Bad thoughts and premonitions

I've been thinking lately of all the times I could have died a violent death.

Falling on my head in the street. Riding on the hood of a car. Learning to surf in a storm and getting carried out to sea. Falling asleep at the wheel. Crashing while riding my scooter drunk. Riding double on a bike into oncoming traffic. Taking turns too fast on single lane farm roads and spinning out. Loading up in a car young people, of all of us drunk. Shooting weapons and throwing knives close to friends. Scaling buildings and trees while drunk. Getting hit by a garbage truck.

Altogether, it doesn't seem like an unusual amount of risk for a human male. Many boys grow up surrounded by war and violent crime. I personally know poeple who have lived more dangerously. But for each risky thing that happened to me, I've heard stories about someone who did something similar and bit the big one. There are people I grew up with who died violently, too, people who probably took no greater number of chances in life than I.

Of course, I truly hope to die in my sleep at a ripe old age, surrounded by loved ones. And of course, now that I have children, I like to think I make better choices. Yet my nightmares are chock full of head-on collisions, plane crashes and 10-story falls that seem way overdue.

Sappy post alert

I love that I get to spend the rest of my life attached to this guy. He teaches me so much -- frankly, more than my biological children. Thanks, Joe.

Going soft

As I get older I find myself more frequently in need of The Big Shakeup -- a major or sometimes minor change of lifestyle that lights the match under my ass. But this technique seems to lose its effectiveness over the years... either that, or I'm just getting less and less eager for change.

I've always had a list of stuff I want to do. Lately, that list is being ignored for simpler pleasures: Watching the kids play soccer. Failblog videos on YouTube. Fantasy football. Lovemaking. Beer.

On one hand, these are truly enjoyable activities, and I feel -- for the first time in a while, actually -- that I deserve them. I have not had a real vacation in over a year, so it's probably natural that my body and mind are retracting a little.

On the other, I feel quite strongly that I'm losing my edge. This scares me.

I have a new job and the work is not adding up like I thought it would. But instead of taking the extra time to find extra income, or at least plug away at the novel, I'm gravitating toward my base instincts.

And the guilt builds...

Shifting gears

So it's been a productive week. I've outlined the rest of the story through to the "big finale" and some ideas for ending scenes, then I went back to where I left off and just started crankin'.

The old plan was to write something to move the story forward and to get feedback from Homework Club. The new plan is to keep doing that, but to stay three chapters ahead in terms of outine.

Changing tactics a bit, too...

Neary every word so far has been written in ink, then transcribed into Word. Still think that's ideal, if a bit of a time-waster. I type too fast, and by writing it out, I'm forced to think about each word a little bit longer. (Plus I get really, really excited writing with a pen, I don't know why.) Transcribing it is a bit wasteful although opportune for initial edits, after which I go through the section again and again until I feel it's ready or I just give up.

Now that I've got the fire, I'm anxious now to, er, expel the entire load of crap out of my system. So I'm writing directly into Word from an outline. Cause basically, I go through the shit again and again anyway.

Right now, though, I'm polishing up another recycling mailer so I can watch The Day the Earth Stood Still for the first time (yes, the original) and still get enough sleep.

I have seen the light!

Maybe all it took was starving myself.

I'd been in a funk for a while. Kind of a long slow descent. Not even a descent, really. Just ... BLAH.

I've been pushing myself in all sorts of ways, but the progress was slow and unsatisfying. Worse, I'd become something of an emotional liability to the family. Even in my best moods, I let a lot of the frustration seep through.

So, I basically starved myself. Why? To shake things up, I suppose. I don't know, felt like the thing to do.

Now all the crap's out of my system. I'm eating healthier, drinking less, and learning to let go of stuff. Toying with the idea of giving up one or more of my many jobs (when you're the main breadwinner in a house of seven, a damn terrifying thought) and pouring my energies into writing. Seriously, how much time do I really have?

As soon as I thought about that, I mean really considered where my focus might belong, it hit me. POW.

I saw the end of my story.

It's a long way off, and it'll be hell. But I know where things are going. At least I think I do. Anyway, it feels good. Like I can do it.

ah jesus effin christ...

I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I really don't.

I feel I'm on a crossroads at so many points... and I don't even know where to begin.

How about the fight I almost got into, walking out of the sushi bar, when some tool commented on my wife's tits? Thankfully I was so drunk, all I could think to do was drop a bunch of f-bombs at his stunned ass... yet right in the middle of downtown Concord. Way to go, family guy.

...and since then, it's been one weird freakout after another. At Joey, for his lack of discrepancy (I mean, geez, the kids' f-in seven years old), and at Marysa, for ordering dish after dish that she can't finish and yet slathers with ketchup so no one else can eat it, either... but so what?

And numerous verbal assaults at Mary, for one thing after another. Seriously, I need a gajillion Hail Marys for this crap...

The origins of horror

Yesterday my two-year-old son, Sonny (man that sounds weird but I love his name) brought home two balloons from Round Table Pizza. It's one of the few places we'll take him. He's the sweetest boy you'll ever meet, but he can't sit still for shit, and at a place like Round Table, it just don't matter.

First he grabs these other balloons, picks a sweet-looking female toddler across the room, and proceeds to give them to her. And this is how big of a sap I am -- I start to cry. Yes, kind gestures from my children turn my eyes into faucets, I don't know why.

Anyway, he takes a couple balloons home for himself. And immediately upon exiting the car in our driveway, he lets them go.

Oops.

I need to tell you that, as a child, a similar event was one of my earliest memories. I was at some zoo with a red balloon, and I let it go -- with absolutely no idea what would happen. My father jumped for it and came up empty.

Now I'm watching Sonny's face, and I'm sure it mirrors what mine looked like almost 40 years ago.

The first look is amazement. Wow, there they go!

The second look is open-mouthed shock. Um, wait, how am I going to get them back?

The third look is, of course, pure unfiltered horror. I can't get them back.

"I want it, I want it," he cries, as the balloons become mere red and blue dots in the horizon, then reach the limits of our vision and disappear forever.

The true horror, of course, is that Dad can only do so much. Dad can't get them back. He looks at me and starts to melt.

All I can do is hug him and say, "I know."

Magical Scorsese

I know heaping praise on the movie Taxi Driver isn't very original of me, but I'm amazed how it just gets better and better every time I see it.

I own a tape of it with an abridged "Making of Taxi Driver" featurette at the end, which I saw for the first tim tonight. I don't usually watch the "making of" stuff. I like not knowing and simply being left entertained. But tonight curiosity got the best of me, and I'm shocked how much planning and tweaking went into the making of this movie.

This is dumb, I know. I live under the illusion that artistic masterpieces -- and Taxi Driver comes about as close to this term as I know in cinema -- are borne out of happy accidents. Maybe I envision this as being the more romantic view ... that art cannot be fully controlled or contained, but merely captured, when inspiration and energy collide in a certain way.

Anyway, there's a part in the "Making of" where director Martin Scorsese talks about feeling the emotions of the characters in the movie after reading the script...

"If I could verbalize it, I wouldn't have had to make the picture ... I felt all those feelings in that story, at that time.... and so this was something I thought that was special to express."

...which reminds me that that's what I always thought made a great film, book, work of art, song, etc. truly great. Expressing the unexpressable. It's like making the impossible happen. It's like magic.

A couple other fun things...

Roger Ebert's original review of the film.

The Making of Taxi Driver, via YouTube.

Drinking

We're talking about alcohol in "homework club" last week and I'm wondering what it is about my own drinking that I enjoy, fear, crave, and sometimes fear because of the craving.

I do think humans, by and large, are somehow drawn to intoxicants (and all sorts of other things), but in my case, I don't think it's as simple. And when I look around I'm amazed how pervasive it is in my life.

Ten years ago it would not have bothered me if I had no beer in my fridge. Now it does. It is the same fridge, in fact, that I had growing up -- filled with the same sort of cheap beer that I fetched for Dad. Or the guy that was physically there when Dad was drunk.

Adding to these thoughts was my slip into memoir territory a few days ago, when I picked up Augusten Burroughs' Dry, which is about, of course, alcoholism.

I'm a cynical about memoirs, and Burroughs seems to have made a career out of them. Two-thirds the way through, my cynicism remains intact. But this book has planted in me this notion -- that there's a slight possibility that I have another person inside of me, a person with desires different than my own, maybe even contradictory desires. And that this person could be working against me. That maybe I need to watch it.

Warm fuzzies time

To me, good writing is about the communication that happens between writer and audience, but it's basically a one-way street -- until the reader is right there in front of your face, telling you what works and what doesn't. Or, like Evil Kneivel, taking a baseball bat to your arm.

Anyway, I don't know why I waited 41 years to join a writer's group. I've been traveling down a one-way street for a long, long time... unless perhaps it was fate guiding me, because the writing group I'm in is pretty effing amazing.

Of course I have nothing to compare it to. But I can't imagine a more talented, funny, and self-motivated group of individuals. Every week I learn something new, and leave joyful and inspired. And thankful.

Random thoughts and oughts

I'm a man of conflicting goals and desires.

One is to create art. The other, to earn money for a wife and five kids.

One is to wander freely, explore, and expand my knowledge of the world. The other is to calm a child's panic attacks, change a diaper, and show up to work on time after five hours' sleep.

I've been running full steam for more than two years since I left the newspaper business. I don't know how it's going to play out.

I do know a few things. I have comrades. I have people in my life who care about the person I am, even if they don't understand the madness of my world.

And I have drive. If nothing else, I have that.

No one has ever had to kick my ass out of bed in the morning. I've always enough crazy in me to do it myself.

This is what I'm talking about

They are riding scooters in the driveway, Joey and Tan.

Joey: "Taste my fire, alien!"

Tanner (singing): "Never I did, but my face, to be I must, you mean my fellow..."

"Ha ha! I popped a wheelie!"

"I can't describe what I am, and to be, and to they, and you be us, when... I be, I can follow my trust..."

"Tanner, what are you doing?"

"To be, I must!"

"I got to go pee."

"I can't be you anymore. But for now, I can trust, some hoooowwwwww! ....Dad, Joey is touching a dead mosquito."

"No, it's alive."

"What?!"

"Oh Tanner, I just did a three-sixty turnaround!"

"Think of it, you can have friends, and more! I stick with you bro, and you're my favorite bro..."

My firstborn

Just some not-so-random thoughts about my first born and all the stuff that makes her Awesome yet Drives Me Crazy...

Awesome:

What an imagination. Now this could easily fall into the Drives Me Crazy realm, but not for me. I adore a healthy imagination, even if it does drive me crazy.

Is a live-for-today sort of kid. Can bounce back from defeat pretty darn quickly.

Whipsmart funny... and how.

Has a lot more self-confidence at school, particularly among her peers, than I ever did.

Seems to be grasping "the big picture" about her mom and I.

Tells me exactly what's up.

Talks to me. Yeah, she's only eight, and these aren't the deepest conversations and they may not last. But we talk. Let me enjoy it for now.

Drives Me Crazy:

The meltdowns. Not as bad as her other genetic influence, but a near-daily obstacle.

...

Oh shit. I thought this would sort of balance out, but it totally doesn't. My kid's awesome. Shame on me!

...

The other night I got mad at a good friend. I finished my drink, grabbed my shit and walked away.

The seconds between getting up and reaching the door of the bar were like a dream. I couldn't believe I was doing this.

Once outside, I had no idea what to do. It was cold and I was too drunk to drive. I leaned my head back on the car and threw it out to the universe. What to do, what to do...

Apologize. Promise not to bring it up again and ask him to do the same. Hug him. Try to forget, and try to remember.

When you really, really needed him, he was there.

Bukowski Tapes

Getting back into Bukowski and stumbled upon a string of YouTube posts of his poetry and interviews here.

Incredible how much output this guy had considering he wasn't very active in his early years and seems to have spent most of his waking life drunk or drinking, even during interviews and performances. A crafted, schtick-ish element to that persona, perhaps. Still impressive.

Best podcast ever

Someday, I tell myself, I'm going to write a novel about my band days. We're only talking about a total of two years (not counting last year's reunion), but they were two of the funnest years of my life.

As a family man, I don't make it out to many shows anymore, but there is something that keeps the music alive in me. And it's totally, amazingly, free.

All I know about KPunk is that it's a podcast run by some guy named Kevin who has incredible taste in music -- good, good punk music. Every three weeks like clockwork, dude hauls out a brilliant, 45-minute old-school style mixtape filled with new and classic tunes that makes my heart wilt with love.

Just one of these things is so loaded with meaty, balls-out tunes, that before you know it, three weeks have passed and another one comes out -- before you've even thought of getting sick of it of the last one. I mean it's just incredible. The fact that KPunk favors certain bands -- like the Copyrights, the Errgs! and Teenage Bottlerocket -- doesn't bother me in the least, cuz they're pretty friggin' awesome. (Just ask my two-year-old, Sonny, who simply adores both the song and the vid for In The Basement.)

Of course I know not everyone is a fan of punk and the fact I'm burying my declaration of love in superlatives probably does more harm than good. All I know is, if I ever do write that band novel, I'll do it listening to KPunk. Thank you, Kevin.

Once a upon a Lester

If you lived in San Mateo around 1980 and happened to spy a squeaky-voiced white kid running around town with his hand up the ass of a black Lester doll and making it talk like Fred Sanford meets Bugs Bunny, I have just one thing to say.

Thank you for not killing me.

Don't get it

It's been a week of horrible news for the newspaper industry, and I can't stop thinking -- who dropped the ball?

I miss journalism, but I don't miss the head-in-the-sand approach to the newspaper business. It isn't like nobody saw it coming.

I simply don't get why newspapers are dying, especially in the Bay Area. We have more entrepreneurial talent, more writers, more READERS than practically anywhere in the country.

If journalism is to survive the passing of newspapers, it ought to survive it here. And it's not.

The idea of newspapers going out of business doesn't really concern me. What concerns me is the death of news. The fact is, newspapers are the first source of many, many news events that get picked up by other media like radio, TV, film, and Google. And in this respect, the death of any newspaper, no matter how bad, is concerning.

Because there's nothing taking it's place. OK, we have blogs, social networks. But there's one less organization going after the who, what, where, when, why and how, like only a newspaper can.

One opinionated blogger doesn't have the manpower, objectivity or legal assistance. One TV news report doesn't have the time.

I thought I was done with journalism. Yet I'd be lying if I wasn't secretly thinking about a way to somehow make it work.

Judy's got it

My oldest kids -- Joey, Tanner, and my stepdaughter Marysa -- now all read above their grade level. Like, waaay above their grade level. In fact, Tanner's teacher won't give her more difficult books, because they're too "adult." Whatever. So Tanner reads my motivational books, titles like "The Magic of Thinking Big." Pure cheese, I admit, but totally sex- and violence-free.

It's my own fault. I started to read when I was three, and I held off teaching Tanner... but only until she was four. Marysa was close behind. And both of them taught Joey, who's now in the zillion-page reader club at school, or some such uber-literary nonsense.

Yes, I'm very proud.

So I'm in Bay Books, looking for chapter books -- because it's now all about chapter books with these kids -- and I come across a copy of "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing." Suddenly I'm towel-whipped by nostalgia, along with the notion that Judy Blume is, without a doubt, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.

I have to admit my initial exposure to Judy Blume sent me into prepubescent male giggle-fits. Looking back, though, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" was probably my first exposure to feminism and the idea that girls actually didn't have the world on a string. Seems hokey to say that, but feels true.

"Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" was more up my alley. I didn't have a crazy two-year-old brother named Fudge, but I did have a younger sister who stole all the attention and drove me nuts with Oscar-worthy crying performances and the repeated theft of my Cleveland Browns football helmet.

I'm super-stoked that Tanner and Joey are enjoying this book on their own and finding it particularly relevant, since they actually have a two-year-old brother/monster on their hands who's not so unlike Fudge. I'm also stoked there's still much more Judy Blume where that came from.

Updike

Gonna try to be brief about this but this guy's death needs mentioning.

Count me among those who drank in Updike's portrayals of the sex-centered male existence and, not unlike AC/DC's music, made me feel OK thinking and feeling some of the things I think and feel.
My first encounter with Updike was as a teen reading A&P, which I found confusing and intriguing much in the same way I encountered most adult fiction at the time. What did I miss, I wondered at the time, reading it again and again.

Later on I latched onto the first three Rabbit books, discovering devices for Scene that didn't bore me to tears, as well as a male character who I might not have been friends with but whose soul I could identify. I felt Updike was writing about the inner crud that swirls inside many white men -- particularly those with flimsy cultural backbones and family structures, not unlike myself -- yet who are compelled to "buck up" and march (and sometimes stomp) ahead with our lives, knowing that not all feelings can be spared ... including our own.

Can't say I'm a major student of his work -- not much of a student of any author, in fact. There's just too many good ones to latch on too strongly to any in particular. But I've read enough to know we lost another master.

Kludge

Amazed that I haven't come across this word before, given how much of my life I've devoted to kludging.

From Wikipedia:

A kludge (or kluge) is a workaround, an ad hoc engineering solution, a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem, typically using parts that are cobbled together.

Kludges are particularly widespread in computer programs, where processing speed is such that they may not make a big difference in performance.

I admit it, I kludge a lot.

I do it as a proposal writer, slapping boilerplate text together in a fashion that answers RFPs and RFQs as quickly as possible.

I've done it as a songwriter, by randoming choosing particular keys and chord constructs, and resurrecting some old, angry high school poetry or mushing a friend's lyrics to fit. Examples include "My Mom's A Bitch," and our ever-popular family ditty, "Pretty Kitty."

I do it as a dad, with magical five-minute meals that look very, um, interesting yet still touch on all the major food groups. If the kids eat at least half and a little bit of everything on their plate, I figure I kludged it pretty good.

Probably the only time I don't kludge when attempting fiction -- but even then, I seem to be digging into wells inside my head for some memory, artifact, or sensation, and then figuring out how to make things work. In fact, my novel, if it's ever complete, will be something of an homage to kludging, since it's coming out in bits and pieces that I have yet to completely assemble. Kind of like creating a human body by starting with the heart, a couple of fingers, an eyelash, some teeth, and a nut.

I'm fairly certain I've heard the word "kludge" before, but can't be totally sure. It's the sort of word in which one instantly discerns its meaning -- which makes it difficult to remember when one first heard it.

Yesterday, when two different co-workers used it, it made me stop and think.

Kludge. K-l-u-d-g-e.

Mmmmmm.

So unchild-free

I'm a 40s male, married, lots of kids. Young kids. I love kids. Even adopted one.

I also, despite better judgement, read Craigslist's rants and raves section ocassionally and see posts about people boasting about "child-free." And looking about the Web, I see entire blogs devoted to preaching non-procreation.

And I can kind of see their collective point -- you don't want to have children for selfish reasons, but by and large, that's exactly why most of us have them. I wonder, though. Is that so bad?

I understand children aren't for everyone. I understand many people have children who shouldn't. I understand many people who might make great parents won't ever have children, for whatever reason. And believe me, I understand the personal benefits of NOT having kids, cause I didn't have kids until I was in my 30s... and before that, man, I had a blast.

But what's the point in making fun of people with kids? Or even worse, demonizing them?

Raising kids is tough, I won't lie. Sometimes it's a real pain in the ass. I'm thankful I have a partner who understands how tough it is, and doesn't give me a hard time about busting out of the house on ocassion. I'm also thankful to have some pretty amazing kids who, for the most part, wake up practically giddy to be alive, which makes me feel pretty giddy to be alive, too.

I do believe this: You can't be a good parent and be a glass-half-empty type -- or be convinced the world is going to hell, or believe that most parents are selfish idiots, or be the least bit suicidal, or too much of a hypocrite (though a certain amount of self-delusion is OK). Point being, you're either an optimist to begin with, or learn quickly to be one, or you're pretty much frakked.

I believe one life CAN be a gift, OR it can be quite less than that. I think there's something instinctive and genetic about keeping the species going, and yet at the same time, absolutely unnecessary.

My personal opinion, however, is that it's kind of neat to keep the party rollin'. If you're up to it, of course. Selfish as that may be.

The Wrestler

It's very good, although I tainted my perception beforehand by listening to a NPR interview with the director, who said he didn't believe Mickey Rourke gave 100 percent. I found myself too focused on this idea, and it didn't help that the ending is sorta hokey.

What was surprising about this movie was how depressing it was. Pro wrestling is a world I know little about -- I wasn't one of those teens who salivated over Wrestlemania of the 80s and its dumbed-up theater for the masses. The Wrestler does show a reality many fans don't see: the washed-up, shot up, broken-wheeled "pieces of meat" its characters can become. Kind of gives you a new respect for guys like Dwayne Johnson, Mick Foley, and to some extent, Hulk Hogan, for at least trying to break out of the box.

I don't think it deserves all the superlatives being heaped on it. But I'll say it again: It's very good. The scenes where Rourke's character, Robin Ramzinsky, "relapses" into wrestling's enticements -- and its consequences -- hits hard.

Old age and bitterness, a weird post

I certainly don't know much about the former, but I know plenty about the latter.

"Is it just me" or are people more bitter these days? It's like, closing in. I can feel it rustle inside me, too.

Is it the economy? Or are these times triggering deeper wounds? I look at myself sometimes and I can't tell.