In the back yard of my childhood home there was an apple tree. It didn't last long, I can remember trying to get rid of the stump - eventually making way for the swing set that would stand for many more years. When the swing set came in, that corner of the back yard was covered in gravel - good for Tonka truck scraping and hauling projects, but not so comfortable in which to land.
We had a good time with the swing set - though I think we did more climbing on the structure than any actual swinging. It served as a launching platform for countless fireworks displays. It was the base of operations for a great many super hero federations. It grew tired and rusty as we found places to play outside of our own back yard.
When at last it was time for the swing set to go away, I volunteered for the demolition project. I spent a day unbolting and collapsing the red and green monstrosity. The pieces that were less cooperative were twisted and bent until they could be removed. Finally, the frame was pulled up out of the dirt that had been buried for so many years. The gravel stayed for a few more months, and then it was carted away as well.
We were left with a little plot of land, big enough for another swing set, and had it been twenty years later it would have been just the right size for putting in a hot tub. But this was the seventies - in Boulder, Colorado - there was only one thing to do: put in a vegetable garden.
We dug and turned and irrigated and sowed. We all made some effort on our little fraction of an acre, but it was definitely my father's baby. We were all a little surprised when anything came up at all, but we started to believe when we saw green things growing where we had planted them. Sadly, the only thing that grew successfully was zucchini. We harvested the first large crop of the great green squash and waited for the corn or the carrots to come along. The tomatoes withered on the vine, and the zucchini kept coming. It has become apparent over time that my father did not have any particular talent for raising zucchini - the trick would be to grow just as much zucchini as you might need. And we never did need any zucchini. We ate zucchini bread, zucchini boats, fried, sliced, diced, shredded, breaded, baked, broiled, and permutations heretofore unknown zucchini. It wasn't until the snow began to fall that the crop began to fail, and it was the first green thing we saw when Spring came.
It only occurs to me now that the only way to deliver my family from this curse would have been to go put the swing set back.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Crazy Flipper Fingers
My friend's birthday party was held at Lucky Ju Ju Pinball in Alameda. I went with a bit of trepidation - I had never shown much skill at the game of pinball (there are not many feats of hand-eye coordination in my scrapbook). I spent my youth wishing in vain for the abilities to show up after hours of concentrated practice. I remember that when I was eight or nine I believed that pinball was a game for burgeoning juvenile delinquents. You found machines in bowling alleys and stuck in the corners of laundromats. The idea of putting quarters into a machine was connected with two things: getting a candy bar and slot machines. Getting a Snickers bar was pretty much a sure thing - whereas getting three cherries in a row was definitely a chancy thing and therefore gambling. Pinball was definitely associated with the latter.
By the time I turned thirteen, I was stretching my boundaries a little bit. I could blame rock and roll, or hormones, but it was most likely a combination of the two - and these two items fell together in Ken Russell's film version of "Tommy." I had heard bits and pieces of the Who's opera, but never as a whole. The overture was used as intro music for the local station's late movie. I went to see the story of that deaf, dumb and blind kid at the theater across from the university campus. They were the first to install way too many speakers to give patrons that "concert (loud" experience. I was swept away by the music and images (it helped that it was loud and Ann Margret wrestled her pillow in a writhing mass of chocolate and baked beans). Then there was the pinball.
"Tommy" taught me that pinball was a means of salvation - a response to repression and a path to God. Elton John was the Pinball Wizard - how could this not be so? When the movie was over, we walked out to the lobby where there was a lone machine standing behind the ticket office. The machine was Fireball. It had tricks and features in its design that I had never imagined - most prominently a spinning disc in the center of the deck to twist the ball into directions that could never be fully controlled or anticipated. The flippers could slide together if you hit a certain bumper, and another would release any trapped extra balls (Wotan and Odin). I watched my older brother play first and was amazed at the sound and excitement generated by one silver ball. Then it was my turn. I pulled the plunger and let the ball go. I watched as it bounced, ricocheted, rang buzzers and bells and then slid abruptly right between the flippers: drain. My brother admonished me never to put both flippers up at the same time.
Thus began my futile search for the perfect technique. I tried to work my magic on the machines the way I saw other kids do - I was too shy to use a lot of "English" (hips and thigh). I stood in front of a new wave of machines that came just before the video game explosion came and all those pinball machines moved out to make room for Asteroids and Space Invaders. I felt a quiet bit of satisfaction as the video games took over - my frequent low scores would become a memory as the pinball machine became a relic again. The sad irony was that I was not that good at Space Invaders either.
Last weekend while I was listening to the jukebox play Canned Heat and Led Zepplin, I had a breakthrough. I played enough games on one machine that I finally started to anticipate some of its action. I won a high score on a match, then on a high score. I looked across the way at the others - staring intently at the glass in front of them - smiling. I pushed the start button and worked on my bonus.
By the time I turned thirteen, I was stretching my boundaries a little bit. I could blame rock and roll, or hormones, but it was most likely a combination of the two - and these two items fell together in Ken Russell's film version of "Tommy." I had heard bits and pieces of the Who's opera, but never as a whole. The overture was used as intro music for the local station's late movie. I went to see the story of that deaf, dumb and blind kid at the theater across from the university campus. They were the first to install way too many speakers to give patrons that "concert (loud" experience. I was swept away by the music and images (it helped that it was loud and Ann Margret wrestled her pillow in a writhing mass of chocolate and baked beans). Then there was the pinball.
"Tommy" taught me that pinball was a means of salvation - a response to repression and a path to God. Elton John was the Pinball Wizard - how could this not be so? When the movie was over, we walked out to the lobby where there was a lone machine standing behind the ticket office. The machine was Fireball. It had tricks and features in its design that I had never imagined - most prominently a spinning disc in the center of the deck to twist the ball into directions that could never be fully controlled or anticipated. The flippers could slide together if you hit a certain bumper, and another would release any trapped extra balls (Wotan and Odin). I watched my older brother play first and was amazed at the sound and excitement generated by one silver ball. Then it was my turn. I pulled the plunger and let the ball go. I watched as it bounced, ricocheted, rang buzzers and bells and then slid abruptly right between the flippers: drain. My brother admonished me never to put both flippers up at the same time.
Thus began my futile search for the perfect technique. I tried to work my magic on the machines the way I saw other kids do - I was too shy to use a lot of "English" (hips and thigh). I stood in front of a new wave of machines that came just before the video game explosion came and all those pinball machines moved out to make room for Asteroids and Space Invaders. I felt a quiet bit of satisfaction as the video games took over - my frequent low scores would become a memory as the pinball machine became a relic again. The sad irony was that I was not that good at Space Invaders either.
Last weekend while I was listening to the jukebox play Canned Heat and Led Zepplin, I had a breakthrough. I played enough games on one machine that I finally started to anticipate some of its action. I won a high score on a match, then on a high score. I looked across the way at the others - staring intently at the glass in front of them - smiling. I pushed the start button and worked on my bonus.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Reality Bites
A very short time ago, I wrote about how proud I was that I had a dog that didn't solve her problems with her teeth. Well, that was apparently just an ironic way to introduce the following story: How my dog came to bite my good friend on her arm and leave a nasty bruise and a fair sized puncture wound in her bicep. Is that giving away too much at the start?
We had houseguests this weekend. Our friend from the olden days - the maid of honor at our wedding, the godmother of our son and all around good egg - came up from the southland to visit with her son and her dog. We have made noises over the years about how swell it would be if our perspective mates, children and now pets would all get along as famously as we always have. Truth is, for the most part, they do. The problem is that dogs are still animals and they sometimes act just like that. Trying to feed two dogs at the same time is a bit of a project even when you and/or the dogs are used to it. Timing is everything. We had figured out the easiest thing was to feed each one in a separate part of the house, allowing them the time and space to inhale their individual bowls, then go searching for the other's. When they were done, there was a little food left over in our friend's dog's bowl - our dog wanted it, and that was what started the problem. The lesson we all learned was that sticking a nice prime piece of meat like an arm in between two angry dogs is a bad idea.
When it was over, our dog had been banished and shamed in the front of the house, while we attended to the medical needs of our tattered and bruised friend. Her dog waited in the back.
This is when we began the discussion of attributing human feelings or characteristics to dogs. It would be nice to say that our dog felt guilty or embarrassed by her behavior - since we did. It would be nice if we could say that our friend's dog felt protective and concern for his master. Truth is, both of them wandered back into the living room shortly after the incident and fell asleep on the rug. It was over for them. The guilt and reckoning for the humans had just begun.
We had houseguests this weekend. Our friend from the olden days - the maid of honor at our wedding, the godmother of our son and all around good egg - came up from the southland to visit with her son and her dog. We have made noises over the years about how swell it would be if our perspective mates, children and now pets would all get along as famously as we always have. Truth is, for the most part, they do. The problem is that dogs are still animals and they sometimes act just like that. Trying to feed two dogs at the same time is a bit of a project even when you and/or the dogs are used to it. Timing is everything. We had figured out the easiest thing was to feed each one in a separate part of the house, allowing them the time and space to inhale their individual bowls, then go searching for the other's. When they were done, there was a little food left over in our friend's dog's bowl - our dog wanted it, and that was what started the problem. The lesson we all learned was that sticking a nice prime piece of meat like an arm in between two angry dogs is a bad idea.
When it was over, our dog had been banished and shamed in the front of the house, while we attended to the medical needs of our tattered and bruised friend. Her dog waited in the back.
This is when we began the discussion of attributing human feelings or characteristics to dogs. It would be nice to say that our dog felt guilty or embarrassed by her behavior - since we did. It would be nice if we could say that our friend's dog felt protective and concern for his master. Truth is, both of them wandered back into the living room shortly after the incident and fell asleep on the rug. It was over for them. The guilt and reckoning for the humans had just begun.
Monday, August 01, 2005
Current Affair
Thank you, Al Gore. First you gave us the Internet, and now you're giving us television that matters. "We want to be the television home page for the Internet generation." I found this extremely encouraging coming from a communications pioneer such as Al "You Can Call Me Al" Gore.
Why would I watch Current TV? I guess because I want to see if it's every bit as scintillating as its founder - or if there will be more naked chicks or heads blowing up than on, say, MTV. Get this - the groundbreaking notion this network will begin with is taking a "philosophical look" at Paris Hilton's phone list. Even better, Al promises us programs that won't tax our attention spans or busy schedules by limiting them to "pods" between two to seven minutes long.
At last! Now I can find out everything I need to know from television that I was stuck getting from the links that I downloaded to my cell phone. They even include an 0n-screen "progress bar" to let you know when you can stop caring about whatever topic they have probed delicately for the past 150 seconds. Whew - that just about wraps up world hunger, now - what about a new recipe for potato salad?
Originally, there were to be 200 video journalists hired and given inexpensive equipment to document the length and breadth of all matters that can be covered in two to seven minutes. Al figured that might be too elitist, so he abandoned that plan, and left the programming up to all of us - those of us with the bandwidth, spare time and enthusiasm for pushing the frontiers of telecommunication. If you're a video blogger, you can't use the stuff you sell to Current - they have exclusive rights to it. If that smacks a little of the same kind of elitist claptrap that they had hoped to avoid, well that's just too bad, isn't it Mr. Artsy Fartsy Video Blogger?
But hey, in a pinch you can always go to their web site to see what's on.
Why would I watch Current TV? I guess because I want to see if it's every bit as scintillating as its founder - or if there will be more naked chicks or heads blowing up than on, say, MTV. Get this - the groundbreaking notion this network will begin with is taking a "philosophical look" at Paris Hilton's phone list. Even better, Al promises us programs that won't tax our attention spans or busy schedules by limiting them to "pods" between two to seven minutes long.
At last! Now I can find out everything I need to know from television that I was stuck getting from the links that I downloaded to my cell phone. They even include an 0n-screen "progress bar" to let you know when you can stop caring about whatever topic they have probed delicately for the past 150 seconds. Whew - that just about wraps up world hunger, now - what about a new recipe for potato salad?
Originally, there were to be 200 video journalists hired and given inexpensive equipment to document the length and breadth of all matters that can be covered in two to seven minutes. Al figured that might be too elitist, so he abandoned that plan, and left the programming up to all of us - those of us with the bandwidth, spare time and enthusiasm for pushing the frontiers of telecommunication. If you're a video blogger, you can't use the stuff you sell to Current - they have exclusive rights to it. If that smacks a little of the same kind of elitist claptrap that they had hoped to avoid, well that's just too bad, isn't it Mr. Artsy Fartsy Video Blogger?
But hey, in a pinch you can always go to their web site to see what's on.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
In the Bunker
I took it as a very pointed, personal comment on my lifestyle that my parents chose to wait until I moved out of the basement before they carpeted it. I suppose the thing that tempers this feeling somewhat is that they had to wait until my older brother had left as well, but the idea that my little brother got to wake up every morning and pad his way on nice shag carpet to the bathroom still chafes a little.
The tile was pretty scary - mostly white with little flecks of pink and grey and blue - and there were a couple of tiles that were cracked due to harsh treatment by a weight set. Again, maybe my parents were right not to waste carpeting on me and my high school buddies. The basement is where we headed after every football or basketball game. The basement is where the Atari was. Favorite games included Breakout, and endless battles with Space Invaders. A group of us band geek boys would head on back to my house to hang around on the well-worn furniture and make plans for the future and rehash the evening's events. The couch was a two-piece monster that was covered in brown and black faux fur. The very comfy easy chair was covered in the same material, but it was a royal blue - as if someone had skinned the cookie monster and laid its pelt on the chair to cure.
It was a monumental occasion when it was decided that for Halloween in my senior year there would be an actual party in the basement - girls were invited. Some of the guys brought dates. Everything changed. We still played Atari, but without the zeal and enthusiasm - sometimes we would let the girls play - if they wanted to.
My parents stayed upstairs. We were working on the whole "trust" thing. Some couples found their way over to my bedroom, with the lights out. I had a waterbed. The problem with this was that somebody (usually me) was constantly going back in to change the record or turn the tape over - how many times can you listen to side one of Billy Joel's "The Stranger" anyway?
There were some drinking parties at the end of my senior year in high school. My parent's basement was the place we all grew up, threw up, and moved on. The boys' club that had once met there had expanded to include girlfriends and underclassmen and hangers-on that we couldn't always explain - after all, why would anyone want to hang around with a bunch of band geeks?
Years later, my twenty-first birthday was celebrated in that same basement. The carpet was a nice rust color that complemented the furry couch. There was a VCR on the TV set - the Atari had been moved to a corner with the "old TV." It was a great party, I've got pictures to prove it, but I missed the tile.
The tile was pretty scary - mostly white with little flecks of pink and grey and blue - and there were a couple of tiles that were cracked due to harsh treatment by a weight set. Again, maybe my parents were right not to waste carpeting on me and my high school buddies. The basement is where we headed after every football or basketball game. The basement is where the Atari was. Favorite games included Breakout, and endless battles with Space Invaders. A group of us band geek boys would head on back to my house to hang around on the well-worn furniture and make plans for the future and rehash the evening's events. The couch was a two-piece monster that was covered in brown and black faux fur. The very comfy easy chair was covered in the same material, but it was a royal blue - as if someone had skinned the cookie monster and laid its pelt on the chair to cure.
It was a monumental occasion when it was decided that for Halloween in my senior year there would be an actual party in the basement - girls were invited. Some of the guys brought dates. Everything changed. We still played Atari, but without the zeal and enthusiasm - sometimes we would let the girls play - if they wanted to.
My parents stayed upstairs. We were working on the whole "trust" thing. Some couples found their way over to my bedroom, with the lights out. I had a waterbed. The problem with this was that somebody (usually me) was constantly going back in to change the record or turn the tape over - how many times can you listen to side one of Billy Joel's "The Stranger" anyway?
There were some drinking parties at the end of my senior year in high school. My parent's basement was the place we all grew up, threw up, and moved on. The boys' club that had once met there had expanded to include girlfriends and underclassmen and hangers-on that we couldn't always explain - after all, why would anyone want to hang around with a bunch of band geeks?
Years later, my twenty-first birthday was celebrated in that same basement. The carpet was a nice rust color that complemented the furry couch. There was a VCR on the TV set - the Atari had been moved to a corner with the "old TV." It was a great party, I've got pictures to prove it, but I missed the tile.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
The Measure of Randomness
Here's an interesting notion: This morning I sat down to write a funny little bit about my deep-seated connection to the second law of thermodynamics. That's the one that states that a system tends to move from an ordered state to a less ordered state. It's all about entropy and the reason why the blog has the name it has. I've been fascinated with the idea since I was fifteen and saw "Annie Hall" the first time.
This is where it gets interesting: I did a quick Google search for Woody Allen quotes and found the one with his character, Alvy Singer, as a kid in the doctor's office. His mother is very concerned because he is very depressed and he has stopped doing his homework. The doctor asks why - and Alvy replies, "What's the point? The universe is expanding."
So, I wrote a few loving paragraphs about entropy, and felt very amused and smug about my very clever bit of humor. Then I went to save and publish my entry, and the universe just swallowed it up. The page could not be displayed, and when I went back, there was the empty form - taunting me. My initial response was to recreate the piece from memory, starting with the "Annie Hall" quote. This time I Googled for "Alvy Singer on homework." Turns out that there are hundreds (really) of blogs and forums and discussions that center on this particular bit of movie dialogue. It occurs to me that I may have unwittingly stumbled upon a grand unification theory. All of physics, it would seems, bends back to "Annie Hall." After years of feeling hopeless, I have come to appreciate this: Comedy trumps the second law of thermodynamics.
This is where it gets interesting: I did a quick Google search for Woody Allen quotes and found the one with his character, Alvy Singer, as a kid in the doctor's office. His mother is very concerned because he is very depressed and he has stopped doing his homework. The doctor asks why - and Alvy replies, "What's the point? The universe is expanding."
So, I wrote a few loving paragraphs about entropy, and felt very amused and smug about my very clever bit of humor. Then I went to save and publish my entry, and the universe just swallowed it up. The page could not be displayed, and when I went back, there was the empty form - taunting me. My initial response was to recreate the piece from memory, starting with the "Annie Hall" quote. This time I Googled for "Alvy Singer on homework." Turns out that there are hundreds (really) of blogs and forums and discussions that center on this particular bit of movie dialogue. It occurs to me that I may have unwittingly stumbled upon a grand unification theory. All of physics, it would seems, bends back to "Annie Hall." After years of feeling hopeless, I have come to appreciate this: Comedy trumps the second law of thermodynamics.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Funny Money
I live in a house that is valued at more than a half a million dollars. I almost fell of my chair laughing when I typed that. Why? Because so much about money is just plain made up. Here's why I believe this to be true. Eight years ago, we bought our house for the princely (to us) sum of $135,000 - one HUNDRED and thirty five THOUSAND dollars (best if you do your "Doctor Evil" impression there). It was suggested to us at the time that we were getting a pretty good deal. Our realtor said as much.
Okay - let's be honest - of course the realtor is going to tell us that we got a good deal or else he's not doing his job, right? Then there's the simple matter of the rest of the houses on our street are not as well maintained, nor do they support a front an a back yard. At the time of our purchase, we pushed all of our nickels and dimes into one big stack and made the best possible deal with the mortgage broker to make it possible for us to own our own home.
Did I mention that this house is on the East side of San Francisco Bay (Oakland)? Did I mention that most evenings we're pretty happy that all the street lights work? Did I mention that most of the rest of the homes on our block are rentals? Did I mention that this was Oakland?
Anyway, eight years have passed and it became important for us to do the thing that all homeowners do when they can't get on a TV game show: they refinance. In order to do this, we had to get an estimate as to the worth of our property in the current market. Apparently, if we had a yen to sell our house today, we could make approximately four times the amount that we had originally paid for it. Or that the bank paid for it - or the amount of our original loan. This is where it gets silly to me, because none of this money has actually existed anywhere for at least eight years. When we refinanced, they didn't want us to pay for this new half a million dollar house, they just wanted us to get a better deal on that house that was considerably less than that - that's why they could make that swell deal on the refinancing. Get it? I still don't. But I suppose if someone kidnapped my dog and asked for a half a million in small bills I could sell my house to get my dog back.
Okay - let's be honest - of course the realtor is going to tell us that we got a good deal or else he's not doing his job, right? Then there's the simple matter of the rest of the houses on our street are not as well maintained, nor do they support a front an a back yard. At the time of our purchase, we pushed all of our nickels and dimes into one big stack and made the best possible deal with the mortgage broker to make it possible for us to own our own home.
Did I mention that this house is on the East side of San Francisco Bay (Oakland)? Did I mention that most evenings we're pretty happy that all the street lights work? Did I mention that most of the rest of the homes on our block are rentals? Did I mention that this was Oakland?
Anyway, eight years have passed and it became important for us to do the thing that all homeowners do when they can't get on a TV game show: they refinance. In order to do this, we had to get an estimate as to the worth of our property in the current market. Apparently, if we had a yen to sell our house today, we could make approximately four times the amount that we had originally paid for it. Or that the bank paid for it - or the amount of our original loan. This is where it gets silly to me, because none of this money has actually existed anywhere for at least eight years. When we refinanced, they didn't want us to pay for this new half a million dollar house, they just wanted us to get a better deal on that house that was considerably less than that - that's why they could make that swell deal on the refinancing. Get it? I still don't. But I suppose if someone kidnapped my dog and asked for a half a million in small bills I could sell my house to get my dog back.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
