Uncategorized — Oh Dave Now @ 7:27 am

The Oscar Awards are on this weekend and I hardly care. But I will watch the program dutifully from beginning to end as I do every year. There are two reasons I usually watch: 1) there’s a movie I’m really rooting for like “Brokeback Mountain” (lost), or 2) I saw every major nominee and can pretend I’m a Hollywood insider whose knowledge and opinion matters.

But I can’t get excited when I’ve only seen 4 of the 10 Best Picture Nominees and even less of the Actor and Actress nominees. Why rush out to see the Picture nominees when it’s probably between “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” anyway. One of my highest rated and favorite movies of the year—I keep a list and rate every movie I see—was “Up” which will probably win Best Animated Feature so not much suspense there.  

I’m also not too thrilled about the dual hosts of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.  I’ve enjoyed them in the movies but I’m guessing that they picked two old guys, instead of one, in case one of them has a heart attack or gets too drunk that there will still be one left to finish the show. Now there’s a reason to watch the show, to see if they both survive it.  It’s Live–watch what happens!

If they’re going to do two hosts, why not Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner from the “Twilight” movies? They’re not comedians and they probably wouldn’t bring any charm to their announcing duties, if they could get the words out at all. But they would look good just standing there and subtitles could do all the work.  

Why have a man at all? Why not a funny woman like Julia Louis-Dreyfus or Meryl Streep (on a year when she isn’t nominated if there is such a thing)? Whoopi Goldberg has hosted in the past but she’s as close to a man as a woman can get in primetime. Ellen was funny on the Emmys but she’s overexposed. I could get excited about the Oscars if RuPaul was the host—she’s hysterical as the host of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and with the Oscars her writers and camera filters would be even better.  

Enough Hollywood bitchiness, it will just give me more wrinkles. The other day I was walking down the street in downtown Oakland and a street person was about to solicit me for change, but he dismissed me with a wave of his hand and said, “Oh, you’re in a bad mood.”  I wasn’t about to give him change but I was taken aback because I was actually in a carefree, relatively relaxed mood, or so I thought.  

A couple of years ago in a stressful job with a long commute that exhausted me, I walked past a colleague in the aisle between the cubicles on the way to mine. He’s a semi-retired Quality Assurance expert in his early 70s who I had already talked to that day. Deep in thought with my to-do list, I didn’t feel the need to greet him again. He stopped me and asked if I was all right, and I said yes, why?  “You were SCOWLING,” he emphasized. I made some excuses and forced a smile, to assure him I had no reason to be scowling.  

My inability to crack a decent smile has become a trend. It’s probably been two years since a good photo has been taken of me. My brother Paul says that I’m photogenic, which I take to mean I look better in photos than in person–how distressing that now I don’t even look good in photos! I’ve taken some acceptable self-portraits for my Facebook profile photo but I gave up a couple of weeks ago to take a new one because in every photo I took, I indeed looked like I was scowling, even when I thought my pose had been “angelic.” Am I becoming like Alec Baldwin whose best effort at a smile looks like it took a crane to turn up his mouth just a smidgen? And when I do show teeth, do I have to look like a maniacal puppet like Steve Martin or Mary Tyler Moore (MTM)? 

Mary, Mary

As people get older, they really should smile less broadly, but they usually don’t. In fact, they seem to do just the opposite to counteract gravity and aging. Audrey Hepburn and Paul Newman smiled with grace in their later years and Sophia Loren still does.  Young people can show their teeth and look natural but young models, actors, singers, and musicians hardly ever smile in their photos—it just isn’t cool. Maybe it’s never cool to smile unless you’re a comedian, selling toothpaste, or Julia Roberts.

Nonetheless, I don’t want to be marked as a scowler. So for the last week I’ve been practicing on lightening up. Finding the balance between scowling and crazy-face is the trick. In my first passport photo at age 20 and in a photo from Christmas last year my smile and face were tense and insane-looking like MTM. I have been able in the past to achieve a relaxed, nice smile but the one pictured here was a single miraculous take out of over 30 attempts.    

So in addition to my morning arm and leg stretches, I’ve been doing face stretches, something I learned in acting classes. I took several series of acting classes in college and after, and relaxing and energizing facial muscles was the key to being expressive. Not to mug, mind you, but to achieve a neutral baseline that then enabled the actor to veer off, subtly, to every emotion in the book.    

Next, I recalled method acting techniques of using memories to inhabit my demeanor. Want to look radiant? Think about the last time you made love or were greeted at the door by a wagging dog. Focus on the blessings in your life instead of credit card balances or the mixed messages from your boss.  If that doesn’t work, Tyra Banks’ modeling wisdom comes to mind: smile with your eyes—which takes a lot less effort than smiling with your mouth.   

I’ll keep working on it. Meanwhile, I’ll be watching the Oscars this year to see how the attendees smile or don’t, and compare techniques of the elders to those of the younger. Hopefully I’ll come away with a role model that I can emulate. Then the next time I see a street person, he will ask me for change and I will give him some, with a relaxed natural smile that comes from within and shines from without, and he’ll say, “Hey, ain’t you Alec Baldwin from that ‘30 Rock’ show?”

*********

And the winner for Best Smile is….Kathryn Bigelow!

February 28, 2010

My New Musical Obsessions Appreciation

Filed under: Music — Oh Dave Now @ 2:08 pm

In my You Really Got Me–Not posting on November 14, 2009, I sent out a distress call for new music recommendations and received many great suggestions for musicians and bands I wouldn’t have discovered on my own. Ones that I’ve enjoyed since then include:

  • Muse
  • Owl City
  • Elbow
  • Landon Pigg
  • Ben’s Brother
  • Ida Maria
  • Scott Walker
  • Imogen Heap
  • Pur:pur
  • A Fine Frenzy
  • Gregory and the Hawk

In the spirit of being obsessed with a particular artist, I promised to award a CD box set of the artist of their choice to the person who introduced me to a new musical obsession. And the winner is…Miss Melanie! However, being that she’s in her late teens, she opted for a $50 iTunes gift card so she could download music. We both agreed that the CD box sets available aren’t very interesting in terms of current music.  

Congratulations, Melanie, for not exactly introducing me to a new artist but for relentlessly promoting Lady Gaga to the point where I could not ignore her anymore. In fact, I grew to appreciate her talent and her music. And then obsession took over, meaning I can listen to her music over and over again—I do not tend to start dressing like my favorite artists, thank God.

More about why Lady Gaga in a moment. A close second new musical obsession was introduced to me by my friend Michael who has always been a great source for discovering phenomenal new artists, ever since he predicted that an unknown singer named Madonna would become a big star. This time around, he turned me on to Wild Beasts, a four man alternative rock band from the United Kingdom who just released their second album entitled Two Dancers.

Michael saw the video for their single All the King’s Men on the Logo channel’s video program New Now Next and called me to rave about it.

After we got off the phone, I went on the internet and found the video on the band’s official website. The song starts with an infectious bass drum thump and forward moving beat. Trilling guitar riffs not unlike U2 or Coldplay are layered over and then a manly bass-range chorus of “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa” jumps in.  Once the lead singer on the song started, I was hooked by his seductive baritone, not to mention his cute face peering out from under a brown druid/priest’s robe. Many male pop singers have tenor voices which makes it hard for me to sing along. A deeper earthy voice appeals to my ear more.

However, the lead vocals on the album’s songs switch back and forth from Tom Fleming’s baritone on that song and three others to Hayden Thorpe’s high falsetto leading on the rest of the album. When I first heard the falsetto on the song “Hooting and Howling” I wasn’t sure I could get into the band wholeheartedly. But once I got past the initial shock and listened to the entire album, it grew on me. Now I’m completely seduced by how he uses the falsetto for variation and emotional expression. Check out “We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ on Our Tongues” and my favorite song on the album “This Is Our Lot.” Both are songwriting gems that start out with simple vocalizing and instrumentation, respectively. Layer after layer of vocals, guitar, and drums get added, building up to irresistible emotional anthems that let loose vocally without resorting to screaming.

The tricky but also intriguing part of Wild Beasts music is their lyrics. I had a hard time hearing what they were singing at first, partly because the word choices are cleverly unique but also at times colloquially British. Since I downloaded the tracks instead of trying to find their CD in a local music store, I had to go to their website for the lyrics which are alternately weird and fun.  Take the “Fun Powder Plot” for an example of both:

With courage and conviction, in donkey-jaw diction, we cry for the cause because the courts have left us lonely; disowned us daddies like the poopers of the party…This is a booty call; my boot up your arse hole. This is a Freudian slip; my slipper in your bits. [Ed.: "bits" is British slang for genitals.]

On the clever side are the lyrics for “We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ on Our Tongues”:

Us kids are cold and cagey rattling around the town, scaring the oldies into their dressing gowns, as the dribbling dogs howl. What’so wrong with just a little fun? We still got the taste dancin’ on our tongues. When we pucker up our lips are bee-stung. We still got the taste dancin’ on our tongues.

And there’s the sweetness of “This is Our Lot”: 

By smirking prank of fate we wiggle and kick like bobbing bait, and wait for a bite. By the milky light of the mighty moon, find someone to nuzzle to, and waltz from the room.

In the chorus of that song, I thought logically they were singing “we hold each other up heavy with hearts” only to find that what they’re really singing is “we hold each other up heavy with hops.”  So British!

By the time Michael, our friend Stefanie, and I caught the Wild Beasts live in San Francisco at a small club for $16, I and most of the sold-out crowd were able to sing along even to these tongue-twisting lyrics. A great band, great record—time will tell if they take off and become big. We almost hope they don’t and just keep putting out interesting records.

I doubt the Wild Beasts will ever become as hugely popular as Lady Gaga, the pop star gone mad! Michael played Lady Gaga’s debut CD, The Fame, for me after he had bought it in Canada, before it was even released in the U.S.  He was excited about her but at first it sounded to me like throw-away catchy disco pop, another in a long succession of divas like Mariah Carey, Gwen Stefani, and Christina Aguilera, none of whom held any interest for me. He gave me a copy of the CD and I threw it in a pile and never played it again.

Miss Melanie gets her Gaga on for Halloween.

A few months later I was driving with three passengers on a day trip from San Francisco to Monterey, a drive of a couple of hours, and Miss Melanie presented the CD and asked to play it so I did. In the close confines of the car as we ambled along to our destination, we listened closely to each song together, including some singing along. I was surprised and impressed by Lady Gaga’s vocal versatility.  I was familiar with the first single “Just Dance,” a sentiment that I can relate to. The second track starts with a provocative chant: “Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick, I want to take a ride on your disco stick.” But what really swayed me to become a fan was the melodic pretty chorus of the third track “Paparazzi” and that remains my favorite song off her first album. The rest of the CD varies from dance tracks to ballads where the singing is actually pretty good and not cookie-cutter.

However, I didn’t immediately dig out the copy of the CD Michael had made for me. Several months later, in fact, after I had written the blog entry about looking for new music, I taped the American Music Awards show because I wanted to see Adam Lambert’s performance. But the real star of the show was Lady Gaga’s knockout performance of two new singles “Bad Romance” and “Speechless.” It was absolutely compelling and memorable because her dancing, singing and mugging are spot-on. Hot backup dancers, shattering glass and a flaming piano doesn’t hurt either. I realized then that Lady Gaga is a performance artist, not a run-of-the-mill hitmaker. But unlike grating and unattractive—but brilliant—performance artists like Laurie Anderson and Patti Smith, Lady Gaga writes catchy ear worms and uses outlandish and sexy fashion and makeup to make her statements. For example, attempts by Gaga to look sexy and live up to the young, supermodel ideal often end up (deliberately)  looking insane or grotesque, not unlike some celebrities do unintentionally.

Granted, Gaga’s big statements aren’t about politics and anarchy. After seeing her on the AMAs, I pulled out the CD and haven’t stopped playing it. Her themes lean towards fame, money, sex, and materialism, which, she puts forth repeatedly, are meaningless compared to love. “We’re plastic but we still have fun!” is the closest thing she has to a mantra. And she treads the fine line between commenting on the emptiness of hedonism and narcissism and indulging in it herself. Gaga has said in interviews that she represents girls who feel like freaks—her “monsters”—and her gutsy music and far-out fashions consistently stay true to that vision.

Musically, she and her collaborators layer her songs with contrasting rhythms and melodies, vocal sound effects, and droll voiceovers. Her biggest hit single to date is “Poker Face” which was not immediately likable to my ear. At a local soup and sandwich spot that plays a top 40 radio station, the manager remarked when the song came on that he didn’t understand why everyone liked it. I agreed but the more I listened to it, the more I appreciated its creativity and her.

Her mini 8-song EP that came out in November 2009, The Fame Monster, is an addendum to her debut and could be seen as a crass move to capitalize on her popularity. But can’t because the songs are even better. I suspect the two-punch releases in a year were part of her plan for world pop domination, and it seems to have worked. Lady Gaga reminds me of Boy George of Culture Club in that they both got a lot of attention for bizarre hair, makeup, and costumes that tended to overshadow the fact that they’re both good artists musically. (I hope she doesn’t crash and burn from drugs like Boy George did.)

At the Grammys, Lady Gaga’s duet with Elton John of “Speechless” and “Your Song” further demonstrated her similarity to flamboyant pop singers that came before her. The enjoyable pairing and endorsement by Sir Elton may have also boosted her popularity—her debut CD, released near the end of 2008, is currently at number 4 on the album charts after 69 weeks and has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide.

Not that popularity is a reason to like an artist. In the case of Lady Gaga, though, she has the talent to back up her popularity. She continues to work hard for it—just the costume changes alone must be exhausting—and seems to live to perform. She’s gotten the world’s attention and as is the tradition for pop artists can now begin to scale back the theatrics but keep writing and singing songs that I and the world can obsess over.

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