nerdmeyr & K

(for a much better and wholly more worthwhile movie review, see K’s takedown of Knowing.)

I can clearly remember a warm spring day in grade school when I walked down 117th Street to catch the school bus, and had James Brown’s _I Got You (I Feel Good)_ stuck in my head. It was stuck in my head because it is an song that in both composition and performance is unalterably, undeniably, and unaffectedly more catchy than white dog fur on a black peacoat. At that time, fresh in the world, James Brown was a revelation to me.  Now, in my tender mid-thirties, it takes a long week and a serious Manhattan or two before Mr. Brown’s voice can move me in such a way. It is not just me growing old and calcified, it is the natural progression of de-sensitization. Over the course of my relatively short life, I have imbibed James Brown not just on the way home from the library in the back of my parent’s car, but in doctor’s offices, grocery stores, and wedding receptions.  It is not James Brown’s fault that he no longer moves me… he has no opportunity for extemporaneous  re-imaginings and re-workings of the iconical.

I imagine that if James Cameron were cowering before me, and I were wielding a jug of syrup and a bucket of fire ants, the one thing that might save his sorry, sorry and tembling ass would be him exclaiming, “I started that movie ten years ago!”

Perhaps it is not James Cameron’s fault that I found Avatar boring at best, completely reprehensible at worst. Perhaps it is that I have seen Contact, Requiem for a Dream, Girl Interrupted, and one of the Harry Potty serials. In other words, James, it’s not you. It’s me.

Avatar - food for the sewer rats

Now that I have done my due diligence in excusing Mr. Cameron, I let loose with my barrage of cutty-shark word complaints about my new favorite worst movie of the world, Avatar. There are those who argue that Avatar relies upon unfortunate-to-unforgivable racist elements . There are those who argue that Avatar represents an unfortunate re-hashing of a messiah complex. Yes, I agree. My biggest beef with Avatar, however, can be summarized thusly:

If you lack all imagination but can corral 2,500 CGI horses, make Avatar.

Aliens from a completely different universe? planetary system? whatever.  Anyway, oh, wow, you came up with four-limbed, two-eyed, vertically symmetrical athletic carbon-based beauty-aliens that look like a cross between Keane Big Eyed kids, Tayshaun Prince of the Detroit Pistons, and the stilt-walking hippie who panhandles down on Pacific Ave.  And who simultaneously perform their lives according to 21st century middle-class American standards of binary genders, heterosexuality, and ethnic eco-consciousness. Wow! That’s really out there!  What??? You say you’re giving them braided hair with beads, iridescent facial tattoos, ear plugs, and bare feet???!?  Waaait a minute… I feel like I’ve seen those features somewhere… oh yeah, like EVERY FREAKING DAY! On the bus, no less (now THERE’S an intergalactic space mission for you Mr. Cameron!) Oh, and they talk all mystical and wise and shit?  Really???   And there are trees on this faraway distant space planet that look suspiciously like every giant-ass oak tree I’ve ever seen?  And the military is all stompy and racist and act like tools for The Man, and anthropologists are all elitist and smug and clueless-about-real-life?  But there’s this One Guy?  Who’s Reluctant??! But Different? And (somehow) Special? Amazing! That’s…… so…….. unique………….

The bottom line for me is that this movie says absolutely nothing about race, class, colonialism, disability, liberalism, conservatism, agency, citizenship, or ANYTHING of interest. It can’t possibly, because its too busy farting and burping unicorns in the form of CGI effects. It relies upon every other action and space-alien movie ever made to make any sort of impact at all. I cannot abide laziness, truculence, or incuriousity, and this movie reeked of all three.  This is a movie made by a sheltered man-child who substitutes trope and cliche and firework for inventiveness, uncertainty and nuance.  Sometimes I dislike a movie; sure, whatever, OK.  Then there are the movies which make me feel like their very popularity is a clarion call for Zeus to descend and incinerate all of us, because if this is what we produce in all of our wealth and glory and comfort, we deserve to be incinerated. This is that movie.

A strange day of rain.  The rain itself was not strange; its geophysical dropping is what made it strange, as this is by far the mildest winter I have ever experienced. (Today, case in point, is bright, sunny, and about 60 degrees).  I know that when Californians talk about the weather in wintertime it is usually destined to receive:

a1) good-natured ribbing

b2) outright scorn

c3) barely-disguised jealousy

from almost everyone north of 39 degrees latitude, but I don’t bring up the weather for any of these purposes. Rather I bring it up to inflect and inform the rest of the story, which is actually shorter than my discussion of the weather (and if _that_ isn’t midwestern, I don’t know what is.)

Anyway, I took advantage of a break in the rain to walk down to the local grocery store, which is a cross between high-falutin’ (I assume for the summer tourists), fancy (for the corporate raiders who can afford to buy up here now), and average (for everyone else). I was purchasing ingredients with which to make chili, which, although it always contains the same ingredients, always turns out differently from the time before.

At any rate, I had my standard moment of indecision when faced with joining a checkout line. 2 checkers, one line decidedly longer than the other. The shorter line had Chatty Checker, a younger woman who has the knack for launching into random conversation with every customer. Tossing my lot in with luck, I joined Chatty Checker’s line, only to patiently witness a conversation between her, Customer John, and another checker about how long they’ve all known each and the best way to broil eggplant and tomatoes.  I finally ascended to the front, only to somehow become ensconced in a conversation with Chatty Cathy about a movie. _I_ thought she was talking about the movie ‘Up’, which, if I had had a second to think about it, would be weird because it’s been out for quite awhile (but which was fresh in my mind, having just seen it via Netflix the night before).  I said, “Oh, yes, I would’ve figured that kids would be totally bored by it, but the animations were pretty incredible.” She cocked her head like a spaniel being addressed by its owner through a thick wooden door, and said, “Well, I thought George Clooney did a pretty good job….”  Oh, right, that _other_ movie called ‘Up in the Air’, that’s actually out right now and thus a reasonable subject for random stranger conversation. For some reason, I couldn’t explain my momentary confusion, so now Chatty Checker thinks I’m a certifiable nutter.

Oh, well.

Sitting in a waiting area under the hum of flourescent lights.

Carefully crossed legs, focused on keeping back straight but arms and shoulders  relaxed (but not too!), face pleasant and calm (but not too!  Have to look a little hungry, a little go-getter-y!). Surreptitiously warming the hands for the initial meet and greet (is a firm handshake with cold hands worse than a limp handshake with warm hands?)  Silently reviewing names and program acronyms so as to appear knowledgeable about the organization.  Silently practicing positive, confident self-talk. Simultaneously trying to imagine myself spending many waking hours under those fluorescent lights.

I glance down,  checking to make sure no lint hath dared to encroach upon the suit. I end up looking at the ring on my hand, which is no longer round, but oval and oblong and somewhat uncomfortable to wear. I think about the fact that I bent it wood-chopping the infernal live oak, which cannot be split by axe, but rather must be pounded into submission with a sledgehammer and wedge.  I think about the fact that even the wedge, a six-pound triangle of forged steel, now has a misshapen and jagged head from the repeated blows of the sledgehammer. I think about how sometimes if you take the bark off first, the wood seems to resist the wedge less when you set it.  How an axe is not at all the same as a splitting maul, and how you should always aim  for the edge of a round and not the center. I think about the sound the wood makes as it slowly cracks apart and how there’s always a few stray sinews valiantly attempting to hold together what the wedge has split asunder.

I look up, stand up as my face arranges itself into a confident (but not over-confident!) smile, and apply what I hope is a firm and warm handshake to the people facing me. I go with the people to a conference room, where I spend the next hour and half making eye contact and talking about many things I have done and can do, but, somehow, the subject of wood splitting never comes up. That is for me to know and keep under the suit.

1. K kissing me
2. As the sun comes up, it brightens the tent walls and enjoins the birds, who are all around, to start singing good morning
3. As the sun comes up, it sends beams through the blinds and the dust motes dance
4. Turtle the dog jingle jangles through the cracked bedroom door, waggling his tail and snuffling the new morning
5. Tea, earl grey
6. Coffee, half-caff
7. Ice cream, any
8. 11 jumping jacks
9. Creeping realization that the covers have been kicked off and feet are cold
10. Outside garbage truck noise
11. Tortured evaluation of whether to go pee now or later
12. Really cold bathroom tiles
13. Alarm, someone else’s in the house
14. Alarm, soft fake nature sounds
15. Intense leg cramps
16. Alarm, beeping
17. Falling out of bed after having weird lucid dream involving ostrich feathers and sticky shoes
18. Bucket of gatorade poured over bed
19. “OMG, I totally forgot to _________”
20. Unexpected phone call in wee hours

The funny thing about being unemployed while still being employed is that its still not that fun.

When I attended a seminar on change management, the person leading the seminar showed a picture of a man, woman, and child walking down a road, toward the camera. The man and woman looked grim, eyebrows furrowed, and with a decidedly downcast aspect to their mouths. The child, on the other hand, was looking straight at the camera and appeared to be skipping. The backstory to the photo is that the three were walking away from what used to be their house, which had been blown away by a tornado. The tornado blew away much of their town, too.  And the takeaway from the story is that the tornado is just an event. What people do afterwards is the change management.

I am managing the change. I read Gawker to self-satisfy that its probably not about me, but rather a blown-up, over-generalized sad state of affairs in all regards. I dutifully put in my time, comparing the list of my occupational handinesses to varying lists of workplace demands. I keep my chin elevated, my interview shoes shined, my three-minute elevator speech at the ready. I spend a good amount of time thanking various entities that I still have income. I spend other time in repose, thinking about the legions of farmers and salespeople and streetfolk who have never known income security, even if they attain professional status in their class and work as hard as they can. I wonder about the length of the shadow this time of our lives will have – I seemingly came into the world with a Depression-era mentality, but for others, I imagine the thick slurry of the unemployed and the small holes of the want ads is a deeply de-stabling envisage.

Its Friday night, and as with all evenings nowadays, I am looking for work or thinking about how I should be looking for work. That seems to be a full-time job in itself.

It is just after 6am on a Friday. K is in the bathroom, drying her hair. She is taking the early bus to make an 8am meeting in the city. I am one of those people who find it difficult to sleep through noise and light, so I am up as well. I can hear that the scrub jays and woodpeckers are already bickering over choice acorns. Even though I’m tired, I can get up easily because I don’t have to plan an outfit or calculate which leftovers are still good to bring for lunch. I work from home, am one of those shadowy creatures of the workworld known as a telecommuter.

We are living in what feels like a monestary, a half-acre gated off from the world for a dog. All three of us humans living here make our living in occupations that, for the moment anyway, afford us the option to make the house our place of business. I leave the gates to bike into town for groceries, or to go with M. to the farmer’s market, but, on the whole, I am mostly breathing within this one half-acre. Below us and across the valley are redwoods; not the redwoods so enormous that it is possible to drive a car through them, but towering, svelte redwoods that grow in clusters and whose bark sometimes slowly spirals up in a counter-clockwise fashion. Further up the hill, the ground turns to sand and the manzanita, knobcone pine, and madrone take over where the redwoods won’t go.

i think back to all the other times i have moved away. away from my dad’s house, away from milwaukee, away from the twin cities, away from portland. i, sentimental and prone to reverie, think about relocation this way: not as _to_, but, as if i arrived here by walking backwards, keeping my eye trained on the things i know, _away_.

I do not wake in panic and disarray, as I have in the past when i wake up in a new place. I do not generally feel anxious or as if I Have To Do Something, even though circumstances dictate that it might be motivational to feel such things. I do not feel inspired to write letters, join organizations, or make birthday cards. I feel as though leaving Indiana was like stepping off a cliff, anchored by a bungee cord, and I’ve been slowly, slowly falling ever since. The bungee cord is still unfurling and seems to have some length to it; I expect that when it is played out, I will come back up.

Greetings Earthlings! wow. How do you begin a narrative about a trip that has no end in sight?  I’ll start with the important facts. 

Ursus californicus was designated California’s official state animal in 1953. I am pretty fond of the (Oregon) beaver, but I love the California state flag, which for those of you who don’t know features a bear and a star. 

I am the new proud owner of two bus passes and a library card. 

I receive official work memos that make reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Rarely a day goes by that someone doesn’t explain to me that I am currently standing in a “microclimate.”

So far, this state has not disappointed. Things are burning, literally. I’ve yet to receive a paycheck, but have already been furloughed. Already a reference to Black Delilah in the papers. Already I’ve seen a one man show on Buckminster Fuller! In all seriousness, there is something comforting about moving to a place in turmoil because you feel that your own inner turmoil is not out of place. 

It occurred to me shortly after we moved here that I’ve been studying this state my whole life. I think it is entirely likely that I’ve voluntarily read or seen more histories of California than of any other place, beginning in high school with Helter Skelter. And since then, Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, Mike Davis, City of Quartz, Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, Rebecca Solnit’s River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power, Nicolas Sammond, Babes in Tomorrowland: Disney and the Making of the American Child.  And that’s not even counting movies or Vanity Fair!

Every U.S. state has a brand and the first time you visit a state, you realize that you were already familiar with its brand even though you’d never been there (I know you think Arkansas doesn’t have a brand, but if you actually went there, you would realize that it does and that somehow it has already imprinted itself on your brain). But my knowledge of California goes well beyond brand recognition. I’m not saying that’s exceptional. It actually makes a lot of sense given the amount of entertainment this state produces. But it is strange to realize. It’s like, analyzing California is what we do to make sense of anything. Like, if we could make sense of California, we could understand the significance of this particular moment in human history. Or is that just me?

Don’t get me wrong! I appreciate the hubris. I’m only trying to figure out why I would already know so much about a state that I’d never even been to until this year (if you don’t count the time I went to Disneyland when I was three). 

Reading back over this post, it sounds so star struck! There is one odd thing, though. For all I knew about California, I never knew there was a Tomb of the Unknown Surfer in Santa Cruz. Amazing. 

My second favorite line from this hyperbole-plagued editorial that cheers Wal Mart’s decision to disclose the environmental costs of producing its merchandise is: “One small step for Wal Mart and one giant leap for Planet Earth.”

And my favorite line: “small companies will feel crushed by the giant’s new non-carbon footprint.”

yeah, suckers! reduce this.

Every evening eases into coolness so that if you go to bed with only a sheet on top, you’ll wake up chilled in the middle of the night.

Every day dawns clear and bright; at most, a few fluffy clouds go scudding overhead.

Every day,  I,  former midwesterner, dutifully check the weather report to find out what to wear.

Every day, the weather reports from weather underground, weather.com, etc. indicate that the day will be sunny or party cloudy, with a high of 87 degrees.

Every day, around 4:30, when I am up in the office finishing up for the day and sweating like a sumo wrestler at a job interview, I decide to look at the current temperature on weather underground, weather.com, etc. and its always 101 degrees.

From earlier today.

circa the NM/AZ border

And probably should have mentioned the twitter thing before…