Don't Ask. Go to hell.

Whatever ails the world, from terrorists to North Koreans, drone bombs to the CIA, it's more than mildly comforting to know that at long last the war on cock suckers is over. I'm not bullshitting here; the repeal this evening of DADT is a major moment. This will be seen, historically, as more important than the end of Segregation in the South. I know how adsurd that sounds, but I believe it.

At the end of the day, more people are homophobic than racist. Nobody with half a brain (the amount alloted the average American) could ultimately, in the face of all the evidence, see a black human as anything but equal, but gay men or lesbian women are still incomprehensible and loathsome to the cousin-humping fucks who can fill their one operable care with more people than teeth, drive to the polls in Melba, KS and vote for Jesus. This repeal is not a small victory. It suggests, for the first time in a long time, that there are more of us than there are of them, more people who could care less what their neighbors do with their junk, more people who have a shred of sympathy, decency, understanding. Tennessee Williams wrote that he could accept anything human, any behaviour, any activity, so long as it wasn't cruel. He should know about cruelty having endured it throughout his "don't ask, don't tell" life. Hating gay and lesbian Americans, denying them their constitutional rights, including the right to die for their countrymen, was cruel.

The truth is, the is nothing less than a sea-change, a reminder that we are not done, that there are fights left to fight and people willing to fight them. Who knows what happens next. I doubt that the gay rights floodgates will finally open wide. It may be years before your gay neighbor can marry the man he loves, your lesbian aunt can acknowlege her love for a woman, but goddamit this is big and it's a start.

I feel light today. We may all still die from global warming, war, suicide, but the fucking aliens who find our ruins one day will have to acknowledge that we were moving to the light when the shit hit the fan. Thank god we live in a country where this change can happen. Forget that it took too long. Remember the countless gay men and lesbian women who sacrificed career and love of country because they dared to speak the love that dare not speak its name. This wasn't a Glee episode. It was the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitting the dick sucking isn't a crime and doesn't lead to cowardice.

My nephew is in his second year at Annapolis. He sent me a copy of an essay he just wrote for a class he's taking. His writting is brilliant and he earned the top score in his class and dinner with the Admiral for his efforts. The topic was vague: "Should any Americans be prevented from serving in the U.S. Military?" It's clear that the Academy is more than a little aware that it serves some gay students and that gay men and women are in the Navy. My nephew's essay argued eloquently, using Kant, etc. as evidence, for the immediate repeal of DADT on the grounds that it is unconstituional, unwise and unamerican. I'm as proud of this esssay, and of my nephew as I ever have been. His generation is better than mine and I ought to know. They are smarter, kinder and will leave the world a better place than they found it. In the words of the poet, "get out of the way if you can't lend your hand; for the times they are a changin'."

The Loyal Order

You can take the boy out of the wood paneled, poorly lit bar, but you can't take it out of the boy. Those exposed to Moose Lodges as children, at very early ages I might add, can never shake it. I remember practically growing up, in every way, in the Moose Lodge right off State Street in Santa Barbara. My grandmother would take me every day after two or so for happy hour, which at a Moose Lodge begins when the sun comes up and ends when the sun comes up. I would sit, stare at the wood paneling, drink my Roy Rogers ("Shirley Temples are for the bitches" I would say to my seven year old self) and play some sort of gambling game that predated modern scratchers. My grandmother would sit with three or four other retired, but still alive, friends and drink the afternoon away. If my brother was there, we would play in the parking lot, or slide on the dance floor. People still danced then, by which I mean all people, some well, some less so, but all people. On Friday nights, Marge would take me to the fish-fry at the Moose, which always meant fresh Red Snapper caught by her boyfriend, Lauren, who we all called speedy because he drove slower than a tax refund. Speedy's van was an old Dodge conversion, carpeted from floor to ceiling in a Tijuana body shop--shag carpet as far as the 10 year old eye could see, heaven. I didn't mind riding with Speedy and Marge because the inside of that van was like an afghan blanket, which is something you want in a town that never gets hot. So, Speedy caught the fish, fried it up every Friday night and we all went to the Moose Lodge for dinner and dancing. I had to dance with my grandmother, mother, aunts and any other old lady who thought I was cute, and I had all the cougars wanting a turn.

It makes sense then that my mom, who is now as old as my grandmother was then, who has recently gone through a year without a job, who is her mother's daughter, would join the El Segundo chapter of the Moose. It makes equal sense that she would volunteer to host the dinner for the month right out of the gate. Naturally, she asked my wife and me to help. In turn, we recruited a couple we know to come with and it was a party. I said to the husband of the couple who came with us that they are the only people I know who would say yes to making and serving dinner at a Moose Lodge to 75 retired Chevron and Hughes workers for no pay, unless you count the two free drinks from the bar and a free steak dinner. I have many friends, but J and A are special, the kind of people you want to be around, the kind you want to be like. So, with the wife and J and A, we made, served, remade and re-served 75 dinners for the octogenarian, blue-hairs who literally ate it up. I was on steak duty and only had to redo four. One sweet retiree asked my wife if she could meet me to tell me how much she liked the dinner. Now my wife is a believing soul and she let the lady in, prompting a fifteen minute lecture on how to cook a steak from a woman who was clearly wearing no bra, probably because they can't make them that big. Other than that, and one dirty old man hitting on my wife (do I have to kick an octogenarian's ass?), it was a good night. Sometime during the evening, my mother, whether it was the stress of a bad year, the tough time she's had with my sister, the nostalgia of the evening, crawled into a large bottle of questionable quality white wine and got blotto. For me, I was ten again, taking care of a drunk parent and not really feeling to bad about it. The wife and I hung around for an hour after dinner, drinking cheap liquor and trying to keep my mom in her chair. Then we piled her into the man van and unceremoniously dumped her off at her house. It was a fun night, a sketchy night, a night at the Moose.

Oprah

Does it make me a bitch that I get misty watching Yahoo replays of Oprah's holiday giveaway? Don't answer that, but I do. I watch the faces of out-of-work, middle-American housewives and gay men in her audience light up like a Busby Berkely dance sequence upon winning a year's supply of candles. Those are some great smelling fucking candles.

I don't blame Oprah. She probably feels like shit for being so wealthy for so little reason and, once a year, with the full cooperation of every corporation involved, she buys her guilt by giving away household items to people without houses. The candle is gonna look great on the middle of the tent floor; thanks Oprah.

We are broke and broken as a country. Game shows were fun when I was a kid, people won money in the hundreds of dollars, which made them as happy as winning $100,000 today. Montey Hall would slip a $50 into the hand of a blue-haired old lady because she had a paper clip in her purse--and we all smiled. Why? Because back then, $50 was mildly life changing. This woman who won it lived in a functional society. She didn't need, or really want much beyond the life she had. Her parents didn't have indoor plumbing, television, etc.. Life was good, and $50 could buy a fuckload of Manhattans.

I get why these people in Oprah's audience act like they just got the call from the governor when they win a lifetime supply of boxed Mac-n-Cheese. Things are that bad. We are that broke. Oprah is our only hope.

Yosemite

There are few things as impressive as Yosemite National Park, even with kids and a monster-in-law in tow. I get a bit of a charge, a sense of my insignificance and a nose full of clean air (which is welcome after driving through Fresno. Jesus, what a shit hole), every time I go. The wife, family and I stayed at the "Scene better days" Pines Resort in Bass Lake. The cabin was clean and full of furniture that Elvis would have bought. The fold out couch, where my wife and I were to sleep, was little more than an oddly placed group of steel bars covered by a cocktail napkin thin "mattress". We ended up sleeping downstairs in the bed next to the MOL, so I can check that off my bucket list. The boys, 14 and 11, are getting too old for these kind of trips. They fought the entire weekend when they weren't bitching about the trip, me, my wife, God, etc. I only hit the older one, a quick, attention getting punch to the forehead, on the trip home--so all in all, I did well.

It turns out that it's hard for me not to hit the kids. That's all I knew as a kid. You don't where underwear, talk back, look away while being spoken to, wham--not the scar inducing, shrink necessitating, life-ruining kind of wham, but the kind you write about in a blog thirty-five years later to be sure. Every time my kids act like idiots, which is their genetic disposition, I want to smack them, which is mine. I do pretty well, but the oldest one, as I said, got me on the way home. He chased his brother out of a gas station mini-mart, screaming something about tiny's having stolen $5 from him. I call the younger one "tiny" because he's not. Get it? The little fucker's 11 year old feet are bigger than mine. Anyway, I digress. The Toehead chases Tiny out of the mini-mart and is losing what's left of his 14 year old rational mind in public. I tell him, with utter calm, to relax and explain the situation--he escalates. A fourteen year old boy's temperament is measured by a Richter scale and Toehead went 7.2 in 2 seconds. I tried repeatedly to get him to calm down, eventually whispering between clinched teeth to "shut the fuck up." He didn't comply, that is until I punched him (25% strength) in the head. After that, he climbed into the back seat, his brother (undoubtedly feeling responsible) gave him the $5 and everybody shut the fuck up for the next 50 miles. I'm not drawing any morals from this episode. For one thing, even Toehead will be able to kick my ancient ass when I'm 90, but I can't say I feel real bad about this moment.

As I kid, I could count on getting my ass kicked at school if I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Shit, our principals could paddle us in public schools. I'm not asking for a return to corporal punishment as the main method of dealing with kids. For a ten year period, I recoiled every time my dad scratched his head. Still, I do wish something else worked on a young boy the way a quick punch to the head does. I haven't found that something but I haven't given up and I don't plan on increased punching. Besides, every parent is allowed to punch every one of his children once on a trip over two days in length. It's in the manual.

Twenty years from now, Toehead probably won't remember the punch to the head, either from the concussion or simply from passage of time. He may not remember that I took him to see a tree that is 2700 years old either. He will remember that I took him places and that he should take his kids places too, even if he has to punch one in the head to bring him in line.

The Afterlife Can Wait

There are moments, amidst the shit that makes up 90% of our life, when the sky opens up, when animals talk to us, when life is in Technicolor. Sunday was one of those days. My brother and I took my Dad to see the Raiders play the Denver Donkeys at Invesco (still Mile High to those of us who are old enough to think that that kind of name for a stadium is as beautiful a thing as a 20 year old virgin) Field. The beer was cold; we were wearing Raider gear and were prepared for a drubbing at the hands of what, I thought, should have been a better team--God intervened. I'm not big on the concept of God, though there was a period of my life when the idea helped me sleep, but it's hard to describe what happened last Sunday without thinking of the divine. Perhaps we just slipped into that alternate universe that my doppelganger enjoys, where everything goes my way and chicks dig me. That the Raiders destroyed the Donkeys is an understatement. It was 28 to O after the first quarter. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or strip my clothes off and run through the stadium shouting, "You fuckers have always sucked. You have never beaten us this bad. My brother, father and I deserve this moment." And, we do. We do deserve the occasional reprieve from the life that sucks the life out of us. As Blanche DuBois said, "sometimes, there's God, so suddenly". While it may be more than a little gay to quote Tennessee Williams to describe what happened at a football game, it just works. Somewhere, between the beers and the brats and the cigarettes and the chick fight we saw on the way out of the game, My brother, father and I felt that God had smiled, for one brief and everlasting moment, on our lives. Fuck the Broncos.

Livin' in the fatherland

When I was 15, my father cut his own thumb mostly off. He was putting incredibly tasteful wood paneling, in a diagonal pattern, on my bedroom wall. He slipped while cutting the paneling and nearly severed his thumb with an Exacto knife. I wasn't home, but my stepmother, brother and step siblings were. In total, there were four people, other than the man in question, who could have taken my dad to the hospital. He asked for a towel, wrapped his dangling thumb in it, and drove 10 miles to the local E.R. for treatment. This is my father. He's not one of those weird medical miracles who doesn't feel pain, he just doesn't want anyone's help when he does. And, while he was no monster of a parent, he naturally expected my brother and me to not bother him with trivialities like severe poison oak, burns, ingrown toenails so infected that I couldn't wear shoes, etc. That pissed me off as I child. I had friends whose parents would take them to the doctor for a cough and I sat at home for a whole day with a broken collar bone to see if it got better--it didn't.

My dad could pick my brother and me up at the same time, one in each arm, when we were in high school, all of his 5'8" bulging and reddening. He had a temper and was prone to threatening us that he would, "knock our heads through a goddamn wall". To his credit, he never did. He thumped us and smacked our heads on occasion and that was enough. He was less tame in dealing with others. As a kid, I never saw my dad take any amount of shit from anyone. Scratch that; I have yet to see it. About 10 years ago, after my first son was born, my 60 year old father chased one of his neighbors down the street for questioning the legality of our fireworks display. In short, he is not to be fucked with, but he will never go out of his way to fuck with you.

On the contrary, he is one of the most likable people anyone would ever meet. He has always been generous to a fault, incredibly funny and truly tolerant (if we leave off politics). I never left my house without money in my pocket when I lived with my dad, either because he gave it to me or because he never busted us for stealing his change out of the chicken bank on his dresser. My father was loving too. He was a traveling appliance salesman, so he was gone much of the time. Still, he would find a way to show up to baseball games, band concerts, etc. Once, when I was in Santa Barbara, an hour from where I grew up, attending summer camp and staying with my Grandmother, my dad showed up. He was coming back from Santa Maria on a trip and he found where I was. This was in the time before cell phones, so I know it was no small feat for him to find me, sitting with my friends at West Beach, eating lunch at camp. My dad came walking across the field in his suit and my heart leapt. I knew he didn't need to be there, he just wanted to see me. I was 10 years old at the time and I still see him, his 1978 white afro, his three piece brown suit with an open collar exposing a gold coin medallion necklace--he was cool and at the height of his "disco" Mike phase.

Now that he's getting older, my dad has slowed down. He lives in Denver and doesn't come out. A few years ago, he had a heart attack. Naturally, he refused to call an ambulance and drove himself to the hospital, or should I say two hospitals. The first one had no emergency room, so he drove to another one that did have an E.R., but no free parking. Needless to say, he drove a block away, parked the car and staggered into the lobby where a flabbergasted doctor said, "You're having a heart attack" to which my father replied, "I know." Some things never change.

My brother and I are going to see him in a week or two and I'm excited. We're taking him to the Raider-v-Bronco game. My brother and dad haven't seen each other for a year or two, so it will be good. For my part, I'm going because of that day in Santa Barbara, because he showed up to my public defense of my dissertation, because he called me twice on Sunday to rub in the fact that he was killing me in our fantasy football league, because I love you, Dad.

The Gang's All High

Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here (1939) is as strange, wonderful and psychoactive as any film ever made. I showed it today in my Intro course and the kids reacted as they always do--technicolor. I sat there with my Cinerama smile watching them watching Berkeley at his whisky fueled, kaleidoscopic maddest. This film should not work. It has a razor thin plot, some of the worst acting in Hollywood history and Alice Faye sings the same song 5 times. None of this matters. The minute the first 6 foot banana comes out and Carmen Miranda starts to dance in her 8 inch heels, all is forgiven. The overhead shot of the aforementioned bananas being lowered onto a group of girls holding gigantic strawberries over their crotches is as filthy and delightful as any shot in any movie. And the film goes on, much like that, for nearly two hours.
It's a back stage musical, so I think my students are more likely to accept all the singing, as am I. I've never really liked the walking down the street, breaking into song MGM bullshit anyway. Not that there's anything realistic about Berkeley's film except the reason for the singing. The final scene in the movie is more surreal, and a lot more fun to watch, than Un Chien Andalou and nobody gets her eye cut in half. The "Polka Dot Polka", which opens with young children singing with dubbed soprano and deep bass, builds to an amazing Berkeley sound stage piece utilizing neon rings, insane costumes and, I kid you not, a kaleidoscopic shot of women dancing. It's celluloid LSD. The film ends with disembodied heads singing Alice Faye's favorite song one last time on a field of blue. And everyone in the audience claps, every time.
Why Berkeley was not a more prolific director is understandable; he was an insane drunk. Still, he left us with an amazing body of work and reminds me, every time I watch this movie, that film is sometimes best when watched with your mouth open. That 18 year old kids like it too restores my faith in humanity.

Bar Mitzvah

That Dylan Thomas was not young when he wrote "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" is a mystery. As I sit at the ripe age of 43, I am already pretty sure I won't be raging "against the dying of the light". I went to my son's friend Erich's Bar Mitzvah last night, with my wife and son. It was a beautiful service, and it made me long for the sense of belonging that all Jewish celebrations evoke. After the service, there was a lovely cocktail hour (I made friends with a bottle of Woodford Reserve) for the adults, while the kids partied in the "kid room". At some point, I wandered over that way to see what the "kids" were up to. I stood at the door and watched my 14 year old boy work a group of girls, including some of the staff, like a seasoned pro, and I realized that I wasn't there for Erich's Bar Mitzvah--I was there for Riley's.

My son grew up last night in my mind, and I doubt there is any going back. I am the sentimental type (I cry during commercials), so the night was a bit tough. Riley is my oldest and his coming into manhood is a bit of a wake-up call. I've seen it coming for some time as the child is blessed with hair in all the right places (for now, boy) a four-thousand dollar, orthodontic smile and a quick wit. He was charming enough to ask the 18 year old bimbo, who had been hired to make the party fun, if she was a striper--and she smiled. As the night wore one, I saw him buzz from one flower to the next, and I began to wonder how long it will be before I get a call from some unhappy father regarding Riley's nocturnal activities. It's not a question of "if", but "when". Then I thought of my perfect "o-k-ness" with the whole thing. Riley's day in the sun is coming and mine is going. Vonnegut would say, "so it goes" and he'd be right.

I spoke to my dad this morning, to check in, to let him know I care. I don't sense any "rage" at the dying of his light. He's 71 and has had a good life. I have yet to meet someone of that age who had any real objection to the inevitable night descending on them, and I doubt I ever will. Riley grows up, I grow down and there's a quiet beauty in that. I will, with any luck, get to see many more milestones in both my kids' lives and I look forward to them all. The feeling that the world will go on, that some part of you will go with it is a comfort and I haven't had any real rage for a long time anyway. Mazel Tov.

Male and Female

I screened the 1919, Cecil B. DeMille directed Male and Female today in my Intro to Film course. Two days a week I get to teach an extension class for our local community college. Two days a week I get to use my graduate school education and, you guessed it, two days a week I love me as a teacher. I get excited about films. Some people look at a cathedral, a painting, a mountain and it fills them with a sense of the divine, a belief that we are not alone, that the dead speak. For me, it's film. I showed a movie made 91 years ago to a room full of people under the age of 25 and the laughed, cried and, fuckin' a Billy, they clapped at the end. They liked it and I felt like there was hope.
I get hopeful and excited at the start of every school year. My high school kids are just as fun and excited as my film students. We covered the first chapter of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter today, and no question I could think of went unanswered. It was clear that at least two kids in every class had actually read the book--that's not bad. The rest were at least decent enough to pretend they had read it, which I think is a positive. I've decided that my job keeps me from getting depressed. When a city block explodes in San Bruno, when truly retarded people when primary elections, when my wife hates me or I can't take a shit, I have a room full of kids who are willing to at least try to figure out Hawthorne's syntax, even though they are taking 5 other hard classes. There is hope in this work. There is beauty in 90 year old images of a naked Gloria Swanson getting into a bathtub. I feel lucky today.

Slayer and Megadeth

Went to a Slayer, Megadeth and Testament concert on Monday--freakshow. That's right, it's Megadeth, not "Megadeath". They are so badass that they don't even have to spell well. The show was at the luxurious Long Beach Arena, a dying relic of 1960's toilet bowl Arena architecture. The building was in better shape than most of the crowd in any case.



Three metal bands was a bit more than I had hoped for as I really can't stand the shit, but I wasn't there for me. My friends Kris and John are true believers and my 14 year old son wanted to go as well, so here I was. I went to a Dave Matthews show two weeks ago, so this concert marked the second time in as many weeks that I went to a show out of kindness for someone I know. In any case, all three bands delivered what they promised. The crowd, 90% fat, tired looking white guys, was pumped and the pit churned. I knew enough to stay out of the pit, though I confess I was tempted. Chuck Billy, the lead singer for Testament, looked like he has had a few too many roadhouse hamburgers, but he can still play a mean air guitar, which he did throughout the show. Somebody buy him a fucking real guitar so he doesn't look like a fat guy playing guitar hero for an hour. Megadeth was better, because I actually know one of their songs. Everything you need to know about Megadeth can be assertained by looking at the home page of their website.
http://www.megadeth.com/home.php
Dave Mustain and his boys try to look like they kill people and eat the intestines, but they never quite pull it off. Mustain's claim to fame is that he once fell asleep (read passed out) on his arm and damaged his nerves so severely that doctors told him he would never play again. But he said, "fuck you man, I gotta rock" and through sheer will power regained his ability to bore the shit out of anyone with a shred of musical taste--which I now grant myself. In one song, "Symphony of Destruction" Mustain compares himself to the Pied Piper. By extension the people who buy his shit, or "follow" him are, metaphorically, rats--'nuff said.
Slayer sucked more than Megadeth, though the guy who pucked all over the floor in front of us between sets didn't seem to mind. Maybe I was just done, but Slayer didn't have a single redeeming musical quality. They could play loud and fast. How's that?
In fairness, this probably reads like a review of a steakhouse in a PETA publication, but there is nothing really redeeming about this kind of music. To each his own, but I really don't need to listen to songs about serial killers, the devil, or suicide--I think about these subjects too much as it is. Somewhere, among the tattoos of demonic goats, vomit drenched shoes, and NAZI symbolism, a lot of angry white people were trying to let out some pent up aggression. Perhaps metal is cathartic, but I'm not that pissed to begin with.

Vonnegut

When he died a few years ago, I felt pretty bad. Vonnegut had been one of my first loves. Slaughterhouse 5 was one of the few books I read in High School. Mr. Ellis, he named himself "El"Ellis, assigned in in A.P. English my senior year--and I actually read it. I read that, Light in August and Pride and Prejudice. Can you imagine. In any case, Vonnegut stole my heart. It was Vonnegut and the poetry of John Donne. I fell so deeply in love with Slaughterhouse 5 that I said "so it goes" to anyone who would listen for a year. This year, when I was thinking about what to assign for summer reading, I went rebel and assigned Welcome to the Monkey House. The other teachers were assigning Confederacy of Dunces, as bad a book as any fat fuck from LA ever wrote--I am glad he killed himself. Anyway, Vonnegut. I read the book over the summer, finished it today as we're going back to school next week--it was off the charts amazing. I've read "Harrison Bergeron" a dozen times, but the rest of the book is incredible. "Adam" is one of the most beautiful, touching stories I've ever read. I cried for 30 minutes after I read it. How could anyone, let alone a goyum, write a story about Jews and the Holocaust that beautiful? Vonnegut's sense of the human soul is unmatched. He must have been a wonderful man. As I child, I liked Bradbury. As I grew up, and read everything he wrote, I discovered he hated women. He does, you know. Every other story involves some fat, ugly whore who destroys a man's life. Even Bukowski liked women more that Bradbury. But not Vonnegut baby. I can't find who he hated, who he did wrong. Thank you Mr. Vonnegut. Thanks for giving me something to talk to my students about for the coming year. Thanks for caring so much about people. Thanks for not letting war turn you against mankind. I wish you had lived forever, instead of Bradbury. So it goes.

The Joys of Tannerite

Rexburg, ID is an unlikely heaven of vacation fun. The town itself is a bit tame for my taste--no bars, one liquor store (a broom closet in a gas station) and 40,000 Mormons, a number which has undoubtedly gone up since we left last week. There are no good restaurants, though we did find a good sandwich place in Rigby, down the road a spell. Rigby also has a larger (think walk-in closet) liquor store called "White Lightenin". In short there is almost no reason to go to Rexburg, which sits on the ass side of the Grand Tetons, unless you're a Mormon farmer or student at BYU Idaho. So how is it that the Coleman's ended up there again this year for a week's vacation? The Peters--Kate Peters, who I work with, and her husband John along with their kids, Andrew and Charlie. Kate's dad is part owner of a ranch complex outside of town. The ranch is on the most unusable, by conventional Mormon farmer standards, land in Idaho. Henry's Fork of the Snake River winds through the 400 acres of land that Kate's dad and two others own. It is full of swamp, woods, moose, mosquito's, trout, eagles, goats, shell casings, tire treads and mud. In other words, heaven. Heaven if you like riding OHV's at full throttle after drinking half a bottle of Seagrams 7 (don't ask, it was cheap at the broom closet), and it turns out that I do like doing that.

We (my boys, wife and the Peterses) spent week doing nothing but drinking, shooting, riding and repeating. Steve, Kate's dad, has supplied the property with every toy a person could want from the aforementioned OHV's to a two-wheel drive motorcycle (Rokon), a six wheeled amphibious craft, a sand rail, and the only fan boat in Idaho. All of these, not to mention the guns and ammo, were made available to us in addition to having John, the ranch manager, at our disposal. We went on the fan boat, to the St. Anthony sand dunes for a ride on the rail, and took 40 or 50 rides through the miles of trails on the property. The boys, 13 and 10, shot guns, drove cars, fished and wrestled--often all at the same time. My wife did all of the above as well, including the wrestling.

But that's not all, which brings me to the title of today's post. Tannerite is an explosive developed by some guy named Tanner. Anyone can buy it by the case and have it shipped to his home. It arrives as two compounds which then need to be mixed and placed in the explosive target container. That's right, I said target. Tannerite can only be ignited by being shot with a high-powered riffle. You can drop it, kick it and even shoot it with a .22 or pistol and nothing will happen; however, if you were to shoot it with a .25-06 riffle round (which I can't recommend enough) it makes as big a boom as should be legal in civilian life. Our target of choice this year was an old clothes dryer that had been replaced. The irony here is thick, given that the Colemans were out of our house for 6 weeks last year due to a dryer fire--this was payback. Julie, John and I took turns taking three round cracks at hitting the Tannerite in the middle of the dryer. John, the ranch manager, was our spotter. John Peters hit the target with a glancing blow, but it didn't blow, then we opened the drier door and I got lucky on my second shot. The dryer went up in the air, all four sides of it blown off. When it landed, the inside drum was the only thing left intact. Take that Whirlpool. That's for smoking every belonging I have. That's for sticking me and my family in a Residence Inn for a month and a half. That's for the lingering smoke smell on my entire library of books. I didn't think of it at the time, but I should have brought a piece of the dead dryer back to show the new dryer that I fucking mean business. Tannerite is therapeutic.

Thanks Kate and John, Steve, Andrew Charlie, Julie, Riley, Spencer, and the Mormon god for making Rexburg. It makes life worth living.

Good Night Sweet Prince

Daniel Shore died Friday, as most of you must know. I won't bore anyone with the details of his heroic (I don't use this term lightly) life, except to say that the release of leaked military documents this week, showing that the government is lying to us about everything in Afghanistan, harmonically converges with the passing of one of the bravest, truest journalists of the last half-century. Shore had the distinction of being on Richard Nixon's enemies list, finding that out by reading his own name on air while reading a leaked copy of said list. He went on to report on a leaked Pike Committee report detailing illegal CIA and FBI activities. When called before Congress to testify, Shore refused to name his source and was summarily fired by CBS. He didn't curl up and go away at that point; he kept going, to CNN and then to, as a commentator, NPR, where I knew him as the voice of aged reason, the best example of the wisdom of unfazed, old intellect.

That Wikileaks has published the latest litany of lies from the govment is proof, as if we needed any, that the Shores of our world are the true heroes and that they are not all dead--thank God. Thank you Mr. Shore for making me think while I listened to your broadcasts. Thank you for making me feel less alone and less of a malcontent. Thank you for what you did for our country, world. Your death reminded me of a passage from Shakespeare's Richard the Second Act II, i:

O', but they say the tounges of dying men

Enforce attention like deep harmony

Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,

For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

He that no more must say is listen'd more

Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;

More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:

The setting sun, and music at the close,

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,

Writ in remembrance more than things long past. . .

Goodnight Mr. Shore.

The Bowl

Anyone who lacks faith, or a reason to keep living surely didn't see She and Him perform last Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl. They weren't the headliners (The Swell Season), but, like all warm up acts at the Bowl, they were better. It isn't that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova were bad, it's just that I've seen them three times in the last two years and, I've been there. I bought these tickets because she and him were playing, along with The Bird and the Bee, who I thought included Eleni Mandell in addition to Inara George, but no such luck. The entire show was great, but it's hard to beat the sublime guitar playing and lyrical genius of M. Ward, especially when he has eye-candy, part-time actress Zoey Deschanel with him. The thing is, I like her look and her voice, but I would love to hear more of M. Ward's. His solo stuff is the best, and that's saying something. I saw him in Seattle with Monsters of Folk and I thought the same thing--let M. Ward have the stage by himself. My wife assures me that he's not bad to look at either, though I was bit to drunk to see very much anyway, which brings me to my real point: urinals.
I pee a lot. This is a natural bi-product of consuming 100 or so ounces of beer in a couple of hours, so I can't really blame the gods. My college roommate, who I went to the Monsters of Folk show with, is the only guy I know who pees more than I do, so we were a good pair. Now, I don't want to sound whiny, 'cause at least I don't have to sit to pee and am not forced to wait in ridiculously long lines at the bathroom, even at a big venue like the Hollywood Bowl. Still, I worry that with increased immigration and the natural changing of the generational guard, many of my fellow men are not aware of good etiquette when it comes to using stand up urinals or troughs. Enlightened self-interest compels me to share a small list of suggestions for your consideration. If you are a man (take a second now and check), or if you know one, please consider this list:

1. Never take the urinal next to a currently occupied place if possible. This is simple, don't stand next to me in an empty bathroom. It leads to stage fright, or, worse, the dreaded crossing of the streams. Besides, I frequently wear sandals to these things, and, while I have learned to appreciate my own splash back, I don't want to feel yours. The same rule applies to troughs, where you should keep a minimum of three feet the fuck away from me.

2. Look at the wall, or at your own junk. Never, under any circumstances, should you look down to your left or right. I have enough shit to worry about without wondering why you're looking at my dick. While we're on the subject, if you must talk to me while you're peeing, it had better be important. "Hey dude, the cops are checking people for drugs on the way out"--totally appropriate. "How's it hangin'?"--not so much. In any event, if you must talk to me have the decency to not make eye contact.

3. Don't judge me when I walk passed the sink. I didn't pee on my hands and my unit is clean. I have no need for soap and water. Similarly, don't announce loudly to your child that everyone should wash his hands, I know you're talking to me. I pee so much at a concert that my hands would be raw if I washed them every time.

4. Don't shit in a toilet near the urinals. Seriously, you have to shit at a concert. Lay off the dairy or jalapenos or whatever it is that makes it impossible for you to hold your shit for two hours. Here I'm having this magic moment with M. Ward and Zoey. I'm feeling great. But you have to interrupt the flow by taking a huge, grunting, paint melting shit while I take a pee. If you must shit, go all the way to the last available stall, do your business quickly, and, in this case, do wash your hands--an apology to everyone using the head on your way out is acceptable.

A Note on My 43rd Birthday

Going bald and simultaneously growing hair everywhere else on my body (yes, fucker, even the bottom of my feet) has given me a certain gracefulness about aging, which is to say I don't care much. I am still able to drink, piss, eat and as Shakespeare said, "make the beast with two backs"--and that's all the matters more or less. This year, as I have for the past three years, I had my birthday at Manhattan Beach's Pollywog Park Sunday Concert. This week's band was a local Reggae outfit, so the stars were aligned. My wife, as usual, took care of most of the particulars, which she manages to do with a smile. I need birthdays and they don't depress me as much as they allow me to act like my inner child for one day. For one day, I can drink as much as I want, say whatever comes to mind (which gets to be a bit much even for me) and dance like a fool. I was surrounded by friends, family and a whole park full of reasonably happy people--and I smiled. My friends, Brad and Natalie, bought me a shirt with the picture of the baby that Zack Galifianakas had strapped to his chest in The Hangover on the front. The shirt elicited more comments from random strangers than anything I have ever worn. I walked through the crowd, as drunk as 10,000 men (thanks Ed Gillespie) wearing my shirt and a shit-eating, glad-to-be-alive look on my face. It doesn't suck to get old, it just hurts a bit more after a hard workout and a bit less after a personal setback--trade off.

Birdcage 2: LeBron aux Folles

Has it come to this? Do we now have to endure a live TV broadcast, 25 minutes long, to announce where a 25 year old basketball player will sign his next contract? President Obama has held two official press conferences since taking office, but Lebron can take a half hour of prime time ESPN coverage to announce that he will be moving to Miami--a town with less soul than a ten year old pair of Birkenstocks. I will not wax nostalgic about that time when players stayed with the cities who loved them out of a sense of obligation or home, as, frankly, I have never known that time. Free agency in every sport has been around for as long as I can remember, and I'm not sure what the big fucking deal is anyway. Lebron James is a businessman, not an elected official or spiritual guru. He gave Cleavland longer than you or I would have and he played well for them. Still, let's face it, no Cleavland team in any sport has won a championship for 50 years. From what I know of the town, having driven through it twice, they never will. Cleavland is like Detroit, without the charm. I understand why Lebron wants to go to Miami and play with the Dwayne and the other guy I don't know anything about. He wants to win a championship, be the best at his profession and become a billionaire--wouldn't we celebrate this under other circumstances? I would say he has a good chance at becoming the billionaire if he wins the championships and keeps his nose clean. I was in Macao on in April and the only symbol of the West I saw was one of those building size Nike posters of Lebron with the caption: "Nice". My wife was convinced that it was a typo, but I think Nike probably checked it before they put it down forty stories of a building. Good luck Lebron and stay out of the strip joints--you never know what you're going to get.

4th of July

I'm a sucker for fireworks. I suppose this is not a terribly revelatory statement--but I have it bad. At the end of the my first marriage, I took the boys to Denver where my dad lives, without my soon to be ex, for a week. I drove straight through to Green River the first day, through Barstow, Vegas, Mesquite and even St. George, where any sensible person would stop on the first day out from L.A.. The boys were tired, and I had pushed them too hard. I was clearly getting the fuck out of Dodge with the two things that mattered most two me, one of whom convinced his brother to put a half-full juice box on my seat while I pumped gas at one of our "leisure" stops. I sat down in the car and felt a lukewarm rush of shitty apple juice hit my face and cascade down. This was a low point in my life, but I was surprised to find that I wasn't pissed. I laughed, Riley laughed and Spencer has never stopped laughing. If they were happy enough to fuck with me without real fear of physical harm, then I must be doing something right and life would go on.
Fireworks, sorry. We made it into Parker the next day on July 2nd and passed a hundred fireworks stores on our way to the Pinery. The kids noticed them. The next day, I took the boys back into town with my father's blessing and spent $150 on fireworks, which is a lot. I bought everything they had, not because I was trying to make the kids happy (juice boxes are cheaper), not because I wanted to drown my pain, not because I can't find anything to do with my massive teacher's salary, but because I like to blow shit up. I like to see colored fire, hear dog-deafening whistles and know that I lit the match. It just feels good.
On the way back from Denver (there were no juice boxes involved) we stopped at a Paiute Indian reservation between Mesquite and Las Vegas for one reason. These Indians don't have casinos, they have fireworks, and not the kind of "safe and sane" crap that we had in Colorado. The Paiute know how to party and must have a vacuum transit system to China, because this place is the final scene of Citizen Kane crane shot, only with fireworks instead of statues. We bought bottle rockets, M80's, and a brick of Black Cat firecrackers. When we got back to California, about a week before I moved out of the house I bought and painted and crawled under, replaced the toilets and killed the rats in, we had a little fun. I blew some shit up, illegal style. It was a final fuck you to my neighbors, my ex and the life I thought, at the time, was surely coming to an end. The juice box incident taught me that the kids would be fine, but it would take longer for me. As each Black Cat exploded, so many that the neighbors threatened to call the man, I blew up a little more of the dream.
It's been 7 years since that day, and therapy, age, a new (decidedly better) wife, have made things better. Look, we all have these stories. The fucked up times even outnumber the good for many of us, but, I swear, as I lay under the fireworks last night and watched shit explode with my second wife, my mother, her mother, my sister, her "dude who fathered her children", their kids, and not my children,who were two miles away with their mother, I know that it gets better. I'm happier today than I have ever been in life. Now if I could just stop people from wanting to play Lee Greenwood, but that will take longer.

Toy Story 3

The 3D aspect of this film was meaningless. The story was the ticket and it was an "E" ride. I went to see Toy Story 3 with my 10 year old son, Spencer, thinking that he would probably say it sucked and that I would catch some sleep behind the glasses--I've never been happier to be proven wrong. It isn't really that TS3 departed so sharply from the other fine films in the series, as much as it is that I may have forgotten how good those earlier films were. I was also reminded that reception of a film, physically and emotionally, depends on where you are and who you're with--no shit? In any case, I saw where this film was going with about 20 minutes left and didn't stop crying until the end. Spoiler Alert! The kid in the movie grows up, leaves his mom, sister and the toys (childhood) behind. I kept thinking of the 10 year old next to me growing up, leaving his toys, his room, his childhood, his father behind, and I wept. The film made me question, again, what role cinema plays in our lives. Does it instruct us, reflect our behavior, provide us a cathartic experience? TS3 with Spencer in tow did all of the above, even if I did have to pay extra for the glasses.

World Kup

I just got done watching the viral video that someone sent to Landon Donovan, which showed a montage of fans in U.S. bars, streets and living rooms reacting to his goal against Ghana that propelled the U.S. into the finals. After I got done crying (I cry in commercials), I asked myself why. Why am I crying from a viral video about a sport I've never played, though I have been watching the games? The answer is as immediate as a Spaniard's fall in response to the light touch of his opponent: I'm crying because we, the people of the United States, have nothing else. There is a pipe in the Gulf of Mexico that is currently spitting out the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez of oil a week into the ocean. 37 dying dolphins washed ashore today along the Gulf Coast. We have been in two wars for 8 years and our economy is third world. That's why the scenes of sheer joy in response to the scoring of a goal against a team from a country 1/100th the size of our own, which I have been a part of, look so much like a street scene from Calcutta on free lamb kabob day. We need this team like a liver transplant. It's as sad as it is wonderful.

Hong Kong

The picture says it all, really. Yes, I continue to be a child, long after I should be, with full intention, a child. Our week in Hong Kong was everything I could have hoped for. The city itself, equal parts amazing and terrifying (OZ and Blade Runner), provided so much stimuli that it has taken me this long to write about it, or perhaps I'm lazy. I mean it about that OZ and Blade Runner bit. HK is the furthest extent of consumer capitalism--Veblen would have a field day describing its conspicuous consumption. I have never seen so many Gucci, Prada, Rolex, etc. stores in such close proximity to each other. There were some places where you could see from one Prada to the next, and they are all busy. The millionaires of Hong Kong (a staggering 7% of the population) control 70% of the zone's wealth and it shows. For every Prada store, there are two or three high rise apartment buildings where life is undoubtedly less grand. In keeping with the Blade Runner model, the higher up you are in this city, the higher up you live. The streets are chaotic, small and crowded, and, in keeping with today's theme, the people speak a mix of English and Chinese that sounds like it came directly out of Blade Runner--or did BL come out of HK? In any case, the city is as much a wonder as a sign of the end times. We loved the food, the sights, the shopping at Temple Street's night market, the booze (there was plenty, the locals don't drink very much). I even got to love the Octopus, HK's transit system, and its crowded but efficient trains. I wasn't in love with the pollution, or its decided upon fix--surgical masks. I can only imagine what things are like on the less environmentally conscious mainland. But we weren't there for the booze, the trinket obtaining or even the sights. We were there to see a friend. I was there to spend time with two of my favorite people, who, despite my own dark visions of impending planetary doom, make me laugh and smile and want to go on living. I am reading Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House again as I just assigned it for my incoming English 3 students. I like Vonnegut, whose characters keep finding ways to defy the coming new world order. He gives me hope, in the same ways that Julie and Robert do. That's the best thing I found in Hong Kong.