Nuance

Shrevie: Ok, now ask me what's on the flip side.
Beth: Why?
Shrevie: Just, just ask me what's on the flip side, OK?
Beth: What is on the flip side?
Shrevie: Hey, Hey, Hey, 1958. Specialty Records. [Beth nods blankly]
Shrevie: See? You don't ask me things like that, do you? No! You never ask me what's on the flip side.
Beth: No! Because I don't give a shit. Shrevie, who cares about what's on the flip side about the record?
Shrevie: I do! Every one of my records means something! The label, the producer, the year it was made. Who was copying whose style... who's expanding on that, don't you understand? When I listen to my records they take me back to certain points in my life, OK? Just don't touch my records, ever! You! The first time I met you? Modell's sister's high school graduation party, right? 1955. And Ain't That A Shame was playing when I walked into the door!

That scene in "Diner" kind of sums up my periodic angst about being married. Why don't we care about the same things? Why doesn't it get easier? Well, the truth is, it does. It just takes time. And patience. What does it mean to get up every morning for twelve years with the same person? Well, if you're not a teenager sharing your room with anolder brother, then maybe it feels something like marriage. There is a certainty to it that I enjoy immensely. I do a little dance each anniversary that I like to call my "Thank God I Never Have To Date Again Dance."
I know more now about who I am than when I started this relationship. A lot of things that I believed to be certain truths turned out to be a lot of hooey. To her credit, my wife has had the same challenging learning curve. We're trying to do all of this as we glide through our own discovery of just what we want to be when we grow up.
Of course, this path is frought with peril. There is money and childrearing and chores and the ever-present spectre of failure. That fifty percent divorce rate does a lot to keep my brain attached to my mouth. I have learned to be more careful with what I say and how I say it. Do I still need practice? You bet I do - but the real amazing thing about this is that I am being allowed to get it right over time. Perfection is still quite a ways off, but I'm waddling there as fast as I can.

Hey, Kurt!

Here's my guilty pleasure for the week: Kurt Russell. I went to see "Sky High" the other day with my family and had a very pleasant time. Kurt plays Steve Stronghold, a.k.a. The Commander, real estate agent by day - super hero by night. It's a family movie, so the kids were the focus, but it was nice to have Kurt there to ground us parents squarely in our Disney litany.
Way back when he started being in movies, Kurt Russell was the new face with Fred MacMurray in "Follow Me, Boys!"(1966) He spent his teens working for Disney, perhaps no more memorably than when he played Dexter Riley in "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes ."(1969) Dexter showed up in two more films, "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" and "The Strongest Man in the World." He was always just this side of hip - but he looked like he might be trouble if you messed with him too much.
That would happen in 1975, when he played Charles Whitman in "The Deadly Tower." Kurt was more than a little stressed when he looked down on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin. This role pretty much put an end to the speculation that Dexter Riley might reappear in "The Sniper Wore Tennis Shoes" for The House of Mouse.
After he left minor league baseball because of a shoulder injury, he auditioned for the role of Han Solo in a little sci-fi project George Lucas was putting together. That didn't pan out, but in 1979 he played Elvis in a TV movie directed by John Carpenter. The Elvis motif carries throughout his career, beginning with bit part in "It Happened at the World's Fair" when he was a kid who kicked the King in the shin. After the Elvis on TV, he had a voice-over as Big E that went uncredited in "Forrest Gump." He was an Elvis impersonator/casino robber in "3000 Miles to Graceland." And let's face it - unless his hair all falls out and his lip stays still - he's always going to have (with apologies to Mojo Nixon) a little bit of Elvis in him.
John Carpenter pushed Kurt's nice-guy all the way to the edge when he cast him as Snake Plissken in "Escape from New York." There wasn't much nice about Snake - he did save the President and all - but then he tore up the cassette tape that would have saved the world from World War Three. Kurt was a tough guy, and if you see him in "Big Trouble in Little China," he's got a sense of humor about it.
Kurt's in his fifties now. He's still hanging around with that Goldie Hawn, and he's back making movies for Disney. These days it's a toss-up whether the grizzled old dreamer will be played by Dennis Quaid or Kurt Russell. That's fine with me - but when they start work on "The Secret Life of Elvis," I hope Dennis isn't waiting by his phone.

Turf Wars

I just finished mowing the lawn. I've always liked that job. When I was growing up, the oldest kid got to mow the lawn, and the middle one got to pick up after the dog before the mowing could begin. I don't think I have to describe the details of why I was anxious for my older brother to pass along mowing duties to me so that I could hand off my "pooper scooper" detail to my younger brother.
While I was waiting for my time to come, I would hang around while the lawn was being mowed on the off chance that I would be allowed to empty the grass bag over the fence into the vacant lot behind our house. Or maybe I could bring the gas can from the garage for a quick refueling stop - anything to get me closer to the machine.
When the day finally came that I was welcomed into the fraternity of mowing, I was ready. I had studied the careful turns and cuts that needed to be made on our back lawn beneath the crab apple tree. A side-bagging mower meant that the front yard, with its twisting sidewalk and hedgerow, was especially treacherous. I learned early on to vary my path on a weekly basis. Constantly mowing in the same direction allows the grass to lie down and become matted. Sometimes vertical stripes - sometimes horizontal - other times I mowed in concentric circles until I reached the center.
I grew up in Colorado, so I spent winters shoveling paths in the snow, clearing driveways. The satisfaction of cutting a swath through the green grass was very similar to that of cutting through ice and snow. Now that I have moved to California and have a house of my own, there's not much snow to shovel - but I get to mow the lawn all year 'round. Today I did a combo pattern - the back yard got stripes, and the front got a capital "C."

Our Back 40

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.

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.

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.

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.