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Sunday, February 7th, 2010
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12:04 pm - recurring dream
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I wanted to write about my most common recurring dream. As a child, I used to have a recurring horrific nightmare and thankfully, that one hasn't emerged since 2002 when I was sick and fell asleep on a futon in the middle of a summer day. I'm pretty sure that my fever and the warmth of the afternoon temporarily boiled my brain and this old piece of flotsam rose to the surface. The other one (benign and relatively peaceful) has become increasingly common to the point where I might start dreading its unoriginality--but that won't happen. It's set in a fictional metropolis. Only recently did I figure out that I designed this city as a perfect locale where everything is created with my preferences in mind. There's no plot to the dreams set in this city, I'm simply wandering around. Sometimes I'm in a car or on a bike, but usually I'm on foot. I've been there so often, I can describe the city in detail.
The video store still deals primarily in VHS and I seem to have invented most of the titles out of whole-cloth. This store used to have an adults-only area and you had to crawl through a short door to get to it. Although I seem to remember that there was (softcore) pornography in this room, the adult-only horror movies were also stored here. They have since renovated, and this area no longer exists. A few miles outside of town is a lovely (albeit foggy) beach, a river, and forest trails. For some reason, the river has crocodiles and water buffalo. The zoo seems to be poorly staffed and poorly maintained, but the animals seem happy enough. The staff at the hamburger joint are consistently rude -- but the food's so good.
The mall (several stories tall) is impossible to navigate and I regularly get lost trying to find my car. The mall's toy store carries toys that are variants on toys that I enjoyed when I was very young (Star Wars), its video game arcade is filled with games that I seem to have invented myself... including one where Hulk Hogan fights crime... The amusement park has a monorail, a log flume ride with a drop that lasts something like five minutes, and terrifying rollercoasters. (I don't even like rollercoasters (but apparently I do)). There's an Eiffel Tower-like structure in the middle of the city's ocean, and while you climb ladders to get up it, you have to jump off of it (into the water) to get down. The library and the used bookstore has (fictional) LPs that I never purchase. The last time I "visited" this bookstore, I was with my father and I commented to him that the last time I was here, I was with my ex-girlfriend. (I can't remember ever doing this.) Also, the owner of the bookstore immediately pointed me to the section where he thought I wanted to go (graphic novels). I resented his assumption. Another time I woke up cursing myself for putting the records down and not putting them "on hold."
Some of these places seem to have been pieced together from other real-life examples in my mind, which makes sense. For example, the CD retailer resembles the one where I used to work in Mountain View, Calif. There are teachers I recognize working at the elementary school. The student lounges on the college campus are a lot like the ones from my four years at Lewis & Clark College, but the dorms are gigantic and the hallways are so narrow that one is constantly bumping into people. The residential areas have elements of Portland and elements of my hometown in California. A few times, I've entered the homes of strangers. I can't remember why, but I never have any "In Cold Blood" intentions. It's like I'm just passing through.
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| Sunday, January 10th, 2010
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8:45 pm - Shame! Oh, wait!
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At the beginning of the The Simpsons anniversary TV special, narrator/director Morgan Spurlock mentioned "NW Lovejoy St" as one of the things influenced by the Simpsons phenomena. Nice research, Fox writers.
Edit: oh wait, they just spoke at length at the fact that Portland influenced the Simpsons. Not the other way around.
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| Thursday, January 7th, 2010
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7:30 pm - oh, the things you find when you're looking through old computer folders
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This dates back to probably 2000 or 2001, when I was living with college friends:
My best friend loves his girlfriend
and I asked him, does he love his girlfriend as much as, say,
he loves cheddar cheese? Because he does love that:
he buys large blocks of cheddar every time he goes to the grocery store.
Is his girlfriend good with crackers? I continued.
You should ask her, I said, or
you could slice her into small cubes
and buy some Wheat Thins
and eat crackers with her.
Or you could buy the Wheat Thins first.
It's a different kind of love, he said, and turned on the TV.
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| Thursday, December 24th, 2009
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12:57 pm - What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him
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In downtown Portland, there used to a billboard advertising two State Farm insurance agents, one male and one female. They smiled down on motorists accompanied by their phone numbers in case you want to call them while you drive toward SW Burnside to get a drink at Mary's Nude Revue (or wherever you're going). I don't know if insurance agents and realtors have indisputable data that proves that plastering their mugs on bus stop benches and large signs along major roads increase their revenue, but that's not why I'm mentioning this. I'm mentioning this because the female insurance agent's name was Angel Devllin. I have added an extra letter in this name so that Ms. Devllin and her family/friends/clients do not find this blog when they're bored and Google her name... because I plan to go off a little.
If she was born with this name, did her parents think that they were being funny? When parents include a pun in their child's name (we all have our (least) "favorite," no need for examples here), do they understand that they are naming a human being and not a guinea pig? If Ms. Devillin's parents were responsible for this name, I want their sense of humor surgically extracted from their brain. With a rusty spoon found on a beach. Imagine Mrs. Devillin speaking to Mr. Devillin while holding their still bloody newborn: "Let's name her Angel! That will be funny!" "You're right!" Mr. Devillin replies. "This clever joke will be with our daughter for the rest of her life, until she dies, when it'll be etched into her headstone." "What about all of the lame jokes she will get about her name?" "It will build character, my darling."
Adult film starlets weren't around when Ms. Devillin was a child in the mid-1950's, but strippers existed. You could imagine someone named Angel Devillin working at Jack Ruby's Carousel club in Dallas, circa 1962. And tell me, with a straight face, that you wouldn't circle this name if you were playing a rousing game of "Guess the Actual Porn Star Names" in an issue of Maxim.
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| Thursday, December 10th, 2009
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12:46 am
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Who would win in a fight: Samantha Morton or Emily Watson?
Tilda Swinton can serve as the referee.
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| Saturday, December 5th, 2009
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11:15 pm - Terrible Movies I Saw In The Theater (part II)
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"IF LOOKS COULD KILL" (1991)
This poor man's version of "Gotcha!" starred Linda Hunt as the voice of Grandmother Willow and breakthrough "21 Jump Street" co-star Richard Grieco as a 26-year-old wise-cracking high school senior turned CIA agent (through a case of wacky mistaken identity!). Hey, god knows no one else from "21 Jump Street" ever went on to do anything notable. Why did I see this movie, especially since it was marketed toward teenage girls who enjoyed Grieco's swarthy good looks? The answer is lingerie. In the commercial, Grieco's character puts on a pair of x-ray specs while sitting at a casino table and is promptly able to see the underwear of the woman across the table from him. Now, as sad as this is, I'd prefer to believe that this is the only thing I remember from the movie, but I also remember that Linda Hunt was kicked off a helicopter by the villain, Roger Rees from "Cheers." The truth of the matter is that I must have been deathly bored over spring break in 1991 and it's what I decided to see on a rather idiotic whim, influenced by the promise of Bond-style gadgetry and ladies underwear.
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| Thursday, November 19th, 2009
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8:16 pm - summer camp 1988
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In 1988, when I was 12, my parents sent me to a summer camp for the first time. It must have been a summer camp on a budget. All of the girls and all of the younger children slept in large clean buildings with gym-type floors, well-lit, with impossibly high ceilings. My peer group left in drafty army surplus tents on a nearby knoll that was composed entirely of loose infertile Dust Bowl type material. In fact, the whole camp was dusty. I can't tell you if there was an adjacent lake but I remember the lousy sleeping conditions.
One afternoon, a large group of kids went on a creek walk. What is a creek walk? It should be self-explanatory. Somehow, three of us got separated from the group. There wasn't any reason to be concerned, as I didn't anticipate we'd be very lost for very long. We'd just have to follow the creek until we rejoined the rest of our camp mates and the (clearly incompetent) counselor leaders. This trio consisted of me, a boy around 7 years old, and a girl from my same age. I don't remember her real name, so we're going to call her Claudia. I remember that Claudia was very cute. And if not for this tiny child, we'd be alone together. I hadn't planned this, but it was a nice coincidence. For the record, I never considered a plan where we would ditch the child and go off somewhere for illicit hugging.
Claudia was the first person to declare that we were lost. "We're not lost," I insisted. "We'll be fine. Don't be dramatic. You're going to scare the kid, sweetheart." I probably didn't use those exact words. But that was the gist. Fifteen minutes later, we rejoined the rest of our creek walking comrades. And Claudia couldn't have been more complimentary. "Roy saved us," she told anyone who would listen. "He kept his cool. We were lost! He remained frosty in the clutch!" Again, maybe not her exact words, but that was the gist.
Later that day, after dinner, she brought it up again. She kept going. I was praised every which way. Dinner was either Sloppy Joes or spaghetti because those are the only two dishes I recall eating. This was the sort of spaghetti that was served out of a large plastic barrel. Moral of the story: Claudia possibly had a crush on me as a result as my "saving" her, and I ignored this completely because I was a complete idiot. At 12 years old, I was a lifesaving "player" and totally unaware.
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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9:00 pm - Terrible Movies I Saw In The Theater (introduction and part I)
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To be perfectly fair, you used to be able to see a matinee for $3.50. And with that statement, I have officially earned the "crotchety" moniker. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Considering how bitter I am toward most everything (excepting Star Wars and Reuben sandwiches), I'm frankly stunned that this is the first time I've complained about how things were cheaper when I was younger, back in 1928. Anyone over 30 is bound to try a joke where they vastly exaggerate the decade when they grew up. My family used to gather weekly to watch "The Cosby Show." There. True and educational. No exaggeration there at all.
"THE LAWNMOWER MAN" (1991)
This was also the first R-rated movie I saw alone in the theater. When I was turned away by the cashier (being only 15 at the time), it would have occurred to most young teenagers to buy a ticket for "Wayne's World" (which I'd already seen) and sneak into "The Lawnmower Man." This did not occur to me.
What I did instead was that I found an adult to temporarily adopt me as his ward. "Excuse me, by any chance, are you here to see 'Lawnmower Man'?" I asked the first adult I encountered. "Yeah," the very tall adult said. (I remember him as being about seven feet tall and Marc Singer-esque) "Can I say I'm with you so I can see it?" I asked. "I didn't know it was rated R [a lie]." He agreed, shrugging benevolently. When I did buy my ticket (from a different cashier), I was questioned as to my age again, and I indicated the guy standing behind me: "I'm with him." When we entered the theater together, I was probably skipping. My brief adult companion never bought a ticket. He just flashed something in his wallet at the ticket attendant and walked in. I hadn't known real cool until this afternoon.
I told this story at a recent party and when I praised the experience/movie, my friend Steve said "It's a fucking terrible movie and you know it." Yes, I know it, but (to use another example), I didn't recognize how bad "Titanic" was when I saw it for the first time because it was Christmas Eve 1997 and the theater was packed and dude, everyone was crying, not just me. The overall moviegoing experience has to be factored, regardless of the movie's actual quality. I loved "Lawnmower Man" because I had to quickly employ (however mild) subterfuge to get into the movie. And why wouldn't I love this movie? It had almost 10 minutes of cutting-edge computer animation and the bare semblance of a plot. And it wasn't "Tron."
This movie shares a title with a short story by Stephen King and was originally released as "Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man", but the only connecting tissue is that his story and this movie both have lawnmower men characters. King sued New Line Cinema to have his name removed from the movie, and eventually won the case. Wikipedia remarks that "the film's original script...was titled 'Cyber God' and had nothing to do with King's story. New Line held the film rights to King's short story, and decided to combine Cyber God with some very minor elements of King's story." 'Minor elements' is more credit than it deserves. In the original short story, the lawnmower man is a satyr, employed by Pan, with a giant lawnmower that drives itself, capable of inflicting death. In the movie, the lawnmower man is a mentally handicapped lawnmowing person who eventually drives a lawnmower using telekinesis. Oh, and a lawnmower kills someone.
Like "If Looks Could Kill," it stars another TV star from the 1980's, Pierce Bronson. Bronson plays a scientist with good intentions and questionable techniques. Jeff Fahey plays the mentally-challenged titular character Jobe, a modern day Lenny with a love for monkeys, video games, and um, lawnmowers. Bronson's character uses a virtual reality program to increase Jobe's intelligence -- but of course, there's terrifying side effects. Specifically, Jobe develops telekinetic powers and then bonds with the computer program itself. In this last act, the primitively CGI'ed Jobe delivers the line that I'd utilize ad nauseam when I was feeling like a megalomaniac: "I am god here!" It was the "I know kung fu" of its time (if only to me).
In 1991, we actually thought that virtual reality video games were right around the corner. Massive virtual-reality gyroscopes would be in every family's living room. TV would be interactive. You wouldn't just watch "Cheers"--you'd be there with Cliff and Norm. This never happened. I rewatched some of the movie prior to writing this piece, and it turns out there's unclothed breasts in the film's only sex scene. I don't remember this at all. I did remember the subsequent scene that takes place in the virtual reality world where Jobe and his new girlfriend turn into a dragonfly together before he accidentally turns her brain into so much jelly. You wouldn't think I'd forget naked breasts in 1991.
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| Monday, November 9th, 2009
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2:46 pm - future dreams
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When I was a little, I wanted to be a surgeon specializing in gender reassignment. But I just couldn't pull it off. Then I wanted to be a mohel. But I just couldn't cut it.
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| Sunday, September 27th, 2009
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9:25 pm - I've been listening to "Les Miserables" a lot lately
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Woman #1:
Did you see them
Going off to fight?
Woman #2:
Children of the barricade
Who didn't last the night?
Woman #3:
Did you see them
Lying where they died?
Woman #4:
Yes! Dude. What a mess.
I'm pretty sure I stepped on Éponine's liver.
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| Friday, August 28th, 2009
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1:37 pm
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I know everyone is eulogizing Ted Kennedy this week, but for what it's worth, I will always remember him for his incredible skills as a dancer.
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| Friday, August 14th, 2009
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11:58 pm - nothing at all like a really small Vegas right on the ocean
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I know I live in a city named "Portland" which is as literal as city names come, but after visiting Seaside, Oregon for the second time in my 15 years of Oregon residency, I think it should change its name to something more 1. unique and 2. even more fitting. Like, for example, "Elderly People Playing Skeeball City" or "Nothing But Taffyville"
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| Thursday, July 30th, 2009
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6:56 pm - From the "I would have blogged about this if I had a blog in 1992" file:
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When I review poems for the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal (using a name that's entirely facetious), I identify the authors by their first name only. Sometimes, if the first name seems particularly unique, I'll take the liberty of changing their name or just substituting their initial. If I used their first name in the review, the author might unwittingly stumble upon their reviewed poem, after searching for their own name in Google. And then I would inevitably go to jail for several shiv-filled months. And I don't want that to happen. I've seen every single of episode of "Oz."
That having been said, I'm tempted to use the full name of a particular person in this post, on the off-chance they'd find this post after a Google query. If she's married, she'd have to search her original name. Complicating matters, when I knew her (B), her last name was hyphenated. If I search her name now, the only result I get is an ancient track and field result sheet, scanned and imported into a PDF file. I doubt she would remember me, I only knew her for that one year. And she's not only acquaintance from my teenage years who has managed to to keep themselves "invisible" to Google's bots.
But B frustrates me particularly because we were friends throughout our 8th grade year and then I never saw her again. I thought about her a lot during the summer between 8th and 9th grade. She went to a different high school, and I suspect her family moved away at a certain point. Her house was on the route that I took when biking to the library. Honestly, I don't remember how I knew this was her house, but I regularly took that route in the vain hope that I'd encounter her by coincidence. B's younger sister once tossed a sarcastic and decidedly unfriendly "hi" at me from their driveway. I took this "hi" to mean that the occupants knew that I was regularly pedaling past their house (I traveled to the library very often the years 1990-1995) so I got into the habit of taking a different route.
My ex-girlfriend asked me why I'd want to find B at all. I muttered something non-committal, but the correct answer is that I'd like to say hello and I hope wherever she is, she's doing well. My intentions do not extend farther than that. She wasn't a close friend of mine in 8th grade, but she was a good friend at a age when female friends were a novelty. Because I'm a hopelessly sentimental sort of guy, B would qualify as being important for that reason alone, but I also danced with her for four minute at the 8th grade graduation dance and I feel that this was was one of my few purely beautiful moments from my otherwise angst-filled/neurotic teenage years. Given that nothing of particular significance occurred between us for those four minutes, it may be difficult for me to convey why it made me sing the body electric for years afterward. If she kissed me on the cheek afterward, or I managed to put together a sentence where I told her how much I appreciated her feminine friendship in Journalism and Pre-Algebra, the story would improve.
The two of us were standing near the auditorium's stage, having a conversation, when I spontaneously asked B if she would like to dance. Given our friendship, I was confident that she wouldn't reject my invitation, and she didn't. I put my hands around her waist and she put her arms lightly on my shoulders (probably something like this image on Flickr -- I don't know either of these Minnesota students, but they will serve as an example) -- the traditional pose. The song was MC Hammer's cover of "Have You Seen Her" (originally by the Chi-Lites in 1971), from the "Please, Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em" album. Given that nothing of huge significance occurred between us for those four minutes, it may be difficult for me to convey why it made my sing the body electric for years afterward.
( Why indeed? )
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| Friday, July 24th, 2009
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10:51 pm - to my least favorite bimbo on the planet
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Dear Megan Fox,
Do you remember Shannon Elizabeth? Neither does anyone else.
I insist you save us a whole lot of trouble and quit now.
Thank you.
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| Sunday, July 19th, 2009
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12:30 pm - And she's lovin' him with that body I just know it
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I never will have a mega-hit in the early 80's with the power-pop song "Jessie's Girl" but on the bright side, I will never look this miserable on a billboard for Oregon's Spirit Mountain Casino (and presumably other billboards for other casinos throughout the United States). What happened right before this picture was taken? Did someone tell Rick Springfield that he lost his farm to a bank? Had he just watched "Old Yeller" for the first time?
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| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
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7:56 pm - soon to be *not* featured on an episode of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me"
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A rather hilarious (also juvenille)/horrible Freudian slip on today's episode of "All Things Considered" on NPR. I'm frankly flummoxed that they didn't cut it out in post. Host Robert Siegel is interviewing NPR's senior Washington editor Ron Elving on the balance of the Senate after Al Franken's win today...and then this happens (30 seconds, NSFW).
(see a post in the comments if you would rather read a short transcript.)
I don't know how much hazing goes on in the Washington headquarters. I imagine he doesn't have to worry about some sort of a business card showing up on his desk. Ron Elving, president and CEO of... well, you'll hear it for yourself.
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| Saturday, June 20th, 2009
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11:21 am - an overheard conversation in which I was involved
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INTERIOR: Tugboat Brewing, downtown Portland, Oregon
I am drinking a beer at the bar, tended by my friend Linsel. My friend Mason is sitting nearby.
Me: Jeez, I have to pee again. What the hell.
Mason: Maybe you're pregnant.
(I contemplate this for a moment)
Me: (brightly) That means I've been having sex!
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| Friday, June 12th, 2009
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8:39 pm - a story from the long past
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Every spring, the Music School in Sunnyvale, California would produce a massive musical revue, starring all the students from all the age groups. Sometimes these musicals would include a vague plot, sometimes not. When I was 12, I scored a solo in their smaller summer production where I’d sing the lead in "T.E.A.M (The Baseball Game)" from "You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown."
This show's director, Jill, was a junior high school choir teacher and the daughter of the Music School’s president. Her potential wrath was legendary. This wrath wasn;t often directed at me, because for the most part, I was obedient without being smugly virtuous. That is, I chose to goof off when Jill was nowhere nearby. But she was still intimidating. You listened to her direction and you did not goof off during rehearsals – or you lost your solo. A few years after this summer show, Jill would kick me off of my solo in an adaptation of "Skimbleshanks" from "Cats" – in a show that she wasn’t even directing. She didn’t think my voice was strong enough. (I got it back when the actual director decided to defy Jill's advice).
In "T.E.A.M (The Baseball Game)", Charlie Brown sits down to write a letter to his pen pal describing what happened in the day's (ultimately tragic) championship baseball game. Jill staged it with me sitting on a bench on the far left of the stage, writing the letter, while the action was pantomimed (as a flashback) at center stage. The mimed baseball game would pause to sing the chorus after each verse. I loved how this was setup, and not just because I didn’t have to learn any of the choreography. I loved that there were several of my peers acting out what I was singing. I loved that my friend Chris was playing me. And the staging had a certain artistic flair, like I was Billy Joel in the music video for "We Didn’t Start the Fire".
This is the final verse of the song:
Two men were on -- with two outs and me
With one strike to go…
Then I saw her -- this cute little red-headed girl I know
Firmly I vowed I would win it for her
and I shouldered my bat and I swung...!
Chris, playing me, swings and misses. He and the rest of the actors leave the stage, some pantomiming a celebration, the others despairing. I am left alone. I’ve always loved sad songs, so I relished being able to sing this decidedly heartbreaking last verse.
But here’s the thing: in addition to the baseball playing cast mates, Jill decided to also include cheerleaders in the singing of the song's chorus. Complete with cheerleader outfits, of course. I was harboring a crush on one of these girls – Janette, a girl who I’d known since we were both very young. She was at least an inch taller than me and fiercely smart. When I referred to "the cute little red-headed girl I know", Janette struck a pose, as part of the Jill's choreography, so it was clear that I was singing about her.
Jill managed to aggravate this, because I think a secret part of her enjoyed seeing me terrified and squirming. We were rehearsing the song and Jill stopped me. "Look at Janette," she instructed. I did so. "What color hair does Janette have?" she continued.
"Brown?" I said.
"Then sing it that way!" she said. I jumped to. The line became "Then I saw her -- this cute little brown-headed girl I know." I don’t know how many hours of sleep I lost over having to sing this line in close proximity to the girl I liked. Cumulatively, at least twenty four hours. To be fair, this moment was somewhat dulled when I considered the fact that Chris was the one playing me. I pointed this out to several of my cast mates -- without anyone having to ask.
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| Sunday, June 7th, 2009
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12:56 am - what, another one? well...okay
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I already have this blog and the ABPJ, but I want to start a third one dedicated solely to my sex-crazed rants. I already have the title: "Brassieres are Difficult."
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
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4:35 pm - "Well, it was no 'Flatliners'."
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I was describing the movie "Mirrors" (starring Keifer Sutherland) to my friend John. I explained it as a "movie that took parts from other movies, ground them up into a meat paste, and formed them into a meatloaf. And then at the end of the meal, after you find a toenail in the meatloaf, the movie says, 'oh, that's supposed to be there.'"
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