cocktail review no. 13 - Gibson

There are many fine lines in the world of cocktails. One of them separates this drink from the martini. First, peruse the ingredient list:

• 2½ ounces gin
• 1½ teaspoons vermouth
• 3 cocktail onions

Savvy partakers will observe little difference between this recipe and the martini's. The only difference, in fact (besides a subjective interpretation of the ratio of gin to vermouth), is the garnish. Whereas martinis are typically garnished with a green olive, a Gibson is garnished with three cocktail onions. Does that make a difference? I do believe it does. Just as the gin in a martini imparts flavor to its olive garnish, so does the olive (often marinated in vermouth or brine) impart flavor to the martini. The same is true with the Gibson. And cocktail onions (especially the Mezzetta brand, which I used) are particularly pungent, and strong in flavor. On the surface a Gibson may taste similar or identical to a martini, but trust me: it's all in the finish. Try downing three cocktail onions instead of a single green olive. I guarantee you you're in for a challenge and a treat.

recommended reading

I have completed A Long Way Gone, discussed more fully in the last installment of recommended reading. It possessed a poignant ending. As I turned the pages, Beah's personal tragedy kept mounting, until it was inconceivable that a mere teenager could take any more hardship. He was eventually forced to flee Sierra Leone, at great personal risk and high cost, after his uncle's family was...well, I won't spoil it. Suffice it to say that A Long Way Gone is a powerful book. It's powerful in a sense which no other book I've read can approach. It is heartrending on perhaps the same level as Night, by Elie Wiesel. It portrays the absolute worst of what human beings can do to one another, and even to themselves. It is both sickening and saddening...yet not without hope. I'm more than half done with The World Turned Upside Down, that splendid science-fiction anthology, and have only two stories left to read in The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. And make no mistake: the tales are bloodcurdling. I have encountered few writers who make my skin crawl in abject terror. Even Stephen King, whom I admire immensely, merely makes the bile rise to my throat, and has perhaps caused me a few nightmares. H.P. Lovecraft evinces an overwhelming, universal sense of horror that leaves a sensitive reader wide-eyed, pale and sweaty. Though I have been rendered wide-eyed and pale, I have yet to break out in a cold sweat. Then again, I still have two of Lovecraft's most seminal stories to read: The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Shadow Out of Time. I'm a grown man and Lovecraft's shorter tales like The Haunter of the Dark, The Dunwich Horror and The Thing on the Doorstep made me turn on all the lights and go jumping at shadows. I can only imagine what these last, lengthy stories will do to my fertile imagination. Lovecraft is one of the best writers I've ever read, for one simple reason: he knew what he was doing. He had each story's plot in mind the whole time he was writing it, and he knew where to lead the action to reach the terrifying climax. Along the way, he masterfully built suspense and dropped tantalizingly ominous hints relevant to the insidious denouement. He was also a literate and intelligent writer, whose prose is elegant and erudite, and whose vocabulary makes me run to the dictionary or encyclopedia every two or three pages. Furthermore, his imagination was limitless. He envisioned an inherently unknown, nefarious, multidimensional multiverse filled with monstrous evil. Anyone who solved the mysteries of this universe would go mad with horror. Spawned trillions of years ago, gigantic half-ethereal creatures from the outer dark, who once held sordid sway over the Earth and the galaxy, slumber uneasily in the depths of our oceans or behind our nearest stars, waiting to wake and extend their fibrous grasp once again. Innumerable volumes of profane arcana and obscene ritual, like the Necronomicon and the Pnakotic Manuscripts, passed down through millennia by these evil gods and their inhuman minions, lie forgotten in ancient tombs or dusty towers, holding their sickening alien secrets for some innocent eye. Disgusting, bestial ceremonies and barbarous sacrifices are carried out in forgotten catacombs and dusky swamps, breathing life into these ancient monsters, keeping their potent legends alive. Phalanxes of horrific things lurk in the dark and pounce upon unsuspecting (or willing) humans. Though he may have been a tad racist, H.P. Lovecraft was a talented horror writer who knew his trade and his stock-in-trade. I highly recommend him. As an aside, I'd like to reiterate that the more I read William Zinsser's On Writing Well and reread The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, the more humbled I become. There are things in the latter that I have unforgivably forgotten and things in the former that I have never suspected. More fool me. I started in yesterday on The Book of Five Rings (as written in Japanese at left). Purportedly, it is a discussion of martial arts, particularly kenjutsu, or swordsmanship. It is written by one of the foremost masters of the art, one of Japan's most famous (or infamous) swordsmen, Miyamoto Musashi. I've read the first two pages and already my mind's been changed about both Musashi himself and Japanese martial arts. From what I understand, Musashi, who died in the seventeenth century, was a renowned swordsman and martial arts instructor. He never lost any of the dozens of duels he fought, even though he fought some of them with a wooden sword. He was supposedly a master of the two-sword style, with both a full-length sword and a short sword (or wakizashi). His legacy is less than flattering. It is rumored that he never shaved, never bathed, never combed his hair, and had a disfiguring skin condition. No matter. Musashi didn't care about any of that. Whereas some are merely practitioners of the martial arts, Musashi was a true martial artist. He practiced both physical and mental control in combat, and strove for perfection in every aspect of his life. That included something as simple as calligraphy (which is why I included the above image of Japanese kanji, instead of, say, an image of the book cover or a painting of Musashi). His legend—and his track record—impressed me so much that I decided to use him as one of the protagonists in my novel. There was a hitch, however. I knew nothing more about the man than what I've told you. Ultimately I decided to buy his book, his magnum opus on swordsmanship that many have touted as a road map to personal success in life. From the first pages Musashi defines martial arts, not as a simplistic mindset such as "being prepared to die," but as a way to serve your master, serve yourself, and establish social standing. That took me completely by surprise. I'd always thought of martial arts as a skill demanded only in war, or perhaps in recreation. Now this scruffy, centuries-dead ronin comes along and tells me it can be used to ascend the social ladder? I can only wonder what else lies in store for me. The volume is divided into five sections: the Earth Scroll, the Water Scroll, the Fire Scroll, the Wind Scroll, and the Emptiness Scroll. Each encapsulates different aspects of Musashi's swordsmanship technique and philosophy, except for the last scroll, which discusses other schools. Furthermore, the book's chapters have positively titillating titles, such as "The Way of the Long Sword," "Stabbing the Face," "A Stand against Many Opponents," "Moving Shadows," "Knocking the Heart Out," and "Being Like a Rock Wall." Oh, goody, he said, rubbing his hands. I'll keep you posted. There remains only tell you that I've placed yet another order to Amazon.com, despite my recent dismissal from my job and my slowly dwindling accounts. This particular order was made possible by a generous birthday gift from my grandparents, I'll have you know. Among other things (like the excellent war movie Battleground and a few more volumes of One Piece), I'm expecting Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok, by renowned Western writer Richard Matheson. I'm trying to catch up on the classics with Little Women, and Memoirs can only help me get a better idea of Hickok, the other protagonist in my novel. Though a work of fiction, the book eschews the fanciful, heroic light in which the ne'er-do-well lawman is cast, and focuses instead on the rawness and ignominy of his life, as re-imagined by Matheson. It's told from a first-person perspective, as is The Book of Five Rings. Who knows what kind of insight I'll gain? It can't hurt to read it. Like I always say, I'll read anything if I think I can learn from it. Except perhaps for the Necronomicon, written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, detailing the hideous secrets of the dark cult of Cthulhu and a great many other things too awful to mention. That might not be healthy at all. It might even frighten me to death.

on the subject of hamstrings

Forget los cajones. The hamstrings should ascend to primacy as far as debilitating-when-injured body parts are concerned. Take out the hamstrings and you impair the function of the entire apparatus. I think most of us are familiar with the memorable scene in the movie Spartacus where Kirk Douglas "hamstrings" a Roman slave driver: biting him on the ankle, cutting through his hamstring and laming him for life. Well, there are other and far more painful ways of gimping yourself up, let me tell you. I have had a rather hostile relationship with my hamstrings for most of my life. I respect the fact that they let me cavort, prance, and mosey about, but as of this writing it seems that they're a lot more trouble than they're worth. I first ran afoul of them when I began to play soccer as a kid—after the first practice session of the season, after the 10-minute stretch routines we did before practice started, my hamstrings would protest mightily. Even today, I am forced to touch my toes a few times every morning to loosen the buggers up, or they'll torque my back the wrong way and my old sledding injury will flare up. My latest adverse encounter with my hamstrings wasn't caused by anything so grandiose as being attacked by a ruggedly handsome, sandy-haired quarry slave, nor even the noble sport of soccer. Nope, not at all. It was the jumping jacks that did it. Yes, the jumping jacks. I did three sets of 100 jumping jacks at around 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, shortly before I went to bed. Why was I doing jumping jacks at 9:00 p.m.? My metabolism, that's why. I have the metabolism of a nonagenarian tortoise. A few push-ups or pull-downs every day and a nice constitutional before dinner is about as strenuous as my exercise routine gets. But I had heard somewhere that working out before bed is a good thing. It heightens your metabolism just before your body shuts down for the night, meaning that you burn off some extra calories while you sleep, or something. What I hadn't been told was that working out before bed is nefariously bad for a good night's sleep. I had the most immaculately horrible night's sleep on Sunday of any night since I had the stomach flu. It seemed like every hour I was awake, tossing and turning. Add in that dry Mojave air which sucks moisture out of my mucus membranes faster than a vampire on a date, and I might as well have stayed up listening to conspiracy talk radio for all the rest I was getting. To add insult to injury (literally), I was sore the next morning. And I mean full body sore: my arms stung from flinging themselves over my head 300 times, my diaphragm ached from yanking my arms and legs into that ridiculous star shape, and my hamstrings...well, if anybody's invented a way to turn the Holocaust into a salve, they must have rubbed it on my legs that night. It's only gotten worse today. I had to get up at 7:00 to help my father return the big U-Haul truck, and then drive him to work. Upon returning home, I half-fell out of the Jeep and stumped to the front door like a—like a—my gait beggars description. Like a stork in splints. Sort of a ridiculous, stiff-legged waddle. Anything to avoid flexing my ankles and thereby setting my strained tendons on fire. As if a rough night and impaired locomotion weren't enough, today my mother and I are going to be shifting all the furniture that she and Dad moved home from Wyoming into its proper place. This includes things like desks, heavy dressers, and even a huge sheet of plate steel that Dad salvaged from Uncle Joe's house. That ought to work wonders for the ol' hamstrings, yes sirree. It took me by surprise, I must say (as Marvin Gaye sang). I've done thousands of jumping jacks in my 23.011 years. I don't lead the healthiest of lifestyles; in fact, I like to eat and drink until I pass out. But even so, sometimes I feel like I'm at war with my body. Darn thing's always giving me a pain here, or an ache there, or stiffening up on me like a frozen fish. I guess that's what it means to be out of shape. I'll grant you that I'm ten pounds overweight and haven't done a significant number of jumping jacks in something like five years, but come on. I'm not that out of shape. I don't deserve to be waddling about like an arthritic jaçana. Particularly not when I'll have to bend over soon and pick up a wad of plate steel.

the quarter-life crisis

Let me just say, here and now, that I did not come up with that sardonic title by myself. It's actually a phrase coined by a friend of mine, David, whose plight is somewhat similar to mine. (He didn't get dismissed from his last job, though, I'm pretty sure.) Well then! Nothing's written in stone yet, but I have a good idea about what I'm going to do now that I find myself, a 23-year-old unemployed college graduate living in my parents' house, unemployed and living in my parents' house. My friends have been wonderfully supportive, my parents and grandparents have given me some good advice, and I'm feeling largely at peace with what's happened. My pride still stings a little, but as soon as Mom bakes some cookies I'll get over that in a hurry. As you'll recall, it says "aviation" up at the top of this page. Thus far, there hasn't been much in this blog concerning aviation, except me prattling on about my flight-related ambitions. This is because you have caught me in the interim. I completed ground school in the spring of 2008, shortly before I went off to Korea. Between then and the time I departed for the Orient, I took flying lessons at Cheyenne Regional Airport in Wyoming, and racked up about twelve flight-hours. I started this blog up in March of 2009, and only just returned to the United States in July. I haven't resumed my flight training yet because, well, I've been working part-time and trying to save money, and since lessons cost roughly $200 a pop... Excuses, excuses, I know. If you're a veteran pilot or a halfway serious student you're probably castigating me as unenthusiastic or cowardly. But it isn't true. It's been heartbreaking for me to be stuck on the ground so long, believe me. But I felt I had to accumulate some savings before I embarked upon my grand quest to become a commercially-licensed pilot with multi-engine, complex, high-performance and seaplane ratings. That takes some doing, you know. And some serious cabbage. Getting dismissed from newspaper has changed all that. I'm now free to move around and do things again. And I've decided, borrowing my mother's wisdom and my grandfather's counsel, to start moving toward my dreams in a more definite manner. What I really mean is, I'm going to not work at all and start flying a lot instead. Good plan, eh? Yes, you read that correctly. I'm going to start hammering away full-time at getting my piloting qualifications. The nice thing about this flight school here in town at the Apple Valley Airport (Apple Valley Aviation, it's called) is that they do both multi-engine ratings and commercial licensing. That's half of my airborne ambitions right there. If I can get that taken care of, then wherever I go from here I'll have the qualifications to work for pretty much any small regional cargo airline there is. Sure, I'll be green. I won't have a lot of flight-hours racked up. But I'll have the basic credentials, and that'll be something. But wait! There's more. There is another prong to my chase-down-dreams plan. As you might have guessed from my cocktail reviews and my ardor for all things boozy, I am something of a liquor enthusiast. I'm an amateur bartender, a newly-minted professor of mixology if you will. I mix cocktails for my parents most every night, and I ran a cocktail bar out of my apartment in Korea for some months. I've always wanted to try my hand at being a bartender. There's something so romantically human in it: me, behind the bar, in a dimly-lit room, shiny bottles arrayed behind me as I methodically polish a glass, two or three regulars sitting on bar stools, getting smashed, getting a load off their chests, the pungent aroma of spirits (alcoholic and human alike) in the air. I've been told I'd be good at it. Not to brag or anything, but people do come to me with their problems. I'm not much good at comforting them, but I like to think I give them some perspective. Sometimes that's all it takes. And anyway, as long as things didn't get too hectic, I think it would be the neatest thing to mix drinks and pull pints for people all day. Great potential for philosophical debate, that's for certain. I don't want to have a hoidy-toidy, hippy-dippy bar, you understand; I really want to work in (or own) a pub. Quiet place, not too big, kind of old-fashioned, lots of dark wood...a cozy, comforting, intimate venue. But to do that, I need a liquor handler's license. And if I'm going to go to the trouble of getting that, I could do worse than go the whole hog and just go to bartender's school. There are some good ones pretty close to me, down the hill in Riverside and San Bernardino. I'd get some practical training, I'd get an insight into the most popular drink recipes, I'd learn to navigate behind the bar, and most importantly, I'd get certified. That means I should be able to get work at any respectable bar, anywhere. Wherever I go from here, then, I'll have those two notches on my belt. Not only do I have my journalism degree and a little experience along with it, but I'll have my commercial pilot's license and a bartender's certificate. Think of it as an epistemological hat trick. If I go to Australia, I don't have to depend on finding writing jobs, which could be really scarce. I could work in any of the myriad bars in Sydney or Perth or Adelaide. Heck, I might even find a job as a bush pilot in the outback. (Gee, wouldn't that be swell? It makes me tingly just thinking about it.) The same would be true if I went to Anchorage: I'd have two trump cards up my sleeve, two fun ways to make a living in a new place. It seems like a good idea to me. It's a bit embarrassing to be acquiring this dual education while under my parents' roof, but they're kind and generous, and living here is drastically inexpensive. Here is the best place to base my educational expeditions with fully reserved capital. So, to that end, I shall pursue knowledge relating to two of my favorite things: booze and airplanes. And in so doing I shall finally fulfill the promise of this blog, that aviation should be one of the topics discussed within it. Further bulletins as events warrant.

random travel destinations - Argentina

Take a close look at this photograph. Would you have said, before you read the title of this post, that it was taken somewhere in South America? No? Well, I wouldn't have either. This is Lago Desiento (which I believe means "Desert Lake" in Spanish), in Argentinian Patagonia. Here I reveal my slight prejudice in the selection of these travel destinations. I have always wanted to travel to Patagonia...a huge, trackless swathe of wilderness and stark civilization in the New World, thought for centuries to be the ends of the Earth (and in some cases, it's literally the truth). There are so many biomes and so much biodiversity in this region that it boggles the imagination, not to mention the culture and (as you can tell from this picture) the sheer geography that's indelibly present. It's well worth your time to research...or just drool over imagery.

XXIII

September 25 was my 23rd birthday. Seeing as how I am back in Apple Valley, where I once lived for seven years and attended high school (among other things), I was in a unique position. Many of my old high school chums were back in town, either living with their parents, too, or working, or attending Victor Valley College. Not only that, but September 25 fell on a Friday. Not only that, but my parents would also be out of town that weekend, in Wyoming, signing over the Cheyenne house to the buyers. So, naturally, I decided to throw a party. I put the word out on Facebook, a dozen people signed up to come, and before you knew it the 25th had rolled around. And it was a fun party. No, more fun than that... Okay, now we're getting there... Perfect. I'd been dismissed on Thursday (see a small dose of the real world). Nevertheless I had set my teeth and created a master to-do list that evening, including the comestibles I needed to buy, the cleaning I had to do, the unrelated errands I had to run, and so forth. Let's take a look at the liquor-and-snack page: BOOZE

1. One liter gold tequila
2. Two 750-ml bottles of sparkling wine
3. Four 750-ml bottles of Sauternes
4. Two 24-packs of beer

COMESTIBLES

1. One bottle of lemon juice
2. Two or three 12-packs of soda
3. Three bottles of assorted fruit juice
4. Several different bags of chips
5. Several bags of Chex mix
6. Some jars of peanuts
7. One honeydew melon
8. Broccoli florets
9. Carrot sticks
10. Cherry tomatoes
11. Celery
12. Ranch dip [I meant to write "dressing"]
13. Tortillas
14. Microwaveable chicken fingers or cheese sticks
15. Pizza Rolls
16. Three cans of dog food
17. One block of ice
18. Paper cups

Impressive, isn't it? Just to clear the air, the dog food was, indeed, for the dogs. We were running low, so I thought I'd just grab some while I was out. With the exception of the beer, all the of the booze (and the honeydew melon) was intended for the punch I was going to make: Frank Davis punch, as borrowed from The Bartender's Bible. And so I sallied forth boldly on Friday morning, shaking off whatever self-esteem issues were still lingering about after Thursday's events, to buy up these materials. It took two and a half hours. True, I had to stop and buy some hoses for my car (see how to register a car in Southern California), but that was still the longest food-shopping trip I've been on in a while. I managed to procure all the ingredients at WinCo except for the block of ice. I was originally going to buy a head of broccoli and make the florets myself, but I saw an inexpensive bag of pre-cut ones already on the shelf in the produce section. I had to double back once because I forgot the honeydew melon, but apart from that my progress through the store was chronological and orderly. I shouldn't have gotten paper cups (or plates, or napkins) because we'd just had a rather large get-together at our house (see Swedish farriers and so on) and there was a stockpile of artificial dinnerware heaped in our pantry already. WinCo didn't have Sauternes in the strictest sense of the word, so I substituted white zinfandel instead. The beer was a monstrous success. I got three twelve-packs of Widmer's Drifter Pale Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale, and St. Pauli Girl, respectively. I couldn't find a block of ice to save my soul, not even at Rite-Aid. Oh well. For better of for worse, I acquired the ingredients, completed my errands, and got home without losing anything (either my groceries or my marbles). Then came the cleaning. I managed to avoid tying a handkerchief around my head, but it was a close thing. I vacuumed the whole house, hard floors and everything; swept the front and back porches, and the garage; cleaned the bathroom (yuck); spot-mopped things like the kitchen counter and the bathroom scale; cleared all the zombies out of the attic (just joking); and picked up all the dog poop in the backyard. Then I sat myself down and waited. I decided I wasn't going to set out a whole bunch of snacks before the party began; I wasn't expecting an enormous influx of guests right off the bat. Whoever came first would come first and then I'd start preparing munchies (and punch...uh, punchies). I turned on the Yankees/Red Sox game and settled in for the guests to arrive. About 5:00 I got a call from Chris, class of '06 (two behind me); I'd asked him an hour earlier to bring me a bag of ice. He called up and said he had, so would it be okay if he could come out an hour early? I said fine, I was just sitting around. A ridiculously short time later, Chris pulled up. (He has a tomato-red 2004 Ford Mustang, and drives it as such; he told me he was doing 40 mph up the dirt roads to my house.) We secured the ice in the freezer, poured some into the cooler to chill the faux-Sauternes and the bubbly, and then Chris suddenly gave me my presents. And what presents! I'd dropped a little hint on Facebook earlier in the week, suggesting that I was low on particular varieties of liquor. Little did I guess how zealously my guests would take it to heart. Chris had brought me not one, but two bottles: Stolichnaya and some 15-year-old Glenfiddich. Real Russian vodka and some single-malt Scotch which I'd always wanted to sample. Needless to say, I grabbed his head and gave the man a big ol' kiss right on the forehead. And then I went ahead and made us both some kamikazes. Two ounces of Stolichnaya and a little sweetened lime juice, drunk in one go. It was tricky (Stolichnaya's got a little bite to it) but fun. Then I poured Chris a beer and we chatted for a while. I set out the grapes, some chips, and some Chex mix. Before long, Crystal called in and said she was on her way, and which road should she turn down again? I filled her in, and she showed up quickly. From her small white car, she unloaded her baby son, Andrew; a backpack filled with toys and diapers; some oranges that had been injected with tequila; and half a bottle of Jose Cuervo Black Medallion. This was going to be good. Andrew was a marvelous little chap, and was so throughout the whole party. Our rambunctious talk didn't faze him. He didn't cry, he just looked around at us all with an adorable, bemused expression on his face. Crystal kept a close and loving eye on him, and didn't drink hardly a drop. (All of our designated drivers, Crystal, John and Amanda, did splendid work and demonstrated exemplary restraint: all were stone-sober when they arrived, stone-sober while they partied, and stone-sober when they left.) Little Andrew conked out about midnight and slept right through our Apples to Apples game, except when I was stupid and loud. The tequila-laced oranges were good; I couldn't really taste the booze in them but there might have been a hint of it lurking just underneath the citrus flavor. I haven't sampled the Jose Cuervo yet. That comes tomorrow. After Crystal arrived, I set out some peanuts and some watermelon. I was working off the theory of graduated snack increase. Crystal, Chris and I stood around and chatted for another hour and half until about 7:20, when the rest of the party began to trickle in. John and Basel were first, and after I greeted them at the door, beer in hand, they unloaded their generosity upon me: bottles of Grey Goose vodka and Speyburn 10-year-old Scotch, plus a couple of cigars, Cohiba and Ashton respectively. The words "yippee" and "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat YEEHAW" were running through my head at this point. John and Basel got settled in, and I washed the veggies, sliced some celery and set out the vegetable platter (with ranch dip). I also toasted up some Pizza Rolls. The five of us stood around and gabbed about things like deadly weaponry, the state of our alma mater, and politics while we drank beer. It was about this point that I switched off the baseball game (which had since ended, and turned into Spider-man) and put on the music, a nice little selection ranging from AC/DC to James Brown. People seemed to enjoy it. And then the girls arrived. Beth, Amanda and Virginia pulled up to the front of the house. It was dark by this time, so as soon as John and Basel spotted headlights on the road they leaped out of the front door and into the shadowy recesses of the shrubs. Crystal edged left, out of the harsh yellow glare thrown by the porch light. Chris and I were left to stand on the stoop, already half-drunk, and wonder innocently where the rest of the guests had got to, speculating loudly on the identities of the three girls who had just arrived. Amanda, Beth and Virginia were escorted inside, Basel and John and Crystal monitoring their every move like hungry tigers, and then the party really began. We made the punch (a messy process indeed, especially without a melon baller), I mixed up cocktails for everybody, refilled the Pizza Roll dish almost constantly, and kept up what intelligible conversation I could under the hectic circumstances. Virginia presented me with a giant two-liter bottle of Smirnoff, while Beth and Amanda had chipped in for some Admiral Nelson's Spiced Rum and Wild Turkey, respectively. That's not to mention the wonderfully thoughtful cards that they got me, which lent to my heart that abnormally pleasant fuzzy feeling. Jeez, could this birthday possibly get any better? It did. Once we'd all had a few drinks of the punch (and some cocktails: screwdriver, Mozart, tiger juice, etc.), we sat down to play Apples to Apples. For those poor suckers out there in the audience who don't know what that is, here's the skinny. There are several varieties, but the one played most often goes like this: you put a "green apple card" down in the middle of the table (floor, car hood, stripper's stomach, as the case may be). Each player is dealt seven "red apple cards." Each of the green cards has an adjective on it. It could be anything: cute, dangerous, frustrating, pretty, fuzzy, morbid, exemplary, extraordinary...while each of the red cards has a noun or a noun phrase on it. Rolling the car, elephants, Liberace, guns, hippies, the 1970s, Richard M. Nixon, Indiana Jones, all of those and more. Each player puts down the red card (face-down) that they think matches the green card best. Say, if the green card was "adventurous" then a player might put down "Indiana Jones." Another player might put down "the 1960s," and so on. The dealer judges these cards, saying them aloud and laying them down on the table for extra hilarity. (For even more hilarity, players can put down the card they think least approximates the meaning of the adjective; i.e. the proper noun "Richard M. Nixon" being matched with the adjective "trustworthy.") Whoever put down the red card which the dealer selects as the best match gets to keep the matching green card, and scores a point. First person to a certain number of points wins. Man, this game is always fun, and always hilarious. Seeing the words people put down to match up with certain adjectives (particularly when they don't have a very good hand) is a gut-busting experience. And so we played until late into the night, Andrew curled up on the couch, all of us sitting around the coffee table (in the armchairs I had huffed and puffed to get out of the back bedrooms into the living room), laughing and joking and insulting one another, occasionally getting up to go to the bathroom or make another cocktail. All too soon, at about 1:30, John, Basel, Amanda, Beth and Virginia headed home, either because they had work in the morning or had to get back down the hill. I thanked them again profusely and saw them out, mentally praying that the horrendously bumpy dirt roads wouldn't defeat them on their way out. Chris, Crystal and I lingered a little longer, but soon Crystal was packing up the baby things and departing with much cheer (not before she masterfully and selflessly cleaned up the kitchen and front room; I hardly had to do anything the next morning). Chris and I were rather soused, so I insisted Chris stay the night and prepared a bed for him. We both fell asleep almost immediately and snored until about 9 a.m. the next morning. We rolled out of bed, popped a couple of ibuprofen, drank some fruit juice, and ate some fried eggs and ham. Then Chris climbed into his hot rod and headed off into the hot morning sunshine. And the party was over. (Only in a nice way, not like in The Shining.) Echoing George Harrison, I would just like to say "Thanks for the pepperoni": pepperoni here meaning booze, thoughtful birthday cards, booze, cigars, booze, good times, booze, kind words, booze, and more booze. Thanks, guys. You made my century.

a small dose of the real world

Boy, have I ever got things to tell you. First, I no longer have a job. I was dismissed. You remember some of the stuff I've written about before in untoward happenstance and William Zinsser, eat your heart out? Well, it's caught up to me at last. My incompetence has finally devolved upon me instead of innocent people. Here's how it happened. The straw that broke the camel's back fell on Wednesday. I made an error, yet another one in a long string. I got the date wrong on an obituary again. I'm not sure how. The obit was submitted without a date, and I suppose I must've called and asked the mortuary for one, and then put it down wrong, somehow. (Sometimes I don't know where my mind goes. I thought I was past doing stupid mental fumbles like that.) More shameful still, the date was blatantly wrong: the date the obituary was submitted was September 23, and I put down the date of service as September 20. Temporally impossible, you see. Anyway, it got past the editors (I don't blame them at all; I was the one who wrote it wrong in the first place) and the customer who'd placed the obituary noticed it. They called me on Wednesday, and wanted to rerun it. Of course, my employer's policy is to rerun an ad for free if there's an error. But before we could rerun for free, I had to go tell Ron. He told me to rerun it, but he also said he was disappointed in how many mistakes I was making. He called me into his office later and gave it to me straight: because I was making so many mistakes, because I'd made it clear that I was not yet ready to be a reporter at that newspaper, I was now out of the running for the full-blown reporter's position which I'd originally applied for. (I'd had no idea that I was still in the running for it, but that didn't make what he said any easier to hear.) He said he liked me, but it was apparent to him that I wasn't yet ready. I thanked him for telling me, and asked where we'd go from here. He said I'd continue working in the capacity of editorial assistant, filing obituaries and letters to the editor, and then (after I'd said that I understood and thanked him for informing me) I left the office. This was a far cry from being fired, but it felt about as bad. I don't know about you, but when I get criticized, no matter how just or gentle the criticism, I feel horrible. Hearing Ron's voice as he told me how disappointed he was, seeing that disappointment in his face and frustration in his eyes, I suddenly felt as if a balloon filled with ice water had exploded in my chest. It was a struggle to keep up eye contact. I'd made this mistake before, and lots of different ones besides. Ron didn't want apologies, he wanted corrected behavior. And I was letting him down. He'd given me this position out of the goodness of his heart and I was letting him down. That's why my veins suddenly froze and my knees nearly failed me. It wasn't because I was being criticized. I was ashamed of myself for disappointing him. I was mortified, but also a wee bit grateful. He had told me why I was out of the running. Furthermore, he was very gentle. He had criticized me very gently. Not that I'm weak or insecure or anything, but I probably would have died of shame if he'd been nasty about it. So the obituary was rerun the next day, Thursday. Thursday was an ordinary day, although I was extra-judicious in making sure that the dates on that day's obituaries were correct. At about 5:00, Ron came by my desk and told me to drop by his office on my way out. I didn't think anything of it. I thought he might ask me to come in on Friday, or Monday. I came into his office at 5:30 and sat down unbidden on the soft leather couch in front of his desk. And Ron told me it was my last day working at that newspaper. I was half-stunned. I couldn't pretend that I hadn't seen (or sensed) it coming. I was actually surprised that I hadn't been fired the day before. But it had only been postponed for a day. As I sat there with my nerves slowly bleaching, Ron gave me the story. He reiterated that he was disappointed in the mistakes I'd made, even with something so simple and innocuous as obituary writing. There were some things I should know by now, he said. I still had much learning left to do and some things about news writing that I needed to work on, and until that time, my employment with the newspaper had, as he put it, "run its course." He was not speaking to me in the usual way he spoke to me (and the other reporters). He normally spoke quickly, quietly, almost harshly: disjointed, rapid-fire admonitions, recommendations, and suggestions, with a good scattering of colloquialisms and idioms sprinkled in. I had overheard him talking to Patrick (another reporter) earlier that day, exhorting him to either finish the story he was working on or, failing that, find something else to do. "We've got to get on this thing. We've got to pull our fat out of the fire. When you fumble the football, you've got to pick it back up fast." On Thursday, as he had Wednesday when he told me I was out of the running for a reporter's position, he adopted a new tone: slow, cohesive, gentle. He was very nice about the whole thing. He could've lambasted my incompetence and told me to get the hell out of his sight. He had every right to. But he didn't. He made it clear that he was letting me go, and he told me the reason civilly, reasonably and straightforwardly. He didn't yell, he didn't kvetch, and he didn't say "You're fired." Despite my shame, despite the acute deadness that was spreading everywhere throughout my body as I heard this, despite how angry I was at myself, it didn't feel like I was being fired. What's more, everything he told me about my performance was true; I could see that immediately. A child should be able to do obituaries correctly, and call for verification when needed, and make sure that all dates and addresses are true and correct before publishing them. But I couldn't. Or wouldn't. So I was being dismissed. Ron signed what was now my final time sheet. I thanked him again for informing me and giving me this opportunity, then turned around and walked out of the office. I felt like I was moving through the cloying, dense air of a dream as I walked back to my desk. I strode mechanically through the newsroom, past reporters whom I'd come to know by name and personality. It was strange to me suddenly. I was an outsider again. Though I hadn't liked the job, it was still a sudden and saddening thing to be leaving. Not to mention shameful. Didn't even make it a whole month, I thought. That phrase kept pounding through my head as I cleaned out my desk and collected my lunchbox, AP style guide, and a few papers that I wanted to keep. (Ron's hand-typed list of journalism basics was one of them.) My guts were curdling. My heart felt like it was shriveling up. My hands and feet and head felt like they were miles away from my body. I couldn't believe it. I'd screwed the pooch. I'd been dismissed from a job. And it was entirely my fault. And then, desk was bare. The wall next to it was clean of notes and reminders. Old press releases and business cards were stacked neatly on the old desk behind. My possessions were in my hands. It was time to leave. Unable to walk out without saying a sort of goodbye, I wrote Thanks again on a scrap of notepaper and left it lying on top of the stacked documents. I stopped by Ron's office once more to shake his hand, say thanks, and apologize. He told me if I ever needed help or a recommendation then he'd supply it. That was too much for me. I left the office with one last over-the-shoulder "Sorry." I walked out without saying a word to anyone. I couldn't bring myself to speak to them. I was just too ashamed. For the rest of that day I really sympathized with whoever invented hara-kiri. I had to call up the staffing service that had placed me with the newspaper and let them know I'd been dismissed. I didn't sugarcoat it, but I didn't beg for sympathy by saying I'd been fired, either. They let me know that they'd process my final paycheck and send it along...and then they said "Good luck." Yeah. Right. I knew I had to keep myself busy or I'd start thinking. Thinking about how big a failure I was. Thinking about how many people I'd inconvenienced. Thinking about what a piss-poor a writer I'd always been. Thinking about how much of a loser I must be for not holding down a job (a temp position, for Pete's sake). Thinking of a lot of other condemning, gut-churning, excoriating, reproachful things. I did pretty well. I kept reading The World Turned Upside Down, watched a couple of movies, and planned out all the errands and cleaning I needed to do on Friday to prepare for my birthday party (more about that later). My mood improved as the evening wore on. Yeah, okay, so I'd been fired...dismissed, anyway. It was my own fault, yes. But it wasn't the end of the universe. I could get another job, somewhere. I was now free to go to Australia, what's more. I'd been given a warning, that was all. This was a small dose of the real world. I'd been given an opportunity, blown it, and had reaped the consequences. At the very least, I should take a lesson from this and do better next time. I wasn't an idiot, just a very, very slow learner. By the end of the evening I was getting excited about the party (which I shall inform you about later), and had largely shaken off the shame, depression, malaise and self-loathing that had been gnawing at me. Then I went to bed, and shut off the light. And thought.

cocktail review no. 12 - Entwistle's Error

I've got no idea who Entwistle was, or what error he might have committed...but it certainly wasn't this drink. Haw haw haw, wasn't that scintillating? Okay, roll the ingredient list.

• 2 ounces dark rum
• ½ ounce lemon juice
• 4 ounces tonic water

Pour all of the ingredients into a highball glass almost filled with ice cubes. Stir well. Can't get much better than that, can it? Rum, lemon juice and tonic water. Dad was right, highballs are best. No more than three ingredients needed or wanted. And these ingredients combine splendiferously. This is reminiscent of other lemony, tonic-laced drinks like the Tom Collins, but with the rum, this comes out sweeter and tastier than they do. I'd say this one is definitely in my top five. Yes, it's that good.

Yojimbo

There's a movie I need you to watch.

It's called Yojimbo (translation: Bodyguard). It came out in 1961 and was directed by Akira Kurosawa (the same guy who did The Seven Samurai). Okay, yes, it's a black-and-white film, and yes, it has subtitles. If those things turn you off, this isn't a movie for you.

But before you click away, I have words for you: Clint Eastwood as a samurai.

Did that get your attention? This movie was the inspiration for A Fistful of Dollars. 

Maybe you don't like black-and-white films. Maybe you hate reading subtitles. Maybe you're just not sure about foreign films. But this one will blow all your preconceived notions out of the water. It neither looks nor feels like a slow, plodding, drably acted, melodramatic noir film (which is immediately what jumps to my mind whenever I think "black-and-white movie"). This movie hooks you in, from the very first shot of the back of Toshirō Mifune's grizzled head staring out over the majestic snow-capped mountains of post-feudal Japan.

This is an excellent film, plain and simple. And I don't say that about every film, you know. It's a well-established fact that my movie collection includes some genuine stinkers, all heavy on CG and light on cinematography: Van Helsing, the X-Men trilogy, Spider-man 3, Peter Jackson's King Kong, and others (though thankfully nothing so mindless as Beerfest). I own some films that are a complete waste of a time, without plot, fully-rounded characters, intelligent dialogue, good special effects, evocative soundtracks, or any other redeeming feature. But I do pride myself on having the brains to know that they stink. 

Simply put, I know a good movie when I see one (it doesn't happen often). This one blew me away. For cinematography, dialogue, plot, and sheer acting ability, not to mention an ominous score and a premise that's simultaneously timeless, deathless, and endlessly captivating, Yojimbo is unmatched.

The plot: a lone, freelance samurai (a ronin), played by the inimitable Toshirō Mifune, finds his way to a town terrorized by two criminal gangs in late 19th-century Japan, and immediately hires himself out to both sides as a yojimbo, or bodyguard...a hired thug, basically. Armed with nothing more than his wits and an extremely sharp sword, and through a series of brilliant schemes, subtle espionage, and deadly showdowns, the ronin forces the rival gangs to destroy one another. 

Sound familiar? It should. This same plot was featured in the first of Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars. Clint Eastwood's roving, taciturn, cold-hearted, pragmatic bounty hunter, The Man With No Name, is based on Mifune's unshakably deadpan ronin in Yojimbo, who names himself after whatever he happens to be looking at when someone asks him his name: Sanjuro Kuwabatake, or "Thirty-Year-Old Mulberry Field." Both Eastwood's "Man With No Name" and Mifune's "Sanjuro" find a small, backwater town being terrorized by rival gangs and cleverly trick them into killing each other off (losing some of their own blood in the process), leading up to a final, epic showdown.

That Yojimbo inspired a Western (even a spaghetti Western) is poetically just, for it was inspired by Westerns. Director Akira Kurosawa was a big fan of Hollywood's cowboy movies and the themes portrayed in them, particularly the timeless and infallibly riveting showdown of good vs. evil. John Ford's dry, windblown streets, the unmistakably bad guys terrorizing goodhearted but timid townspeople, dilapidated towns full of dusty, rickety buildings, and lawless frontiers where might makes right are all present in many of Kurosawa's jidaigeki, or period dramas. Yet Kurosawa adapted those Western themes and made them indelibly Japanese, turning Yojimbo into a one-of-a-kind "Eastern," where the bad guys wear topknots instead of black hats, the dusty windblown streets have a torii gate and a Shinto shrine at the end of them, and the hero mows his enemies down not with a hail of bullets from a six-gun but with a series of lightning-fast strikes from a katana.

The result is...well, I wish I could be more eloquent than this, but the result is so freaking cool. We have plot. We have theme. We have Kurosawa's immortal cinematography and editing, where cuts are made on motion and are almost seamless, where the actors in speaking roles create intriguing visual geometries on-screen and we aren't just cutting back and forth between talking heads, where wide-angle shots make you feel like you're watching the action from a front-row seat. We have good acting: Mifune's gruff, unflappable samurai Sanjuro and Tatsuya Nakadai's sinister-looking, gun-toting villain Unosuke both stand out as memorable performances. The supporting cast, mainly playing brutish thugs with crooked teeth or scruffy whiskers, is a joy to watch as well. Yes, my friends, this is epicness, and not as the Millennial generation has defined it (a flip performed on a snowboard or the most humongous Michael Bay movie explosion yet), but real movie magic, the cathartic joy that comes from watching a film that has it all: a good story, a vivid setting, characters who feel real and whom you can root for, and an ending you wish would never come. Dialogue is good, too: Sanjuro is refreshingly blunt with his scumbag employers, and his final discussion with a fallen Unosuke is at once satisfying and bone-chilling. The movie keeps the suspense up; one never knows what's going to happen next. Sanjuro switches sides like lightning, the situation seems poised to boil over at every turn, only to be delayed until the final climax. The eerie, percussive score helps. The heavy beating of drums, the sinister rumble of horns, and the dissonant whine of flutes punctuate every rise and fall of the action, their otherworldly cadence pervading the movie. The subterranean accompaniment is appropriate for a movie of this type. Cut off from the world he knows by the death of his master and the changing times in Japan, Sanjuro is doing the only thing he knows how to do: outwit the bad guys and kill them to a man. Even if he gets beaten or bloodied in the process (and he does), he will never quit following his swordsman's code, even if life as he knows it crumbles around his ears.

I highly recommend this film. Whether you're a fan of Sergio Leone's TGTBTU trilogy, want to compare Westerns with Easterns, or have fallen in love with foreign films (as this film caused me to do), Yojimbo will resonate with you on some primeval level. I dare you to resist the impulse to grab a sword, put on a kimono and go out and fight bad guys after seeing it. It's impossible.

writing updates, 9/20/2009

This promise I made to start writing every day is really paying off. Stephen King, you were right: if you write every day the inspiration will surely come, not to mention all the practice you'll get, and the writing that will actually get done. 

First, I've made astounding progress with the novel. I need merely conclude Act III and I'm done. The thing's almost done. Of course, I'll have to edit and fine-tune it, but the basic writing will be done. I can't describe to you what a feeling this is. It's the deepest kind of excitement imaginable, a triple threat: (a), I'm bringing a world born of my imagination to glorious life to share with millions; (b), I'm close to accomplishing something I've wanted to do for some time, and conceivably the rest of my life; and (c) this could be the start of something beautiful. Charles Dederich, the founder of the Synanon rehabilitation program, had a mantra. "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." That seems apropos, and it keeps running through my head. Makes sense. I'm a writing addict. 

 Second, I've started some other stuff up in the meantime. I've had an idea knocking around in my head about a sort of sci-fi romance story (which I won't name yet), but thanks to this nascent regimen I've finally begun putting it down on paper. That was four days ago, and I'm over twenty pages in already. I take that as a good sign. It's coming easy, it's funny, and I think I might keep it going. I've also got a short science fiction story of a more serious stamp in the works, but it hasn't progressed much. Neither have any article ideas, except one about my sojourn on Jeju Island shortly before leaving Korea. Never fear, I'll develop them and write them soon enough. Oh yes! Speaking of writing articles, both of the travel articles I've submitted thus far (to Real Travel Adventures and In The Know Traveler, respectively) have been published, finally. Here are the links:

• South Korea's Seolnar New Year Celebration
• Living in a Small Korean Town

So that's the story (no pun intended). Further bulletins as events warrant. Stay tuned, it won't be long.

how to register a car in Southern California

Let us discuss certain first principles regarding car ownership in the sunny, smoggy, scummy state of California. I will introduce some terminology to start:

• smog: a portmanteau of "smoke" and "fog," referring to aerosol pollutants (industrial waste, car exhaust, and so on) mixing with airborne water droplets (like fog) to form a filmy, unhealthy haze.
• smogging: in certain states like California, drivers are required by law to have their car "smogged"; that is, tested to ensure that they are keeping noxious exhaust emissions low, which in turn ensures that smog levels are minimized. Before a car can be registered, it must be smogged.
• title: in reference to automobiles, this is a legal certificate of ownership issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles. Also known as a "pink slip."
• license: everybody knows what this is, but I thought I'd mention it here just to make this list longer. This is the little piece of plastic, obtained after you complete your driver's test, that says you're allowed to drive a certain class of vehicle. It has your picture, your birthday, and some other miscellaneous crap on it.
• registration: bureaucracy these days being what it is, it's no longer enough to simply own a vehicle. You now must register it with your state of residence. You tell them you have a car and they issue you with license plates that you bolt onto said car. Makes it easier for the cops to identify you, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
• registration stickers: as if registering a vehicle wasn't enough, the registration expires after a few years. So you have to occasionally renew your registration. These stickers, applied directly to your license plates, keep track of your registration currency.

Are we clear? To own and operate a car in this state, you need four, count 'em, four things: title, registration, license, and a smog check.

I'm writing this because I went in to get a smog check today, in preparation for obtaining registration for my 1995 Jeep Cherokee, and thereby being able to drive my car in California legally. I just got back. It took almost seven hours. That's Southern California for you.

First, I got up at 7:00 a.m. to get to A-Action Automotive (the ones who did the checkup on the Jeep right before I purchased it) by eight. I did, and got it inspected. At nine, owner Steve Coultas came out to give me the verdict. The Jeep barely passed the smog check, but it failed on the fuel system evaluation. There was a leak in the fuel system somewhere. The smog check had already cost me $60, but I went ahead and approved the $80 fuel system inspection. That took a further hour or two. I went down to Starbucks on the corner of Hesperia Road and Bear Valley and had some passion fruit lemonade tea (for $2.80), then went across the street to Walgreen's and read some magazines: guns, video games, even the latest issue of Time. It was the "brain" issue, all about the human brain and its vagaries.

Somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 I returned to the shop and heard the new verdict: both the filler hose and the vent hose, connected to the fuel tank, were leaking. To repair it, the custom bumper on the Jeep and the fuel tank would both have to be "dropped" (unscrewed, lowered and removed). Total repairs, including parts and labor, came to just over $450. The day had already been going badly before I heard this. I'd ripped my pants on the rabbit-wire on my way out of the backyard gate, and I'd had to get up early. Now I was going to spend two weeks' pay on these repairs. Not that I would've cared, mind you. But compounded with the rest of what happened today...well, read on.

So I went ahead and approved this latest round of repairs, too. Steve checked and told me that his shop had the hoses in stock, so they wouldn't need to be ordered. Good, because it meant the Jeep could be repaired that same day. And I needed to have it repaired as soon as possible. On Monday I'd be getting up early again to head up to Barstow and the office of the Department of Motor Vehicles to get the Jeep registered. Steve printed me out an cost estimate and told me the Jeep should be finished by this afternoon. (I'd just like to point out here that, despite how it sounds, I'm not blaming A-Action Automotive or any of its employees for this. I understand that parts and labor cost a lot. I'm just deploring the fact that I have to spend that much money on repairs. I'm not complaining that A-Action is charging me that much for them. They run a splendid repair shop and I'd recommend them to anybody. This was just some bad news on top of a soon-to-be stinky day...but read on.)

My dad had called me earlier and told me he and Mom were coming into town to go shopping. Once he heard that the Jeep was going in for new repairs, Dad said he'd pick me up and we'd all go together while the repairs were going on. I plunked myself down on the sidewalk outside the repair shop and awaited their coming, shaded from the blasphemous sun by the A-Action sign out front. Mom and Dad came shortly before noon, and we headed off: first to try to find a mattress store in Oak Hills (which we didn't; it wasn't even there) and then to Tom's Burgers to get lunch (yum!).

Then (this was about 1:00) we went back to A-Action. The Jeep was sitting outside in the parking lot...a good sign? Perhaps it was finished already. I went into the small front office. Steve said that the parts that they'd thought they had weren't correct; the hoses were intended for a Jeep Wrangler, not a Jeep Cherokee. He'd order up the parts and I could bring the Jeep back in on Monday to have it repaired. Awesome.

Fortunately I didn't have to pay anything right then and there. Steve nicely said, "We'll square up when you come in on Monday." I walked out of the office feeling slightly let down. Five hours and nothing had been fixed, only diagnosed. The Jeep hadn't even passed its smog check thanks to those blasted leaks in the fuel system (which the DMV would never let pass). I'd have to get it re-checked on Monday after repairs were concluded. Damn it and blast it.

Thereafter, Mom, Dad, and I stopped by Harbor Freight (a hardware store) to get some more stuff for my emergency automotive kit: a hydraulic jack and a towing cable, replete with large steel hooks (cool!). Then we split up. Mom and Dad went home, and I went to Eagle Motors, the car dealership where I'd originally bought the Jeep (I should just think up a name for the Jeep so I wouldn't have to keep blandly referring to it as "the Jeep," shouldn't I?). I had an errand in mind. I didn't have a title for the Jeep. I had a lot of other paperwork that had been given to me when I'd bought the car, but no title. I didn't know why. Normally they give you the title when you buy the car. But I didn't have it. So I went in to get it. Carl was still there, his wrinkled, spotty, sandal-clad foot resting on the desktop. I told him, politely, that I hadn't received a title. After leafing slowly through the paperwork I set before him and clicking around on the computer for a couple minutes (whistling tunelessly over the blaring television), he pronounced that, as far as he knew, my title was still being processed by the DMV. They'd mail it to me when they were finished. I asked how long he thought it'd be. He said he didn't know. He told me to give him a call about 2:30 (it was about 1:45 right then), when Sal, the owner, would come back and dig up the paperwork.

I sighed, thanked him, and left. I got some gas. I drove almost all the way home, then pulled over and called Eagle Motors precisely at 2:30. Carl said that he'd confirmed with Sal that Eagle Motors didn't have the Jeep's title. The DMV was working on it, and would mail it to me. However, the reason I hadn't received my registration paperwork is that Eagle Motors had mailed it to me, but it had returned undeliverable. I almost banged my head against my steering wheel when I heard this. I'd given them my street address instead of my mailing address. We don't receive mail at our street address. I quoted him the mailing address and requested (biting back my self-disgust) that he send my registration paperwork to me again.

I should explain here, now, that the reason I haven't received my title is because I haven't registered my vehicle with the state, and the reason that I haven't registered my vehicle with the state is because I don't have any registration paperwork, and the reason I don't have any registration paperwork is because I gave Eagle Motors my physical address instead of my mailing address that day long ago when I bought the car. So in the meantime, my parents and I have been wondering and worrying and wailing about how my registration paperwork hasn't shown up yet and how I don't yet have my car registered with the state and in the meantime the fuzz could pull me over and ticket me for driving around without registration. Sheesh.

After getting home at a quarter to three, having left the house precisely seven hours earlier, I collapsed onto my bed and considered going into hibernation ahead of schedule. An entire day shot. Blown. Down the drain. As if being informed that I'd be shelling out $450 on car repairs wasn't enough, I had then been notified that I'd made a stupid mistake, and had been wondering and wailing and waiting for absolutely nothing this entire time. And it took seven hours and an unholy amount of driving around in triple-digit heat to figure it all out.

This is how you register a car in Southern California. Phase One, anyway.

who needs Twitter?

Jeez, I can do everything that site can and more. Just watch: Postman I'm sitting in my easy chair writing on my blog. 1 minute ago Postman I'm beginning to think the U.S. would be greatly improved if we excised both Hollywood and the District of Columbia and shoved them out to sea. 3 minutes ago Postman Just wandered past where my dad is watching baseball, wishing I knew a little more about professional sports. 10 minutes ago Postman Wandering around outside when it's pitch-dark out with no moon, nothing but the stars and the faint streak of the Milky Way above your head, and the occasional outburst of barking dogs way off in the darkness, is a surreal experience. 23 minutes ago Postman Sipping a martini with the folks while watching Deadly Women. 51 minutes ago Postman Well, I suppose I'd better get off this thing (and quit taking such fatuous Facebook quizzes as What Super Smash Bros. character are you?). 1 hour ago Postman Hmmm, Henry David Thoreau had some interesting things to say about fish in the sky, didn't he? 5 years ago Postman Doo doo ga ga boo boo? 22 years ago P'shaw. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Twitter's for twits. Micro-blogging strikes me as the stupidest thing to come out since...since...well, macro-blogging, actually. Who the hell cares what everybody else is doing or thinking on a minute-by-minute basis? For a long time now I've suspected that nobody on Blogger actually reads anybody else's blogs. Not really. They just sort of pop in from time to time, skim the first article that catches their eye, leave a superficial comment and scram. On the other hand, they pour hour after agonizing hour into crafting their own blog, in the vain hope that somebody's going to look at it. (That's what I do, anyway.) I'll bet that problem is only accentuated on Twitter. I'll just bet you everybody on there pours insane amounts of energy into posting updates (known as "Tweeting," as if the name "Twitter" wasn't damning enough) and none into actually reading anybody else's. I should bloody well hope that's what people do, anyway. What kind of craven, suppressed, inanimate sort of person would actively follow somebody's Tweets? What kind of nut are you to actually care what complete strangers are doing (unless, like me, they're reading good books, drinking strange cocktails, traveling to far-flung places and flying high-performance airplanes)? I think I should point out that I'm not bitter about the age I was born into. Okay, maybe a little. I really couldn't give a crap whether everybody in the world was texting on their cell phones, gaming on their Nintendo DS's, or Tweeting on their computers. I just wish that, for once, the telecommunications industry would stop innovating (if that's what it's called). Progress for the sake of progress is not progress. Just because everybody is doing something does not make it cool (ask the nearest lemming). All this electronic whiz-bang might make our lives a little more convenient, but not if we become slaves to it. Where's the mystery of life gone to? If we sat through every concert, every awards ceremony, every fireworks show, every lovemaking session and constantly Tweeted it all, there'd be no surprises left for anybody. And what more is there to life than surprises? Mystery? New things? Or at the very least, good old-fashioned mano a mano face-to-face person-to-person communication? Twitter is a bad idea. Blogging itself might potentially be as well (although it does allow me to say this). E-mail is abhorrent: I'll bet you in another twenty years nobody will even know what the phrase "snail mail" even means. The Internet is great at connecting people; nobody stopped to consider the people who didn't want to be connected. You know, let's just cut right to the chase. I don't even think we should've come down out of the trees. Our feet were on the ground, but our heads shot straight into the clouds...the thunderheads instead of those nice feathery cirrus formations at the edge of the stratosphere. Call me old-fashioned if you want. All I have to do is switch off this computer and you can't touch me. At least this world still has that much going for it.

100th post

Yes, I freely admit that this is fatuous and pointless, but I take it as a favorable sign that I have made it this far, and would like to trumpet it from the rooftops for the benefit of my detractors. So, without gilding the lily, I am pleased to announce that this is my 100th blog post.


In the news today, President Obama is desperately trying to extricate himself from any notion of involvement with A.C.O.R.N., the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a vague political action committee with a rather spotty record. He initially supported them, but now that over thirty of their members have been arrested for crimes (and two of their members were caught on tape helping some woman to get a building for her child prostitution ring, right here in this county no less), he would rather disassociate himself. Smart move. 

 Things are going loads better at work. I've got the obituary routine down: check e-mail frequently, type all submitted obituaries up, bill the mortuaries (or the private parties), arrange all the obits into a single file, submit it to Mrs. B for editing, make the changes she suggests, then resubmit it to the paginator. Usually it's all finished by 12:30 or 1:00. I've been surprised by the level of professional detachment I've managed to muster: it occasionally escapes me, as I'm writing up a family's heartfelt eulogy for their loved one, that I'm writing about a formerly real, living, breathing person. Memorializing them with the printing press just doesn't seem to work at all. After I finish with the obituaries, I just scout around for news stories and work on whatever ideas I come up with, or work on what Ron or Mark assign to me. I haven't committed any major foul-ups since that last one I wrote about (see William Zinsser, eat your heart out). Today I even got to do something that was fun: go over to the archives building and root around among the old newspaper copies for Dusty Files. It's a column that runs every Monday comprised of 50-year-old, 40-year-old, 30-year-old, 20-year-old and 10-year-old headlines from the newspaper. It was wild, poring over the headlines from 1959, 1969, 1979, and so on. Food was so darn cheap in the fifties...I ran across coupons and food sales ads that were unbelievable. New York sirloin, $1.29 a pound. Eleven 15-oz. cans of dog food, one dollar. Four pounds of apples, nineteen cents. What a time to be alive. 

 Nothing else going on, really...except that I'm hard at work on another story, one totally unrelated to this novel I'm working on. From the looks of things it might pan out to be at least a novella. It's a sort of romantic comedy, but I plan to have a dash of adventure thrown in...it wouldn't be fun otherwise. Stay tuned for more updates. 



Oh, one more thing. As befitting a milestone, this landmark blog post contains an unprecedented ingredient: my first-ever retraction. (I don't know if you can print retractions in blogs, but by thunder I'm going to try anyhow.) Those of you who have been keeping track may be under the impression that I live in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, which I have been naming in this post for some time now since my return to the States. I found out this morning (from my geologist father, who can be trusted in such matters) that I was mistaken. The San Gabriel Mountains are situated to the west of Cajon Pass and Interstate 15, and are home to Mount Baldy and Mount San Antonio. My house, located east of Cajon Pass and I-15, halfway between Apple Valley and Lucerne Valley, is actually located in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. My mistake. Okay? Does that clear things up? I had you thinking I lived in Phelan or Wrightwood, didn't I? Suckers.