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.