My Uncle's Special Forces Memorial Day Siesta

I went over to my parents' house for a barbeque today. After everyone ate, a few people went to sleep. My uncle decided to do his post-barbeque sleeping on my parents' sofa. My uncle does some really, really loud snoring. He's a big guy, and he's a back sleeper, so you can imagine what his snoring sounds like. My dad snores loudly, too, and for a time, they were both snoring in the living room. In stereo.

Here's the thing about my uncle. He's retired now, but he used to be in the Army Special Forces. That's one of the branches of the Army that does secret stuff. I don't know what the secret stuff is, but it requires maps and guns and two-way radios, and they paint their faces green and jump out of helicopters. Oh, and they have a beer afterwards and rock out to Van Halen. I saw it in a TV commercial. Maybe that's an oversimplification, but whatever it is, it's not drum-beating, hunting, male bonding or anything that requires condoms. At least I don't think that it requires condoms. Maybe after they have the beer? Don't ask; don't tell.

Anyhow, I can't imagine that snoring would be good in the field. Not very secret. Not the way my uncle does it anyhow. Let's say that you're trying to hide out or sneak up on an enemy. Well, for one thing, you're not going to be sneaking up on an enemy in your sleep, so scratch that notion. Not unless you're sleepwalking. But if you're trying to hide out, it might be kind of a problem. I'm not talking a little problem, either. I'm not talking about a "your buddy's going sneak up and draw a Sharpie moustache on you while you're asleep," kind of problem. I'm talking about getting captured or killed. That's the problem I'm talking about.

You'd think that if you were a loud snorer in the Special Forces, that Uncle Sam might cough up some taxpayer bucks to get that fixed. I've heard sleepless wives calling radio talk-show doctors and asking about this operation that will fix their husbands' snoring problem, so I know there's a cure for that really loud snoring. I have yet to hear Donald Rumsfeld on one of those call-in doctor shows, though. People always talk about how media-averse he is, so I guess it's not a surprise that he hasn't called in. Or, maybe it's just not such a priority for the Army. Too bad. My uncle could've used that operation.

Staying Up Late. Again. (Sigh). Again.

The sad part is that I don't have anything complete to post. I've been writing something that's incomplete. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow will be big and bright and beautiful, and full of hope and wonder. Tomorrow I will post ten times and each post will be brilliant and funny and thoughtful. Tomorrow.

Fuck. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today is today, and right now I have failed. I have let myself down. Sleep, you win. I give up. My consciousness succumbs to your gentle, soothing touch and that sexy voice of yours. You really know how to do a guy in.

Staying Up Late, Doing What I Told Myself I Wouldn't Do. (Sigh).

I walk my dogs daily. Two dogs, twice a day. I've gotten to know my surrounding streets intimately. I know the houses, I know the people and I know their lawns. This is the way of the dog walker.

Nearly every house has a name. The houses of people whose names I know are named after those people. For example, the house where Clay and Sarah live is known as--you guessed it--Clay and Sarah's house. Simple. Generally, the houses close to your own are the ones that you associate with peoples' names. As you move farther out, the houses end up taking on different names, names that have absolutely no association with any person's real name at all. The Rent-A-Cop lives on a far corner, in the Rent-A-Cop house. The Crack House is on the opposite side of the block. It's not so much of a crack house as it is a loud party house with varied guests who keep irregular hours. We call it The Crack House, though. The Skateboard House has a back yard that abuts The Crack House. Once, when the band that uses the garage at The Skateboard House for a practice space was making too much noise, the Crack House crackhead lit off a few rounds at the Skateboard House. That was unusual. The Police came. The Crack House crackhead switched houses for about 6 months after that. He went to the County House, which is not in our neighborhood.

There are some houses that don't have names. Those houses are blank spaces in neighborhood house-lore. They're like missing letters in a crossword puzzle. Sometimes those houses are overshadowed by their dwellers' personalities or neuroses. When referring to the spaces where those homes are, I'll refer to the occupant and his/her defining neurosis or personality trait . For example, Danny and Gail live next door to the Lady Who Cares Way Too Much About Her Lawn. That's how we describe her. That's her title. England had Lady Diana, Princess of Wales and 33rd Street has Lady Who Cares Way Too Much About Her Lawn. And she does care way, way too much about her lawn. She sprays toxic...stuff on it, scoops kitty litter over the cat turds, and puts full gallon bottles of water on her lawn to scare cats away from it. The thing is, her lawn sucks. I'll be blunt. If she were a dandelion farmer, she'd be doing a damn fine job. I really don't think she's a dandelion farmer, though. Not on purpose, anyhow.

Another character, The Crazy Cat Lady, used to live next door to the Skateboard House. One time, Artillio, the grandson of our next-door neighbor, The Reverend, told me, "Morgan. There's a lady down the street. She got a hundred cats." I didn't believe him. He looked at me stone faced and nodded his head. He was dead serious. After walking past the woman's house a few times, I began to realize that Artillio wasn't making this up. She had ferals running in and out of her house. Cats on the roof, cats on the doorstep, cats under the house, in the bushes, coming out of her chimney. After talking to her a few times, and learning that the white cats were Portuguese Watch Cats, I realized that she was a little crazy. It made sense. I've always sort of thought that a person's sanity is inversely proportional to the number of cats they own. Fewer cats, more sanity. More cats, less sanity. This woman had quite a few cats. Cats in the attic, even.

Houses with dogs, where the owner's name is not known, are automatically the dog's house. Over on 31st, there's Emma's house. Emma is an ancient, curly-coated, mop-headed mutt with a friendly, pipe-smoking owner who wears a cowboy hat. The owner drives a pickup truck with a bumper sticker that says "Don't Believe The Liberal Media." I don't engage him in political discussions, but I do talk to him about other stuff. I've been talking to him for five years, and I still don't know his name. Nice guy. He's lucky that Emma lets him live in her house.

Now, there's a house mid-block, across the street from me, with a story. That's the Chihuahua House. That's an interesting case. A family with a Chihuahua once owned it. Their Chihuahua would run loose over peoples' lawns, leaving little Stimpy-sized logs that you might mistake for cat shit if you hadn't actually seen the offending dog doing its offensive business. The Chihuahua Family ended up getting more than a few stern lectures from cheesed-off neighbors. They finally sold the house to two middle-aged guys who play loud 60s music. (Ugh...baby boomers move in, play their Grateful Dead really loud, and there goes the fucking neighborhood). The guys have been relatively low-key. The house is still the Chihuahua House in my mind. The two baby boomers haven't really done much in the way of re-mythologizing the home. I just can't bring myself to call it "the old baby boomer guy house." It's still got the Chihuahua juju.

There's more to this. My energy is waning, though. More on the houses in my neighborhood later. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Bad, Bad Husband

I've done something really bad. I've opened my wife's mail. Bad!

Bad, bad husband.

Well, I didn't exactly open it. It was an issue of Glamour Magazine, in a plastic wrapper. I removed the plastic wrapper and slid the magazine out of the wrapper. Okay, so I did it. I opened her mail. Know what? I even looked at the magazine after I did that. Some people will say that I’m in the wrong for opening another person’s mail. They’ll say that I should've gone to the store and checked out an issue of Glamour on the newsstand, if my Glamour jones was so strong. Yes, I could’ve done that, but my wife’s copy was right there, on the living room floor, below the mail slot.

Besides, I think that I'd look pretty silly leafing through Glamour Magazine in the store. People would stare and shake their heads as I nosed my way through a magazine that advertised "20 Sex Secrets That Men Are Embarrassed To Tell You About." (That's actually more like something that would appear in Cosmo. My wife doesn't have a sub to Cosmo though, so let's pretend that it's a Glamour article. It's not too far out of Glamour's league. ) "That poor guy. He needs to read Glamour to brush up on his sex secrets," they'd say. “He must’ve been banned from the locker room at some point in his life.” Sad, sad husband.

So, I read my wife’s copy of Glamour Magazine at home. The Glamour Magazine that came in the mail that was not addressed to me.

My dogs didn't look twice.

A Slow Day At the Brain Cafe

I told myself that I'd write every day. So, here I am. Even if I don't feel up to it, I've made this promise to myself: write every day. Some days the ideas just fly off of the ol' brain griddle like hotcakes. You want a full stack of humor? Order up! I'll serve it to you with a side of hash browns and some sausage. Apple-turkey sausage, at that! On those days, I'm overwhelmed by excitement. Euphoria. I think that describes it pretty well.

On other days, the grill is closed. For whatever reason, good ideas don't take hold, or I don't have it in me to explore the ideas that do settle in. The batter doesn't even get mixed for the hotcakes. "Aw, fuck it," I tell myself, "I'm tired of thinking right now." But I have to write. For me. To stay honest with myself. I've made a promise.

~*~*PiMp mY BloG, yO!*~*~

It's been a while since I've had much contact with popular culture. I haven't been watching much television, and I don't have cable, so I'm missing out on a whole wide world of cheesy poofs, Sopranos and Queer Eye makeovers. Any of my pop culture references are strictly old skool (read: passe). The last time I saw anyone leave an island was on the Gilligan's Island reunion show. Nobody was voted off of that island. They were rescued. Whew, what a relief that was. That was big news. I think that show even aired during a network sweeps period.

Back to the present.

I was recently invited to go wading in the shallow end of the pop culture pool. My neighbor, Susan, told me about a show that she was hooked on. I had to come over and see it, she told me. I wasn't expecting much. Susan is a 50 year old woman from Brooklyn. I'm not putting Susan down, here. Susan is hip, but for some reason I expected to be sitting with her in her kitchen watching that Sarah Jessica Parker show that seems to follow me around, no matter how far I am from a television set. That's one show that I'm familiar with, by osmosis. And I know Susan watches it, so I was a bit hesitant to go over.

When I finally saw the show that Susan had gushed about, I was bowled over. I did not see fresh-faced Sarah Jessica Parker on Susan's kitchen TV, as I thought I might. Instead I saw the rapper Xzibit and a crew of auto-body specialists tear down a Firebird and rebuild it from the ground up. The rebuilt Firebird ended up sporting a chandelier, a makeup counter in the trunk, an espresso machine between the seats, and a laptop computer that eased out of the dashboard. The show was "Pimp My Ride."

In case you're unfamiliar with this show, it involves celebrity host Xzibit offering commentary and helping out as a crew of body guys turn a sorry-ass hoopty into a smooved-out pimpilicious cruisemobile. The recipient of the hoopty-to-cruisemobile transformation is usually someone in need of a new car, but too broke to afford one. Pimp My Ride is a little like the (ahem) old school show, Queen For A Day. I loved Pimp My Ride. It was fantastic. Awesome, even. I might even venture to say that it was off tha hizzy.

Yo.
(Isn't that how the kids punctuate statements these days?)

I really enjoyed the show so much that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I started applying the "Pimp My Ride" theme to other aspects of life and society. I came up with a few things that might benefit from the Pimp My Ride treatment:

Pimp My Occupied Country
Xzibit and a UN Delegation travel to Iraq and pimp the Iraqi infrastructure from the top down. The country would be running like a seven-deuce Cutlass with glitter paint and a diamond-window hard-top in no time!

Pimp My Political Party
Let's face it, the Democratic Party needs to have its shit pimped! Xzibit, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos exhume FDR, revive him, and turn the Donkey Party into an ass-kicking dynamo. Awwwwww SHIT! It's about to get crazy up in that convention!!

Pimp My Foreign Policy
Xzibit, Jimmy Carter and Jessie Jackson roll around the world, mend fences, solve crises and create a Pimped World Order.

That's the Pimp My Ride theme on a macro level. I've also been thinking about how the Pimp My Ride theme applies to my own, small Summer to-do-list. To wit...er...I mean--pEep ThIs, yO:

I need a turf-grass knowin' muthafucker to come Pimp My Grass. Get rid of tha weedz an' hook me up with a mackin' L to tha A to tha W to tha N. KnowhaImsayin'?

Bob Villa! I need you to come to my hiz-ouse and Pimp My Foundation. Bust my crib out so that it's above grade. While you're under there, could you Pimp My Plumbing, as well? I'd like to be able to pass a super carne asada burrito with extra guacamole/extra sour cream and have it flush in one shot. tHanKS, PlaYaH!

While I'm on home and garden projects, I'd really like to get a shout out to Martha Stewart. Whattup, girlfrien'! B4 U bounce 2 prison, do U think U could Pimp My Back Yard? Maybe U could put in a hedgerow maze , some Roman Ruins and an English garden? That would be tight. Holla back if U think U can!

Finally, I need someone to Pimp My Blog! Set up some fresh visuals, and some dope-ass audio. Give my blog some o' that bling-bling, yo. Can you help a blogger out on this one?

I'll be over at my neighbor Susan's house, in front of tha' TV if you need to find me.

Traffic At A Dead Stop: Part Two

At some point, while I was sitting in the late-night traffic logjam between Ashby Avenue and University Avenue, I realized that it had taken me about 20 minutes to travel less than a quarter of a mile. I began to search the darkness beyond the edges of the freeway, trying to spot familiar landmarks. I was hoping to find out just how close I was to the University Avenue exit, where the CHP was funneling four lanes of traffic into a narrow, one-lane offramp. To the right of the freeway, Berkeley's Aquatic Park offered me a cool, thick darkness. To my left were two lanes of cars heading in the same direction that I was. I began to regard these cars as my competition for the offramp. Beyond those two lanes and the traffic heading in the opposite direction, was the Bay. The Bay gave me nothing. I couldn't even make out the squat, melancholy hump of Alcatraz Island or its pulsing lighthouse.

After the Coroner's van passed in the right-hand shoulder, I began to visualize the accident scene up ahead. In my mind I was trying to complete the equation that included four closed traffic lanes and a coroner's van. Completing that equation was hard to do. There were too many missing variables. How many ambulances? I hadn't seen any. There weren't any speeding CHP cars. No helicopters. No fire trucks. On the radio, the traffic announcer was reporting that the CHP didn't know how long the freeway was going to be shut down. In my mind, the movie Road Warrior met the television show Emergency! I had an image of wrecked, overturned cars, fire trucks at odd angles on the freeway, and rescue crews working like mad to remove torn, bleeding bodies from cars before they exploded.

Between traffic reports, I would hear snippets of news about a car bomb in Iraq, or a shooting in San Francisco's Bayview District. My inner voice began to pick up where the traffic slowed down. "I am SO going to rubberneck," I thought. "I shouldn't rubberneck, though," I answered myself. Rubbernecking is not really my thing. I try to make time through an accident scene, while others do the rubbernecking. "What if I don't WANT to rubberneck," I finally asked myself. The thought had occured to me that the scene might be so ghastly that I wouldn't want to look.

People always use a trainwreck as a metaphor for something that they would rather not watch, but can't seem to turn away from. A trainwreck as a metaphor exists in the imagination. A trainwreck in reality is something most people would go out of their way to avoid. I doubt anyone really wants to look at a train crashing, and the carnage that goes along with it. I felt like I was inching slowly toward this second notion of a trainwreck. All of the elements of a metaphoric trainwreck--the Coroner's Van, the closed roadway, the flashing police lights--were waiting at the University Avenue exit. I really wasn't in the mood to see what real life had to offer.

My Life As A Cult Member

I'm in this cult. It's not really regarded as a cult by the general population, but it is a cult. Some of you reading this might be in the same cult, without even realizing it. Let me run down some specifics, and you tell me if you're in the cult.

Your master deprives you of sleep, in some cases barking irrational commands at you, or moving you from your place in the bed at 2:30 in the morning.

You offer your blind devotion to your master, feeding it, taking it for a walk, picking up its shit. Sometimes, in the service of your master, you defend its behavior or its habits tooth and nail: "I'm picking it up, see?" You hold up a white plastic bag and smile. Then add, under your breath, "Your lawn isn't even that nice, anyhow, so shut the fuck up. A little shit might actually improve it."

You have pictures of your master on your refrigerator, or in your wallet, or on the dashboard of your car. You're especially fond of that photo of your master that you snapped after it had rolled around in the mud at the park. Or maybe you prefer the photo of your master with the sock in its mouth.

You talk to your master in a special voice, and offer it rides in the C-A-R or trips to the parky-park.

The only time you tell your master to do anything is when you use your breathy, excited voice to tell it to find its ball. And in those cases, it's only so that you can throw your master's ball for his/her pleasure.

You're in a cult, face it. You buy your master food, you bathe your master, you groom your master. You fret when your master is sick. Your master depends upon you to find odd bumps on its body, or strange disturbances in its eating patterns. You find joy in the silly, sideways looks your master gives you. You excuse your master for polluting your car or house with its smell. Any other human would be a pariah if they smelled that way, but not your master.

If you're like me, you're in this cult, and you haven't even realized it. I call it the Cult of Milo and Luna. I have two masters. Some others might call it the Cult of Rex or the Cult of Nipsy. They may have one master, or they may have more than one.

I think you know what cult you're in now.

Traffic At A Dead Stop: Part One

You expect traffic delays at rush hour. You might even expect delays during daytime off-peak traffic hours. In the wee hours, when people forget about speed limits and regard turn signals as an option rather than a rule, traffic delays are pretty unusual. These delays happen though, and I was stuck in one recently, while driving home to Richmond from Oakland. As I was following the high, looping roadway that connects I-580 with I-80, in Emeryville, I could see traffic slowing up ahead in Berkeley. About a mile ahead, up near Ashby Ave., all lanes of the freeway were clogged with a thick mass of slow-moving brake lights. Within a minute I was at the very tail end of a procession that had, from afar, resembled a channel of slow-moving lava. After another minute, I was beyond the Ashby exit, and regretting my decision not to get off of the freeway. I was in the middle of the lava flow.

The first thought my brain could muster was "Radio." I was tired enough that thoughts were coming in the form of single words. I reached over and turned on the radio. As it turns out, there was a traffic accident just before the Gilman Street exit, a couple miles ahead. All lanes were closed, and the CHP was emptying the freeway at University Ave., about a mile before Gilman Street.

In that situation, where traffic is barely moving, all you can really do is sit and look around. As one lane surges forward, and another stalls, you catch glimpses and glances here and there: a video screen showing through the tinted windows of a red sports car (nothing good on); a small shadowy figure in in a big, silver Honda; a confused Ford Explorer to my left with its blinker on, then off, then on, then off--as if changing lanes would be of any help at all in that situation; a tragically bad mullet on a guy in a silver Nissan sports car. There were trucks, too. Big semis, like moving walls, creeping ahead and falling back slowly, their fits and starts accentuated by the loud hisses and squeaks of their air brakes.

And, of course, there were the assholes racing ahead in the right-hand shoulder, trying to get to the head of the line. In this event, the most notable vehicle to cruise down the shoulder was the dark blue van with the gold words "County Coroner" painted on it.

Let's start with coffee...

This morning I got up and found, to my disappointment, that I was nearly out of coffee. The coffee filter on the Braun usually takes 4-5 spoonfuls. I only had enough coffee for 2-3 spoonfuls. Weak coffee. I prefer strong coffee to weak coffee, but weak coffee is better than no coffee at all, so, well...some days you take your coffee any way you can.

I used to work with this German woman at SFO. Ilze. She was about 50, and spoke proper English with a soft lilt and a slight accent. I always found it hard to engage Ilze in conversation. She never said much. She was a bit misanthropic. Pleasantries, that was about it for her. One day I caught her near the coffee machine, as she was making coffee, and asked her how she made her coffee. "You know, everyone seems to have their own way," I said. Actually, I had a hidden motive. Several other employees had complained about how strong Ilze made the coffee, when she made it, and I wanted to see what her technique was.

"Well," she began, almost defensively, "I like my coffee to taste like coffee." She hastily scooped five heaping spoonfuls of coffee into the dry paper filter. I nodded in agreement. Coffee that tastes like coffee sounded swell to me. Someone who plays fast and loose with the coffee scoop is not someone to fuck around with or argue with--especially before they've had their first cup. That's a hard and fast axiom in my Book of Life. "Some people here make it weak," she whispered. That was the most she had ever said to me. She let her coffee do the rest of the talking for her.

You can always judge how strong a cup of coffee is by noting the color of the bubbles floating at the top of the cup. Clear bubbles--not so strong. Brown bubbles--strong. Ilze made coffee that had orange bubbles floating on the at the top of the cup. Orange. Take a sip and you thought your head would explode. Coffee with a capital "C". Coffee that tasted like coffee.

This morning's coffee had clear bubbles. It did not taste much like coffee.