Ten Thousand Buddhas

Keeping Your Eyes Open

2007-10-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

When I was not much younger, I thought of the world as being divided between interesting people and not-interesting people. And I spent most of my time trying to make sure I was interesting.

How do you do that?

If you are young and shallow, like I was (now I am no longer young but still quite shallow), you start externally. You study the ways interesting people dress and try to adopt their styles. Unfortunately, I was never bold enough -- unlike my little sister -- to completely give myself to dressing like an interesting person. "My hair won't do anything interesting," I would say. Or, "Who can afford to dress like that?"

In the latter, I was correct. I could not afford to dress like that, but it had nothing to do with money. This from a person who, everytime he wore shorts to school in junior high, was absolutely convinced that the entire school had chosen that day to not wear shorts as part of a school-wide conspiratorial practical joke, played on me.

To go from that to, say, wearing Chuck Taylors in 1981, would have been unthinkable. I did have earrings for awhile, but that was in 1985, and by then it was very acceptable to have earrings. But I kept getting them caught on my fraternity sweatshirt, so I got rid of them.

It was about that time that I decided, well, maybe I'm just not the kind of guy who can appear interesting. I don't have the guts. So I should begin a campaign where I go on and on about how it's what's INSIDE your head that makes you interesting.

Seventeen years later, I think I finally believe that. Whew.

I was talking about this with my neighbor, the poet with the 40-inch vertical, the other day. Now that I have a job, I am sympatico with the ills of the working man. Oh yes, I feel the poet's pain -- the waking up early, riding BART to work. The endless stream of people, rushing toward what? Toward jobs that make the world a better place? No! They are just killing time, waiting to die.

Right?

Oops! I forgot that I'm 42, not 24.

Regardless, the poet and I stole a moment of calm at 8:30 in the morning in front of our overpriced homes. We'd just teamed up to catch a wayward Shack, who decided that, rather than follow me up the front stairs post-walk, he'd pause, look at me as if I were crazy for assuming that he'd leashlessly follow me up the stairs even though he'd done it the previous 100 times I'd walked him, then slowly back down the stairs, look at me again, and dash down the street.

It took me, the poet, and the new girl down the street to catch him. Finally, we cornered him under a car and I grabbed him by the back leg. Bad dog!

Satisfied with a job well done, the poet and I paused to reflect on our lives. The poet is, if anything, even more tortured than me, though he does a much better job of keeping it to himself. By many standards he is a success. He has a well-paying job, owns his own home, has about 2.4% body fat, and a nice girlfriend. But he, too sometimes wonders what it's all about.

"If you'd told me this was what 40 looks like, I'd have said you were crazy," he told me.

"Yeah. Remember the whole 'no way, man, I'm never going to get some job and waste my life!' thing?" I said.

He chuckled. "Yeah." The poet once taught at Seattle University, at precisely the same time I was a graduate student there. Different departments. He was English, I was, oddly enough, not English but Education. "I get up every morning, drive to work, come back twelve hours later," he said. "All I'm missing is the suburbs."

"And from where I sit, the suburbs don't sound all that bad," I said.

The point is not that we are two typical guys entering middle age, full of disappointment and regret. We're not. The point is that the poet is a guy who goes to work, wears the latest non-risky fashions and plays (or used to play, until he ripped up his knee for the umpteenth time, thus reducing his vetical to something like 35 inches, still higher than most people can jump even while wearing spring-loaded shoes) plenty of basketball. And yet, if you had a few minutes to engage the guy in conversation, or even to look at his life (or at his books, which I did once while the Jawa was watering his plants), you'd come to find that the poet is an interesting person.

And you might find out, under further review, that far more than half of the people in the world are interesting, and most of them just look like regular schmoes as they walk from place to place.

I have this argument with the Ex-Mormon New Yorker all the time. She is unimpressed by the unimpressive, while I'm obsessed with the unimpressive. She has set parameters not on whom she will talk to, but on whom she will think about. In a way, I sort of admire her ability to use her time only for things she finds worthy. I mean, I've spent literally hours wondering about the guy standing next to me waiting for the crosswalk light to change, and generally find that my conclusions about this person -- while fascinating to me -- are usually of no interest to anyone else and in fact it is generally considered weird and rude to pay such close attention to perfect strangers.

Maybe I'm easily impressed. Maybe I've listened to way too many country music. Maybe I'm just really, really naive.

Whatever. I've got to say that, having spent so much of my life thinking that people were uninteresting, I'm pretty proud to now consider them all interesting. If that's because I'm gullible or naive, I'll cop to it.

Welcome to the Working Week

2007-10-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

Everyone in my immediate family must read this article. Pay close attention to the second-to-last paragraph. Enjoy.

Shockingly, tomorrow is my last day of joblessness. Yes, you read that correctly. After three years of chronic "freelancing," and seemingly out of nowhere, I will re-enter the world of work Monday morning at 9 a.m.

And who are these obvious fools who have hired me, you ask? None other than the people who've given me the greatest $50 a week job in the universe, The San Francisco Examiner.

I'm not being facetious. I have absolutely loved my $50 a week "gig" with Brand X, and in fact will be one melancholy sportswriter tomorrow night, when I cover my last game, Mills vs. Half Moon Bay. That it is at Half Moon Bay is nice, since the first game I covered last season was at Half Moon Bay. And so life continues its nice little circle, as Andy Williams once sang in a Christmas Special that has been taking up space in my memory since 1967.

The world is a circle
Without a beginning
Without an end

So sang Andy while wrapped in a cardigan sweater, Claudine Longet already buried somewhere in his past.

Unfortunately, my new job will not involve dredging up ancient and obscure pop culture references. Instead, I will be neatly wrapping past failures up with future successes (I hope) as the Examiner's new real estate reporter. Once a week, Brand X will flop onto your porch swollen with a 16-page real estate section, mostly written by me.

What will I write about, you ask? Unlike the paranoid and obtusely authoritarian
San Francisco Chronicle, I will not offer weekly updates of how quickly the sky is falling. Since my new boss's boss's boss told me (his words) that we were going to be more "hip," than the old dying Chron, I guess I will be dishing out of-the-moment, streetwise articles about houses in San Francisco (and San Mateo County), which is fine with me. If he wants to look out at a bald guy wearing the last of his three aged and wrinkled dress shirts and see "hip," then maybe he knows something the rest of us don't.

Everyone keeps saying, "Are you excited?" Well, yes and no. Yes because I went out and got a job, thus keeping us from the poorhouse. Yes because it's actually a writing job, unlike the potentially spirit-crushing corporate "communications" job I foresaw when I began this search. Yes because for all of my career failures, my record when I'm hired to actually write is pretty good.

But also no. Or if not "no," than maybe more of an apples vs. oranges answer like, "Well, yes, but I'm a little freaked out, too." As all of us under our small and crumbling roof should be.

Shack, for one, will be slammed with a massive life change starting Monday. Saying "so long" to his daily romps at the dog park and the half-hour play sessions that have him eagerly awaiting my return from the gym each day, he will have to adjust to the life of a two-income family dog. Hours of sitting in the concrete corridor that is our backyard await him. Thrice-weekly sessions with a dog walker. No more mid-morning playing. No staring out the front window for hours at a time.

His life will change.

And then there's the Jawa, who'd gotten so used to the idea that my getting a job would equal financial salvation that he'd spent the past few weeks asking me, a la my mother, if I'd gotten a job yet. He, I am sure, will not miss the refrain "because we don't have any money," but how will he feel not having his dad at the ready each day. What about next summer, when my water park attendance drops from four to zero? And what happens during all of those Thursday and Friday Jewish holidays that litter the school calendar during September and October?

I'm sure we can do it. I mean, most people do it. They haven't been lucky enough to have three years where their primary job is getting their kid to and from school, coaching his teams and volunteering to chaperone field trips. Both Shack and the Jawa tend to squish their bodies up against me when we're all home together. Will that change, now that I won't be constantly present in their lives?

And what about Brandeis Hillel Day School? Here's a list of this year's volunteering responsibilities:

Parent Association Secretary
Marketing Committee
Campus Tours Leader
Annual Fund
Bookfair
Grandparents' Day Chaperone
Booster Club

Okay, I think that's it. And that's my answer to the question, "Okay, you haven't been in an office setting for quite awhile. How do you think you'll function in one now?"

All of these new issues, things we haven't faced, basically, since I was a dot-com flameout in 2001. In return I get two things: money and a professional purpose in life. I get to go from having a three-paragraph answer to the cocktail party question, "And what do you do?" to a neat, easily digested, completely respectable response: "I'm a journalist. I work at the San Francisco Examiner."

Already people have tried to slice through my haze of ecstasy, and I appreciate their concern (and tips), but I'd kind of like to just sit back and enjoy the haze. It feels not unlike the time the seventeen-year-old me went to Roger A. Hunt's house after my first date with the future ex-Mormon New Yorker. "This is the greatest part," I told him. "it's all just laying out there in front of me, and I'm standing on the hill, looking down at it."

But don't get too excited about the money. I did the math, and figured that I will be making approximately 28% of what Sandra Bullock pulls down. Ink-stained wretch, indeed.

So family, did you enjoy that article about our hometown? Yes, Scranton, PA is "hip," an idea that I always assumed would require the earth shifting off of its axis to come true. I always thought it was hip, frankly. Even now it fits into the paradigm of an old, small, dirty city with real ethnic neighborhoods that I like.

I'm pretty sure that's not what they're talking about, though.

Mod Mark Goes to War

2007-10-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

It took three days, but by my third day in Santa Monica, I was beginning to assimilate. By then, however, my self-esteem was completely shot.

I'd been having the vivid dreams of a feverish Malaria victim all weekend. On Sunday, I dreamed that a guy with no arms or legs had asked me to take some papers out to his car. I stepped out his front door and immediately fell into a deep mudhole.

But by Monday, at least, I'd tossed my running shoes aside in favor of some flip-flops, and was wearing a tighter t-shirt than usual. In this manner I fit in. Sort of.

On Sunday afternoon, a few hours after everyone but the Big Apple and I had left, I stood on the corner of The Promenade and Arizona Street, caught in a weird triangulation of a rapper, a violinist, and a homeless guy whose diatribes against Jews and Gentiles eventually devolved into non-stop swearing. At one point, a Lubivitcher canvasser approached me. "Are you a Jewish man?" he asked.

"Yes."

His eyes brightened. It was Sukkot, and he was holding some vegetation. He asked me something in Hebrew. Just now the Jawa informed me that the vegetation he was holding was a Lulav and an Etrov. As a Jew, I still need work.

Which point was driven home Saturday night, when the Big Apple suddenly introduced eight L.A. women that he knew to our formerly all-male group. We'd been sitting at two tables outside our plush suite, soaking up Santa Monica and paying tribute to Mod Markie, who will be going off to Iraq in December. This was the second night of tribute, and we'd found an awesome groove. The high school friends had seamlessly blended with the college friends. The sports guys were allowed to watch sports; the art guys received their fill of art. The sun worshippers went back to the hotel and got all Zen on us, lying by the pool.

The Big Apple is good at knowing people. He's kind of like an indie movie Man About Town. All weekend he ran into people he knew, which was strange, since he lives in New York. So on Saturday night, after several hours of sitting at our tables, these women showed up, and one took heated exception to my explanation that my child attends "Jew school."

"You're ghettoizing yourself!" she fumed.

Three hours later I was walking down Wilshire Boulevard with Uncle Sam, Dug and our friend the American Original, who carried a box of flowers he'd stolen from a nearby wedding. It was past midnight and we were 42 years old, and no one wanted the flowers. All of us, save for Dug, had been in the same fraternity, along with the Big Apple, Mod Markie and Come Fly With Me, back at Santa Clara University. Dug, as regular readers will know, managed a few months ago to forgive me for blasting out of my Volvo at top yuppie speed when I hadn't seen him in 15 years.

As it turned out, the yuppie part hadn't registered, thank God. And in fact, over the course of our weekend, it turned out that Dug, among the crowd, could most easily identify with my job-needing, starving artist/writer vibe. Even though I often wore a baseball cap and shorts.

So we all met up Friday, me telling everyone who'd listen that I had no idea what to expect from the weekend. I was smashing some disparate personalities together, and we had the college vs. high school issues as well. I'd been trying to make Saturday a blowout and already knew that wasn't going to happen. What would we do? Sit around at tables and drink all day? Watch football in a bar, mixed in among throngs of tall, thin guys in bootcut jeans, flip-flops and oversized sunglasses? Sit around some more and argue with strange women? Force guys who don't really know each other to share hotel rooms?

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

By Saturday morning, my fears had lessened. I was staying with the Big Apple, and he was on EST, so we were the first ones awake. We went down to the suite at 10 and knocked. Soon, the American Original met us at the door. He'd arrived late Friday night, and had no qualms about answering the door wearing only a pair of very small shorts. And for all of his mysticism, the guy was in great shape, which left me in a state of awestruck irritation.

We went in. The room was dark. Dug and Come Fly With Me were still lying in their beds, asleep. Empty beer bottles littered the room. It was a tableau more fitting for men half our age, but it somehow calmed me. I had no worries. Everyone was going to get along.

So we sat there, waiting for Mod Mark and the Arcadia boys to arrive, and I watched the Original get dressed, my interest growing as he added clothing, each piece a little bit more outrageous than the last.

He started with a pair of tan shorts, which was normal enough, but then accessorized them with a huge brown belt. Then came a bright green t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, a pair of beige dress socks, and some shoes with Chinese writing inside them. I shook my head in appreciation.

A word about the American Original. He showed up at Santa Clara when we were sophomores as a transfer from UC Davis. He was from Grass Valley, up in the Sierra foothills, and rode a Honda Supersport 400. He wore little round glasses and had a large seashell dangling from a necklace around his neck.

Over the years, the Original has drifted in and out of my life, which I understand, as I am sure I am one of the less interesting people in his world. Right now he lives just a few miles from us, but I hardly ever see him, which is my loss.

On Saturday night, a few hours before I was browbeaten for being a lousy Jew, the Original and I had a great conversation about how much we love people whose freakiness goes unadvertised.

There are very few of these people in Los Angeles.

By Sunday, I'd laughed so much that my face hurt. The weird combo of people had gelled into non-stop comedy. Best of all, Mod Mark seemed to be having a great time. That morning, we woke up, dragged an unshowered, bed-headed, still-wearing-the-shorts-and-t-shirt-he'd-slept-in Come Fly With Me out of bed, sorted through the wreckage, and went to have brunch, weirdly enough, at a Mexican restaurant.

By now everyone was comfortable with each other. As a sports guy, I'd particularly enjoyed the Arcadia boys' encyclopedic sports knowledge, and their eager willingness to watch college football and drink beer at noon on a Saturday. I also liked that they suddenly imported a guy whose father was the legendary Spanish-language Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrin.

We ate our breakfast burritos and checked out the waitresses. Everyone wore sunglasses. Then we walked back to the hotel one more time.

People were getting ready to leave, Mod Mark among them. We stood in a circle in a spot where yesterday there had been a wedding. Mark felt he needed to make a little speech, so he told us how much he'd appreciated our showing up, and how he'd be thinking of this weekend while he was in Iraq. We stood there for awhile and did the math: he'd be shipping out in December, and would be in-country for 270 days. So in around 400 days, he'd go back to his normal life as an accountant for Price-Waterhouse in Boston. Like Uncle Sam, he'd go back to being a weekend warrior.

And then there was a little pause. I was standing next to the Original, who'd been so good and kept his rantings about wanting to "shoot Mark in both feet, so he can't go," to himself, or within the hidden confines of the suite, out of earshot. But right now I could feel the air go out of him, and in fact just about every person in the circle, one by one. And I thought, "I am 42 years old, and this is the first time I've ever seen a friend off to war."

I remembered one time, sophomore year, when our dorm floor put on a dance. Halfway through, I elbowed my way up to the DJ and put on some song, I don't know which one, but something Two/Tone or Mod. Someone said, "This one is for our own Mod Mark!" who, I must add, was then and remains today the best dancer I have ever met.

I don't know. Not the most poignant memory at a time like that, but it's the one I had.

We went back to the room a dazed and quieted group. The Arcadia boys went home. The Original fired up his bio-diesel Jetta and drove Dug and Come Fly With Me to LAX. Only the Big Apple and I stayed over until Monday.

That night, the Big Apple and I had dinner with a women he knew, one of the group that had infiltrated our party Saturday night. She was so SO VERY L.A. and had contacts everywhere. She'd gone to high school with Sean Penn. We went to dessert and the celebrity chef came out to talk to us. And I didn't know this woman at all, but even she said, "It seems weird that the nicest, sweetest guy in your group is the one going to Iraq."

I'm better in print than in person, but the Big Apple managed to skillfully weave a story in which we're in college and he's riding on the back of Markie's Vespa, listening to the wind make a cool flapping noise as it runs through Mark's super-thick hair.

So meanwhile, as we return to our lives and the wreckage that is my checkbook, Mod Markie will be keeping track of his time in a journal that you can find here.

398 days and counting.

Dancing Mike

2007-09-24T13:32:00.001-07:00

There is a shadow world that exists while you're at work. It is a world of mothers, nannies, layabouts, restaurant workers and ne'er do-wells like me. The king of this world -- in our neighborhood, and nowhere else -- is Dancing Mike.

It used to be that The Vacquero, who sat on a bench in front of the coffee place all day, every day, wearing his cowboy outfit, was the King of the Daytime Weekday World. However, on the strength not only of his unique dancing style (showcased once a year at the Glen Park Festival) and his ubiquitousness, Dancing Mike has zoomed past The Vacquero and is now the unquestioned king of daytime Glen Park.

As I mentioned above, Dancing Mike came to prominence at the Glen Park Festival. Smaller than other neighborhood festivals -- which is appropriate, given that Glen Park is smaller than all of the prominent San Francisco neighborhoods -- the Glen Park Festival is one block long and congregates around a bandstand. During the day of the festival, the bandstand plays host to a number of bands I've never heard of. Most of them are designed to be palatable to hippies and demonstrate our neighborhood's collective appreciation for music from other cultures, thus hammering home the point that we are better than you.

Usually, this means we get a day of a salsa band, a rhythm and blues concoction, those guys who play "El Condor Pasa" on a bunch of wooden pipes, and maybe an African deal with bongo drums and women dancing around. NEVER will you see mainstream rock and roll or country music on the bandstand at the Glen Park Festival. We are better than that.

Which would all be just another yawn-inducing example of hippie culture gone awry in San Francisco, if not for the genius of Dancing Mike.

There is no way to put into words the herky-jerkiness, the otherworldliness, the unexpectedness and unfettered joy of Dancing Mike in action. Standing about 5'8", weighing in at around 125 pounds, the sixty-ish Dancing Mike arrives early, always wearing shorts and an unbuttoned short-sleeved plaid shirt. His silver hair is slicked back into a loose pompadour, his moustache is neatly trimmed. He is smiling. Someone has bought him skateboarding shoes.

And he dances. All day, without pause, alone, in a crowd, smiling out at the festival-goers. Whatever the music, Dancing Mike doesn't care. He dances.

Away from the dancefloor, Dancing Mike is a more serious figure. You can see him at neighborhood association meetings, trading in his shorts for a pair of too-long Levis. Sometimes his Levis are long enough to get caught under his shoes, which eventually results in little tears at the hems. However, don't be fooled into thinking the Dancing Mike is a dirty street person. Dancing Mike is always clean. His skateboarding shoes are always new. And somewhere in Glen Park, Dancing Mike owns his own home.

The Jawa and I are always pleased to run across Dancing Mike. Usually, we see him at the park, striding off purposely toward a goal known only by him. He walks hunched over and hurriedly, his head bobbing to a tune that he shares his no one. He looks bemused, and he is always polite. Dancing Mike.

When we see him, the rule is that the first one to spot him must tap the other one on the shoulder and say, "...Dancing Mike." The correct answer to this is "sweet."

Last weekend we saw Dancing Mike at an open house a few blocks away. This was the oddest Dancing Mike location since we saw him grilling hot dogs at a neighborhood jazz festival in the park. That's where I learned that his name was "Mike." I added that "Dancing" part myself. Boy, does it fit.

How does Dancing Mike fill his days? Unlike me, he always seems to have a purpose, always seems to be heading toward something. He is not idle. Is Dancing Mike secretly a real estate mogul, checking out local open houses in search of his next investment? If Dancing Mike could relate the people, what would he say?

I ask everyone in the neighborhood about him, hoping to get a more complete picture of his life, but at this point, I seem to know as much about him as anyone.

- He likes skateboarding shoes
- He likes to dance
- He cares about the neighborhood
- He likes to volunteer
- He is always on the move
- He owns a house somewhere in the neighborhood
- He prefers Levis over other brands of jeans
- He takes the time to groom himself

But there's more. There's got to be more. Was there ever a Mrs. Dancing Mike? How long ago did he buy his house in the neighborhood?

I guess the central question is this: what happened?

What happened to Dancing Mike? If he's a homeowner, that means that at some point he was lucid enough to hold down a job, making enough money to buy a house. Unless he inherited his house, in which case someone in the neighborhood should remember what he was like as a kid. And if he inherited it, and was always a bit off, why isn't anyone taking care of him? Who's letting him roam the streets all day?

I like that we have a Dancing Mike in our neighborhood. He's easily more interesting that The Pen Guy, from our old neighborhood in Seattle, whose only claim to fame was that he hauled around hundreds of pens each day. He wasn't well-groomed and cheerful like Dancing Mike. In fact, I pity any neighborhood for lacking a Dancing Mike, and I'm just sorry I don't have enough money to buy him a "Glen Park" sweatshirt to wear around, though on second thought, I don't think I've ever seen Dancing Mike wearing any sort of outerwear. He probably runs hot, due to all that nervous (yet cheerful)energy.

Man, I need a job.

Extra Lazy Polacks

2007-09-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone has a dark period in their lives, however short or long, that left a serious dent in their psyches. Mine happened in 1976, lasted only three months, and kicked my butt halfway through next week.

On March 21, 1976, my family moved from our small town in Pennsylvania to Southern California. We followed my dad, who had moved in January, cutting a dashing figure as he walked down the tarmac to his plane at Scranton-Avoca airport. "I won't be needing this," he'd said, handing his coat to my mother, and then striding, coatless, out into the snow.

Two months later we joined him. Thirty-one years later it's easy to forget what March in Southern California looks like to a bunch of East Coasters. We were floored, amazed to be swimming in March. There were palm trees, and when you drove past the Lemon Street off-ramp on the 91 freeway, it actually smelled like lemons. We were babes in toyland, absolute naifs who thought we should live in Long Beach because it had the word beach in its name.

One week later, settled into a tiny house in Anaheim, Noodles' Mom and I started at our new schools. And thus began the trauma we both still strive to overcome.

I'm not going to say that almost eleven years of life in Clarks Green, Pennsylvania (population 1,200) didn't prepare me for the realities of Riverdale Elementary School. All of that time running across open fields gave me enough stamina to outlast the gangs of kids who chased me home every day. But as I've said many times since, you show up in Orange County in 1976 and you're short, Jewish, wear glasses and have a big vocabulary, no amount of sports is going to save you.

It took a few days before anyone decided to call me "Fairy." By then, I'd already earned the ire of the class bully, Ernest. I'm not sure why. It could be any of the quirks outlined above, or it could be that, in my quest to be cool, I'd told someone that I wasn't afraid of Ernest. I was lying.

Weirdly, by the time Ernest finally jumped me and kicked my butt, I was no longer afraid of him. I'll never forget him on top of me, in the field during P.E., screaming "YOU PUD!" and me underneath him, not even blocking the blows, calmly saying, "A pud is a cigarette," as he flailed away.

They pulled him off me after awhile. He was crying hysterically, so the teacher comforted him, which I knew, even then, sucked. Nobody checked out to see how the freaky new kid was doing. They just called me "Fairy," then went off to do their own thing. I went back to the tetherball post, where I spent every recess of every day.

One week I took a test to see if I could go to this other school, with all the other freaky braino kids. I must have passed, because the following Monday, I was gone.

I liked that. Never even cleared out my desk. Just took off on a Friday, ran home so nobody would beat me up, and didn't show up on Monday. I hope they made Ernest clean up my stuff, and I hope it was full of things he found confusing and threatening.

Not that I'm bitter.

The following week, I began at La Veta Elementary where, mixed among the "regular" kids were two classes of "ELPs." Ask me what "ELP" stood for; I can't tell you. Everyone said it stood for "Extra Lazy Polacks." I liked to think it stood for "Electrically Powered," so I repeated this phrase to myself sometimes, quietly:
Electrically Powered.

La Veta Elementary School saved Southern California for me. Noodles' Mom didn't have a La Veta Elementary School, so she had to grind it out at hideous places like Vista Junior High. Nobody stepped in, and she hates Orange County to this day.

At La Veta I found two whole classrooms full of weird, smart kids, some of whom wore glasses and bought their pants at Sears. Some of us (after plenty of hard work) managed to at least look "regular," and some even mixed well with the "regulars." I wasn't one of them, sadly.

Thirty years later, I'm not sure that the "ELP" or "MGM" ("Mentally Gifted Minor" -- AKA "Mentally Gifted Moron") program did much to meet the needs of its unusual customers. For many years, I ran around saying that I never should have gone to La Veta, that if I'd stayed at the neighborhood school -- once we'd moved to a new neighborhood -- I would have gotten to junior high with a leg up. I encouraged Bud and/or Marsi to avoid La Veta at all costs. "Don't be branded a freak," I said, which she would prove over time to be a very ironic statement, indeed.

And of course, modern education theory rejects the entire concept of taking smart kids and separating them from everyone else. They call it "tracking," and it's considered only slightly less evil than racial segregation.

To a point, I agree. For kids in the middle, tracking sucks. For kids at the bottom, it's even worse. But for all the kids carrying around these huge brains and not knowing what to do with them, tracking at least puts them in the same place, pays some attention to them, and doesn't force them to spent 2/3 of their class time drawing war scenes on the back of their homework or feeling weird because they finished the quiz twenty minutes before everyone else. Thirty years later, I'm pretty sure that "gifted" kids are also "special needs" kids. The middle serves them no better than it serves special ed kids.

Let me step off my soapbox for a moment and go back to 1976. Two days ago I got an email from a guy I haven't seen in almost 25 years. I went to high school with him, but didn't really know him after sophomore year, because by then he'd been completely swallowed up by the punk rock world. One day he was sitting in the back of Mr. Lindskoog's class with long hair and a fleece-lined jacket; the next day he had a reverse mohawk. The last time I saw him, he was driving down Chapman Avenue in some old car. He had a mohawk and a tattoo on the side of his head. I am told that he hung out in the same frightening circles as Bud and/or Marsi.

He was a La Veta guy, though, and I remembered him from there as a skinny guy with blonde hair who had a rugby shirt that was identical to mine, and who occasionally presented outrageously controversial ideas as facts. Apparently, we played draydel with Dave K. Little kids.

And now he is a special ed. teacher which, given what I wrote above about "special needs," makes a certain kind of sense. He lives in Minnesota, has two kids, and sent a picture of himself -- a 40-ish guy with a goatee, holding a toddler, wearing a baseball cap and a polar fleece jacket.

Here's the funny thing: I have a good memory, and I'll bet that probably 65% of the people I knew in high school could email me and I'd instantly know who they were. Forget if they were friends of mine or not; I'd at least know them.

But there is a strange bond that I feel with the weirdos from La Veta Elementary School. Not you "regulars," only us Extra Lazy Polacks. In junior high school and high school, the ELPers dispersed, as anyone would. We would occasionally cross paths, giving each other an unseen nod or internal wink, a sort of, "Hey there, I see you pretending to be normal, and I get it, and it's okay with me, bub."

So a belated "thanks" to the small crew of La Veta alums who went to El Modena High School, class of 1983, and to the rest of the freaks who got together at Kim Senft's house that same year for a La Veta reunion. Welcome to the show, Mr. Former Punk, and Lisa Mac, if you're out there, call me.

Time for a New Table

2007-09-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

It was an important moment, a momentous bridge to cross. The Jawa and I, and only us, were to complete our first father-son furniture moving project. The question was, would he, at age ten, be able to hold up his end of the deal? Literally.

The challenge was this: after several years of shopping for a dining room set, never finding one we could agree on, balking at the price of them all, Sandra Bullock and I finally found one we liked, for the low, low Craigslist price of $225 (chairs included). But there was a complication. Said dining room set was in San Jose, and once we drove down there (Saturday), checked it out, decided we liked it and plunked down the $225, we realized that we could only fit 3 of the 6 chairs into our car. No way was that table going into our car, nor the 3 other chairs. For once, we missed our old Subaru. But only briefly.

So we drove home and planned to return later in the week in a more appropriate vehicle. Not a rented truck, which would cost almost as much as the table itself. More likely, a borrowed truck. And then we learned this: we know like two people with trucks. "If we lived in Seattle," I told my bride, "we'd know tons of people who owned trucks."

"Do you think we can fit the table into a Prius?" she answered.

And right now I'd like to stop and say yes, Hammer, I know Wine Guy has a truck. S. Bullock said the table wouldn't fit in it because he's got that shell on it.

So we borrowed Jenny From the Block's Minivan on a Friday morning -- the first day of the year 5769(?), in fact -- and set out for San Jose for the momentous task at hand.

Jerry Seinfeld used to do a bit about the father-son team, moving furniture, with his father squinting through the cigarette smoke as he backs up the stairs holding a desk, saying, "easy, easy," while Jerry thinks he should be saying, "difficult, difficult, impossible..."

Would my Jawa be able to assist? Or would I be lugging this huge, mahogany table into Jenny From the Block's Toyota Sienna alone, or perhaps with the help of Charlotte, the retired librarian who sold us the table?

The spirit was indeed willing. My Jawa, age 10, head pumped full of Pokemon, wanted so badly to help me carry that table to the car. He grabbed one end, I grabbed the other. The table, at this point, did not seem all that heavy. The Jawa made it a few steps, then rested, then a few steps more, and then Charlotte stepped in and grabbed the other corner, so it was the Jawa, Charlotte and me hauling Charlotte's parents' wedding present to the car.

A word about Charlotte's house: it was in the middle of San Jose, across the street from a dead gas station and a Mosque. Cars sped by two at a time. It wasn't the greatest location for a house, but Charlotte, who had grown up there, told us of a time when the house sat across the street from nothing but fields and trees. "They went all the way to the river," she said. "What river?" I thought.

Too bad. As is often the case in San Francisco politics, "progress" (or "progressive") is not what it's cracked up to be.

We laid the table upside down in the back of Jenny From the Block's minivan. To do so, we had to flop the back seats down, leaving the 10-year-old Jawa no choice but to ride shotgun.

He did this with a mixture of awe and anxiety. At first, after we'd waved goodbye to Charlotte and her emotionally damaged house, he marvelled at the improved view of the road. It was panoramic, way better than the back seat, where you have a chair in your way. But there was the issue of the airbag.

"Will it decapitate me?" he asked, half-jokingly.

At ten, you are under some pressure to handle with poise many things -- like airbags-- that would have frightened you when you were in single digits. Only problem is that while they may still scare you, you cannot show it. You must joke about it endlessly, or ask seemingly calm questions about it, as if you were just curious. "So, it this airbag came out, would it break my legs?"

Meanwhile, I'm aging several years each minute, worrying about the dual tragedy that would result should I get into a head-on collision. With the Jawa at 4'7" and 70 lbs., he is only 2 inches and 10 lbs. below the minimum for front seat occupancy, but still. And then to return Jenny From the Block's minivan damanged.

So I'm a little nervous, but also living the wonder of parenthood as I look over, for the first time, and see my pre-teen Jawa sitting in the front. I can just reach over and mess up his hair, for example. It made me wish we were sitting in an old pickup truck, bouncing down a dirt road, but maybe that's just evidence that I've seen way too many of those Chevy truck ads they play during football games, the ones with John Mellencamp music playing in the background.

And all is well and good until we reach the freeway, at which point my Jawa turns into the most obnoxious male backseat driver I have ever met. "Dad! DAD! DAD! You're too close to the car!"

"DAD! You're driving 75 miles per hour! What's the speed limit here? 65? Slow down!"

It had become obvious to me that we would need some support for the 32-step task in front of us, so we dropped by Sandra Bullock's massive new place of employment and kidnapped her, placing her in the back, along with the table and chairs. She hunkered down back there while the Jawa continued to deliver a continuing assessment of my driving skills in real time.

"DAD! OOOH! YOU ALMOST HIT THAT CAR! CHANGE LANES! YOU'RE TOO CLOSE!"

By the time we reached home, I had decided that, eligible or not, the Jawa was banned from the front seat until age 12. Maybe by then he will have calmed down a bit and come to terms with the airbag.

Although, via the absolute magic that is Volvo engineering, our car's airbag will not deploy unless the front passenger seat is holding a minimum weight of 100 lbs. So in theory, he could ride in the front seat, as the Shaman and Tony Hawk have before. In reality, he is banned. For reasons of my mental health.

The new dining room table now takes the place of our old pink formica 1950s table. We bought that one at an antique store in Snohomish, Washington, in 1993 for $100. On Friday, fifteen minutes after we posted it on Craigslist, it was gone, sold to a San Francisco mini-mogul with two kids and another on the way, for use in a rental property. She paid us $74, only because she didn't have another dollar. Afterwards, I worked it out: that table cost us 8 cents a month.

After it was gone, we were oddly somber. That table, we realized, had taken us through life as apartment-dwelling newlyweds, through the Jawa's birth and resulting babyhood. It had born the brunt of Play-Doh, water-soluble markers and countless blobs of food. Fourteen years we had it, from ages 28 to 42, which is a pretty significant period. It was time for a grown-up table, but also time to take note of all that our old pink table gave us.

We can only hope our new table -- Charlotte's parents' wedding present -- will offer as good an ROI.

Abba Intrusion

2007-09-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

I have spoken often in this space about my commitment to providing the Jawa with a firm, interesting and slightly esoteric pop music base. I believe strongly in my responsibility to save him from Justin Timberlake, even as I am admittedly wide-eyed at JT's massive talents.

As I write this, however, there is an equal and opposing force trying to indoctrinate my Jawa in the evil dark musical arts. Sandra Bullock, whose interest in music has never gone any further than "it's got a good beat, I like to dance to it," spent the past weekend exposing my Jawa's fine-tuned ears to music rated no better than that which you would hear on a local top-40 station.

And now, this.

Tonight, as I scramble madly to record each nugget of wisdom that drops from the lips of my fellow Parent Association officers, the Jawa and his mother are joining the Hammer and her child at the Orpheum Theater, for a performance of ... Mamma Mia.

If I spelled that wrong, it was on purpose.

A word about Abba, the bass-challenged Swedish pop group whose circa-1979 music inspired Mamma Mia. Even as a pre-teen, I loathed Abba. I knew then that there was no place in my musical canon for glittery Swedes singing in phonetic English about royalty that dances and rememberances of dalliances with men named Fernando.

I shunned Abba even as they made their irony-fueled comeback in the 90s, sitting smugly on the sidelines each time a wedding DJ cued up an Abba tune. Not for me.

As I get older, I realize that I must give Sandra Bullock's taste in music some time. Not equal time, I mean, come on. The night Frank Sinatra died, I tried to get her to lie on the floor in the living room and listen to a few choice Frank cuts. She lasted all of five minutes. Lost in my own revelry, it took me that long before I glancedd over at her and saw that, rather than glazed over, her eyes were ablaze, reflecting the organizing and planning that was going on behind them.

"You're not listening to the music, are you," I said, flatly.

"I wonder if those chairs I saw in the Pottery Barn catalogue would fit next to the couch," she answered.

So before any of you start bagging on me for not considering her commitment to music equal to mine, think of that.

"You never know what they're listening to when you're not there," someone told me once. On Monday, I returned home from the craziest wedding I've ever been to, to find the Volvo's CD changer full of "their" CDs -- Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Pure Funk, a couple of old Derailers and Old 97s CDs that I introduced S. Bullock to about ten years ago, and the dreaded "Abba Gold."

Did they distribute this CD to every woman who graduated from college between 1990 and 2000? Does the practice continue to the present? Is it included, already loaded, in the CD players of each Volkwagen Jetta as it is wheeled off the showroom to its new owner?

I should talk. I love John Cougar Mellencamp. And I eagerly remind you that my problems with Abba probably stem from the inarguable fact that I am no fun and not a good sport. Don't try to drag me onto the dance floor; you will lose a friend. Want me to karaoke? I'll leave first.

Meanwhile, Sandra Bullock is a great dancer, and effortless natural, and she has passed that skill down to her son. Theirs is a bond of physicality, of grace, where he and I bond musically on an intellectual level -- they are participants, while he and I are critics.

That doesn't make me sound all that good, does it. At least I'm honest.

I have had two positive Abba experiences in my life. The first came on a drive from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. My volleyball team all crammed into a Subaru Forrester for the three hour drive. So I was there with four of my favorite people in the world, plus a guy named Timmy Timmy -- I kid you not, he changed his last name to "Timmy" -- and someone decided that it would be a great idea to listen to "Abba Gold" all the way up. Five gay men and me in a four-seat car, plus "Abba Gold." How can you hate that?

Not strangely poignant, like when we stopped at the border and played George Michael's "Freedom." I'm serious. It was poignant. You had to be there.

The second time came when the Dinner Club, a social institution revered in our house, went to Japantown to do some karaoke. I will karaoke only for the dinner club, and only in a karaoke booth, and only when it was my idea in the first place and we didn't tell anyone until we got there what we were doing, and even then only when we are drinking Budweiser out of cans because the karaoke bar doesn't have a liquor license and even though we are all pushing 40 and at times the combined income of the two guys singing Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" is something like $500,000 a year. I will karaoke then. I will open the evening with a duet. Ken Dunque and I will sing "Like a Virgin."

After that, Princess Grace will abruptly grab the mic out of my hand and launch into her version of "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight," or something like that.

But eventually, the Golden Boy and his Golden Wife will insist on singing Abba's "Fernando," and I will realize that, although the Golden Boy and his Golden Wife are smart, attractive, successful and funny, both of them are tone-deaf, which in no way dimmed their enthusiasm and in fact made their reading of "Fernando" unique and fabulous in its own exceptional way.

God gave everybody something, but he didn't give anybody everything.

I plan to slip into the Jawa's room tonight, quietly put some headphones on him, and play him a few tracks from my iPod. Something to clean his pallet. Something obscure and important. To me, at least.

Reincarnation

2007-08-29T20:08:00.000-07:00

In my next life, I'm going to come back as a member of one of the cool bluegrass bands I see on GAC's "The Edge of Country." Though I will look as though I loathe all forms of country music, what with my pierced nose, ironic t-shirt and gloriously unkempt curly hair, I will pay homage to pioneers like Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe each time I pick up the mandolin I learned to play when I got tired of picking out various Pixies songs on the electric guitar I bought my junior year.

I will major in English at a large Southern university, say Clemson or the University of Georgia, where I will meet my bandmates -- the shaved head guy who plays the guitar, the other curly-haired guy on the acoustic guitar and, of course, our beautiful, beatific lead singer, Emily.

We will release a few albums on regional labels, play coffeehouses, and make one video, which will then appear on "The Edge of Country." This video will feature us playing our song on the porch of a dilapidated shack, overgrown with kudzu and other green southern flora, on a sunny day, interspersed with footage of us sitting on the same porch, rocking back and forth in porch swings, laughing and having a great time. Although Emily is undeniably great-looking, it will seem that we have a decidedly brotherly relationship with her. We will be the friends she comes to when her heart is broken, rather than the causes of that breaking. Except for the acoustic guitar guy. He will break her heart, but the band will soldier on.

There will be a point in the video where Emily is walking next to a river, with all of the trees, bushes and grasses impossibly green all around her. The rest of us will still be playing away on the porch, looking solemn, concentrating intensely on our instruments, though of the three of us, the mandolin is really the only one that requires great concentration.

I will wear my best ironic t-shirt for the video, along with some faded jeans and work boots. I will accessorize my look with a pair of small, round, wire-rimmed glasses. None of us men will have shaved for a few days.

In our video world there will be no problems, just music, hanging out on the porch, and Emily walking next to the river. It will seem like a world anyone would want to enter, one where the sun is an hour or so from its descent, and it's even money we will then barbecue or go into town for an incredible, inexpensive hamburger at some place we started to go to because it seemed ironic but then realized had the most incredible food in town. We found it during college. It was the only place open after the bars closed, and we would go there with Emily and compete to see whose poetry would get her attention. It was the guitar player, even then.

I hate the guitar player. He is supposed to be my friend, but instead he monopolizes Emily and tries to go all rock star on us everytime we tour, insisting that he needs to drive when Emily is riding shotgun, and then forcing one of us to sit shotgun when Emily is in the back, so he can sit back there with her and play his lame songs, singing in this atonal croon. It is amazing that he can harmonize so well in the studio and on stage, yet when left on his own sounds a bit like an off-key Barry Manilow.

That's not bluegrass at all.

Fortunately, in our video all is perfect. The guitar player -- alright, I'll give him a name, David. Never "Dave." Never something as pedestrian as "Dave." It's gotta be "David," because "Dave" is a good guy who doesn't mind watching a little ACC hoops in the motel after a show. Not "David," though; no. "David" absolutely HATES sports, even though he claims to have been an All-State cornerback in high school. Right. That story's as phony as his Southern Accent. When we first met, in Freshman English, he told me he was from Indiana -- anyway, "David" looks like one of us, stress-free, enjoying the warm Georgia afternoon. The day is perfect, and I have to admit, it's easier to handle David when Emily's down walking by the river, and that part where we're all hanging out and laughing is real, because Tony (the bald guy, who could go by "Anthony" but does not, even though "Tony" is hardly a bluegrass name) said something really funny just a second before.

Yes, if I could come back as one of those post-collegiate liberal arts major used to be in a punk band bluegrass guys, hanging out on the porch in one of those lazy Southern afternoon videos, everything would be great. There would be no problems at all.

Back From Camp

2007-08-27T21:02:00.000-07:00

After we dropped the Jawa at Walton's Grizzly Lodge, it took a few days to get my feet back under me. After all, we'd spent something like 42 consecutive days together, and for all our mutual complaining, we'd gotten sort of attached.

To wake up Monday to a very, very empty and quiet house, well, it was unsettling. And naturally, despite the big plans S. Bullock and I had made, we spent the week doing basically the same things we'd have done had our Jawa been home. Except that we occasionally ate dinners while seated at the bar.

Okay, that part was different.

Eventually, I got re-used to being alone, and the few hours we spent each day worrying that our Jawa was having an Allan Sherman-type camp experience made the week pass very quickly.

A word about Walton's Grizzly Lodge: with the guidance of The Hammer, we sent our Jawa to Walton's on purpose, consciously avoiding the very popular (with the/our Jewish crowd) Camp Towanga. For this we are very glad, for while it is true that our child did not learn how to create peace in the world and embrace multiculturalism, he did spend and entire week without showering, played a bunch of frisbee golf, learned the chords D and A on the guitar, and made 11 out of 20 on the air rifle range.

A few years ago, that last detail would have horrified me, and the idea of me on the air rifle range still gives me the willies. I'm a pretty vehement anti-gun guy. But seven years of parenting in San Francisco (and a lifetime unavoidable urge toward contrarianism) has pushed me so far toward wishing it was 1958 that I'll take the air rifle as part of the wholesome Walton's Grizzly Lodge experience.

I am fooling myself, of course. As the Hamptons are just Manhattan in a different setting, so is Walton's Grizzly Lodge San Francisco private school culture set in the mountains an hour north of Tahoe. More than once did I silently thank the unwavering God of materialism and shallowness for forcing me to buy a Volvo last year, allowing us to roll into Walton's on a footing if not even then at least in the ballpark with our fellow campers.

Nobody there had to know that the Volvo was our only car. As far as they were concerned, we had three more just like it back in our garage at home. Oh, wait; we don't have a garage. They didn't have to know that, either.

Both Sandra Bullock and I cursed ourselves for being such class victims. "I hate to admit it," said my self-made bridge of almost 15 years, "but I kind of like this scene."

"Me, too." Mighty and judgemental lords of San Francisco groupthink, do your worst. We are guilty as charged.

Not that I didn't love the shabby, broken-down Pine Hill Motel, our layover point on the drive up. Equally boistrous in his love was the Man About Town, who met us there with his son and Man-About-Town-in-Training, Tony Hawk.

It is not easy to become a Man About Town. The more I see the Man About Town in action, the more I believe that, like champion spellers, Men About Town are born, not made.

Here's a scenario for you: You are driving through the mountains and come upon a town so small that if you blinked, you would miss it. This town is so small that you have to leave it just to change your mind. It contains a gas station. You stop to gas up your car. As you are filling your tank, a forest service truck drives up. The driver gets out and begins to fill up the truck's gas tank. Do you:

A) Nod and say nothing.

B) Turn in the other direction, suddenly take great interest in your thumbnail or get back in your car until your gas tank is full.

C) Engage the forest service woman in a detailed conversation about the difficulties of maintaining effective forest fire spotting coverage, given that budget cuts have affected staffing in the forest service.

If you answered A or B, you are me.

Quincy, California is the home of "single moms who are dirtbags," according to our server at Moons, the best restaurant in town. It has more single moms than any other place she had ever lived. Would I know this were we not in the presence of a Man About Town? No.

We are very pleased with our Jawa's experience at Walton's Grizzly Lodge. Weirdly, he returned home a much more polite version of his usually slightly rude self. Doors which previously slammed in our faces were suddenly held open with grace and elan. "Do you need any help," a phrase neverbefore uttered by our Jawa, has become commonplace. I don't get it, but I hope it is a while before it wears off. Next year he will have to go to Walton's Grizzly Lodge for two weeks instead of one. I will have to manage.

Call them tweens or pre-teens, and check this out: still young enough to use his camp dough to buy a Walton's Grizzly Lodge teddy bear, but hip enough to put said teddy bear to work scratching out the twin turntables drawn on the back of his new Red Hot Chili Peppers CD cover. "He's DJ Grizzly Lodge," says my Jawa.

Tomorrow is the first day of fifth grade.

Four Pairs of Sunglasses

2007-08-13T23:04:00.000-07:00

This is not a sad story. It could have been, but it is not.

But first, a memo to the gay baby boomer across the street, who is very nice and friendly, but whose "Free Palestine / End the Occupation!" t-shirt struck me dumb yesterday. I realize that your support of this cause is probably just a component of the "Liberal Activist Causes" package you picked up at REI. The Palestinians do appreciate your support, and would be happy to show their gratitude. Right after they stone you to death because you're gay.

Back to the nice story.

This is the tale of four pairs of sunglasses. It could be about many, many more pairs of sunglasses, enough to fill an entire book. A very tedious book. So I will limit to four pairs, just enough to cover the past month.

As I have related, I am not allowed to own expensive sunglasses. An exception was made for the perscription ones, which cost all the money left in our "Flexible Spending" account for 2006. I have now owned them for approximately 240 days. Their per-day cost is now below $2, making them actually cheaper to own than the three pairs I've bought in the past month.

It could have been more. When the first pair, which I bought after two cheap pairs imploded on successive days, stayed behind in Orange County instead of coming home with me, I figured, I'll see Roger A. Hunt soon. He can just bring them to me.

And he did. I went a couple of weeks wearing glasses all the time. Then the much-more-expensive-looking-than-the-$25-they-cost Fossil brand sunglasses returned to me. All was good.

A week later, however, they snapped in two, without warning. "You know," I said to a nonplussed Sandra Bullock, "maybe it's not entirely my fault. Yes, I've lost several pairs of sunglasses," including the pair that legendarily fell out of my pocket as I ran for a MUNI train, then reappeared in another guy's hands as the train doors closed, leaving me no option but to wave good-bye as the train pulled out of the station. Could have been worse. People have had to wave good-bye to far more significant things and people while pulling out of trains stations, "but maybe I'm just jinxed. I mean, come on."

She nodded, unconvinced.

One time I went downtown for an eye doctor appointment. I wore my contacts, but figured I should bring my glasses with me, just in case. It turned out that my glasses had no interest in going downtown. They wanted to go to Pittsburg/Bay Point, where the BART line ended. Good-bye, glasses.

SNAP! Went the attractive Fossil glasses.

Two days ago, the Jawa and I went downtown to see "The Simpsons Movie," which he loved. The lights went up. We were surrounded by geeks, which is something I have to say I've always suspected about "The Simpsons."

I've never heard my Yu-Gi-Oh-loving son laugh that hard at a movie. What that says about his demographic, I do not know, or will not admit.

On the way out, as the Jawa argued non-stop about doing anything that strayed from his personal agenda, we ducked into Marshall's, where I bought a butt-ugly pair of sunglasses made by Champion, who also make workout gear that is not nearly as cool as UnderArmour, Nike or Adidas stuff. I have lots of it.

So I figured the sunglasses would match. Also, they were $7.99, and I kind of got a kick out of the fact that the Jawa was pretending to show interest in the whole project, not realizing how very obvious it was that he just wanted to speed things up.

I lie. He actually did like the reflective blue lenses. Had I realized that they had reflective blue lenses, I would've put them back on the rack. But then I would have had a whole new bag of problems, namely I would have been up to my eyeballs in impatient, sardonic Jawa.

It didn't really matter, though, because that particular pair of sunglasses erupted above my left ear the next day. Their timing was magnificent. Having spent an hour chasing Shack around the beach at Crissy Field while the completely oblivious Jawa built sand castles, I was already reaching a point of unattractive frustration when I tossed by backpack (yes, that backpack; I have not been able to give it up yet)in the passenger seat. Of course, its entire contents came spilling out. In my disgust, I grabbed a bag of pretzels that I'd been hoping to eat but found difficult on the beach because this stupid dog got in my face and its owner did nothing but chuckle, "Oh, I guess he wants some of your food!"

The bag was upside down. Despite Glad's excellent zip-lock design, the bag was also open. The pretzels somehow filtered out of my hand and down to the very obnoxious space between the driver's seat and the console, where they joined about $5.80 in change that I have dropped down there.

"YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!" I yelled, completely freaking out the Jawa, who assumed he was in trouble (again). As he braced himself for what he figured would be the inevitable pointed lecture, I jammed my hand into the space between the seat and the console. Sweating, I managed to get three or four of the pretzels. I ripped my glasses off to wipe off the sweat, leaving half of the left earpiece still attached to my ear.

This, I explained to the Jawa, who'd shown an interest in how business works, made these $7.99 sunglasses a much worse value than the $470 ones. You got it: their per-day cost was $7.99.

This morning, our first stop on the way to Raging Waters (we have season's passes) was Sports Authority, where I have bought several pairs of cheap sunglasses that have not blown up on my face. We settled on a nice $20 pair of "Boarders" and happily continued on our way to San Jose.

The second water slide we went on was unintimidating: just a small slide into a deep pool, followed by a faux-rapids float down a river. The Jawa went first. WHOOSH! Then I went, being careful to hold in my stomach but still unsatisfied with the results.

WHOOSH! Except I fell off my innertube, surfaced, and nervously tried to laugh it off. Then I realized my sunglasses were gone.

This was a new record. Two hours for $20. And I actually liked these sunglasses. What would Sandra Bullock say? Just the other day she'd warmed to the idea of me getting nice non-perscription sunglasses "after (you) get a job." Now she'd probably deny me any sunglasses, or limit my sunglass purchases to the sad circular racks at Walgreens.

I thrashed around for awhile, then stood in the water, reaching down blindly with my hands. Up the hill, the line had stopped. They were waiting for me. Embarassed, I moved on. "You can come back when the park closes," said the bored lifeguard, who'd witnessed the whole thing.

The sun is cruel. We wear sunblock to limit our exposure. When you've been wearing sunglasses for seemingly ever, suddenly spending 5 hours sunglassless is downright brutal. And every half-hour or so, I would think, "Oh, I'll find them. They're not gone." I checked back where I'd lost them. No dice. They were churning around at the bottom of that first hill, I knew it.

Funny thing is that when you're walking around shirtless and self-conscious, one of only a few middle-aged dads at the water park on an August Monday, a good pair of wraparound sunglasses can be almost as good as a shirt. Stripped of not only my shirt but also my shades, I was a pathetic figure, lacking even a cursory nod towards cool. All I had going for me was my proximity to and connection with this gorgeous child, so I made sure to never be more than 5 feet from him, which was good, because otherwise he'd talk the ear off of whomever was 5 feet from him.

Some guys can pull off fat and shirtless. There is a certain kind of guy whose heft can even look menacing. Give him the right facial hair -- AND THE RIGHT SUNGLASSES -- and you've got a guy you don't want to mess with.

That's not me. I'm more of a "boy, that guy looks uncomfortable, like his skin is too tight," kind of fat guy.

Today, as I stood in line for "White Lightning" behind a trio of negative body fat teenage guys, I vowed, for only the 5,807th time in my life, to get in shape, once and for all.

At five-thirty, I had a quandary. Though I'd enjoyed the water park immensely, I was tired of being wet. I sat on the edge of a pool (self-consciously) while the Jawa hurtled off of this short concrete slide again and again. The park was to be open for another half-hour, but I was ready to go. But if I waited for the park to close, I knew they'd find my sunglasses. I decided to take one more trip to the lost and found, and search their box of sunglasses.

And there they were.

I think. The Jawa later inserted a variable by asking, "How are you sure they're yours? You only had them for an hour. Do you remember what they looked like?"

Do you realize that you could just go up to any lost and found, look at their sunglasses and choose a pair you like? I do, now.

This pair of sunglasses is back, so it is a happy ending. Maybe this pair will be a pair for the ages. Maybe I will wear them to the Jawa's high school graduation. They will go nicely with the size 32 pants I promise you I will also be wearing.

200 Posts; is Anybody out There?

2007-08-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

This is post #200, unique also in that it is my second post of the day. Sandra Bullock is in Seattle, the Jawa is asleep and I'm surfing MySpace music and watching "What Not to Wear."

I need to get more serious.

But before I do, let me share with you another moment of parental failure. This afternoon, the Jawa and I were hurtling down 101 toward South San Francisco. We were on our way to pick up S. Bullock, then take her to the airport.

Our Jawa is ten years old, and even though yesterday -- when I mentioned to him that the 10-year-old babes at the Mill Valley dog park might peak the interest of some of his friends -- he responded, "What do you mean," with absolute beautiful innocent confusion, he is still far past the clueless toddler phase.

Which explains the following conversation:

Me: (grumbling about the incompetence of other drivers)

Jawa: Dad? How come some guys' weiners get stiff when they're embarassed?

Me: Huh?

Jawa: You know. When you're embarassed, your weiner gets stiff. Sometimes in the shower, too.

Me: Uhhh...

Everyone wants me to be entertainingly embarassed at times like this. I am known for my preference that the human body be filled with nougat instead of organs.

However.

I pride myself on the open communication that exists between my Jawa and myself. No topic is off-limits, and every question is treated with respect. That is, until I suddenly and completely run out of patience, usually after answering a series of questions about roller coasters and/or theme parks.

Me: Does that happen to you?

Jawa: Yes.

Me: When you're embarassed.

Jawa: Yes. Why does it happen?

Amazingly, driving a car and catching a fish requires a license. Parenting does not. I take this stuff pretty seriously, but I was caught completely off-guard by this one. That doesn't mean that, once I caught my breath, I didn't devote myself to giving him the best possible answer to his question.

Me: Well, biologically, this means that blood is running down into your, uh, penis. This makes it stiff.

Jawa: (Nodding) But why?

Me: This will all make sense to you in the future. As you get older, it'll seem less weird. And you might find that it happens when you see a girl you like.

Jawa: (very long pause) Huh? What do you mean?

Me: I have no idea. Different things will make it happen. You know, those guys have a mind of their own!

Failure. Utter failure. The first time we had a conversation about this particular body part, I came through like a champ, sticking to biology and closing with, "You're going to hear a lot of things about your pee-pee. Why don't you run them by me, and I'll let you know what's what."

This time, caught completely unawares, I dropped the ball so badly that he changed the subject. "I don't like talking about body stuff," he said. "I grosses me out."

I figure that sixty-second conversation will eventually cost me around $700 in therapy sessions some day.

I told Sandra Bullock, who said, "You've got to stick to biology! Explain that he'll get some thoughts that make the blood rush to his penis!"

Sitting here, surfing MySpace music, looking for some new stuff to listen to, I came across the second acts of all the people I used to know in Seattle in the 90s. Tired of writing for 10 cents a word and a spot on the guest list, I ditched the world of struggling musicians in favor of twice-a-year Banana Republic shopping sprees and bad jobs in downtown high-rises. They kept on plugging away.

So while I sit here, fingers crossed that someone will hire me to do something, anything, having something to do with something I'm good at, these guys all crank out album after barely-selling album, or collages, paintings and designs. They get jobs booking bands into nightclubs.

Well, I was about to go on a self-loathing rant about how Rusty Willoughby spends all his time playing music and painting, and I spent all my time looking at Rusty Willoughby's website and thinking, "Well, but for a few breaks, I'm just like him," when the Jawa tottered out of his room, rubbing his eyes, and said, "I had a bad dream that the world ended."

Much easier than our earlier conversation. All I had to do was say, "It was just a dream. Everything is okay," then walk him back to his bedroom and lie next to him until he fell asleep.

All of which, naturally, makes me feel like a punk for spending the past two hours wishing I was Rusty Willoughby.

As far as I can tell, Rusty Willoughby has no Jawa, no absent Sandra Bullock, no reason to have to explain the functions of male anatomy in childlike terms, no power to make the world seem safe after a bad dream.

I could say it puts it all in perspective, but I still think I should find something better to do with my days than surf the web and do laundry.

Poker Night

2007-08-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

Why do all of these guys love so much to play poker? You put me in a room of guys who like each other, like to talk to each other, like to drink beer and eat salty snacks, why do you also need a distraction that will eventually cost me money?

Oh Yes, it costs me money. And that's supposed to bother me, I know, as I am sure each dollar lost costs me additional silent treatment time from S. Bullock. Since I don't actually enjoy playing poker, and have lost all of my money each time I've played, I've taught myself to think of the $40 buy-in as the cost of hanging out, drinking beer and eating popcorn.

Why now? Why do I finally play poker after 42 years of non-interest? Even when Ken Dunque asked me to play, I showed up but did not play. Instead, I hung around the table and heckled a bunch of guys I didn't know, endearing me to them forever. I was not invited back.

But now. A bunch of Brandeis dads I don't know very well -- I know their wives, of course, because I am a Nancy Boy with no job who hangs out with the other housewives ... oh, sorry ... "stay-at-home-moms" every day at our kids' school -- guys I wanted to hang around with, some Sun Devils, Mr. Confidence and a few other guys, asked me if I wanted to play.

And so, finally, I acquiesed. I showed up with my six-pack a month ago, sat down and lost all my money. But it took four hours, so it was okay. I figured I paid $10 an hour, which works out okay for me. I haven't yet done the calculations necessary to figure in the ancillary costs, i.e. the emotional cost of coming home and telling S. Bullock that not only do I have no income but I just dropped the cost of one saxophone lesson so I could make new friends.

But am I capable of making new friends? I've got to wonder.

Last night I returned to the Sun Devils' house for some more poker. Problem is, the one time in my life that I played poker was when I was on the baseball team at Saddleback College in 1983, and all the baseball players would play poker at lunch in the cafeteria. We played poker, but really it was just an excuse to heckle each other. That's how ballplayers do it.

Not to mention that I'm a dork who can't keep his mouth shut. So as the evening goes along I realize that I'm hearing my voice more and more, and though I'd say that at least 45% of what I say is pretty funny, that leaves a solid 55% open for interpretation. And I don't really know these guys all that well. Remember that.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm kind of strange, too?

Thank heavens for Mr. Fun, who I'd sort of figured as a guy who'd find everything hilarious, even a deconstruction of the eerie yet empowering effect that powerful bathroom lighting can have on the simple act of urinating. Even when my pop culture references became too marginal for anyone to grab onto ("What popular rapper's real name is the same as a character on a much-beloved TV show from our Junior High School years?"), Mr. Fun pretended like he not only got it, but found it hilarious.

Mr. Fun's courtesy laugh cannot be beat.

The truly interesting thing about a bunch of guys playing poker is that the game, the setting, the entire scene (or "gestalt," as a particularly bad boss I had once said) is a litmus test for how each of us interprets guy-ness, manliness, being male and grown-up. In this case, we're Jewish guys, hyper-educated guys (three JDs around the table, only one still a lawyer), guys proudly waving our San Francisco sensitivity around like a white flag of masculine surrender.

So when we lampoon our absent wives, it comes with hidden air quotes. Parady is the unspoken parameter within which we play. We do NOT discuss the cans on that bimbo, the time we got in that guy's face because he insulted our friend, and I have no idea which, if any, of these guys can burp the alphabet.

Good or bad? I have no idea. Completely out of place thirty years ago? Probably. It may be just because I don't know any of these guys well enough to know if any of them can burp the alphabet, or what their old bar stories involve.

What do I know? I'm the interloper who can't shut up, erratically careening between carefully keeping his mouth shut during a discussion of some other (absent) guy's politics, and then occasionally blurting out some weirdly inappropriate observation about the song on the radio. I mean, I've hung out with these guys' wives much more than I've hung out with them.

Maybe the glacier is moving, however slowly, and I'm heading toward a place where I can hang out with guys in something more than meta fashion. If only I can learn to keep my mouth shut.

I really wanted to chime in about that guy's politics. And the rapper 50 Cent's real name is Curtis Jackson, same as the guy in "The White Shadow" who got shot at the liquor store right before the team went to the city finals.

Monkey Suit

2007-08-08T23:25:00.000-07:00

Eventually, I would find the trend -- in which Sandra Bullock does the bills Sunday night and then does not speak to me until Wednesday -- unnerving. And eventually, though I'd rather not, I would begin looking for ... a (gasp) job.

I've said before that one of my least favorite things is when people act as if my underemployed state is part of a massive con job I'm pulling, wink-wink. Trust me; it's not by design. But I also say that, were money no object, I'd probably be fine writing my little magazine articles, covering high school sports for the San Francisco Examiner, and pretending that a really important novel and or screenplay was lurking just beneath the surface.

Given that money is not just an object, but, for the sadly overextended residents of San Francisco, the only object, the above option does not exist. I would like my wife to speak to me more than 4 days per week. And so, I have been looking for a job.

The possibility of a job dropped down onto me from thin air a few weeks ago, when my friend the Drama Queen, who is battling illness, took a leave of absence from her job, which involves "technical editing." She told her boss who I was, I called her boss, and so it is that I find myself trotting down Montgomery Street, completely overdressed and sweating, at 3:06 this afternoon.

Is it appropriate to wear a tie to an interview in the post-dotcom age? Sandra Bullock claims so. I don't think so. Given our relative career arcs, I go with the tie. Which is now flapping in the wind.

Bullock tells me to go with my best -- the green pants, light blue shirt and subtly plaid jacket I bought for Uncle Sam's wedding. Uncle Sam now has a 2-year-old. I have the same dress-up outfit. On a positive note, the pants still fit.

But that doesn't make me feel any less like a fraud as I lope down Diamond Street on the way to BART. For all anyone knows, I am a regular 42-year-old guy on his way back to work after ... lunch? The iPod I have on could be playing REO Speedwagon or some other 1980s hits. The bag I carry could contain important documents, not three copies of my resume, and the Timbuk2 bag itself could have been bought at a store, or given to me as a gift, not tossed my way by an electrician who'd gotten a load of them after doing some work at the bag factory.

I pass my reflection in a window: bald guy, sport coat, slacks, black shoes. iPod. Squinting, because my cheap sunglasses broke over the weekend.

I'm not listening to REO Speedwagon. I'm listening to Wilco, which relaxes me completely, so much that as I saunter up Montgomery Street, to the address I got from the company's web site, I feel as though I'm the protagonist of a music video, dressed like everyone else but really so very special, possessor of truths and emotions of great depth.

In some ways, I realize, I miss the walk from BART through downtown to some sort of job. It, along with Friday happy hours and the frozen yogurt place in the alleyway, was my favorite part of having a job, back when I did things like have a job.

Imagine my delight when I emerged from the fog and realized that my potential new place of business was on the 26th floor of the Transamerica Tower. How iconic!

Here's where the running and sweating begins.

The URS Corporation has three San Francisco offices. 600 Montgomery is the Global Headquarters. Technical Editing does not take place at the global HQ. 2:58. I don't even know where 221 Main Street is.

Have you ever run down a crowded city street, holding your arm out as if to hail a taxi that you cannot afford? Have you done it in 4-year-old dress-up clothes, sweating, an aged tie flapping from around your neck? Have you done it panicked, convinced that you have blown an interview for a job that seemed a slam-dunk? And you think, "Man, I've screwed up again. How many days of silence will follow this one?"

I have.

But the business world is so strange. Thanks to my cool new phone, I found out where 221 Main Street was, and arrived there at 3:16, drenched in sweat. I figured I was far from the first interviewee to make this mistake, but still would have preferred to show up on time, unsweaty. I'd prepared, after all, to approach this interveiw as if I were a very experienced, very busy writer/editor who'd deigned to look into this job only because my friend the Drama Queen needed someone to fill in. Well. That's out the window when you're disheveled and late. And missing your tie, which you ripped off and stuffed into your jacket pocket in a fit of anger two blocks away.

Now the truth is, I really need this job. I want my wife to speak to me. But I would have liked to at least pretend like I can pick and choose.

Of course, I showed up and the guy interviewing me had no idea I was late. And he wasn't listening when I mentioned that I'd gone to the wrong building. All he knew was that I'd shown up totally disheveled and sweaty, which didn't seem all that unsettling to him anyway.

I swear, the logic of the business world completely eludes me, almost as much as the aptitude for using power tools.

The interview itself went well, I think. It was pretty brief and pretty light, and he said I was "obviously very qualified," which I won't take as a comment on his fitness as a manager. He had a cool English accent and a ton of pictures of his kids on his office walls, and when the HR lady asked how I knew the Drama Queen, he commented, "They have the same parole officer." Very droll, which I like.

So cross your fingers. I need some income, now.

Then I limped home. The dress shoes I was wearing gave me blisters. Everyone who saw me on BART could assume that I was coming home from a long, rewarding day at work all they wanted. I just wanted to get into some shorts and a t-shirt, which I did effectively enough that my neighbor the Poet With the 40-inch Vertical commented, "You're looking kind of punky today," when I passed him on the way down to the grocery store.

This afternoon I mentioned to the Jawa that S. Bullock would be coming home early because I had a job interview. "A job interview?" he said. "Allright!" I guess the heart-warming father-son bonding period is drawing to a close.

Lets hope that I soon have a job. Some kind of job. Not one that hurts my square peg self so badly that I have to write cryptic messages on people's white boards or perform strange dances in the stairwells when no one's looking.

Don't laugh. It's happened before.

But I guess no matter how much time I spend reading the blogs of 25-year-old would-be filmmakers and their cool, counterculture friends, it won't change the basic fact that I am a 42-year-old father and husband with a butt-kickingly huge mortgage, who enjoys being a part of the mainstream enough to buy a Volvo the first chance he got. I spent my bohemian days playing volleyball, waiting tables and looking like a writer. The option to hang out with people who were actually sacrificing so they could take their shot at creating something cool was always there, but I chose to spend my time sitting on the fence, trying to sound convincing, instead.

Give me a job, any job, is a just reward for the decisions I've made.

Jawas Caught in the Seam

2007-08-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

I am now the parent of a ten-year-old boy, with plenty of time to reflect on that as the Jawa and I lounge about in the rubble of his birthday weekend.

Ten -- at least as defined by pop culture mores of 2007 -- is a strange age. I was reminded of this last week, when I ran out to do some supplemental birthday shopping. Gone, thankfully, are the $75 lumps of plastic that littered his bedroom from ages 2-8. But what takes their place?

The Jawa has been saving his virtual allowance (it exists as a column of numerals on a spreadsheet, available for withdrawal on demand) for months. At first, he was saving for his own movie camera. Then he moved on to an iPod. Now, with the birthday finally here, he's changed to a Nintendo Wii. What he needed from us, then, wasn't more Legos; he needed cash. Which, naturally and exhaustively, is something available in very short supply around here.

Even though he would be receiving a big fat check in his birthday card, I felt badly that the Jawa would have nothing to open on the actual day of his birthday, so I ran out to Borders and grabbed him a requested CD (Green Day) and a Yu-Gi-Oh book, then sidled over to the greeting card area.

The Green Day CD has Tipper Gore PMRC sticker on it, warning us of objectionable language and/or subject matter contained within. It's been several years since I heard the first of the Jawa's friends blow out some objectionable language while hanging from a rope at Rachel's gymnastics birthday party (and I'll never tell who it was). When I was in fourth grade, Chris Graham cranked out swear words with the best of them, and in fact, Barry Colmery and I were considered freaks because we refused to join in.

So frankly, I don't really care what comes flying out of their mouths, as long as the adults don't have to hear it. Controversial, yes, but that's my stand.

But what kind of card do you buy a 10-year-old, to accompany his Green Day CD and Yu-Gi-Oh graphic novel?

Seems like the "You're 10!" card with the picture of the little kid in a baseball uniform would be a relic of a simpler age. Likewise, however, the campy 1950s photo of a woman happily presenting a martini to her man strikes me as somewhat mature for a 10-year-old Jawa.

I settled on a card with a color photo of a goofy-looking dog. The dog was wearing a grille -- one of his teeth had a diamond embedded in it. Inside, the card said, "DOES THIS MAKE ME LOOK PHAT?" Hopefully, I struck the right balance of little boy and pre-teen.

Ten has become in-between, neither here (childhood) nor there (adolescence). I'm too old to remember if it was always like that.

I drew the short straw and got the car full of boys for the drive to Waterworld in Concord. Four of 'em -- The Shaman, the Jawa, Tony Hawk and cousin Count Burpalot --insisted that we listen to the new Green Day CD at maximum volume (adolescence), but self-censored the swearing when singing along to the songs (childhood). Much of their humor centered around the innate hilariousness that comes from having a penis (adolescence ... er, adulthood), and yet they all fell into a chastened silence when I told them that they MUST RESPECT people who are different from them, like, say gay people, who may not want "gay" to stand in as an adjective also meaning "stupid," "ridiculous," or "embarassing."

And Tony Hawk's dad won't let him bleach his hair white.

They are good jawas, caught in the seam that follows Tonka trucks and precedes "Dad, can I borrow the car?" We spent 6 hours at Waterworld, where only the Jawa was brave enough to go on the halfpipe ride and only Tony Hawk was brave enough to chat up the legions of 10-year-old girls also at the park. (Note to the Man About Town: your son is straight. And unlike the Shaman, who prefers to furtively check out the already-developed teenage babes as they stream by, Hawk lives in a world of reality; forget untouchable older women, man, there's a boatload of pre-adolescent babes out there, just waiting for you to glance over from your two-man raft and say, "And how are YOU doing?")

There were stretches where Sandra Bullock, Noodles' Mom and I would sit on our towels, aged, insignificant and ineligible, watching as the jawas wrestled with each other in the wave pool.

Four years ago, I realized with bittersweet clarity that I was no longer required to play a central role in playdates. Overnight, I'd gone from fun provider to caterer. Four years later, even that role is diminished. Now they just want money, so they can go buy their food themselves.

Fortunately, Holden Caulfield was right: there is no better job than to be the Catcher in the Rye. You stand on the perimeter of the action, making sure that no kid goes over the edge. They get to have their fun, take their chances, succeed or fail, knowing that if they get too close, we'll be there to scoop them up. I have no idea how long it will be before they take that responsibility from us, so I'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts. Too bad it doesn't pay.

Desert Dreams ... and Nightmares

2007-07-29T19:49:00.001-07:00

Someday, Noodles' Mom will be free of the Mojave Desert, and someday, Sandra Bullock's layabout husband will be a major wage earner, capable of whisking his family away for exotic vacations every summer.

Until one or both of those days arrive, the Jawa and I will define our summer vacation as a week at Edwards Air Force Base, deep in the evil, sandy heart of the Mojave, 25 miles from the nearest town.

We have been here since last Saturday, and will return home to San Francisco -- and its soothing, oft-maligned by many but not me 65 degree fogginess -- tomorrow.

Noodles' Mom does a good job of keeping everyone busy normally, but this time both Noodles and Count Burpalot were laid low with "walking ammonia," limiting our entertainment options. For example, there were no visits to the local (that is, Air Force-sponsored and 25 miles from the next closest) swimming pool. Instead, in a moment of sheer genius, Noodles' Mom went to the "BX" and bought a ten dollar swimming pool, which the suddenly oversized and teetering on the edge of adolescence children splashed in happily for hours.

Truly enjoying this trip has been Shack. Free of his concrete jungle of a yard, he's spent hours in the heat, running roughshod through my sister's huge backyard. Seriously. When he gets home, he's going to feel very ripped off.

Me, I blasted my way through about a half-dozen books in a week, stayed up later than everyone else and slept through breakfast. Some nights, lying in my neice's bed with the Jawa, four thousand pictures of horses looking down at us, I'd put down whatever book I was blazing through and watch my son sleep.

I know that the days of it seeming very cute for the father-son team to share a bed are dwindling. Before long it'll seem kind of gross, just two hairy guys with the same DNA squished into a bed.

But for now, I can look over and watch him lie there and look like a miniature, male version of our own Sandra Bullock, who at this very moment is applying another coat of "Brown Bag"-colored paint to the new archway.

Unfortunately, once you get past the waning days of cuteness, sharing a bed with my Jawa is no pleasure cruise. The child is a whirling dervish, rolling around restlessly, wrapping himself up in the covers, sweating badly enough (and sleeping deeply enough) that I can amuse myself for quite some time by running my hands through his hair until it stands up, Heat Miser-style, or fans out in the manner of the look favored by Cure frontman Robert Smith.

Today I was driving through the desert, trying to convince myself that all of those Gram Parsons, desert-loving, headband-wearing or ATV-driving types aren't insane. As I drove, I passed the occasional beat-up gate with a sign saying stuff like "Caliente Ranch," indicating that there are people for whom the great dream is to chuck it all, buy some land (from Van Ness Brokers' Mimi Song, perhaps? Her name dominates a stretch of the Palmdale Highway outside of Llano) and wake up to peace, quiet, Road Runners and the sun's unforgiving rays.

Good on them, I guess, but I still think they're nuts. Even the mis-named town of Lake Los Angeles, with its run-down shacks and weird, giant piles of rocks peaked my interest only in that it looked like the kind of place you'd use as a setting in a story about two people who've been so beat up by the world that they think they no longer have any chance at love.

Even weirder: I was driving down Avenue O, twenty miles from anything, and every mile or so I'd see someone walking. Didn't matter what age -- young, old, kids, adults -- people walking. Run down, messed-up, beat all to pieces. Walking down a desert road, miles from anywhere.

And a thought about these desert communities -- Victorville, Palmdale, Hesperia, Lancaster -- so let me think about this: I'm going to go home tomorrow and duck down while Prius drivers tsk tsk me for driving a big heavy car. Meanwhile, they're building thousands of new houses in Victorville, and there's no water there.

Someday, hopefully soon, we will spend our summer vacation at a butt-kicking beach house somewhere, either in California or one of the mysterious (to me, anyway) beaches of the Atlantic Coast, with my sister and her family. No one will worry about going into bankruptcy or getting their plans crushed by the United States Air Force. Everyone, in other words, will be happy.

Except Shack, who's really going to miss this huge backyard.

An Icon Reaches the End of the Road

2007-07-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

One bright spot in this summer of discontent has been the time I've spent with my Jawa. He had camp -- out in the lush wonderland that is Marin County -- Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, but he was home today, leaving me wondering how to fill the daylight hours without a) watching lots of Cartoon Network, or b) arguing with each other. Given our limited resources, naturally I had only a few options to work with.

I chose to go to the San Francisco Zoo. As zoos go, it's pretty lame and occasionally cruel, but it's the only zoo we've got, and we're members, so it costs nothing to go. Off we went.

Being a committed and consciencious parent, the kind who would never let his kid go off into a wave pool unsupervised, I packed water, fruit and sweatshirts into my backpack.

Now let me give you a little background on this backpack. Bought for $19.99 the day after Mark's wedding (in 1999), the small, sturdy, outrageously unhip pack has served as a sports bag, an overnight bag, a book bag and outright luggage. It has travelled by air, both as a carry-on and as checked luggage. It has carried hundreds of ounces of bottled water at once, then sat on my back as if light as a feather. It has survived a sea change of styles, in which one went from carrying it slung over one shoulder to wearing it over both. I prefer both, myself. It has even outlasted Mark's marriage, I'm sad to say.

And now, it is gone. Dead. Broken like so many pairs of $15.99 sunglasses.

It was a day like any other, and the backpack's responsibilities were quite familiar. The Jawa and I left the house en route to Steve & Kate's camp in Mill Valley, along with the Shamen and 400 Yu-Gi-Oh cards. In the backpack were two white workout towels, a bottle of water, my lock, my workout gloves, an iPod and my wallet. Plus a Blistex and some change (for the newspaper).

I dropped the kids off at camp, marvelled at the differences between San Francisco and Mill Valley, navigated the parking lot full of Volvos much like my own, then continued out to Larkspur to the gym.

It went like this for another 90 minutes, me in the gym, secure in the thought that my reliable, trusted backpack was doing its job without complaint, carrying things, being thrown into a locker, slammed up against the locker walls, hung on a hook, just like it has been hundreds of times before.

But this time, when I went to get my stuff after the workout, something was different: when I unzipped the small pocket in the back, the zipper came off in my hand.

No more backpack.

Lets be fair, here. It wasn't even a Jansport. It was some off-brand. Everytime I wore it, I'm sure people wondered why I didn't just pony up for the Jansport. Or maybe they wondered why I was stuck in 1999, backpack-wise, when there had been so many improvements in backpack technology since. I liked my backpack. No, I loved my backpack. It was a silent, supportive partner in so many of my pursuits.

I tried to go on like nothing was wrong. "The pocket is pretty secure," I thought to myself, "Lets give it a shot."

Three strides and my iPod came crashing out onto the floor. Two more and there went some change. The backpack was trying, but there was no way to ignore the truth: it had run its course.

I am left with a large hole in my life.

A few years ago, feeling insecure and wanting to bring my look more up-to-date, I bought a new backpack at Old Navy. Yellow and having seemingly hundreds of straps, it clung closely to my back, sleek and stylish, but not very practical. For one, it didn't zip down the sides like my old backpack. It had a lid that snapped down, instead. Instead of unzipping to reveal everything I'd placed inside, this backpack required that I reach blindly inside, counting on fate and naked hope to retrieve whatever I wanted.

The back sipper pocket is too narrow. I put my wallet and iPod in there and it bulges out weirdly. And there're these two weird metal clip things on it. They don't clip to anything. They just hang there. It's a lousy design, and yet it cost the same $19.99 as my faux-Jansport.

But I have no choice. If Sandra Bullock must turn in her Acura and be doomed to the Genentech shuttle, I will suffer my uncomfortable fate. I will wear the yellow backpack. I will reach blindly inside for my towels and my water bottle. I will listen to the random clanking of the two metal pieces that attach to nothing.

Today I tried again to wear the old backpack, to the zoo. I put nothing in the broken pocket. Instead, I put everything in the large pocket, which made for some sweaty moments as I reached in, looking for my sunglasses amidst the water bottles and sweatshirts. It put an edge onto my day, but when you're walking around a zoo, holding hands with your nine-year-old son, how big of an edge can it be?

A Stain on My Day

2007-07-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Not much bothers me as much as when people assume that my "lifestyle" is the result of some kind of well-planned scam, that all of the poor career decisions I've made are a smokescreen. In their eyes, I am a genius of slack, somehow having convinced this poor, hardworking woman to finance my educational whimsies, then trudge off to work while I sit at home, eating malted milk balls and watching TV.

This simply is not so. I've gotten where I am today via 20 years of random screw-ups, short-sighted thinking and a breathtaking inability to fit my square pegged-self into the conveniently round holes of society. Don't let the polo shirt fool you; I am one seriously out-of-sync guy.

And lest you think that my days stretch out before me as endless fun, consider that the complications of my days, while seemingly trivial, have no less impact on my ability to enjoy myself than an unreasonable boss or client does yours.

Consider today's conundrum: I woke up feeling like someone had just slammed me in the jaw with a 2 x 4, drove the Jawa to Discovery Science camp (this week is one of the three this summer in which he has an actual planned activity), went to the gym, drove home and ... hmm ... seems to be a very unusual smell in the house.

It hit me immediately after opening the door. Shack stood there, hanging his ridiculously giganticly-eared head in shame. I looked around and found nothing. But ... that ... smell. It was not good, not the way I hope our house usually smells.

"I'll find it eventually," I thought jauntily, then continued into the bedroom to separate laundry.

It was while hauling the laundry basket downstairs that I found it. Not a small pool of urine, or a sad, but manageable pile of vomit. No, what began yesterday as a hint -- while at the dog park, the Jawa mentioned that "Shack's poo has the consistency of pudding," thus guaranteeing that we would be eating no pudding for the immediate future -- now sat before me in colorful, malodorous symptomatic form: Shack is not feeling well.

I'm sure you've heard people describe how, during an auto accident or other traumatic event, time seems to slow down. Consider finding a giant stack of dog diarhea parked next to the dining room table a traumatic event. Time slowed down. In fact, I had enough time to consider whether I had any chance of ignoring the problem, before admitting that I would have to do something about it.

Quickly coming to my sense, I thought, "Carpet cleaner." But we had none. So I grabbed what I could with two paper towels, then sprinted down the front steps to the garbage can, making noises only decipherable by zealots who handle snakes for fun. This took care of the lion's share of the problem, but left an indelible stain on our very tired and on its last legs dining room rug.

Consider our dining room, and my role in its present state. Even if you take away Shack's attention-grabbing efforts, the room is no show-stopper. We have a formica table that was really cool when we bought it for $99 in 1995, thinking that it'd be hip and retro and provide a bridge until we could afford a real dining room table. Twelve years later, it's still here.

As is the tired old blue rug, dotted with small keepsakes from various meals the Jawa has eaten since we bought it, in 2000. Sandra Bullock has been planning our dining room makeover since 2002. We have decided on at least 5 dining room tables and a half-dozen rugs. And yet, when it came time for Shack to cut loose, he knew that if he went into the dining room, we would care that much, because we still have the same post-collegiate, stained, falling-apart setup in there that we've had since moving to San Francisco. If this is a con I'm running, it's a particularly cruel one.

Still no carpet cleaner. I would have to improvise.

Can you use Comet on a rug? The label says "no." Windex? Lysol? No, and no. I remembered that my mother kept a large bottle of something called "Simple Green" around, so I drove to the grocery store and bought some, then sprayed about half the bottle on the stain. This left me with a wider, more deeply ingrained stain.

Downstairs I found some Baking Soda stuff. I poured it on the stain. 30 minutes later, the stain was still there, but now at least it smelled like Baking Soda instead of Shack's intestinal distress.

Meanwhile, Shack was lying around, waiting to get yelled at. No way. This was my fault, for leaving him inside while I went to work out.

My options seemingly exhausted, I decided that the only thing to do was to flip the rug over. So I moved the table and chairs from the rug, pausing twice to straighten out chair legs that were collapsing inward on themselves. Shack decided that now as a good time to check and see if I was still angry with him, so he planted himself in the middle of the rug.

Stupid rug. Just as bad on the other side.

Seriously, this took about a half hour. Me flipping the rug around, then trying to match it to the pad underneath, Shack running from spot to spot on the rug, all the while trying to make sure that at least two of his legs remained on its surface. And after all that, I decided to just flip it back over. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

You can't accuse me of slacking on this one. By lunch I'd tried three cleaners and the other side of the rug. And the stain remained as stubbornly obvious as it had been the first time I saw it.

What I needed was that little cat the the Cat in the Hat keeps under his lid, the one that has the thing called VROOM. Wipe that stain off the earth, shovel the snow and put everything back in place before mom gets home, or in my case, before the Jawa returns from camp. Shoot.

Finally, I found something downstairs, something I'd overlooked. A bottle of something called "Kids and Pets." You pour it out, onto the stain, let it sit there, and, in a non-toxic fashion, it lifts the stain away. You blot at it with a clean towel. If it doesn't work the first time, you repeat steps 2 through 4.

If it doesn't work the second time, you pour a half-gallon of it onto the stain, go away for two hours, then scrub it with a wire brush.

At this point, I began to notice that the stain had become part of the weave of the rug. It was now difficult to ascertain where the rug ended and the stain began. Taking a short moment to remind myself what this stain was comprised of, I gagged, turned away, and poured more "Kids and Pets" onto the affected area.

As of right now, 8:10 pm, the stain stands. It is part of a larger wet area made up of 70% "Kids and Pets," 15% Simple Green, 10% Baking Soda and 5% water. Sandra Bullock just shrugged her shoulders and said, "I think we should just order that new rug now."

Simple as that!

Sprint PCS Owns Me

2007-07-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

I am fortunate enough to serve two genetic masters. Both were on display Tuesday, to the everlasting pleasure of the first of three Sprint PCS customer service clerks I spoke to.

I speak for my entire family when I say that we have hated Sprint PCS almost from the moment we signed our first contract, back in 2000. Seven years of sketchy billing, incompetent customer service, endless unrecorded phone calls followed by mysterious bills, plus their complete inaction in a case of identity theft, which resulted in a very dark spot on our credit, which may still be there, despite their repeated reassurances that the "incident" has been resolved.

So why, you ask, did we put up with Sprint for seven years? At first, because it's just easier to swallow the rage than to get new phone numbers; then, when it became possible to "port" your phone numbers, we were imprisoned by our 2-year servicea agreement. Thanks to Genentech and Verizon, we entered June on the brink of freedom from the nefarious forces at Sprint PCS. All we had to do was untangle ourselves.

Not so fast, former wearer of an impressive Jewfro: despite the apparent ease of switching our phone numbers to Verizon, and despite Sprint's insistance that our 2-year agreement was up, I found myself spending 90 minutes on the phone (landline) with a friendly Sprint "customer care representative" Tuesday, while the Jawa lurked in the background, learning how to use words like "ludicrous," "unacceptable," and "corporate lackey," words I myself learned in 1987, while eavesdropping on an incensed Peter O'Toole whose engagement ring design had been botched by Shreve's.

The problem, according to the woman whose name I never got, thank God, was that, despite what I'd been told the week before, our agreement was not up until July 16, and so I would have to pay $150 per phone number and, oops! I'd already transferred those numbers, so I guess I owed $300. We still had one line with Sprint (Sandra Bullock's old line, now erased through Genentech largesse), would we like to transfer that one, too? If we wait until July 16, it won't cost $150, but we will ahve to pay for another month of service.

And that earlier call I'd made to Sprint PCS? Never happened.

Somewhere in Arizona, my mother's ears perked up: it was time to fight the power.

Imagine the frustration. Also imagine the freedom. Given that there was essentially no way to avoid being screwed by a company that had screwed me over time and time again, I was free to abuse this woman any way I saw fit. I could shout, use words she'd never understand, say things like, "LET ME FINISH SPEAKING!" and frankly, at the cost of $300 plus a month of Sprint that we'd never use, she owed me at least the chance to vent.

But I went too far, and I don't mean when I told her that I'd just done a Google search on "Sprint sucks" and got 1,800,000 hits. When she kept insisting that I had not called the week before, and that maybe I was the kind of person who'd jump the gun and cancel three phone lines at a cost of $450 less than a month before they were set to expire, I decided that what I needed was for her, this heartless, mindless Sprint PCS she-devil capable only of mimicking the corporate line, to admit that maybe Sprint PCS had screwed up.

If she'd done that, I would have gone away. But she wouldn't. And so it went on and on ... and then she hung up on me.

I wonder if the Jawa could see how close I was to a coronary. Could my mother, now undoubtedly attuned to this disruption in the force, feel the angry, solid mass settling into my stomach. Did she pause while working in the glass lab, and shake her fist toward the heavens? Hung up on by your former wireless provider! The irony!

The Jawa quickly ran into his room, emerging with a note. On it he'd written "Dear Sprint, you suck. We are not paying. You are freaking crap."

My thoughts exactly, but probably more likely evidence that I'd unwittingly commmitted a parenting faux pas during my outrage. Shoot.

Not to late to turn it into a learning opportunity, so I explained to him that there was essentially nothing we could do, and that I was yelling for two reasons. First, because they owed it to me, and second, because as my mother's son, I will NOT be bullied and I will tilt at all the freaking windmills I see fit to tilt at.

"If I was grown up, I'd sue them," explained my litigious son.

"Well, the problem is that they have no record of me calling earlier, and they're a huge monolithic corporation who can destroy my credit. I have to pay them. What I can do is write a letter to the company, to the Better Business Bureau, write in my blog, but honestly, they don't really care. I can't hurt them. They can only hurt me."

In other words, kid, your father, like most, is a paper tiger.

By the time we reached his OT appointment ($100 a week so he can make a rubber band ball to strengthen his fingers and thus ultimately improve his handwriting), I was taking directions from the other half of my genetic soup. I called Sprint back, this time speaking slowly and calmly, like a very reasonable man who has been treated poorly but understands that we need to work together to resolve this problem.

This time, somewhere under the hot Arizona sun, a man in a Reyn Spooner shirt stirred.

"Look," I said, "I understand that you probably don't have to do anything. But the right thing to do would be to waive those charges." I paused, as a reasonable man would do. "It's just the right thing to do," I repeated.

Amazingly, the rep put me on hold for 10 minutes, not 75. And every 3 minutes she broke back in to see if I was doing alright.

Then Melissa, her supervisor, came on and explained that, even though it is in the contract that I would need to pay $150 for each disconnected line, it was wrong of Sprint PCS to not remind me of this. They can waive one of the charges, but not both. Would that be okay?

"That would make me happy," I said. Meanwhile, in Arizona, Dad made his bio-feedback face, which is designed to demonstrate that the person wearing it is calm, in control, and completely unflappable.

After I hung up, I thought about the game Sprint PCS had just played at my expense. For instance, how come Melissa had a record of my June 25 call, but the unnamed she-devil did not? And how come Melissa had clearance to erase one of my charges but not both? What difference did it make? Basically, Sprint had gotten rid of me with as little impact on their end as possible. The she-devil got to hang up on me, and since I couldn't remember her name, she wasn't called out on the carpet for it. They'd already lost me as a customer, and they're getting one more month out of me. Where I woke up Tuesday thinking I owed Sprint nothing, in the end they got an extra $250 out of me.

$250 which I'm sure is needed so much more by Sprint PCS than it is by me. Good job, Melissa and she-devil!

Which leaves me where? Nowhere. Like I told my Jawa, there is nothing I can do, short of spending alot of time and money and at best ending up a human interest story that fills up the last 2 minutes of the evening news. Whoopee. Sprint never cared about me, no more than Verizon now does. Melissa ended our call by saying, "We're sorry to lose a valued customer like you," and I'd hung up before I thought to even say, "Yeah, well I never felt valued."

It's a pretty lousy lesson to learn, re-learn and/or be reminded of. The only good part was enjoying the full effects of both parents as they channeled themselves through me. To my mom, thanks for the awareness to take on a behemoth like Sprint and fight it to the end, never once thinking (until the she-devil hung up on me) that my valient battle would end in total defeat.

To Dad, thanks for giving me the awareness, once I learned that I would not win the battle, to switch gears and lay on the charm. In this case, of course, the charm was a completely hollow and false manipulation on my part -- and exactly what they deserved.

Good to have both options.

Oh, and a plague on Sprint PCS. May your nationwide network crumble like a hunk of bleu cheese left out in the sun while we all dance on your grave, you bloodsuckers.

Hall Tree v. Little Boy

2007-06-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Am I a racist because the groovy Afro-Cuban music at Ambassador Toys made me want to slit my wrists? Everyone else seemed to be enjoying it. It made me long for the furniture store in Everett, Washington, where they played old honky-tonk tunes while we shopped for bunk beds.

Am I a bad father because I didn't check the Jawa's butt for a bruise when he fell off of the hall tree thing in the entry way? I am, but that bonafide was established long before the youngster took his spill, when I made him take two swipes at cleaning the basement, then berated him for breaking the pull-out shelf on the armoire (sp?).

I just wanted a little time to write. But that's not happening. Especially not since he fell off the hall tree.

What is a hall tree? It is an antique thing that looks like a gigantic chair. It sits in our entry way after spending several years trying to fit into the modernist motif of my parents' house and condo. Before that, I think but don't know for sure, it sat somewhere in Aunt Lillian's house in Bangor, Maine. Sandra Bullock cleverly talked my mother into giving it to us, reasoning that it would feel more comfortable amongst our more traditional decor.

What the hall tree does not know is that had it stayed with my parents, it would now be living amidst radically modern things like Joan Miro-inspired rugs and insanely bright primary-colored walls. After all these years, my parents finally got the chance to decorate entirely according to their own tastes, and they made the most of it. The results wound up in the "Style" section of the local Sun City (+ whatever suffix) newspaper.

So you would think that the hall tree would be happy in our house. We tried to make it even more comfortable by hanging old photos of its former owners, my great-grandparents on my mom's side, next to it. But no! It still harbors grudges aimed directly at little boys.

The Jawa fell a split-second after I shouted, "Okay! Now I need to write!" He had a handful of wrapping paper (he was up there trying to reach the wrapping paper in the hall closet) when he fell.

Lately, the Jawa has decided that each and every pain, no matter how small, must be paid tribute with a howl of gut-wrenching sadness. A stubbed toe, a pinch, a trip, all must be followed with an "OOOOOHHHHH! AAAAAHHHH! OOOOWWWW!" as if he were a World Cup participant who'd just been slide tackled.

This time it was different. The screech was real, as were the tears, and the impressive sound of body hitting wood and then floor.

I ran to him and picked all 65 pounds of him up. It seemed serious, until I realized that he was holding his butt. "Okay, okay," I said, "You're fine. Lets lie down for a second." I thought maybe I was being Tony Soprano rescuing his child from the swimming pool.

The Jawa is at an age where extreme pain -- not the theatrical kind -- creates a problem of reaction. What to do? Do you cry or start swearing? Do you go fetal or start throwing things? Just as our earlier birthday present trip raised the question: Legos or a hip-hop CD? Since my Jawa is on the young side, he chose to combine faux-swearing ("CRAP!") with tears, stretching out on the couch in pain and then making the inevitable call to Sandra Bullock, because what are dads good for in times of crisis? You can't beat up a hall tree, though if you throw the house keys at it enough you may chip the varnish.

His day is about to get worse. Now that lifting even the smallest object like, say, a box of markers, "pulls" on his back, how will this afternoon's trip to the dentist play out?

A chance to redeem myself as a father. Which is pretty easy at the dentist. Something about seeing your child prone in a dentist's chair, his eyes and mouth open wide while he nervously taps his feet together erases any rancor you may have built while trying to write a novel, only to be interrupted every 30 seconds by a shirtless 9-year-old full of long, involved schemes of fantasy roller coasters.

This Guy, Jeff

2007-06-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

How strange is it when someone you don't know except by sight completely dominates your day? I found this out yesterday, when Dug's friend Jeff appeared three times in conversation before finally showing up in the flesh at Taqueria Can-Cun for a late dinner. I don't even know this guy, to the point where I sat three feet from him at Taqueria Can-Cun and didn't even feel comfortable waving "hello," and yet, there he was, showing up repeatedly in my Monday.

Jeff was the guy matching Dug's casual hipness the day I demonstrated my complete and utter lack of street cred by yanking my Volvo over to the curb, bursting out in my Banana Republic garb and then babbling like an idiot at a guy I hadn't seen in 10 years. While this all went on, Jeff stood a safe distance away, probably silently lamenting the fact that his neighborhood, which he moved into 15 years ago when it was one of the most remote outposts of the city, was now crawling with perky, bald yuppies in Volvos.

That day I gave Jeff a little wave, as I did remember him as one of Dug's core friends 15 years ago. One night at 2 a.m., Dug, Jeff and I sat in a place that I now realize was probably Walter Haas park, in my own neighborhood, and looked own at the city. Yesterday, I gave him plenty of my time, but no wave.

It began in the morning, as I drove the Jawa to day camp. This week he has camp, which explains why I am sitting here in workout clothes, trying to erase the damage I did to my aging body last week, when he did not have camp. We were listening to KUSF, which we seldom do because it normally plays very challenging music from Afghanistan that we'd probably enjoy a whole lot more were we not narrow-minded bourgeois Americans.

This time they were playing a local old-time band called the Crooked Jades (I would have linked to their home page at www.crookedjades.com, where you can see a photo of Jeff in his bluegrass guy gear, except blogger is not linking right now, which I blame on my laptop, of course), who, I'd read recently, were back in town to do prerecording on their new album before going to Germany for some shows. Jeff is the leader of the Crooked Jades, which explains why he is also the guy who sometimes sits in front of the coffee place playing bluegrass music.

"Hey," I said to the Jawa, "remember that time we pulled over and I talked to that guy I knew from college?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember the guy who was standing with him?"

"No?"

"I just read about him yesterfday, and now he's on the radio. Isn't that weird. We saw him, and here he is, on the radio. He lives in our neighborhood."

I'm not sure the Jawa got into the weirdness of the vibe. He did not know that our Jeff-centric day was to continue.

To be fair, it was more of a Jeff-centric 24 hours, since I'd read of him Sunday, then heard him on the radio Monday. This made two Jeff intrusions into my life in less than a day, and honestly came after about a month of wondering where the guy was, once I figured out that a) he lived above the hardware store a block away from us and b) he was the guy playing old-time music in front of the coffee place.

Now I had my answer. He'd been on the road.

A few hours later, I was talking to Markie, long-distance. Before moving to Boston to volunteer for 1992 presidential candidate Paul Tsongas, Markie was a San Franciscan and an intimate member of Dug's social circle, which included Jeff, plus Rick the Barbarian, who later became the soulful, wildly successful folk singer Richard Buckner.

As you can infer, Dug's friends ended up with so much street cred that extra quarts of it sit in the back of their closets, like where we keep those tennis rackets we bought last year, thinking tennis would make a good family activity.

Markie will be leaving for Iraq in October, so I'm trying to organize a get-together for him out here on his beloved West Coast. I told him I saw Dug recently, and then about the recent Jeff-ness of my life. "...and when I saw him with Dug," I related, "he was wearing jeans, work boots, an old dress shirt, and a vintage sport coat. So bluegrass."

Markie laughed. "That is so bluegrass. Was the sportcoat brown?"

Indeed, it was.

As it was several hours later, when Ken Dunque and I filed into Taqueria Can-Cun for a late evening dose of Mission Mexican food. I thought we were there because Dunque's first choice, La Mexicana on 25th street, was closed. Now I realize that we'd been drawn into Jeff's immense gravitational pull. We were powerless, just as I was powerless in my attempts to not order any food, especially once Dunque offered to buy.

So I sat there, mesmerized. What a climax to my Jeff-ish day, to be here, a picnic table away from his actual, brown-sportcoated presence. I wondered if I should say "hi," but knowing that unless I reminded him that I was the idiot in the Volvo, he would only stare at me blankly, wondering if maybe I was a particularly rabid Crooked Jades fan, even a stalker, I kept my mouth shut.

And I'm not, by the way. A stalker. I like the Crooked Jades fine, though my tastes run more to honky-tonk than old-time. I did not consciously try to fill my Monday with Jeff readings, live radio shows, discussions and taqueria sightings. Normally, if I'm going to obsess over someone I don't know, it'll be someone more like the woman in the pink baseball cap who honked at me twice from her Range Rover this morning while I was waiting to make a left turn onto Tennessee Valley Road. That sort of obsession makes sense to me.

I'll bet Jeff doesn't even have a car. He's that cool. If he does have one, it's either an old pickup truck or a Ford Fairlane.

Sonoma Bar Scene

2007-06-25T16:15:00.001-07:00

The easiest way to get to know a place is to hang out, alone, in one of the local bars. And so it was that I found myself center stage at Steiner's, on the less-chic West Side of the Sonoma plaza. Apologies to the Hammer, who may have expected a guest more involved with the operations of his child's 24-hour playdate, but I'd just spent the first week-and-a-half of summer camp-free, and needed some time alone.

Sonoma is an up-and-comer, not as established as Napa but getting more attractive to wine types all the time. And, it seems, the town is divided down the middle of its plaza: new-style money to the East, old-school blue collars to the West. I took a lap around the plaza and decided on old-school.

At 4:30 every Thursday, the Mr. Deli comes into Steiners. He goes to Murphy's first, which is a higher-class bar on the East side of the plaza. Then he drives over to Steiners and starts passing our samples of a bunch of salamis and cheeses. Which is a little unusual, except that nobody in the bar seems fazed. In fact, a few people go, "Oh, man, I didn't know he'd be here today," incluing Meghan, the bartender, who might also want to pay a visit to Mr. Tailor and let those capris out a little bit.

Mr. Deli is sensitive. It takes only one pass on the salami for him to skip me altogether. On the sixth salami, though, he offers again, giving me a chance to ask when the cheese will be rolling around. If I were a good guest, I thought, sitting in a bar at 4:30 while, a mile away, the Hammer acted as de facto babysitter for my child, I would order up some of that exotic cheese dip Mr. Deli has.

I think about this for awhile but am distracted when one of the many 50-ish guys in t-shirts with moustaches announces, "I'm going to be Jewish here. I'm not buying anything!"

Now this puts me in an odd, though sadly familiar position. It reminds me of the argument I had with a fellow Joe something-or-other during the R.A. retreat, junior year. "How is it a stereotype when I say Jews are cheap?" he wanted to know.

Or the time my "progressive" neighbor had enough tequila to casually refer to the time this guy tried to "Jew him down." By the way, that guy maintained that he was the progressive until the day he and his loud-mouthed wife moved away.

So here I am, alone in a bar, getting along with everyone, talking to a guy named Rick about how this other woman's son is in Iraq, and this guy with blindingly white tennis shoes pulls out the Jew slur card.

"WHAT?" I said. This bought me a little more time, but also prolonged the moment. Rick turned to me and said, "He's just going off."

"Did he say what I think he said?" I asked. Rick waved his wand. Then the guy walked up behind me, looked over my shoulder at the Mr. Deli menu and said, "Get some of that cheese. I'm a cheese guy." Which meant that had I pursued this, I would look like a complete jerk. I let it drop.

At 9 p.m., said Meghan, there would be live music. I looked around. The live music, I decided, would be covers of 1960s classics and extended blues jams. The band would be wearing Hawaiian shirts. I came back anyway.

I've been to Sonoma at least a dozen times now, stayed the night at least six. But until I went into Steiners -- and by the way, the scene was even better at night, when every single one of Sonoma's over-35 unattached people was in the house -- the only people I'd seen in town were a slightly more relaxed version of the people I saw in San Francisco, which isn't nearly as interesting to me as a room full of firefighters, bigots, divorced guys in yellow linen shirts and women who take a full loop of the plaza, then return, sit down next to you and say, "There's nothing going on here tonight. This is it."

Roger A. Hunt would have enjoyed it. Sandra Bullock would have enjoyed it. In about 20 years, I imagine, my very own Jawa will enjoy it.

And to you, Hammer, I apologize. I will be a better guest next time. Or maybe I'll just invite you to come along to Steiners.

Right v. Wrong, Home Depot-style

2007-06-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

We are five days into summer and so far I've had very little success in my role of sage-like father figure.

Take, for example, our experience at the Home Depot.

As a family, we have run out of money. Despite being a longtime in the making, this situation still crept up on us, leaving us dazed, frustrated and looking for a way out. One which might involve me getting an actual job, though I am not convinced that at this point in my life I am at all employable. Today I answered two ads on Craigslist. I am qualified for both jobs. And yet, so are legions of 27-year-old go-getters, none of whom have weird gaps in their resumes.

Stay tuned.

Our financial woes have forced us to radically scale back what was to be a summer of high-impact home improvements. Gone are grand plans for a new bathroom, windows and a backyard deck. In their place is the humble aroma of sweat equity. Fifty dollars at Home Depot will buy you 40 feet of crown moulding, which can then be installed at no cost, by the homeowner himself. By "himself," of course, I mean "herself." Because she was born a contractor's daughter.

Flush with the inexpensive success of the kitchen and dining room, Sandra Bullock and I decided that it would be a simple add to continue into the hallway with our crown moulding, and perhaps add some new baseboards as well. We would slap the moulding in place, then paint. Simple.

But did you know that you can purchase the materials needed to change a boring doorway into an attractive archway for well under $100? You can do this online. The work itself should be simple!

This particular fantasy, which seemed cute and harmless when measured against last month's fantasy of six-figure stock option riches, sadly turned out to be no more real than the unrealized stock proceeds. One week later, our simple hallway project is less than halfway done. I spent all of last week peeling 100-year-old wallpaper from our disintegrating plaster walls in thin strips resembling pencil shavings.

Which led us, my Jawa and I, to Home Depot.

Roger A. Hunt mentioned recently that he thought I was a "man of principle." Living where I do, it is inadvisable to ever claim moral high ground, and in fact I struggle to keep a straight face just typing the phrase "man of principle." But it is true that I don't like it when I see things that seem obviously hypocritical (like perhaps, the hijacking of the word "progressive" to mean "clinging to a 40 year-old political and social agenda"), mean or downright wrong. And as the father of an impressionable Jawa, I try to take seriously the responsibility of teaching him how not to be a jerk.

Unlike the man at Home Depot, who told me a blatant lie in order to get in front of us in the line that materialized when Jewell, the cashier, opened up another register. The incredibly helpful Jawa and I were toting 15 feet of baseboard, 16 feet of razor-sharp cornerbead, one gallon of Flush Puppy-endorsed Zinsser primer (which, sadly, has nothing at all to do with William Zinsser's excellent book On Writing Well), two tubes of silicone filler and 12 pounds of spackle when this guy reached the line at the very moment we arrived.

It seemed to me that he was part of the group in front of him, a dad and three kids, so I asked, "Oh, are you with them?

"Yes," he said, as he pushed his cart in front of ours, "Thank you."

Then the dad and his three kids, who, it quickly became obvious, had nothing at all to due with this line-cutting guy, went on their way, leaving my man to take his turn, having worked hard manufacturing lies to get there before the bald, unshaven chump and the adorable kid behind him.

"Hey!" I said, "You're not with them."

"No, I'm not." He said this blankly, with no inflection or expression. A statement of fact. Implied was that yes, he had lied, yes, I had fallen for it, and the success of his lie meant that he had earned his spot in line in front of the hapless me.

"You lied," I said.

He said nothing. Turned his back, denying me the opportunity to enjoy, for just a few more seconds, the sight of his thick moustache and graying blow-dried hair.

What could I do? Like the grinning old guy who threw his wrapper nowhere near the garbage can in front of the Excelsior branch library the other day, he felt no fear of my reprisal. That guy at least smiled and waved at me when I pointed out that he had missed the garbage can. This guy just gave me his back, methodically unloaded all 17 of the small nozzles he was buying, paid and went on his way.

"That guy lied to me so he could cut in line," I told Jewell, when the Jawa and I finally reached her. She smiled. "Oh," she said.

I am a father, and my young, impressionable son, sometimes a demonstrator of questionable ethics himself, witnessed this entire incident. So now what am I supposed to tell him about the rewards of doing the right thing, even if you don't immediately or obviously benefit from it, just because it's the right thing?

Apparently, you can lie, cut in line, whistle a little tune, go on with your day, then go home and enjoy the reflection of your oversized moustache in the mirror with a clear conscience.

And don't tell me that karma will get this guy in the end. When Rex Moore, terrifying and obnoxious all-CIF linebacker at El Modena High School from 1980 to 1982, married a USC cheerleader while I shivered, broke and alone in my bedroom in Boston, 3,000 miles away from my girlfriend, who was cheating with one of my friends anyway, I realized that karma is a meaningless construct, designed to keep people from complaining when good things happen to people who don't deserve it and in a passable mood when bad things happen to them even though they consider themselves good people.

But who cares if a guy lies and doesn't care when you call him on it? The real problem here is that my son saw this happen, and with it, the difference between right and wrong got a little bit blurrier for him.

So I had to explain to him that what he'd just seen sucked, and that just because you can do something isn't always a good reason for doing it. This is important, because he's at an age where he can't really see beyond his own needs.

Like our friend at Home Depot, he often feels that the ends justify the means, whatever they may be. If that means telling Mommy that she really needs to come home early because he misses her, when his real motive is to get her to agree to buy him the Bionicle that Dad just denied him, so be it. It's dirty work, but someone has to do it. And I'm the bad guy, pointing out that his true motives are absolutely transparent, but perhaps forgetting to cut him more slack than I give to Home Depot liars and library trash-flingers.

As if living isn't hard enough, you throw some parenting on top of it and you have plenty of reasons for your hair to fall out. That's what I need. More reasons to lose more hair.

Maple Syrup and Blueberry Shampoo

2007-06-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

My Compaq Presario 1100 is dead. I thought I could outsmart Kevin and his Geek Squad friends by just plugging the thing in and pretending that everything was okay. I was wrong. Now I must depend on limited accesss to Sandra Bullock's spanking new Genentech HP laptop, or risk the wrath of the Jawa when I tell him that I will be moving his 7 year-old Dell desktop downstairs to the "office" (actually a corner of what used to be an illegal studio apartment and now functions as a low-ceilinged, unheated family room.)

Yesterday was Friday. For the first time in several months, the Jawa finished his breakfast then charged into the bedroom, where I was lying in bed, trying in vain to introduce myself to the day. "Stay here, Dad," he commanded. Then he ran into his room and returned with a hard-covered book about Bionicles. He jumped back into bed and slammed himself against me.

This is something we used to do every morning, until I realized that not only did it make waking up more difficult for me but also led to yelling at him when he refused to get out of bed at 7:20. Since it is a rare occurance in these pre-adolescent days, I let him stay.

He smelled like maple syrup and blueberry shampoo, and I'm sure it would embarass him to find out that I noticed that. He would have preferred to smell like motor oil and the remnants of a gigantic belch. He is almost 10 years old, and caught firmly in the hidden space between childhood and adolescence, constantly tilting the scales between equal parts little boy and teenager.

Not on Friday morning, however. It would be gross, I thought, to share a bed with a teenage boy, but it is still precious to share one with a 9-year-old. I lay there and watched him as he read. In profile, his cheeks still have the rounded edges of a toddler, though they have hollowed out plenty since his chipmunk-like infancy. His arms, I noticed, have little black hairs on them, miniature versions of the ones that cover my own arms, and noticable dark hairs lie above his upper lip, waiting to be shaved off on his bar mitzvah day. I hope they can last that long. There's nothing worse than an adolescent boy who waits too long to begin shaving. Me, I made it past my bar mitzvah, but just barely.

Today we snuck out at noon to buy birthday presents for Sandra Bullock, who was getting her hair cut. We combined as an efficient shopping force, unable to think creatively but good at marching down her birthday list and fulfilling her wishes. "We're going to go in, get our work done, and get out," I told him as I parked the car at the mall.

"No browsing," he said.

Then, to cement our relationship, I cued him with some lyrics from a Cut Chemist song we'd been listening to: "The robots are coming. When?" I said.

"When I get my big break," he answered, solemnly.

Ten minutes later, gift and cards in hand, we settled down in the food court for some Panda Express. He sat across from me in his stylized Godzilla t-shirt. dwarfed by the teenagers roaming all around him but now at least a peripheral part of their world.

Yesterday, I sat at a Starbucks with a few moms from school. After we established that we are all firmly in support of the Jewish state in Israel, we began talking about the challenges of our children as they enter pre-adolescence. "My daughter," said one mom, whose dutiful religious observance is contrasted by her colorfully profane vocabulary, "now walks to shul alone. It's two blocks."

"Wow," I said. "I'm way too paranoid for that."

"And I think soon we will take her and some friends to the mall, then tell them to meet us back here in a hour."

Flash forward to the food court, me watching my growing Jawa plow through some fried rice and pot stickers. "So, Jawa, do you think you'd be able to hang out here with some friends, and we'd be here too, only in another part of the mall?"

He thought about it, his already oversized eyes widening. "Really?" he said. Then, a few seconds later, "When I'm eleven. You can't do that until you're eleven."

I'm pretty sure that, when that time comes, I will be wearing a disguise and shadowing his every move, except for the 45 minutes when he and his friends disappear into EB Games.

It's a shame that we don't feel comfortable letting him roam the we we did as children. When I was 10, though, I lived in a town of 1200 people. We left home in the morning and returned when my mom rang the cowbell to tell us it was time for dinner. Different times. I hear they lived that way here as well. Not now.

Now I get scolded for letting our Jawa take Shack for a one-block solo stroll through the alleyway that runs behind our house. "You don't know who's hanging out back there," an alarmed S. Bullock reminded me. "Homeless guys, gang guys, who knows?"

She's right. The five minutes he was back there were very long. I leaned against a lamppost on the corner of our street, waiting, watching my neighbor prepare her 5 and 3 year olds for a (chaperoned) walk. As I stood there, outward calm hiding inner turmoil, I watched her sit her young son on her lap and put his shoes on. I'd completely forgotten about that, the little Jawa in my lap years ago, me trying to tie his little tiny Adidas as his legs flopped around.

It was right as I panicked and started sprinting up Diamond Street that the Jawa and Shack appeared around the corner. "Shack is a bad dog," said the Jawa, unperturbed. "He heard a dog bark and started running the other way. I had to put him back on the leash."

He's lucky to have that option. I'm finding that my leash on him is becoming more and more obsolete with each passing day. As we discussed at Starbucks, once you get past the "child as fashion accessory" stage, parenting involves letting go of that leash a little bit more each day.

On the plus side, this means that eventually someone else will have to listen to endlessly detailed explanations of ideas for the greatest roller coaster ever.

And now I must close, quickly, because that very same Jawa is making faces at me and demanding that I get off the computer by 4:30, because I've been on it for an hour and fifteen minutes.

A Mirage

2007-06-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

This is sort of a mirage. It may seem like I have inexplicably reappeared, two weeks after inexplicably disappearing, but I have only reappeared briefly.

I have a very legitimate reason for my disappearance, however. The computer woes, hinted at a few weeks ago, have grown to the point where they have actually consumed my laptop. Two years of spirited use resulted in a total breakdown of the "motherboard," leading to a phone call where a guy named Kevin told me that it would cost $726.53 to bring my computer back to me, cured of its motherboard issues. "I could send it to the therapist to cure its motherboard issues," I said. "It could get at least seven sessions for that."

"Or you could just buy a new laptop," said Kevin, dryly.

"Yes, I could."

On Monday, I called Kevin and told him just to send the hovering-near-death laptop back to me, screwed-up motherboard and all. Its "t" and "d" keys are still gone, by the way. It is, in short, disposable.

Not as disposable are all of the files now stuck on a computer that no longer works. I had Kevin send it back in the hopes that it will come to life just one more time, long enough for me to back up all of my stuff. I never did that, the logic being that all of my files are just word files, and not really worth backing up. Fortunately, I did back up my two journals -- the one I keep for myself and the one I have been keeping for the Jawa since he was enwombed -- before dropping the ailing computer off with the Geek Squad.

And a word about these much-publicized "geeks." They're not all that geeky. Yes, the guy who helped me was slightly overweight, and his short-sleeved, 65/35 blend dress shirt made him look like a stressed-out engineer, but his geekiness was only skin-deep. The Geek Squad is merely a clearing house for ill computers. They don't do any of the work. Instead, they farm it out to Kevin, who lives somewhere in the 909 area code and waits one week to call you and tell you that it will cost $726.53 to fix your computer.

I remember when I realized that pocket calculators were disposable. Since I was a youthful geek, sans white shirt and extra pounds, I asked for a pocket calculator for my eighth birthday. I could have the birthday wrong, but I know it was an early one, one where I should have been asking for a football instead of a primative mathematical device. Likewise I should have been watching "Brian's Song" instead of "West Side Story," and probably should not have had a drafting table in my bedroom.

But I loved that calculator, and my later conversion to sports-mad kid did nothing to curb that love. In fact, it expanded my calculator needs, seeing as I could now use it to figure out batting averages and add up long columns of strikeout totals. Sometimes I would just sit there, happily banging out imaginary batting averages. "Now, if I was up 243 times and got 72 hits, what would my average be?"

Those early calculators had few functions and yet cost triple digits. By the time I got to college, the same calculator could be purchased in a drugstore for $7.99. Or you could get one that did everything, including make you lunch and do your laundry, for $39.99.

Shortly afterward, televisions became disposable. My first aborted job, one that lasted (big shock here) all of 4 days, was as an apprentice to a television repairman. In a pattern that would repeat itself at least once later in life, when I almost became an apprentice roofer, Dad thought it would be good for me to get some solid, blue-collar work experience, and I agreed, until the job actually started and I realized that I was way too good to be doing something like that. I lasted 4 days, then got a job at the Baskin-Robbins across the street, like my sister had a few years prior.

Televisions were not disposable in 1981. You went to someone's house and fixed them. By the time I was a television consumer/purchaser, eleven years later, when my new bride Sandra Bullock and I conspired to buy a TV for our first apartment, our 19 inch Sony cost $329, which meant that the cost of fixing said TV was almost as much as it cost to get a new one. When that one broke, I went to Circuit City and bought one for $209 from Matt Hoskinson, a kid I taught at Blanchet High School who was the best pure baseball hitter I've ever seen, and yet never played, because the coaches hated him.

And now my laptop is disposable. I checked the Best Buy circular last Sunday; why would I give Kevin $726.53 when I can get a new laptop for around $600?

In the meantime, I apologize to all 11 of my loyal readers. Sandra Bullock is loathe to lug her new, Genentech-assigned laptop on the shuttle bus, so I have access only when she drives to work. And since we'll be paying a tidy $1530 a month for 5th grade, we're down to one car, so she won't be driving to work very often, at least until some publisher swoops down on me and rescues me from this life of obscurity.

I'm not holding my breath.

Nesting Bowls are my Nemesis

2007-05-22T13:17:00.001-07:00

Like my father before me, I like to develop more efficient ways of doing things. Since my world is pretty limited these days, my gifts for innovative, forward-thinking programs must be spent on the most mundane of tasks, like doing laundry, walking the dog and emptying the dishwasher.

Sometimes I face obstacles. They are much like the obstacles Sandra Bullock faces each day at work, only instead of them involving multi-million dollar drug development issues, they involve common household goods.

To this growing list I add my most recent nemesis, nesting bowls.

While I am sure that nesting bowls are a boon to anyone needing several sizes of bowl but having only limited storage space, nesting bowls are a large, obnoxious thorn in my side as I work toward a better way of emptying the dishwasher.

I empty the dishwasher several times a week. Each time I open the door warily, hoping that this time I will face no nesting bowls. Without nesting bowls, emptying the dishwasher is a joy -- well, maybe not a joy, exactly, but much more pleasant -- and, despite vicious opposition from my wife and Jawa, I have slowly, mostly without their knowledge, been improving on the methodology we use to load and empty the dishwasher.

Surprisingly, as she is normally a model of efficiency, S. Bullock is completely not on board with this. In fact, she gets a special kick out of completely discrediting the improvements I have made on the way we do laundry around here. Personally, I can't tell you how much I prefer to be folding ONLY shirts in one load and ONLY pants, underwear and socks in another. Especially given that we have limited space, so I fold on our bed.

Her ridicule, however, is nothing compared to the barrage she aimed at me regularly during the pre-jawa laundromat days, when I timed each load to finish exactly 4 minutes apart, giving me just enough time to fold a load before the next one was done.

The dishwasher has been more of a challenge, because the whole of our "dishes," that is, everything we eat off of or drink out of, is an unmatched melange of colors, sizes, shapes and uses. We have the eight-piece set, which illogically resides in two different cabinets. Then we have the plastic plates, the Jawa's assortment of plastic cups (which maddeningly live in a lower cabinet), various Tupperware containers, silverware, and a bunch of little bowls, plates and ramikins which, to me, have no practical use and yet seem to show up in each and every load we wash.

And then there are the nesting bowls.

These are not the original nesting bowls. Those ones were black. We got them as a wedding present. Actually, we got two sets of them. Over the past almost 15 years, I have methodically destroyed them, one by one,until now only two remain. I do not know where they are kept. When they insult me by appearing in the dishwasher, I simply place them on the counter. They are Sandra Bullock's problem.

A few years ago, S. Bullock's mom, Mean Jean, bought us a new set of glass nesting bowls. Where the black ones went only 4 deep, these ones come in about a dozen sizes. If you were to paint little kewpie doll faces on them, they would easily pass as Russian dolls.

I take it that these nesting bowls, perhaps because they come in 12 different sizes, are indispensible cooking tools. Each and every time S. Bullock makes anything beyond pasta, out come the nesting bowls. The tiniest one will be full of chopped up parsley, all the way up to the biggest one, which is perfect for tossing salads. Then the meal is complete and I have first 12 separate bowls to rinse, then 12 separate bowls to somehow fit into the dishwasher, and then, a few hours later, 12 separate bowls to pull out of the dishwasher, re-nest, and then reach as far up as I can to place on the top shelf.

They live up there because they hate me. I know this because they've corrupted my favorite plastic bowls. I use these bowls for everything. In my world, all you really need is a plastic bowl, a fork, a spoon, and a slightly sharp knife. In fact, when I first met Sandra Bullock, in 1990, all I owned, kitchen-wise, was an orange bowl, a fork and a spoon.

I now have access to all manner of plate and bowl. I could use a little red bowl, a tasteful light blue pottery ramikin, a large yellow bowl. I'd rather use one of my two beige platic bowls, though, and everything was fine until the nesting bowls somehow convinced one of my plastic bowls to take a turn in the microwave, where it self-destructed loudly. Each pop represented a chip exploding off of the plastic bowl. By the time I retrieved the injured bowl from the microwave, I was chalking up my worst kitchen disaster since the time I tried to microwave ramen noodles without water.

How else do I know that the nesting bowls hate me? I know it because they refuse to lie close to each other in the dishwasher. A few of the smaller ones will congregate up with the glasses, while the larger ones are more comfortable down on the bottom, with the plates. But only one or two of the nesting bowls will fit in the bottom. They are selfish, you see, and take up far more dishwasher space than they deserve. Curse you, nesting bowls.

Recently, Sandra Bullock, whose commitment to efficiency ends abruptly at the dishwasher, informed me that I was no longer to put the larger nesting bowls in the dishwasher. "They take up too much room," she explained. Now I would have to wrestle the nesting bowls clean in the sink, taking care, of course, to not chip or break them.

The nightmare not only doesn't end, it gets more vivid each day.

For her upcoming birthday, Sandra Bullock has asked for, among other things, a nice, big wooden salad bowl. If I can find one, I will gladly get it, for it is my fondest dream to see those nesting bowls sitting, alone and forlorn, forgotten, in the top of the cabinet.

Then I will be free to move forward with my plans to radically change the entire dishwashing paradigm.

Musings on a Broken Laptop

2007-05-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

Be careful and don't bump my laptop as you read this. There is something very wrong with my laptop. The power cord wasn't connecting, not even if you wiggled it, which meant that I had only battery power. My battery is lame, so I had only about 45 min. until it died. Or, rather, the Jawa and Sandra Bullock had only 45 min. to do research for his California history project while I watched two high school baseball games simultaneously. In the freezing cold at Golden Gate Park, completely oblivious, well, only slightly oblivious of the reality that I would have no computer on which to write my reports of the games, to send to my semi-employer, The San Francisco Examiner.

You can imagine what a happy sort-of surprise it was to find, as I crossed Lincoln Avenue in the wind, that I had no way to get the stories from my brain to The San Francisco Examiner.

Enter the Hammer.

As Hillary Clinton says, it takes a village. For me, and for the good of Bay Area high school baseball enthusiasts, my village was located in the shadows of the University of San Francisco, in the neatly-appointed home of the Hammer, the Wine Guy and their well-behaved son, the Shaman. They set me up at the dining room table, then went about their business while I bashed out a few hundred words on how Lick-Wilmerding held off Stuart Hall 4-2, while Crystal Springs Upland just slipped by University High, 5-4. L-M now faces CSU for the league championship Saturday.

Be there.

Sandra Bullock has been home all week, absolutely disrupting my daily schedule, in anticipation of beginning her new job Monday. Some would spend their first non-job week in 7 years at a spa, on a cruise, or driving up the coast with their husband. Not my bride of 14.7 years. Instead, we've spent this week installing crown moulding in our kitchen and dining room. By "we" I mean that she did most of it. I mostly held up large pieces of wood and measured stuff. In the end, I pounded in a few nails, but I am barred from anything involving paint or primer.

The project should be completed in time for my masculity to be completely compromised.

To pass some of the time I spent standing there, holding a nine-foot long piece of moulding over my head, I made up a song:

Well I was born a contractor's daughter.
In the suburbs, just north of Seattle.
We ate deer every year.
If the pipes clogged, we had no fear.
Just the memories of a contractor's daughter.

My apologies to Loretta Lynn.

Speaking of music, I have now used all $15 of the iTunes card Shack gave me. I used it to download the following songs:

So Sad About Us -- The Who
Telephone Line -- ELO
Fisherman's Blues -- The Waterboys
Put the Message in a Box -- World Party
Dirty Old Town -- The Pogues
Fairytale of New York -- Pogues
two versions of the Byrds' "Tulsa County" -- Son Volt and the Backsliders
Touch Me I'm Sick -- Mudhoney
Speeding Motorcycle -- Yo La Tengo
and then three by Yaz -- "In My Room," "Midnight," and "Only You."

I put 'em all in a playlist and called it "Oldies." They're not all exactly "old," though. The two versions of "Tulsa County" are pretty new.

The rest are old, however. In a world where people still pay three digits to watch 65-year-old men prance around and call it "rock and roll," I feel a responsibility to remind people that, yes, the music of a 42-year-old's youth is "old." I've long since given up trying to ram this stuff down the Jawa's throat, as he has moved onto more contemporary sounds, befitting a contemporary youth. We get in the car and he says, "Are we going to have to listen to country music?"

The Jawa is a music guy. He started out singing along to my Pixies CDs in the car, to my great pride until I realized that the pride I was feeling was coming from the same place that baby boomers go when they brainwash their kids to believe that all worthwhile culture ended in 1970.

Being a music guy myself, though, I started throwing stuff at him, to see what would stick.

The Jawa is also a dancing guy, something he inherited from his mother, so by age 5 I had lost all control of his musical direction. Where I loved rootsy rock and roll made by earnest young men wearing plaid shirts, he went back into the 70s for funk played by 15 guys wearing workout towels and sombreros and singing about the mothership. His long-distance mentor Butter Goats sent him info about djs and electronica, and I just tried to keep up.

The Jawa's last 5 CD purchases:

Kraftwerk
Fujiya/Miyagi
Cut Chemist
Funkadelic
Gorillaz

I feel no less proud than I did when he was singing along to my Old 97s CD from the backseat, but this is why my iPod downloads are correctly labeled "oldies."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go play cheerleader while my wife primes the new moulding.

Big Hairy Ape Redux

2007-05-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

It has been quite some time since I barged into the room as a big hairy ape. Since my third shot at grad school, in 1995, when I had considerably more hair (on my head), in fact. That time, I got into it with one of my teachers, a nebbishy little guy with a beard, a combover, wrinkled khakis, Birkenstocks and blue socks. I realize that I have just described every single liberal arts school humanities professor in the U.S.

This guy, David Marshak, who resisted the nickname "The Shack," insisted to me that there was an overflowing reservoir of famous Jewish athletes, proof that the stereotype of the nebbishy Jewish man did not exist. He lived, apparently, in a home lacking mirrors.

Later, discussing this debate with my equally swarthy classmate Joe Mele, we realized that I'd put Marshak in a situation he'd probably faced countless times as an adolescent but few times since. His voice said, "I am a reasonable, educated man having a discussion," but his eyes said, "GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU BIG HAIRY APE!"

We got a kick out of that, Joe and I.

I was a big hairy ape last night, though in a much less threatening way, when I arrived late for my "Breaking into the Glossies!" class.

As I would later learn, my 15-year attempt to fashion myself as some kind of "writer," has been entirely without practical training. Yes, I have workshopped to the point of exhaustion and can tell you why your symbolism doesn't work, but I still have no idea what it takes to call up a stranger and convince him/her to let me write something for them.

In an attempt to finally take charge of this, I signed up for "Breaking into the Glossies!" which, I hoped, would get me past this 15-year-old obstacle.

The room, fashionably empty of furniture on the third floor of a downtown art gallery, was already full of young, attractive, ambitious women when I arrived, five minutes late, sweating buckets from walking up Powell street, the cords from my messenger bag and brand new iPod dangling twisted from my shoulders, sweater and only-slightly-fashionable-and-then-only-in-a-tough-guy-sort-of-way fleece-lined corduroy jacket all askew. There was no more room at the table, so I had to pull up a chair, being careful to keep some distance from the various young, attractive, ambitious women, lest they be splashed with some of the sweat pouring off my middle-aged body.

A big, hairy ape.

I think one of my problems as a writer is that I like to talk too much, amazingly, simultaneous with also being horrified at my appearance and thinking, "Oh, God. Please tell me that I don't smell." No sooner had I settled into this seminar, still sweating, than the instructor waved her hand jauntily at me and asked me to "give a little background," this without any guidance, no seeing anyone else give their background. I launched into it.

Perhaps if I were 15 years younger, less hairy and my skin was dry, they would have found my asides funny. As it were, they dropped to the floor like bricks. Silence filled the room. I swear, I could hear my glands pumping out sweat.

But this was not enough. I had to compound it by launching into an outline of a story about dog walkers that I just "pitched" to "San Francisco" magazine. As I proudly, PROFESSIONALLY gave the lowdown, I noticed that the instructor's pained expression was shared by each and every one of the young, attractive, ambitious women in the room.

Did I mention that I was the only male in there? Okay.

"Uh, yes, I'm going to hang onto that," said the instructor soothingly, as she would were she speaking to a rabid dog in a corner or a cheerful, boistrous "special needs" student stuck in an honors class. "What I meant, though, was what are some elements of a story? What would make it compelling?"

For three hours I stared at the words "DOG WALKERS" in the corner of the white board. And still, I couldn't bring myself to shut up.

Everytime a young, attractive, ambitious woman spoke, I had to add some helpful comment, some personal experience that might add some depth to what she had just said. Weirdly enough, I grew comfortable with this. My body dried and I even, recklessly, put my sweater back on, as if to say, "I am completely at ease in this room full of women much younger and more professional than me. I will dominate the conversation, for I have knowledge from which you can all benefit."

The class was very informative. I learned that I do not know even the basic foundations of pitching stories to editors. My years of cranking out stories to the alternative weeklies did nothing to prepare me for the next step -- the one that would eventually lead to that special place where you're making a living doing this sort of thing.

It was fine. Everyone forgave me for sweating, speaking out of turn and being a middle-aged male. They did what most young, attractive and ambitious young women do in my presence: they ignored me. And the second time I prefaced a comment with, "You'll have to excuse me. I can't seem to shut up," the instructor said, "Oh, no. That's okay."

Whew.

I would like to think that this one three-hour class will signal a turning point for me. I'd like to think that I will now tap into a small slice of the ambition that was floating around in that art gallery room last night, that I, too, will soon be jetting around the world in pursuit of a lucrative story.

If, of course, that were the kind of thing I wanted to do.

42 is the new 32

2007-05-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I woke up and was 42. During the course of the day, this seemed sometimes okay, sometimes great and sometimes awful. Which describes an average day, if I'm not mistaken.

I put myself in a strange position: I both want my birthday to be ignored and celebrated. Celebrated by accident. Kind of like I want my constant and occasionally interesting otherworldliness to be ignored, but then noticed as an afterthought. Like it's something I can't control.

My 42nd birthday began at 6:00 when, unannounced, the Jawa burst into the bedroom, attached himself to my shoulder, and said, "Happy birthday, Dad!"

Now. If nothing else were to happen during the day, that would be enough.

Especially since he was a Jawa preparing for his first school overnight trip. Two nights and three days in gold country. S. Bullock would drive him to school at 6:15, he'd get on a bus, and then we'd see him three days later. Strange, and perhaps not the best way to celebrate an insignificant birthday, but there you go.

The next thing I heard was barking. Lots of barking. Shack, though very thoughtful to buy me a $15 iTunes music card to go with the hot rod iPod I got from the non-canine members of my family, decided that protecting me from the guys working on the house behind us was of paramount importance. At 8:05 he began barking. By the time I left the house, at 8:40, he was still barking. The workers seemed unaffected, but I did notice that our house stayed free of attacks by crazed contractors, so I guess the barking worked. Haven't been bitten by a vampire in 42 years. Is that because I am careful to always take a drink of water before turning off the light at night? There is no way to prove it isn't so.

All I really wanted for my birthday was a milkshake. Maybe it wasn't he milkshake I wanted, it was the idea that, it being my birthday, I was free to blow off whatever limits I have on my regular, present-day life.

Of course, many of you will look at a 42-year-old guy who sleeps until 8:05, then goes to the gym, comes home and writes some stuff, reads, plays with his dog, then meets his family for dinner as a person with few limits on his everyday life. Not so!

Most of my limits are based on health issues, though some are also based on keeping myself from spinning into an endless cycle of non-productive days. The first time I dropped out of the working world, I promised myself I would wear shoes every day. This way I would stay a couple of steps clear of the Michael Keaton "Mr. Mom" plaid shirt of shame, I thought. I now wear slippers most of the time.

On my birthday, however, I figured I'd blow everything off. I'd get up late, go to a coffee shop, read the paper, and at some point get that milkshake.

No. I got up at 8:05, which in my world isn't late. This left me with enough time to go workout, which would take care of the milkshake calories. Even on my birthday, I can't let it go completely. It's like the difference between coming home drunk when you're 23 and doing it when you're 40. At 40, your vices are limited to eating a bunch of low-fat pretzels and watching TV.

At 42, a good workout actually feels pretty good. I finished up at 10:45, feeling slim, focused and extremely pleased with the huge new red Adidas shorts I'd bought for $4.97 last weekend.

Now it was time for the milkshake.

But it was only 10:45. Who has a milkshake at 10:45? It was a beautiful day, so I thought I'd walk down to Fisherman's Wharf, look at the tourists for awhile, and then get my milkshake.

Should I really get a milkshake? I thought. Maybe if I had a Jamba Juice, that would take the place of a milkshake. Or maybe some frozen yogurt. This way, I could approximate the hedonism of my milkshake and still not kill myself in the process. But no! It's my birthday. If I want a milkshake, I'll have a milkshake. And I WILL NOT send my usual four little things I write for this one outfit every Tuesday. THAT will happen WEDNESDAY and they will just have to accept it.

This all took place as I walked the three blocks from the gym to Fisherman's Wharf. Then I arrived at the corner of Mason and Jefferson, looked both ways and turned back around. Who wants to spend their 42nd birthday at Fisherman's Wharf? Maybe if you're turning 10 the allure of the Rainforest Cafe, a really good deal on some sweatshirts and a guy who dresses up as a tree, then jumps out and scares endless mobs of European tourists is inescapable. Not at 42.

Besides, though it is my birthday, and though I am eager to shed what little adult responsibility I have, I also know that Shack, he of the $15 iTunes gift certificate and endless though well-intended barking, is at home, bored out of his skull on an 80 degree day.

So I drive home, formulating a plan: I will take Shack to Crissy Field, where he will run wild with other dogs while I bask in the sun, displaying the semi-in shape body of a man at least 5 years younger than 42, though with the diminishing scalp coverage of a man at least 5 years older. That's why God made baseball caps look so cool.

How carefree I must appear! 42 years old, in oversized brown shorts and a cool t-shirt that says "NASHVILLE GUITARS." How I must appear to be successful at something that doesn't require I go to an office every day. To be like me, walking an irresistable dog down Chestnut Street, and yes, finally, with a MILKSHAKE in my hand.

Months I had waited. My desire for a milkshake had waxed and waned. Ever earlier on this day I'd thought, "Do I really want a lousy milkshake from Johnny Rockets? Maybe a simple cone from Mitchells instead."

And then: FORGET IT. IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. THOUGH I AM LESS THAN STELLAR IN THE CAREER DEPT., I DO DESERVE AT LEAST THIS.

Plus an iPod.

Props to the slightly scary-looking woman I saw at the beach later. As I chased Shack back and forth, she noted that I seemed uncomfortable with the small dog/no leash/bay access situation. "I've never taken him here before," I said, as Shack darted the length of the beach.

"Oh, is he your girlfriend's dog?"

Thank you, mohawked and tattooed woman. Thank you for looking at this 42-year-old guy in shorts and a baseball cap and assuming that he was at the stage in life where you have a girlfriend. Thank you, perhaps, for assuming that I am at the beach at 2 pm on a Tuesday because I am a grad student, ready to start a fine career in something, the law, maybe, because great artists generally don't wear gigantic shorts, t-shirts and baseball caps. I completely forgive your assumption that I am with a borrowed dog, which would explain my incompetence at handling him, as well.

"Worse," I said. "It's my son's dog."

In the end, the milkshake was a mistake. It was an overrated dream, and it made me feel huge and gross the minute it was gone. After drinking (eating?) it, I returned to the realm of middle-aged guys who have to consciously hold in their stomachs. Bummer.

Shack and I came home and fell asleep. Both of us. We woke up in time for Sandra Bullock, enjoying the one month a year that she gets to pretend she is an entire year younger than me, blew into the house, ready to sample some top-shelf margaritas at Tres Agaves downtown.

This is how childless people celebrate a Tuesday birthday, we thought, as we sat in the bar, waiting for our table, peppering the young (yet receding. Hooray!) bartender with questions about Tequila brands.

And I'll bet you that childless people are home by 8:30, so they can catch the second half of "American Idol," because how would it look if your Jawa returned home from his school overnight and you couldn't tell him who got kicked off this week?

Happy birthday to me.

Escalade Invasion

2007-05-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

There is a sea change afoot at Brandeis Hillel Day School; the enemy has arrived. Last week I saw a Cadillac Escalade in the parking lot.

In a normal environment, this would mean little. It has been several years since the Escalade was the exclusive domain of the professional athlete and hip-hop star. Thanks to some savvy marketing by General Motors' elite brand, the massive, over-styled vehicle is now desired by many societal subcultures, from the good-timing boys of HBO's "Entourage" to the Sacramento family of 6 who find a Chevy Suburban just too darn common. The mighty Escalade is everywhere ... except our parking lot.

Understand that our parking lot, like our school and our city, is a special place. We pay handsomely for our nice, new school, our fearsome Russian security guys, our top-flight educators, our plans for a state-of-the-art theater and gymnasium. Yesterday we had our "family and sports day" (formerly walk-a-thon) at a local public high school, stepping over graffiti and weeds as we made our way to the unmowed grass next to the football field. "It looks like Vietnam," someone said. There are many reasons why we pay for school, and they often seem incoherent to non-San Franciscans, whose local public schools are an actual option to consider, not a threat to drag out when their children become exceptionally unmanageable.

Considering the limitations of the school's mission (it is, after all, a religious school, something we often forget and are sometimes irritated to be reminded of right in the middle of a solid rant about George Bush and his preferred treatment of faith-based organizations), we do a good, and improving job of stocking the coffers with families from a variety of economic stations. Thanks to my inability to make even a modest living, we rank toward the bottom of the social strata, but are never made to feel (on purpose, at least) like the "poor relations" we feared we'd be, had we chosen some of the other local private schools.

Meanwhile, back in the world of reality, I hand you this question: so if we're all over the map, economically, but we also realize that 2/3 of us are paying an enormous yearly fee to send our kids to grade school, why is it that its five years in and I'm seeing my first Escalade in the parking lot?

Should I be proud that the number of champagne green Toyota Camrys in the lot each day easily outflanks the number of wins our young basketball team has posted in the past four years? Is it somehow proof of our moral balance that every day it seems that someone new is rolling past the fearsome Russian security guys in a shiny, silent Prius?

Along those lines, am I not supposed to find it suspicious that on a normal day you can count at least 6 Priuses (Priii?) in the parking lot at all times, and yet only one Honda Civic Hybrid? If a Hybrid idled quietly in a school parking lot but no one knew it was a Hybrid, would the driver still rack up righteous points in the eyes of Al Gore?

It is very good for our children that we keep it quasi-real, automotively, at school. The less they know about their privilege, the better, according to an author who spoke at the JCC recently about "The Price of Privilege." Children are carving themselves up with butter knives, thanks to the pressures laid on them by their wealthy parents. We are very careful, we hope, to not lay anything like that on our little Jewish kids.

"Privilege," itself, though, is a little slippery. According to national averages, we, even us with me acting as financial albatross, easily exceed national medians for standard of living. Here in the special city, we are decidedly middle class, which is fine until you start trying to explain that to someone from somewhere else, who will not buy it under any circumstances. In my Jawa's world, he is not privileged. To the other 99.9% of the world, he is wildly privileged.

Things are changing, witness the white Escalade. A recent trend toward grabbing the attention of the crowd now known as "The Jews Who Used to Send Their Kids to The Town School and Hamlin" has us sharing space with large-scale BMWs, the aforementioned Escalade, a very scary guy who sometimes shows up in a Mercedes SUV and tailgates everyone while yelling and waving his arms around, and the guy in the Porsche who always helps himself to the illegal parking spot right in front of the school and wears clogs, rain or shine.

Some are up in arms about this change in our school population. Not me. I have friends who taught me, by their actions and way too recently for a guy who should know better, not to judge people by their wallet size. I mean, I've seen guys in Priuses throw out road rage that would make my enormous pickup truck-driving brother-in-law proud. So what are we supposed to say? "Some of my best friends are rich people who drive nice cars?"

And besides, I like to pretend sometimes that we have money. I bought that freaking Volvo that we can't afford, didn't I?

But an Escalade? That's different, right? This is no cute little Lexus SUV (which can be purchased as a Hybrid). It's huge, it's gaudy, it probably sucks down a couple of Priuses each day for lunch. I haven't yet polled my fellow BHDS parents, but I've got to think that seeing an Escalade in the parking lot is not their favorite thing. Since they have jobs, not nearly as much time to ruminate over this and are not insane, they probably haven't even noticed it yet. But they will.

What's next, a Hummer? Do they even make it in a Hybrid?

Jawas, Report Cards, Jenny from the Block, Sportswriters

2007-05-01T23:45:00.000-07:00

And then how about you have a day that begins with your Jawa forgetting several important school-related items and ends with you standing outside a bar, telling a guy you barely know about the first time you realized you'd step in front of a bullet for that very same Jawa?

And then all the stuff in-between.

I swear to you, my Jawa -- much like myself -- would forget his head if it were not attached to his body. As much as I nag him every morning, I have to believe that without my input he would arrive at school each Monday thru Friday shoeless, minus his lunch and backpack, and then blaming me for their absence. This morning, despite a series of subtle and not-so-subtle reminders from Sandra Bullock, we managed to get to school without his book report "creative project." Worse yet, we would not have come within several hundred miles of remembering that had he not also forgotten his lunch.

The lunch worked my last nerve, because I'd set it on the counter at 7:15, only to have him realize, with much drama and finger-pointing, at 8:11, that he'd forgotten to attach it to his backpack via the very convenient little hook thing. The lunch stayed home, and I got blamed. "I hope you're happy that I'll be going hungry ... DAD," he said. I was not buying it. "Well," I said, "I'll do my best to get it here by lunch," pause, wait, wait, then lay the hammer down: "BUT I HAVE A VERY BUSY DAY TODAY."

Pulling away with much sadistic satisfaction, until I hear a distant DAD! DAD!

We forgot the freaking creative project. There goes my workout. I get back to school, drop the thing off to much oohing and aahing among the 4th grade regulars, including, I noticed, some sincere interest from the Jawa's arch-enemy. Good to see that. Nice that the Jawa gets a little pub for his creative project, though I have to wonder if he, like former Oakland Raider Randy Moss, really deserves it.

From there I go on to complete my day, which really was more busy than normal, and cross your fingers that all the copying I did at Kinko's eventually pays off in the form of some nice, lucrative assignments from the editor of "San Francisco" magazine.

And then the report card came.

I don't want to appear a 1980s yuppie parent, hyper-focused on my child's grades. This is San Francisco, of course, and such concerns are considered not only hopelessly bourgeouis (sp?), but also somehow barberic. And yet. The child, like his father years before, receives a report card best summed up as "fine." Are we raising a "fine" child? Is the child capable of more than "fine?"

Less charitably, are we paying $19,000 we cannot afford for "fine?" And what about that 3 (kind of like a C, only in non-judgemental 21st-century San Francisco private school-speak) in handwriting? Are the much-loved (by child and father; I love the hour to do my crossword puzzles while he is in class) Occupational Therapy (OT) classes not paying off?

Once again, I am faced with a parental puzzle I am not able to solve. Nine years in and I still have no idea how to motivate my obviously gifted (to me, at least, plus the teacher from the Nueva School who gave him the IQ test) Jawa. I try to harangue him, only to find that the first pause in my monologue draws from him not guilt, not contrition, but instead a very complex observation about Yu-Gi-Oh, which is not what I'd hoped to get in return. Obviously, the harangue is bouncing off his tough outer shell, then ricocheting back at me. It is having no effect.

I try threats. At one point, after getting no response, I look back at him (we are driving to OT as this happens). His eyes are closed. He is asleep.

But I can tell that, on some level, he is engaged. He's not happy to be on the receiving end of all this, but he is at least present. When he is awake, at least.

Several hours later I recited my ritual parental code, as I see it: "If you care at all about parenting," I told my rapt audience of one, outside the bar, "you constantly feel like you are failing."

And so it was that I pulled into a parking spot outside the coffee place we go each Tuesday. The Jawa and I ease into OT with an hour of chess. He eats a cookie. Usually. Today, I ate the cookie, because he didn't like it and I can't stick to a diet and thus will weigh at least 200 lbs. from this point forward.

I'll readily admit that I was at a loss at how to let my Jawa know that a "fine" report card was not really "fine", and I apologize to everyone who took the time to write books insisting that what I said next was wrong, but you can't fault my honesty.

"Every dad wants his son to be better than he was," I said to my Jawa. "You'd have to have a huge ego to not want that." He agreed. "And the thing is, I'm worried that you'll end up like me -- a smart guy who's pretty disgusted with the way he let things turn out."

I know. I'm supposed to be a good example, not a cautionary tale. But I was at wit's end, and frankly, I'm a pretty darn good cautionary tale. So I let fly. Whether or not this had or will have any kind of positive impact I do not know. I do know, however, that once I told him this any kind of anger I had at him evaporated, immediately replaced with an overwhelming urge to hold him in my arms and protect him from whatever ill will -- be it classroom bullies, errant gangster bullets, evil, manipulative women and every unreasonably demanding boss his future might hold -- might come his way. Instead, we played chess.

I beat him, as usual. I can't let him win, because I want it to mean something every time he beats me.

Flash forward several hours, because I'm boring myself by recounting every spare minute of my day. My Jawa, who has returned to driving me crazy, insists that it would most definitely be MY FAULT if Shack destroys his Star Wars miniatures set up on the living room floor, and then states that there is NO WAY he will EVER use the Ivory soap I've bought by mistake. He will simply be dirty, he says. I tell him, accurately, that he is being unreasonable, which has about as much impact as if I had spit directly into gale force winds.

Now we switch the setting to the local bar. Jenny from the Block and I have chosen this venue for our meeting with a successful local lawyer, the man we hope will take over our roles as Chairs for the Bookfair. Eventually, I run into this guy I sort of know. He writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, covering high school sports. Since my meeting with Jenny from the Block and the successful local lawyer has ended, I hang out with the sportswriter. He has a 14 month-old son.

At 11:30, our evening ends. We stand outside the bar, as sometimes happens, especially, it seems, when you've had a surprisingly good time hanging out with someone you hardly know. There is so much to talk about. And he's a young guy, and I've been feeling lately like a tired old parent, so he asks questions and I answer. I share with him the travails of later-childhood parenting. "Your kid stops being an accessory," I say. "And you can't be cool. You just try to keep up."

You could say that my child has put me through the wringer today, or you could say that it is just another day of being some kid's parent, and that I got off pretty easily because Sandra Bullock did the dishes and let me watch a basketball game, then dealt with the sometimes nightmare of convincing our Jawa to go to be at 8:30 while I sat in a bar and had a good time. You could say that the non-quantitative benefits of being the Jawa's dad were obvious as we walked up 6th Avenue, when I put my hand around his neck, like my dad used to do to me. "That's kind of weird," said the Jawa, so I took my hand from around his neck and put it between his shoulders. He's a skinny kid, so he has a clearly defined ridge between his shoulders.

"I like that better," he said, leaning into me. "That's our way."

Here's what I told that sportswriter, after I asked him if he could remember the exact moment he realized he'd take a bullet for his Jawa: when my Jawa was about a year old, we went to watch Sandra Bullock play in a soccer game. The game (unsurprisngly) wasn't holding my interest, so I tossed the infant Jawa into his stroller and went for a walk.

The neighborhood wasn't the best. We turned a corner to find a drunk guy lurching up the sidewalk toward us. This guy seemed harmless, but what if he wasn't? What would I do? I wasn't sure, but I knew this much: whatever that guy did, I'd spend my last breath making sure he couldn't get to my Jawa, because what's the point of being taking a last breath if you can't use it to protect your Jawa?

Pretty freaky.

A Learning Experience

2007-04-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

Today I went on a field trip with the fourth grade, and I learned many things. Not only that Mission Dolores (or Mission of the Lady of Sorrows) is the oldest continually operational building in San Francisco, though I did learn that. Or that Mary, mother of Jesus, is the lady of sorrows. Seven of them, to be precise, all having to do with her son. She was, after all, a Jewish mother.

I was reminded of how cool Catholic iconography is, when we sat in the 1,400 seat Basillica, next door to the actual Mission. And that, when the chips are down, I think old cemetaries are pretty cool. So cool, in fact, that I have to refer to them as "boneyards."

But that was not all.

I learned that today's schoolbuses have seatbelts, and that you cannot pull away from school until everyone has their seatbelt fastened. They also have much taller seats, making it much more difficult to harass the kid sitting in front of you. Overall, they seem much nicer than they were when I was a kid, or even when I was teaching high school.

My Jawa is still young enough to get excited when he sees me at school, which is nice.

The learning began almost immediately, and came directly on the heels of my first educational moment of the day. We drove a 6th grader to school this morning, as a favor to someone who plays basketball with Sandra Bullock. Halfway through the ride, I heard faint rap music coming from somewhere. 6th graders, I quickly learned, sometimes listen to their iPods on the way to school.

But that was just the beginning. After almost five years of dealing with this class of kids as their basketball coach or the Jawa's dad, I got to take my annual survey of where they are, socially. I found out who are the nice girls and who are the mean girls, and which girls will go quickly to the mini-tantrum when things don't go their way. And I learned that there are girls who are perfectly nice, but are ignored by the nice girls and ostracized by the mean girls, so they have to sit alone on the steps and make it look like everything is okay.

I learned that there are mean girls pretending to be nice girls.

I learned that when the Shaman goes fetal, the best thing to do is "give him some space."

I learned that all of the crazy boys seem to have had no trouble finding each other. Even crazy boys new to the school have quickly found their peers. And that something as simple as a found pair of eyeglasses can cause hours of entertainment and trouble. And that though there are perhaps a half-dozen crazy boys, one is head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to being clever and funny. And being sweaty, then shoving his hair up to maximum height.

And that some boys that I had no idea were crazy are. So crazy that they will take leave of their adult-friendly persona to eat a lemon cough drop that they've found lying on the sidewalk, and then later eat a blade of grass, before returning to their more controlled, sports-obsessed modus operandi.

I learned that there are some boys whose parents should know who they've been hanging out with, because it's not a good idea for them to hang out with these people. And that plenty of my parental peers have no idea (or refuse to acknowledge) how their kids behave when they're not around. And that kids think they know when there're no adults around, so they can practice swearing and talking about killing stuff.

I learned that my child's teacher, like me, prefers wearing a worn baseball cap to not wearing one. And that he is not afraid to go down the slide when encouraged by his class. And that his teaching assistant, though Jewish, did actually go to Mass while at Santa Clara, my alma mater, but only on Saturday night, "before partying."

I found that the other teaching assistant was a very interesting guy, who carries a sports bag that indicates he played some sport at Stanford, which, in my world, is very impressive.

I learned that the Jawa's ex-girlfriend is trying to mend fences, even if that means skipping the mass "capture the flag" game going on in favor of joining him on the jungle gym. I also learned that one of our (S. Bullock and I) favorite girl basketball players plans to become a lawyer, which comes as absolutely no surprise to either of us. And that one of the stars of our basketball team "doesn't like playgrounds."

I learned that all of the "kindness committee" training in the world will not teach your child to clean up after him or herself. Nor will including non-disposable Tupperware in their lunches. Some kids more than others.

There is a boy in 4th grade whom, I predict, will eventually carry the "Animal House"-inspired nickname "Bluto." But he will surprise everyone by being incredibly well-read. And eventually, he, too, will have his heart broken by one of the mean girls. Or the wannabe mean girls. It makes little difference.

I learned that the other 4th grade teacher really likes to emphasize the second syllable of "cafe," suggesting that she spent a semester in Europe during college.

I found that, not surprisingly but still a little unsettlingly, 4th graders from a Jewish Day School know absolutely nothing about Catholicism, Christianity, Saints or Jesus Christ himself. Most of them were upset by the Crucifix. "Why's he up there?" more than one of them asked. Our docent, Al Lopez (not THAT Al Lopez, baseball fans), was very patient, and seemed to be doctoring his presentation. He reminded us several times that Jesus was a Jew, that The Last Supper was a Seder. As our Indie Rock-looking teacher left the Basillica (inexplicably, he had jury duty), he whispered to me, "If he starts giving them communion, get them out of here." Fortunately, it never came to that.

I learned that most kids love dogs, but as much as they love dogs, they hate it when the dogs' owners lay down a blanket in the park and start making out. This will send them running in terror, shouting, "THEY'RE MAKING OUT! GROSSSSS!" If you respond by saying, "What's gross? Are they hippies?" They will give you a blank look, is if you've just spoken to them in Latin.

Everyone should go on a field trip. Even people who are neither parents nor teachers. It's good for the soul, and even better for those who want to know what goes on when their backs are turned.

Change of Command: Dad Misses Out

2007-04-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

My dad wasn't able to get from his part of the desert to the Rocket Scientist's part of the desert last Friday, so he missed the impressive ceremony marking the Rocket Scientist's ascension to Commander (Commanding Officer?) of the 452nd Global Hawk squadron. I am positive I have the name wrong, but it is something equally impressive, even through my San Francisco-tinged eyes.

The Global Hawk is an unmanned supersonic airplane, one of the strangest-looking vehicles I've ever seen. There was one parked near the stage at the ceremony. Halfway through the event, a guy with very good posture stood next to the Global Hawk while Colonel Cook, commander of stuff much larger than the 452nd, explained how the plane carries the name of the commanding officer of the squadron. With less flourish than I would have expected from a civilian ceremony, the guy with good posture removed a tarp from the plane, revealing the name of the Rocket Scientist. It was pretty cool.

It's very unfortunate that my dad was not at the ceremony, Noodles' Mom and I both agreed. For years I thought that the Rocket Scientist was the son my dad never had. It was only recently that I realized that the Rocket Scientist is living the dream my dad never got. It was only recently also that I learned that at age 18 my dad was accepted to West Point. My grandmother let it slip one day while we were visiting. I knew he'd been in the army, and I knew he revered West Point, to the degree that he somehow convinced the 3-year-old me that I wanted to grow up to become a West Point cement truck driver, but didn't know that he'd almost gone there.

He washed out before he ever got a chance, though. His failing left eye did the trick. What has been a light-hearted family reference for years ("It's blue, just like my eye!") gained a little traction as a vehicle for tragedy with this knowledge. Poor Dad.

This is a long and perhaps too revealing way of saying that he would really have enjoyed the "Change of Command" ceremony we attended last Friday. He would have enjoyed the pomp and ceremony, how we were all ferried into a back room prior to the event, where we met Colonel Cook (who seemed unable to get a grasp on the concept that some women work and support their families. "Uh...I'm a writer, Colonel Cook." Right. I support a family in San Francisco as a writer. The kind of writer who earns $10,000 a year. That woman over there next to my child has something to do with our survival, Colonel Cook. Whatever.). We were happy to be back there -- my family, my sister's family, her in-laws and the Rocket Scientist's very outdoorsy brother, his wife and their very tiny infant son who had a Jewish first name despite the family's so-very-obviously-not-Jewish background.

Dad would have enjoyed that the whole thing took place in a hangar, which had been cooled to 46 degrees F. He would have liked the guy in fatigues who, as we passed on our way in, saluted the Rocket Scientist and said, "Congratulations, Sir. Will we be performing the stomping tonight?"

The "stomping," I later learned, involves a group of military guys who come to your house, climb into the roof, and stomp around until you invite them in for alcoholic beverages. This sort of thing happens all the time at Brandeis, of course. It's rare to have a Friday where a bunch of guys don't come over, climb onto our roof, and stomp around in their Merrill slip-ons until we invite them for a glass of Pinot Noir.

And Dad would have liked shaking hands with Colonel Cook, and the Rocket Scientist's predecessor, whose name I don't remember. What I do remember is that his "call sign (nickname)" was "Squish," and that he had eight -- count 'em, eight -- kids, mostly boys with lots of freckles and a strange hairstyle that involved gelling each individual bang down over their foreheads. Eight kids!

Soon it was time for the ceremony to begin. We were escorted out to the hangar, which was already full of about 150 people, mostly guys wearing olive drab flight suits with patches that said "Test Pilot School Graduate," plus lots of "honored guests" and one absolute pansy from San Francisco who gets nauseous on roller coasters.

The stage was at the front of the hangar. As we sat, Colonel Cook, "Squish" and the Rocket Scientist -- whose "call sign," to my great joy, is actually "Rocket," which is actually short for "Rocket Scientist," because he is an honest-to-God Rocket Scientist -- walked somberly onto the stage. There was one guy who acted as the emcee, plus a nervous-looking guy whose entire job was to hold up the squadron flag for the entire ceremony.

Since I was not privy to the inside gossip (I learned it all later), all I saw was a very disciplined, moving ceremony, involving lots of tradition. The color guard moved slowly to the stage for the national anthem, holding the Jawa's attention the whole time. "Look at how they walk," I told him, pointing out their precise heel-toe action. Colonel Cook thanked the distinguished guests by name, including not only some general, but, among others, my sister, her in-laws, Sandra Bullock, the Jawa, and eight kids with strange-looking individually gelled bangs.

Colonel Cook sung the praises of "Squish," he of the eight kids and prominent eyebrows. Looking a bit like Richard Benjamin, "Squish" ate it up respectfully, then came forward to offer his own quite comprehensive remarks, which included a ceremony of his own invention involving each and every one of his kids, plus a bag full of unusual coins. As he spoke, I scanned his bio in the program. "Squish," it seems, accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior in 1973, when he was 8 years old.

After "Squish" spoke, Colonel Cook, the Rocket Scientist, and "Squish," all joined together on the dias to complete the actual change of command. The nervous-looking guy joined them with the flag, which they then played some kind of hand-over-hand thing on. I guess at the end the Rocket Scientist's hand must have ended up on top, signaling that he was now in charge of the squadron. "Squish" and his eight kids would now move onto another squadron, but not until "Squish" received an almost comically huge medal, presumably for a job well done.

Then it was goodbye, "Squish," hello Rocket Scientist.

I was not expecting much from the Rocket Scientist's "remarks." Known more for precision knowledge of unusual things -- for example, Colonel Cook introduced him as "probably the nation's pre-eminent expert on unmanned flight," which makes me wonder why my sister is so worried that he will not be able to get a job once he retires from the military -- than for his social abilities, the Rocket Scientist would have been excused if his remarks were as dry as we were freezing in that hangar. But no! In a shocking turn of events, the Rocket Scientist delivered an entertaining, breezy yet very weighty speech, promising, among other things, to "take the squadron to the next (very specific but forgotten by me) step," and to buy my sister another Kate Spade bag. "Squish" may be competent but lets face it; the Rocket Scientist is a stud.

I stand by that, even with the memory of my Jawa melting down in exhaustion the next day at the California Poppy Festival while the Rocket Scientist and his dad methodically browsed the Arts & Crafts booths fresh in my mind.

The ceremony closed with plenty of hoo-hahing, and then a very surreal moment where Colonel Cook, Squish and the Rocket Scientist led the crowd in a round of "Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder" from the stage.

But it would have been cool if my dad could have been there, if only because he would have been the sole attendee not complaining about the icy temperature there in the hangar, even though he would have been wearing a short-sleeved shirt while the rest of us huddled in sweaters.

I know that the reality of this day was not as clear as this ceremony would make it, and that the military isn't always the most empathetic employer. And I know that as a good San Franciscan, I should have been muttering under my breath about the "military-industrial complex." So shoot me. I'm not a good San Francisco. Not by a long shot. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the opportunity to block out all of the white noise for a morning, be proud of my brother-in-law, and dig the traditions if his chosen profession.

Dad, you shoulda been there.

My Bad Performance

2007-04-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

I keep a mental list of people I'd like to run into. It's been in my head for at least 20 years, since Eric Friedman left for summer after Junior year and never came back.

Surprisingly, I've actually seen many of the people on my list. You can't plan to see them. It just happens. And when you see them, if you're me, you have to make a split-second decision: should I say something? Weirdly, my initial thought is always -- not sometimes, always -- "There's (insert name). I won't say anything. It'll be weird."

Dave K. was one of those people. He materialized via email and for that I am thankful, having now met his delightful wife and exposed him to my jawa and Sandra Bullock. All of those questions I had about his life in the years 1983-2006 have been answered, and it's weird. It's not like I stopped thinking about the guy, referring to him or mentioning him to people. Time just passes.

The last time I saw someone on my list was a couple of years ago. I was at the Claremont Hotel to meet my ex-Mormon New Yorker friend who was in town, and I saw the Original Kathleen, aka Cody, entering an elevator with her husband. Time may usually drag, but in this situation, it moves very quickly. I had no time to wonder if my screaming out the name of someone who may or may not be the person I thought they were would offend my guest, or if this person getting into the elevator was, in fact, Cody, but, unlike me, I took a chance and yelled out her name.

And it was her.

So the ex-Mormon from out of town had to keep Cody's husband entertained while she and I filled in the blanks for the past 10 years or so. To her great credit, she did so. I think they talked about wine.

The great part was that Cody and I were so happy to see each other, and that we've seen her (and her very jolly husband and their adorable children) several times since.

But it doesn't always work out quite that way.

My friend Dug, the college athlete-turned artist, played a huge role in my early post-college experience. Both of us were from Orange County. We were both into music, and both dropped back into Orange County following graduation without any sort of plan as to what to do next. So we spent much of the next year driving to Los Angeles to see what was up.

After that, Dug moved to San Francisco and I moved to Seattle, but every time I came to San Francisco, Dug would drop whatever he was doing and show me the time of my life, which usually included burritos at 2 a.m., often eaten on some hillside with an incredible view of the city. We were both in the same spot -- trying to avoid joining the mainstream world, with varying success. Honestly, he was better at it than me, even back then.

Through Dug I met Big Jody, who, though it's been almost long enough since we've talked that he may have to join the "man, I hope to run into ..." list, remains one of the most treasured people of my world. I think about the guy every day. Met him and his wife at a Dug party in which Rick the Barbarian, long before he became the soulful folk singer Richard Buckner, threw pickles off the roof of Dug's house while the Pogues played.

Dug was at our wedding, actually wearing a suit.

Somehow, when we moved back to Seattle in 1993, I lost touch with Dug. He moved to Eugene, where we saw him once, and then to Portland, got married, had a kid, but unlike me, stayed focused on his goals, i.e. not ending up trying to pass himself off as a "consultant" or a "content manager," when being no more qualified for either than he would be a "smelter" or a "long haul trucker."

That was that. I am at fault. I was 180 miles away, and in fact went to Portland every October for a volleyball tournament, but did not call. One time, hoping to lift me out of whatever funk I had settled into, the Legendary Dr. Bandeau took me to Portland for a spontaneous trip of alcohol consumption and strip joints. I have a memory of having a heartfelt conversation with a stripper about how guilty I felt, being in Portland and not looking up Dug. She advised me to look him up. Even with that advice, I didn't.

I felt like too much time had passed, that it'd be awkward, and I hate awkward. Guilty, however, is quite palatable, so I just tucked it away, referred to my guilt occasionally, and went on with my life.

Last Friday, I was driving the Jawa home from saxOphone practice, when I saw what was undoubtedly Dug walking down Chenery Street with two other people. Without thinking "is this a good idea?" I slammed on my brakes, causing great alarm in Dug and his friends. Then I rolled down my window and started yelling his name.

He had no idea who it was. The Lefty he last spoke to in 1995 had a full head of hair and did not drive a Volvo. In fact, it was Dug who drove the Volvo, albeit an ancient, boxy one with an Elvis Costello "Get Happy!" bumper sticker.

Eventually, we sorted it out. Then I pulled over and got out of the car, instantly realizing that I must look like the biggest yuppie tool ever to walk the earth. Here is my old friend, still looking like my old friend, his wife and his other friend who lives in my neighborhood -- renting a place above the hardware store -- and who I often see sitting in front of the coffee place on Sundays, playing bluegrass music with a bunch of old guys, dressed exactly as you would imagine: thrift shop sportcoat, jeans and work boots.

And there's me, with my Volvo, my shaved head, my sunglasses and my Banana Republic gear, stupidly babbling about my list of people I'm always hoping to run into.

Dug seemed a little taken aback. He is by nature very laid-back, so he held his ground and seemed happy. He was in town for art reasons, and in fact is a working artist, whatever that means beyond "I don't have a regular job and I still make a living doing what I want."

I felt lame. Silly. Ridiculous. Caught completely off-guard. At least if I'd seen him the day before I would have been unshaven and on foot.

It wasn't like running into Cody or Dave K. I didn't really have the chance to not act like a fool. So we exchanged email addresses, and I'm pretty sure redemption will have to come from me. After all, he didn't volunteer that we should get together while he's down here, and even though his wife said, "Oh, sure, I've heard lots about you," I can't help but think that their post-script was more along the, "Wow, that guy's sure changed," lines than the, "Boy, it was great to see him!" paradigm.

Most of this is my own disgust at having to say, "Uh, I'm a stay-at-home Dad," ...who, rather than using that time to create something and follow through on all of the drunken promises of 15 years ago, instead goes to the gym and has his wife buy him a Volvo. Maybe I should have talked to him about "personal wellness."

Game's not over yet. And the good part is that it has inspired me to not let Big Jody drop to the "it sure would be great to run into him" category.

Ruminations on the Hat

2007-04-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

Since I was seven years old, I've worn baseball caps. I wore them when I had so much hair that I had to buy hats a size too large, just to contain my Oscar Gamble-like halo of hair.

One day in 1973, I took my beloved New York Mets hat off twice, for a total of 4 minutes. I noted it, then bragged about it for weeks. It was summer, so I didn't have to remove it for school.

At the time, it was possible to cloak myself entirely in Mets logoed gear. I had the Mets hat, the Mets t-shirt and the Mets jacket. No Mets pants, though Larry Wolk did hand me down a pair of Miami Dolphins cords, which I paired with my Kevin Arnold-style Dolphins letterman jacket.

Since that time, I've experimented with many looks. All of them went just fine with a baseball cap. And each time popular baseball cap style changed, I changed with it.

First, I adopted the mid-70s kid fit: slammed down on your head to contain as much hair as possible, this look always resulted in what my mother called "wings," that is, my pre-puberty Jewish hair was so wavy that it would curl up over my ears, creating huge, magnificent, Dumbo-esque ramps of hair. It didn't really matter that I had constant hat hair. I never took off my hat.

Those, yes, were the days, my friend.

At some point in the late 1970s-early 1980s, when playing baseball became as important as wearing a baseball cap, my style evolved as my hair shrunk. By high school I was wearing my lettuce tight, helmet-like, and perching my hat on top of my head, tilted back to reveal something I would be very proud to reveal today: bangs.

Not too high on my head, however. Not high enough to, as my very athletically gifted but undersized friend Phreb once said, "house a family of midgets under there." Give Phreb a break. It was 1983 and "midget" wasn't yet a slur.

That was a good look. Out on the town, my cardinal and gold El Modena High School lid casually slapped on my head, making me obviously a varsity player even without the accompanying maroon silky jacket with "EL MODENA BASEBALL" sewn on the back, I felt like a part of something, like a real jock.

A few years later, while living in Seattle, I still sported the visible bangs look. It was especially effective during my freshman year of college, when I tried to grow out my bangs like the guy in the gold suit from ABC, only to find that my post-puberty Jewish hair could manage only the approximation of a rooster tail, like the shocking red one adopted by Bud/and or Marsi during the depths of her punk phase.

Senator Chris Winn was the first guy I saw who pulled his baseball cap down onto his head, completely hiding what was, and probably still is, I haven't seen him in years, one of the best heads of hair I've ever seen on a human being. This was fine with Chris. He wore his obvious physical gifts uncomfortably, pleased at the access they allowed him to some of life's finer things, but also concerned that they took away from his grittiness. As a result, he jammed his hat down onto his head, resulting in what his girlfriend commented "looks like a tennis ball."

We did not know that he, like Tim Lynch, who shaved his head in 1981 and looked like an old-time ballplayer in his hat, was actually riding the leading edge. Before long, we'd all have our hats slammed onto our heads.

But first, we would abuse our hats in the worst ways. We would wear them backwards, something I am as guilty of as anyone. My mid-20s were lousy with backwards hats, forcing strangers to accost me on MUNI and sometimes refer to me as "people like you."

And then, suddenly, the backwards hat became a symbol for the worst kind of uncool. The backwards hat lost favor almost as quickly and totally as the "wild shorts" did in the mid-80s. Immediately, struck with a case of selective amnesia that would do a pro-Palestinian activist proud, I joined the loud chorus of backwards hat denouncers.

I had already moved on.

For a time, during the great volleyball obsession of the late 80s and early 90s, we wore much smaller hats. They had the names of clothing companies on them, rather than the names of sports teams. We wore them pushed low, with the brims flipped up, so as not to catch our hands on them while delivering a perfect set at the net. It was this hat style that somehow convinced the coach of the Cambridge, Mass. volleyball team I tried out for in 1989 that I had talent, though I was raw. "I saw that hat and I figured you knew something about volleyball," she said. Or something about posing, I thought.

And then came my favorite hat style, the one that has led to my present-day hat crisis. In the late 90s, when I started teaching high school, I noticed that all of the boys wore baseball caps with perfectly rounded bills. They wore them low and peered out from under the bills as if they were just about to throw a 95 mile per hour fastball just off the inside corner, scaring the crap out of you and sending the message that the inside part of the plate is theirs.

I love that look, and once one of the kids I was coaching at the time showed me how to achieve it (by rolling the bill over your forearm repeatedly), I adopted it as my own look. The low look complemented my new lack of hair perfectly. With the hat down low and what was left of my hair clipped literally to within a quarter inch of its life, the result was that I took on the air of a serious ballplayer, one who shaved his head not because he was going bald but because it flat out looks tough.

And there I have stayed, happier still to find that hats were now being sold with the bill pre-rolled. The kids took it too far, crumpling their bills until the cardboard hidden inside came poking out through the fabric. They showed up with triangular bills, bills that looked as if they'd been rolled across the forearms of Nicole Richie. I kept mine perfectly rounded. And tough.

A few years ago, when hip-hop style replaced sports style as the point of reference baseball cap etiquette, I noticed more and more of what I considered to be horrid mutations in baseball cap style. Now the brim was perfectly flat, and the size tag was left on, along with the price tag. I wear a 7 3/8, sometimes a 7 1/2, and I'm not Minnie Pearl, so I'm not on board with either tag making its presence felt on my hat.

The angle of the hat has changed, too. No longer is the hat jammed securely on your head. It floats, usually askew -- which used to be the tell-tale sign that you were lefthanded, by the way, according to several former coaches of mine -- and the brim tails off somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees of straight on. Frankly, to my middle-aged eyes, it looks ridiculous and anything but sporty and tough.

Make no mistake: these guys wearing their hats at ridiculous angles are far tougher than me. Their hats don't reflect it.

The real problem is that, after 30 years of moving with the trends, I've gotten stuck in late-90s style, unable to move forward or backwards. I know that when I leave the house -- especially after more than a week without a haircut, when I generally don't go outside without a baseball cap -- I am presenting to the world the image of a burned-out fashion has-been. Someone who, if asked, would as likely claim to choose their clothing "because it's comfortable." That's the kind of thinking that leads to sweat pants and fanny packs. And yet, I hang on.

Why? Why does this latest trend in baseball cap style strike me as so wrong? Why is it completely out of the question for me to try it on for size? I've tried every other ridiculous permutation of baseball cap wear, why not this one?

Is this what getting old feels like? I guess so. That and going bald, I guess.

44 Hours of Sin (City)

2007-04-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

"Dad, can I swear?"

So began 44 hours in Sin City with my Jawa. A few thousand yards of Las Vegas Blvd., "The Strip" to tourists and locals alike, drew forth this response. He was staring up at New York, New York, our hotel, when he said it. I denied his request, naturally. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, except when your dad is in the front seat.

A word about New York, New York: last year, while attending the wedding of the Legendary Dr. Bandeau, I stopped into New York, New York while waiting for everyone else to arrive. At that time, I found it the goofiest, lamest, cheesiest theme hotel, casino or park on the planet. Something about the dueling pianos playing Billy Joel, or the reproduction of the bar already made into a movie ("Coyote Ugly") raised my legitimate and real urban hackles, so I sat at the least obnoxiously theme-y bar and sneered at the tourists around me.

This time, seeing it through a 9-year-old jawa's eyes, it seemed wonderfully colorful and fun, as true to its theme as Disneyland to Tomorrow, Fantasy, Adventure, Main Street and New Orleans, which is to say, just fine. In fact, I can't think of a better place to stay with a jawa, save for perhaps Mandalay Bay on the strength of its many and varied swimming options.

What do you do in Las Vegas when you are sans wife and cohort, but with jawa? You don't gamble and do very little strolling around, drink in hand. Instead, you spend hours in the arcades. In a strange, under-21 approximation of a bunch of guys at a bachelor party, we quickly dropped our stuff in our room, then zoomed down the elevator ... to get to Gameworks and drop $20 on video games.

Two hours passed as the Jawa strapped himself into interactive "Star Wars" games, "Jurassic Park" games, a skateboarding game and something where the entire machine swung around in circles as he fired at some kind of on-screen bogies. I stood there, hands in pockets, still trying to figure out if I was allowed to have a beer or not.

The problem is that it's very, very strange to walk around Las Vegas minus vices, treating it as if it were an adjacent land conjured by Disney. "Sin City," indeed. Weirdly, but not surprisingly, to be an obvious dad in Vegas is to be completely invisible. Nobody, not the packs of women, the packs of guys, the old guys, the young guys, the sports teams here for Easter tournaments, the guys shilling for strip joints and casinos, nobody acknowledges you, not even the other dads, who are busy re-assessing their masculine power even as you do your own.

As a sidelight, fifteen minutes after parking our car, the Jawa and I had this conversation:

"Dad, what does 'sin city' mean?"

"Uh..."

"Because I think Detroit should be 'sin city'."

"Why?"

"Because that's where all the bad things happen. Sins are bad, right?"

After our week in Sun City WEST, we had only 44 hours, and the good fortune of local escorts, in Sin City. The soon-to-be-married Kathaleen, plus her Scottish fiancee Bill, steered us through the crowds and keyed the Jawa into his favorite attraction, the Bellagio water show. "Choreographed by some washed-out Broadway guy, I bet," said Kathaleen, dryly. Fiancee Bill eagerly assumed to role of good-time and knowledgeable uncle, reaching for the Jawa's hand each time they crossed one of Las Vegas' enormous crosswalks. He ground out local facts and anecdotes with a vehemence that suggested that is was he, and not his betrothed, who was an Associated Press reporter. At one point, after speaking accentless English all night, he disappeared from sight, only to reappear standing next to another Scottish guy, a blackjack dealer he knew, now speaking with a thick Scottish accent. Proximity?

The Jawa was quick to catch on to the Vegas vibe. He pushed the envelope all weekend, staying up until 11, waking up at 6:30, nervously eyeing the gaming tables, assessing the wisdom of slot machines ("I don't get it. There's no skill.") and, in what could be a frightening foreshadowing, demanding to head out and hit the arcades Sunday night at 9:30, after returning from dinner in suburban Henderson at Kathaleen & Bill's newish stucco home. He had the bug.

I had the pangs. "People come to Las Vegas for three things," said a wisdom-filled Jawa at one point. "They come here to smoke, to get drunk, and to gamble." Can't argue with that, and I'll readily admit some envy when we emerged from the elevator Sunday morning, hand-in-hand as the perfect father-son tabeleau, only to see a bunch of guys walking around in groups, their only cares being 1) how their money is holding up, and 2) whether they should drink bloody marys, to acknowledge that it is 9:15 on Sunday morning, or to just go straight to beer, which is better for the long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

One thing you miss when you're that bunch of guys is just how oversized and gross many Las Vegas tourists are. You spend you time at the sportsbook and you miss all of the tourists from Iowa. And you won't go to the Adventure Dome at Circus Circus, naturally, because Circus Circus is aged and decrepit (as are its visitors, generally), so that $100 you would spend on wristbands (to ride the rides at Adventure Dome) can be spent on food and beverage. And, if you choose, you get to shop, something that ranks very low on a jawa's agenda, just below clubbing and putting a twenty on the Mavs to cover at home against Milwaukee.

By Monday morning, the Jawa was planning his next trip. According to him, we will stay again at New York, New York, this time with Sandra Bullock, and we will stay for a week. Even though Las Vegas is not designed to provide many options for his favorite meal -- breakfast -- and even though that led to a 45-minute death march in search of first Denny's and then a simple donut, his plains remain grandiose.

But isn't the that nature of Las Vegas? You take your normal experience and expand it a few notches? You pay $4.50 for an ice cream cone, instead of $2.50. If you normally enjoy a few beers, you have twelve. A woman who normally wears a scoop neck wears a plunging V-neck instead. We all strive to be a little bit more over-the-top than we are in our normal lives, jawas included.

I've now been to Las Vegas twice only, but both times I had this sense of being swept out of town on my last day. We have been spent, and in our place comes new platoons of revelers, fresh and eager as we are worn-out and tired. As we checked out of New York, New York, I felt the urge to give a knowing, cynical nod to everyone checking in. Even our luggage looked tired, theirs wide-awake.

I write this with a 10.5 hour drive in my rearview. Rather than take two days to drive home, the Jawa and I humped it all the way, covering 600 miles and several ecosystems over the course of Monday. After 10 days in the desert, I can honestly say that I had to struggle to keep myself from pulling the car over and kissing every blade of green grass I saw yesterday. I am enjoying every one of the 63 degrees San Francisco has for us today, and am determined to eat all of the bad food I can manage, for tomorrow we truly return to our normal lives, with all of the checks and balances that normal lives require.

As for the Jawa, he spent 10 hours inventing new games of chance, to be played with something called "chew," with 1 chew equalled to 10 dollars. Vegas, baby.

Desert Spring Break #2: The Drool Pool

2007-04-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

We all have our own issues with the desert. For me, it is this feeling of vastness, disconnectedness, and beads of sweat running continuously down my face. For the Jawa, it is drool.

Unlike Shack, the Jawa has never been a big drooler. As an infant, he was a swaddler, even on the hottest of days, but not a drooler. He was noted for his easy-going personality, nice grasp of infant logic, and impeccable memory. For him, drooling is new, and, I am not overstating to add, the worst kind of terrifying.

There is geography involved. Three days in the Mojave desert; no drool. On his first night in the Sonoran; drool.

At first, he had no idea what it was. I put him to bed on the new, loudly purple sheets my mother had bought for the guest room (the ones on my separate air mattress were bright yellow. Hence, when I took his pillow, I had the sense of lying down for a nice rest atop an Easter Egg. How seasonal.). He lay there under the whirling ceiling fan, reading his "Star Wars Jedi Masters" book.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"My bed is all wet."

May I add now that the Jawa has never been a bed-wetter, so that particular situation never entered my mind. Since we live in an old, falling-down house, I immediately thought, "Ah, shoot. The ceiling's leaking," forgetting for a moment that not only are we in the desert, where it doesn't rain in April, but are also in my parents' circa-1986 duplex, which is in excellent condition with a roof that does not leak.

I went into the bedroom to see that next to his shoulder, directly underneath his pillow was a small, pancake-sized wet spot. "Huh," I said, amassing all of the logic and sense of a father, "I have no idea what that is."

"It's bugging me. Can you change my sheets?" I considered it for a second, if only to see what other outrageous color of sheets my mother had purchased. Cooler heads quickly prevailed, even in the desert. I stepped forward and moved his pillow down, covering the spot. Though I was still flummoxed, the problem was solved.

Two minutes later, he called me again. "Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Now there's a spot on my pillow."

At this point you've got to wonder about the reliability of both our thought processes. If these mysterious wet spots are not coming from drool, where are they coming from? The roof is not leaking. Juice from the grape-like sheets? A hidden underground spring? Grease from the unshowered Jawa's hair?

None of the above.

"Wait a minute!" I said. "You're drooling!"

An indescribable look came over my Jawa's face. He wasn't angry or frightened so much as utterly disgusted at himself. That a strange liquid would involuntarily come out of his mouth seemed to him the most unpleasant of facts. This Jawa is no neatnick. Unlike his cousin Felix Unger (the artist formerly known as Count Burpalot), he has no problem going several days without showering, spent several months learning how to burp on command and has been known to wear the same clothes for 48 hours straight, provided those 48 hours take place away from home where Sandra Bullock and I are not there to nag him to change his clothes, doing our best to make him feel like a swamp monster for even considering that wearing the same clothes for 48 hours straight is a viable option. And yet, the drool nearly made him ill.

"Yuck," he said quietly.

"It's no big deal," I said, ineffectively. "Just flip over your pillow."

It went on. Each solution was fine for a couple of minutes, then: "Dad!"

If we were at home, it could have gone on all night. Fortunately, my mother stocks a limited number of outrageously-colored linens, so once he'd gone through both sides of his pillow, a couch pillow and a rolled up blanket, he was stuck facing the truth His solution: take the case off of his pillow and hope for the best. In this fashion he made it through the night.

Today, while absorbing the full flavor of Sun City WEST, he occasionall brought up the incident and how strange it seemed. "That was weird," he told me while changing into our swimsuits in the men's lockerroom. "I was drooling." His reputation, it seemed, was in tatters. Fortunately, it was not too much of a stigma for the friendly old guy in there with us. He offered God's blessings for us as we hit the showers.

Which reminds me that today the Jawa also met his first salty old guy. At first, every old guy we met was benignly nice, friendly and definitely willing to answer Jawa questions as they arose. While sitting in the photo lab, though, talking to another harmlessly nice guy, a true salty old guy burst through the door. "So they let you out!" said either my dad or the nice guy working at the lab, I can't remember.

The salty guy zeroed in on the Jawa, peppering him with quips about his age versus the Jawa's age, and then something about how his wife's mother thought he'd never amount to anything. I half expected him to produce a few quarters from the Jawa's ear. As a kid whose old guy world is normally populated by kindly grandparents and aging hippie burnouts, the Jawa responded by trying to remain polite while internally experiencing mild freakout. I say good on you, salty old guy. The world needs you.

Meanwhile, afternoon and most of the evening passed minus any new drool. Then, dozing while my mother and I eagerly Tivo'ed through "American Idol," the Jawa produced a small pool on a black and white striped couch pillow. "Oh no!" he shouted when I woke him up.

"What is it with you? You're a drooling machine!" I said that for two reasons. One, because he has become an actual drooling machine, "drooling machine" defined as a reliable and consistent producer of drool; two, because that's what Sandra Bullock would have said, and we've been apart from her for four days now, so I figured I'd put her back in the room, if only in a small way.

By now the Jawa had had 24 hours to adjust to the idea that he was going to drool every time he fell asleep. Though uneasy with the idea, I think I'd convinced him that it was a weird by-product of our being in the desert, and to expect it to go away once we returned to the normal, humidified world.

That was when he decided that drooling, like burping, might have some comedic value.

I put him to bed, thinking he was barely awake, went out into the family and came back to find him lying with his head in a virtual pool of drool. It was like a crime scene of drool. "No!" I said. "You're drooling even more!" He sat up, doing what I later discovered was a convincing portrayal of someone awakened from a deep sleep. "Oh, man," he said groggily.

We flipped over his pillow, me envisioning another night of pillow musical chairs. He flopped his head onto it and I turned to go.

Something made me turn back, though. There was something about his grogginess that didn't sit right. On Saturday night, on my way into bed at 11, I came into the room we were sharing to find him lying diagonally across the bed, totally wrapped up in the sheet, holding his "Star Wars" book in one hand, seemingly asleep. I was gingerly taking the book from him, feeling very paternal indeed, when he sprung up and shouted, "Almost April Fool's!" then explained his logic. Seeing that it was 11 p.m. on March 31, it was almost April Fool's day, making me eligible to be fooled. Interestingly enough, when he told the story to his cousin the following day, the time of the prank had moved up to 12:01 a.m.

Instead of leaving the room, I turned back and took a glance at the boy on the bed. His perfect little shoulders were squared to the mattress. His legs were curled up, his eyes closed, his ridiculously long eyelashes fanned out above his cheekbones.

And small bubbles of drool were being forced from his mouth onto the pillow.

"You're faking it!" I shouted. He kept the charade going for about one second more, then began laughing, his eyes still closed.

"I wasn't faking it before. This is the first time," he said, unconvincingly. "Dad, can I have another pillow?"

"I'm done with this," I said, waving my hand in what I hoped was dismissive fashion, and walked out of the room, leaving him there with his drool-covered pillow, probably thinking that a wet cheek was a small price to pay for the joy of tricking your father one more time.

As I said, the desert does strange things to people. And Jawas.

Spring Break in the Desert

2007-04-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

The first thing you notice is that there is no music. No, the first thing you notice is that what looks from behind like an attractive blonde riding her bike down my parents' street is actually someone's grandma. Then you notice that there is no music. No, then you notice the golf carts which, were they being driven down Powell Street in San Francisco would be heralded as a great commitment to "green" comportment. Here they are old guys on their way to the store, or, as my dad says, "Guys who lost their licenses so they got golf carts. Which is illegal."

Then you notice that there is no music.

Right now I couldn't find myself on a map. The Jawa and I, after three days at Edwards Air Force Base, spent yesterday driving through 400 miles of desert(s) -- first the Mojave (known for its Joshua trees) and then the Sonoran (known for its Saguaro cacti) -- to arrive here in Sun City West, NOT Sun City, my mother explained dryly, but actually one of four Sun Cities presently stocked full of old people of all stripes. We came for Passover, but we will stay for the dry desert air. Isn't that why people come to the desert?

This is Day four of our Spring Break Desert adventure. It culminates next weekend in Las Vegas, and what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, even if you're nine years old. We are far from our Sandra Bullock and our Shack, earning our desert stripes and allowing the Jawa the sublime experience of GameCube on a 50+ inch plasma screen.

So far, we have spent plenty of time in our car. That much is certain. You don't get from San Francisco to Sun City (West) via Edwards Air Force Base without spending lots of quality time, just you, your Jawa and your Volvo, in what would be lonely interstates if not for the ten billion other people "sharing" the road, many of whom pull enormous trailers full of their belongings and/or intimidating-looking off-road vehicles and Jet skis, and most of whom practice what the Rocket Scientist calls "left lane entitlement."

This is only our second time to Sun City (West), our first spent truly absorbing the retiree experience. This morning, after slogging through the heat to one of the myriad rec centers, we saw the copper room, the photography club's digs, the glass club's "lab," and met many older yet very active people. The poor Jawa, feeling slightly confused and extremely shy and wanting only to go swimming, stood in the background. Everyone wore shorts and there was no music. None. Just the sound of contented seniors going about their hobbies.

As I told my father and mother, give it about 10 years and you'll be hearing music here. All of those baby-boomers will show up, bringing their dinosaur rock with them.

I'm not a huge fan of the desert. I've been obnoxiously vocal about my dislike and frank aversion to Arizona, but I think it might be the desert in general that puts me on edge. Speeding across the Sonora, surrounded by its vastness, I could only feel nostalgia for the Pacific Northwest with its cool, damp weather and it's giant umbrellas of green trees. I like road trips, but to me the interesting thing about them is the towns you go through, not the breathtaking views that used to make my dad break out in "America the Beautiful" every time we went on vacation.

Mostly, though, I just freak out at the idea of "NEXT SERVICES 55 MILES." That's why Edwards AFB makes me edgy. On the way down, I had the foresight to buy two extra packs of gum, knowing that there was no way I'd be able to get any at Edwards AFB.

The scary thing about Edwards is not that the closest cities are the very dangerous and glum Lancaster, Palmdale and Rosemond -- though that fact is considerably scary -- but that once you pass the security gates, you still have to drive through about 10 miles of depressingly empty desert to get to Noodles' Mom's house. It makes me want to hang my head out the window and start howling.

From there, another 400 miles to Sun City (West). This includes Needles, where you can pay $4.09 a gallong for unleaded premium and see remnants of Route 66, once "America's Main Street," but now Needles plus several miles of unkempt road running alongside US 40. The Jawa and I, excited by the Route 66 conjured by the movie "Cars," spent an hour on this unkempt road, doing untold damage to our car and watching the unbroken desert landscape creep by. Occasionally, we'd see a sign boasting MOTEL! standing in the middle of a field, no motel in sight. It was disappointing and very sad. Eventually, after passing the long-since dead down of Acton, we went back to the 40, which was at least honest and up-to-date about its emptiness.

And empty it was. Hours of rocks, tumbleweed, scrub brush and cactus. What if our car broke down? What then? As I've mentioned, I can walk through the Tenderloin at midnight and feel safe as a kitten. Put me in a six-month old car going 90 miles per hour and the NEXT SERVICES 55 miles, and I'm tense as caged lion.

Then, finally, dodging golf carts, we arrived in Sun City (West). This afternoon, we went swimming in one of the complex's several pools. This one was open for children until 4 pm, so the Jawa and I entered the 85 degree water, this time dodging the human manifestation of the golf carts -- an army of seniors, doing their daily "pool walk." The pool, in fact, was set aside for walking. "No Swimming! Walking Only!" warned a sign on the wall. "No Jumping From Pool Deck!" said another.

Imagine. You've worked your whole life for this payoff. Now your have sunk your life's savings into a sparkling new duplex, are overwhelmed by the number of clubs and activities available to you. You look forward to your afternoon pool walk, and what do you find? A score of Spring Break-loosed kids, all hopped up on Grandma's chocolate cake, doing cannonballs off the diving board and imitating dolphins directly in your path.

Who can blame the Sun City West residents, one of whom looked eerily like Vice President Dick Cheny, for shooting killer glares at us as we went about ruining their day? Ask them what is worse than other people's grandchildren? Certainly that would be other people's children, if they join the grandchildren on the diving board, offering tips on how to create the largest splash.

"I can't understand why they'd be like that," said my mother, following a quick 15-minute poolside nap. I can kind of see it. I'm not here to change the world, just to fit within its parameters, so I turned over a new leaf, and then spent most of our remaining pool time urging the Jawa to limit his splashiness, nay, his 9-year-oldness.

On the way back to the house, we played a game. "Robert Duvall, yes," I said. "Clint Eastwood?"

"He's too tough," said Mom.

"Warren Beatty, no. Jack Nicholson, no. Harrison Ford?"

"They still make movies!"

"Yes, but they are all old enough to live in Sun City. I mean, the various cities of Sun City. Clint would be one of the older guys. He's 80."

"They'd live in Sun City Grand."

"Is that where the rich people live?"

"Yes."

"Mick Jagger. He could live here. He's 65."

"Your older sister could live here on her next birthday. They're lowering the age to 45."

Silence.

There are a multitude of crafts clubs. Everyone is making something, then for sale at the local craft store. They make totem poles, wooden toys, jewelry, sculptures that look like a cowboy on a horse. They take photos (color and black-and-white), make movies, play lots and lots of golf, bowl, and meet other senior singles, if the need arises.

But there is no music. Except, I'd imagine, when the various music clubs meet.

Hair: In General, it Sucks.

2007-03-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

I hate you, hair. Besides the obvious -- that for the past ten years, you have been steadily sliding off my head and down my back -- there are so many reasons to curse you, hair.

Even when I had hair, it wasn't exactly A-list hair. No smooth, straight mop for me. No, that one bypassed me and went straight from Sandra Bullock to her Jawa. Instead, I got the coarse, dense Brillo-esque cap that inspired me to explain recently to my Jawa the concept of the "jewfro."

"So, wait. It's like an afro, but it's for Jewish people? Will I have one?"

No. The Jawa does not have Jewish hair. But I did.

Even with hair, I had few options. I could go short, which I usually did. I could grow it, until it became larger and larger, eventually resembling that of Gregory Corso, according to one friend I had in college. Eventually, in Seattle in the 90s, surrounded by long, flowing hair, I tried, with the help of products purchased in the "ethnic" aisle at Walgreens, to have long hair.

Two incidents hastened the end of that era. First, one of Roger A. Hunt's lawyer friends, a guy I would eventually appreciate as a big, fat jolly guy, saw me entering a bar and nudged Hunt, saying, "Check out Kramer over there." Dude, I thought, I've known Hunt since we were 12, and that entire time we've built a rapport based somewhat on pointing our ridiculous things/people. You don't get to horn in and try not only to take my place on the roster but also use me as fodder. No.

Secondly, and more importantly, I happened to glance at a photo of myself, taken while visiting Noodles' Mom in Alaska. There is the nice, afro-sheened hair hanging down past my ears, and there on top is a very obvious, very pale-looking bald spot.

Away went the long hair, forever. Since then, my strategy has been to make it appear that, rather than getting my hair cut, I am instead slowly drawing it back into my body. By now, my weekly haircuts result in barely any skull cover. And so it shall remain.

It would be enough -- enough pain, enough tragedy -- if that were the sum of my reasons for hurling invectives at hair. There is more, of course.

In a world where even single, stylish and semi-famous actors like Jeremy Piven feel it is necessary to wax their chests, those of us chained to the middle class are left to deal with what once -- in the halcyon, Tom Sellick-drenched days of the 1970s and 80s -- was considered a blessing: abundant chest hair. Since Burt Reynolds last hung up his cowboy hat, this once-admired trait has become the punch line of a very dated joke. Remember the guy with the chest hair, his shirt unbuttoned to his navel, gold chains dangling from his neck? Yeah, thanks. Thanks alot.

I was 18 when I realized I should stop making fun of hairy guys. Hmm, I thought, that will probably be me eventually. The joy of realizing that I could strut my semi-hairy chest through the El Modena High School locker room while others walked around still trapped in the smoothness of pre-adolescence quickly faded when I realized that evolving social mores would demand that I minimize the impact of the follicles as I grew older. What was once a babe-magnet now became just another hassle, another reason to never walk around shirtless.

In some ways, I envy the completely self-unaware guys, like one particularly long-winded member of our school cohort, who can show up at a swimming birthday party, strip on down and dive in, revealing an abundance of body hair unknown outside the stomping grounds of Bigfoot. He didn't care. I would.

This is not even taking into account the random and weird hairs now sprouting up in places they should leave alone, nor the graying of not only what's left on my head but also what is on my chest. I tried pulling them, but found I would need a much greater understanding of mirror images and geometry to be truly effective.

A few years ago I read an Esquire profile of the writer Joseph Heller. Accompanying the article was a very close-up photo of Heller, highlighting the absolute chaos of his eyebrows. I vowed then, should I ever become prominent enough to warrent an Esquire profile, that I would demand some eyebrow shaping prior to the photo shoot. Call me a Nancy Boy if you want, you wouldn't be the first, but who needs to open up a 500,000+ circulation magazine and see that your eyebrows are going off in several directions?

And now, this: my one hair-related upper hand, gone. For years, while others struggled to put some facial hair in place, I walked around clean-shaven, secure in the knowledge that, should I desire, I could pound out a goatee in a matter of days. I bragged that I'd made it through the 90s in Seattle without growing one, but I knew that what made it bragging was the undeniable fact that I could grow one in the time it takes most people to take a shower.

Several weeks ago, I noticed that I have somehow worked up several spots on my face where hair will not grow. It's cruel, it's ironic, it's just wrong. Now that the hair on my head is mostly gone, I have lost even the option of facial hair. "It's stress," said this ancient, Norwegian dermatologist I visited. Stress? Stress from what? Trying to fit a trip to the dog park into my day? Too much working out? That makes about as much sense as a 41-year-old, semi-in shape guy clocking a 110 on his blood glucose level test.

So nothing. So now I can't go several days without shaving, which I love doing, because not only does it make me look tough, it also makes me look like one of those cartoons that is a face whether you turn it right side up or upside down.

Curse you, hair.

Water Worries

2007-03-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

When you grow up in a small town in Pennsylvania, you don't think often about the water you drink. When you grow up in Orange County, you obsess over it.

The water in OC in the 1970s was awful. It was gray, and sometimes you had to wait awhile for all of the weird little bubbles to settle down before you could see through it.

We had our weapons. A measure of OC success -- and assimilation -- was the ubiquitious Sparkletts water set up in the corner of the kitchen. Every week, the "local Sparkletts man," made famous as a sort of post-modern milkman for the sun-drenched set, would show up in his truck with the shimmering sign, dropping off a few huge bottles of water. Then your dad -- with much drama, the sound of rushing water, some large bubbles and occasionally a puddle on the floor -- would flip a bottle over and place it on top of your "Office Space"-style water cooler, and you'd have water. You'd also have a place to congregate and gossip to avoid work, but as a kid, that didn't come up so often.

I wanted to Sparkletts rig not only because our water was gross but because of the status afforded those who had one. To lack the Sparkletts was to reveal yourself not only as a greenhorn but also as one who cares very little about health. You'd rather drink cloudy, brown water than fork out a few bucks for your health? Are you kidding me?

Naturally, it was a battle in our house. My mother did not see the logic. As a New Yorker, I'm sure she was used to opaque water. As native Pennsylvanians, we were not.

Arrowhead, with their lilting "Arrowhead ... spring wa-a-ater." motto, came a close second to Sparkletts.

Many years later, as a young adult, long removed from both Orange County and the joy of a home Sparklett's cooler, I was confronted with people drinking water from smaller bottles. As a contrarian, I originally scoffed at them, once raising the ire of a guy by calling his drink "yuppie water." "What, I'm a yuppie because I drink my Poland Springs Water?"

In a word, yes. And no matter how long your hair is, how much you brag about your band, and how much you want to date this girl I'm dating, I will not retract this.

Sorry. I got sidetracked.

My point is that eventually, I came around. Not enough to spend a dollar every time I want a drink, and thanks to the magic of first Brita, and then the glorious filtering system of our Amana refrigerator, I don't have to. I buy a bottle of water, mostly for the design of the bottle, and then refill it several times during the course of a week.

I am no longer a water expert, and can't really tell the difference between bottled and regular water. As long as it's cold. I do miss the Sparklett's cooler, though. It's one of the few things I miss about having a job. A few years ago, when I spent more time at the Jawa's school, I regularly pilfered water from their cooler, figuring if it wasn't included in our massive tuition payments, it should be.

Along the way, I became very opinionated regarding water bottle design. The Jawa loves the square bottles, which, to us, look like shampoo bottles. I like the thicker bottles, but am intrigued by the recent trend toward shapely, 25 ounce bottles with simulated grips on the sides.

This speaks directly to me as a workout guy. I like the grips, I like the shape. The bottle is easy to grab, easy to drain. The 25 ounce size means you only have to refill once during a workout.

Thought Sparkletts seems to have folded up their tent in this very competitive world of water, Arrowhead ("...spring wa-a-ter...") continues to fight it out. Their latest innovation, however, leaves me very cold, and not in a good way.

Arrowhead, perhaps looking for something beyond shape and fake grips to make them stand out, has adopted -- in their eyes, refined? -- the bottle spout. Their new design is a massive pain in the butt.

Everyone knows that simple twist-offs are inadequate. You need to pop-top, or the innovative twist top, especially while at the gym. No one wants to send a water bottle cap flying through the air while they're on the Precor. Nor do they want to have the bottle send water spewing all over the place, should they drop it. The twist and pop-tops solve these problems. They do not need improvement.

Certainly, they don't need replacement by a complicated snap-off lid that then stays connected to the bottle by a small, plastic strap. Arrowhead has introduced this unnecessary feature, which functions something like an attached gas cap. This means that you need to unsnap the cap, which only unsnaps from one spot, confusingly marked by a plastic tab, to drink. If you are winded, and used to pulling open pop-tops with your teeth, the odds are good that you will attack the cap somewhere other than the small plastic tab. The bottle will not open, and you will hurt your teeth, and your lips.

So you will have to stop what you're doing, focus on the bottle, locate the tab, and then open.

Once the bottle is opened, you will then have to avoid the still-affixed lid, which dangles like the aforementioned gas cap, sometimes digging painfully into your lips. It is not an efficient system. I hope they did not pay a group of engineers handsomely to design this. Obviously, they should have ponied up for a focus group instead.

Fie on you, Arrowhead. You were so close. The bottle is wonderful, but the cap is awful. Serious water drinkers will now have to buy Arrowhead, and then a different brand, hoping that the bottles are universal, so that he then may switch the other cap to the Arrowhead bottle, thus avoiding painful lip and teeth injuries.

As if working out isn't painful enough.

I Don't Smoke, Don't Ask Me

2007-03-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while running down the list of things I don't do, I mentioned that I do not, nor have I ever, smoked cigarettes. It's not that I'm a major no-smoking advocate, though I have to admit I find it nicer when they're not around. I just was never able to pick up the habit. Not my vice, I tell people who ask. Now that I think of it, there are few, if any, who ask.

My parents both smoked. Mom polished off her last butt on her way to the hospital, where she would learn that those debilitating chest pains she'd been having were, indeed, consistent with the experience of a 50-year-old woman who weighs 97 pounds but is having a heart attack. Dad followed a few years later, in support of Mom, through the mighty efforts of The Patch. Now they live in Arizona, where the air is always free of moisture. They are smoke-free, have been for several years.

Oh, but during the glory days of smoking, did they burn. Not only them, but both my sisters. Even Noodles' Mom, known now for her complete and total commitment to physical fitness, was known to light up on occasion. Marsi and/or Bud, of course, being a disaffected suburban youth, picked up the habit at 13, I think, much like her mother 30 some years before. Lucky Strike straights, if I remember right.

I also remember one night, having dinner with my family at Marie Callendar's, then shoving my chair as far back from the table as possible afterwards when all four of them sparked up for a relaxing after-dinner smoke.

Smoke was a fact of life.

When we were kids, we would drive from Orange County to Sacramento to see my grandparents. Someone was always smoking. "Please," we'd gasp, from the back seat, "open a window!"

"The air in this car changes every 60 seconds," my father would say, and since it was quite obvious to us by now that he knew way more than we did, about everything, we let it go. We sat in silence, choking on cigarette smoke. It wasn't until my freshman year of college that I realized what smoke-free air smelled like.

And still, I hold no grudge against cigarettes. In fact, though I am made dizzy by efforts to figure out EXACTLY WHICH subculture claims smoking as its own -- cool teenagers? trashy middle-aged bowlers? musicians? my father-in-law? - I still find smoking kind of cool.

When I moved to Seattle, in 1988, I found that everyone I knew suddenly smoked. Well, they didn't smoke, like my dad, leaving the cigarette burning up in an ashtray while they focused on a model airplane. Their cigarettes were much more of a prop, a schoolboy affectation. They smoked European brands, available in Canada and at tobacco shops in Seattle. Sometimes they rolled their own, something I'd seen field hands do in Australia.

And they only smoked two or three a day, usually at night when we were in bars. They could smoke away at night, then wake up the next morning and run full-court for hours. No problem. It seemed somehow sophisticated, and I was disappointed to find that my few lame efforts at joining them in no way made me a smoker. I just couldn't do it.

One time, alone in New York at age 23, feeling somewhat short on style, I went up to a bartender at 3:00 in the morning and asked for a pack of Marlboros. That was the only brand I knew. "Sorry, man, but I can lend you one," he said. "Thanks," I mumbled. He gave me one. I lit it and then wondered what to do. But it was cool to have it there while walking alone to the subway at 3:00 in the morning. Nobody messed with me. I know that much.

All the girls I dated back then smoked, too. Not habitually, but in bars. In fact, Sandra Bullock is the only girl I've "dated" who never smokes. My first girlfriend, the ex-Mormon, is now a smoker, and, of course, trying to quit.

Even the Rocket Scientist, until a few years ago, smoked. This guy is so clean-cut he basically bathes in apple pie each morning and still. Must have been a military thing. Sadly, he was perhaps the only person I've ever known who did not look cooler while smoking. He looked like a 10-year-old trying to look cool, which is ironic, because if there's one thing the Rocket Scientist has never done in his life, it's try to look cool.

Time passed, and many of the casual smokers I knew became habitual smokers. The Legendary Dr. Bandeau turned into a guy who lit a cigarette after meals, and in the morning, after shaving. His car, by now a Dodge truck, began to smell like a man's car: smoke, cologne and tools.

Amazingly, we have all but legislated cigarette smoking out of existence. Even more amazingly, high school kids continue to smoke. Smoking was a big deal at Blanchet High School, where I taught from 1996-1998. I didn't get it, but I also felt we had more important ways to spend our time than to police teenage cigarette smokers and besides, we were giving them free promos of Coke's new extra-caffeine cola after school. I mean, why single out one vice and promote the other?

I wonder what's become of those teens. How many of them now smoke like hod carriers? And what of the parallel worlds of smoking -- the downtown hipsters and the rural cowboys? If they found themselves in the same room (a laundromat? the grocery store?), jonesing for a smoke, would one approach the other and ask to bum a cig? Smoking (and being a carbon-based life form) is the only thing they have in common.

And they all want to quit. Except my little sister, who never wanted to quit and did.

My dad always said he was going to start again if he made it to 70. Well, he'll be 69 this year, but he just got out of the hospital after having lung surgery, so I doubt he'll make good on that promise, which is just as well. As good a prop as a cigarette is, and as cool as it looks, I am learning that addictive vices just don't wear that well as you get older.

Life in the No-Tinker Zone

2007-03-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

As a contrarian, I have a responsibility to be against whatever everyone else is for. So it is that, instead of jumping onto the "hip moms and alterna-dads" train, I choose instead to embrace my oldness and unhipness. To this end, I am working to slowly develop the habits and nuances of an old guy.

I do not smoke cigarettes, which puts me at a great disadvantage in the world of old guys, or at least the world of old guys as I imagine it. I also do not "tinker," which is perhaps an even greater shortcoming. Old guys have to "tinker." It doesn't matter what they "tinker" with, something I learned several years ago.

My father, during my youth a model planes and war games guy, always a car guy, once a gun guy, decided to become exclusively a camera guy after he shot his knee off while cleaning some mayhem-producing weapon. This being several years ago, he has been all cameras, all the time, for as long as many jawas in our family can remember.

He belongs to several camera mailing lists, message boards, places you can go and discuss cameras. Rare cameras replaced rare guns (and before that, rare cars) in his life, and he seems pretty happy that way. He gets to "tinker," though I suspect that much of his "tinkering" takes place in the form of online research, rather than in actually taking apart cameras and putting them back together. If he does take them apart, etc., I can guarantee you that there will be lots of sweat and exactly one profanity per session. That's the way it was when he was trying to put the stereo I got for my bar mitzvah together, and I have no reason to believe that his methodology has changed over time.

One day, a few years ago, my father and I, plus the Jawa and Count Burpalot, joined the Rocket Scientist on a dry desert lakebed to watch him fly his radio-controlled airplane. There were lots of plane-flying guys there when we arrived. All of them knew the Rocket Scientist. Over half of them were old guys, and after awhile (maybe it was just a few minutes. Time seemed to move pretty slowly for me out there on the dry lakebed), I noticed these guys spent most of their time not flying the airplanes, but tinkering with them instead.

The Rocket Scientist had his off the ground pretty quickly, and then stood there, squinting up at the sky, flying smoothly around, which came as no surprise to me, given that his 9-5 job involves piloting march larger, often experimental airplanes around at great speeds. To say I was impressed with his flying skills was to say that the few seconds I got to watch him fly -- in between chasing the Jawa and Count Burpalot around, trying to keep them from the other guys' planes -- were impressive, indeed.

As I said, the other guys were mostly tinkering. I realized then that it doesn't matter what it is -- cars, radio controlled airplanes, cameras, guns, fishing poles, model trains -- the basic activity is the same. It involves going to a store your son might find singularly boring, talking to the guy there, buying a few small pieces of stuff, going home and patiently putting things together and taking them apart, then joining a bunch of other guys out somewhere that your son also might find singularly boring, patiently putting more things together and taking them apart, and talking to other guys. And in-between, flying something, taking a few pictures, driving something, shooting something.

Weirdly enough, as I write this I realize that, while the tinkering gene may have skipped me, it has landed squarely on my Jawa, who, at age 9, is already frequenting singularly boring stores and talking to the guys who work there, buying overpriced, very small items, then taking them home and tinkering. He lays out cards and small figures on the ground, concentrating mightily, gravely moving one piece or card from one spot to the other.

For my dad, it was war stuff. For the Jawa, it's Japanese stuff, battle stuff, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Bionicle. He hasn't narrowed it down, and thank God yesterday at Metreon he didn't beg me to go into the uber-geek gaming store next to the arcade. "I'm not old enough for that stuff," he said, casually, as we passed.

I can't wait.

But for me, father and son of tinkerers, nothing. The best I can manage is books, and while the library is singularly boring to most, you can't really tinker with a book. I am outcast from the world of men.

I try to make up for it in other ways. My latest old-guy quirk is putting my glasses, when I'm wearing them, on my forehead when I'm reading something. This is an old guy thing, because it is only recently that I discovered I can actually see close-up things better without them. So I figure, if I'm going to have an old guy condition, why not exacerbate it with a time-honored old guy habit. On the forehead go the glasses.

If I smoked cigarettes, I could focus on something, squinting through a haze of smoke, with my glasses on my forehead. Alas, it's not my vice. Which is fine, because the situation I just described goes hand-in hand with tinkering.

I tried model cars. No patience, and I'm sloppy. My cars came out with big blobs of glue all over them, unlike my father's pristine, historically accurate airplanes.

He'd had a special table built when we added a family room to our house. The table came out of the wall, resting on this tiki thing we had. He'd set up all his stuff and build airplanes while we watched TV, read, played games, whatever. That way we could all be in the same room, even though it sometimes backfired, especially on the nights set aside for painting the airplanes, when the paint fumes and rattle of his air compresser usually chased us from the room.

He kept the completed planes in the basement on plexiglas shelves. There was a little tiny, stubby one with a single jet engine in its tail. That was my favorite. Once a month, he took them all down and dusted them, one by one.

He'd had this room made special when we did the basement. How happy he must have been, with a room in which he could display all of his airplanes, but also with enough room to put up a 4 x 8 table in the middle, onto which he dumped a bunch of kitty litter. He'd then use the kitty litter to make hills and trenches, and would stage (again, historically accurate) World War II battles, using little tiny army men and tanks. Not like my bigger, seldom used army men, but tiny, detailed, spray painted with his own tank and paints. He explained to me once that he likes to set up actual battles, ones that happened, and see what would have happened had this or that general chosen a different strategy.

A real hobbyist, my dad. Most of it went away when we moved to California, which is sad, though familiar to me, a non-hobbyist.

I tried cars, when I got old enough to drive. But like many Jewish men, the stuff under the hood may as well have been a Rubik's Cube to me. Same with motorcycles, though the risk of masculinity is much greater for a guy who shows up and doesn't know how to fix his own bike than it is for a guy in a car. With a car, you might be a collector, and everyone can drive a car. To be a motorcycle guy is to be part of a rough-and-tumble fraternity of men. Men who tinker. Men who don't panic if their motorcycle leaves them stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Men who are not me.

The rest of the hobby totems -- guitars, skateboards among them -- poses, all of them. No real interest on my end. No tinkering.

So I am left, hobbyless and tinker-free in middle age, with my glasses on my forehead, tagging along with my child as he patiently navigates the mean shelves of a Japantown hobby store.

Does laundry count as a hobby?

How Much...

2007-03-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

How much do I love lying on my stomach? You can have the chair or the couch. I'll take the floor. If you're looking to find me at my happiest -- and I have to admit that some might find the idea of me at my happiest quite elusive -- then take a look when I'm lying on the living room floor, big (yet oddly flat) green or tan pillow under my chest, reading material spread out in front of me. If you look back a few minutes later, you may find me asleep, my head halfway covering this month's Vanity Fair or a book about the Mafia.

I do my crossword puzzles while lying on my stomach on the living room floor. Since I am lately addicted to them, I also do them in coffee shops, sitting in the car while waiting for the Jawa to finish his school day, and occasionally, though not often, at the kitchen table.

At night, when I go to bed, I lie on my stomach. Not counting a short period following my reading of "The Amityville Horror," where it was revealed that each family member shot by Ronald DeFeo was found lying on their stomach, which creeped me out enough to try lying on my back, I have slept on my stomach since I was a little kid.

I love sleeping on my stomach, but as I get older, I find it less comfortable for the long run. I start out there every night, having rationalized many years ago that it feels safer, because if anything fell from the ceiling it would hit my back, not my front. But eventually, my right arm falls asleep, or I just get antsy, so I roll over to my side. But during that time I am on my stomach, until I get antsy, I revel in the knowledge that my whole body is stretched out.

It is my kind of nirvana.

Now that I am in my 40s, my time on the floor is becoming limited. If I stay there too long, my back starts to hurt. I get up and make a noise befitting of a 75-year-old man. Aaarrrhhh! It's worth it, though. I will continue to lie on my stomach until they have to lift me up by a crane.

How much does my blood suck? I mean this not in a vampirical way, though my grandfather, who is 100% Romanian, always claimed to be a vampire. No, I mean it in a "got my latest blood test results back" sort of way.

No shock, there. We knew my blood sucked. We just didn't know how much. We knew that I had high cholesterol. Nothing massive doses of round, beige pills can't handle, though. It's "down" to 209. My "bad" cholesterol, however, continues to soar, proudly waving its flag well over the accepted norm.

And why can't blood pressure be like oil pressure: the higher the better? If my blood is running through my veins at a high pressure, does this mean that every time I cut myself it will come spurting out like a very small, red geyser? Is the pressure high because of all the cholesterol floating around in there, sharing a very small space with it? I wonder, if my pressure got high enough, if my blood would actually boil? No, that's temperature, not pressure.

Nothing that a few small, white, round pills can't take care of. And they're relatively inexpensive.

And now, this: without the benefit of my doctor, who usually scolds me, adding to my perception that all of these health problems are somehow my own fault, karma, whatever, I scanned my latest results to see this one staring back at me under the category "abnormal:" BLOOD GLUCOSE LEVEL: 110.

Apparently, and I really should ask my father about this, because this is one of his pet ailments, your BLOOD GLUCOSE LEVEL is supposed to be between 70 and 100. Anything over that is considered "prediabetic."

Nice.

I am almost 42 years old. I weigh about 15 pounds more than I should, but not enough so that when I say, "I need to lose weight," at least one person doesn't say, "What are you talking about? You're not fat." I am a vegetarian. Sure, I am weak in the face of chocolate, perhaps far too weak. I stopped drinking one Coke a day, and now have two or three a week. I drink alcohol moderately. At least in my world it's moderate. I have never smoked cigarettes and I go to the gym, to complete an inefficient workout, at least three times a week. AND MY FREAKING CHOLESTEROL, BLOOD PRESSURE AND BLOOD GLUCOSE IS ABNORMALLY HIGH!

Sorry. I lost it there for a moment. I'm back now.

Sandra Bullock is having none of this. Almost 42 herself and built from the sturdiest of white girl genes, her cholesterol is something like 135. The last time she tried to give blood, they wouldn't let her because her blood pressure was too low. And I know she sneaks out to the vending machine at work several times a week for chocolate. Her first response: "Wow, you've got everything."

Then, being S. Bullock, she swung into action. Within minutes, she had emailed me several articles about "Type 2 Diabetes," which, I have learned, results entirely from poor eating habits and being overweight.

So what is left for me? I have to cut out yogurt? I already switched to organic peanut butter, though I would much rather have skippy. After several years of counting fat content, cholesterol and salt, I now add carbohydrates and sugars? What's left for me to eat besides grapes? I can't even eat cottage cheese, and who in their right mind wants to eat cottage cheese?

This morning, I asked Shack where the Jawa keeps his pencils. The dog seems to have a craving for products made of wood -- pencils, window sills, chair legs. He seems to be in pretty good shape. It is noon now. Maybe Shack and I will sit down and gnaw on the table leg together. At least then I will be lying on my stomach, which will take some of the sting -- though not the splinters -- from the exercise.

The cruelest irony is that now I am forced to model my diet after that of my favorite subculture -- hippies. I will join them in eating whole grain pita bread and hummus, washed down with some freaking carrot juice and a dessert of cashews. Sounds awesome.

My friend Kathaleen was explaining the concept of "offsetting,", wherein someone with the available resources, like, say Al Gore, makes up for a bad move, like, say, having a power bill of $30,000 a month, but giving the same amount of money to something good, like, say, some kind of organization devoted to reducing greenhouse gases. For Al, it helped "offset his carbon footprint."

So I'd like to offset my anticipated hippie footprint, the one I will incur by eating whole grains, cutting out Twix bars and Cokes, and any resulting "mellowness" that comes from my new diet. Since I do not have the financial resources of Al Gore, instead I will "offset" by selling my Volvo and buying a 1968 Pontiac GTO, in which I will roar through the streets of San Francisco, honking my horn obnoxiously at anyone in my way. Especially if they are driving a Prius.

I will take my GTO to pick up the Jawa at school, sitting in the parking lot, loudly revving my engine, wearing sunglasses and a sleeveless t-shirt, listening to Metallica on the stereo. How they will abhor my Hurst shifter and glasspak exhaust. That I will be inside, eating bean sprouts from a reusable canvas bag will not matter then.

And I will go home and lie on my stomach, because they can't take that away from me. Yet.

Having a Bad Time Change?

2007-03-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

It is already 11 a.m. Where did the morning go? For starters, where did that hour go? You know, the one we lost Saturday night. At the time, I thought, "Big deal. One hour. It'll be barely noticeable. We'll enjoy the extra hour of sunlight. Nothing else will change. We fly to Boston and back and are fine. So shall this be fine."

Wrong.

I should have paid greater attention. At one point Saturday night, as I went around thinking I was setting all of our clocks forward an hour (I missed two), I flashed on the time, in seventh grade, that I was up until 2:35 on the first Sunday of daylight savings time, unable to sleep. But, I figured, even if it's a problem, it will be fixed by Monday.

Wrong again.

The first sign of panic begins Saturday night, when you're lying in bed reading and look over at the clock to realize that it's suddenly 1:30. Which means that, even if you get 8 hours of sleep, you won't wake up until 9:30, which is actually 8:30 and far too early to wake up on a Sunday when you have to get up at 7 from Monday to Friday.

But wait. On Monday, 7 will actually be 6, and it'll be dark outside, and I can't think of a more miserable way to start a day than to wake up when it's still last night.

In Arizona, they don't have daylight savings time, which means that my parents called on Sunday at their usual time, 10 a.m., which was actually 9 a.m. Yes, I am often still in bed when they call, but generally, I've been reading for at least a half hour by then. Not this time. This time it was only 9 a.m., so I was still asleep when they called, having some weird dream about traveling through time with Roger A. Hunt and the Legendary Dr. Bandeau to see Led Zeppelin's first show ever, only a fight breaks out and someone starts firing a gun, sending the Legendary Dr. Bandeau scurrying toward the action in a completely predictable show of bravado while I cower in the corner, rationalizing that it is much smarter to cower in this situation.

So to go from that volatile yet virtual world to answering specific questions about our plans for Spring Break was a little confusing. Give me that extra hour and I would have been golden.

And then, of course, there is the weirdness of eating lunch an hour early, convincing yourself that it is time to for your only twice-weekly now Coke when it is in fact only 11:00 a.m.

Sure, there's the upside, especially when San Francisco decides to bless you with abundant sun and warmth, which, since it is so unexpected, you try not to blame on global warming. You don't have to, actually. Someone will do it for you. The upside is that now you can sit on the front steps and drink a Margarita at 6:30 and it will still be light, and if you're lucky, Shack will be a good dog and sit quietly on the steps next to you, rather than running into the street or barking at everyone who walks by.

Skip forward to 10:30, when everyone in the house who is usually asleep by now is wide awake, wondering why they can't get to sleep. This comes after a difficult and combative weekend, so the angst of the individual who cannot get to sleep is tinged with an edge of hostility. Finally, at 11 o'clock, I summon up what remains of my parenting skills and say enough of the right things to put this individual at ease. Naturally, he falls asleep shortly afterwards.

Not me. I'm up until about 1, reading, not reading, remembering slights from years before, both committed by me and aimed at me. Anything long-buried surfaces, giving me plenty to think about besides the frustration I feel at lying in flannel sheets on so far the warmest night of the year.

And then, the misery that is Monday morning when it occurs on Sunday night. Sandra Bullock, who never met a morning she didn't like, is peppy as always, which makes it worse. The Jawa, who launched himself into my bed at 6:30/5:30, has a mood to match mine. Every thing either of us does annoys the other. He twists our sheets into a ball, making it twice as hard to make the bed. I nag him to get dressed, when he wants to play with Shack.

I look in the mirror. My face is twice its normal size and contains lines I don't remember seeing there before. Which is frightening, because the light in there isn't so good, given that it's still last night pretending to be this morning.

In a few days, I am certain, we will be fine. Adjusted. We will come to appreciate the longer afternoons, and memories of the dark mornings will eventually fade away. Just in time for daylight savings time to end. And then we get our hour back.

Unlikely Kodak Moments

2007-03-05T21:20:00.000-08:00

"They" will have you believe that the only the parts of life accompanied by sunsets and beaches can be truly memorable. Nowhere will you find greeting cards festooned with images of haircuts and the Vacaville Premium Outlets.

Which is why, too often, when life's great memories occur at places like the Parkview salon and the Vans Outlet, they disappear into vapor before anyone has a chance to log them. Minus any widely accepted signifier for "great memory," they fade into the stuff that makes up 90% of our lives -- checkbooks, grocery stores, car washes, staff meetings.

This is why I am glad to have been cognizant -- for once -- of the memories we were building on Saturday, as we went about completing the errands of our day.

Not much, really. A haircut in North Beach, followed by a trip to the bulk candy store. Ten minutes in the Walgreen's in Chinatown for passport photos. The Jawa refusing to smile, and then finding it appropriately funny when his photo emerges looking like a mug shot.

The Jawa has secretly developed a sense of the absurd that makes me very proud. While waiting for the photos to develop, he tapped me on the shoulder. "Hey, Dad," he said, "how about some Easter towels?" He pointed at a display of very average-looking hand towels, arranged in a very average way, underneath a sign that screamed, "UP TO OUR EARS IN EASTER!" with colored eggs arranged all over it. "These are Easter towels!" he said gleefully.

My old passport bore a photo of me at age 22, sporting a representative 1987 hairstyle and two hoop earrings, looking very much like a pre-steroids Jose Canseco. As dated as that may look today, I would find it preferable to the one I am now saddled with. Lately, whenever I have my picture taken, this bald, middle-aged guy shoves me out of the way and takes my place.

Driving to see my grandparents in Sacramento, stopping at the Vacaville outlets to see if the Vans store has anything good on sale. Eating Subway sandwiches outside in the sun while Shack sits nearby, his leash hooked underneath one of the table legs. He's waiting for someone, anyone, to drop some food.

I won't claim that the Vacaville outlets are the ideal place for an epiphany, but when you spend as much time down the rabbit hole as I do, you take your moments in the sun where you can. For me, it arrived while sitting outside the 9 West store with my Jawa, waiting for Sandra Bullock to hopefully find a pair of shoes to replace the tired old brown ones she's worn every day since she sprained her ankle playing basketball.

The Jawa, Shack and I were sitting there, fending off the attentions of shoppers who love dogs. I don't know how many more Saturdays I've got to sit in the sun, in no hurry, with my little boy draped over my shoulders. Two weeks ago he was five, so I can only assume that two weeks from now he'll be 15. And I've yet to meet the fifteen-year-old who will absently put his arms around his dad's neck while waiting for his mom to emerge from the 9 West outlet.

At these times, if we're lucky, sunset, beach or no sunset, beach, time can slow down enough that we have time to be conscious of the way life is flowing over us. Like the way weather is sometimes perfect enough to fit like a favorite sweater, sometimes you can actually see memories as you build them. This was one of those times.

From there, to Sacramento, where, after 25 years of driving myself, I can finally find my grandparents' house without getting on the wrong freeway.

My grandparents have reached late December, I think, which makes every visit precious and bittersweet. This time, my grandfather was angry. He is not going gently into that good night. He can't stand being old. "You live long enough and eventually they've taken everything away that you enjoy doing," he said, more than once.

"But we've had a great ride," my grandmother countered.

"I DON'T CARE!' thundered Grandpa.

He's bored, Sandra Bullock told me later. All he wants, he says, is to have a place to go where he can play pool with other old guys.

Every visit, I hope, adds at least a month to their lives. My grandfather turns 90 in two months.

What they have now, mostly, are great old stories about their lives. Some of them I've heard many times. Some they now tell more than once during a single visit. Others I've never heard before. I know they lived on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, in a one-bedroom apartment. I know that my dad, as a very little kid, walked around the army base in St. Augustine, Florida, pointing out all of the officers, making my enlisted grandfather salute each of them over and over.

I know that my grandfather left the dress factory in 1959, a year in which, I now sometimes have to remind them, I was not yet born. I have heard many times that there friends used to climb through their kitchen window on Ocean Parkway and offer to babysit my dad, but Sandra Bullock has not and I don't really care if I have to hear about it 100 more times. I won't get bored.

When Noodle's Mom and I were little kids, my parents would pack us off to my grandparents house in Massapequa, Long Island, for a week each summer. Every year my grandmother would fill our heads with images of the wondrous, amazing things to be found in New York.

The two things I loved above all else were the Empire State Building and the Automat. One of my favorite childhood memories: driving our 1967 Plymouth Barracuda convertible down 5th Avenue, on the way to my grandparents' place. Stopping at a light a 27th and 5th. My dad hitting a button and putting the top down. Looking up and seeing the Empire State Building rising up in front of us.

But we never got to the Automat. I imagined it, this place where you put in money and pulled out food, but we never got to go. Then, one summer, we arrived in Massapequa to find that my grandmother had placed paper towels over the open oven. She'd cut slots into the paper towels, and written the names of food items on them: peanut butter & jelly sandwich, apple, chocolate cake, and my favorite, lemon meringue pie.

Since I was in preschool, sorry, nursery school, then, my grandmother has gone out of her way to make lemon meringue pie every time we visit. She is now 89 years old, has two fake hips and can no longer stand for periods longer than 15-20 minutes, so she will not be making me any more pies. Instead, they get into their Honda Element, drive to the store, use the crane in the back to unload her scooter, and then she rides into the store while my grandfather walks next to her and they pick out a lemon meringue pie for me.

At 7:30 on Saturday, my grandmother handed me 3/4 of a lemon meringue pie, telling me that "the last time, I almost had to run after you to get you to take it!" I told my grandfather to get himself down to the Rancho Cordova senior center and play some pool. To prop my grandmother in the corner on her scooter, with her crossword puzzles and a sign that says "DO NOT DISTURB" around her neck, because she says she doesn't like people all that much.

I seldom feel as comfortable with responsibility as I do driving home from Sacramento at night. The drive is just long enough -- 100 miles -- for one or both of Sandra Bullock and the Jawa to fall asleep. On this night, I can see the Jawa concentrating on his Nintendo DS in the back seat, the glow of the screen lighting up his face. S. Bullock dozes in the front. Both of them, along with Shack, who is sleeping in the back of our station wagon, depending on me to get them home safely.

This must have been what my grandmother was talking about when she told my grandfather they'd had a great ride. So sunsets, no beach, just I-80 and a string of supremely forgettable towns: Dixon, Fairfield, Pinole.

We reach the Bay Bridge and cheer our new FastTrak device, which propels us past toll booth traffic with two small beeps. San Francisco appears on our left. There's your sunset and your beach.

Tomorrow we will work on the house and take our chances with the Blue team that laughed at us a few weeks ago (this time they beat us with -- literally -- both hands behind their backs). I will try to fashion 15 pages of transcribed interview into something resembling a coherent, 2000 word magazine article. And then, tomorrow night, Sandra Bullock will sleep exactly 45 minutes because she is under so much pressure at work.

But tonight we are all fine. And this, we will remember.

New Ways to Waste Time

2007-03-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

These are the things that keep me from doing what I'm supposed to do which, right now, is completing a 1500-2000 word profile of San Francisco appellate attorney Dennis Riordan:

1) Purimschpiel (sp?) -- Part of our new commitment to Judiasm (almost entirely generated by our choice of school for the Jawa) is an awareness of Purin, the fun Jewish holiday. As you may or may not know, in general, Jewish holidays are not celebrated, they are observed. There is no Yom Kippur Bunny.

Purim is different. Despite following the classic Jewish holiday script (summarized as "They tried to kill us, we survived, lets eat."), Purim is a celebration. I remember this vaguely from my own childhood, during the few years we actually went to temple. And hated it, by the way. Purim, if I recall, involved weird fruity baked things masquerading as candy, people dressed up as characters from the Purim story, singing, dancing, all of the things I love best.

In our present life, Purim is the best day of the school year. It is the day when you recycle last year's Halloween costume, which no one except your best friends has yet seen, since Halloween is not officially sanctioned in Jewish Day School. There is a carnival, a talent show, and the Purimschpiel.

The invention of our school itself, Purimschpiel, as far as I can tell, is a chance to re-tell the Purim story as filtered through the eyes of Baby Boomers. Queen Esther and Mordecai set their tales to the tunes of Beatles songs, and for every kid dressed as a punk or a rapper (zero, actually), there are 25 dressed as hippies.

Ah, San Francisco. Haman comes out in a Prius instead of a chariot, and at the end of the story, George Bush is burned in effigy.

I made that last part up.

Regardless, all of the children look very cute, and the Jawa's teacher manned rhythm guitar, which was pretty cool. Zelda dressed as a geisha.

2) Chasing Shack all over the world: Yesterday, I returned home from the gym to find a message on our answering machine: "Hi (in cool-sounding Irish accent), my name is Mary. I have your dog, Shack, here. I found him in front of my house."

I called Mary. She lives 6 blocks from us, almost on the border of Noe Valley. Endemic to our status as upward-striving middle class people, he escaped when the cleaning lady left the front door open. She must not have noticed, however, because there was no note. So Shack went on a vision quest, arriving at Mary's house around 10:30.

I ran to Mary's house, still in my workout gear.

I don't blame Shack. Mary's house was much nicer than ours, and her little toddler who was obviously having the time of her life. "Now the girls (pronounced guhrls) are going to want a dog of their own," said Mary as Shack jumped up onto her daughter. "Did you like having Shack here?" I asked her. From behind her pacifier, she nodded: yes.

After thanking Mary profusely, I put Shack on his leash, attempted some kind of weak scolding, and set off for home. Shack, infused with a sense of freedom and all that means, ran the entire way with his leash in his mouth. When we got home, he continued running, this time in circles, from the living room to the bedrooms, pausing to growl at me, around the coffee table, until he collapsed from exhaustion.

What did Shack see during his Glen Park adventure? Who did he see? What did people think upon seeing a Corgi out for a morning stroll, sans owner or leash? It was six blocks before someone finally took some action. What made Shack decide to head North? He went in a direction we never go.

I guess he was just curious. But you know what that did to the cat.

3) Crossword puzzles: At this point in time, you can compare my enthusiasm for crossword puzzles to that of Sonny the bird for Cocoa Puffs. I do two of them a day, sometimes three, even though it means I have to suffer through the San Francisco Chronicle to get my puzzles.

Sandra Bullock is disgusted with this new habit. I gave up drinking Coke, only to find a new compulsion. This one is more time-consuming.

4) Eating breakfast: this morning, already throw off track by the purimschpiel, I decided to go to the post office and then eat a proper breakfast at this place in Noe Valley that I've never been to. It has a U-shaped counter and an old sign. Good enough.

Two seats away was Rob. He wasn't eating, just drinking coffee and drawing. He wasn't eating, I later learned while eavesdropping on his conversation with Lisa, the waitress, because he was committed to a diet that was "like a journey toward natural." I didn't hear the specifics, but whatever they were, the journey had blessed him with an overall "smoothness." Everything was smooth, his breathing, his sleeping. His head, I might add, if mine weren't well on the way toward smoothness itself.

Soon after Rob revealed his smoothness, Lisa dropped off my two scrambled eggs and hash browns. "These eggs," I thought, "are like a journey toward heart disease."

A snowboarding guy walked in and sat on the other side of the U. He was there for one reason: to talk to the other waitress, not Lisa. Both Lisa and the other waitress were young and attractive, which was surprising, given that you would expect most places with U-shaped counters to be staffed by Alice, Vera and Flo. Maybe you would expect that if you watched too much TV instead of working.

Lisa was living with her boyfriend in a studio apartment, which was working out well because they'd bought this big bookshelf / room divider at IKEA. Whether the new guy knew this or not, he was interested in Lisa's co-worker. So they played their little game. Her body language suggested that she was interested. His order of a cheesburger at 10:30 in the morning suggested that he was willing to do whatever he needed to do to advance this relationship.

Eventually, he got up and went to buy a snowboarding magazine, then returned wearing large sunglasses. The waitress went back to his spot on the U and stood there talking to him.

Ignored by both of them were two of the most disheveled, yet not-unclean old men I've ever seen. They sat near the cash register and said things like, "Can you believe there was an earthquake last night? Near Lafayette!" and "120 tons of rocks falling down Telegraph Hill!"

With all of this going on, do you blame me for not working? Who can work when there's so much to see?

It's not going to get better, not today. Even though I have a Monday deadline, I am going to go back to school to watch the Jawa -- actually dressed as a Jawa -- play the Star Wars theme on his saxaphone for the talent show that they don't call a talent show because, I guess, if you suggest that the performers have talent, that must mean that the audience does not, and we're all talented here.

And special.

120 tons of rocks falling down Telegraph Hill. I can't even imagine.

Donning the Spike Lee Face

2007-02-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

Apologies first to Dave K. and Lord Vader. I went to OC and didn't call. Instead I helped myself to a serving of the high-gloss world of Roger A. Hunt, which involved bars tucked into the corners of shopping centers, late-night bowls of edamame and ramen and occasionally black cowboy boots, but not, apparently, my expected birthday phone call, which I forgot to place upon returning to San Francisco.

For that, I also apologize to Roger A. Hunt. He gives me Springsteen in high-definition, and I don't even call. He must be wondering if he really turned 42 yesterday. Is it still a birthday if I don't call? Ask our old friend Phred. I haven't called him on his birthday since 1996.

Given that I've been in a lousy mood ("Cranky," S. Bullock) since November, I've decided that, rather than keep the mood locked inside, where it can fester and expand like the impact of a dum-dum bullet, I'm going to adopt a Spike Lee face. letting the entire world know that I am, like Spike, constantly lugging around ten thousand pounds of baggage and disgust.

Unlike Spike, I will reserve my heaviest baggage and disgust for myself.

Today was a fine time to debut my new Spike Lee face. Though it was Sunday, the traditional day of rest for my non-Jewish readers, I carried a Lee-esque smoldering anger throughout the entire day. Any request from Sandra Bullock or the homework-laden Jawa sent waves of quick anger through my post-Orange County misshapen frame.

I've been sporting a rerun of the 2000-2002 headache since returning home, which has done nothing to improve my mood. This headache, which basically wiped two years out of my life, and which I'm not even sure is an actual headache, comes, I think, from my neck, introducing itself via a series of weird pulsing waves through my head. It feels like there are fireworks shooting off inside my head. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these times, my head just explodes, Scanners-style, solving the headache problem but introducing a slate of new ones in its wake. Then, after the laser bolts die down, the weird, nausea-inducing pain arrives, making all light and sound the equivalent of small arms fire.

All of this is a long-winded excuse for anyone who came across me wearing my Spike Lee face today.

Spike Lee's face is liberating. Sandra Bullock's mantra is to "put on a happy face," so normally, I try to follow along, to better present us as a couple. How would people feel if they saw peppy S. Bullock dragging along a disgusted Spike Lee clone, Spike as a middle-aged Jewish guy?

We would find out.

I wore the face to the YMCA for our basketball game. Pre-game, I came face to Spike Lee face with the ironically named Brooke Shields, imposing coach of the blue team from two weeks ago. That particular farce had led to numerous parent complaints, then me calling the overmatched director of the YMCA Youth Basketball program, who then relayed the message to Brooke Shields. Expecting awkwardness, I walked past Brooke (and her powder blue polo shirt with "COACH" written in script across the front) following her team's laughable drubbing of yet another squad of patsies, flashing the Lee grimace at her. She said nothing. Lefty, she can handle. Spike Lee is another story.

My players seldom respond to my constant harping, yelling, pleading, cajoling. This game began in kind. Halfway through the first quarter, Bullock and I called time, yanked our team off the floor and tore into them (as much as we are allowed, given our community's undying commitment to self-esteem) for their lackluster play. They returned to the court a changed team.

Perhaps the Spike Lee face had something to do with this. When Spike is faced with a half-hearted film crew, does he turn the face onto them as if they are under-researched journalists or members of the obviously racist ruling class? How does the crew respond? Do they snap to attention, cranking out scenes in an efficient, professional manner?

Today's game also presented S. Bullock and I with a new challenge. Short two guards, we stuck the Jawa, normally an undersized forward, into the backcourt. He responded by playing swarming, energetic defense and dishing out passes with a frequency and zest never before displayed on-court, by him or, frankly, anyone on the team this season.

Given our shortage of guards, we had planned to play our two remaining guards three quarters each, filling in with the Jawa for the two remaining quarter slots. His play was so inspired, however, that not only did I have to briefly drop my Spike Lee face, but Bullock and I both agreed that he had earned an extra half-quarter of play.

But would this decision bring with it the whiff of nepotism? A few of our players were confused when we ran the Jawa out for the second half of the fourth quarter.

Personally, I was overjoyed to see our generally non-sporting Jawa show enthusiasm and agressiveness. Our well-adjusted players seldom display any kind of fierceness, no matter how many ways we think up to encourage them to. If it had been any other child, I would not have thought twice about giving him the extra floor time, but I was taught by my own father that when you are the coach you cannot appear in any way to be giving favor to your own child.

Fortunately, since our parents were across the gym, nobody heard Sandra Bullock turn to me --as the Jawa leapt into some guy's face, forcing a turnover -- and say, "He's so cute!"

Probably not what LeBron's mom thinks when she sees him on court, but it works in our world.

Tomorrow, I'm going to wear my Spike Lee face while I'm behind the wheel. No yelling and arm-waving for me. Just the patient suffering one feels while trying to navigate a world full of imbiciles. I have some errands to run. I'll wear the face then, too. People will find it intimidating. It will speak to the flaws they'd hoped to conceal from the world. Spike suffers no one gladly.

Maybe I'll take it far enough that when I enter the "Office of Development," at the Jawa's school, check representing either the entrance fee for 5th grade or 1/3 of the highest yearly salary I've ever commanded in hand, I'll do it with Spike's unconcealed disdain. I won't have to say a word. They'll just see Spike's face on my head and they'll understand.

Spike is power.

The Orange Curtain, Among Others

2007-02-20T15:30:00.000-08:00

Now that my previous entry apparently has established my bonafides as a racist, let me recount the conversation I just had with the barista at the Corona Del Mar Starbucks:

Him: “Is it cold out there?”
Me: “It’s wonderful.”
Him: “I like it cold. I’m going to San Francisco next week.”
Me: “Why?”
Him: “To get out of Orange County.”

And so it is with my misunderstood semi-hometown. Is it full of silicone-enhanced airheads living in enormous stucco homes hidden behind gates? Is it an endless mob of neo-Rockabilly construction guys in their 20s, casually glancing at this week’s “Cycle Trader” in search of a new dirt bike? Is it a Mexican family at Disney’s California Adventure, waiting in line for the ferris wheel with the kids jumping out of their skin and the dad leaning against a pole with his eyes closed, wearing shiny black dress shoes with his jeans?

Maybe it’s the old white guy waiting for a Coke in Tomorrowland, his plaid shirt tucked into his Wranglers, his sideburns almost touching on his chin, his watch band splattered with white paint.

It’s all of these things, plus the sun-soaked part of PCH, choked with Bentleys and BMWs, running through Corona Del Mar, which I am now staring at from inside this Starbucks.

Whatever it is, I offer you this advice: do NOT waste your money on Disney’s California Adventure more than once. You should do it once, but do NOT take that voyage during President’s Day Weekend, in the midst of a 2 for 1 special on tickets for Southern California Residents.

To sum it up: every single ride at Disney’s California Adventure, beginning with the Ferris Wheel -- which looks harmless enough until you reach a certain point, then your caged-in car slides down a pole and rocks violently back and forth for five minutes – to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which drops you down and jerks you up until you’re pretty sure that you are going to lose the pretzel you just ate, completely embarrassing yourself in front of the Rocket Scientist, who routinely experiences mach 2 and so can barely tell that the ride is moving, is designed to make you sick.

They spin, they accelerate, they go backwards. They simulate. They make me sick.

And so it was that I wandered, dazed and ill, through Disney’s California Adventure, taking two steps forward, then three sideways, to avoid the thousands upon thousands of strangers also in the park that day.

At seven o’ clock, we gave up, left the park, thought briefly about having dinner in downtown Disney, then drove to deepest, darkest Anaheim for dinner at a really cool old school Italian place.

Orange County is also this.

The next day, Disneyland, aka the HPOE (Happiest Place on Earth), accompanied again by 50,000 of our closest friends. But there is something about the HPOE that sets it apart from the generic themeparkitis that plagued California Adventure.

For OC kids like myself, Disneyland functions as a stand in for all of the normal places people live their lives. I can walk by a spot in Frontierland and remember where I was sharing popcorn with my ex-Mormon girlfriend in 1983. On the Matterhorn, I stood nervously in line but never said a word, the better to impress my little league friends on the day we went there following our successful season.

After 31 years of Disneyland visits (as I reminded Noodles’ Mom on the Jungle Cruise – our first time there was March, 1976), it’s not quite the HPOE for me, but worth it for ten precious hours of the Jawa holding my hand and demanding that I go on rides with him. He is nine, and my time holding his hand is ticking down so loudly that I can feel it pulse in my chest every day. That there is this place – Disneyland – that can function for young parents and infants, guys in the bittersweet waning days of their omniscience dad-dom, teenagers sharing popcorn and multi-generation Church groups, can only be a gift from Walt himself. The old tyrant.

Something interesting about the crowds at Disneyland. Yes, they are fat. I had to get that out of the way. As Noodles’ Mom said, “When I come to Disneyland, I feel pretty good about myself!” More interestingly, to me, is what they wear. Everyone tries to represent their home towns, either with a t-shirt or a hat, which I really like.

Less interesting and frankly downright disturbing is the trend of buying ridiculous Disney-themed hats, headgear you would never otherwise buy and/or wear, wearing it all day and then undoubtedly stowing it away deep in the back of some closet, behind the old sports gear and Tom Cruise, and never wearing it again. Why do this?

We spent double-digit hours at Disneyland. The Rocket Scientist plotted out our strategy, deftly using Fast Passes on key rides for maximum coverage. The Jawa and his cousins, Noodles and the Artist Formerly Known as Count Burpalot but now, by parents’ request, called “Felix Ungar,” thanks to his mother’s noting that he possesses a commitment to neatness that some might find disturbing in a ten-year-old boy, had a full Disneyland experience, the kind that you refer to repeatedly throughout your life. (“Remember that time we went on Big Thunder Mountain three times in a row? And then it started raining?”)

Back to Orange County. Yesterday, as Noodles’ Mom, the Rocket Scientist, Noodles and Felix returned to the searing nightmare that is Edwards AFB, we drove to Santa Monica for a day with the Rock Stars. As usual, Los Angeles at first thrilled me, then irritated me, then completely creeped me out. Lunch at a nearby “deli” turned out to be a packed, high-energy vibe hamburger place, admittedly only 50% hipster but cool enough to remind me that if I lived in LA my nerves would be shot.

Today I dropped Sandra Bullock and my Jawa at LAX, then drove down PCH, fending off mocking emails and angrily texting Flush Puppy to vent my hurt feelings at the minor firestorm raised by the question: “Why did you notice that the tiny woman in the Toyota Avalon was black?”

There is nothing to add that won’t make me look like more of a schmuck than I presently own up to.

Other than that I was frankly relieved to cross the county line in Seal Beach. “Now Entering ORANGE (county),” and my shoulders sagged. I opened the window and the sun roof, slowed down to 45, watched suburban renewal take place on both sides of the road.

There are two ways to look at places, and even people. You can use your brain and make a list of pros and cons, add them up and make a reasoned, logical assessment. Then you can sift through your brain and your heart for all of the memories, intangibles and meaningfuls that make it whatever shade of color it is for you. No one, however convenient it may be, should throw a blanket over the whole thing or the whole person and say “this is what it is.”

Now if you’ll excuse me. I have a date with some traffic on the Newport Freeway.

In the Flow

2007-02-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

I can't comment on what goes in in the heads of the thousands of drivers who take on the length of California Interstate 5 each day, only what goes on in mine. We are joined by common purpose, and yet seem to have nothing in common other than that we're getting in each others' way.

And we hate the trucks.

How we hate the trucks! The presumptuousness of them, as bad as the much-maligned MUNI buses at home. The trucks act as if they own the road -- particularly the stretch of I-5 running from the junction at Highway 152 (Pacheco Pass) and the Grapevine -- and even though they probably do own it by virtue of their travelling it daily, would it be so wrong for them to act at least as benevolent landlords with us as cooperative tenants?

Do they have to pass each other at 62 miles per hour, forcing us to go from a comfortable 85 (sorry CHP) to 61 in the space of a few hundred feet? Given that they are undoubtedly very aware of the consequences of their actions, can they then allow us acknowledgement of our anger? If we wave our arms and/or make pointed gestures at them, shouldn't they at least glance at us?

They do not. Because they do not care. At all.

To the long-haul trucker, automobile drivers are no more significant than tumbleweeds or a spilled load of tomatoes. We're something they cannot allow to get between them and their pre-determined arrival time. Since none of them have the luxury of a Burt Reynolds-driven Trans Am as an escort, they have to dodge the obstacles on their own.

These are the thoughts that could possibly race around in one's mind as he navigates the 240 miles of I-5 between Santa Nella and Castaic. Perhpas mose pointedly when he realizes that waving your arms after passing the 37th 18-wheeler to pull out and pass at 62 miles per hour is essentially useless and a waste of neuron firings. So is passing said truck before it's completely out of the fast lane, as an indication of your displeasure at their behind-the-wheel decisions. Once again: they don't care.

Does the tiny black woman driving the Toyota Avalon at close to 100 mph care? As she weaves in and out of traffic, invisible from behind, save for the sides of the rims of her enormous sunglasses, is she thinking about her impact on the members of the I-5 community? When she cut off that team of youth soccer players in their rented van, forcing them to brake, did she glance up into her rearview and think, "Oops! Sorry!" I'll never know.

By that time, a more pressing question forms: where do the people who work at the gas station/convenience store/Subway at exit 269 actually live? The complex, alone at the end of its exit, seems miles away from the nearest town. And yet, there at the counter, as I wait for my 6-inch Veggie Delight (extra cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, oil and vinegar on 9-grain bread), a woman who is arriving for work is telling Candy, the Assistant Manager, that she thinks her place was broken into the other night. "The front window was busted. Someone broke in," she said.

From where? Did someone drive 50 miles just to break into her house? And if there's crime out here, where nobody lives, what does that mean for those of us who live in cities, piled on top of each other with easy access to each others' valuables?

No, I'm serious. Where do they live? What's the mathematical formula that determines the probability of getting a job at the gas station/convenience store/Subway in the middle of nowhere if you live equally in the middle of nowhere, or, I guess, the exact same middle of nowhere? Is there a large applicant pool, or do the complex owners just draw a circle on a map and then see how many qualified applicants reside within that circle?

At mile 175, I decide that yes, I am a fine country-western singer. You can hardly hear the difference in the vocals I am adding to the Derailers' third album. They would be well-served by employing me to provide harmonies for their next release. That I can do this while 50 ounces of water reminds me that it would like very much to get out of my body, thank you, makes it all the more impressive.

Am I alone in wondering why Mr. Harris chose to build his valley resort one exit away from the massive slaughterhouse outside Coalinga? I have been driving this road for 23 years and I have never once found Harris Ranch, more accurately, the blob of gas stations across I-5 from Harris Ranch, to not be foul-smelling. Who, once they'd gotten ahold of the weird concept that they're going to go get pampered 75 miles from Fresno, thinks it's okay to emerge from your spa treatment only to encounter a snootful of slaughterhouse?

At 4:07 I pass Magic Mountain, indicating that I have enterered Los Angeles' orbit. On the advice of Roger A. Hunt, I tune to AM 980, where they have "traffic on the ones." This is no Kathy for KCBS in the studio looking online. They've got guys in helicopters checking out the 405, looping down to the 710 and the 605, then looking at the 91 before heading back up to see what's happening on the Hollywood Freeway. I listen intently, relieved to find that I have missed a sigalert in Castaic by 5 minutes.

For reasons still unclear, I feel like I am protecting myself from traffic by listening to 980 "traffic on the ones." I am not. When the flow slows to a crawl outside Glendale, there is nothing I can do, other than shift to survival mode and try to stay sane, pleased to know that the answer to "what's worse than traffic?" is "driving six hours and then arriving at the north end of Los Angeles at 4:07 on a Thursday afternoon."

Meanwhile, the eye in the sky is telling me that the 5 is moving well for this time of day. I look around at other drivers. Los Angeles, I decide, is the future, whereas San Francisco is the past. I see no quaint army of Prius's driven by white women with short hair and plastic-framed glasses. L.A. freeways are full of people trying to get through the day, shooting into gaps when they can, enduring. Brown-skinned, black-skinned, Asian, white, all are unperterbed by the fact that they are travelling at 15 miles per hour on a road designed for 65. They do this every day.

I am not of them, unfortunately, and after 90 minutes I begin to lose my cool. Nothing in the world, save for the Antelope Valley, is more disheartening than the stretch of I-5 between downtown L.A. and the 91 near Disneyland. It's less than 30 miles, but usually takes more than hour to travel, giving you plenty of time to enjoy the City of Industry, Santa Fe Springs and their attendant landscape of low-lying industrial buildings. "If I can just get to the 91," I think, shifting into Orange County mode, "I'll be home free."

At Carmenita Road I think, as I always think when passing Carmenita Road, "This is where Dad worked when we first moved to California." At the sign for Buena Park I think, "We stayed at a Holiday Inn in Buena Park that first week in 1976."

There we were, wide-eyed in the way that only people who've spent their entires lives in the Northeast, coming to Southern California for the first time, can be, a family of five with kids aged 13, 10 and 5, pointing out the palm trees and swimming in the hotel pool in mid-March. It was amazing. This year it will be 31 years ago and I'll be 4 years older than my dad was when we moved.

Roger A. Hunt lives in his old neighborhood. At 6:30 I turn onto his street, remind myself to park in front of the house next to his parents' house, not his parents' house, and take a deep breath of nostalgia. Today the Jawa and Sandra Bullock arrive via Jet Blue. Tomorrow we'll go to Disneyland.

Poor Sports

2007-02-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

We Jews may be the Chosen People, but in general, we are not the athletic people. This does not mean we don't harbor dreams. In my youthful fantasies, I got the call in the ninth inning, rode the cart out of the bullpen, stepped up to the Shea Stadium mound and fired three sinkers on the outside corner, then walked slowly into the dugout while 50,000 New Yorkers cheered.

We get older and our dreams shrink. Now I would be happy to lead my team of 9-year-old Jewish kids to just one Sunday victory in the YMCA 9-11 boys' league. We had our first game today.

I am only a semi-fiery coach, but quite sensitive to perceived wrongs. Sandra Bullock, who coaches alongside me, sometimes dominating the proceedings as only she can, cares not at all for the behavior of our opponents.

Following today's game, in which we were, frankly, destroyed by a team of 11-year-old public school kids, I was livid. S. Bullock could not have cared less. Maybe it's a guy thing.

Why was I livid? Because the team we played was much larger than us, much more skilled than us, much older than us, and spent the second half smiling and laughing. The team's parents, in fact, joined them in smiling and laughing, as if they were content fans of the Harlem Globetrotters and we were the hapless Washington Generals. It was a bloodbath. They did everything but fire a bucket full of confetti at the ref.

At one point, I yelled something to one of our players, a very cute, very small girl, about getting in front of the extremely large boy she was covering. She just shrugged her shoulders. Wisely, I might add.

Being passive-agressive, possessed of a long enough memory to recall the last time I got mad at an opposing team and ended up getting called out by their much larger than me coach, and frankly being a little scared of the tough-looking lesbian (named, hilariously, Brooke Shields, I kid you not) who led today's opponents, I tried to keep my mouth shut. I shook her hand and siad nothing at all.

And then turned and announced, loudly, to my crew of concerned parents, "That team should not be playing in this league!"

Our league is purposely non-competitive. I know, it's lame, but that's what it is. We don't even keep score. Why this team of extremely skilled, extremely large, extremely agressive 11-year old was slumming in our 9-11 league is beyond me, unless their purpose was to show up every Sunday, kick the living crap out of their opponents, then smile and laugh their way home where their parents can pat them on the back, puff up their chests and congratulate themselves for having such athletically adept children.

Not that I said any of this to them. I kept my distance.

But the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, worse than that left by the rice cakes we had afterwards for snack. Our first game, and admittedly we are not only not very good but also undersized and co-ed in a boys' league, and we get slammed so hard that our kids are now looking ahead to yet another year of Sundays like this. Perhaps it would be better for all concerned if highly-skilled teams led by frightening women named Brooke Shields with glib, self-congratulatory parents found leagues in which they were challenged.

Let me be clear: the kids themselves, other than the laughing and smiling but who can blame them, they were bored, were fine. They played clean, they didn't trash talk. I can't imagine it was much fun for them, other than in the way that shooting a barrel full of fish with a 9 mm pistol would be fun.

I don't know what our team's athletic dreams are. Other than a couple of players, it seems like in general they'd just as soon be doing something else than chugging up and down a basketball court, listening to me yell, "GET A BODY ON THAT GUY!" and trying in vain to hoist up shots with three enormous 11-year-olds draped all over them.

Maybe our next game will be better. Maybe this league contains only one team that should be playing CYO or PAL basketball with kids their own age. Maybe the rest of the teams are like ours -- little, still learning how to play, longer on enthusiasm than skill.

We can only hope. Otherwise, look for this coach's mouth to write a check that his butt is in no way ready to cash before the season is over.

My mom always told me that my mouth would get me in trouble someday.

Bad Dog!

2007-02-08T11:20:00.000-08:00

Shack is a bad dog. He is now one week post-op and showing no signs of personality reduction. In fact, given that he has spent that week denied dog park privileges with a huge white cone strapped to his head, it's fair to say that he is probably one ticked-off little corgi. Which in now way excuses him from his bad deeds.

Back when Shack was all man, we used to leave him in the "backyard" when we left the house. I use the admittedly ironic quote marks around "backyard" because it is being very charitable to call the small, steeply-pitched space that lies between the back of our house and the way-past-its-prime, slowly dissolving fence up the hill as "yard." It's more of an "embarassment," and Shack's domain, a narrow, concrete-floored runway surrounded by five-foot tall retaining walls, resembles more that stark confines of a prison than the pastoral image most have of a yard.

It is appropriate, however, because that is exactly where he belongs.

Since his operation, we are not allowed to leave him outside by himself, because he might get hung up on something and re-open his incision. This is the theory behind the giant white cone, as well. It's not as effective, however, at protecting dogs who decide to use the edges of the cone to scratch at the endless itching that comes with having your fur shaved.

The cone is also useful at butting people in the ankles, digging in the mud and flinging things that make you angry.

The downside of the cone is that, when you are left inside and take the opportunity to chew up the already-decaying windowsill in the front bay window, the little chunks of wood that are stuck to the inside of your cone are a dead giveaway that you are the one responsible for not only the ripped up appearance of said windowsill but also the large pile of wood chips lying on the floor below the window. Hence, you are a bad dog.

Should we be surprised? After all, Shack's favorite beverage is the dishwasher. Why shouldn't his favorite snack be the windowsill?

I understand that Shack is upset. He has been castrated, denied of the thing he loves best -- going to the dog park -- and forced to wear what looks like a small satellite dish around his head. When he does appear in public, he is met with pitiful smiles and odd stares. Worst of all, he has absolutely no idea that this is not permanent. In his world, you were once a carefree intact puppy. Now you are a castrated shut-in with a satellite dish protruding from your neck, with no end in sight.

I tried to take off the dish last night, while the Hammer was over picking up her son from a playdate with the Jawa. Shack has his follow-up vet appointment today, and he hadn't been furiously trying to scratch at his incision all day, so I took off the cone for awhile. At first, he just stood there. Then he returned to his normal activities. The Hammer and I were a little disappointed at his nonchalance.

Unfortunately, he soon began scratching again, so we had to re-attach the dish. I wasn't there to see it, but I am sure it only fueled Shack's rage.

When I returned from the gym today, he was sitting in the middle of the living room, his head still encased in that ridiculous cone, looking guilty. I immediately looked at the bay window. Half of its lower sill -- including however many layers of lead paint had been built up over the years -- was gone. Directly underneath the window was a large pile of wood chips.

Shack is a bad dog.

I grabbed him by the collar and led him to the back door. Strangely, he went willingly, as if accepting that, having had his fun, it was time to deal with the consequences like a man, albeit a man with no testicles.

Now I am charged with finding some mysterious substance that is supposed to repel bad dogs. You paint it on and the dog goes nowhere near the previously irresistable object.

And let me say that our house, whose gradual demise has been mostly secret until now, is now flashing a nice big Oklahoma mobile home dweller-looking wound right in the middle of the living room for everyone to see. I plan to move the couch to the front porch today, for consistency's sake.

Man of the House

2007-02-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

Last week, the Jawa asked me to define "synonym" for him. "It's two words that basically mean the same thing," I answered, feverishly scanning the recesses of my brain for an example, "Like automobile and car."

"Like burp and belch?"

"Exactly."

Or like incompetent and inept, which in our home are synonyms for balding, unemployed, middle-aged Jewish guy, at least when it comes to activities relating to the preparation of food.

For many years, I have disappointed or just plain turned off people who want to discuss cooking, chopping, grating, folding, grilling, or anything up to and including Hibachi! which, I hear, has something to do with cooking but I know only as the epithet Gilbert Arenas shouts as he releases another killer j. A Hibachi, reasons Gilbert, heats up faster than anything on earth ... except Gilbert Arenas.

I have long insisted, with absolutely no guilt, that I am worthless in the kitchen. More so than in other places. During my single days, I made sure to sleep until around noon. That way, I could just wake up and walk across the street to the sandwich shop, rather than having to create anything in my own home.

In a perfect world, Sandra Bullock would return from another long day putting food on our table, only to find that said food had already been prepared and laid on the table by me, her progressive, 21st-century husband.

Not so. I will regularly get on my hands and knees to vacuum under the table, but I will not and cannot put food on top of it.

Witness the events of last Friday.

I dislike the preparation of food so much that these days my lunch usually consists of various items taken from the refrigerator or pantry, placed in a bowl on top of each other, and then eaten. An apple, some pretzels, a couple of hunks of cheese, maybe a tortilla. A spoonful of peanut butter, once I realized that not only is that far easier than actually making a sandwich but also saves you the calories of the bread.

Even leftovers are too much work. They involve the microwave, tupperware, and the dishwasher. No good.

Last Friday I was busy. I was trying to create a web site -- one which you will eventually see linked to from this page, listening to sports radio and IMing with Flush Puppy about the options available to her husband, Butter Goats, should he decide to ditch their bar and get a 9-5 job.

In the middle of this, as I was rummaging through the pantry, looking for pretzels, I came across a package of Yakisoba noodles, the grown-up version of the Top Ramen I had happily eaten so many times in my youth, when they cost $0.25 a package and I couldn't afford to go across the street to the sandwich shop. I'd seen them in there earlier in the week and told S. Bullock that she shouldn't put them in the Jawa's lunch. I would eat them. Add seasonings, full with water to the line, and microwave. Surely I could do that, as I had done so often in my twenties.

Or not.

Maybe it was the distractions -- they were discussing the Super Bowl on the radio, I was wondering if Butter Goats, after ten years of working odd hours in shorts and a t-shirt, would be able to adjust to the company man life, I couldn't get my web page to publish -- or maybe it was the sad simple truth that I am worthless in any room containing a refrigerator, a sink and a range, but darn it if I didn't leave one step out of my noodle preparation before sliding the whole thing into the microwave, entering 4:02 minutes on the digital screen and then returning to my laptop.

A few minutes later I noticed a smoky odor. At first, I did nothing. In fact, I kind of liked the smoky odor. In my mind, I pictured my noodles browned, which would do nothing to lessen the sheer joy of noodle consumption.

At 4:02, the microwave beeped. The smoky odor had gotten a little stronger, and it did occur to me to wonder what was going on.

Then I turned around.

Somewhere, on the other side of a thick cloud of brown smoke, lay the microwave. In it was a package of what used to be noodles. I looked down at Shack, whom, besides being a dog and unable to speak, was so disgusted at the large plastic cone he'd been forced to wear following his surgery that he was lying helplessly on his side, sighing. He was no help.

I may have made some kind of involuntary yelp. I sifted through the smoke, coughing. It was too thick to get to the microwave. I ran around opening windows, hoping to avoid an embarassing smoke detector activation. At least I managed that.

Eventually, it cleared enough that I could get to the microwave. The package of noodles was crushed on one end, leaking thick brown smoke. Inside, the noodles had turned black and paper-like, reminding of nothing as much as the embodiment of pure evil that closed the 1980s Terry Gilliam movie "Time Bandits."

I reached through the smoke, grabbed the package of what used to be noodles and ran outside, trailing smoke behind me. The entire house was beginning to smell like a slumber party popcorn attempt gone horribly wrong.

Once outside, I waved the noodles around, taking in the full impact of the tragedy as it unfolded. I couldn't just throw the noodles away, as they would probably ignite whatever dry surface the hit, so I went back inside, lowered my head and ran water over them. They were, indeed, evil. Then I dragged Shack, huge plastic satellite dish and all, into the living room. I certainly didn't want to asphyxiate my post-op dog.

In a rage, I called Sandra Bullock. "Those noodles said they were microwave safe!" I thundered.

"Did you open the top before you put them in?"

"OF COURSE I DID!"

"Did you remember to add water?"

Silence on my end. The basic premise of any microwaveable noodle is to ADD THE FREAKING WATER TO THE LINE and then place the package into the microwave. I am useless in the kitchen, but I do know how to boil water and microwave things.

Don't I?

Apparently not. In the midst of a house full of brown smoke, I hung my head. How would I live this one down? We had dinner club in 24 hours. Would we be able to clear the kitchen of burnt popcorn smell in that time? It seemed unlikely. And with the world in turmoil, how much time would be spent specifically discussing my kitchen ineptitude? Most of it, as it turned out.

I was not finished with ineptitude for the day, unfortunately, but the rest of it turned out to be far less spectacular than the burnt noodles incident. Dropping an entire box full of blueberries onto aisle 9 is a pain in the neck for the produce guy, but the droppee can easily wheel his cart away from the pile of blueberries and return to anonymity within seconds.

Forgetting to go to Safeway in the first place is quickly forgetten when the forgetter blazes through his shopping in 30 minutes, blueberry spill included, and returns home in time to put away the groceries (weaving his way through a kitchen still lousy with brown smoke) and get to basketball practice before school ends.

Leaving the basketball jerseys in the car requires only a five-minute run back to the car during warm-ups. The aftermath of a burned package of noodles is not quite so easy to shake.

The next day, Saturday, we dropped $22 -- that is the exact amount, as calculated by a half-disgusted, half-humorously exasperated S. Bullock -- on various air fresheners and candles at Target. We came home, plugged in our air fresheners, lit our candles, and hoped for the best. "I had to clean the microwave twice," related Bullock, dryly, after I'd already cleaned it once. Despite the repeated cleaning, the microwave still carries with it a not wholly unattractive yellowish hue.

And yes, the cabinet next to the microwave still smells like burnt popcorn, because the microwave's surprisingly effective exhaust vent spewed weird yellowish liquid smoke onto it during the incident. In general, though, we had the entire event reduced to "funny story" status by the time people began arriving Saturday night.

And now our house smells like a comforting mix of vanilla and lavender, which provides a very appropriate background odor for any man's Super Bowl experience.

Bad Jobs No. 5

2007-02-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

In Israel, there is a mandatory 3 year military commitment when you turn 18. Despite the continued urgings of my father, there is no such requirement here in the U.S. I'm not sure I agree with him on that count, but I do think that there should be at least a requirement, to be exercised at any age under 30, stating that all citizens of the U.S. must work as waiters for at least one year.

First of all, everyone should know what goes on in restaurant kitchens. They should know that, to begin, all restaurants have cockroaches. Each and every one. With any luck, none of them, known for their Courtney Love-like resiliance, appears in the dining room. Instead, they should stay behind the scenes, which of course puts them much closer to the food.

Second, unless you're working in a high-end place -- which comes with its own set of challenges -- your kitchen is generally populated with some of the more scary and possibly criminal elements of society. Again, where best to put them? Close to the food.

In California, restaurant kitchens, again, except for the high-end ones, are manned by Spanish-speaking people from South American countries, convicts of all colors, illegal aliens from Europe who are "on holiday." How "on holiday" includes washing dishes in the back of Chili's escapes me.

Third, you should be required to work in restaurants because this is where you will learn that PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING. Given the correct set of circumstances, the most pressing personal needs, or the correct combination of mild-altering substances, people will do whatever they need or want to do, with little regard for the consequences of their actions. If that means tipping $3 on a $100 tab, or hosting a party that begins at 1:00 a.m. when you were in a dead sleep at 12:59, so be it.

In late January, 1991, on the heels of a December that began with me having three restaurant jobs and ended, inexplicably, with no jobs and $12 to my name, I rented a car and drove to my parents' house in Orange County. Once again grad school loomed, this time in San Francisco the following September.

Also, I had this new girlfriend. Kind of looked like Sandra Bullock, lived about a half-hour outside of San Francisco. Very organized. Unlikely to ever stab me during an argument.

But the plan, as much as I could formulate an actual plan, was to make a short pit stop in Orange County, then join Noodles' Mom in South Carolina to watch over her while the Rocket Scientist blasted away at bogeys in Iraq.

Upon reaching OC, however, I got word that Noodles' Mom was rocking back and forth in front of her TV, watching CNN and making sure that none of the casualties were slightly nerdy MIT grads who looked a little bit like Troy Aikman. "It's not a good idea to go there," my mother said, followed quickly by, "HAVE YOU GOTTEN A JOB YET?"

Two weeks later, I was climbing the walls of Sandra Bullock's townhouse, 30 miles outside of San Francisco. Each day I took BART into the city, then walked into restaurants and asked if they were "taking applications." Again, for reasons unclear to this day, I felt that my best option was to get another job in a restaurant. I mean, isn't that what writers did?

As a San Francisco neophyte, I didn't yet know that nobody gets jobs at the tourist restaurants. Like any newbie, I figured Fisherman's Wharf was where the big money was. Nobody bothered to tell me that:

1) Europeans like to pretend that they don't understand this crass American concept, what is eet you say, teeping?

2) People from the outlying areas come into San Francisco and, if they know absolutely nothing, dine at chain restaurants on Fisherman's Wharf. They work hard for their money, and they're loathe to give it to you unless you earn it.

3) The worst of stereotypes can often seem true when you have just refilled a Coke for the twenty-third time: large groups of young, blinged-out black men are lousy tippers. Groups of gay men are great tippers. Old people tip 10%, but are usually so nice that you don't mind.

4) Drunk people are the X-factor. They might be feeling good, they might want to save as much as they can so they can maximize their drinking opportunities.

5) Smokers are good tippers, but I'd already learned that the previous year, working in a comedy club in Seattle.

So I got this job at the Fisherman's Wharf branch of Houlihan's, one of those vaguely Irish-themed restaurant/bars with oversized, laminated menus. I was trained by this young guy who I thought was stoned, only to find out later that he was just plain dense. And stoned. Often.

But he'd done well at Houlihan's, so he was in charge of training me. He taught me the proper placement of the garnish kale on each plate, how to make a salad, how to greet customers, and suggested that I buy several white 65/35 dress shirts, which require less ironing than 100% cotton ones.

An aside here -- restaurant workers are generally dirty. This is because we have, tops, two sets of clothes to wear to work. And even then, we have only one tie and one apron. And we generally live in apartments and have to do our laundry in laundromats. And since everyone is basically sleeping with everyone else, nobody really cares who's dirty and who's clean.

As I said, life is different in a restaurant.

It may be different now. Just as I spent my temping days during the glory days of artistic types taking $8.50 temporary clerical jobs to make ends meet, so did I wait tables during a time where everyone seemed to be working on some kind of play, painting, novel or movie. As in "Taxi," nobody was an actual waiter, except Chris Shuler, who went to Columbia, majored in fine arts, didn't mind it if I called her "Shu," and would answer, "I'm a waitress," if anyone asked what she did.

Waiters are the best, or at least were. Even at Houlihan's, which, I would quickly learn, was not just cheesy but was "corporate," making working there like selling out on top of your selling out. We had a rule book, a training manual and had to toe the line, but we were at least interesting.

Nobody at Houlihan's had any pretense, except for me, maybe, of living a normal life. Shortly before I started there, half the staff had gradually died of AIDS, so management was a bit shell-shocked. While I was working there we lost one guy practically overnight, which was especially strange because, frankly, I didn't like him. My very Puckish friend put that one in my face, though, because he was an activist and he thought I needed to know that this is how it happens sometimes.

My Puckish friend ruled Houlihan's. A young, wiry, gay Midwesterner, he'd come to San Francisco several years prior when it became apparent to him that he could not live anywhere else. He wasn't interested in sugar-coating things, and had so much energy that you half-expected him to disappear while you were talking to him, only to reappear perched on a lamppost a few feet away.

I'd been pretty deep into the restaurant life in Seattle, but there was something more intense about the San Francisco genre. Puck introduced me to all of it. For awhile, anytime something weird happened to me, he was there to either shepherd me through it or encourage me to embrace the weirdness, rubbing his hands together with what I can only describe as glee.

He also gave me the unfiltered low-down on the AIDS crisis, seeing as he was neck-deep in it. He was down several friends, boyfriends, roommates. People were coming in and out of his life, so he'd decided to become a fatalist and not let too much of it get to him. These days, he takes it very seriously as the Director of an outfit that finds housing for AIDS patients. No longer Puckish, and in precarious health, I still saw him described as "enthusiastic" a few months ago in the SF Weekly.

Who knew, as they sat down to dinner at their corny Fisherman's Wharf faux-Irish restaurant, that their waiter ("server" in Houlihan's lexicon) had recently performed a one-man show at Josie's Cabaret? Or that he had, a few weeks earlier, showered tourists with the pennies he'd been left as a tip, throwing them out the windows and shouting, "You forgot your change!"

Nobody knew that one of the waiters was a drummer from Memphis, that one of the managers was sleeping with one of the hostesses, who was dating one of the bartenders, or that one of the other managers, only a few years earlier, had been on the same University of Texas baseball team as Roger Clemens. One day, in our white shirts and green ties, he and I played catch in the middle of the Wharf tourists. He could still bring it.

And who could have sensed that, among this cohort of misfits, there were some who were committed to the "company man" ideal, albeit in restaurant terms. Ask me how it feels to be written up for chewing gum on the job because Ann turned me into management, even though her girlfriend Elaine thought it was a cheap shot.

Every so often they'd slip in a law student or biologist, just to stir things up. One guy came in from New Mexico, an old friend of the baseball-playing manager. Prone to wearing bright white tennis shoes and fraternity sweatshirts, he tried to function as if he were still a Sigma Chi, only to lose all credibility by having a very public rendezvous at a party with Puck, who did it only as a political statement, and then, in absolute confusion, taking a swing as one of the hostesses before getting thrown out onto the street by one of the bartenders.

These were the last times in my life that I saw the sun rise with regularity. The parties were great, but the job sucked. I used to walk around telling people that "If Charlie Manson walked through that door with a twenty in his hand, I'd have to wait on him." Puck said I suffered from feeling that the job was "beneath me." Well, sure. There was that.

By now, my two pairs of poly/cotton pants were starting to fall apart, and grad school was about to begin. Restaurant cliques have a very short life span. About a year in, everyone gets restless. Since most people hate the job itself, are treated poorly by management and customers, and can't count on a steady cash flow, they're constantly looking for new jobs. Everyone promises everyone else that they'll bring them along to their new job, but it never happens.

Autumn seemed like a good time to leave. Even more so that night a bunch of people came in from Hayward, joked around with me during the mean, and then left me $5 on an $85 check. Here's the great part of waiting tables: there is absolutely nothing you can do to get them to change, to understand that they've done something wrong, or to make yourself feel better.

I spun away from their table, fuming, looking for a manager. Fortunately, I stopped to talk to Bill, a bartender, an older guy (probably all of 35) who let nothing bother him. "There's nothing you can do, dude," he told me. "Just gotta move on to the next table."

No way, I thought. Not this time. I strode back to the table and confronted the diners. "Was there something wrong with my service?" I said. Reading that sentence today makes me wince.

"No, it was fine," they said.

"Well, you tipped me $5. That works out to about 6 percent.

"Yeah, well, that's what you deserve."

Bright, vibrant colors flashed before my eyes. I mean, I know that's what I deserve, even more so today, but the agreement in the restaurant world is supposed to be "I do my job okay, you tip me at least 15%." We get minimum wage, and they take taxes out based on 8% tips. So every two weeks, I'm getting a paycheck of around $100.

That's what I deserve.

I hit them back with some kind of vehemence appropriate for someone about to begin his second Masters program in Creative Writing, thinking that, somewhere up in the place where they tally who wins and who loses, I was getting some good points for berating these losers. They would crumble under my formidable wit.

So what do you think? Did they slink out of the restaurant? Did they reach into their pockets and lay down a couple more sawbucks? Did they apologize?

None of the above. They laughed at me and made some kind of gay slur, the reasoning being that, since I was a waiter in San Francisco I was gay. And worth $5.

It deteriorated from there. My only recourse was to insult their city of origin. I went for the "you're a bunch of hicks who don't know how to act in the city," angle, which upset them, enough that I looked in all directions upon leaving work that evening. For the rest of the night, I assumed they were trashing my motorcycle, somehow figuring out that it was mine.

And again, let me repeat: there was nothing I could do.

Two weeks later I was out of there. Somewhere along the line, Puck and I got this idea that it would be really cool to be bike messengers. Which is another story entirely.

My last night at Houlihan's was the first night Sandra Bullock and I lived together. It ended in someone's apartment in the Tenderloin, and then running up the middle of Hyde Street at 5 a.m., trying to get home before someone mugged me.

The next afternoon I woke up in my new, very small co-habitation apartment, vowing to never don the apron of the waiter again. Like most of my personal proclamations, this one proved false. I'd be back in the building within three months.

It's like war. You get so close to these people for such a short period of time and then they're gone. Last year Puck had a party to bring a bunch of Houlihan's people together. I went, but I didn't have much to say to anyone. Nor did anyone have much to say to anyone else. The French woman had divorced his husband, who now was gay. The no-nonsense waitress had three kids and was living in Marin. Puck's old roommate was living in Diamond Heights and headlining a Tennessee Williams revival in Oakland. His health seemed pretty good.

And Ann was still bagging on me for chewing gum. Not everyone becomes your best friend.

The Unkind Cut

2007-01-31T12:23:00.000-08:00

The condemned man strode down the front steps, unaware that this was the final day of life as he had known it. In less than 24 hours his entire world would change. The sun would seem a little less bright; there would be slightly less bounce in his step. This morning, at least, all of that was off in the future.

For the condemned man had no concept of time. For him, days unfolded endlessly into naps, walks, eating. His life had been distilled down to its most rudimentary elements, and when you live like that, there is no reason to pay attention to time: day, night. That's it.

There were times that he was left alone, sometimes inside, sometimes in his cement-walled prison out back. Those were sad times, times when he would peer out the window at the world, see it passing by and wonder, "Why am I left in here?"

Today, though, no one left him behind, forgotten. Today the condemned man joined the rest of the world outside, walking seemingly without a care, stopping to literally smell the roses.

After the walk, the condemned man was brought before a tribunal, inexplicably. He bravely faced a mob of 20, all eager to touch him. They treated him like a pet, like him completely unaware of the tragedy in his near future.

The condemned man lapped up the attention. Because he spends so much of his time alone, he appreciates any attention. "This is the way it should be," he thought. "There's plenty of me to go around."

He had heard whisperings, during his rare outings, of events so gruesome that he couldn't begin to understand. After all, he was a young man, and innocent. It was less than a year ago that he lived with his family on a farm, before coming to the city. And this, this ... process ... that he'd heard of, it seemed too awful, too inhumane to be true.

So he ignored it. He wrote it off as an urban legend, spread by some distempered airhead who liked to hang around the park and steal people's innocence. Why the world had to include people like that, he did not know. But his spirit would not be crushed by a sour old man's tall tale.

Later, the condemned man returned home from the tribunal. He was fine, he thought; the mob had done nothing more than talk to him and touch him. It was not his business if they wanted to act this way. If the condemned man knew one thing, it was that people liked to talk to him and touch him. He was attractive, if doomed.

The condemned man sleeps, dreaming of open fields full of friends, with birds flying overhead. He is relaxed as he can be, completely unaware of what lies ahead.

Tomorrow morning, the condemned man will awake and skip breakfast. The doctors have instructed him to eat nothing after midnight. Then he will get into his car and drive to the hospital. He will do this willingly, because it is a place he's been to before and nothing bad has ever happened to him there, save for a little prodding and poking. They always have good food there, which runs opposed to what he's heard about hospitals.

But tomorrow will be different. He will enter the hospital and they will speak kind words, as usual. They will be happy to see the condemned man.

This time they will take him to a back room and strap him to a table. They will inject him with chemicals, then put a mask over his face and tell him to count back from 100. He will find himself getting tired, and it will feel good, and no old man's urban legend will enter his mind.

He will drift off, and that is when his life will change.

When he awakes, he will be in terrible pain. Something very important to the condemned man will be missing. Someone will have placed a large white cone around his head. His innocent world shattered, he will think of the old man's story and wonder "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?"

And so the condemned man will return home, only part of what he was when he left, one of the growing community of creatures known not as men or women but simply as "neuters."

Poor Shack. He has no idea.

Father/Son Degree of Difficulty

2007-01-29T13:39:00.000-08:00

What's harder, being a father or being a son? After yesterday, I'm not sure. I do know one thing, though; neither job looks to be getting any easier in the future.

I told someone once -- okay, it's me, I told lots of people lots of times -- that if you care at all about being a parent you constantly feel like you're screwing up. Take yesterday, for example.

These things often begin quietly. We took Shack for a walk around a very disappointing lake and then went to Trader Joe's. Lately -- not so lately --the Jawa has been devoting himself to making sure that every one of our planned or spontaneous events is somehow ruined. Usually he does this by disagreeing with something -- or everything -- that we say, then, like a litigator ruled more by emotion than professionalism, driving his point home with a series of increasingly combative and pointed comments.

By the time we got to Trader Joe's, I was already sniffing around the edge of the idea that every time we do something, the Jawa makes sure to ruin it. As a thoughtful parent, the kind who spends $19,500 to send his child to school that includes a "kindness committee," I should use these moments as "teaching opportunities." I should gently remind my Jawa how precious our time together is, and that his behavior is doing nothing but compromising that preciousness.

I should also probably have named him "Sunshine," while we're at it, and fed him only organic juices and left-wing propaganda as well.

As a deeply flawed human being, my response to these incidents is always the same. A voice begins, at first small and distant, then, shockingly quickly, throbbingly loud and insistant. The voice repeats the same thing: "How DARE this child RUIN every single thing we do! What is WRONG with this child? He NEEDS TO BE TOLD that he is WAY out of line."

And so I do that, with great skill. By "skill" I mean "relentless sarcasm and nastiness."

This had not yet surfaced as we circled around and around the Trader Joe's parking lot, looking for a parking spot, Shack panting in the back of the car.

Sandra Bullock had an idea. "Wouldn't it be wonderful," she thought, "if we could buy Shack this bed I saw at Cost Plus?" We could put it under the front window. Then he wouldn't have to climb up onto the end table that can barely support his 22.9 pounds.

Here's where it really falls apart. Had Cost Plus not had the wicker bed thing at all, or had they had one not ripped up and damaged, we could have made it through Trader Joe's, either holding our new dog bed or vowing to buy it online.

Since there was a bed, but it was damanged, this put the imprint of an idea into the Jawa's head: Shack needs something like this bed, and he needs it right now.

And so, like a Lorax who speaks not for the trees but instead for partially-grown Corgis, the Jawa accepted his mission: he would find something similar to this wicker box -- where are most of the world's wicker boxes? At Cost Plus! -- and he would find it NOW. We would not leave the store until he found it.

At this point, the voices in my head grow louder. Negotiations ensue. Finally, several minutes past the time I'd hoped to exit Cost Plus, we drag him out of there. By now, his advocacy for Shack has grown epically. Like a small, Vans-shod Clarence Darrow, he continues to plead his case, often in direct opposition to our orders and requests.

Within five minutes, I'm dragging him across the Trader Joe's parking lot. He's threatening me, swinging his free arm at me, yelling at me. All of the other Trader Joe's patrons, many of whom have named their children "Sunshine," and fed them only organic greens, otherwise why would they be at Trader Joe's, have stopped where they are standing and are watching to see how I am going to respond to the fact that my 9-year-old is doing a Rich Little-level impersonation of a three-year-old, minus the adorably cute part.

As usual, I fail. Instead of calming the child, I feed his rage, squeezing his arm harder as he tries to wriggle away, trying to adopt a quiet, threatening voice, not because I think it might be effective but because I'm still hoping that if I don't lose it, the hippies in the parking lot will figure I have everything under control and will continue on their way.

Nothing works. The Jawa is a few seconds short of going Linda Blair and having his head spin around completely. This is my child? This is my partner in funk?

Finally, I snap completely. I lean down closely to my child, the person I would most definitely take a bullet for, and whisper, "Do you want me to hurt you?"

First of all, as if.

Second of all, he doesn't believe me, and rightly so. Third of all, I look up and a family of four is staring right at me. I can see in the mother's face that she's cursing herself for not memorizing the number of Child's Protective Services. I give the Jawa's arm another squeeze and we walk waord the car, where his poor dog is sitting, anticipating the arrival not of a crazed, sub-par parent and a raging child but instead the two people who play with him, feed him and pet him.

Finally, exhausted I pull something out of my childhood. Appropriately, as we will soon learn, I draw from my own father's legacy and apply the feared "fingerprints on the neck" method. It gets his attention immediately.

I rip open the door and throw the Jawa in. That will have to take the place of "hurting" him. I really want to yell at him, but yelling has long since lost its effectiveness. I've been trying the low, threatening thing so far, so I continue, trying to make it sound as if I've compressed an eighteen wheeler full of rage into 45 decibals. And I say this:

"When we get home, you will go straight to your room. You will have no electronics for the week. You will have no playdates. We will talk about the proposed sleepover with Tony Hawk later."

From the back seat, he just sneers at me.

Eventually, Sandra Bullock returns, minus any Trader Joe's loot. In a desperate attempt to pierce my child's impressive personal armor, I say, "Nice job, Jawa. Mommy couldn't even buy food because of you."

I am expecting to receive news, either by phone or email, of my nomination for "most petty parent of 2007" any day now.

We drive home in silence, save for the part where the Jawa tosses a sweatshirt toward me and I swing around and say, "DID YOU THROW THAT AT ME?" with enough force to actually kind of scare him. Two hours later, after we've each calmed down via our go-to sources -- me, crossword puzzles, him, loud funk music -- he is released from his room, sporting a conciliatory attitude.

For this I thank him, because life wasn't done with me yet. Earlier in the day -- and if flying off the handle wasn't my usual M.O. I guess I could blame my behavior on the stress of this -- my mother called to tell me that Gedalya Ben Yitzak was in the hospital. Again.

See, my father is in worse shape than a lot of guys his age. Years of smoking, inhaling saw dust and eating pizza have left him susceptible to all kinds of illnesses, most of which I have to research on my own, due to my family's long-standing policy of sugar-coating all forms of bad news.

So I got the call yesterday morning and quickly shifted from bad dad to good son mode. Since my parents were not CC'ed on the email explaining my lack of ambition and willingness to embrace responsibility, they still have in their mind the argyle sweater-wearing 17-year-old son who could handle any crisis. Back then, their biggest worry was that the world was having a party that I was too uptight to attend. But that persona came in handy then, and I'm thankful that enough of it still exists, at least to them, that I could step up and be of some use yesterday.

Today, after hours of research, I called my dad in his hospital room, asked a bunch of pointed questions about his condition, hung up, satisfied in part that he/they are taking this situation seriously, and then called Noodles' Mom to share my findings. And told my parents that, despite my well-documented distaste for the state of Arizona, that the Jawa and I would be visiting them during Spring Break, when the average temperature in the Grand Canyon State is a comfortable 95 degrees.

Taking these events back-to-back, I couldn't help but wonder where the ceiling is on all of this. I've been telling the Jawa, since he was very small, that the worst part of being a parent is that as he gets bigger, I get older. It seems like parenting has been getting more difficult with each passing year, as the Jawa completes his transition from adorable toddler to disgusting boy. Next comes sullen teen, which I'm sure will be no picnic.

I noticed the other day, after 15 minutes of negotiation culminated in the Jawa agreeing to join me in taking Shack for a walk, that we've long since passed the point where just showing up in public with our child elicits smiles and coos from everyone we pass. Shack does his best to pick up the slack, but my child himself actually now has to do something exceptional to win the crowd's unconditional love.

Where is the precocious toddler who spontaneously danced on the sidewalk to the club music coming from "The Pink Zone" as everyone smiled their blissful approval?

Will I be able to roll with his combative nature as he gets older? Will we turn into one of those toxic father-son teams, where the son charges out of the house in a rage several times a month and then later waits until I'm dead to write odes to my well-intended but poorly-executed attention?

Soon, I know, he will be unable to hold my hand, at least in public. I will always pat him on the head, though, even when he is bigger than me, and I plan to sneak into his room every night before going to bed, as I have been doing since he was a baby, and say goodnight.

Nobody has to tell me that being a son becomes more difficult as your parents (and grandparents) get older. I understand that the whole of my earlier thought is actually "as the Jawa gets bigger and I get older my dad gets even older than me."

I've also got Roger A. Hunt to offer constant reminders of our parents' -- and our -- mortality once a week or so. It's the one thing we can count on, he tells me, though since becoming a hotshot lawyer he's added that taxes are another thing we can count on.

I remember two pictures of my dad from old photo albums. One, which I've referenced more than once when writing a story, was taken some time in the mid-1960s. I may not even have been born yet. It's black-and-white, and in it, he's wearing a white shirt and one of those skinny, cool 1950s ties. He's at work, and he's talking on the phone. In the photo, he looks ambitious and very young.

The other picture was taken at Hammond's, "The Pool." We went there all summer, every summer, in lieu of a country club, most of which in our part of Pennsylvania, I think, didn't accept Jews at the time. In this one, he's standing in the pool with at least 3 kids hanging from his arms, hoisting them all out of the water. I'm one of them, skinny, maybe 9 years old, wearing a bathing cap because they'd decreed that summer that anyone with hair past a certain length, boy or girl, had to wear a bathing cap. There's water flying around everywhere, because all of the kids are climbing up onto my dad, kicking, waving their arms around.

I'm sure that one day the Jawa will be asking himself when he got too big for his dad to carry him up the front steps. That day is coming very, very soon, by the way.

What Are the Alternatives?

2007-01-25T11:29:00.000-08:00

Neal Pollack, who has written for "Vanity Fair," among other publications, recently released a book called "Alternadad," recommended to me by Flush Puppy. "Oh, great," I thought. "Here's another book I should have written but was too lazy and/or screwed-up to do it before someone else got the idea.

So I went to Neal's web site to learn a little bit more about what an "alternadad" is. When the Jawa first entered our world, I assumed that I would be something like an "alternadad," that is, in my opinion, a dad unlike the mainstream of "normal" dads. As I had spent so much energy making sure to not appear a part of any "normal" world pre-parenthood, I would continue to remain visually unusual, culturally vital. I would not don the strangely-cut "dad jeans." I would force feed "cool" music into my culturally ambiguous child's ears. The walls of his room would be covered with Keith Haring prints and pictures of motorcycles. In doing this I would separate myself from the oh-so-boring masses and retain the feelings of shallow superiority that had somehow carried me through 10 post-college years of career failure.

And it worked, for awhile. The Jawa, three weeks old, sat in his cool, oversize-wheeled stroller and caught the Ramones. I continued to ride a motorcycle, or rather more accurately, continued to own a motorcycle. We lived in a cool apartment in a cool neighborhood and strolled him, in his cool little black Adidas, to the restaurant with outdoor seating so we could eat nachos and have a beer while he slept.

When your child is small, especially now, there is plenty of support for parents who want to hang onto their cool. You don' t have to automatically give up your mojo, start dressing like a schlub and bore people with endless stories about formula and first steps. Neal Pollack articulates that, with great support from the people who write into his website, offering up tips on the best cities to raise cool, urban kids (Portland, judging by their responses), best art scenes, etc. Former alterna-dudes like Dan Zanes helpfully provide a soundtrack for cool parents, cranking out kid's albums one after the other. Nobody has to listen to Barney anymore. Nor are they prisoners of Disney.

It's really easy to be an "alternaparent," in fact. They gave us minivans to avoid, for one, as easy a target as frat boys were in college. No minivan = no giving in. The path was absolutely over-greased by the generation before us, who devoted most of their lives to avoiding becoming adults, remaining cutting edge and hip before suddenly and without warning emerging as twinkly-eyed creatures from nursery rhymes.

When the Jawa was almost 3, we moved to San Francisco, which made being cool, at least for me, much more difficult. One night, a couple of years after we moved, I took the Jawa to a burger place on Valencia Street. In our cool shoes, we took BART and moved like a hip urban generational team through the Mission.

There were other cool dads at Burger Joint that night. None of us were anything like our own fathers, who left early in the morning wearing uncomfortable suits, then returned home, present but in their own world, interested in dad things and, importantly, I guess, boring dad music.

My dad was into folk music. I'm not sure if he still is, but my childhood was spent to a soundtrack of Simon & Garfunkel, The Kingston Trio, and occasionally more eclectic artists like Richard Dyer Bennett, whose "Essential" LP we picked up while on vacation in Carmel, to the great ironic delight of my mother, my sisters and I. Dad's music was something to endure, to ridicule, to eventually, begrudgingly, appreciate.

Same with his taste in art, which in my case ran to abstraction, with a specific focus on Joan Miro.

Back at Burger Joint, all of us cool dads were lined up, waiting to order. Since my Jawa was older, he was already back at the table, singing along with whatever baby boomer tunes they had playing.

Cool is what you make it.

One of the other dads, who was wearing the uniform of the literate cool dad (vintage sport coat, scarf), was teaching his kids the lyrics to the Beatles' song playing. The Jawa, also singing along, though I have no idea where he learned the words, got a shout-out from the other cool dad (blue collar artist genre), who said to me, "Yeah, my kids listen to cool music, too. Isn't it great not to have to listen to bad kids' music?"

Before you jump on me as an elitist, let me clear one thing up: I am an elitist. Yes, I am better than everyone else. And worse. Aren't we all?

And yes, I have donned many of the costumes of the cool dad, and have beamed with pride when my passenger has noticed that my 3-year-old is singing along with the Pixies in the back seat. However, at that moment I decided that at some point there was something fundamentally wrong with having "alternative" as a stated purpose in your life as a parent.

For one, what is there to separate the "altnadad" from the boomer who slaps a tie-dye on his kid as a billboard advertisement of the distance he has traveled from the "uptight" world of his own dad? And how about the 80s lover who insists all of his boys sport rattails like his? I saw this guy in the park one day. All four of 'em with the hair hanging over their collars. I silently cursed him for making my life as a parent more difficult.

In the end, it's not a value decision, however. As I realized again while checking out Neal Pollack's next reading, the Pipqueak A-Go-Go here in San Francisco this Sunday. It's fun and dancing for kids of all ages! Some of San Francisco's "alternakid" bands will probably be there, like the Sippy Cups. But even if I did want to go -- and no, I don't, but it has nothing to do with the cloying, "I may get older buy I'll never grow up!" tone of the listing -- I don't think we're invited. It just doesn't sound like something a nine-year-old would be into.

No Dan Zanes, no Pipsqueak-A-Go-Go, no Sippy Cups.

First of all, I don't get to make those decisions anymore. That stopped right around first grade. Shortly after that, he decided the motorcycles and primary colored Keith Haring prints in no way reflected his own interests. In their place went posters for Godzilla moves and pictures of Pokemons.

Music went next. After several years of forcing my will into him, I managed to get him interested in music, but his taste, when it finally emerged, had little to do with mine, or with the taste I imagined he should have. No more popcore, no more punk. Yesterday he mused, "I'm probably the funkiest kid in school," as he sung along to Parliament while building something intense with Legos. I won't argue with that. For a little Jewish kid, he's got the funk. Not on the level of the Beasties or anything, but then again, he's only 9.

If it sounds like I'm bragging, it's because I am. Once I realized that no matter how hip I considered myself, he was going to do his own thing, I was free to just sit back and watch, and then try like mad to just keep up.

I have a pretty good grip on popular culture. I should, given that I've generally devoted my life to absorbing it instead of having some kind of rewarding career. And I'm as guilty as anyone of being hyper-aware of what is "hip" at any given time. Not so hip that I would create an entire blog devoted to my attempts to remain "hip" even after having a kid. Maybe, as the new wave of cool parents' kids get older, they, like me, may learn that it's pointless. Your kid's going to be cooler than you. He'll be listening to Cut Chemist while you're looking in the used CD bins at Amoeba for some weird country thing, your own 21st century "Essential Richard Dyer Bennett."

Maybe the truth is that you can hang on to hipness for the first few years of parenthood. After that, it runs out, rather quickly, and you find yourself firmly placed in the adult world, giving way to the one person in your life who deserves to take the lead, your kid. It's at that point that being cool and alternative is replaced by hanging on for dear life.

Still in Hawaii

2007-01-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

Nineteen years ago, following college graduation, Roger A. Hunt and I took a trip to Hawaii. It was my first time there. The first night, we sat on the balcony outside our hotel room and listened to Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead," watched the lights of Waikiki twinkle below us and imagined that we were on the cusp of beginning our lives as adults.

Two drunken weeks later, we groggily boarded a plane for home. We'd acquired huge sun tans, dove off of waterfalls, got ditched by two gorgeous, mobbed-up sisters from Las Vegas, and solemnly stood atop the final resting place of the U.S.S. Arizona, amazed that oil still leaked from the then-46-year-old hulk, spreading out onto the water's surface, leaving a little oil rainbow atop the wreckage.

Then we came home. Hunt did eventually begin his adult life, which, after several years of adult complications, plays itself out mostly from behind an oversized desk scattered with dense legal documents. I'm still working on the adult life part -- witnessed most starkly tonight when, reading the online version of the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer," I realized that a kid I once gave a "C" in Contemporary American Literature is now doing sports and general assignment reporting for one of Seattle's two major dailies while I scuffle away on the high school sports beat for the "San Francisco Examiner."

This morning, Sandra Bullock took the Jawa to school. It's something she likes to do once a week -- or perhaps "did" like to do, given the intensity of the argument they were having this morning as I drifted in and out of sleep -- and it allows me an extra day of sleeping in, something very dear to me.

Usually, on this day, I wake up around 8:30 and head out to the gym. But this morning, sometime between 7:25 and 9:00, I had a dream where someone was telling me not to bother trying to get anything done today, since all of the items on my "to-do" list are of little or no consequence. I snapped awake at 9:00 and decided to see how long I would sleep if I decided not to get out of bed until I was completely awake.

Normally, I awake at 7:00 each weekday, miserable, ill, angry, and thinking of only one thing, namely, how badly I wish I could go back to sleep.

This morning's experiment ended at 10:30. That's right, 10:30; restaurant worker wakeup time. I had gone to bed at 11:45 the night before. Even if you subtract time for the six or seven times I wake up during the course of a night, and the half-hour I was awake listening to Sandra Bullock and her Jawa argue in the morning, that's still a solid 9.5 - 10 hours of sleep.

Not that the overall total is important. What matters is that I woke up at 10:30, refreshed, reasonably happy, minus the angst that usually accompanies my mornings. I skipped my workout, but in doing so missed the part of the morning where I try to convince myself to skip my workout, counting on muscle memory to get me to the front door of 24-Hour Fitness.

And rather than drag myself through the morning's errands, I snapped to them. I was in and out of the shower in 15 minutes, out the door in 30. Errands complete in an hour, hit the library and ready to have lunch with Danger Girl at 12:30.

It's not that I'm lazy, or rather, this is not the conclusive proof that supports the theory that I am lazy. I'm just not wired to function during the same hours as normal people. I don't stay up too late anymore, but that's just because if I do I'm looking at hours and hours spent alone, haunting the night time. Also, I usually have to get up at 7:00, to get the Jawa to school.

Something happened to me during that 1987 trip to Hawaii. I think that when I returned, I remained on Hawaii time and continue to do so to this day.

It's ironic, because I'm no fan of Hawaii. When we were there in 1987, I branded it "the least hip place on earth." I have little use for days on end spent lying on the a towel, and I hate Hawaiian shirts. I'm not interested in Luaus and gigantic ferns don't impress me.

My neighbors down the street moved to Hawaii last year, after several years of deteriorating relations between us. As they prepared for the move, they put a lot of pressure on all of us to share their belief the there was no higher aspiration to hold than to move to Hawaii. I just couldn't board that train. Charley don't surf.

Regardless, I think when Roger Hunt and I went to Hawaii, I just stayed on Hawaii time, which has left me three hours behind the rest of the world (or at least, the world that exists in Pacific Time) ever since. This explains everything, even the weird hours I kept during the all-too-brief time I lived in Boston (in bed by 4, up by noon).

Now, of course, the challenge is to find a way to break the Hawaii Time Zone Hex. Is there a way I can join the rest of the world and recalibrate my inner clock to more closely resemble the Ben Franklin-esque ideal?

Or am I doomed to live my life three hours out of sync, a curse whose consequences I don't even like to think about?

Mall Right, Now!

2007-01-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, young and alone and living in a basement apartment in Seattle, I found myself homesick. Even though I was in the Northwest, which topographically could not be more different than my hometown, it was easy to find a soothing place to remind me of home. I just got into my car, drove across the 520 bridge and pulled into the acres of parking adjacent to Bellevue Square, the biggest mall in the Seattle metro area.

I've often told people that as an Orange County kid, I didn't grow up with the same kind of backdrop as normal kids. Where they had actual animals, deer and the like, we had people dressed up as Bambi. We had Disneyland instead of reality, beaches instead of cornfields. And instead of city streets, we had malls.

For awhile, probably right around the time I was living in Seattle and making up for having spent college as if it were a four-year extension of high school, I made it my business to belittle malls, to lament the "mallification of America," being very careful to point out that my generation did not invent malls, we just were left to live in them, to make do with the hand we were dealt.

I was lying, though. I never hated malls. How could I? I'm from Orange County? My dad even had a camera store in the Orange Mall for awhile, which meant that not only did the mall have to stand in for a town, it also was the place I went to see my dad at work.

I held several mall-related jobs in late adolescence: Hollywood Sports Plaza, where we stood around and tried to catch the eyes of the girls who worked at the Wet Seal across the way, my dad's store, even Sears one summer, in the shoe department, thanks to my dad's connections in the mall.

The mall was the first place we could go on our own, chaperone-less, at the precocious age of 11. Dave K. and I would grab our skateboards and terrorize the little old ladies shopping at the City, an open-air mall that would later, after several failed remodel attempts, be reborn as "The Block," a "Shoppertainment" center including movie theaters and a Vans skatepark.

No, you will no longer find me taking the easy road, trashing the malls as synthetic substitutes for "real life," because like it or not, there's plenty of real life taking place in each and every mall. If you look closely, you'll find that malls have, without any planning, begun to mimic city life. There are good malls and bad malls, high-end malls and ghetto malls. Even within each mall itself you will find high-rent and low-rent.

You'll find everything except housing, which used to be a fantasy of mine, during the period of my late 20s when I'd recovered from the tired old trick of mall-bashing and begun to look at malls for what they were: a legitimate interpretation of the urban model. Once I realized that malls were invented to ape a city street, minus the hassles of cars, weather and crime, I started to imagine a mall with a layer of housing above the stores. You could buy a mall condo with a balcony, then sit there and watch the "city scape." At night, the stores would close and you could then stare out at a quiet, peaceful city street, minus the cars and the weather.

Naturally, given its own space, the city-mall would develop as a city would. Think of it as the missing step between SimCity and real city. There would be dangerous parts of the mall, snooty parts of the mall. There would be restaurants and bars, mini-parks (with skylights, naturally), places for teenage couples to have ridiculously dramatic arguments over not showing up after football practice the way you'd promised.

All in a mall.

Today I got home from the gym at a bad time. Street cleaning prevented me from parking, so I just kept going, and eventually ended up at a mall. I wanted to buy basketball shoes, but just as all good San Franciscans know without proof that President George W. Bush eats babies, I need no proof to know that Sandra Bullock somehow got Copeland's Sports to shut their doors and vacate the premises in the time it took me to get to the mall after calling her and telling her I was thinking of getting some new shoes.

With that option gone, I went into the mall and wandered around, just like I used to do on those homesick days in rainy Seattle, circa 1988. In Macy's, I wondered if somewhere there was a place that churned out light jazz loops, slightly sophisticated yet still innocuous, to play in Macy's mens' stores across the country.

In the past, usually while holding down some kind of hateful job that required real clothing, I would drift through the mens' store slowly, looking seriously at clothes, then rubbing my fingers on the fabric as if I was testing to see if it was up to snuff. "What is this? Cotton? What weight? Where did it come from?" In this manner I supposed the store clerks would be forced to treat me with respect, a fashionista who knew his stuff.

I love the way Macy's smells, the way perfume, lotions, new clothing and linens mingle in the air. There are no windows, so there's nowhere for the smell to go. It just hangs around.

I'm not going to change my stance on malls. I know a woman who brags that she never goes to malls. If she needs anything, she goes downtown. Good for her, I guess, but I'm way too old to stake my self-esteem on where I shop. It's not as if downtown is full of one-off mom-and-pop stores. I like the city, too, otherwise I wouldn't put up with the endless hassles of living here.

But sometimes there's nothing that feels exactly like a mall. Nothing that feels as safe as a mall. It's a gigantic cocoon with clothes and DVDs and slices of pizza and packs of teenagers shuffling around, stalking each other. And it never rains. As failed 1950s Shangri-la experiments go, it's held up pretty well.

There were no basketball shoes in the Stonestown Mall today, not for me. Footlocker, which used to actually carry athletic shoes but now just carries oversized versions of the lame sports shoes I wore to my Bar Mitzvah in 1978, is worthless. No one has any cheap sunglasses. I was feeling the loss of Copeland's very deeply, and eventually ran out of time so, large pretzel in hand, I walked out to the parking lot, and drove home.

I Hate Going to the Doctor

2007-01-16T16:55:00.000-08:00

Today's the day of my checkup, the first in two years, so I can be forgiven when I wake up feeling a little bit on edge. She's going to tell me I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and lord knows what else.

This will completely rule my day. I know this because it began last night. Every time I go to the doctor I have high blood pressure because I'm freaking out since I'm at the doctor. That's one reason why I don't go very often. The other is because I haven't done my cholesterol in over a year. I keep waiting to "get back on track," totally denying the probability that this IS my track, s-curves and all.

So I go through the morning all edgy and nervous, pretty sure that this will be the time I'm told I have six months to live. I go to the gym, which functions much as last-minute cramming for a test, which is to say not at all, but at least it makes me feel a little bit better, the thinking being that, hey, I work out; how bad can I be?

That's the most sickening part about my personal brand of hypochondria: it is equal parts neurosis and denial. Yes, she is likely to tell me that I have six months to live, but she is just as likely to tell me I am doing wonderfully, and send me on my way.

This is San Francisco and our doctor works in the Castro, so I am one of a few straight male patients she sees. The first year we were here, when I had a headache, she casually asked me if I'd ever had an HIV test. I now know that she specializes in HIV cases and always asks that of everyone, but at the time, let me tell you, given how little I knew and know about that virus, that was one long week.

I know I'm going to get scolded. If I were a tough guy, I'd blow it off and go on my way. If I were a sane guy, I'd nod my head gravely and promise to be more conscientious. Being me, I try to not gravely, end up looking vaguely constipated and ask if she knows of any good kennels for my dog. She is a dog owner.

Naturally, when the assistant takes my BP, it's sky-high. So high they won't even tell me what it is. And since they're all paid to be cheerful and play it close to the vest, her expression betrays absolutely nothing about my condition. Am I going to have a stroke right here? When she put the cuff around my arm I could actually feel my blood pulsing through my body. It was pretty gross, if you want to know the truth.

See, there's not much, except maybe live, slimy fish, that grosses me out as much as imagining the innards of the human body. The idea that someone would go to school for many years just so they can wipe ear wax off of a flashlight after sticking it in my ear completely baffles me. As many who know me can attest, I would be much happier if the entire human body was full of nougat, like a Three Musketeers bar.

Mine is full of inefficient blood-moving vehicles, given to me lovingly by my mother (bad heart) and my father (high blood pressure). This is their legacy, and I have accepted it, Christ-like, to spare my sisters the pain of these two particular conditions. I have had super high cholesterol since I was 28 and weighed 165 lbs. and have had high BP since I was 34.

Don't think I'm not aware that there are big fat guys walking around with perfectly normal cholesterol and BP. Don't think I don't sneer every time my father-in-law slaps another big old steak on the grill. He has nothing to worry about. After a lifetime of smoking and eating whatever the heck he wants, his cholesterol is something like 149.

So this time the news is not all good. The BP is too high. I haven't done my cholesterol. There are the beginnings of a hernia on my right side, which absolutely ticks me off because the scolding I get involves "going to the gym and doing more core body strength workouts."

Wait a minute. You're telling me that merely going to the gym, doing cardio and working out your upper body isn't enough? Now the fat guy is absolutely beside himself with glee, as are the millions of 1950s tough guys who went out to dinner every night, ate whatever they wanted, smoked cigars and drank scotch until they passed out. Did they have a nice doctor telling them that their workouts weren't good enough, and that they needed to get a blood pressure machine so they could take a reading every day and then email it to their doctor?

Hardly, I'm thinking. I'm thinking that maybe the dames they had draped on their arms occasionally worried about them, and if they felt bad they went to the men's club and took a shpritz (sp?).

I walk out of there feeling angry and decrepit, even though my doctor said, "Seriously, you look good," as she gave me a perscription for fish oil. "Take this twice a day and you'll stay out of trouble," she said.

"I'm thinking at this point, and chance I have to get into trouble I might have to take," I respond. She frowns.

They cut me loose onto Castro Street, the one place, thankfully, where you can be an aging guy who's falling apart and still get checked out by passers-by. I'm absolutely disgusted with myself for being old, disgusted more for not really being that old and yet having the problems of an old guy. Didn't I carefully buy flared jeans so as not to be mistaken for an old guy? Don't I have an LCD Soundsystem CD in my car?

I want decadence and youth. It's 3:00 on a Tuesday, and I want to get on the next plane, go to Las Vegas, drink and gamble for the next 72 hours. After 45 minutes of ridiculously lame small talk and going out of my way not to seem neurotic to my doctor, who in the age of HMOs is probably so overworked that she's not listening to most of what I say anyway, I want to verbally abuse someone for almost hitting me with their car as I step into the crosswalk.

But darn me if I don't know my limitations. Even though my BP had dropped to a manageable 128/88 by the time I left, I am still me. What would happen if I went to Las Vegas without my Atenolol and Zocor? My pressure would skyrocket.

I scale down my decadence. Now I want malted milk balls and I want them bad. Zelda has been on me to try the peanut butter chocolate malted milk balls. If I can find them, they're mine.

Castro street would have the proper kind of food store, the kind with emaciated cashiers and plastic bins full of grain. Sure enough, I find one. All they have, though, are tiny little malted milk balls, barely worth the effort, and surely not at $10.49 a pound, a good $5 more than I have ever paid and a solid $7 a pound more than they charge at malted milk ball mecca, across the street from the Jawa's school. I may be old, I may be falling apart, but I'm no health food store's patsy. Shame on them for taking advantage of the elderly like that.

Walking back up Castro Street, I take ironic note of the store names, most of which draw on a seemingly endless source of metaphors for the male sexual organ. Do I want pizza at the Sausage Factory? A new t-shirt at Rock Hard?

Finally, drinkless, Las Vegas-less, malted milk ball-less, running completely out of steam, anger and decadence and almost at Market Street, I settle on two overpriced cookies at a place called "Hot Cookie!" that sells not only cookies but also red briefs with "Hot Cookie!" written across the font. The two cookies cost $4.60. The Castro is a ripoff.

I'm sure, as Zin Gal suggested, that it probably would have been physically better for me to down six or seven alcoholic beverages, rather than eat two cookies. The cookies are pretty good, or rather, "hot," though. The bottle of fish oil capsules cost $6.19 at a pharmacy that specializes in "difficult and complex patient needs," which is a nice way of saying that they stock protease inhibitors.

Aging before my time or not, I'm still me, and I have to go pick up the Jawa from saxOphone practice, then go home. I've got two crossword puzzles waiting for me, and I'm really going to knock the crap out of them. I'll show those crossword puzzles absolutely no mercy.

No Vacation at All

2007-01-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

Help me, please! While the rest of you -- or perhaps only those of you whom, like Sandra Bullock, work for organizations unwilling to recognize the heroic deeds of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- toil away at your jobs, quietly staring into computer screens or casually lifting a coffee cup to your lips as you consider the importance of various spreadsheets, I am here, at home, trying to manipulate a disinterested Jawa into completing a rough draft of his book report.

I have been charged to do so by my leader, S. Bullock, who at least expects me to provide absolute coverage of any and all items intercepting our lives having to do with the written word. Because I'm a writer, you know? You do know, because you are loyal, and you come here several times a week to see what I've written most recently. Even if you are my mother and are surprised and uncomfortable to learn that your only son will offer up only a mumbled reply upon being asked "how are things going," and yet will admit to the world that he has spent seconds, nay, minutes, standing at a public restroom urinal, drenched with sweat, unable to complete the simple task he came into the room to do.

The Jawa and I are several Ritalin short of having good, solid attention spans. Give him a bin of Legos, give me a stack of books I have chosen myself, and we are fine. Give us both a PC and the assignment to write a rough draft of a book report about Kate Di Camillo's "Adventures of Desperaux," and we will find anything, shiny or not, far more interesting and important than our assigned project. So far, two hours in, we are about half way done. This represents at least a solid 20 minutes of actual work, sandwiched in among some Lego time, some web-surfing, a sincere examination of a plastic Easter egg that somehow found its way onto the Jawa's new-and-improved bedroom work space, some playing with Shack, etc.

Have I mentioned that my less-than-vast reservoir of patience, while perhaps no less vast than anyone's, and probably superior to that of the always-on-the-move S. Bullock, is unfortunately doled out in very erratic and unpredictable ways? Rather than building in a predictable and therefore manageable way, my style is to calmly wade through an extended period of patience-testing activities, and then WHAM! No more patience.

Ask the Jawa. He is the frequent recipient of my inconsistent ways.

Somewhere on our agenda today is a trip to see the movie "A Night at the Museum." I just checked online (after, naturally, checking out ESPN.com, several blogs, two newspapers and some inflammatory opinions about the Middle East) and saw that it's playing downtown at 3:45 and in Daly City at 2:00. Will we, diehard city residents, brave BART and go downtown? Doubtful. We will get in our car and drive to DC, where we will be joined by every other parent stuck at home with their kid in paying $5.25 for 16 oz. of popcorn.

If and only if we can manage to get it together enough to complete our rough draft. Check that; there will be no movie. I left out the part where we not only had to complete our rought draft but we also had to get through it without:

a) the Jawa trying to sneak something really obvious by my, like continuing to build something with Legos long after I've told him to stop.

b) me delivering a quite impressive lecture on the negative aspects of lying, ignoring your parents and being disrespectful and then...

c) me, at a loss for disciplinary measures to combat what I see as an increased tendancy on the child's part to be disrespectful and inconsiderate, then throwing out my trump card: "WE WILL NOT GO SEE A MOVIE TODAY."

Who wins? Not me, that's for certain. Now, instead of looking forward to a nice entertainment experience with my Jawa, I have bought two more hours of home-based combat. Excellent strategy on my part.

How bad does that missed vacation day look now, workers of the world? Martin Luther who?

Unintelligent Design

2007-01-13T21:12:00.000-08:00

Lets just assume, for the sake of argument and the $18,000 we spend to send our jawa to school, that there is a God. And just in case there is, I capitalized His name.

Assuming that there is a divine being, and going several steps further and acting like there is truth to creation and/or intelligent design, one must assume that each and every element of human design is intentional. Nothing was left to chance.

Take, for example, the miracle that occurs when you cut your hand. With help from no outside source, the skin on your hand -- provided it is not a truly injurious gash -- eventually heals itself. If you pay attention, you can actually watch your skin heal. The process begins almost immediately and, in most cases, is completed perfectly. Good as new.

There are glitches, though, and this is where it becomes too easy to poke holes in "intelligent design." Why do I have high cholesterol, bad eyesight and a lousy throwing arm? Why does Flush Puppy get headaches? Why do some people stop eating when they're anxious, while some only eat more?

Most tellingly, why did God bestow only men with stage fright, when women would handle it with so much more grace?

Please understand what I mean by "stage fright," for this is not a universal expresssion, nor does this usage have anything to do with the theater. The "stage fright" I speak of is a benign name to place onto a truly terrifying experience, that of a boy or man who, when called upon to urinate in a public restroom, cannot get the liquid out of his body, no matter how badly it seems to want to get out.

Most women -- and many very confident and/or completely non-self-aware men -- have no idea what this means. For them, a trip to the restroom is simple: you go in, you unzip, you let 'er rip, and that's it. Girls actually go to the bathroom in pairs.

For some of us, nature's call in public can become a truly horrifying event. If it gets bad enough, we may have to plan the entire evening around the possibility that me may have to go, won't be able to go, and then will spend the balance of the night uncomfortable, thinking of nothing else but the fact that we are dying here, and must find a safe place in which to empty our bladder.

It gets better with age and the greater mind control that comes through maturity, though I've heard that the process, now physical and not mental, will soon reverse itself. Back in college, just the idea that someone might be within ten feet of the door of our dorm floor's bathroom was enough to send me in the other direction. You can forget about urinals, or enlisting in the military. I guess I would have failed at San Franciso's inner-city schools, as well, where they have removed the stall doors to prevent drug dealing. And you ask why we spend $18,000 on 4th grade.

As a young guy, even one whose guy credentials are sketchy at best, you don't want to admit that this is a problem. In a world where people routinely greet their best friends with homophobic slurs and painful blows to the shoulder, to come clean to the fact that while you may have gone into the bathroom to complete the simplest act in the world, you have emerged several minutes later unsuccessful in your attempt is to turn in your membership card in the world of emerging men.

To hide in the stall is to risk the assumption from strangers that whatever you've gone in their to do has been foul and repugnant enough to last several minutes, so that's out. And to stand at the urinal motionless, literally going through the motions but fooling no one is to invite embarassment on the level of being punched out by someone's little sister.

Ladies, you cannot imagine. You stand there, thinking of anything except the all-too-real fact that everyone has come and gone while you are still there, looking straight ahead, trying to ignore the fact that the only liquid coming out of your body is sweat when you can think of nothing else. Eventually, the urine actually seems to go backward into your body rather than coming out. Meanwhile, every other guy stands there, proudly doing his business, with no thought other than "Who's the loser with the stage fright?"

I mean, we all know what it is. And we all hope it happens to someone other than us. Having suffered from stage fright for most of my adult life, I get a certain joy from realizing that someone else is so afflicted. Since I am already hidden in the stall, I can do whatever celebratory dance I choose without worry that someone will see.

Of course, that's the worst part, of course, the reason why any architect behind something called "intelligent design" would have thought to spare the males of the species of this particular foible. For one, who has more to lose, dignity-wise, by admitting something like this? More to the point, consider something we all know: if it were women who got stage fright, the woman in question would be enveloped by her understanding, supportive friends, who'd help her work through this problem, ultimately solving it.

If women got stage fright, there would be no stage fright.

"Oh, honey, it's okay. Don't you worry about it. We're all here for you."

The best guys can manage is the completely useless, though well-intentioned, "Even if it's just ME in there with you? I mean, we've known each other since we were 12!"

"Yeah. That's actually worse."

"Dude!"

Even gay guys aren't likely to show sympathy, finding it hilarious and the springboard for a barrage of jokey insidey references that may be a stretch for straight guys' appreciation, coming as they are in a time of awkwardness and tension. Only women, to other women, would provide the comfort and empathy needed for some social anxiety-wracked, urine-filled slob to overcome this dastardly handicap.

Honestly, I have had a few friends who've ultimately understood, though normally after a period of hysterical laughter, and always because they know of what I speak. Roger A. Hunt once told me that, as a child, he would visualize the poster that hung over the toilet at home, thus mentally transporting himself to the safety and isolation of his own bathroom. Uncle Sam, for whom nothing is cause for embarassment, obeyed my instructions to "get out of here!" many times while we were in college, waiting patiently outside for his turn, which eventually came.

One time, at a crowded Lower East Side bar, my friend Dan barred the restroom door from multitudes of bargoers hip enough to believe him when he told them, in hushed tones, that there was a drug deal going down in the bathroom, and it would just take a few more minutes.

But these are special men, the kinds of men I have taken great care to select as the foundation of my social circle.

Yesterday, as I climbed away on the Precor at 24 Hour Fitness, I eavesdropped on the conversation of two women nearby. I noticed how obvious it was that their conversation would never have taken place between men. "Your hair looks great! Did you just get it cut?"

"Oh, no it's still flat. It'll get better in a few days."

"No, no, it's great. Did you lighten the color?"

They asked how their mothers, daughters, sons, husbands and dogs were, recounted some great things they had talked about last week, and then showed great enthusiasm and interest when some other guy they knew came up to say hello. All he had to do was show up. They carried the rest of the conversation, asking him all kinds of questions about his new baby, his wife and his recent move to a larger house only two blocks from his old home.

Then one of them said, "Well, when things calm down, we'd love to come see the baby!"

Him: "Yeah, whenever. Now's fine."

Them, together, laughing as they would have had he just told them it was appropriate to pin thumb tacks onto bunny rabbits' tails: "Oh, no, no, no!"

Confused: "Uh, you can call first. It's okay."

Again: "No, we'll wait until things have calmed down."

He looked at them, his face screwed up, and went back to something he could understand, the free weights.

So okay, we're different, and that's fine, and no matter how many dolls and pink t-shirts we give our sons, they may end up not noticing their wives' haircuts and never hugging their buddies and telling them they love them. With some practice, they might invent stories about drug deals to spare their friends some dignity while attempting to urinate in a packed Lower East Side bar, which is worth something, actually plenty.

But I promise you that if there were such a thing as "intelligent design," somewhere along the way they would have made it so that stage fright was a thing women fear, not men.