End of the Festival Season, I Think

Went to the Renaissance Fair and Metea Park for the first time yesterday and boy is that a different kind of crowd. I get the feeling that for a fair number of the people there it's the only sunlight they get all year because they spend the rest of their time playing Dungeons & Dragons or WoW. It's fun to visit that freaky little world, though. I mean, hey, I bought D&D when it first came out back when it was a slim, light blue 40 page rule book. It was just a phase for me, though. You could tell they were all going to great trouble to try to "act the part" but couldn't go much further than sprinkling old old timey phrases like "Good day to you" and "Huzzah!" into their conversations. They were still charming, though.

I'm not convinced the people who were part of this event were into the Renaissance period so much as the medieval one, the one with the most violent looking weapons. That was probably my favorite part to see: this group of enthusiasts with ad-hoc chain mail and swords padded with duct tape and socks going after each other in short, intense bouts of hand to hand combat. Before each one, the emcee would remind us all that "back in the 14th century, this is exactly what you would see on the battlefield," and then the guys would start flailing until one scored a hit in some vital area. The loser would make a grimace and then enact a romanticized slow-motion fall to the ground.

Even more dramatic were the two jousters who drove their horses here from Texas. Check out the guy's flowing locks--there was some real ego dueling going on between him and his adversary. They were great horsemen (I think so, at least--I really don't know anything about it) and performed a few really neat feats of skill before engaging in an actual joust: no padded, balsa-wood lances, no helmets; just their hair to protect them. After that, they dismounted and starting swinging real swords at each other (The local padded-sword team had to be eating their hearts out at this) and that was cool too. Then B had a good enough sun burn that we decided to go home.

Of everything, my favorite event was the Punch and Judy Show. The origin of slapstick, it was, Punch and Judy. The puppeteer was funny, too, making repeated self-deprecating jokes pointing out what a bad puppeteer he was (though I thought he was pretty funny). He would break out of character to say things like "Hey folks, I know it's a terrible accent, but I'm doing the best I can" or to admonish the kids "no, when you see the alligator behind Punch, yell 'There he is!'" Still, I laughed pretty hard--at the play, not him--and was glad I got to see it. The picture of J shows that she did too.

Doctor Wins

For about a week, I've been hoping that I could make it through tonight without watching Lost. For a few weeks, of course, when I saw an ad or some teaser about the new season, a part of me, just like in everyone, probably, would say "Oh, Lost? I wonder what's going to happen," and I would get excited.

But I don't want to get into it. It's just an addiction with no real payoff, isn't it? I mean, they raise your curiosity with a small twist and it kills you not to know, for example, what is in the damn hatch. Then, when you find out what is in the hatch, you don't really care anymore because (a) it's just a tv show, and (b) they have thrown some new plot twist at you that has you again anticipating next week's show.

That's the problem for mel with serial dramas; you're rarely enjoying the moment, but instead anticipating the next one.
Still, I knew there was good chance that if I saw tonight's episode, I would fall into that narrative trap and have effectively forked over my Wednesday nights for the winter.

But something else happened. Instead, I had a dvd of the new Doctor Who series, a nerdy series, but one that takes me back to the old Tom Baker days that I used to watch with my old grandma. She was my BBC friend. We'd stay up late on Friday nights and watch all the BBC
lineup they had, and she had no idea what was going on, but she thought it was all funny, and it was great to be there with her. So I put this new Doctor Who dvd in, a show I hadn't watched since I was old enough to get my driver's license and have "better" things to do with my Friday nights. I watched the show, and it was okay, but more importantly, I started it, unthinkingly, before Lost came on, and didn't even realize it until The Doctor was done saving people in space an hour later.

So I made it through Lost premiere night without getting hooked is what I'm saying, and that's a small victory. Richard Brautigan says that you have to keep track of the small victories, so I do.

When you first break your kid.

This is one of the last pictures taken of J when she still had a full set of teeth. Oy. It's okay to let your kids be more than 20 feet away sometimes, right? It's gotta be. I had to be that far away to get the Burley trailer on the bike while they were playing happily near the house, and it only took the usual 3-4 minutes, and then when I was literally within two steps of grabbing them to go for a bike ride, J falls, gets up bloody, and has lost one of her upper front teeth.

I was alone at the time, so I had her crying and B crying because his sister was upset and me trying to find a tooth in a sidewalk made of pea gravel. Never found it before I decided we had to get to the dentist where we were told she'd be fine but toothless for three years until the adult tooth comes in.

It almost doesn't need to be said that when C got home she found the tooth immediately. Then, at school this morning, a former student dropped by to stay hi and I told him the story and he said that if I had put the tooth in milk it would have been fine. So, I guess I'm feeling guilty from my accumulation of three shoulda's:

1. I shoulda a found the tooth.
2. I shoulda known about the milk trick.
3. Upon my first examination of her mouth, I shoulda not have yelled in J's face "Oh my God!! Your tooth is totally gone!!!"

I could live with two, but anytime you rack up three in a five minute period, it's going to eat at you. Especially that third one. That's one I'd advise you to avoid if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

Look at this Cool Spider

Took the family on a hike to a great nursery today that has a hundred acres or so of wildflowers out back and you can walk around in it and let the tall weeds blow around you like, you know, waves or whatever. I love it there. On the hike we saw this spider that in real life stretched, and I'm not kidding, at least--really, I'm not making this up--three inches from, like, front left leg to back right leg, if that makes sense. I've called spiders "huge" many times in my life, but I've never seen a spider this big, ever. I think it had a baby rabbit wrapped up in a far corner of its web.

Even more amazing were its markings. This picture shows its bottom side, but on its top side, its thorax (whatever the back/bottom part is) had bright green and gold streaks all over it. Again, never seen anthing like it. If spider markings are meant as a warning, this one was saying that, if we messed with it, it would electrocute us.

At least three inches, I'm saying. Easily. I don't know how to google spiders, but I need to think about that. Maybe a search like "three inch spider indiana electric kill" would get it.

Such a great nursery. This is the same place where, last summer, I parked next to a small pickup with a nice dog in it and with a cab on which someone had written in permanent marker "stop talking sh** about other people, b****." I have a photo of it somewhere. I should look for that again.

The Science of Sleep

Wow. Sometimes you hear about movies that you think you are going to like and they fill you with anticipation and you finally see them and are disappointed. I am thinking of American History X (sorry Ryan!) and March of the Penguins, The Matrix Reloaded and countless others.

And then other times, the opposite happens, like today: out of nowhere, I read a review and see a trailer for Michael Gondry's new one, The Science of Sleep, which I just know is going to be awesome. He directed the last Charlie Kaufman movie Eternal Sunshine . . .. I'm ready.

Sometimes I think it pays to not even worry about what movies are coming out in the future or follow it in the press because the good ones, like this one, will find you on their own when they come out. I used to read Aint it Cool News all the time, for example, but got tired of living in that state of anticipation. Gotta live in the moment.

My big idea

Man, all you really need is PBS, I think. And a dog to sit next to you. And a good bicycle or two and a copy of In Our Time. That's really it. [and of course the health and love of your family]

Tonight, I did the usual sit down with a book but had to see if I was missing anything good on tv and got caught up in this two hour Nova story about Einstein. What was so great about it is how they humanized the science behind it all by making it narrative--they go back and tell the stories about Farrady, Lavoisier, and Emilie du Chatelet, the folks to came up with the ideas that had to happen before Einstein. Narrative is where it's at. We humans can't put it down; it's simply not possible.

Why don't we do this in science and math class in school? I bet if I learned a little bit about the personalities and adventures of the minds behind the theories, I would have been riveted to the hard science of chemistry and whatever other science I took in school. Math, too. Mathemeticians are freaks. Why didn't my math teachers sell me on the freakiness of the people who came up with these ideas? Instead, it was all thrown at us as though math text books were these bibles of numbers that had been around since the beginning of time. If we'd been caught up in the drama of their creation, I bet we would have taken math more seriously, we kids.

I'm all into this idea now. A revolution in education. I will call it "narrative science." "Narrative math. " Ok, I'm tired now. I'll go sleep on this.

Valentine

The wife is off in Ohio riding in a 24 hour mountain bike race (she has got to be hurting right about now), so I spent a quiet day at home being dad. It was nice. The kids like each other this week. We went to the ol' Johnny Appleseed Festival and I got to talk clawhammer banjo with a guy and buy apples and walk a lot.

The folks came over tonight so's I could head to the FWMoA for the latest Art Attack event, John's latest movie Valentine. I love these things. People come out. We see Fort Wayne in a movie, places we hang out at, people we see around town and in the audience. And, since John is the one making the movie, we can also count on being disturbed and having a guilty dark laugh or two. Valentine fits that bill. It felt more confident and patient than his last one, or something. One interesting thing about this piece is that it features a young gal that I got to teach a few years ago. That's Michelle's shoulder in the photo above. It's kind of an edgy role, and when I spoke to her after the show, I think she was a little, I don't know, unnerved at the idea of me seeing it. Not that she cares what I think or anything, just--I don't even know what I'm trying to say. Point is, she looked great up there on the big screen and it was cool to see.

Hey Sarah--we got a mouse.

Second in a few days. Old-school spring trap + peanut butter. I am trying to make you jealous as revenge for telling me "I'm glad you have mice" yesterday.

It's about time.

Pet Sounds happened to me today. I'm a little slow, I know.

First Comedy Gig

We had a journal prompt in one of my classes today that asked you to write about a childhood dream. I usually like to write to the prompt, so I go to thinking about it and remembered a story about my youth that I hadn't thought about for years. It's kind of funny, so here it is.

When I was a kid, like from the ages of six to nine or so, I used to say that I wanted to be a comedian when I grew up. I don't know where I got the idea, but I think it might have been early glimpses of Steve Martin on the telly. I was serious about this, which is weird because I was always kind of shy and quiet as a kid.

I liked to check out joke books so that I could work on my "craft," right, but I thought that kid jokes were beneath me. To get more sophisticated material, I started checking out joke books from the grown up section of the library. Most of the time, I had no idea what these jokes were about, but I thought that the less they made sense, the funnier and more mature they must be.

So third grade rolls around and I'm seven and we have show and tell day and I decide that my show and tell will be a short comedy act. I adored my third grade teacher, Mrs. Haymaker, and wanted to imress her, so I opened my grown up joke book and chose a joke that made absolutely no sense to me, thinking it must be an impressive, extremely mature joke indeed. I don't remember the joke, but I do remember it was about two drunks in a bar and the punchline was "Where in the hell is the cat?" Perfect for third grade.

So I get up there and do my little bit, and am in the middle of my big finale joke, in front of third graders and a teacher, telling this joke about two drunks, and I remember that I wasn't "feeling it" from the crowd. I decided that I would have to give some extra punch to the punchline and so I did: "Where in the Hell is the Cat?!!!?" I almost yelled it at them.

And I still had no idea what the joke was about, and the room was silent because of course none of the seven year olds did either and the teacher had no idea what to say. Finally, a kid who didn't like me raises his hand. Mrs. Haymaker calls on him and he simply says "You shouldn't swear in school." "Yes, Joe, that's right. Thank you. Thank you, Scott." I sit down. And that was my last show at that venue.

Is that funny? I think it's a little funny, anyway.

BTW, to illustrate this post, I was going to use a picture of a really fat cat, but instead have decided to use a picture of Chan Marshall, who records great music under the name of Cat Power. I hope that's not too confusing.

Skateboarding is hard

We finally got to Rise this weekend to pick up C's new skateboard. In the picture, as you can see, is J, though, who quickly adopted it as her own. C used to skate a lot when she was a kid and had been wanting a new one ever since the new skate park opened here a year ago or so, so I grabbed her a gift certificate at Rise for her Birthday and now she's set. It's funny to see your wife skateboard. She's good, for a wife-skateboarder. Personally, I have always wanted to try it too--but it wasn't something people in my town did when I grew up and I have no history with it, and so I suck at it. It's hard, skateboarding. I think I'm going to stick to mountain biking for my thrill sport.

Funny or Sad

So on my way to school every day I pass this seedy night club and for about two weeks now, it has had a simple message on its tiny marquee: "Midget Dancers August 23-25." Every day I would drive by the sign, look up, and be just a little bit sadder for having read it, and look forward to the 25th of August when they would take it down.

Then August 23rd came and the sign had been changed. Now it read "Little Sisters August 23-25." And I thought for a second about how that change must have happened and I imagined the scene that must have taken place when the "Little Sisters" drove into town and looked at the sign that had been billing them as "Midget Dancers" for two weeks and they were probably upset, I figure, and had a few words with the management. It's still a sad story, but at least it's a story, and a sad story is always better than a sad nightclub sign.

Dream band

I can't believe I've never seen Animal Collective live yet. It hurts to know that. Some days I have trouble getting out of bed just because I know that I have missed that experience in my life so far. Seeing video like this convinces me that, given a choice, it's the one band I'd like to be a part of. It's just sublime. B, my two year old, goes crazy when their song "Purple Bottle" comes on and he starts egging me on to yell along to the "Whoa! Get that!" part toward the end. You have to be born with great taste like that, I think.

Last of the Summer Wine

I think that's the name of an awful BBC comedy that they run on PBS here, but it fits. Here's a snap of one of my favorite summer rituals: eatin' outside. We finally dragged the picnic table out of this low kind of holler in the back yard and put it somewheres where we could actually use it, so we did. I made lots of fish tacos this summer, for example, to varying degrees of success. It always hurts the flavor of the fish for me when, right before I take my first bite, C always says "are you sure this fish is still good? I thought it smelled funny." Oh, but I exaggerate.

Anyway, if I am picking ultimate summer moments, this has got to be one of them. That's J yakking to Papaw about going to the dentist or something. I think we're eating some homemade spaghetti that he brought over. It's the simple things, right?

The Wire

When you're out of town for three weeks in a summer and you are in places that don't have television, you get out of the habit of watching television. Then, when you come back home, you try not to watch television to see how long you can hold out. You don't have cable, so that helps. You don't work at a job where you need to watch television so that you have something to talk about with your co-workers. So you are doing okay and you don't miss television. You see your teevee-free future spread out in front of you and you can see that it is going to be okay. You will eat better. You will sit down at a table and write a letter to an old friend. You will learn the names of trees.

And then they release the third season of The Wire on DVD.

Oh, I was so close to living life of value. But it's worth it really. I mean, c'mon. The Wire is the best thing on television and if it isn't please don't tell me because I don't need to know about it. And, if you know, please don't tell me what happens in this season because I have no idea. The first two episodes are just so good, though.

A funny thing happened to me while watching the first episode, though. One scene takes place at a Baltimore Orioles baseball game and I'm sitting there watching it and I think to myself "it would be nice to go to a baseball game." Where did that come from? Sure, I used to go to Detroit Tigers games all the time when I was a kid, but I kind of fell out of baseball when I stopped being any good at it and I haven't followed it for years. And now this? We'll have to see where the urge takes me. The last baseball game I attended was in Evansville at the minor league stadium where they filmed the Madonna movie A League of Their Own. It was such bad baseball that we left after three hours and it was only the fifth inning. Maybe I need to try a real baseball game. We'll see.

Yeah More of the Garden

Can't help it. It's these high summer flowers I like best, the ones that are happiest when the sun is beating the rest of the world back into the cool air conditioning of their homes and offices. These flowers are even from the same part of the garden as the last picture below, but the light is better, so I had to put them up.

It was one of those rare mornings when I was awake before both kids. I put some of the blueberries we picked last weekend on my Grape Nuts and went outside to the picnic table and, for once, ate my breakfast without hearing Clifford or Dragon Tales in the background. It was a lot of nice for a mere ten minutes of time.

While I was out

The above picture is what happens when you leave the moles in charge of your lawn when you go on vacation. I think you can see four or five traps sitting there, poised and useless. I have not caught a mole in a long time, though I've had some very exciting close calls. Is this any way to spend a summer? Well, it's one way. It's not bad. The secret is to learn how to look beyond the scarred tatters of your lawn to see the colors of your high summer perennials (which were lovingly looked after by Michelle--thanks!!). It's about perspective.

You can't see it in the top picture, but there is a bird bath in this corner of the garden that gives me all kinds of perspective. It's just this simple concrete design, very Japanese or something, and I rarely even see birds in it, but I find myself thinking about it. Some nights right after I brush my teeth I will turn off the bathroom light and then look out the window at my bird bath in the moon (well, and street) light and I know that nothing bad is going to happen while I'm sleeping. Just one of the lies we tell ourselves so that we can stop thinking and fall asleep, of course.

In other news, I can't stop listening to the Fiery Furnaces latest, Bitter Tea.

Sturgeon Bay, Michigan

J on the beach, this stretch of beach I'd been wanting to get back to for a few summers now but never took the time. We remembered this hidden part of the beach that you could only find if you followed a hidden two-track and we drove slowly along seven miles of the loneliest road in Michigan trying to find it, but gave up and drove to the public part. This part of the state is so hard to get to, though, that we had it to ourselves almost. Really, one of the prettiest stretches of sand and water and dune I've ever seen.

The next time you are on a sandy beach, make sure you take the time to take a small plastic shovel and dig as deep a hole as you can. Dig to the wet sand and keep digging until you make a small underground lake. I felt five years old when I did this. I took the wet sand and built tiny castles and my children immediately stomped them back into the sand every time. How did they know that's what you're supposed to do? It's something we're born with, I suppose.

Live Strong

Here's kind of a funny snap I took during the Indian River, Michigan 4th of July parade last week. I wish the punch line showed up better. I just like the irony of a guy with a LiveStrong bracelet combined with a skull tattoo and cigarette with a long ash hanging sticking out from his knuckles. Cracks me up. It's the ash that I should have caught against a darker background, I think. At the time, I was just trying not to get caught by him.

Small town parades are the best. You forget that 1/2 of every parade is taken up by local merchants driving cars with the names of their businesses on them--it's just a rolling commercial where you have to sit in the sun and listen to the firetrucks blast their horns in your ears for 30 minutes. But still, they're the best.

The Best Festival is Today's

Oh, look at that little kid there on me shoulders. Fresh from bopping his head to the live Greek Fest band. My new favorite festival, Greek Fest. It's more ethnic, you know. More people that don't look like me, compared to German Fest at least. Dances that I only see once a year and make me wonder when the kids dancing them learn them, and even more why my family doesn't have any dances. I don't know what we'd do with it if we had a dance, my family, but it might be nice to know that there is one that we could do if we ever saw an ad in the paper that there was going to be a Hill Fest that weekend. Maybe it would be to dance in whatever way you do when you are playing a great song at home and think no one is watching. Everyone would hit the floor and just let it go, just let it go like they should every day but we'd do that once a year and maybe that would be enough, or a start at least.

Festival season

German Fest might be my favorite summer festival here. Greek Fest has slightly better food, but it's dang expensive, I think, and something about it feels exclusive for some reason. Like it's for Greeks only almost. That's probably in my head, though. German Fest is pretty laid back in comparison. If you're from the midwest, you're already half German just from being raised to eat all that meat and boiled vegetables. So, it's comfortable.

This is from last night. The always fun Melissa saying hi to me as I surreptitiously snap her photo and Brian's great, really great, girlfriend Leslee smiles on. She always smiles, Leslie. It's almost her natural state--it makes you smile too and wonder why you don't smile more and so you resolve to try, and then the next time you see her you remember your pledge and realize that you haven't been working on it enough.

For the birds

This here is a birch tree that has grown near the beach at our family lake place for the past forever and now I need to accept that it is probably pretty much dead. It's the flocks of wood peckers perching on what looks like its bullet-ridden hide that clued me in. The birds are pretty, and funny to watch as they bash their heads into the bark over and over, but still, this is a special tree to me. It frames the lake view in every cheesey sunset picture ever taken by our family. At least we'll have pictures.

Summer Blogging Season is Here!

A few more days of school and my summer will start and I plan to be doing a lot of this here: sitting down to read but instead having J. walk up and ask me to watch a Gene Kelley movie with her. It's a life.

I think Monkeysquirrel will be taking a summer vacation, too. Maybe it'll be more of a summer photo blog if anything. Either way, there will be a little more space between posts. I slow down in the heat, you know. Anyway, as we say in our yearbooks, have a great summer. Don't spend it all in front of a computer monitor. Oh, and wear sunscreen.

I never used to care about this stuff

I forget how great it is when spring rolls on and our garden just keeps blooming, one perennial after another, on into and through the summer. I spend a lot of the winter thinking about all the things I'd like to change about our flower beds, but once things fill out and start blooming, I forget all the problems and just dig watching things grow. I never used to care about this stuff, and never would have guessed it's something I'd be into, but I guess it's okay to like different things as you grow up.

This here is the first bloom on our small stand of siberian iris. It's smaller than most irises, but sits on top of this long, graceful, grassy foliage that's always tipping in whatever breeze you have. Might be one of my favorite plants--this fall I really need to bury a bunch more bulbs of this so that I can have a large blur of them next year. 

I'm the man.

Here is a picture of me after I sank a putt during my first round of 2006 last weekend. I look so happy because I hadn't made anything longer than three feet all day and this one was like four feet at least. Incredible.

Actually, for my first outing of the year, it wasn't half bad. I shot 41 on the front at Deer Track, parring 4 of 9, and then fell apart a little on the back and shot 50. That's a tough 9 back there. Had a few penalty strokes and got tired enough that I missed some easy putts. Overall, I hit my irons pretty cleanly and, well, who cares how well you play when it's as beautiful as it was Saturday. I think 65 is my favorite outside temperature, for sure.

YouTube strategizing

I think the secret for using YouTube is that you go there only once every six weeks or so. That gives the place time to replenish the wells, so to speak, and you can go right to the "most viewed" or whatever and see a few really funny things and then leave. That's what works for me, anyway.

This is my favorite from yesterday's visit.

Downsize

I have too many loved ones and stuff in my life to ever do this, but I've always had this dream of living in a really small place. Room for a bed for sleeping and a chair for reading and a maybe a window for staring at birds and stuff.

So tonight on NPR they had this nice story about the "Tiny House Movement"--people who share, and are living, my tiny, impossible dream. Ideally, one would build his own tiny house from lumber he salvaged from decaying barns or milled from funky timber. There are enough people in this "movement," however, that businesses are building houses for you now. And they're really cool. Check out a few of them here. I think my favorite is the "S-House." As the web site explains, the S-House is "everything the 10x16 Front Gable is and less."

I can see my tiny life from here, and it's nice, but worshiping living spaces like this, I know, is a form of pornography--an objectification of space rather than of women. Real estate dreams always look at homes as if they're just cool, homey spaces, and I let myself forget that really living in them would be rather similar to the (already great) life I live the too-large home we have now.

But still, it would be so cool.

American X, a list

On a good recommendation, I watched the 1998 movie American X the other day. Lots of yelling. Some violence. I know this is a popular movie, and I can't deny that that Edward Norton is a swell actor, but I have some problems with its verisimilitude in a few places.

1. Skinheads. They cannot play basketball. How could they not know this? Everyone knows that skinheads cannot play basketball. It's just absurd.

2. The "gang bangers" that the skinheads are in conflict with in this movie are too pretty. They should look like they do in the perfect HBO show The Wire: scrawny and shifty and paranoid and tough. The guys in this movie, on the other hand, all look like dates Lisa Bonet could have brought home to meet Clifford Huxtable on The Cosby Show.

3. Again with the basketball scene, no game that was being played to decide which side would get to "own" the court would ever make it to completion if this neighborhood was as tough as it was supposed to be. As soon as it got to game point, the losing team would have sabotaged it by starting a fight and then they would have always been able to argue that they didn't lose the bet. That's what I would do, anyway.

4. The jail was too clean looking. Nobody died there, either. I think more people die in jail, usually, like in the too-long-and-flawed-but-fun Blood in, Blood out.

There was some nice dramatic tension in the movie. I'm not sure why they killed the kid at the end--it was kind of a cheap shot, a "warning" to us that we may all too late to save our kidz unless we start practicing one love right away.

I got a small laugh out of Norton's style of argument when he was still a skinhead: his response to any expression of sympathy for other races was "bullshit." Then, after this deeply hateful man is changed by the experience by making a single black friend in prison, he returns to the outside and counsels his brother that now it is the racist way that is "bullshit." Pretty convincing argument, that.

It probably sounds like I enjoyed this movie less than I actually did, I guess. For much of it, I had trouble getting over the fact that the one fat skinhead is now Earl's brother in My Name is Earl, except he has lost about 200 pounds now. Crazy. A regular DeNiro he is.

About syrup

Hey, I'm happy to say that I have a short piece published in the newest issue of the Acres Quarterly, the wonderful newsletter put out by the Acres Land Trust. My contribution may approach the sentimental at times, and there is one ambiguous modifier in there I'm not happy with, but overall it's a cute little thing about family trip to the syrup festival up north of here about six weeks ago or so. If you're interested, you can read it here, and hey, think about joining Acres while you're at it. They're the ones trying to maintain the simple natural charms of this corner of the state.

If you click the link, open the latest newsletter's pdf.

My Bodyguard

Have you seen that movie, My Bodyguard? You totally should. Early 80's, Matt Dillon as a high school bully, kid hires a motorcycle tough to be his "bodyguard." The bullies do this cool thing where they took huge wads of toilet paper and got it wet and then whipped it at their victims. I'm glad no one does that at my school, but it looks fun.

But Mr. Row here is totally right out of that film. He even made his bike out of, well, bike parts that he ebayed and and scrounged and that also included a round trip drive to New York and back that he did in, like, six hours or something insane like that. Six hours, I swear. I can't imagine. I can make a decent spring risotto, savory crepes, the occasional compound-complex sentence, but that's the extent of my assembly skills. What Tracey managed with grandpa's shop and a dream just knocks me out.

And the ladies glasses he's wearing. They're just too much, and I can't believe he's thinking of leaving town--Indiana should start giving cool-people grants to keep folks like Tracey and Joseph in the towns where they're needed.

Anyway. Thanks for stopping by tonight, T.

It's a kind of life, I guess.

So this little wildflower is what I'm obsessed with these past ten days or so. If the sun didn't go down, I'd be outside digging them up all night long. See, they're flowers, sure, but they're not where I want them to be, and that makes them weeds. The only way to keep them from coming back, though, is to get the bulb dug up. It's an art, really, digging them out without popping the stalk off and losing the bulb somewhere down there, where they are waiting, waiting for next year, when they will be back.

Oh, but when you get them whole . . how can I describe it? It's like catching a fish, a dirt fish, and one that means you harm. I'm almost a little sad at the thought of my perennial beds being wiped out of them. No, that's not true. Now that I think about it, they're like little moles that I don't have to feel bad about killing when I catch them.

And on Texas Ranch house . . man, that ranch owner and his family are abominable.

New Reality

I love all the PBS reality shows. This is partly because I have no choice--I got no cable. It's also because they're just smart and fun and things I can imagine doing too. I'm talking about shows like 1900 House, Frontier House, Manor House, and now, the new Texas Ranch House, which started tonight and goes the next four nights. It's pretty fun stuff. Right now, for example, as I type, frickin' Indians are stealing their horses! How great is that?

The pattern for these history-based PBS reality shows is pretty consistent: pick an interesting historical period, convince ten people that it would be a great adventure to recreate it, and then film them as they fall apart in the dust, the monotony, the people they don't like, and the back breaking work. It's a lot of fun to watch.

One of the sad things you notice when you watch these shows is that people are freaks and jerks no matter what year it is. The cook looks to be the next guy to lose his wits, I think. He's a loose cannon. I can't wait.

Stephen Colbert Moment

There's a pretty funny account of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondent's dinner this weekend. I don't get to see his teevee show too often, but I wish I did. He gets in a lot of funny "zingers," is what I think they call them. Here is a sample from the article:

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

And another:

Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."

Regardless of your politics, I think those are pretty funny. The article makes it sound like his remarks weren't taken too well by W and wife. In fairness to Colbert, these things are supposed to be roasts, though, so I don't think he should have been surprised. Here's a short article that recounts some of his jokes, and here is a site with a tiny video of the speech, which is about 15 minutes.

You forget about the rain

Sun is sunny and all, but it refreshes me to wake up to drizzle on a Sunday sometimes. It limits your options, reduces the number of choices you have. You will probably be inside. You can stay close to a cup of tea, even, which you haven't done for a couple weeks.

This cup of tea was brought to me courtesy of Michelle, who packed it back from a tea farm in India. She showed me pictures of the place, and it had the look of a Dr. Seuss landscape. Beautiful. In all of the pictures though, I didn't see a single monkey or leper, which are usually the two things I'm curious about when I hear someone has been to India.

Mr. B is still asleep and J is watching Bob le Builder, so I better make the most of this time and crack a book.

Iraq II

I'm still kind of bewildered by what Seymour Hersh is reporting now in his last New Yorker piece. It sounds like such a redux of the run up to Iraq--so pre-determined, even though the plan sounds so nuts. Air strikes just aren't going to do it, and I think these so called bunker busters have about as much hope of working as Star Wars does of knocking out a missle. And think about what will happen to Iraq if we try to mess with Iran. I mean, what little stability there is over there is the result of Shiite dreams of creating a new Islamic state like their neighbors. They would go nuts if we started messing with the mothership.

At the same time, I have to admit that, between the two, Iran strikes me as a little more crazy, unpredictable, and malevolent. Iraq posed no threat to us; I don't think there can be much disagreement on that point, but Iran seems a little more ominous of a threat.

I dunno, I'm just rambling. It's just not a great situation, and I don't have a lot of faith in this administration's devotion to diplomacy.

New music for me.

Townes Van Zandt is on my mind lately. It started a few weeks ago when Sarah Jane—I wish she would give me the link to her blog—gave Cath and me a mix with his “If I Needed You” on it. Then, in one of those coincidences that life gives you, friend Joe Rocchio writes an email about a documentary that features him. Netflix sent me the movie and I couldn’t get any further into it than a scene where he sings “Dollar Bill Blues” before I had to turn it off and go google the chords for it. What a great song.

It seems like that’s the main way I play the guitar these days; my calluses will have faded from disuse and then I hear a nice song that sounds just easy enough for me to pick so I figure out about ¾ of it by playing it over and over. Soon I will forget I ever knew it. Right now, though, my fingers hurt again from trying to learn the chords well enough so that I can sing along:

If I had a dollar bill

Yes I believe I surely will

Go to town and drink my fill

Early in the morning.

Townes, though, he’s a sad story. Usually, I’m suspicious of upper middle class fellers who go country—and this guy was rich—because it doesn’t seem authentic enough. They make me think of the Kingston Trio, maybe; poseurs. Townes, though, was messed up enough that you have believe the tragic warble in his voice. He tells a story in this movie, for example, about a time when he fell asleep with three tubes of airplane glue that he’d been huffing in his mouth. It solidified and stuck his mouth shut and to get it open he claims that the doctor took a hammer to his face. “This is going to hurt,” he said. You do shite like that to your body and you earn the right to sing about pain.

There is an interesting segment in the movie where he remembers first realizing that he could “make it” with the guitar. He realized, he said, that if he was willing to give up everything, he could do it. And he means everything: his family, kids, money, and his own “personal happiness”. I had my own realization then that maybe the reason I will never make it big with my, well, anything, is that I’m not willing to sacrifice both my own happiness and well-being as well as that of my loved ones. I guess I just lack ambition; I’ll have to try to get along in this world armed only with some modest measure of personal happiness and a decent family. Wish me luck.

Back

When you have spring break and then after that a week of only three days, that first five day week of school is tough. Somehow the gods noticed our pain and graced us with a two hour fog delay on Friday morning, though. That was pretty nice. One of my students suggested that it was leftover fog from 4/20 the day before, and I thought that was pretty funny.

I think it's okay for a teacher to laugh at jokes like that. There are probably parents and administrators out there who would rather me respond with a stern, knee jerk "don't do drugs" any time a reference to them is made in class--not that they come up that often--but I don't think that's necessary.

So for my two hour delay, I sat in the living room and read through this fabulous gardening photo book I got from the library the other day and that made me want to go walk outside in mine in the fog. I thought maybe I'd get a photo of the duck that has been sleeping on our lawn for a week now, but she wasn't there. Instead, I took this picture that catches some of our peach, viburnum, and azalea blossoms. It's looking pretty out there now.

Oh, spring.

Nothing like the first trip to the DQ. Except this day, they only had chocolate working, America's second favorite flavor. Blizzards taste funny with chocolate. Don't try it. This one family had a 200lb Rotweiler with them that got to order its own cone, which was funny to watch.

You know you were meant live in Canada when it's 73 degrees out and after an hour of working outdoors you start to complain about the heat.

World's Coolest Indian

I usually don't like Anthony Hopkins movies, and I usually boo to myself any movie that uses non-diegetic music to try to manipulate my emotions, but The World's Fastest Indian, despite these drawbacks, is a pretty great show. I took this photo during the movie's climactic scene.

There is some average acting, and Hopkins's ability to charm everyone who crosses his path using only his hearing loss, a few corny jokes, and a handshake seems a stretch. He could have been a little more darkly portrayed, I think. In the end, though, it's a true story, and seems pretty honest.

In case you haven't heard of it, it's about an old codger who in 1963 took a 192o Indian motorcycle and modified it for speed. He lives in New Zealand and saves up money to sail to L.A. and then drive his bike to Utah for the Bonneville Speed Week to see how fast his bike can go. His reception is chilly at first, but his charm melts most of their hearts and gets him a chance to race even though most people think he's just going to kill himself.

But he doesn't. This movie almost made me want to get a motorcycle, but not really. An Indian t-shirt would satisfy me, probably.

Mole Killer

Yes, I just got my first ever mole, and the experience is making me reevaluate the way I live my life. I'm just not a killer, I don't think. I might even have to stop wearing shoes made out of leather now.

It all started when I realized that he was missing my trap system by burrowing under the old tunnels in new, deeper runs. Copying some of the ideas I've read that we're considering for attacking Iran's nuclear labs, I decided to reformat my traps as "bunker busters" so that they could reach deep enough.

It worked quickly. Little J and I were out puttering for about ten minutes this morning when I noticed two traps had gone off. One was empty, like usual, but the second, an old school "loop" type trap I'd borrowed from a friend who prefers to dig his out of the ground with a keen eye and a shovel, felt heavy as I lifted it. It felt heavy and then it squirmed as I noticed the furry grapefruit sized critter trying to escape the thing. Yes, she was alive, and very cute, actually, front paws like paddles with claws at the end and skinny pink nose. I wasn't prepared for this at all.

It doesn't seem fair, really. It's a lot easier to lead a moral life when you don't have to make so many decisions about things. But here I was, the guy who feels bad for the fish when he sees his father in law clonk it on the head, having to decide how or if I was going to kill this mole that had kept me up nights for the past year or so.

It wasn't much of a decision making process, really. I knew immediately that I would be setting her free in the park across the street. Getting her there was a problem, though. I had a dog outside, a kid with no shoes on, and a sleeping B. up in his room. Further complicating things, I didn't want J to see the mole struggling in the trap because up to now she had been rather encouraging about Mole Hunt 06, and I was afraid I would lose her support if she finally figured out what a mole was or that the project involved killing them.

So, I dropped the trap and mole into a plastic shopping bag and carried her inside so that I could get a leash for the dog. A plastic bag isn't much trouble for a mole to dig through, though, and soon dirt was falling all over my house. I switched to a bucket.

To cut to the chase, I picked up J and with the dog we darted to the park with B still sleeping. This is right next to the Park & Rec offices, so I tried to find a place away from windows to let him go and that little guy dug a hole so quickly that . . . well, I just couldn't believe it. It was like his paws, or hers, were cutting through snow instead of soil.

Anyway, I don't know what to think now. I still hate moles, just not the ones I meet. I could not kill the thing with my bare hands, no question about that, but at the same time there is a part of me that knows if one of my more lethal traps got one and killed it, I would not feel all that bad about it.

I don't know. As Whitman says in Song of Myself:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

A post about food.

So, I had Indian buffet for lunch today. Normally, this is about the closest I can get to restaurant heaven: navratan korma, chicken makhani, naan, raita for dessert, some really sweet tea, oh, and saag paneer—can’t forget that. Things started normally for me today, too. I came, ate my weight in cream and butter, and left. Something was different today, though. It was not quite as, I don’t know, blissful as I’m used to feeling. I still shoveled the food in like you are supposed to at an Indian buffet, but at the back of my head I was thinking to myself—or not even that, I wasn’t exactly thinking to myself; it’s more like two thoughts were talking to each other about me, and they were saying “that dude has got to stop putting it away like that.” I overheard them a little, maybe, and I realized they are right.

On the radio or somewhere recently I heard about an interview project they did with people who live to be 100 on the island of Okinawa and it turns out that most of these old people have a saying that you are supposed to eat only until you are “80% full.” I might try that.

That would be hard, though. I used to eat anything I wanted with no problem because I rode my bike 200 miles a week all summer and it didn’t matter. Kids changed that. They like bikes okay, but they don’t like to go on three hour rides. They prefer riding circles in the driveway on their tricycles, which is fun to watch, but I can’t very well get my exercise that way. Instead, while they ride, I garden, and that doesn’t really burn the calories.

So, I think I’ll try to stop killing myself with food. Less of it. Less meat. More legumes, whatever those are. I just bought some chorizo for a recipe, though. I’ll eat that. And I will exclude from the definition of “meat” things like fish and sometimes chicken and definitely proscuitto—no way am I giving that up—and the occasional hamburger won’t count either. Sounds like a plan to me.

To be honest, I had this same plan a week ago, and then Mike and Michelle came over to grill and C and I were going to grill our portobellas and I told them about our plan to eat less red meat, and they were real supportive. They said “why would you want to do that?” And then I ate one of the huge burgers Mike made even though I was already 120% full and it was 10:00. Maybe it will go better this week.

Let the spring sports begin

Basketball has been such a drag for IU fans the past few years-- thank goodness for spring sports. The sad news for today is that George Hincapie crashed out of Paris-Roubaix, the awesomest of the spring classics, but look at that! Phil has a shot on the field at the beginning of the 4th round down in Augusta! Hootie has been taking a lot of heat for how difficult the course is this year, but what an awesome Sunday this is going to be: Vijay, Tiger, Phil (and Couples!?) all within a couple of strokes to start the day. I wish it were raining so I wouldn't feel guilty about holing up in front of the teevee.

Spring Break, mid-term report

Half way into this year's spring break, an interim report:

• Mole traps sprung: three; deceased moles: zero. But they're close--I can sense it. A friend of mine at work has an uncle who's obsessed with mole hunting and always says "if they knew how much fun this was, they'd make you buy a license." I'm not to that point yet.
• The second draft of my writing assignment was an improvement, but still could have been savaged more than it was during the workshop last night. That class is so nuts. I appreciate a lot of what the prof is trying to do and how she's doing it, but the workshops can be so painful. She tries to start dialogue for each piece by asking "What is this about?" but we can all tell that she has an answer in mind when she asks it, and sometimes the correct answer is supposed to be "nothing" and other times the answer is supposed to be "it's about the father." We're too kind to answer the former, though, so when we try to suggest other possibilities--when we get it wrong, that is--we can sense her disappointment.
  
• I finally read the instructions for the anti-fungal stuff I spray on my peach tree and it turns out I am a few months too late if I wanted to prevent peach leaf curl this year. I sprayed anyway, just in case; it seemed to help last year. I will still get a larger crop of peaches than I know what to do with, so no big deal.
  
• Quite a reversal of fortune doing taxes yesterday, going from owing a big chunk to the state, including a penalty for underpayment, to realizing that I had forgotten to report what one of our employers had withheld for state taxes. I'm surprised I even figured that one out before I sent in the payment. That's good tax karma.
• My Neighbor Totoro is my favorite Miyazaki movie until I see my next one or re-watch Spirited Away again.
• J and I started seeds for lettuce, tomaters, basil, and, because she wanted to, sunflowers. I've never had much success with propagating things from seed, but they're already sprouting. Having things growing in your house adds a nice level of excitement to your life, I think. They're just these dinky seeds, but I bet I check them five or six times a day. It's better than teevee!
  
• Speaking of, Katie Couric to CBS News? I dunno. That might be bad for news. That's not really fair to KC, though. I bet she changes the way we watch cooking demonstrations and Tom Cruise interviews during the nightly news.
  

Spring Break Reverie

The best day, moment even, of spring break is on Saturday morning when you have slept in past your usual 6:00 am wake up and it is actually 7:05 and you lie awake for a few minutes noticing the sunrise and planning all of the things you will do over the next week. Things like:

• Reading that copy of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter that I bought at Myopic books in Chicago a few weeks ago.
• Putting new strings on the banjo.
• Spraying the peach tree so that it doesn't get Peach Leaf Curl this summer.
• Planting some stuff.
• Killing at least one mole.
• Re-watching the Miyazaki movie My Neighbor Totoro a couple of times.
• Riding my bike 200 . . . or maybe just 100 . . no, let's go for 130 miles.
• Swinging my new driver out in the fresh air.
• Getting J & B in the bike trailer for a few spins.
• Writing a good second draft of my current writing assignment in my creative non-fiction class.
• Doing at least 1/2 of the things listed here so that a week from today I don't wonder what I did with all my time.
  

Do Not Farm

A few months ago, I got hooked on this Frontline special called Country Boys, a documentary following the high school careers of a couple of mountain boys living desperate, poverty-stricken hills of . . . I forget--one of those mountain places where they make coal. Eastern Kentucky, I'm pretty sure. It's phenomenal and I still think about Cody and Chris, the country boys, all the time.

So David Sutherland, the director, made a prior documentary for Frontline called The Farmer's Wife, and C and I got it the other day and just got through 240 minutes of some pretty gut wrenching stuff. This one follows the farming life of the Bushkoetters, a couple with three young girls. Darrel is married to his land, and it's kind of a one-sided relationship. He can't see beyond the harvest, but his real wife, in the picture up there, sees the writing in the crop circles: they're drowning in debt and their only hope is to leave the land, go back to school, find another way.

What amazes you while watching this is how stubborn Darrel is about it all. The American myth is of the noble farmer taking on nature and perservering against all odds. What I came away with here was not quite as noble. Darrel comes across as reckless, myopic, anti-intellectual.

It makes me wonder how the midwest can still be populated like it is--are all these people working 100 hour weeks to clear $5,000 at year's end? I'm showing my ignorance, I guess, but that was revealing, too. I've lived in farming states my whole life and known so little about farmers. I hope they're not all living this way.

The sole redeeming quality of this farming life shown in the film is the resilience of the kids. A number of shots of the three young girls playing outside, with animals--very little footage of siblin fights of any kind. They seem oblivious to their parent's stress, or cleansed of it by a life that lets them live so close to the land.

I still want to live on a farm, but now I'm pretty sure I don't want to actually work it. My ideal might be to have some of your cuter animals to look at and pet and a nice vegetable garden and maybe an orchard, but not have to do much work. I would wake up early and walk the grounds with my dog or kid or Cath and then go make tea and read some. I would have to get another farm in a different hemisphere, though, so I would have somewhere to go when fertilizer season was going on. Maybe a banana farm in Costa Rica.

This man should be a star.

The guy on the left, David Berman, that is; not the cheese-head on the right. That's just the guy whose web site I stole this picture from.

Anyway, I finally got to see Silver Jews last night in Ann Arbor at the Blind Pig. It was sweltering and crowded in there (it turns out that they still let you smoke in AA--fascinating) but the place was held together by a palpable, reverent vibe for the event we were all waiting around to kick off. This tour was a big deal for all of us. It's funny, Berman records a lot of anthemic-type rocking tunes, but I think most people sort of appreciate him on a personal "he speaks to me" kind of level and are not actually shouting out the lyrics to "Rebel Jew" in unison with hordes of friends. If they are, I wish I'd get invited to some of those parties where it's happening. Anyway, my point is that it is a special kind of feeling when all these people enjoy a song writer guy as a kind of personal icon but then get to appreciate him in the context of a mass love-in like this was. I can't remember the last time I was at a show and just smiled like I did last night. I just smiled at the wonderfulness of Berman having his act together enough to do this tour and for us to be there and to actually have Sarah and Wes there too made it even nicer.

Berman himself was pretty guileless and endearing, too. His glasses kept sliding off his face and he had to squint at the lyrics on his music stand every couple of lines to remind himself what song he was singing, but never mind that, this band was pretty amazingly tight. I don't even know what else to say. Right now, I can't think of more than one or two other shows that were equally enjoyable and I think they were both Yo La Tengo shows.

Blow Up (1966)

I have a new camera and I like it. It's digital, it's fast, and it's furious. Most of the pictures on this site were taken with it. In the back of my mind, though, I've always known that it missed something. I hadn't been able to put my finger on what it missed, though, until the other day when I checked out Antonioni's classic movie Blow Up (1966), and suddenly realized what it is: the ability to be used in hand to hand combat.

I haven't even seen the entire movie yet because the DVD started skipping, but it's about a detached fashion photographer in "swinging" or "mod" London. It's cool. My epiphany came during a scene where the main character, the photographer, drives up somewhere in his convertable, parks, opens his glove box, and lifts out his 35mm. This was 1966. And the thing is, what struck me, is how you could tell that this thing had some weight to it. I'm not clever enough to know what make of SLR it is, but it was clearly metal, and its parts were metal; when he fits it to his palm, you can almost hear tiny mechanical noises of parts, tiny metal parts, operating or hitting his skin. And all he was doing was holding it. Look at it in the poster there . . . in the film, he doesn't use it to strike the lady under him or anything (well, maybe metaphorically he does) or anybody else as far as I know. But if he found himself surrounded in an alley, I bet he could start swinging that thing and take out a few people.

On the other hand, my camera is plastic. It's nice, and does nice things, but when I put it into my hand, I might as well be picking up a Happy Meal. I can tell myself that all that really matters is how the pictures turn out, but that's like saying that cars are only about getting you to work on time. *sigh* I'm not a violent person, but I wish that if I ever needed to clonk someone over the head with my camera, it would hurt them.

Syrup Day

Here is J on the morning of my newest favorite family ritual, the Maple Syrup Festival up in Somewhere, Indiana--I know it's near a town called "Mongo," but that's about it. This year was different than last--there were people there. Lots of 'em. We had to wait in line for 30 minutes to get in, even, and that was a drag, but once inside they bring the pancakes and sausage to you in abundance and afterward you ride the horse-drawn wagon through the woods where the syrup is rising at that very moment and you see the sincere little Boy Scouts emptying buckets of the stuff into other buckets. We'll go next year, too, I'm pretty sure, even though it seems to have been "discovered."

Did you know you can, in theory, tap any old tree and make syrup out of it? The only real difference is that non-maple trees have lower amounts of sugar in the sap, which means that you have to boil it longer to get the stuff. I'm tempted to try some of the trees in our yard.

Pete the dog.

This is our new dog, Pete. He's the one on the right. On the left, of course, is Mr. B trying to get the ball from Pete. Pete plays ball like he was raised by Labradors, the best Ball players in the dog world, and this is no surprise because Pete's domestic partner happens to be a Labrador. You cannot know Pete and *not* love the little fella. We'll be sad to give him up when his owners get back from cutting records in Nashville.

Good dog

More from the Chicago trip. I like this one because it has a dog in it, mostly, but also because of how the passenger is looking at the cop just like the dog. I wish the shot was composed so that we saw more of the lady, but oh well; the train was bumping me around a lot. A learning experience. This dog was great, leaning against that thin wall and sleeping while standing up, and then he'd wake up and look at his master and he'd scratch him on the side of the head. Should I have asked to pet him? I wanted to--it was killing me to be so close to a beautiful dog and not pet him, but it didn't feel right to ask. He was working, after all.

Sitting here on the couch with my new wireless setup. The kids are in bed and the NCAA games are on tv--I think this has become one of my favorite holidays.

I was right.

I have to go on record as one of maybe three people I talked to all day who thought we'd win tonight. IU, that is. When I talk about IU basketball, I say "we," and that's okay. Those San Diego Beach Bums, or whatever they're called, were better than I'd guessed they'd be, and probably had their best shooting game of the year, but we kept our cool better than they did at the end.

The guy who wrote the wrap-up for the NCAA scoreboard site actually claims that we were "outplayed, outhustled, and outsmarted" for "39 plus minutes," but we had more assists, fewer turnovers, and more steals, so I don't get it. We even had a couple of 9 point leads in the first half. No respect.

On the El

Here's one of my favorite photos from our Chicago weekend. That's the Mtn Bikin' Mama herself, waiting with me to grab the train back into town after walking around the huge botanical conservatory they have on the West side of town. We didn't have proper change to buy a train ticket, so the CRT employee waived us through for free. How cool is that? We just acted real clueless and she said "well, even I wouldn't walk around in this neighborhood, so I don't want you to go off looking for change for a $20."

There are few things better to do in a city than to rattle around on trains. You can read a book or stare at strangers. You don't have to steer or yell at bad drivers. There is no "train rage;" there is only free time.