Smoking
Ever the enthusiast of landscaping machinery and culture, August has taken up smoking after spying a guy on a riding mower smoking. In his mind, if a lawn-mowing man finds it enjoyable, it must be good.
Any tube will serve as his cigarette, but he favors the small orange connecting rods from the tinkertoy set. They're all deformed now with crimped ends, like Swisher Sweets blunts. He's got smoking down. He gestures with his cigarette when he speaks, like a gangster.
He couldn't be more clear about the dangers of smoking ... actually, in typical August fashion, he's taken it to the next level, concluding that smoking "kills you," almost instantly. When we're out in public, if August sees someone smoking, he'll say, quite loudly "Daddy, that man has a cigarette! He's going to die!"
We've decided that weary bemusement is the only way to approach this.
7:59 AM
Testing, uploading all the date images for 2006
4:48 PM
ERGHHH
Well, that sucked. The past month or so this poor neglected blog has been lost to the vagaries of domain transfer. Finally, we're live again. Now I'm in the midst of switching over to Movable Type. Stay tuned.
Well, that sucked. The past month or so this poor neglected blog has been lost to the vagaries of domain transfer. Finally, we're live again. Now I'm in the midst of switching over to Movable Type. Stay tuned.
9:59 PM
Angelic
Amidst all my emotional turmoil, starting with abject disgust and presently stuck in catatonia, I had the following exchange with August:
August: [singing, in a soft, sweet, and angelic voice, nonsense, on the stairs one evening] "laliseegoinglatinkywoobahhhlilowlieli"
Me: "August, what a beautiful song you're singing!"
August: "Yaw, I singing song about Sondra."
Me: ?
August: "Yaw, because I don't like her."
Ahhh, the power of not needing make any sense.
Amidst all my emotional turmoil, starting with abject disgust and presently stuck in catatonia, I had the following exchange with August:
August: [singing, in a soft, sweet, and angelic voice, nonsense, on the stairs one evening] "laliseegoinglatinkywoobahhhlilowlieli"
Me: "August, what a beautiful song you're singing!"
August: "Yaw, I singing song about Sondra."
Me: ?
August: "Yaw, because I don't like her."
Ahhh, the power of not needing make any sense.
1:16 PM
Nerdism, and its Discontents
A colleague, she of the trenchant Blackberry, forwarded me an email in which she described me to the recipient as being "nerdy, but in a charming way." She told me this was high praise, but I wrestled with it for the rest of the day, before coming to peace with it.
The episode led me on a journey with many sideways excursions down memory lane.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that not only was I a nerd, but that I can remember the precise instant I became one. It was October 14th, 1978. I was in 8th grade and living in Ohio. I used to love to watch Saturday Night Live, and on Ocotober 14th, Devo was the musical guest.
I don't remember much except that I have a very clear picture in my mind of how strange they looked, and I remember, also with great clarity, how unsettled it made me feel. But it wasn't exactly an unpleasant feeling. More like a realization that every thing you thought was normal was now cast in a different light.
They were aggressively spastic, so not cool - in the 1978 rock 'n' roll sense of cool - that they were an affront. I remember having a very strong aesthetic reaction to their appearance, to their sawed-off guitars that had too many wires held on with electrical tape, and their matching yellow industrial jump suits. They had short hair and glasses ... or maybe they were welding goggles. They were playing a cover of the Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction" but it was all wrong. Instead of the soulful, mid-tempo blues rock of the Stones, it was sped-up, and ridiculously jerky ... jagged, abrupt, guitar playing, and the chords were messed up. I hated it, it was too much for my young mind, but it made a life-changing impression on me. Something about it stuck in my head. I bought the record maybe a month later.
To me, at least, Devo were the proto nerds. Up to that point, I was a bookish kid who also excelled at sports. And I was big, going through puberty earlier than most of my classmates. So the atheticism and pubescent vanguardism gained me entry to the most desirable cliques. But I knew that I was, um, a little different. I loved science fiction, and I devoured everything I could get my hands on. I would get so immersed in my reading that my parents had a great deal of difficulty simply getting me to move around the house to, say, eat a meal.
At about the same time, although it must have been 7th grade, my English teacher gave me Samuel Delaney's "Dhalgren," suggesting that I read it and explain it to him, because he couldn't make sense of it. I can see why. It was not really an appropriate work for a 7th grader to read, and I have to admire his decision to share it with me, especially because he actualy had read it. But we never spoke about it. So maybe I was on my way, ready for the tipping point.
"Dhalgren" is an amazing book, really, and it foreshadowed meta-fiction in a way that I don't think it gets adequate notice for. It has a decidedly punk aesthetic, although written in 1977 I'm not sure how much Delaney would have been striving to respond to punk so much as he was seizing on whatever it was that making punk possible. It was like nothing I had ever read before. I re-read it a few years ago and was amazed that I actually got through it as a 7th grader. It's funny, but I'm equally not sure I would want my sons to read something like that at such a tender age while being truly grateful that I did.
So, back to Devo. Seeing them made me feel like my bookishness, my affinity for odd, slanted things, my enthusiasm for arcana, was okay, was good. As soon as I got over the shock, I secretly admired them, and aspired to be like them.
I got a little thrill more recently by "24 Hour Party People," a kind of fake documentary about the Factory records hey day. There's a scene in which Joy Division is supposed to be playing the Hacienda, Factory's sort-of built-in night club, and the song is "She's Lost Control" and I got a chill down my spine watching the actor playing Ian Curtis jerk around the stage as if beset by seizure, over-the-top tense and menacing and brilliant.
Finally, over a few beers with yet another group of colleagues, all about my age, I relayed the story about being called a nerd, mostly to have fun at my own expense, and the only one among us with kids in middle school said "you don't understand, my daughter calls me a nerd all the time, what you don't want to be is a dork."
They make that disctinction?
There's hope then.
A colleague, she of the trenchant Blackberry, forwarded me an email in which she described me to the recipient as being "nerdy, but in a charming way." She told me this was high praise, but I wrestled with it for the rest of the day, before coming to peace with it.
The episode led me on a journey with many sideways excursions down memory lane.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that not only was I a nerd, but that I can remember the precise instant I became one. It was October 14th, 1978. I was in 8th grade and living in Ohio. I used to love to watch Saturday Night Live, and on Ocotober 14th, Devo was the musical guest.
I don't remember much except that I have a very clear picture in my mind of how strange they looked, and I remember, also with great clarity, how unsettled it made me feel. But it wasn't exactly an unpleasant feeling. More like a realization that every thing you thought was normal was now cast in a different light.
They were aggressively spastic, so not cool - in the 1978 rock 'n' roll sense of cool - that they were an affront. I remember having a very strong aesthetic reaction to their appearance, to their sawed-off guitars that had too many wires held on with electrical tape, and their matching yellow industrial jump suits. They had short hair and glasses ... or maybe they were welding goggles. They were playing a cover of the Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction" but it was all wrong. Instead of the soulful, mid-tempo blues rock of the Stones, it was sped-up, and ridiculously jerky ... jagged, abrupt, guitar playing, and the chords were messed up. I hated it, it was too much for my young mind, but it made a life-changing impression on me. Something about it stuck in my head. I bought the record maybe a month later.
To me, at least, Devo were the proto nerds. Up to that point, I was a bookish kid who also excelled at sports. And I was big, going through puberty earlier than most of my classmates. So the atheticism and pubescent vanguardism gained me entry to the most desirable cliques. But I knew that I was, um, a little different. I loved science fiction, and I devoured everything I could get my hands on. I would get so immersed in my reading that my parents had a great deal of difficulty simply getting me to move around the house to, say, eat a meal.
At about the same time, although it must have been 7th grade, my English teacher gave me Samuel Delaney's "Dhalgren," suggesting that I read it and explain it to him, because he couldn't make sense of it. I can see why. It was not really an appropriate work for a 7th grader to read, and I have to admire his decision to share it with me, especially because he actualy had read it. But we never spoke about it. So maybe I was on my way, ready for the tipping point."Dhalgren" is an amazing book, really, and it foreshadowed meta-fiction in a way that I don't think it gets adequate notice for. It has a decidedly punk aesthetic, although written in 1977 I'm not sure how much Delaney would have been striving to respond to punk so much as he was seizing on whatever it was that making punk possible. It was like nothing I had ever read before. I re-read it a few years ago and was amazed that I actually got through it as a 7th grader. It's funny, but I'm equally not sure I would want my sons to read something like that at such a tender age while being truly grateful that I did.
So, back to Devo. Seeing them made me feel like my bookishness, my affinity for odd, slanted things, my enthusiasm for arcana, was okay, was good. As soon as I got over the shock, I secretly admired them, and aspired to be like them.
I got a little thrill more recently by "24 Hour Party People," a kind of fake documentary about the Factory records hey day. There's a scene in which Joy Division is supposed to be playing the Hacienda, Factory's sort-of built-in night club, and the song is "She's Lost Control" and I got a chill down my spine watching the actor playing Ian Curtis jerk around the stage as if beset by seizure, over-the-top tense and menacing and brilliant.
Finally, over a few beers with yet another group of colleagues, all about my age, I relayed the story about being called a nerd, mostly to have fun at my own expense, and the only one among us with kids in middle school said "you don't understand, my daughter calls me a nerd all the time, what you don't want to be is a dork."
They make that disctinction?
There's hope then.
8:59 PM
- Upon leaving the station, looking down the street and seeing August's little head peeking up in the car window, scanning for me. He sees me, and begins to excitedly point me out to Eliza. A silent celebration, until she lowers the window and I can hear him exhorting her to "look! is daddy! is daddy mommy!"
- The way Rob Zombie sings "yeah"
- A margarita, made by hand, with Cointreau, an Añejo tequilla, organic lime juice, and a very small amount of simple syrup to take the edge off the lime. Enjoyed with company, the tongue loosens
- The gentleman spied at downtown crossing in a moleskin blazer, black jeans, riding an English 3-speed, with his folio neatly lashed to rear rack
- Dylan, this weekend, learning to ride his bike without training wheels, in the span of 40 minutes. Throughout the day, he will request approximately seventy times that we practice again. Finally, in the last hour of daylight, we head to the basketball court where I stand in the jump ball circle as he rides figure eights around me
- A surprise invitation from Jacob to come over to watch the Patriots opening game. He is an Orthodox Jew and keeps a strict kosher house. Somehow, there are two beers in the fridge, which I am immediately offered. He has one too. Peace among men.
- Neighbor Dana sees me cleaning and waxing the chain on my fixed gear and asks if I can take a look at Caroline's bike chain, which has slipped off and is resisting all attempts to reattach it. I take the fixed gear off my work stand and load up Caroline's Barbie bicycle. It has track forks. After attaching the chain, and giving it a squirt of lube, I align the axle and level the training wheels. Barbie rides again.
- Dave, whose company is tasked with cleaning up the sewage that has been flooding our finished basement, and who has known me for all of three minutes, tells me that he is scheduled for a vasectomy in two weeks and that he cannot take antacids or else his "balls will blow up"
- The idea of driving our Subaru, our only car, for another five years, suddenly striking me as hip
- The beard no longer itches
9:30 PM
Radio WILR - Stereo 112.7
The iPod's many virtues are well-documented, and I've certainly enjoyed its portability, form-factor, and splendid user interface.
But it wasn't until I started listening to my music in shuffle mode that I felt it had changed my life ...It's like my own personal radio station, playing me back to myself.
When I was younger, and living in Jersey City, I used to love to listen to WFMU, one of the finest radio stations in the country, and notable for, among other things, having no pre-programmed format. You never knew what you'd hear.
In those days, I would assemble mix tapes with religious fervor, carefully assembling what I considered to be unlikely, but strangely appropriate, juxtapositions of tracks. I revelled in pursuing the odd-ball combination that would elicit surprise, but without being disjunctive.
True, most portable digital music devices have some kind of shuffle function, so the fact that it exists in the iPod is hardly worth mentioning. But the fact that the iPod holds so much music, even my first generation iPod will hold more than 1,000 songs, changes everthing for me.
The randomness creates juxtapositions I would never come up with myself. Listening to my music without consideration for juxtaposition, or genre, or album, or artist, is like listening to my own thoughts, or my own history, unordered. And whereas my mix tapes were necessarily composed of things I really liked, the shuffle mode presents me with combinations of tracks I love and those I never thought much of. I'm redisicovering things I'd dismissed in the past.
So, for example, I decided to jot down the songs presented to me on my commute home. In chronological order:
Underworld: Two Months Off (Radio Edit)
Sondre Lerche: You Know So Well
Towa Tei: Angel
The White Stripes: Sugar Never Tasted So Good
Chin Chillaz: Trinity
Boards of Canada: Olson
Tom Waits: Jesus Gonna Be Here
John Mayer: Back to You
Michael Torke: The Yellow Pages
The segue from Boards of Canada to Tom Waits was flat out weird, but it worked. John Mayer to Michael Torke just didn't, but it was a hoot to hear Torke, a modern American composer perhaps comparable to Philip Glass, in this ad hoc set.
And when I get tired of all these songs and off-beat pairings, I'll swipe them out for another 1,000 songs, waiting to be discovered on my big drive at home. Now that's a killer app.
The iPod's many virtues are well-documented, and I've certainly enjoyed its portability, form-factor, and splendid user interface.
But it wasn't until I started listening to my music in shuffle mode that I felt it had changed my life ...It's like my own personal radio station, playing me back to myself.
When I was younger, and living in Jersey City, I used to love to listen to WFMU, one of the finest radio stations in the country, and notable for, among other things, having no pre-programmed format. You never knew what you'd hear.
In those days, I would assemble mix tapes with religious fervor, carefully assembling what I considered to be unlikely, but strangely appropriate, juxtapositions of tracks. I revelled in pursuing the odd-ball combination that would elicit surprise, but without being disjunctive.
True, most portable digital music devices have some kind of shuffle function, so the fact that it exists in the iPod is hardly worth mentioning. But the fact that the iPod holds so much music, even my first generation iPod will hold more than 1,000 songs, changes everthing for me.
The randomness creates juxtapositions I would never come up with myself. Listening to my music without consideration for juxtaposition, or genre, or album, or artist, is like listening to my own thoughts, or my own history, unordered. And whereas my mix tapes were necessarily composed of things I really liked, the shuffle mode presents me with combinations of tracks I love and those I never thought much of. I'm redisicovering things I'd dismissed in the past.
So, for example, I decided to jot down the songs presented to me on my commute home. In chronological order:
Underworld: Two Months Off (Radio Edit)
Sondre Lerche: You Know So Well
Towa Tei: Angel
The White Stripes: Sugar Never Tasted So Good
Chin Chillaz: Trinity
Boards of Canada: Olson
Tom Waits: Jesus Gonna Be Here
John Mayer: Back to You
Michael Torke: The Yellow Pages
The segue from Boards of Canada to Tom Waits was flat out weird, but it worked. John Mayer to Michael Torke just didn't, but it was a hoot to hear Torke, a modern American composer perhaps comparable to Philip Glass, in this ad hoc set.
And when I get tired of all these songs and off-beat pairings, I'll swipe them out for another 1,000 songs, waiting to be discovered on my big drive at home. Now that's a killer app.
8:33 PM
