Whale Watching From My Cubicle

Been A While...

2008-09-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe I haven't posted since April.

I apologize for neglecting you.

First, my niece has improved a great deal. I invite you to visit Clara's picture blog, linked to at the right. She had brain surgery in May to remove the largest of the tubers, the one most likely causing her seizures. She hasn't had a single seizure since the surgery, and has now been weaned off her anti-seizure meds. Things have not been entirely smooth -- in August, they discovered that the flow of cranial fluid was impeded, putting tremendous pressure on her brain. They installed a shunt, which solved that problem, but cause some intestinal problems that had to be dealt with. Now, however, Clara's back to eating normal food, and things seem to be progressing rapidly for her.

The biggest reason I haven't been posting here is that I've been steadily working on a screenplay. Until early August, I had a writing partner, but we've had an unfortunate falling out: She scheduled a pitch session with a producer before we finished the screenplay -- a serious faux pas. The producer was kind enough to ask to see the script when it's finished, but for some time, I'd been concerned about my partner's frequent attempts to drive the script off the story we'd carefully worked out. So, while I was going to be out of town and unable to work for several days, I asked her to read five Oscar-winning or -nominated screenplays, and my previous work, in the hope that she'd pick up on the importance of story.

We're talking, at most, twenty hours of reading. All of it available for free on the Internet.

She refused. She wrote an impassioned e-mail about being unemployed and not having any money to spend on writing, how we were up against a deadline and needed to just get the project done as fast as possible, so she didn't have time to get "a college degree in screenwriting." She said my suggestion came across like an order, and she doesn't take orders.

I, on the other hand, consider reading screenplays to be part of the job of a screenwriter. At the core of every writer should be a heartfelt desire to improve and develop his or her craft. Put in market terms, reading screenplays for movies that have been made helps a screenwriter know what sells. It's just as important as reading the trades.

After I'd said as much to my former partner, she dug in. No reading screenplays, we don't have time, let's just finish.

Sorry, I said. If you won't do what's required to learn how to do it right, I can't work with you.

That was six weeks ago. Since then, we've gone through many, many gyrations, including my concession that I'd send her my ongoing work and take her notes, incorporating those that fit. It hasn't been easy, and it's actually slowed the writing process down by sapping my will to write at all; I've been so preoccupied with responding to her many, many e-mails regarding those few ideas of hers I don't incorporate that the writing has all but come to a halt.

For example, we took pains at the beginning of the script to show that our protagonist is a very good doctor. Her idea for the scene that marks the break from act 2 to act 3 involves our protagonist running away in the middle of a medical crisis. Now, aside from the fact that doing such a thing in real life would certainly cost him his medical license, it doesn't fit his character, and it diminishes the story. A good doctor, when faced with a medical crisis and multiple distractions, would eliminate the distractions. If that's not enough reason to keep the hero rooted to the spot, keeping him there shows that he's worthy of the eventual victory that comes in act 3. When I thought about him doing a cut-and-run and looked ahead in the story, I couldn't understand how he'd deserve the prize at the end. Why would our heroine choose to stay in a relationship with a man who won't face his fears or confront the obstacles in his life?

Granted, real life women choose such men all the time. But this is fiction -- it should elevate the audience. The story should aspire to something greater.

So, now I've finished writing that scene. The hero doesn't run away, he gets PULLED away, still managing to take care of his patient.

My former partner didn't like it.

As I've been writing this, I came to a realization -- For my partner, the male lead was never the story's hero. In her mind, the female lead...the love interest...is the central character. That's the rock that derailed the train. The logline, from the start, has always been, "A lonely, confirmed bachelor finally meets the perfect woman -- and she's exactly like him." The story is about HIM, and from the start, she's been fighting to make it about the love interest character. (I don't know why I didn't realize this before; in addition to fighting me on story elements, she's also been trying to get me to change the logline.)

I'd come to another realization the other night, while getting another screenplay ready to send out: that I need to be a little in love with my characters to make them "pop". I've never had a sense of the female character at all, and have certainly never felt any love for her.

Maybe now, I know why.

When Nerds Become Stay-At-Home Dads

2008-04-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

Christmas Treats in Hell

2007-12-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

Ten treats we never want to see:

1. Roast Jerky
2. Figgy Jell-o
3. Garlic Canes
4. Hot Buttered Sardines
5. Gingerbread Yes Men
6. Pickle Punch
7. Baked Bean Ambrosia
8. Mountain Oyster Marzipan
9. Chocolate-Covered Pigs Knuckles
10. Peppermint Haggis

FORAC: Found Your Letter To Santa

2007-12-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

I got to work this afternoon and this e-mail was in my in-box, addressed to the collective:

A letter to addressed Santa in a green envelope with beautiful red crayon printing and a red crayon star..(at least I think it’s a star) has been found and turned into me. .
If it is yours or if you were entrusted with delivering it to Santa..you can pick it up from my desk.
Thanks
Laura

The Actress, The Doctor, and The Porn King

2007-12-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

The Real Miss America

2007-12-05T15:54:00.000-08:00

Yeah, But Two THOUSAND???

2007-11-15T09:05:00.001-08:00

A couple days ago, I woke up to find nine hundred e-mails in my in box.

Yes.

Nine hundred.

There were five or six different subject lines, but each e-mail appeared to come from a separate e-mail address, and each e-mail address appeared to be associated with a fictitious name. Now, I did not open any, because I practice computer prophylaxis (I am careful about virii), but there they were. In my spam box.

When I got home from work, there were another eight hundred and fifty. Same half-dozen subject lines. By the end of the evening, I'd received another three hundred or so.

This is not the first time this has happened. A few weeks ago, I got two thousand e-mails a day for a period of three days. I am grateful for my spam box.

I suspect that the tactic is intended to catch those who will open JUST ONE of the e-mails to see why there are so many. But damn! Two thousand e-mails?

Made my incoming e-mail look like a Monty Python sketch: Spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail from my dad, and spam. SPAMMITY SPAM, WONDERFUL SPAM!

Bloody Vikings.

Christmas Is Coming, The Geek Is Getting Fat...

2007-11-08T16:50:00.000-08:00

The Internet is a thing of beauty.

Today, I discovered a website that will more than meet all my Christmas shopping needs, especially since I will be spending my tenth holiday season snorking hard cider and spiked egg nog as a singleton.

Here are some of the things my loved ones can look forward to finding under the tree this year:

The USB-powered hamster wheel is pictured above, but here is the "Cat's Arse Pencil Sharpener":

There is the desk-sized, USB-powered refrigerator:

And of course, the perfect gift for the geek who has everything, a USB-powered humping dog:

What a wonderful time of the year!

Picket Fences

2007-11-06T07:45:00.001-08:00

The writer's strike presents me with an odd quandary: Do I continue to try to sell my script, or wait until after the strike is over?

For those of you who may not be familiar with the reasons behind the writer's strike, a little background: The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) is striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), mostly over the amount they get paid for the distribution of their work via the Internet. Production companies, networks, and studios save up-front costs by paying "residuals", which are a percentage of the per-unit sale price of a movie or television show. Residuals are a significant part of the overall compensation writers earn for their work.

How much? Let's look at one film, Reign Over Me, which starred Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler. It's a good choice because it got good reviews, but wasn't a big box-office smash (it virtually disappeared from theatres in a month), having cost $20 million to make and earning around $21 million. For the week ending October 28th, that little film sold 55,872 copies on DVD, earning roughly $1.1 million. At the current rate of compensation, the writer received a residual check in the amount of $3,350.64, minus taxes.

One week.

This is not chump change.

Now, back in 1985, when VHS was new, the AMPTP put forth the position that the consumer market was changing and that the technology had not been proven, so they negotiated with the WGA to set a reduced percentage for residuals on the then-new technology, with the understanding that if it proved itself, the residuals would increase again. They reneged.

They did the same thing with DVDs, again claiming unproven marketability for new technology.

Incidentally, under the rate structure that existed before VHS, the screenwriter for Reign Over Me would have earned $16,753.22 that same week.

What's happening now is that new technology is reshaping the marketplace once again, and the AMPTP wants to cut the writers out of residuals entirely for this new technology. Internet streaming and downloads, cell phone downloads, things we didn't see as marketable three years ago are becoming commonplace. Miss your favorite TV show? Go to ABC.com and watch it! you'll be shown commercials, which the network is being paid for... But the writers of the show are not getting their residuals for the rebroadcast of the show. The AMPTP insists that the technology isn't yet proven to be marketable, but there it is, and the parallels with the introduction of VHS and DVD are clear.

Now, I'm not one to say that restitution should be made for the percentages the WGA negotiated away in the past, and in any case, that's not what they're asking for. They want in on the new technology because they wisely see the market headed in that direction, and they want a raise.

It's not an unfair position.

How does this relate to me?

The WGA's success or failure will undoubtedly affect the amount I get paid for my work as a writer.

Now, I am not a union guy. Far from it. But in this case, I agree with the WGA. Not because it will affect my paycheck, but because I sincerely believe they're right.

But will I be able to resist if someone offers me a quarter of a million dollars for my screenplay?

I don't know. I honestly don't know.

It would sure be nice to get the opportunity to find out, though.

Blowing Away Clouds Of Doubt

2007-10-27T23:21:00.000-07:00

Aeons ago, before the fires, I wrote this post about pitching my screenplay. That was an exciting afternoon.

Not nearly as exciting as this one turned out to be.

I should begin by saying that I spent that week and a half working on what I thought would be a very good pitch. I read a book on selling your story in a minute. I wrote and rewrote my pitch, refining it until everyone I gave it to (read as: "subjected to it") responded with an honest, "Wow, I'd love to see that movie."

And then I got to the Screenwriting Expo and took a seminar on pitches. Round out my education, I thought. Oh, no...the seminar contradicted everything in the book.

Shit.

Okay, I'll take another seminar on pitching. Same thing.

Another seminar, another writer who disagrees with the book I read.

It turns out that sixty seconds is too long a pitch.

So last night, I sat down and rewrote my pitch from scratch, and by the time I went to bed, I still hadn't gotten it to the point of wow-I-would-love-to-see-that-movie. It didn't pop.

At 4 am, I woke up with the solution: There's a tragedy in the story... That's my pop.

So, here's how it goes:

Everything In Between is a multi-plot drama about how we all experience love the same way. When the lives of four very different couples cross at a gay wedding, they must face a tragedy that will ultimately change each of them -- for the better.

Spoken aloud, slowly and clearly, it takes about 20 seconds.

"I get it! It's Crash, with love! I love it!" said one agency executive. Exactly. I'm going to send her a thank you note.

A drama is a hard sell. Look at the list of movies at your local theater... It's late in the year, so the awards season has begun, but that is the only explanation for movies like Michael Clayton and Things We Lost In The Fire. What's an easy sell? Horror. R-rated comedies. Male-driven romcoms. Seriously, Saw VI is actually being written. I'm absolutely certain that I don't want to know what body parts you can cut off after the fifth vivisected appendage. I mean, really, once you've cut off all four limbs, how much thrill can be left? Here's an idea for the tagline for Saw V: "You're going to need help for this one."

I am not going to say what responses I got or from whom; I'll just say that I did better than I hoped.

Apparently, I've got game.

The Fat Lady Ain't Even On Stage, But...

2007-10-23T14:31:00.001-07:00

I'm proud of my neighbors here.

San Diego claims to be "America's Finest City". If you live anywhere else and take pride in where you live, you might look at that as mere bravado.

I don't.

I called my best friend Bear when I saw his house was surrounded by the mandatory evacuation areas, and he answered his cell phone from his friend's front lawn, miles from his own house. His friend is out of town, but the friend's house is located closer to the Harris Fire, so Bear was up there to break in and get the guy's belongings out if the fire got too close. Just hanging out on the front lawn with a hose.

Thousands of people spent last night at Qualcom Stadium, where there is no shortage of food, water, and bedding being brought in by voluntary donation. In fact, several local bands set up there and kept folks entertained, while dozens of area massage therapists offered free massage to evacuees. The atmosphere there has been described as "festive" by the press, and though people are worried about their homes, they're calm and well-behaved.

A local company which makes respirators and face masks donated 30,000 masks to the Office of Emergency Services, which will allow responders to work more comfortably in the hardest-hit areas, and provide an opportunity for damage assessment teams to go in earlier.

As of noon today, 513,000 people had been evacuated from their homes... Roughly one in twelve San Diegans... And there have been exactly zero reports of looting or mayhem. Zero.

We still have several days of fire and destruction ahead of us, but right now? Right now, I'm so proud of my neighbors.

This truly is America's Finest City.

Ring of Fire

2007-10-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

There is one pair of numbers that I think illustrates just how scary these last two days have been: Between 6 pm and 10 pm last night, the county estimate of the size of the Witch Creek fire went from 20,000 acres to 145, 000 acres.

At the moment, the only way out of San Diego is to the east, via the I-8. Or, by air.

My eyes haven't stopped watering since Sunday.

145,000 acres. And that's just one fire.

Depending on where you get your information, there are between 5 and 7 fires burning, and the city of San Diego is very much surrounded.

How badly stressed is our emergency services system? For most of the day yesterday, there was only one fire engine for the entire city of San Diego.

The scariest thing about all this is that friends and loved ones are in those areas evacuated, and I've lost contact with them. I called Sihaya yesterday and got her machine. If she went to work yesterday, then she's clear of the fires, but her cats are not. I called this morning again, and got her machine again, so her house is still standing, at least. For now.

Because bloggers are fond of lists, here are a few things I'm tired of:

1. Itchy, burning eyes.
2. TV journalists comparing burned neighborhoods to "a war zone".
3. Network television preempting local coverage
4. Network television's entertainment spin on our losses
5. The phrase, "the (absolute) worst that could happen"
6. The growing sense of helplessness
7. Video of fires and firefighting efforts that are so tight they don't show anything
8. Video of fires and firefighting efforts when what we need are maps
9. Matt Lauer
10. Smoke

Half An Hour's Jubilation Before The Doubt Rolls In

2007-10-18T12:19:00.001-07:00

I was finally able to choose which companies I'll pitch to next week. It's not an unexciting list, including Brillstein Entertainment Partners, Creative Artists Agency, and Kennedy/Marshall.

For those of you who may not know, Brillstein represents people like Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, and a host of others. There are some great screenwriters at Brillstein.

Creative Artists Agency is huge. The in-house networking that could happen here would almost certainly get my picture made.

Kennedy/Marshall. I guarantee you have seen a film produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, because basically, if you've seen a Stephen Spielberg film since E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, you've seen one of theirs. These are the people who produced Poltergeist, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future, The Color Purple, Jurrasic Park, Schindler's List, and The Sixth Sense.

You might, if you look with me towards the horizon, see the dark clouds of doubt roll in.

I am going to pitch to Kennedy/Marshall.

Next Saturday, I am going to pitch to Kennedy/Marshall.

I may not sleep for a week and a half.

Moving Ahead

2007-10-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

As I sit down to write this, I'm struck by the feeling that posting about the process of writing and moving ahead with my screenplay just isn't all that compelling. Would it help if I mention that I'm considering getting new living room furniture?

I didn't think so.

On Friday, I registered my screenplay with the Writer's Guild. This was a big step, as it meant my screenplay was actually finished.

Or so I thought.

Last week, I discovered that there is a San Diego Screenwriters Meetup group. (Meetup.com is a great idea, by the way.) Last night, I went to my first meeting, and brought my screenplay. I'd printed out four copies of the first ten pages in case they were open to reading it, but I went without expectation. They turned out to be an interesting group, struggling with some of the same things I struggled with. They were a bit skeptical when I said I'd written my way from outline to completed rough draft in just 3 weeks, but they were hooked by my pitch. (I use Michael Hauge's idea of how to sell the story: instead of telling the story, I start with how I got the idea for the story, then move on to give a little teaser that describes the style of the story.) I got the question I wanted: "So, what happens?" They then went on to shred my first ten pages, nitpicking it to smithereens. Yes, smithereens.

I am learning that Improv training helps when you're presenting your writing to strangers. When someone offers a suggestion, it helps to embrace the suggestion, something that does not come naturally for a writer. (We tend to think, "Well, that's your opinion, but since I wrote it, might I suggest a few places where you can put your notes?")

I am also learning that when people give notes, there is a sort of wheat-from-chaff processing that's required. You can almost always get one really good kernal of a note from the deluge of it-would-be-better-ifs and I-would-have-done-it-this-ways. Last night, I got one of those.

It was a "crap! you're right!" kind of moment.

All of this leads, of course, to the conclusion that a screenplay is never actually finished.

As a case in point, Paul Haggis (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and the current In the Valley of Elah) tells the story of working with Clint Eastwood on Flags of Our Fathers and partway into the filming, becoming convinced that a rewrite was needed. In spite of Eastwood's assurances to the contrary, Paul went ahead and did the rewrite.

Eastwood continued filming.

With the original script.

The film is brilliant anyway.

The best part of my weekend came when my parents called on Sunday evening to tell me that they loved the rewritten story. I'd wrestled for days with their notes, and finally arrived at a solution that both tightened the fourth plot line and delivered satisfying resolutions for three of my main characters.

But not for me, because apparently, I still have some tweaking to do.

Next week, I'll be headed to the Screenwriting Expo in LA, and pitching the story to at least five agencies.

It's a start.

And I Was Naked

2007-10-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law called on Sunday with notes on my screenplay. His first comment? "Font's wrong, Dude. You've used 10 pitch and it needs to be 12 pitch."

Crap.

One note, and 109 pages (acceptable) becomes 139 pages (so long no one will ever look at it).

He had other notes, mostly formatting, sort of redirected from things he got about his own screenplay from his former room mate, who is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

So, I sat down with my laptop and mercilessly ripped through the rough draft. I followed William Shakespeare's lead and got rid of all the stage direction, except where it's essential to the story.

And then I went through it again.

And again.

By Sunday night, I'd shortened it by ten pages, and by Monday afternoon, another seven pages. Have I mentioned that I hate rewrites? My elegant descriptions and scene setups had been reduced to cursory shorthand designed to evoke a visual in as few words as possible. Nothing remained but what was essential to the story.

And at 122 pages, I was still 2 pages too long.

Another note regarding a villain who never gets his comeuppance. I shredded a scene to give him that comeuppance, and damned if it didn't make the whole screenplay better. The writing was tighter, so it got me down to 120 pages. Another scene rewrite and it's down to 118 pages.

118 pages.

And the news this morning is that Hollywood is hunkering down for the writers' strike. There's a hiring freeze, and few production companies are reading new work.

Yikes.

Here's The Wind Up

2007-10-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

It's been a week since I finished the rough draft of my screenplay, sent it out to readers, and realized I hadn't read it myself.

I have now.

The morning after I wrote that post about sending my screenplay out for other people to read it, I printed it out, bound it with brads, and took it to Starbucks for a cup of coffee and a donut.

I brought along a pencil.

I wrote in the margins; feverishly scribbled, barely legible notations I would later struggle to decipher.

And I discovered that I like sitting in Starbucks alone, reading and people-watching. There is now a 'bucks within walking distance of my apartment, and I may have to take up spending my Saturday mornings there, reading and people-watching, people-watching and reading.

Had anyone asked what I was reading, I'd happily have pitched the story to them, doing what I could to get that all-important response: "Wow. I want to see that movie!"

Since 7:55 am on Saturday morning, the notes and comments have been dribbling in from my readers. The first came from a friend married to someone in the Industry, who called in tears and thanked me for making her cry on a Saturday morning. "Amazing," she said, "Wonderful!" It's become something of an inside joke that the "high concept" description of the screenplay is, "It's Crash, with love!" Her honest opinion was that it's better than Crash. She offered some tremendous insight, leading me to make a couple changes even before I printed the thing out for my trip to Starbucks.

On Sunday night, my parents called. I could tell from my dad's tone of voice that they were not looking forward to telling me what they thought. They didn't like it, and found some of it disturbing. There were parts they did like... The coffee shop was nice, and the dialogue was spot on... But they wouldn't go see it. They also offered some excellent observations, and I am still struggling with them. As difficult as their comments were to hear, they will undoubtedly help tighten the "weave" of the four plots.

On Tuesday, I heard from another reader, who called it "honest" and "profound".

Over the course of the week, I've gone back over it half a dozen times, and made quite a few minor changes. I've also made one or two major changes: added a scene that whimsically brings things full circle, and toned down the scene my parents thought was most troubling. I can feel the thing getting better, but it still needs work.

One of the most surprising things about the process is how low on the priority list this seems to be for people I'm counting on most for solid notes. A couple people I've sent it to haven't even acknowledged receipt.

Even as I work through the process of rewriting, I am shifting my focus to the other part of screenwriting: selling the script. I have three weeks to develop and refine my pitch. It isn't going to sell itself.

The pitch is the part that worries me. Albert Einstein failed his math exams twice. I could be sitting on a wonderfully written script with a brilliant story, and still blow the pitch.

I'll keep you posted.

Oh, Get Over It

2007-10-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

Aboard my last ship one evening in June of 1998, at around ten minutes after eight, a group of young petty officers came knocking on the Chief's Mess door with a complaint and a demand: Ban the movie "Blazing Saddles", which was the feature being shown that night.

It seems they were deeply offended by the opening scene in which the redneck cowboys demand of the black members of the track laying gang, "Sing us a nigger work song." These young petty officers were, to a man, black. And they found the scene offensive because of the use of the word nigger.

Being the good leaders we were, the chiefs present listened to the complaint, restated it to ensure we understood it, then pointed out that the scene showed the rednecks making fools of themselves attempting to demonstrate what they wanted after the track gang feigned ignorance. That the point of the scene was to poke fun at racists was lost on these young men. It didn't matter that one of the screenwriters was Richard Pryor. All they saw was that a white actor had used the word "nigger", something for which there could be no justification.

Our command master chief called down to the ship's TV station and had the film banned. While he was on the phone, he asked our young petty officers what movie they'd like to have shown in its place. "Friday," they said.

Ten minutes later, the command master chief called down to the TV station and banned that movie, too. His rationale? If a word is so offensive that its utterance in a film is sufficient reason to ban the film, then all films in which the word is uttered are banned. Periodically, for a period of about two months, he'd call down in the middle of a movie and have it banned. Eventually, the group of young men had enough and came back to the Chief's Mess to retract their demand.

Personally, I don't think they ever got the lesson he was trying to teach, nor did they ever grasp the concept that one of the greatest powers of comedy is its ability to illuminate evil. I wish I could have sat those men down and shown them that scene over and over until they understood it. "Look, here...see this group of hard-working black men stroking their chins thoughtfully, pretending not to know the requested song, and refusing to behave in a stereotypical manner? Now, see this group of white cowboys, prancing around, kicking up dust, flapping their arms like chickens? Which group looks idiotic to you? And in the next scene, when their white leader considers a piece of equipment more valuable than the lives of two hard-working black men, doesn't he get thumped over the head for it?" Would have been wasted breath.

Flash forward: present day. The government of the Philippines is seeking an apology from the producers of "Desperate Housewives" for a racial slur. Apparently, during the season premiere, Teri Hatcher's character asked a medical professional, "can I check those diplomas, because I want to make they're not from some med school in the Philippines."

The government of the Philippines. The government.

This is not a group of young men taking on the mantle of disenfranchisement. This is a government. Presumably, these are people in power.

Now, I am not a fan of "Desperate Housewives", and have never seen even part of an episode. However, I have seen an occaisional advertisement for the show, so I know that it is a comedy-drama, and if the ads are any indication, the main characters in the show frequently deserve a comeuppance, and very often they get it.

I don't know Teri Hatcher's character, but I know the type. For the character to say something of that nature, it had to be a setup for a later, well-deserved slap.

This is one way that comedy works. We see a despicable character (a character we "love to hate") get their just desserts and it points to their behavior as inherently wrong. An object lesson is thus delivered to the audience.

You don't have to be an intellectual to grasp this concept, and yet, many smart people miss it entirely. They hear the words, but miss the point.

Worse, the mainstream media reports on such objections as though it's the correct point of view. Over time, many people have come to believe that the context in which something is said is immaterial, that a word uttered must naturally have been chosen for its most hateful definition.

As a writer, I am dismayed by this trend. It assumes the worst of the speaker (which in the case of television and film is the writer), who is often in agreement with the individual who claims offense.

In one widely acclaimed and Oscar-winning film addressing the subject of racism, a white, off-duty cop (a nice guy, by any standard, and who we think is color-blind until this scene) blows away a young black man who, it turns out, is unarmed after all. We see the white cop torch his own car to destroy the evidence of the murder he's committed, including the victim's body.

And no one points to it and says, "See? SEE? That's racist! I'm offended by that scene! The producers should apologize!"

Some advice for those who would cry foul over things like these: Stop. Listen. Think: What is the context of the "offensive" language?

Not everyone is out to get you.

I'm Nice Because I'm Cynical

2007-09-30T15:44:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's just me, but I am horrified by this story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070930/ap_on_re_us/airport_death

What really made this woman snap? How is it possible to strangle one's self with handcuffs?

More importantly, what is happening to us?

I think she'd had enough.

Enough rudeness, enough people around her behaving as though they were the only ones who mattered, enough bad-service-with-a-smile.

It used to be that when you saw someone do something stupid behind the wheel of a car, it was because they were in a hurry or hadn't planned ahead far enough to change lanes amid the congestion. Now, virtually every bad driver out there is on a cellular phone. (This is my observation, anyway.)

Walmart has done away with their customer service phone lines, replacing them with a recorded message that tells customers to use their SELF help website "service". A year and a half ago, my old credit card company sold my balance to a different bank, which sent me a new card (same balance, same limit, new card), and I spent three weeks in daily automated phone loops trying to activate the card. After five minutes of menu listening and button pushing, I'd get a message that, "all our customer service representatives are helping other customers, please try again later." Followed by a resounding click. Airlines offer their best discounts only to people who purchase online, without using a customer service representative. I've called to book a particularly odd routing and been told, "You could have saved X dollars had you ordered online," when the routing I needed was not available online. Software companies charge large fees for technical assistance even when they don't offer adequate documentation to help you solve a problem on your own.

The article does mention that the woman was late for her flight. I'd like to know why. Did she fail to allow enough time to get through security? Did she fail to allow enough time to get through traffic? Less than a week after 9/11, I went back East on a business trip. My flight was scheduled to depart at 9 am, but I'd been watching the news and surfing the Internet, so I knew to arrive at least two hours prior to my flight. I got into the security line, boarding pass in hand, at 5:30 am. The line was already well over an hour long. A woman (who, incidentally, had three bags with her) a place in front of me in line turned to me and said, "Gee, do you think I'll make my 6 am flight?" I politely suggested that she go to the ticket agent's desk and let them know she would be missing her flight. She walked away, leaving her bags where they were, and asked over her shoulder, "Will you watch my bags?" No, I replied, I will not. Ten feet away, she turned and asked, "What did you say?" No, I repeated, I will not watch your bags. There was a moment of silent glaring between us, over which we could hear, "Due to the heightened security, keep your bags with you at all times..." She snatched her bags, called me an ass, and went to the ticket agent...who promptly walked her to the head of the security line.

So, given that the airlines will do everything in their power to help you get to your flight, including inconveniencing other passengers, what happened to this woman?

If she was late through her own negligence, why did she snap? If she was late through some unavoidable hazard like an accident the freeway, why did she freak out to the point where she choked herself trying to pull her way out of those handcuffs?

My cynical guess is that her family will sue the airline for wrongful death.

And my cynical side is also growing increasingly afraid that anyone we come into contact with during our day could come just as unhinged as she did, with equally devastating results.

In a very practical sense, and purely for survival reasons, it makes sense to be nice to people.

'Bout Birfin'

2007-09-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

Beginning about 6 pm last night, I started sending the completed rough draft of "Everything In Between" out to my readers.

I don't know why I was hoping for immediate feedback. First, no one can read 110 pages in a few minutes, assimilate the contents, and write a well-thought-out response with cogent notes in, oh, half an hour. And B) it was Friday night.

To paraphrase Butterfly McQueen, "I don't know nuffin 'bout birfin' no screenplays."

Still, I feel like an expectant father. As I was writing it, I maintained a relatively casual air about it ("Oh, yeah. I'm writing a screenplay. It's no big deal."), even as I wrote 4 - 5 pages per day, forsaking most things, including basic hygiene on weekends, to get it finished. Having written "CUT TO BLACK" at 5:30, I was ready for bed by 9:30, at least physically, if not mentally. I tossed and turned a while, wonderinghopingpraying, semisuccessfully suppressing the nagging thought that I, myself, have never read it end-to-end, so whatthehellwasIthinking?

I know it's a monster of a good idea for a movie.

But is my execution of the idea even remotely on the mark? I don't have the faintest fucking clue.

I remember, at age four, dancing around the living room with my grandmother, singing, "She had a baby girl! She had a baby girl!" in the seconds after the phone call came with news of my sister's birth. I also remember being conscious at the time of the fact that I had no idea what that meant in real terms.

In a way, I've been dancing around for the last month, singing, "I'm writing a screenplay", with no idea what it really meant. And here I am at 3 am the morning after finishing the rough draft, wondering if I've done this magnificent idea any justice at all.

This much, I do know: There are nuggets of truth in it. In the second-to-last scene, one of my characters says something so poignant that before I could type it, I started bawling and had to take a ten minute break before I could continue. The critic in my brain says, "Sure, but will the audience feel that way?"

So, here I sit. At 2:15 this morning, restless from anxiety and heartburn, I could stand being in bed no longer, and I got up only to discover that I have nothing to drink that isn't acidic...including the water.

I believe I shall, after all, print a copy of my script and read it at last from start to finish. I will try to ignore the errors I see, and look to the story.

And later, I'll probably take a nap.

She Had It Coming

2007-09-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

I killed a woman Sunday night.

Granted, she was one of the characters in my screenplay, but it was still a gut-wrenching experience. In the end, I didn't actually show her death, since the conversation between the characters at her death-bed was the important part of the scene, but that didn't make it any easier.

In fact, not showing her death felt a little like I was holding something back. I don't pull my punches on the rest of the screenplay; it's not gritty or edgy, but its examination of some topical and sensitive issues will certainly draw criticism from the Religious Right and quite possibly from women's rights organizations. Some of it will be decidedly difficult to watch.

So, why did I hold back from showing her issuing that last, long sigh as she passed? As I wrote the scene, and the two characters at her bedside talk, it became apparent that I didn't need to. No matter how I tried to steer the scene in that direction, the characters' conversation wouldn't let me go there. The dialogue was good, powerful, meaningful stuff; it just didn't mesh with the moment of this woman's death. Suddenly, I was at the end of the scene, and she was still alive.

And I realized that I didn't need to show it. It may be more powerful because I don't show it. One moment on screen, she's alive but on life support. The next, her sister is putting her personal effects in a box.

I'm learning a great deal about story telling as I write this screenplay, and one of the most important lessons is that what you don't say, what you don't show, can be even more moving than what you do.

I had known all along, since the morning I first outlined this story, that this woman was going to die. Her death carries important lessons for all the other characters...lessons about how we connect with each other, lessons about hate and intolerance and ignorance, lessons about love.

From a purely storytelling standpoint, her passing came at the climax of the story, the point at which the film moves from the second act into the third. We're into the home stretch, now.

Still, when the moment came, it was painful, and I found myself grieving the loss. I sat in the dark for a while. I got up and poured myself a glass of Pinot Noir, then sat in the dark a while longer.

I'll be finished with the first draft by Sunday at the latest. After that, it's out to my readers, then back for rewrites and adjustments. I won't see her in quite the same way I did when I was writing the first two thirds of this first draft, though. I'll know where she's going, how she ends up. Our relationship won't be as innocent as it was.

I guess that's to be expected. After all, I did kill her.

Even if she did have it coming.

Open the iPod Bay Doors, Hal

2007-07-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

As a gift to myself on my birthday, I bought an iPod Nano (red, for those of you who are both Apple-savvy and socially conscious). Because size matters, I bought the 8 Gigabyte Nano...and yes, that's an oxymoron. I'm not sure how you can call anything a "Nano" if it can potentially store FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF MUSIC.

In keeping with the Electronic Tradition of ThingsFailingToWorkRightOutOfTheBox, it took a while to get the thing installed. I didn't have to spend a whole lot of time troubleshooting; I downloaded the latest version of iTunes and everything worked.

And work it does. I am in love with this thing. Not only does it store and play back my music, and allow me to set my own playlists, it also sorts everything by artist, album, song title, genre, and composer. If I have more than one album by an artist I select on the Nano, I find that I can select all the songs by that artist, or the individual albums. Likewise, if I choose a compilation album, I'll see a menu of the artists whose music comprises the compilation. And it's all automated. All I have to do is load the thing, stick in the ear buds, and jam.

When I see those iPod commercials which feature people (or their shadows) dancing like spasmoidal hyper-lunatics whenever they hang the player's ear buds in their aural canals, I can so totally relate...no, that's not a descriptive enough term...I grok in fullness. Even now, as I write this, I can hardly refrain from tapping my toe to "Afraid To Dance" by Don Ross. Not only does the song kick ass, but so does the Nano.

Listening to music this way is ass-kicking squared.

When a device is this simple, I think it should kick this much ass. It should be this convenient. I shouldn't have to format the device, or program it a certain way to get it to work.

Ass-kicking aside, this much convenience makes me slightly uncomfortable, as though I need to know what I did to deserve it. Surely, I must have done something more substantial than capitalize the second letter of certain proper nouns. It doesn't help that, for such a very long time, I have openly smirked at people who professed their passion for iDevices.

It's the lower-case "i"; it seems to indicate possession, but with the normally capitalized first-person pronoun reduced to lower case, while the device's name is capitalized, is there some message of subjugation there? By owning one of these, is one submitting to the Will of Apple? And just what possesses who, if the "i" is attached to, and smaller than, the device's title?

I still smirk at the Apple iNotion (or perhaps it's an iCorporate iPhilosophy) that electronics are somehow vastly more powerful if they are plug-and-play-accessible to everyone. I've used Apple computers often over the years, and invariably ran up against the anti-immigration fence between what I needed the machine to do and what it would do*.

I show up at the computer store like Rodney Dangerfield, "Two of those, four of these, six boxes of the naked lady tees, and oh, my! That has to be the worst looking thing I've ever seen! Do you get a free bowl of soup with that computer? Oh, sorry! I looks good on you though!" Later on, if I see you around the electronics superstore, I'm likely to snort derisively and shout, "Hey, Whitey, where's your computer?"

I mean, am I the only one who hasn't missed the fact that the Mac computer spokesman is Justin Long, who has made a career out of playing Megadorks. Don't get me wrong: there is no one better at playing dorks than Justin is. Maybe that's the iMessage: "You own a computer, so you're already a dork. You should be the absolute best dork you can possibly be, and we can help you with that."

Let's face it, this little ass-kicking Nano is all the help anyone needs to be a complete dork. Or at least dance like one.

If you happen to be cruising around San Diego, I'll be the one rockin' out like Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

*Key distinction: I said what it would do, not what it could do.

Backing Into Artistickiness

2007-07-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

Last Monday, the Monday of Independence Day Week, a new guy showed up at my Improv class. (I say "my Improv class" like it's mine, which it isn't, so I'll amend that to say "our Improv class", which it is.) The teacher introduced him as a Director, and she actually did pronounce the capital "D", because he is a Director in the sense that he directs movies. At the moment, he is directing a short film.

Our teacher explained that he was there to meet the class because she thought he might find someone he'd like to cast in his film, and we all welcomed him, not because he is The Director Who Might Cast One Of Us In His Movie, but because that's how we are. Improv is fun and reasonable human beings like to share their fun, at least most of the time.

Later, when he was leaving, the teacher pointed to me and said, "Kurt is the guy I told you about who might be good for your lead."

Gulp.

Me?

He told us a little about the project, and invited me to what he referred to as an open casting call for the project on Thursday night.

So. I went.

Reading the pages, I immediately understood the character I was auditioning to play. Divorced dad, slightly angry, doesn't get along with his ex-wife. Got it.

Once I'd read the two scenes they wanted me to read, and done a couple more exercises the Director wanted me to do on camera, they asked how long I could stay. "We just want to have you read with a few of the boys auditioning for the role of the son, and if you can stay a little longer after that, with some of the women auditioning to play the ex-wife."

I was there for two hours.

When they let me go, I felt I'd done okay...there was more I could have done to polish the performance...but I knew it was a good sign that they's asked me to stay and read with a variety of other actors. It meant they wanted to see how well the other actors played off me.

Yesterday, he called and offered me the part.

One scene will feature me fly-fishing. I have never done any fly-fishing, so before we shoot that scene, the Director will arrange for me to get some tutoring on the subject. So, I did some research on fly-fishing, and it turns out that Brad Pitt had to do the same thing to prepare for his role in A River Runs Through It.

So, I will have that in common with Brad Pitt, at least.

Life is funny that way.

What We're Doing With Our Independence

2007-07-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

Last night, my daughter and I walked down to the waterfront to watch the fireworks over San Diego Bay. It was a terrific night, warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt, but cool enough that a brisk walk didn't raise a sweat. Perfect San Diego weather.

The spot I chose was on the boardwalk between a California-style pizza place and the store that sells fishing tackle, overlooking the marina which is home to dozens of million-dollar yachts and even more fishing boats, many of them of the kind that go for days at a time. If there had been a breeze, the booming of the fireworks would have been mixed with the pinging of the rigging on a hundred sailboats. I love both sounds, and when they're mixed? I'm euphoric.

It wasn't terribly crowded where we stood, but there were plenty of families there: parents with strollers keeping one eye on their playful youngsters and the other on the fireworks, while the kids hollered and gamboled in blissful ignorance of the five fireworks displays visible from where we stood.

It might have been the Perfect Independence Day Experience if any of those kids had spoken English.

No,

I am not a racist.

I am, however, a thoughtful moderate, and finding myself at a celebration of my country's birth surrounded by people who came here from somewhere else set me to thinking about a single question: What happened to The Melting Pot?

I was raised to believe that America had risen so quickly to become the great nation it is because we are a nation of immigrants. We've drawn our strength from a pool of positive qualities brought here by an enormously diverse group of people who came here (and still come here) seeking something better than what they had wherever they were. I have met many immigrants and befriended a few; they all share a passionate desire to work -- and work hard -- for the benefits they draw from their new home. For that reason alone, we Americans should welcome them with open arms.

My daughter's high school graduation ceremony was conducted in both Spanish and English. Spanish first, followed by an English translation. I won't say I wasn't miffed, but it stands to reason; Hispanic students comprise the largest ethnic group in San Diego City Schools. Bilingual ceremonies at public schools are an indicator of the change this country has undergone since the 1990s, when we began to espouse multiculturalism and encourage immigrants to retain their cultural heritage rather than assimilate.

I grew up in a predominantly Irish neighborhood, and I knew of several households where Gaelic was regularly spoken. Despite that, no one ever suggested that public school ceremonies be conducted in both Gaelic and English; those parents who spoke only Gaelic forbade their children from speaking anything but English at home in order to create an environment where they themselves could learn the language. Those parents had come here seeking a life better than what they had in Ireland, and they understood that it came at the cost of joining American society. They all felt it was a price worth paying.

Multiculturalism teaches that we can still have that unified society, but presumes that relinquishing even a small part of one's cultural heritage is somehow disrespectful, or at a minimum, embraces a misunderstanding of the importance of that heritage. The problem with that line of thinking is that a common language fosters a greater understanding between cultures, and the lack of a common language only serves to impede the very thing we as Americans ought to be seeking: acceptance of our fellow citizens.

This country has always struggled with immigration, and at one time or another, every single ethnic group in America has had to deal with the fallout of racism and discrimination. Every successfully integrated group has achieved their place in our society through understanding -- by understanding those who arrived before and by fostering understanding of who they are and why they came. The thing we all have in common is that we or our ancestors all came here seeking a better life.

The ongoing debate over immigration in this country is understandable, but the drive to close our borders and make immigration more difficult baffles me. To be sure, there are those who come here to leach off our society, but my experience is that these are very few and far between. The vast majority of immigrants come here understanding that they will have to earn their place here, and they go to enormous lengths to do so. I work with a South African immigrant who owns his own business and employs several people, including me on a part time basis. A friend of mine is a first-generation American whose father died a millionaire, but began as a tuna fisherman in the days when the industry relied on men who could stand on a rolling deck for days to haul fish aboard using cane poles. These men, and many like them, have earned their place here, and they embody the spirit of Democracy.

Our foreign policy for many years has centered on a desire to spread Democracy to other nations, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is a good example of that sort of cultural myopia. The governments in Iraq and Afghanistan are failing because Democracy cannot be given as a gift; it must be earned with sweat and tears and blood. Like any commitment, Democracy requires sacrifice every day.

As we walked home from the fireworks last night, I was a little sad for us as a country for our tendency to exclude those who come here with so much to offer, and for those who receive so little welcome.

I don't think anyone has said it better than Bill Murray in Stripes: "We're all very different people. We're not Watusi, we're not Spartans, we're Americans. With a capital "A", huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts."

Welcome to America.

Staring at a Blank Page

2007-01-24T17:01:00.000-08:00

The work on my screenplay continues at a frenetic pace. Until last night, I had four pages written, but as I worked on the structure of the piece, it became apparent that I needed a new opening.

It's sort of a shame to have to lose my original opening, because it involved a car accident, and let's face it, any movie that begins by smashing a 7-series BMW is, by definition, very cool.

It's not entirely gone - I merely moved it back by a couple minutes in favor of a more subtle opening that provides a better place to state the film's theme. The new opening also provides a better visual counterpoint for the film's ending.

Moving the scene means that I'll have to rewrite it, of course. So basically, I'm back to blank pages.

In the past, I'd have worried about this. Now, however, I have a much better idea of how to structure a film's story, and I can see how this change in the outline improves the story.

Blank pages ain't so bad.

Random Thought on a Superficially Pretty Day

2007-01-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

Is it even possible to grind your own coffee without thinking of stampeding cattle?

Two Days in the Valley

2007-01-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

There is empowerment in hanging out with creative people. The form of creativity doesn't matter -- music, dance, visual arts, acting, writing -- as long as you can share in the creative process, contribute to it. The blocks you faced and found insurmountable when working alone seem to be shaped differently, when viewed through the eyes of another artist.

One of the gifts I received at Christmas was a two-day screenwriting seminar with Blake Snyder, author of one of the best books available on screenwriting, Save the Cat!, and that's how I spent my weekend. Eight of us came in with a seminal idea and left on Sunday with a completed story arc (or several arcs, in my case, since my screenplay involves four intersecting stories)...something I never would have thought possible.

This was the Real Deal. Of the eight, only two had never worked in the entertainment industry. Among us were a television producer, an industry accountant, an executive, a production assistant, a story board artist, an animator, a writer who's been with one of the longest-running shows in television history since its second season, and the director of a Disney animated feature. And me, retired Navy, occasional blogger.

We began by going around the room and pitching our ideas. Blake is an intensely upbeat guy, and he'd greet each new idea with enthusiastic approval or with an enthusiastic question intended to jog things a little and clarify things not just for him but for his student. Every idea was a good one, with both story telling and commercial possibilities. When I described my idea, Blake exclaimed, "Yes! I get it! It's Crash, with love! That's a script you can sell!"

As the weekend progressed, the possibilities before us expanded as everything threw ideas out for the benefit of all, and as we chose from among them, our stories began to take shape. I can't speak for any of the others, but I remain astonished at how rapidly my own story took shape. With each note, each change or tweak, it became apparent (at least to me) that I've tapped into something universal, that my story just might touch an essential Truth.

I see my characters now, and I can hear most of them. I know who they are, where they come from, how they think. I know their blind spots. I know their dysfunctions, both open and secret. I know what will change them forever.

In October, when my brother-in-law and I return to the Screenwriter's Expo, I'll pitch my screenplay to as many people as will listen. I know exactly what I'll say.

The Best Part of Christmas

2007-01-01T22:44:00.000-08:00

Having read my last two posts, you may have gotten the (erroneous) impression that my Christmas was not terribly good.

Au contraire, mes amis!

It seems only fitting to mark the milestone of my 200th post with this picture of my niece, Clara, demonstrating her skill at sitting up, something she could not do until four days before Christmas:

The steroid treatment she's undergoing to combat her seizures appears to be working, and when I snapped this picture on Christmas morning, she had been seizure-free for two weeks. She had bad days on Tuesday and Wednesday, and couldn't get settled for anything...one side effect of the steroid treatment is restlessness marked by crying jags that end as suddenly as they begin.

On Wednesday, Kate and Joe reduced her dosage of Phenobarbitol (the first medication they tried to ease her seizures), and it was as though someone flipped a switch inside her. On Thursday, she began to smile at people, and by the evening, she'd invented a game to play with Joe, where she'd hold up her fist until he touched it with his, then she'd pull it back and smile. On Friday, she began to interact with the rest of us, looking me in the eye for the first time in her life over lunch. She treated me to a half smile, then.

On Friday, Kate and Joe began to try to get her to open her fists a little, and offered her things to grab...by Saturday evening, she was grabbing a map out of Joe's hand.

So the best part of Christmas? Getting to watch a miracle happen, right before our very eyes.

They Got Us Coming And Going

2007-01-01T16:52:00.000-08:00

We didn't have to spend another night in the Denver International Airport, but our bags haven't made it to San Diego, yet.

As it happened, more than a dozen passengers on our flight from Denver were deposited here in San Diego without luggage.

Clearly, the baggage handling system in Denver is broken.

To be fair, I should probably not blame the baggage handling system in Denver, I should blame the airline: most likely, they failed to load our bags on the flight out of Casper because of the weight limitations of the turboprop we flew to Denver, opting instead to put them on the next flight. That flight arrived in Denver after our San Diego flight departed, so our luggage was left stranded until at least this morning.

The thing is, the flight out of Casper was a) not full and b) two hours late because of mechanical problems.

And that, gentle reader, points to incompetence.

Standing by the baggage claim turnstile last night, watching the dwindling and slowly circling collection of not-our-bags, I thought about how little tolerance I have for incompetence.

If I go into a restaurant that is uncrowded and still boasts of slow service, I'd rather leave and go stand in line or sit at a table in a busy-but-efficient place than wait for Chatty Cathy to finish flirting with her manager. Drivers who hold up traffic because they can't simultaneously make a directional decision and talk on their cell phone should consider themselves fortunate that their metal box insulates them from the invective I'd offer them if I thought it would make a difference. I'm too polite to shove past people who block an aisle or path instead of moving out of the way while they fumble with their belongings, but the day when I'm not that polite is coming.

These days, the most polite response one can expect when telling a retail clerk or service representative of a problem is a shrug: not my problem, they say.

Now that automated customer service is so prevalent, they're probably right, and there is often no one there who can offer a solution. For example, when I call my parents, the phone company in Casper will often route my phone call to a recording that says, "You have reached 307-XXX-XXXX. We can't come to the phone right now. Goodbye!" While my parents sat by the phone on Christmas Eve, waiting for updates from the girls and me, all I got was that stupid recording. They could call out to me, however. Last night, I got the same message when I called to let them know we'd arrived safely, and when I called Operator Assistance to see if we could break through, I got no answer. From AT&T. I did get a recording which said that if I stayed on the line, an operator would assist me. I stayed on the line and let it ring for more than five minutes, and got no one.

As it happened, I had nothing better to do...we were standing in line waiting for a taxi. The girl managing the airport cab stand understood customer service, and in between calls for more cabs, she'd walk the length of the line and apologize for the delay, saying that she understood people might have New Year's Eve parties to get to, and just generally being bright and pleasant. Not one person waiting registered a complaint.

The day after Christmas, I called the airline's lost baggage assistance line, and ran through the standard automated maze ostensibly designed to route calls to the customer service representative who might be best suited to help, and got a terminal recording: "All our customer service representatives are busy assisting other customers. Good bye!" After six tries, we just got in the car and made the half-hour drive to the airport to see about our luggage in person.

Last night, when the baggage representative told us to call the baggage claim number today, I'm proud to say that I was able to muster the enormous self-restraint it took not to snort in derision at her. She had, after all, arranged to send my younger daughter's bag to Phoenix, even though she'd be flying there on a competing airline. The woman had done all that she could within the limits of the system, and she'd been concerned, even if she wasn't overly pleasant.

Therein lies the problem, I think. There's a system, designed to appear efficient, but which is anything but. Companies go to great lengths to tell their customers that automation is there to allow them to provide better service, but the reality is that the automation is there to avoid having to employ people whose salaries might be put to better use bankrolling the wildly overpayed CEO. (The "retention bonus" paid by bankrupt United Airlines to its CEO in 2004 was equal to...get this...what a customer service representative at United can make in fifteen years working fifty hours a week.)

It doesn't take much to make a customer feel appreciated. When I brought my car in for service in November, the customer service representative with whom I had my appointment was with another customer, so another rep helped me right away. After doing all the paperwork and making sure I was comfortable in the lounge (with a capucchino), he briefed my service rep on what I wanted and what was being done to my car...and it was MY customer service rep....the one I had the appointment with...who came to update me on the status an hour later, and who gave me my keys and my paperwork when the car was finished. The runner who went to get my car asked if I wanted it washed or if I had some place pressing to be (it was a weekday morning), and when I opted not to have him wash the car, he told me to just drop by any time and the dealership would wash the car for me. Two days later, the dealership called me to ask if I was happy with how I was treated and what was done to my car, and if I had any ideas that might help them improve the quality of their service. A few days after that, the manufacturer called me to ask if I was happy with the dealership. Not once was I subjected to an automated customer service phone maze.

Most people I talk to think this kind of service is beyond any reasonable expectation, but I disagree. It doesn't cost anything to be polite, and though it may take a few more minutes to ask, "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" and then actually do it, that sort of treatment builds customer loyalty and actually makes money for the company. Think about it: I spent more than a thousand dollars to fly to Casper. The two hours it took to make sure I was happy on Christmas Eve cost the company two hours' pay for the representative, and a couple meal vouchers...some $31 in total. The airline rep who dropped what she was doing to let me into the baggage room in Casper the day after Christmas took perhaps fifteen minutes out of her day, at a cost to the company of a whopping $2.25. Had I not been so abysmally treated by other employees of that airline, that $33.25 investment might have guaranteed thousands of dollars revenue, simply by creating a loyal customer.

It's unfortunate for the airline that the ticket-crusher I wrote about in my prevous post doesn't understand that. Nor do the baggage handlers and maintenance techs who can't be bothered with doing the job right. There will always be customers who are unreasonable and insulting, as was the woman I met in Denver who was wearing a full-length ermine coat. She was upset that the airline had brought her to Denver at all, since her flight was bound for Aspen. It had diverted for mechanical problems...flaps that would not fully deploy, which meant that the minimum landing distance for the airplane was greater than the length of the runway in Aspen. When she stopped her ranting for a moment, I said, "Well, better to spend Christmas Eve in the wrong airport than to spend it strewn all over the woods near the right one." She blinked at me twice and barked, "I have a home in Aspen." When she approached an airline employee, she said, "I'm looking for someone with enough intelligence to..." The guy smirked as he listened, no doubt wishing for the sudden appearance of a PETA crusader armed with a bucket of blood.

I think it was the film "Kelly's Heroes" which introduced the pseudo-Latin phrase, Illigitimati non carborundum: Don't let the bastards grind you down. Human nature being what it is, this slogan ought to be the defacto motto for anyone who deals with customers in any way, shape, or form. Unpleasantness on the part of people who haven't gotten what they paid for should never be an excuse for bad service.

When I was on my first ship, I had a chief who would inspect my work, and if he found it lacking, he'd say, "There's never time to do it right the first time, but there's always time to do it again." His words came back to me years later, when I was the chief, because the price of failing to do the job right the first time was often too high to contemplate.

I don't think that my military service has made me unreasonable in my expectations. Rather, it instilled in me a sense of how little difference in effort there is between doing the minimum and doing one's best, between getting in people's way and taking others into consideration.

I'll wrap this up now. Our baggage should have been on the ground in San Diego for seven hours now, and I still haven't heard a word.

Next year? I'm driving.

Christmas in Casper

2006-12-29T09:45:00.000-08:00

This year, I got luggage for Christmas.

Let me just say that, on the surface, the aftermath of last week’s storm in Denver seemed to be taken care of. When we arrived on Sunday evening, the hordes of people sleeping in the airport were gone, the detritus of all those thousands of stranded passengers was gone, and except for the 8 or 10 foot snow banks, you’d never know that the airport had just dug itself out of a blizzard.

But all was not well in Mudville.

When we got off our flight from San Diego, we checked the monitor for our outbound flight, got the gate number and headed there. We had a couple hours to kill, so we stopped for dinner. We got to the gate in plenty of time, and watched as standby passengers hugged and congratulated the ones who’d been called for a seat on each flight.

In retrospect, this should have been a warning sign. Standby passengers shouldn’t be that friendly with each other.

We waited until it was time for our flight to board, and oddly, we heard nothing about it.

I got up to check the monitor, because our airline? Might have changed the gate while we were having dinner.

So I’m looking at the monitor and it very clearly says that the gate where we’d been sitting for 90 minutes was our departure gate. But the gate closest to the monitor? The back board at that gate lists our flight.

As delayed.

I can often be helpful, or at least I’ve been told I can be, so I very kindly approached the gate agent and said, “Did you know that the monitor has the wrong gate listed?”

I did not expect the response I got. I expected the woman to say, “Oh, really? Sorry about that! Thanks for letting us know, I’ll get that fixed right away, and we’ll make an announcement at the other gate.”

When the shimmering that always seems to indicate the shift between my imagination and the Real World stopped, the gate agent simply looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “We have no control over that.” And then she turned and walked away before I could ask her another silly question like, “How long will we be delayed?”

When I walked back past the monitor, I got my answer to that question: two hours.

The girls and I relocated to the new gate and settled in for a two hour delay. The last time we’d flown through here at Christmas, it had been a five hour delay, so at that point we agreed that we were pretty lucky.

And then I got the phone call from Orbitz confirming the two hour delay.

I called my dad and let him know, and as soon as I hung up? Another call from Orbitz telling me that the delay had been extended by half an hour.

At some point after ten p.m., the gate agents disappeared. I’m sure they didn’t vanish into thin air, like Cheshire Cats, but they might as well have.

At around eleven, just about the time that we should have been boarding our delayed flight, another gate agent showed up, and my phone rang. Orbitz again: flight cancelled. I calmly walked over to the gate agent, who was setting up her stuff for boarding, and asked, “Is it true that our flight was just cancelled?”

“Was it?” she asked. “Let me check.”

She tapped a few keys on the computer, then said, “I better go ask my supervisor,” and hurried off to Customer Service across the concourse.

Right about then, someone’s kid said, “Hey, the board shows our flight’s been cancelled!”

I told the girls to grab all our stuff and follow me to Customer Service…I wanted to beat the rush.

When I got to the counter, the woman there took our boarding passes, lackadaisically tapped her keyboard a few times. The agent next to her told the passenger next to me that she’d be put on standby for the first flight on Christmas morning, but that the flight was already overbooked, so while there wasn’t much hope, there was at least some hope that she’d be able to make it out in the morning.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. The agent I was dealing with said with a bored sigh, “I might be able to get you on a flight on Tuesday evening.”

Tuesday? Tuesday as in two days from now, Tuesday? I was incredulous. “Oh, no,” I said, “you guys have been rude to me and lied to me and this cancellation is because you couldn’t fix your airplane on Christmas Eve…you’re going to make this right. You’re going to do right by me.”

The woman looked at me with fire in her eyes. She grabbed our boarding passes and crushed them in her fist before slamming them on the counter in front of me. “I,” she snarled, “am not helping you!” She spun and headed for the Customer Service office.

“What??? I want your name!” I shouted after her.

“You’re not going to get it!” and she disappeared into the office.

“Sir?” said one of the other agents. “If you don’t calm down, I’ll call the police.”

I thought about that for a minute. I didn’t doubt for a second that he was serious. So I stood there silently, wavering between astonishment and panic. What happened to the option to go standby on Christmas day? What happened to the customer service representative calmly talking the distraught passenger through the choices available? What happened to the recognition that the customer has the airline a lot of money to make sure that he and his kids could be with their family on Christmas? What could I have said that would warrant a threat to call the police? I replayed what I said; I did not use foul language. I only raised my voice to be heard across the room by the retreating customer service representative. Correction: the retreating airline employee.

And the ultimate question: Now what do I do?

Other passengers came to the counter, were apologetically told they’d be on standby for the next day, received their hotel and meal vouchers, and left.

I held my ground at the counter.

Other passengers reacted with shock, incredulity, and anger. They were given their boarding passes for the cancelled flight and told to go away, and I wondered if I was seeing some new company policy: don’t help any customer who is upset.

While I stood there quietly, the police did, in fact, arrive.

It was then that I noticed the mob behind me. If I squinted just right, the whole scene turned black and white, and those skis that guy had? might have passed for a pitchfork.

The girl from our gate who had so helpfully disappeared when I asked if our flight had been cancelled reappeared to help get things straightened out for me. She was friendly and talkative, and she got me a hotel voucher and meal vouchers right away. She tried to arrange for our baggage to be set out for us before we left for the hotel.

And while we were waiting for that, she refused to let me out of her sight.

At some point her supervisor told her that there would be another flight in the morning, an extra flight to take care of the passengers on the cancelled Casper flight. The flight time was so early in the morning that by the time she got me flight vouchers, it no longer made sense for us to go to the hotel.

When I told my daughters we’d be spending the night in the airport, they said, “Kewl!”

I did not sleep. Alanna slept on the floor for an hour or two, while Heidi and I watched part of “King Kong” on Alanna’s DVD player.

By 6 a.m., our extra flight had still not shown on the monitor, but a phone call to the reservation number and we had confirmed seats for the flight departing at 8:15.

Before boarding, I asked the gate agent to confirm that our bags would be on our flight. She said, “Yes, I show them waiting to be scanned for your flight.”

Perfect. We’d be there in time for a late Christmas breakfast, even if it wasn’t to be my Dad’s amazing pancakes.

The thirteen of us on that extra flight were relieved to finally enter the terminal to see our loved ones, some of whom had spent the night in the Casper terminal and faced a two or three hour drive home.

For the first few minutes after the baggage turnstile began to move, there was laughter and friendly banter, except for the one slightly crazy-looking woman who had arrived from Denver three days before and still had not gotten her luggage.

And then the turnstile stopped.

Not one of us on that flight had picked up a bag.

We headed to the counter en masse.

There was one. One? One. Airline. Employee. At the ticket counter.

And she was looking at a line of thirty passengers headed out on the next flight to Denver.

We went home.

Most of our Christmas presents were in our checked bags.

So. We had breakfast.

And we opened the gifts we had.

And we made each other laugh.

And we had a terrific dinner, turkey with all the trimmings.

And the morning after (Boxing Day, if you’re Meg), we went back out to the airport.

And there were our bags. So, I got my own luggage for Christmas. A day late, but just as appreciated.

In a perfect world, I’d be able to say that I handled it all with dignity and grace, but even the world inside my head isn’t perfect.

Has Christmas been wonderful, in spite of the adventure? Yes, and partly because of it.

As I write this, it is snowing outside, and has been for more than four hours. Denver’s airport is once again closed, and we can almost certainly look forward to more trouble on our return trip.

But the snow sure is pretty.

Christmas Time Is Here

2006-12-24T08:38:00.000-08:00

You can because it's cloudy. The cloud is at the top of this picture, in the very center.

Also? It's like 68 degrees, but with the wind chill? Totally 65.

Brrrr!

Headed up to Wyoming later today, passing through Denver, where I imagine they are just beginning to dig themselves out of all the fast food wrappers left behind by the stranded travellers this week.

Merry Christmas!

Twelve Ways to Make Christmas Shopping More Pleasant

2006-12-21T21:35:00.000-08:00

1. Stop talking on your cell phone and drive.

2. Try to walk in some semblance of a straight line so that people in a hurry can get around you.

3. No, it doesn't matter what direction.

4. Please stop talking on your cell phone and drive.

5. Keep your kids close to you or leave them with a sitter.

6. Put things back where you found them.

7. Stop talking on your damned cell phone and drive your damned car.

8. The holidays are much nicer if you treat everyone with the same respect you demand from them.

9. Trying to talk on two cell phones while driving is one louder than stupid.

10. Freedom To Go To The Head Of The Line is not one of the Rights provided by our Constitution. Please wait like the rest of us.

11. Neither is Freedom To Drive Like A Moron.

12. Hang up your FRIGGING cell phone and PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR DRIVING!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Planes, Trains, and Ships

2006-12-20T22:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas, for me, always seems to be about airplanes. Or more precisely, travel.

Since I left home in 1979, the only Christmas I can remember that wasn't spent on the road or as a guest somewhere was the one I spent off the coast of Kuwait. 1993.

This year, my daughters and I will be traveling to Wyoming to visit my parents. I am not sure which of them is more excited about the visit. If I had to pick, I'd say it was my dad.

Like most kids, I got some cool gifts over the years, but what I remember most about Christmases when I was growing up was the laughter. And the music.

My mother has her PhD in Music Education, and though that came after I left home, she was the assistant music director at our church for many years, so from the time I was old enough to join the Junior Choir, my mom and I (and later my sister) had Candlelight Service and Christmas Sunday services to prepare for and perform in. By the time I was 11 or 12, I was in the Handbell Choir, and then the Youth Choir. My friends and I would join the processional, careful to take seats close to an aisle so that we could slip out for the bell loft before we were needed there, and then back down to our seats in time to sing with the choir. Performing added a level of excitement to holiday services that I long to recapture.

When Christmas didn't fall on a Sunday, our family tradition was to sleep in until at least 8 am...interminable for my sister and me until we hit our teens and actually preferred to sleep in. We'd all take turns opening presents, with my dad taking pictures of us nonstop, though mostly of my sister. When the base of the tree was visible once again, my dad would head for the kitchen to make the world's best pancakes.

One year, in my early teens, Dad and I went out for a tree on Christmas Eve...I have no idea why we waited that long, but those were lean years for us, so it's possible that until that day, my parents weren't sure we'd get to have a tree and food on the table. It's also possible that the season was so busy for my mom, and business so busy for my dad, that we simply put off getting the tree until the last minute. Whatever the reason, we found ourselves at the tree place in a parking lot on Hartford Road well after dark, looking at trees illuminated by the street lights and a string of bare bulbs through that thin, wind-whipped snow that falls only when the temperatures have fallen below freezing. When we'd decided, we went in to the office, where the tree guy waved us out the door again. "Take any tree on the lot, no charge," he said. "Merry Christmas!"

Our return home that night was both joyous and triumphant: we were men, and we had won that tree. Over the years, my mother has made many jokes about my father's frugality, and that tree remains in our memory as having elevated his sense of economy to legendary status. The Christmas Eve quest for a tree became a tradition steeped in egg nog and jokes, and on those few Christmases when I was actually home before Christmas Eve, my dad and I have upheld it. Once or twice, my brother-in-law has joined us. Men hunt tree.

My dad has an unbelievably creative mind, and no one who knows him will ever deny that he thinks of things in different terms than the rest of us. One year, he gave me a Marine recruiting poster. Not because either of us had any ties to the Marines, but because it had a photograph of a Phantom fighter on it. Cheap gift, a poster, right? Not very original? This was no ordinary poster: it was a billboard poster. One Saturday not long after, we wall-papered my room with it. That Phantom was 25 feet long, and covered two and a half walls of my room. No, my dad didn't just give me a poster. He gave me an image of the ultimate expression of my dream to fly, one that I'd see first thing every morning and last thing at night for as long as I lived under his roof. He gave me a celebration of a passion we shared, that we still share. The message was clear: "This is what yo can do, if you want to, Son." He gave it in a way no one I know has ever even considered, much less gotten...that poster stands as one of the coolest gifts I've ever heard of.

Years later, when I was in Maine to help build USS COWPENS, I went into the blueprint library at Bath Iron Works and printed out the exterior line drawings of the ship to give my dad for Christmas. That led to this:

...which is now on display at the Cowpens National Battlefield Museum. It was built mostly from scratch, out of plastic and fiberglass and wire and brass, and it is six feet long.

Over the years, there have been several occasions when I've been unable to be home for Christmas Day, so the family has moved the whole celebration and all the traditions that could be moved to whatever day I could be there. The important thing, as far as my mom and dad were concerned, was that the family gets to be together for the celebration. I will be able to offer this to any woman who chooses me: two Christmases.

For several years after my sister moved to California to be with Joe, the three of us have given our parents gifts that honor them with our creative talents. One year, we borrowed their video camera for several days before Christmas, and presented them with a short film about what Christmas means to us. The film was hosted by Joe as Wiley Beaton-Smythe, a vaguely British talk show host who goes around interviewing various people (all played by my sister and me) about the meaning of Christmas. Another year, we wrote and recorded a 40's style radio play about a Sam Spade-est-ce-que private eye hired by a mysterious and beautiful woman to find the meaning of Christmas. A couple years ago, we recorded an album of our music for them.

It's not just that I love how they made Christmas for us when we were young, I love that they gave us so many options for making Christmas wonderful now.

It's that one fact that makes being solitary at Christmas such a bittersweet thing; My most passionate Christmas wish is to share all of this with a woman who understands and appreciates it.

Anyway, I have all of that to look forward to.

And the best thing about Christmas this year is that my niece's EEG was normal today. There is no sign of the abnormal brain activity that indicated lurking seizures and infantile spasm. Yesterday, when Joe went to check on her in her crib, Clara heard his voice, rolled over, and started giggling.

So, this year, it seems there will be one more laugh in the Kalbfleisch household.

I Wish I Had a River

2006-12-18T03:09:00.000-08:00

I called my sister on Thursday for the latest news about Clara, who was in the hospital last week, undergoing treatment for infantile spasm. The news was good, that the steroid treatment seems to be working, though we've seen this twice before...she'll start on a new medication, her seizures will disappear for a week, only to return in a week with greater intensity. Each medication is purported to be effective for 50% of those it's given to - so this being the third, and last, available treatment option, perhaps the Law of Averages will work in her favor. My sister is hopeful; I am not sure I have room for more disappointment.

What's been astonishing to me is how acutely I feel each piece of news about my niece, though perhaps it's my sister's pain that most deeply affects me. She and I have always had a special bond, but I am only just beginning to understand what motivated her to be so powerfully supportive during and after my divorce.

I seem to be feeling everything much more intensely lately. A cheesy Lifetime movie ended with me streaming tears this afternoon; what's more, I'd seen it before. Music can make me misty-eyed, if you'll excuse the alliteration. It doesn't even have to have lyrics: W.G. Snuffy Walden's rendition of "The First Noel" snuck up on me a little while ago, and Mozart's Overture from La Nozze di Figaro before that.

It must be because it's coming on Christmas, and they are indeed cutting down trees. They're putting up reindeer.

The other night, I took Heidi Christmas shopping. I had thought to let her go do her thing for a while while I knocked out my gift-hunting for her, but a phone call from an old friend kept me from getting much done. The call kept me on the outside of the Christmas rush for the evening, and I'm grateful for that opportunity. I honestly think everyone should set aside one evening during the busy season to simply sit and watch.

I guess that's how I've been feeling this Holiday season: on the outside, looking in.

I am hungry for something, and I know what it is, but like a kid looking up at a cookie jar on a high shelf, it's out of my reach.

When I get like this, I have a tendency to walk around in circles and cast off the things I have that I enjoy for want of the thing I don't have that I crave. Scott Peck would have said that I lack the ability to defer gratification.

It's not that I lack that ability, it's that I often choose the easier path, the one in which I don't have to exercise it.

I wish I had a river that I could skate away on.

Soundtrack

2006-12-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

Inside my head, there is a large chorus singing in a minor key, with thematic counterpoints from cellos and violins.

I woke this morning to the call of the fog horns on San Diego Bay. Next to the sound of a lover's sigh as she snuggles against me and tries to hang on to the last vestiges of sleep, fog horns are my favorite thing to wake up to. They remind me of summers in Maine, of when I was young and the world had not shown me any of her crueler jokes.

I had a meeting this morning, out of the office and across the Coronado Bridge, just past my favorite part of San Diego: the beach in front of the red-roofed Hotel Del Coronado. I'd been asked to give a fifteen minute presentation, and the drive would be forty minutes there and back.

The sky was dark and low, especially out over the bay, where the clouds came right down to the water.

Given my mood, this was a welcome change from the perpetual sunshine we've been given for more than a week. The fog rolling in late yesterday afternoon, sweeping across the sea and pouring up the hillside below my office, gave us the first clouds we'd seen since Tuesday last. I'm not sure if the clouds were a precursor to my mood, or if the billowing vapor was manifested by my discontent.

Cresting the overpass on Pacific Highway, where the view of the airport and downtown is always best, the sun broke through the overcast for a moment, and I knew that neither the overcast nor my mood would last. This, too, shall pass, as my boss is fond of saying.

But what if I don't want the mood to pass? What if I don't want blue skies and warmth and sunshine? What if I just want an excuse to retreat a while, to hunker down under the covers to hold in warmth and ward off the daylight?

I don't want to spend today in the real world.

I don't want to spend the day in a world where selfish people act as though the rest of us should be okay with their erratic, cell-phone-impaired driving.

I don't want to spend the day in a world where babies have infantile spasms, and impaired cognitive development, and symptoms of autism.

I don't want the winter of my discontent to be made glorious summer by this sun of San Diego.

Just for a day, I want my world to be about biplanes with wires that sing in ninety mile winds and smell of gasoline and oil and leather, set to playful music on a single classical guitar.

Just for a day, I want my world to be about the softness of a loving woman's touch and the perfect eagerness of her kiss, set to Harry Connick or Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra, or simply to the beat of my heart.

HCOD Redux

2006-12-05T16:41:00.000-08:00

Last year, I posted about the dreaded HCOD...the Holiday Cutoff Date. As I explained in that post, the HCOD is random date beyond which you and your new love cannot include each other in family Christmas plans. "Anything less than six weeks," I wrote, "and including each other in family plans on the Big Morning are uncomfortable and weird. Everyone will just end up trying to be polite while sitting unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in their slightly-fuggy PJs, and that’s too much pressure to put on the family."

Begin a new relationship beyond mid-November and you're destined to be a little lonely on Christmas Day.

And then there's the problem of what to give - there's a lot of pressure on the First Christmas Gift Ever. It sets the tone for all the gifts that come after (or don't, as the case may very well be). It's hard enough making a meaningful purchase for someone you know well, but for the person you're still shy about, still uncertain of...those are treacherous waters, my friends.

This year, there is help on the horizon: www.findgift.com. There are so many choices here that finding a gift should be easy! Alas, one must be careful about the message in one's gift.

Some examples:

1. I'm not certain I'll like your family.

2. I want to maintain an air of mystery , or...I embrace your intrinsically selfish nature.

3. I know you're not , and I want you to know that I'm desperately okay with that.
4. Guess what I'm REALLY interested in!

5. I think it's time to redecorate your place in a South Pacific motif.

6. Is it too early to build a vacation home together?

7. No, really, I DO like your smile , but I could like it more...

8. I want to see you naked, but I also think you could stand to lose a little weight.

9. Your housekeeping habits need improvement, but that doesn't mean you should spend less time with ME.

10. Is it time for our blood tests yet?

The Internet can be so helpful!

And, Charlie...LIGHT A MATCH!

2006-12-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

There's gotta be a better headline for this story.

I mean, the story is funny.

The funniest headline of the year was at the top of a story that was definitely not funny: Four Killed in Cartoon Bloodshed.

Maybe a humorous story needs an unfunny headline to maintain the cosmic balance.

And vice versa.

I still think they coulda done better.

A Star Is Born

2006-12-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

It's not just pride that I say this: My daughter makes a great zombie.

On Friday night, I went to see her perform in "Night of the Living Dead" at the high school. She appeared in four scenes.

Thirty minutes before curtain time, when the audience began to take its seats, there were two sheet-covered corpses plainly visible on stage. As the play began, the corpses came to mindless life, rising from under their coverings with obvious effort. The audience was completely surprised; neither of the corpses had so much as twitched until the music began.

One of those two reanimated corpses was my daughter...she'd told me what to expect at the beginning of the play, so I'd been paying very close attention to them, and to the audience's reaction when they came to life. It was perfect...simply perfect.

If you've ever tried to lay still for half an hour, perfectly still, without breathing perceptibly, for half an hour, you get an idea of how she began her performance on Friday night. And she did it on the hard floor of the stage.

The discipline she can find, when she wants to, is nothing short of astonishing.

And that was only the beginning of her performance. It's been said that there are no small parts, only small actors. Heidi took that saying to heart, and though she had no spoken lines, she poured herself into the process of becoming her character on stage. She watched the film several times, then moved on to other zombie films, taking notes and pulling ideas from at least a half dozen places. She perfected a twitchy walk-of-the-undead that truly looked as though she only partially remembered how to move, and then she added a painful-sounding wheeze...the effect was stunning.

Afterwards, as I drove her home, she asked my opinion, and I told her honestly that I was amazed.

Last night, over dinner, she told me of plans for the musical, "Guys and Dolls".

"Will you audition?" I asked.

"Of course, Dad," she said.

Then she smiled a small smile.

I guess we'll be seeing some musicals now.

Licensed to Amuse

2006-12-01T00:46:00.000-08:00

Tonight was graduation night for my improv class.

I won't try to explain the games we played in the lab...most of them involve a degree of physicality that makes them impossible to explain in writing without painting a fine glaze on the reader's eyes; there are high levels of you-had-to-be-there in this particular soup.

I will, however, say a few words about some of the people I've begun to know through improv in the last two months: These are kind, generous, intelligent, loving people, and I am glad they're in my life. It's rare to find another person who sparks your imagination and challenges you to reach without and within for warmth and growth, which makes this group of ten such human beings absolutely extraordinary.

Our graduation "ceremony" consisted of each person in the group taking a turn sitting in the center of our circle, to listen while the group pointed out the things they enjoyed about having each of us in the class. Some of the compliments I received were what I expected - things I've seen in myself; a surprising number were unexpected...things I never considered, and it's made me realize that people often see wonderful things in us that we never notice when left to ourselves.

I need to remember that. Yes, I do.

After sitting in the circle, each person had an opportunity to say a few words about what the class meant to them. I found it hard not to be emotional...it's astonishing how much more open and unreserved I am compared to how I was eight weeks ago. I love these people, this group of people.

The class is not over for me...there will be a holiday break, one which will seem far too long, and class will resume in January. Several of my classmates will return, and others will join the group, so the dynamic will change. Of course, improv is all about embracing change and building upon the unexpected, and Jacquie, our teacher, understands that it's important for her to assemble a group of people who play well with each other. Judging from this group, that's one of her great talents, so I have no doubt that it will continue to be something I dearly love.

Weather Vein

2006-11-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

Whoever thought up this week's weather for San Diego needs to have their head examined.

Check it.

As I write this, it's 61 degrees (16, if you're Meg, who is brought to you by the letter "U".)(And while I'm at on the subject of Meg, I should suggest that you go vote for her in the Best New Blog and Best Personal Blog categories.).

But notice the bright red letters "Severe Weather Alert!" Apparently, we may have...shudder...FROST.

ALERT ALERT ALERT...SENSITIVE OUTDOOR PLANTS MAY BE KILLED IF LEFT UNCOVERED. Jack Frost is on a rampage in Southern California, and he may do a drive-by on yo' garden, and shit.

Apparently.

I'll contrast this with the weather in Casper, Wyoming, which is also listed in fair condition...at 20 degrees (-7, if you're Meg), with temps expected to dip down to -1 (-18...yeouch, Meg) over night. And no severe weather alert.

See, we're Weather Pussies here in SoCal.

I predict a run on plastic sheeting at Home Depot today.

Precipice

2006-11-26T09:22:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning in the middle of a conversation with one of my characters. I savored the talk...I like the man...and when I got up, I was on fire to begin writing the first chapter of Tale of the Tiger.

I got up and got dressed, mulling over this first conversation in my mind.

I found my copy of The Bridge Across Forever, then rediscovered my twenty-five year old copy of A Gift of Wings, which I set out on my coffee table to read later.

I realized that I'll need to do laundry today, so I sorted some of the dirty clothes, and loaded the laundry basket.

It was still too early to start the washer, so I went to the Vons to get a cup of coffee and a bite to eat for breakfast.

When I got home, I checked e-mail, replied to a post in one of the flight simulation forums I frequent, and read a couple posts in another forum while I ate my breakfast.

I fired up the sim and did some flying, not for fun, but for the photo opportunity. I'll be making some title art for Tale of the Tiger, and I needed a few screen shots to work with. The flying part added another .7 hours to my log book.

And now, I am writing this post.

Really, the things I will do to avoid sitting down to actually write.

Richard Bach wrote in his essay It is said that we have ten seconds, "...the only time I can write is when some idea is so scarlet-fierce that it grabs me by the neck and drags me thrashing and screaming to the typewriter. I leave heel marks on the floors and fingernail scratches in the walls every inch of the way."

This morning, I know exactly how that feels.

I love the creative process, the feel of writing, the way my fingers flow over the keys, the soft clickety-clack of the keyboard as my thoughts move from someplace other through my mind and out my fingers to become perceptible shapes on the screen.

It's the starting I hate.

What must a bird feel, standing on the edge of its nest, wings outstretched tentatively, with the unfamiliar beckoning touch of the wind ruffling its feathers?

I'll get there.

Of Words and Wings

2006-11-25T20:31:00.000-08:00

I’ve had a couple ideas today…pretty good ones, if I do say so myself. The first involves embarking on a new writing project, one which I’ll share with you as it’s being written. I wasn’t quite ready for this one when NaNoWriMo started, or I’d have attempted to write it there. Thinking about it now, that’s probably a good thing. Even now, the story is still developing in my head.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I love airplanes. I always have – according to my mother, the first word I ever said was, “airplane”, though apparently the pointing (and undoubtedly the wild gesticulation) was necessary to understand the context of my toddler’s unskilled articulation.

I eventually became a pilot.

And then, after a couple near-mishaps caused by my own failure to account for the inattentiveness of others (or simply by that inattentiveness, depending on how you look at it), I took a break from flying. By the time I was ready to go back to it, the world – my world and the version of reality that I subscribe to most of the time – had changed and I could no longer afford to fly as often as I’d need to in order to be any good at it.

I never gave up my love of airplanes, though.

To keep my navigation skills sharp, I began practicing with computer-based flight simulators, and eventually made a virtual flight around the world.

Once in a while, someone with a similar love of aviation and a remarkable level of skill and patience will produce a simulation of a favorite airplane, and unintentionally (or intentionally, depending on how much credit you give the developer) inspire me. This has happened three times now: with the King Air I flew around the world, with the Spitfire I haven’t yet given up writing about, and this week with a 30’s vintage de Havilland biplane.

These airplanes capture my imagination and become the keys to a vivid, virtual world that extends beyond the limits of the simulation, beyond my time at the computer.

This time, I’m going to share the story that comes out of this world with you, right here.

If there’s one core truth to creativity, it’s that inspiration never comes from just one place. Just like the people who access creative thought, ideas are the sum of many experiences, many lessons.

Four of Richard Bach’s early books hold a special place in my heart. Biplane and Nothing By Chance were first-person accounts of two summers Richard spent barnstorming…flying his biplane around the mid-west, selling rides for $3. Those experiences helped him form the basis for his best-seller Illusions, a copy of which sits on my computer desk nearly all the time. Finally, A Gift of Wings is a collection of essays about flying, mostly non-fiction. It was reading A Gift of Wings that led me to finally seek out a flight instructor, and the day I flew solo was also the day I wrote Richard a thank you note for encouraging me to fly.

I’ve been asked a good many times over the years why I’ve never gone back to real-world flying. I have invariably given some bullshit answer about the cost of flying, just as I did earlier in this post (and just as I did when asked over lunch this afternoon), but the simplest truth is that I haven’t gone back because I don’t want to. There are other things that I hold more important at this point in my life, and for now, I’m perfectly happy to enjoy my flying from inside my head, while seated at my kitchen table.

You could see this as compromise if you want to, and perhaps it is. As Richard notes in The Bridge Across Forever, “The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.” While I whole-heartedly agree, I refuse to accept that compromises must shatter dreams.

And that leads me to my second idea, which takes the form of a question: What dream have you set aside to make room for other things of equal importance, and have the compromises you’ve chosen shattered or merely postponed the realization of your dream?

While you’re thinking about that, I’m going to be writing about flying and other things in a new feature I’m calling Tale of the Tiger.

The View

2006-11-24T20:47:00.001-08:00

Yes, this is it...the view from my desk. No, there are no whales in this picture.

We have shy whales in Southern California.

Opposing Mirrors

2006-11-24T20:47:00.000-08:00

I watched a news piece about Michael Richards this morning, this one about his phone call to Reverend Al Sharpton’s radio show.  He wanted to apologize, again, for his outburst at the Laugh Factory last week, and the Reverend Sharpton wouldn’t let him.

Now, I am the last person to condone an outburst like the one Richards treated his audience to, but I do wonder what really started it.  As with other “revealing” videos, the crucial minute or two at the beginning…the inciting event…is missing.  All we see is the reaction, and blameworthy as it may be, I wonder if what set him off wasn’t equally reprehensible.

Whenever someone crosses a line and enters a realm of Public Unacceptability, most people around them point their fingers and yell, “Ah-hah!  See?  See?”  The finger-pointers forget that something came before, something that drew the offender out, and something came before that, and something before that, and so on, and so on, like the reflections in two opposing mirrors.  Every one of us has a hand in it, no matter who we are or what we have done or where we live: in a moment of surprise at another human being’s carelessness, who among us hasn’t blamed it on the most obvious difference between us and them?

We see it everywhere, if we’re paying attention: Palestinians suicide bombers kill Israelis whose military kills Palestinians.  Shi’ites burn Sunnis alive after Sunni militiamen murdered hundreds of Shi’ites.

Retaliation is not always so brutal…it very seldom is.  Have you ever sped up to avoid letting someone into your lane on the freeway?  Answered a telemarketer’s pitch with a tirade?

The Reverend Sharpton wouldn’t let Michael Richards apologize because according to Sharpton, Richards has the power to help others heal from the effects of racism, and until he does something worthy of that ideal, there can be no apology.

Doesn’t that just up the ante?  What can he do to help begin the process of healing, if no apology will be accepted?

It surprises me that a man of faith would overlook the fact that spiritual and emotional healing cannot begin without forgiveness, and that forgiveness is impossible when the aggrieved insists that the apologist is being insincere.

For some of us, the grievance becomes more important than any remedy.  We clutch at our anger, fearful of relinquishing it without knowing how to replace it, like a drunk holding tight to his brown paper bag.

I don’t have any answers.  My thoughts on the subject only lead to more questions, except perhaps for this one: My world will be a vastly different place when I believe that every apology I receive is sincere.

How's Yours?

2006-11-19T09:04:00.000-08:00

When I wake up most mornings, I have ideas in my head.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, this is usually a good place to grow them, but not such a good place to keep them until they’re needed.

I digress.

Mornings.

Ideas.

Usually, when I wake up full of ideas, they’re Work Related, because chances are that I brought a problem home to sleep on, like a college student with a garage sale bean bag chair.

I used to have ideas in my head every morning, but these days, Tuesday ideas are buried in an avalanche of rhythms after my Middle Eastern drumming class on Monday evenings. Two hours of drumming on Monday, and I hear Chiftetelli and Maqsum and all the rest in my head until they fade to echoes sometime on Wednesday.

Friday morning ideas…ahhh, Friday….these are the most wondrously frustrating ideas of all. Friday morning ideas are shouldadones. Now, if you have a functional mind (and quite possibly if you do not), you know what shouldadone ideas are: they begin with, “Oh, nuts! I should have…”

You have to be careful with shouldadones, because they can lead to paralyzing self-doubt. To question what you did by comparing it to some hypothetical thing you didn’t do is to stand on the crumbling edge of an intellectual abyss. It is very likely that you will fall, screaming, into the void that is insecurity until you finally come to rest, limbs akimbo, at the bottom of self-loathing.

I awaken on this edge every Friday morning.

I awaken on this edge every Friday morning because I am studying improvisational comedy on Thursday nights.

This edge is exactly where every student of improvisation should live.

Every single class offers me a moment when I chose something but could have chosen something better. For example, last week, we began with a game called, “How’s Yours?” in which one person leaves the room and the rest of the group chooses something everyone has. The person who stepped outside is then invited to return and guess what the thing is by asking each member of the group, “How’s yours?” and getting one word answers in reply:

“Empty.”
“Outside.”
“Metal.”
“Functional.”
“Mechanical.”
“Downstairs.”

If you haven’t guessed that the answer was “clothes dryer”, don’t feel bad; neither had I at that point. “Outside” threw me off. And while that answer was true for the classmate who gave it (as it is for me, come to think of it), it put me off track for a while.

When my buddy Bear went out, someone suggested “hair dryer”, which I thought was a good idea because it was so close to the first game that it might be more challenging. Also, I immediately came up with a one word clue that I thought might be funny: unused. You know, because I shave my head, and all.

Let me just say now that I am a dork, because obvious is almost never funny.

Bear came back and got these clues:

“Plastic.”
“Mechanical.”
“Unused.”

At which point, Bear asks, “Is it a hair dryer?”

He probably wouldn’t have needed plastic and mechanical.

On Friday morning, I woke up with a number of better clues in my head: Lonely. Shelved. Silent. Dusty. Disconnected.

Most learning happens when we make mistakes. Not necessarily big mistakes; learning can happen with all mistakes, large or small, if we’re paying attention and we let it. And by paying attention to the things we didn’t do, we can learn a lot.

So these Friday morning Shoudadones are a fantastic opportunity for me to learn about the imperfect way my mind works. Improv is all about embracing imperfection and running with it; when you think about it, that’s what life is all about, too. It’s not just okay to screw things up – it’s expected. And, it’s better when you do.

As my improv teacher says, “Dare to suck big!”

Babel

2006-11-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

You must. See. This. Movie.

Credo

2006-11-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

-- I believe that before you see a William Shakespeare play, you should read it all the way through.  Out loud.

-- I believe that it should be against the law to drive while holding a cellular phone to your head.

-- I believe that you can trust God, but that you cannot trust anyone who puts a “Trust God” bumper sticker on their car, at least where driving is concerned.

-- I believe that Truth is larger than both Science and Religion, and that neither Science nor Religion, separately or together, possess all the tools required for enlightenment.  Something else is necessary, but I’m not sure what it is.  If I find out, I’ll let you know.

-- I believe that how you end a relationship is even more important than how you begin it.

-- I believe that a sense of humor can’t happen without a healthy intellect.  I’d rather meet someone who’s funny than someone who’s smart, because funny is a two-fer.

-- I believe that coffee dates are pointless, because you can’t make an informed decision about your second date in the time it takes to sip down to the foam, even if you order a venti.  A good first date should last at least four and a half hours.

-- I believe that people with shared childhood experiences can love each other more deeply than people who don’t go back that far, and that’s why you should try to find the things you both did as children, even if you didn’t know each other then.  I played the violin.  How about you?

-- I believe that the only thing more humbling than the recognition that your child is smarter than you are is the realization that your child is growing into a strong, compassionate, sensitive, loving adult.

-- I believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman, unless one spouse happens to be of the other gender.  Vive la similitude!

-- I believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is not unconditional: If you want to own a gun, you need to be a member of an organized militia, which includes the active and reserve military, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, a law enforcement agency, or the police reserve.  If you still want to own a gun, but you don’t want to join one of these organizations, you should still be allowed to keep your gun…in Afghanistan.  Or maybe you can go help put a lid on things in Darfur.

-- I believe that rights are always attached to responsibilities.  To earn the right, you must live up to the responsibility.

-- I believe that infidelity always has consequences; even if your partner never knows, you do, and if you let yourself off the hook, it’s at the expense of who you were.

-- I believe that mystery is what keeps our minds engaged.  “What you see is what you get” is boring; give me an enigma to explore.

-- I believe that the deeper one delves into one’s personal Truth, the greater the relevance one’s art will have for humanity.

-- I believe that shared laughter is an irresistible turn-on.

-- I believe that a person’s past is what makes them who they are, and that their choices today make them what they will be.

-- I believe I’ll have a cup of coffee.

The Dark

2006-11-11T06:15:00.000-08:00

The human mind is sometimes very cruel.  Mine is, at least.

Since the split with Sihaya, my sleep has been…irregular, at best.  I did not sleep at all the night she was making her decision, and since then, I’ve managed perhaps one full night.

It hit me on the way home after improv on Thursday night that it had been exactly two weeks since I’d been relatively happy, and I got home with no desire at all for sleep until exhaustion overtook me at 1:30 am.  I had to be at work by 7, and that was made doubly painful by the fact that it was a government holiday, and therefore a day off.

I held off on napping all afternoon, refrained from going to bed early, desperately hoping to avoid a protracted struggle to return to a normal circadian rhythm.  I went to bed at 11:30, only a little late for me, and looked forward to a long night’s nap.

Instead, I awoke at 5 from a hideous dream in which I sat helpless in the passenger’s seat of a car while a woman I love tries desperately to get in out of the radioactive rain that came after a nuclear holocaust.  In the dream, the door is locked, and I cannot figure out how to unlock it.  Even if I could, I can see that she is soaked to the skin, and I know that she is already dead; if I succeed in letting her in, it will kill me, too.  I am left with nothing but to stay in my seat, a passenger in an unmoving and unmovable car, unable to look away as my lover uses her last gasping breaths to plead for my help.  I know there is no where else to go; the whole world is awash with the same toxic horror that is killing her.  I know also that there is only so long I can stay in the car, and yet I haven’t the courage to go out in the rain and comfort her.  I awaken to the sound of my own voice: Oh, no.  Oh, no.  Oh, no.

I shall not be going to Tai Chi today.  Last week, Sihaya moved from her usual place in the front row to the back.  I had told her, the day before we broke up, that I can’t look at her in class; she’s distracting.  I had intended it to be a compliment, something flirtatious.  She is, after all, beautiful, and the woman I most desire.  I love watching her, but if I permitted myself to do so, I would learn nothing of the form.

But my comment, combined with my presence in the class, caused her to change the way she learns, and I have no wish to do that to her.

It’s beginning to get lighter now, the sky overcast with a purple-gray that is almost lavender.  The birds on the morning shift have begun to show up for work, and as usual, they seem to have had too much Starbucks.

I’ve written before about how remarkable it is for me to even remember my dreams; even so, I wish that my dream had not been so vivid.  I know that I should feel a triumph of sorts, another victory over the pain in my past.

I don’t.

I miss my best friend too much.

Things I Don't Understand, Part 3

2006-11-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I wrote about things I don’t understand, and since I had the chance to read an old, long-forgotten Lewis Grizzard book, I thought it would be a good time to write Volume 3.

Our Fascination with Celebrity White Trash.  Yahoo! Entertainment News has ten (TEN!!!!) links to stories detailing the Britney Spears – Kevin Federline divorce.  Shit.  Eleven. There is an entire section of Yahoo! Entertainment News devoted to FULL COVERAGE: BRITNEY SPEARS.  I will not link to that page unless they link back to mine.  I wasn’t able to find a single story online today about the failure of a proposition which would have placed limits on Eminent Domain in California, but Britney is everywhere.  And just to show you how fickle the American Public is…I was also unable to find any stories about the upcoming TomKat nuptials. Mmmmmmaybe the whole Britney Divorce Cataclysm ain’t such a bad thing.

The Marine.  Who the hell green-lighted this little gem of a movie?  Oh, wait.  It’s produced by Vince McMahon.  Never mind.  (Side note: As a screenwriter, I hesitated to ask “who the hell”, and had edited out “the hell”, in case I should ever find myself pitching to that producer and he or she didn’t have much of a sense of humor.  I put it back in because it’s not likely that I will ever pitch to Vince McMahon.  Ever.)

Why We Aren’t Out Of Iraq Yet.  I mean, shit, the Democrats won the mid-term election on a platform of “End Bush’s War NOW!” and they’ve had control of Congress for oh, 25 hours as I’m writing this.  Why are we still fighting in Iraq?  I’m opposed to the war in Iraq, too, but it’s not that simple, is it?  Announce that the troops will be home by 1 November 2007, and you’re almost guaranteed to get 2,800 more of them killed before it’s over.  They’ll be lame ducks in the extreme sense of the word, unable to achieve anything more lasting than a desert tire track.  I have a suggestion for getting them home safely and quickly: without any advance notice, have the troops simply bug out for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, all at once, and as fast as they can go.  It took what, five days to get to Baghdad from Saudi and Kuwait in 2003?  And that was when they were going towards the people shooting at them.  I bet they can get the hell out of Iraq in two days, three at the most, without getting anybody killed at all.  We should probably tell our folks to leave behind the hammers and saws and paint brushes they were using, though, because the Iranians are going to need that stuff to finish rebuilding where we left off.

Explaining

2006-11-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning, Sihaya and I perched on a picnic table, waiting for our Tai Chi class to begin.

“Everyone asked about you at Bill’s retirement party last night,” I said.

She nodded, knowingly. Thoughtfully. “Have you gotten tired of explaining, yet?” she asked.

I sighed. How should I answer that? “There’s not much to explain,” I said, flatly.

I wanted to ask if she could offer something for me to say when people ask why she’s not with me at social functions any more, but I knew that she couldn’t.

At least, not one she’s willing to share with me.

I wanted to tell her that I don’t say much because I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable around my friends and family if she changes her mind.

I had a sense that something was happening with her for a week or two before she lowered the boom. She’d been distant…loving, but lost in her own thoughts, which she attributed to two funerals in two days and the anniversary of The End of Her Marriage. Two Thursdays ago, she missed our good night call. When I called her at 11, she didn’t answer, and the next day she explained that she’d stayed late to talk with her dance teacher, which sometimes happens.

Her e-mails that Friday were terse, the polar opposite of the warmth she’d conveyed in all our daily exchanges since that first introductory e-mail. She seemed distant, scattered. We agreed to see each other that night, that she’d call when she left work so that we could watch Game 5 together…we planned for me to bring dinner.

When she called, it was already the fourth inning, and she suggested a total change in plans. She’d come to my place, maybe we could go out for dinner someplace where the game would be on. I suggested a place to eat, and she had trouble remembering it, though we’d eaten there two weeks before. She seemed lost.

When she said she’d still have to go home and feed the cats after we had dinner, I suggested that we go with the original plan and let me bring dinner to her. She was clearly tired, and I didn’t want her to have to face the drive home after dinner and the game…it seemed to me that she wouldn’t be able to really relax at my place if she came down, so I pressed her to go with the original plans. She agreed. (Besides, we hadn’t seen each other since Sunday, and that had been very brief…I missed my Sweetie, and I wanted to spend the night. There was Cuddle Time at stake.)

When I arrived with dinner, she was clearly tired. She greeted me with a very long, sad hug. And then another.

After dinner, she quietly said that she hadn’t been so depressed and sad since before her marriage ended. She couldn’t explain what was causing her sadness, this time, just that she felt that she was losing herself in the relationship. “I think…we…should…stop seeing each other,” she said.

There wasn’t much conviction in her voice, and as we talked, she began to reconsider. She asked me to stay the night…not to have me there, but because she didn’t want to be alone.

On our way home from Tai Chi that Saturday morning, she said that maybe we shouldn’t break up, that maybe what we had was worth holding on to. She asked for some time to herself to think, and the next morning told me that her decision was to stop seeing each other.

I was understandably shocked; just days before, we’d talked about the enduring nature of our relationship. I said some things in the moment that I regret, though not such bitter things as to be unforgivable, I think. Their memory will pass. They remain the only harsh words ever spoken between us.

The following Tuesday, we met at her place so that I could drop off some things of hers and I could pick up the last of my stuff.

We talked for more than two hours, calmly and respectfully. She allowed me to ask my questions, and tried to answer them thoughtfully and honestly. For all her trying, she seemed unable to offer more than, “I don’t know.”

I got the distinct sense that she was holding back, shielding me from something.

Coming, as this does, as we both recognized the end of the Limerance Phase of our romance, I wonder whether or not this is merely her way of processing the crisis of continuance that sometimes follows the end of the endorphin rush.

More than one of the people I’ve talked to think it is, or something close to that. Their opinions are based on what I’ve told them…as true an accounting as I can provide, to be sure…so I have some doubt as to whether or not they are simply reading my hopes.

Two or three friends have asked if I thought she had maybe cheated on me, and knowing my painful background with infidelity, is trying to protect me the only way she knows how – by ending the relationship to avoid reopening an old wound.

I must admit that the sense I have that she’s holding something back does make me wonder, but I would hope that she’d have given me the choice of how to process that information instead of assuming incorrectly that I’d be better off having such a decision made for me. No, I doubt that she’s been unfaithful.

And so, on Saturday morning, that conversation on the picnic table may have meant something deeper. “Have you gotten tired of explaining, yet?” I wonder if she was looking for common ground, something to grab on to before we spin all the way out of each other’s lives.

My answer, in the moment, must have stung.

Yes, Beloved, I am tired of explaining, when in the place of an explanation, all I have is the hope of us.

I love you, and miss you.

“When you find yourself
In some far off place,
And it causes you
To rethink some things,
You start to sense that slowly
You’re becoming someone else…
And then you find yourself.

Well, you go through life
So sure of where you’re heading
And you wind up lost
And it’s the best thing that coulda happened
‘Cause sometimes when you lose your way
It’s really just as well…
Because you find yourself,
Yeah, that’s when you find yourself.

When you meet the one
That you’ve been waiting for
And she’s everything
That you want and more
You look at her and you finally start
To live for someone else
And then you find yourself,
Yeah, that’s when you find yourself.”
-- Brad Paisley

And You've Already Paid Me For It

2006-11-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

It isn’t that there’s a certain sweetness in it; it was very sweet.

It’s that the vindication was so poetically understated.

I should go back to the beginning.  (Vizzini said, “If the job goes bad, go back to the beginning.”)

Two years ago, a colleague and former friend stood up in the middle of our annual professional conference, and in front of the entire body, stated unequivocally that my simple, already-paid-for solution to a complex problem was not viable.  “The last thing the Navy needs,” said he, ”is a couple of shade tree mechanics.”

I was, shall we say, discreetly offended.

For a while, my cubicle became known as “The Shade Tree”, and because I am a professional heretic, I continued to work through problems and introduce solutions…albeit more quietly.

I work for a small company that mainly provides training to the Navy.  I am employee number 7, and at this stage of our Global Domination Plan, there are ten other guys on the payroll scattered about the country.  The corporate philosophy explained to me when I joined the company was, “Do the work, and the contract will follow.”  My boss is a pretty savvy guy, and he long ago recognized that the most basic business credo of all (“Give the customer what he wants and he’ll keep coming back.”) begins with giving the customer what he wants.  My own personal approach to that has been to develop the things that Navy has paid for but deemed “unusable”.  I am, after all, being paid to train people how to use these things, so this part of what I do is in both our interests.

I have had a number of conversations that went like this:

“I have an idea for how you can make use of the Snarffblatt Gargleblasting feature,” I’ll say.

“No, you don’t.  That feature is broken.”

“Actually, it’s not.  Here’s what you—“

“Wait.  How much will this fix cost?”

“Nothing.  I didn’t fix it; it wasn’t broken.”

“But it doesn’t work.”

“Yes, it does.  Check this out—“

“We’re not paying you to fix it.”

“I didn’t fix it because it wasn’t broken.  And you’re paying me to train sailors to use it.”

“Exactly!  This isn’t training, it’s fixing.  And besides, even if it wasn’t broken, we wouldn’t know how to use it.”

“That’s what I’m saying.  It isn’t broken, and I can show you how it works.”

“We don’t want to know how it works because we don’t know how to use it.”

“I’m trying to tell you how to use it.”

“No, you’re not.  You’re trying to tell us how it works, which is impossible, because it doesn’t work, because it’s broken.”

…and suddenly, I find myself channeling John Cleese: “I’m sorry, is this the five minute argument or the full half hour?”

The usual result of all this unrequited forward thinking is that my ideas are a year to two years ahead of the Navy’s, which gives the unfortunate impression that I am unusually smart.

This week, the Navy came to me with a problem, and I presented a solution I’ve been working on for five years.

The Navy’s response was essentially this: “Hey, cool!  This works!  Who knew?”

Uh, I did, thankyouverymuch.

Hey, Leonardo da Vinci never got his airplane idea off the ground – it took a couple bicycle repairmen to make a machine that actually flew.

Don’t discount the guys under the shade tree, is all I’m sayin’.

Stuck Hear In Irak

2006-11-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

Oh, sure, he has apologized now, sort of. “Oh, sorry, I botched the joke.” Like we’re all at a big office party and slightly tipsy, and he’s the ditzy blonde who forgot the punch line to a knock-knock joke instead of a United States Senator.

Food for thought: It's a safe bet that at least three of the men in the picture above have college degrees, two of them earned while they were on active duty. Clearly, their command of the language is excellent: effective parody requires deep understanding of the subject. This simple response to Senator Kerry’s insulting remark is nothing short of brilliant.

John Kerry’s “botched joke” shows not just that he’s an arrogant asshole with a stunning level of contempt for the men and women in the military…who are at the same place in their lives that he was 40 years ago…but that he’s surrounded himself with people who share that arrogance.

He may have attempted to tell the joke, but he didn’t write the joke…and probably didn’t even read it until it came up on the teleprompter. And if, "Just ask President Bush," is all they could come up with for a punch line, Kerry needs a new writer. He might as well have just gotten up and said, "Yeah? Well...your mom wears, uh, boots! Yeah! And you suck, too!"

This is not the first time Kerry has made disparaging remarks about our troops. During his presidential campaign, Kerry said that President Bush was “spending like a drunken sailor.” An odd use of stereotyping from a guy who’s never far from reminding us all about his service in the Navy.

Kerry’s website talks about his service in Vietnam, but never mentions his antiwar protests after he returned home. There is heavy emphasis on his daring leadership as a riverine skipper, and a quote from one of his citations.

He’d like you to think that the lessons he learned in combat stand him in good stead today.

But they don’t.

If they did, he’d never say anything remotely insulting about those who serve or have served with honor, the way he did, and he’d make sure that his speechwriters understood that. He’d make it clear that he respects those who have chosen a life path so similar to the one he chose as a young man.

Instead, he aims the machine gun of his contempt and sprays us all with staccato bursts of rhetoric, the object of which is to point out that we ought to listen to him because he’s smarter than we are.

He did go to Yale, after all.

After Kerry made his “drunken sailor” remarks, I wrote him an e-mail (through his website) to express my displeasure over the use of such a stereotype. To me, the fact that so much of what he says he’s done involves fighting stereotypes only reinforces the hypocrisy of his ilk. America needs fewer John Kerrys, not more.

Three months after I sent my e-mail, I got a fairly lengthy response from the John Kerry campaign that read, in summary, “Thank you for your support. If you’d like to contribute to the John Kerry for President Campaign, please send your check to…”

The note was signed by a Jennifer somebody, and because there is an Immutable Law of the Universe that states that All Women Named Jennifer Are Cute, I considered hitting her up for a date.

That is, until I remembered that Republicans are better in bed.

Okay, I’d like to write more, but it’s payday and Vons has a sale on beer.

When Words Fail

2006-10-27T18:03:00.000-07:00

How do you express your anguish over the pain felt by someone you love without letting it consume you?  What words can offer comfort when there is no consolation to be found?

These questions have been on my mind of late.

My niece, my sister’s seven month old daughter, has been having more seizures in the last week or so, and today…we are closer to the news we fear: that her seizures have descended into a condition called “infantile spasms”.  The EEG results from today put her “on the edge” of the condition.

The prognosis in cases similar to Clara’s is not encouraging.  Five percent of children who suffer infantile spasms do not survive to their fifth birthday.  Ninety percent suffer “severe physical and cognitive impairments”, even when treatment is successful – which it is not in more than half of those who suffer from it.  Even among those treated successfully, only one in twenty-five will have normal cognitive and motor-skill development.  Brain damage caused by infantile spasms leads to cerebral palsy in half of the children afflicted with it, autism in a third of them.  There are likely to be learning difficulties, behavioral problems, and psychological disorders.  Most suffer from epilepsy later in life.

Treatment prospects are not good.  In the US, the condition is treated with ACTH, which can cause weight gain, hypertension, metabolic abnormalities, severe irritability, osteoporosis, sepsis, and congestive heart failure.  The damage to her heart caused by the Tuberous Sclerosis may make this option very risky.  In most other countries, there is a drug called Vigabatrin, which can also cause somnolence, headache, dizziness (just what you want when you’re learning to walk), fatigue, weight gain, and decreased peripheral vision.  Vigabatrin is not approved by the FDA.

Nope.  There are no words of consolation.

Who Knew?

2006-10-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

Screenwriting Expo 5, end of Day Three: wow.  Amazing day.

I should tell you first how I did in the Creative Screenwriting Open: Much better than I expected.  I know that I am a good writer, but I will admit that the only reason I signed up for the CS Open was that my brother-in-law wanted to compete.  Since he and I are writing partners, I thought we’d be able to compete together.

This did not turn out to be the case.

When I first realized this, I had a moment of panic.  I’ve never written anything like a script…lots of professional writing, quite a few blog posts, one novel (and parts of two others)…but never a script.

And then I realized that how I did wasn’t as important as what I learned from the experience.  This seemed to calm me down.

The rules for the CS Open went like this: Each screenwriter would be given a scene description, a pencil and paper, and 90 minutes in which to script it.  Entries would be judged on structure, dialogue, style, and originality.

This was my scene: “Your ANTAGONIST has just suffered a defeat at the hands of the protagonist.  Licking his wounds, the antagonist rallies his ALLIES (or henchmen) and plots a counter-offensive.  But one of the allies is beginning to have second thoughts. In as non-cliché a manner as possible, write this scene in which the bad guy tries to regroup while facing subtle resistance from one of his own.”

Here’s my entry:

FADE IN: A PRESCHOOL CLASSROOM. Twelve children and their teacher are seated in a circle on a colorful carpet.  A thirteenth child, HEATHER HARDWICK, is seated on a chair in the corner, facing the wall.

               HEATHER
          (straining to catch
          attention of nearest
          child, a girl)
     Pssst!

               JENNY CARSON
          (mouthed silently)
     No!

Heather hikes her seat around slightly, half an inch closer to the group.

               HEATHER
     Pssst!  Jenny!

The ball rolls between Jenny Carson and Stevie Plimpton, toward Heather’s chair. Both Jenny and Stevie run to retrieve it.

               JENNY
          (whispering)
     What?

               MISS PRENDERGAST
     Jenny?  Hurry up, Honey.  Leave Heather
alone while she’s in time out.

               JENNY
          (looks apologetically
at HEATHER)
     Yes, Miss Prendergast!

Jenny and Stevie run back to the circle with the ball. Jenny rolls the ball across the circle.

               JENNY
     House!

Heather hikes her seat a little further.

               HEATHER
          (whispers)
     Jenny!

Jenny lets the ball roll by her again.  This time, Miss Prendergast is distracted by another student.  Jenny runs to get the ball, but Heather picks it up first.

               JENNY
          (whispers)
     What do you want? You’re going to
     get me in trouble, too!

               HEATHER
          (whispers)
     I hate Miss Prendergast and her
     stupid games! If we ruin the game,
     she’ll let us play outside.

               JENNY
          (whispers)
     How?

               HEATHER
          (whispers)
     You know how she is when
     a kid gets sick?  What if
     me, you, and Stevie all got
     sick at the same time?

               JENNY
     Ewwww!

Both girls look at Miss Prendergast, who now notices them talking.

               MISS PRENDERGAST
     Break it up, Girls! Please don’t
     make me have to tell you again.

Jenny grabs the ball and goes back to the circle.

               JENNY
          (looking back at HEATHER
           and mouthing)
     Gross!

Jenny rolls the ball across the circle.

               JENNY
     Kitty!

Jenny looks back at Heather, who pantomimes shoving two fingers down her throat.

               JENNY
          (whispering to STEVIE)
     Heather wants us to throw up
and spoil the game.

Stevie glances at Heather, who pantomimes gagging herself again.

               STEVIE
          (whispering to JENNY)
     Cool!

               JENNY
          (whispering to STEVIE)
     It’s gross!

               STEVIE
          (whispering to JENNY)
     Three kids sick at the same time?     That would be cool!

Jenny looks at Heather, who nods encouragement.

               JENNY
          (whispering to STEVIE)
     I don’t know…

               STEVIE
          (whispering to JENNY)
     I’m doing it! Come on!

Stevie looks at Miss Prendergast, to make sure she’s not looking.  He puts his fingers in his mouth.

Jenny looks one last time at Heather, who nods encouragement, her own fingers in her mouth.

Jenny looks at Miss Prendergast, and quickly jams her fingers down her throat.  She wretches.

Stevie does the same.

Heather smiles, hitches her seat back to the wall and places her hands in her lap.

FADE OUT

Now, when my brother-in-law and I were headed back over to get our pages after they’d been graded, he asked, “How do you think you did?”

I told him that I’d be happy if I scored over 30 points, and very happy if I received a score in the 40s.

When I pulled my pages out of the file folder, I was shocked at the score: 81!

The reader liked my sense of action, but felt that the dialogue was too on the nose and that the stakes were not high enough.

Not bad for the first time…essentially, without any training or real awareness of how to develop a movie scene, or even how to put it in writing, I got a B.

Apparently, I can write.

Awash in a Sea of Ideas

2006-10-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

I am not participating in NaNoWriMo this year.  Instead, I am attending Creative Screenwriting Expo 5, where tomorrow, my brother-in-law and I will participate in the screenwriting tournament.

We had the option of pitching a screenplay this weekend, and while we’re working on one, neither of us felt we were ready to pitch to anyone, much less the people who will be there to hear unrepresented writers pitch ideas.  Producers and executives from Universal Studios will be there.  Imagine Entertainment will be there.

I am certain that we could sell an idea, which in this case, would not be for money, but for an opportunity to come in to their offices for a second pitch to higher-level folks who could actually buy the idea.  For money.

I am not so certain that we would be ready to make that second pitch on short notice.  And, since neither of us has actually written a screenplay before, there’s that whole Okay, so now what do we do? thing if we do sell an idea.

While we sat there listening to Simon Kinberg, writer of Mr. & Mrs. Smith and X-Men 3, talk about pitching a story, it struck me that the Hollywood establishment supports events like these because this is where the really fresh ideas come from.  The film industry needs aspiring writers as much as the aspiring writers need the industry.

The truly interesting thing about sitting in a room with a hundred writers is that creative energy forms an invisibly luminous pool, and if you’re sensitive to it, the ideas pour out of you.

It’s a cool feeling.

Wish me luck!

And I'm Sticking To It

2006-10-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

I write my Sihaya daily to tell her that she is a) beautiful (she is), b) smart (hey, she picked me), c) amazing (talented and lovable), and d) any of a limitless number of equally appropriate and complimentary adjectives. When she was in Europe, first on a cruise, and then visiting friends in Rome and Tuscany, and gone for three (very long) weeks, I kept it up, because years from now, I would like to be able to honestly say that since we chose to love each other, I’ve told her she’s beautiful every day.

Because she is.

And I never get tired of saying so.

Now, allow me to assuage your fears that this will just be one of those sickly-sweet posts about newfound love; it’s actually an explanation of why I’m finding it so difficult to post these days.

Time.

Now, aside from similar world views and senses of humor, my Sihaya and I really began with only two common interests – movies and food…and, well, okay, three common interests. Since we’ve been seeing each other, she’s broadened my horizons more than I ever thought possible.

Seriously.

Since she’s a belly dancer, I figured I’d learn to play the doumbek (a Middle Eastern drum…trust me, you’ve heard one), so I have drumming class on Monday evenings. On Tuesdays, I often go with my Sihaya and some friends to the theatre. My friend Bear invited me to join a comedy improvisation class on Thursdays. Fridays are date nights, and Saturday mornings we fill with Tai Chi. There is no room left in my schedule for full-contact needlepoint.

I would never have considered any of this before meeting my Sihaya. Oh, sure, I’d have thought about it, in a sort of wouldn’t-it-be-nice sort of way, but the fact that I now have a companion for most of these things…there is someone other than me who benefits from all these activities…that’s the inch that put me over a mile, so to speak.

Despite the difference she’s made in my life (and she tells me I’m making similar differences in hers), I’ve noticed recently that neither of us compliments the other with absolutes. Neither will say, “You’re the best (blank),” or say, “This is the most (blank) I’ve ever had with anyone.”

Oh, we compliment each other, to be sure. As I said, I tell her every day that she’s beautiful and I try every day to tell her how amazing she is; she tells me just as often how wonderful I am and how lucky she feels to have me in her life.

I’m not saying the absolutes are necessary, I’m just making the observation that they’ve been absent.

For a while, I thought of this absence as a choice we had both made, because absolutes can come across as less credible, and somehow undermine the integrity of what we’re building with each other. How can I possibly be the best? Haven’t we both learned that, having loved before and now again, that there isn’t just one person to love? That to love someone is a choice? Once you’ve said, “You’re the best,” to one person, can you honestly say it again to someone else?

My Sihaya does not see things from this admittedly cynical and simplistic point of view. When I mentioned this topic to her, she said simply, “To use absolutes like that is to ignore the whole of the person.”

Does she love kissing me because I am a good kisser or because my eyes light up when I look at her? Do I love spending time with her because she’s beautiful, and smart, and funny, or because she opens herself to me a little more with every day we spend together?

The answer, of course, is Yes. It’s all of those things and more.

A tribute offered to one aspect of the person we love means that we overlook the rest of her, even if only for a moment. An absolute compliment leads us away from the anticipation, the expectation of a still deeper relationship, and an even greater understanding of the one we love – it robs us of our desire to see more of the infinite mystery that is the essence of romance.

She’s an amazing woman, my Sihaya – beautiful and thoughtful and generous and loving – and every day, she becomes more beautiful, more amazing. Every day, I am more drawn to her. Every day some question is answered, some new mystery is presented, and so it goes. I devour every paragraph of her as though she is a sublime story well told.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing all this time. I’ve been reading.

Something Cardstock This Way Comes

2006-10-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

Can you believe that it's already time to start thinking about Christmas cards?

On Sunday, Sihaya and I made a trip to Costco…always an adventure in itself…and while navigating carefully through the myriad obstacle/patrons on our way towards the rear of the store, my eye was drawn to the large, multi-aisled Christmas card section.

We did not stop. We were there on a mission.

But, the seed was planted.

Christmas cards? It's still the first half of October! It turns out that, yes, Virginia, the weeks leading up to Halloween are, in fact, the best time to be thinking about Christmas cards. (Sarcasm intended.)

In the car that evening, Sihaya and I talked about it, and she agreed that it is getting to be time. "I think they've even got snowflake stamps at the Post Office this year," she said. I'm not entirely certain, but I think one of us may have used the word "we" in the discussion, as in, "when we send out Christmas cards". There's a cool thought!

For the past several years (read that as, "oh, for about the last twenty-five years or so"), pretty much all I've done is think about it, when it came time to send Christmas cards. Rarely have I actually sent them, generally because I am so thoroughly focused on my own little world that I can't be bothered with any project that a) involves anything resembling effort, and b) indicates an awareness beyond that aforementioned weird little world. The result is that my Christmas Card List is woefully out of date, and probably needs to be put together from scratch.

When I was married, I rarely sent them because my ex-wife frowns upon humorous holiday cards, and quite frankly, I think the whole point of sending Christmas cards is to contribute to the joy of the season by giving one's friends a laugh.

I've never understood the logic behind a card that mirthlessly says "Happy Holidays". Oooh! A rosy-cheeked snowman card that says "May Your Holidays Be Warm and Bright!" Forgetting for the moment the irony of a rosy-cheeked snowman, why on Earth would a snowman ever wish anyone warmth and sunshine? I refuse to fill friends' mailboxes with suicidal snowmen.

If I'm going for the generic holiday wishes, I'd much rather send one of these:

"Hathy Holidayth!"

On the other hand, my ex-wife refused to put her name on anything that was even remotely funny, and she didn't seem to appreciate the humorous cards we received. No doubt, anything with a sharp edges and a sharp wit is hard to put where she can read it.

Kicking and Screaming

2006-10-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday morning, Sihaya asked me why I haven’t written anything here in a while.  I told her quite honestly that I didn’t have much to say, and that there wasn’t much time to say anything I did consider worthy of a note here.

For that, I apologize.  One of my blogging friends wrote to me several months ago to say that she hadn’t posted in a long while because she was happy, and mused that her inspiration to write must have come largely from her earlier unhappiness.  I suppose that’s been true of me, too – I wrote from a sense that not writing left me incomplete somehow.

This is not to say that I am suddenly complete and now no longer need the soothing effect that comes from slathering words on a page, it’s just that, well, now that I have someone with whom I can share those thoughts as they occur, I’m not so likely to throw my thoughts out into the void.

For this, I apologize.  I feel as though I haven’t been a terribly good friend.

On the other hand, the lack of “Where are you?” e-mails seems to indicate that my erstwhile readers have drawn the conclusion that I have wandered off on a happier path, and presumably all wish me well and so haven’t felt a pressing need to send out a search party.  I am not, after all, unaccounted for.

There is another aspect to my silence: my steadfast refusal to finish the last topic I started.  Richard Bach once wrote that he hated writing and that an idea had to drag him kicking and screaming to the page and jam a pencil in his hand before he’d put words on paper, and I know exactly how he feels.

It was a post about old fears and their effects on new relationships, and it remains unfinished, perhaps because the lesson it chronicles is still being processed.  I am deeply grateful for my Sihaya’s patience – and perhaps that is all that needs to be said on the subject.

So, for those of you who wondered – I am still here.  Almost as importantly, I am happy.  I’ll write more soon…I have a couple subjects I feel are worth writing about…but for now, thanks for checking back.

But It's Okay When You Do It

2006-07-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

Provincetown, Massachusetts has been a popular place for gays and lesbians to settle for as long as I can remember.  In fact, I recall hearing about this about 35 years ago, from a buddy who used a derogatory term, not because he hated or even disliked gays, but because where I grew up, that was how 10 year old boys described anyone showing any sexual preference.

“Hey guys, guess what!  Bobby likes Lori Walsh!”
“Shut up, Fag!  I do not!”
“Why did you walk home from school with her then?”
“She lives on my street!”
“See?  You live near her because you do like her!  Fag!”
“Shut up, Fag!”
“You’re a fag!”
“No, you are.”
“Fag!”
“Fag!”

There was never any hate implied or inferred.  In our minds, to be a fag was to be an outsider, someone who didn’t fit in.

I remember learning from a friend that a faggot was actually a bundle of sticks, and later, that in England, a fag is a cigarette, and none of us could figure out why the word had such disparate meanings.  Of course, if any one of us had used the word disparate, or suggested that we look up the etymology of the word, he’d have been called a Fag, and he’d have gotten his ass kicked at recess.

The buddy who told me about P-town did so with a sort of awe, and now that I think about it, he must have heard about it from his parents.  These days, we tend to look on that sort of thing with horror, as though they were intentionally raising their child to hate.

I’m not saying that there weren’t parents who fostered prejudice in their children in the early 70’s, but in my Catholic, predominantly Irish neighborhood, most of my friends were simply raised with the same misunderstandings their parents had.  The kids in my neighborhood were the children and grandchildren of immigrants who believed so fervently in assimilation that those in my generation grew up seeking sameness, commonality, unity.

So I was amused this morning to read that the municipal leadership of Provincetown held a meeting so that heterosexual residents could complain about being the targets of hate speech by the town’s homosexuals.  There’s no small amount of irony there: gays and lesbians move to P-town so that they can be where they feel accepted, to assimilate, to find a place where they can live honestly and can share a sense of community.

A place where they aren’t so different.

And then, they reject those who are different.

The one and only time I’ve ever been thrown out of a bar was in Norfolk, Virginia.  I was there on business, and went out partying with a friend and her newlywed husband, and a group of their friends.  We wanted a quiet place to have a few beers, dance a little, and shoot a little pool.

One of the women in the group suggested a lesbian bar, and we all agreed.  Really…we were looking for a quiet place to have a couple beers.

The bartenders were polite.  We were not obnoxious, at least, not in my opinion.  We gathered around two tables, drank our beer, told stories, shot some pool, and did a lot of laughing.  The regular patrons either ignored us or fixed us with sullen gazes.

Until my friend’s husband sought to distract her from the game by sliding the butt of his pool cue up the inside of her thigh as she leaned over to make her shot.  She wiggled flirtatiously, then missed her shot.

By the time the table had settled back to stillness (I started to write by the time the balls had stopped moving, but that would be too ironic), one of the bartenders was standing at our table, arms folded and insistent that we leave.

“Why?” someone asked.  “We haven’t been too noisy.  We haven’t been rude to the other people here.  What did we do?”

I swear I am not making this up.

The bartender spoke firmly: “You’re too heterosexual, and it’s bothering the other customers.”

Dear Terrorists

2006-07-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

A friend e-mailed this to me this afternoon, and I thought it was worth passing on.

“Dear Terrorists,
I am a Naval Aviator. I was born and raised in a small town in New England. I come from a family of five. I was raised in a middle class home and taught my values by my mother and father.

My dad worked a series of jobs in finance and my mom took care of us kids. We were not an overly religious family but attended church most Sundays. It was a nice, small, Episcopal Church.

I have a brother and sister, and I am the youngest in my family. I was the first in many generations to attend college.

I have flown naval aircraft for 16 years. For me the flying was never a lifelong dream or a "calling," it just happened. I needed a job and I liked the challenge. I continue to do it today because I feel it is important to give back to a nation which has given so much to me. I do it because, although I will never be rich, my family will be comfortable. I do it because many of my friends have left for the airlines and someone has to do it.

My government has spent millions to train me to fly these multi-million dollar aircraft. I make about 70,000 dollars a year and after 20 years will be offered a pension. I like baseball but think the players make too much money. I am in awe of firemen and policemen and what they do each day for my community, and like teachers, they just don't get paid enough.

I respect my elders and always use “sir” or “ma'am” when addressing a stranger. I'm not sure about kids these days but I think that's normal for every generation.

I tell you all this because when I come for you, I want you to know me. I won't be hiding behind a woman or a child. I won't be disguised or pretending to be something I am not.
I will be in a US-issue flight suit. I will be wearing standard US-issue flight gear, and I will be flying a Navy aircraft clearly marked as a US warplane.

I wish we could meet up close in a small room where I could wrap my hands around your throat and slowly squeeze the life out of you, but unfortunately, you're hiding in a hole in the ground, so we will have to do this a different way.

I want you to know also that I am very good at what I do. I can put a 2,000 lb weapon through a window from 10,000 feet up. I generally only fly at night, so you may want to start sleeping during the day. I am not eager to die for my country but I am willing to sacrifice my life to protect it from animals like you.

I will do everything in my power to ensure no civilians are hurt as I take aim at you.
My countrymen are a forgiving bunch. Many have already forgotten what you did on Sept 11th, but I will not forget!!

I am coming.
I hope you know me a little bit better, see you soon...sleep tight.

Signed
A U.S. Navy Pilot”

Foot In Mouth

2006-07-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

The moment I told my brother-in-law that this had been the best birthday ever, I realized I’d said exactly the wrong thing; his sister died early that evening.

In my defense, I didn’t say it when we spoke that night.  I said it when he called to wish me a belated birthday on Sunday morning.  I’m not that insensitive.

It was a strange evening, the actual night of my birthday.  Heidi was gone to her mother’s already, and Alanna went to bed early.  And then my parents called with birthday wishes and the news of my brother-in-law’s sister.  It was not unexpected; she’d been sick for several months, but the death of a sibling is never a small thing, and Joe felt it very keenly.

This was the second time in five years that a death has occurred on my birthday.  The first time, some family friends lost their five year-old daughter.  I cannot conceive of the devastation they must still feel, but the celebration of my birthday has since lost quite a bit of its luster.  (And as if losing a child isn’t bad enough, Caroline’s birthday was December 25th.  Sometimes life is very, very cruel.)

How To Fix A Flat On A BMW

2006-07-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

I am on a business trip to San Jose.  In an ill-advised attempt to be somewhat self-sufficient, I opted to drive here from San Diego, rather than fly and rent a car.  After all, I drive a BMW…the drive would likely be pleasant, or at least not unpleasant, and I’d have the use of my own car while here.

That was my logic, anyway.

So it was that I found myself moving along with early afternoon LA traffic.  Feeling rather smug, I was, too.

“DING!” said my car, in her polite way.  Her name is Giselle.  She says, “Ding!” whenever anyone riding in her has forgotten their seatbelt, or if a door isn’t fully latched, or if the parking brake is not fully released.  She is very polite, and this surprises most people, who expect her to be very German.  I have no idea what this means, but most people say it, so presumably people expect the car to alert me to a passenger’s Seatbelt Infraction by sounding a U-boat diving klaxon and shining the errant passenger’s individual map light on them.

A-OOO-ga!  A-OOO-ga! Eine passagier sicherheitsgurt ist nicht gewölbt!

No.

Giselle simply says, “Ding!”

I am sure she’d whisper it if she could.

But getting back to my story, I was in the far left lane, the ostensible fast lane, traveling at about 15 miles an hour (in a 65 mile per hour zone), when Giselle dinged this warning:

“You have a flat tire.”

That was the important part.  There were instructions on the video screen that needed to be scrolled through to be fully read, which is not what one should do while driving in traffic with a flat tire.

As it turns out, I have run-flat tires, which I was a little skeptical of when I got the car, but now, having been told by my car that I have a flat tire while driving on the freeway in Los Angeles, I must say I fully appreciate the concept of the run-flat tire now.

I grok run-flat tires in fullness, as Heinlein would say.

I put on my hazard lights, and made my way to the next exit.  (I must add here that hazard lights seem to be much more effective than mere turn signals when one desires a lane change in LA traffic.  I don’t recommend abusing this knowledge, but it’s nice to know it’s there, you know?)

I found myself a gas station, pulled in and got out to examine my tires.

None of them were flat.

Now, never having actually seen a run-flat tire perform its sacred task, I speculated that perhaps it might not look any different when running sans air, so I checked the tire pressure in all four tires.  Both rear tires were at 41 psi.  The right front was at 41 psi.  The left front was at 39 psi.

Hmmm.  Not that big a difference, but to be on the safe side, I filled the left front to match the other three and started the car again.

Still getting the indication of a flat.

So, I asked the gas station cashier for directions to a tire place.

He sent me to his cousin’s place down the street.

To be fair, it might not have been his cousin, but it was another 76 station and the proprietor was also Middle Eastern.  So it’s possible that this was, in fact, his cousin’s place.

The guy at the second station made me wait while he checked the pressure in all four tires of another flustered driver and sent him on his way.  Then he checked the pressure in all four of my tires and concluded that the sensor was probably bad and suggested I take the car to my dealership for service.  The other customer had exactly the same issue, he said.

He gives me vague directions to the BMW dealership in Glendale, which I find easily, but can’t figure out how to get into because it’s under construction.  Two trips around the block later (growing increasingly nervous, as I may very well be driving on a punctured tire), I find my way in.

The receptionist is very apologetic about the fact that the service department is 8 blocks away.

I head to the service department.

I explain my predicament to the receptionist, who makes a call, and then tells me that they can schedule me an appointment for Thursday.

It was at this point when my frustration got the best of me.  “Thursday?  I need an appointment to have a flat tire?”  I stop, take a breath, and less psychotically explain that I am already 140 miles from home and that I am en route to San Jose on business.  Thursday is out of the question.

She makes another phone call.  The service department doesn’t handle tires, anyway, but she can give me directions to the shop where they refer all their tire work.  I explain that someone needs to at least reset the tire sensor for me before I go to the tire place.

One of the service representatives walks me out to my car and shows me how to do it.  I is actually very easy, and I had thought of performing it myself, but wasn’t sure I could.  He makes me promise to get the tire looked at, gives me directions to the tire place, and sends me on my way.

At the tire place, they removed the wheel, examined the tire and found…

No.

Puncture.

Not even a slow leak.

I asked the tire guy to set all the pressures correctly, and while waiting for the chance to back out of the stall, I reread the section of the owner’s manual on the flat tire sensing system.

If the system, when active, senses that one wheel is spinning faster than the other three, it knows that the only way this can happen is if the tire is somehow smaller than the other three.  Low tire pressure makes the tire smaller…who knew?  According to the manual, a difference of only 3 psi between tires will trigger the alert.

As you and I now know, the system works exactly as it should.

For the remainder of the drive, I kicked myself for not checking the tire pressures…as I should have…before beginning a 460 mile road trip.  I assumed that the service inspection I’d had done on the car just a few hundred miles ago would have set the pressures on the tires correctly, and that I had one less thing to worry about.

Writing about this tonight, I realized that the front tires were over-inflated, and that undoubtedly contributed to the leak in the left front.  I still should have checked the pressures, but I would have set the pressures to the same for all four tires, just as had been done by the dealership a couple weeks ago, so I wouldn’t have avoided the problem.

With the tire pressure set correctly…I got two miles to the gallon more than I expected.  The little excursion off the freeway in Glendale cost me two and a half hours, but not a dime otherwise, and actually saved me money by improving the gas mileage.

Funny how things work.

Curmudgeonly Game

2006-07-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

Saturday night, sitting in a bar with Sihaya, I spotted a guy – a white guy, mind you, with dreadlocks that went to his waist.  Blond dreadlocks.

Now, some of you might be thinking, “Wow, that guy’s been doing that for a while!”

I’ll admit, that was my first thought, too.

But then, the curmudgeonly side of me popped out of my chest, screeched eerily, bared tiny metallic teeth, and scurried across the barroom floor.

Keep an eye on the cat.

Anyhow, the curmudgeon that was formerly in me thought of the old Jeff Foxworthy routine…the one that made him famous: “…you might be a redneck.”

Taking a slightly different tack on it, I amused myself for several minutes with a little game that begins, “If your dreadlocks are blond, you might be a poser.”

“If you’ve ever touched up a temporary tattoo, you might be a poser.”

“Yo, if you be stawtin yo’ sentinces wit’ `yo’, an you a white boyee, you might be a poser.”

If you’ve got any more ideas, I’d love to read ‘em!

Shakespeare on a Midsummer's Night

2006-07-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

Arr, me lads and lassies, the birthday plunder this year has been exceedingly good, yes it has.

Sorry. Still sort of in the spirit of "Pirates of the Caribbean" from Saturday.

But seriously, the gifts this year have been pretty sweet. For starters, for the first time in several years, I have a girlfriend. A Significant Other. I've written about it before, of course, but her presence in my life pops everything into sharp relief.

Then, my dad sent me a digital camera. I promise: I will take pictures and post them here for your enjoyment. I have two in mind, for starters…first is the view from my office window, and second, a shot of me and my shiny pate, taken in a mirror, of course. Other pictures will follow, I'm sure.

My daughters gave me a DVD and a gift certificate for a music and video store, so I will go shopping there tomorrow, when the fact that it is my birthday will give me an additional discount.

And Sihaya gave me tickets to this season's San Diego Shakespeare Festival, along with a book containing all of that Shakespeare guy's plays.

Last night was the first of the three: A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I must say that this Shakespeare dude knows his way around a story. I predict good things for him, and I suspect that his plays will (eventually) be very popular.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is pure fun. There are young lovers who quarrel, and doubt, and hate, and then love again. A husband and wife plot against each other, not for anything deadly, but in the way that married couples do when their arguments overshadow their appreciation of each other. Playful spirits, woodland fairies make mischief, and magic is everywhere, as pervasive and cool as mist in the forest.

Watching the Mechanicals rehearse their play-within-a-play, it's easy to imagine that Will might have been poking fun at some of his lesser contemporaries, or even at those with whom he worked most closely.

As a fan of Hamlet, Othello, and Much Ado About Nothing, I have to say that the bawdy side of Will Shakespeare is a welcome discovery.

When Helena says,
"…So we grow together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition;
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem…"

…'twas the bark of laughter mine which heard you,
O'er reaching the tittering gallery.

Contrast

2006-07-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

If you were paying attention, yesterday offered a good picture of what makes this country great.

I spent my morning in front of CNN, watching their live coverage of Discovery’s launch.  When I tuned in, the commentators were busy trying to make a news story of the routine, but there really wasn’t much to report.  In NASA’s parlance, all systems were “nominal”, so the “controversy” of the morning was whether or not a missing eighth-inch-thick piece of foam was capable of killing another seven astronauts.

Periodically, they’d switch over to cover other things, an interview with Warren Buffett’s grand-daughter about his $37 billion donation to the Gates Foundation, and a few other fluffy stories…and the terrible story of former soldier Steven Green, accused of murdering a young woman’s family, then raping and murdering her.

I’m not going to mince words about the soldiers who’re accused of going off the rez.  Whether or not the accusations are true, the political climate will ensure that none of them will get a fair trial.

But this morning, reading the story of the young Iraqi woman apparently raped and murdered by Green, I stumbled across a small statement – that thirty troops have been implicated in the various incidents that have come to light in the last few weeks.

Thirty.

There are 138,000 troops currently serving in Iraq.

Thirty alleged criminals out of a hundred and thirty-eight thousand.  Two hundredths of a percent.

The main stream media would have us believe that all American operations in Iraq are vaguely Haditha-shaped, and they show distorted photographs of the mentally ill Steven Green as proof…I didn’t see a single human interest story yesterday about how the troops marked the 4th…just an absurdly stretched mug shot of Green, put up behind the story that he was honorably discharged in March after being diagnosed with a personality disorder.

But think about it: two hundredths of a percent.

I don’t mean to minimize the incidents in Haditha and elsewhere, but I would like to point out that the vast majority of our service members serving in Iraq are doing so with honor, courage, and commitment.

Shortly after Discovery achieved orbit, it struck me that ours is a nation of contrasts.  On any given day, you can find rapists and murderers, but also brilliant scientists and engineers working together to put men and women into space.

On our way home from a party last night, Sihaya credited the freedom we have in this country for giving us such contrasts.  We can choose, she said, to be a murderer or an engineer, to take lives or to save them.  What we do with our choices is less important than the fact that we have them.  The truth is that most people will choose to do something good, if given the opportunity…

I’m proud of my country.  I’m proud that I had a small part in defending her, in carrying out her foreign policies.  I’m proud of the way our leaders conduct themselves in the face of direct threats…and make no mistake, North Korea’s launch of a missile that could reach our Pacific coast yesterday didn’t have to be successful to convey the intended threat…and I’m proud of the way our soldiers and Marines are conducting themselves in nearly impossible circumstances.

There’s a lot to be proud of.

This Just In

2006-06-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

Winnipeg Herald, Manitoba, Canada*
June 2, 2006

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The actions of President Bush are prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.  "I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry.

"He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken.   When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh cross the fields. "Not real effective," he said.  "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.  "A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said.

"I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR races.

In recent days, liberals have turned to sometimes ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers on Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney hits to prove they were alive in the 50s.

"If they can't identify the accordion player on 'The Lawrence Welk Show,' we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.

"I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said.

"We're going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The President is determined to reach out," he said.

*Not really sure; My dad forwarded it to me after getting it from a friend.

Maybe I AM The Only One...

2006-06-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

Headline: "World Cup Viewers May Top 30 Billion"

Just A Few Words

2006-06-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

I want to write a few words about the woman I love.  Quite honestly, a few words couldn’t possibly fill the bill, but neither would a million.  Where my Sihaya is concerned, I often find myself bouncing off the limits of the language.

I took her to the airport last Sunday morning at 4:30 am.  She had a flight to Hawaii, where she spent the next ten days with her family, and she will be home tomorrow.  Though the trip was planned before Sihaya and I met, her mother invited me along – a wonderful gesture – and if my daughters were with their mother, I would have gone.

On Sunday morning, we sat in the terminal food court, her head nestled on my shoulder, and the conversation was as easy as if we’d known each other for three decades instead of three months.  After we parted, she to the security area and I to my car, she lasted five whole minutes before calling to say, without any artifice or agenda, that she missed me.

Seriously, the words that flow so easily on abstract subjects…haven’t left me, it’s just that pulling them out is like pulling hen’s teeth.  All the eloquence has left me; her very existence is poetical, and nothing I can say can do justice to her.

I could more easily describe the Mona Lisa, or synopsize the collected works of Shakespeare in twenty-five words or less.

And without warning, a song like KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See” comes on, and I’m free to write something nearly worthy of her.

“…you can see she’s a beautiful girl
She’s a beautiful girl
Everything around her is a silver pool of light
People who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm

Suddenly I see
This is what I want to be…”

I first heard that song before Sihaya and I met, but this is the first time I’ve heard it since, and I think I get it now.  It’s the silver pool of light thing.

Since the day she and I met, she has plainly shone with joy.  That first date, coffee at Starbucks in Fashion Valley, while we wandered around the mall, talking and gazing into windows, I remember commenting on her laugh.  I remember exactly where we were, outside the Bang and Olufsen store, I said simply, “I love that you laugh so much.”  She replied that she’d gone a long time without laughing and had only just recently found her capacity to laugh again, and she was making the best of its return.

And then she walked into me, playfully, nudging me with her shoulder.

I thought, Oh, so that’s how you are!

She walked into me quite a few times that day, always playful, as if she was saying, Hey, this could be good, you and me. Let’s have fun!

This is good, her and me.

I make it a point to tell her every day that she is amazing.  I never get tired of saying it, and no matter how many times I do, the meaning of the word doesn’t diminish a single jot.  It’s about the joy she finds in her dancing, in her friends, in the myriad aspects of her day, and – however inexplicably – in me.

Is it any wonder that she sees joy in my eyes?

Yep. I know. I seem to be using the word “joy” a great deal in this post.  I will not apologize.

We exchange e-mails throughout our day, share jokes and frustrations and triumphs.  We share each other’s thoughts, exist in each other’s thoughts.  When she gets home from dance class or rehearsal, she calls to say good night, and because we know how the day went, we’re free to talk about other things: her cats, the opera, my flight simulator projects, family, cookies, wine, farts, movies, hopes, dreams, history, current events.  In short, we can move past our day and on to Important Stuff, Getting To Know Each Other Stuff.  This is how we’ve become friends.

It’s no different on those nights when we can be together.  The weight of the day has been shared all along, and we can almost always let it all go in the first five minutes of each other’s company.  Once in a great while, it takes almost ten.

I must confess that the greatest joy I get from knowing her is the privilege of seeing her open herself to me.  This is the part of being in a relationship I had forgotten about, and I am captivated not only by the wonder of it, but also by the fearlessness she seems to have as our intimacy grows and our lives slowly intertwine.

As fearless as she is, she is equally unhurried.  There is no stumbling, headlong rush, no breathlessly exaggerated proclamations in her approach to the process of becoming us.  It is, we are.  The most noticeable outward expression of the deepening commitment we share is the slowly increasing number of pages between where we are on the calendar and where our plans begin to be formed.

From time to time, she shows me a glimpse of the enormity of her soul, the vast depth of her character.  One of the challenges I face is in dealing with an inappropriate sense of my own unworthiness…in the face of all evidence to the contrary, I have long lived in fear that an annoying little dog might someday pull back the curtain and show me to the world as I feverishly work the controls of my illusions.  The only time I have ever seen Sihaya irritated with me happened when I deflected a compliment she paid me, and I realized that in refusing to accept her amazement and wonder at the discoveries she was and is making in me, I was withholding a part of the respect she deserves.  After all, how could it be possible for anyone to be simultaneously wonderful and incapable of experiencing genuine wonder herself?  Consciously, I began by simply thanking her for her praise, but as my awareness of her integrity has grown, I’ve also come to accept the basis for her admiration without any question, and feel that I am indeed worthy of such a woman.

And the most wonderful thing of all: she thinks I’m brilliant.

A Burning Issue

2006-06-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

As early as next week*, the Senate may consider an amendment to the Constitution that would specifically ban the burning of the American Flag.  This time, it may pass.  Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says he’s got 66 votes, just one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to send the proposed amendment to the states for ratification.  The House has already approved the amendment, and if it passes, it will mark the first time in history that both houses of Congress have voted to amend the Constitution to restrict the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment.

This is not an issue of National Security.  There has been no raging national debate on this issue since the early 1970’s.  Americans rarely burn the American Flag in protest any more…it simply doesn’t evoke the emotional response it used to, because we’ve matured enough since the Vietnam era to understand that burning one flag might offend a few people, but no harm is really done.  (To do any real harm by burning an American Flag, you’d have to burn them all.  Go ahead and try; we’re even bigger than that.)  Once such an amendment is in place, flag burning might come back into vogue, though – as a gesture of defiance.  Perhaps it’s just best to leave well enough alone.

The truth is that in the twenty-five years I’ve been participating in the debate about flag burning, I’ve heard dozens of arguments in support of the kind of ban now in front of the Senate, and every one was based on emotion.  I have never seen or heard any rational argument in favor of curtailing freedom of speech.

And that’s what bothers me about this.  We’re very nearly willing to give up our freedom to avoid offending anyone’s sensibilities.  I’m sorry, burning the flag bothers you?  Okay.  Sorry.  Can I have some of your bottled water to put this out with, please?  That twenty-nine foot tall cross on a privately-owned war memorial honoring Korean War veterans offends you because you’re an Atheist and the cross used to be on public lands?  Oh, gosh, let’s just tear it down for you at taxpayer expense.

Since we’re on the verge of relinquishing our hard-won freedoms to the forces of Political Correctness, I propose the following changes be made to our Bill of Rights (my text is in italics):

I
Congress shall make no law respecting or disrespecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof unless anyone’s delicate sensibilities are offended; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press except when the exercise of such free speech be considered vulgar or thought-provoking; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble without doing or saying anything meaningful, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances at taxpayer expense, no matter how frivolous.
II
A well regulated militia, once being considered necessary to the security of a free state, but not any more, the right of most of the people to keep and bear arms should be considered fair game, such decision being at least initially based upon the design of the arms in question, but the right of Dianne Feinstein to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, except when those papers and effects may be transmitted electronically, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I could go on, but do you really want me to?

If this passes the Senate, Americans will spend the next seven years embroiled in a debate over whether or not to curtail our First Amendment rights.  It will become the hot topic of the 2006 and 2008 elections.  At a time when we should be setting the example for struggling new democracies such as the one in Iraq, we’ll be ripping ourselves to shreds re-deciding an issue so central to our national identity that our present enemies cite it as the prime reason that all Americans must die.

The reality is that the people who burn American Flags these days aren’t Americans, and none of our laws can touch them but the one we haven’t changed since 1791: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

We need to leave that one alone, if for no other reason than it scares the shit out of al Qaeda.

* It happened today, Tuesday, June 27, 2006.  The amendment failed, 66-34.  Democracy WINS!!

World Cup Football Live!

2006-06-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

Why do sports fans so often consider themselves free from the constraints of polite society during the time surrounding their sport-of-choice?

Put more succinctly, why are World Cup Soccer/Football fans such assholes?

On what fucking planet is it okay for fifteen fucking guys to get beered up and scream at their overly-loud television at four o’fucking clock in the fucking morning on a fucking Thursday?

I know it’s getting warm…yesterday was the first official day of summer (though this is Southern California, and summer actually started in March), so the air at 4 am down here on the coast is a scorching 62 degrees, which obviously means you have to, have to have your doors and windows open at all times, and most especially when you have more than a dozen sweaty, loud-mouthed, drunk-assed frat boys crammed into one small apartment living room to watch the game and cheer loud enough that your team can hear you all the way in Germany.

The respectful thing to do at that hour would be to close the doors and windows so that you don’t wake up the whole neighborhood and keep them awake for the remaining two-and-a-half hours before their alarms complete the job.  The resulting buildup of heat in your living room might be a tad uncomfortable, might make it hard to keep the beer cold, but also might create the same conditions the Lakota seek to create in their traditional sweat lodge.  You might suddenly achieve a level of awareness beyond yourselves.

While I’m thinking about it, why are there no women there?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I’m just saying, is all.

Okay, I’m going to wrap this up and get to work, but I’d like to finish with two choice words for all you World Cup fanatic assholes out there: TiVo.

Most Incomprehensible Headline

2006-06-21T04:27:00.000-07:00

Arctic Monkeys’ Bass Player Quits The Band.

Um. Okay.

Good Night and Good Riddence

2006-06-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

I think it was Jeff Foxworthy who said, “If you can’t think of anything nice to say, you’re probably talking about Hillary Clinton.”  My thoughts have been turning to the political lately, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been writing as much as I once did.  I don’t want my blog to become anything like a screed.

One topic that has occupied me of late is the growing concern over the conduct of our soldiers and Marines in Iraq.  My opinions remain largely unformed on the subject, and that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

There is a tradition that seems prevalent in some of the blogs I read is the Commentary On Dumbass Celebrities, and though I myself have not taken part in this tradition (largely focused on TomKat and BrAngelina), an event took place today which compels me, and in that vein, I’d like to share a few thoughts with you.

It is my sad duty to report to you that Dan Rather has left CBS in a huff.  Dan described a “protracted struggle” with network executives who had “not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work.”

Time for a quick review: Without expecting him to do any real work, CBS has been continuing to pay Dan Rather his very hefty salary, after sidelining him in the wake of a national scandal he created by airing a report which was at best poorly reported and unsubstantiated, and was eventually discredited – his report on the president’s military service during the Vietnam War.  Sure, Rather stepped down voluntarily from his position as anchor, but at that level, people never get fired, they’re simply offered the opportunity to leave of their own accord.

It’s a tradition, you see, to allow people who have attained a certain rank and degree of notoriety to salvage a bit of dignity at the end they themselves brought about.  Just like the captain of a warship that rammed another vessel, he was told, “Dude, you’re a fuckin’ psycho, and we’d feel more comfortable if you’d just leave.”

Only he wouldn’t leave.  He just hung around.

For their part, CBS executives have been pretty cool about the whole thing.  CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus complimented Rather by invoking Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.  He also said, “I had one of our interns put shortcut icons for Solitaire and Minesweeper on Dan’s Windows desktop, but the guy just can’t take a hint,” though this remark has not been widely reported.

Dan, I have a couple things for you to think about:

First, journalism is, on the surface at least, all about image.  As we used to say on USS COWPENS, “An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.”  All you had to do, all you had to do, was appear to be telling us the truth, and we’d have cried over your retirement as we did 25 years ago when Cronkite chose his sailboat over the anchor’s desk.
Second, when someone is paying your salary, they get to define the expectation of satisfactory performance.  You were allowed to fuck up on a grand scale, in public, and leave with your salary and your corner office intact.  In Japan, you’d have been banished to the subway with a thousand ribbons pinned to your suit instructing passersby to scream at you about your foolish arrogance.  If you were in any way related to us mere mortals here in the US, the only way you could have prevented your ass from being escorted to the door by CBS Security would have been to pull a Tyler Durden-est-ce-que self-ass-kicking before they got to McManus’ office.

Nope, you got to keep your multi-million dollar salary with no expectation beyond you taking the spanking.

So let’s get this straight:  You. Fucked. Up.  You did.  And you know you did, because your fallacious report impugned an unpopular president, which rules out politics as the reason you had to leave.  You were, were, powerful enough, respected enough, that Bush wouldn’t have had the political capital to have you fired if there’d been even the tiniest shred of truth to that report.  No, you had to leave because you had compromised your own integrity, and your continued presence would have compromised the integrity of the entire CBS news organization.

And yet you storm out four months before the end of your contract, as petulant and demanding as an ill-disciplined child.  Why did any of us ever respect you?

*        *        *

When I read that news story, the Reuters piece that quoted Rather’s bitter departure, I came to a pair of unpleasant realizations: first, that this was the reason I never liked Dan Rather in the first place and that the feeling I always had was finally vindicated and second, that people like Rather are everywhere in positions of power and prestige here in America.  That leaders who live by maxims like, “The buck stops here,” and, “A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan next week,” and, “Ask not what your country can do for you…” are conspicuous only by their absence.  That Dan Rather actually is what’s wrong with this country.

Our national motto officially remains, “E pluribus unum”, once proclaimed with strength and pride by all who lived here, and with envy by many who didn’t.  Now, at least in practice, our motto seems to be, “You must respect me!” in a voice like Droopy the Dog’s.  Hell, even people here illegally demand our respect, as if it’s a guarantee that comes with placing the bottoms of one’s feet on American soil.

Edward R. Murrow, indeed.  If Murrow’s life teaches us anything, it’s that respect must be earned, and integrity is a precious commodity that must never be left unguarded.

Past President

2006-06-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

I am, as the saying goes, a little verklempt.  More than a little, actually.

Tonight was my last PTSA meeting as president.

I held the position for two years, having been reelected for the second year because no one else stepped up to fill the position, which is more or less how I became the maitre d’ for my eighth-grade French class’ French Restaurant project: I fit the tux.

I wrote about some of the events that filled the end of last school year, and no, I am not linking to those posts because the events themselves deserve to be left in the past.  If you have a few minutes to dig, feel free to go back and read about them, but I – along with the faculty and staff, students and parents of Point Loma High School – have moved past them.

Of course, we may have moved past those difficult days, but there’s no denying that they’ve colored most of the days this school year.  I can’t imagine how it’s been for those who work every day on campus; for my part, I’ve felt a little gun shy all year.

Over the last few days, I’ve felt a growing sense of relief, that my days of decision-making were nearing an end.  It wasn’t until this evening, on my way to the meeting, that I began to feel a little sad.  Another phase of my life is done, a part of my daughter’s life is nearing an end, and we’re both gearing up for what’s next.

I am a little sad.  Sure, the last few weeks of school were tough last year, but overall, I’ve had fun.

So, tonight, I ran as loose a meeting as I ever have.  I always felt that Roberts’ Rules of Order were a bit too stentorian for a polite group of twenty-five parents who love their kids and give each other credit for having at least that in common.

We settled the money issues, talked about some ideas for next year, and all of it with a sort of easy camaraderie.  I’ve been a part of this group for just short of three years; many of these people have known each other their entire lives.  That’s reason enough to consider it a great honor to be asked to serve as their president.

It is astonishing how many of the people in the PTSA give the full measure of their devotion to our kids.  All our kids.  Not just the twenty-five or thirty kids directly represented in the room, but all of the more than two thousand kids here.

I am humbled by their hard work, and I can say with all honesty that I never felt quite adequate to the task they asked of me.

At the end of the meeting this evening, I stood up and admitted that I felt honored to be asked, two years ago, and that I had no idea at the time what that honor really meant.  Now, I said, now I know.  To have had the opportunity to work with such selfless people, to share a little in the satisfaction of their hard work, that has turned out to be the real honor.  The honor doesn’t come from anything I might have done to deserve the post, but from the extraordinary people I’ve worked with.

By way of thanks, I presented each of the members of my executive board with a bottle of Pinot Noir. Nothing extravagant, just a good little wine that they could share with their spouses, all of whom have worked just as hard, but without any recognition at all.

I am so very grateful.

Let's Not Forget

2006-06-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

Through all the talk about 6/6/06, try to remember that 62 years ago today, the Allies invaded Normandy and took the fight back to the Nazis. 10,000 Allied soldiers died on the beaches that day.

Doing My Irony

2006-06-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

I wished I’d had a digital camera: this particular bumper sticker was of homemade quality, but there were several on the car’s tail expressing contempt for the Bush Administration.  The one I’m compelled to write about in this instance read: “Overthrow the Facist Bush Regime!”

The sticker was on a sensible, environmentally-friendly, economy car, and though I’m sure that this is not fair, the image that popped into my head was of a passionately self-righteous, organic-cotton-muumuu-wearing woman in her early fifties who, on seeing video clips of Mr. Bush uncorking a particularly folksy malapropism, shrieks, “See?  See?!?!?!? WE ELECTED AN IDIOT WHO CAN’T EVEN SPEAK THE LANGUAGE!”

As I said, I’m sure it’s not fair, but I’m a writer and I do enjoy my irony.

A footnote: When it occurred to me to look on the Internet for an image of a similar bumper sticker, I turned to Yahoo! and applied the following search phrase:

“facist regime” Bush

I discovered (to my delight) that there are no less than ten freaking pages of links, and no way to share this with you, my reader, without coming across like a sanctimonious prick.

(Of course, now my blog will be one of those links.)

Memorial Day

2006-05-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent me this thought today: A win-win situation: Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border, take the dirt and raise the levees in New Orleans, and then put the Florida alligators into the border moat! Any other problems you would like for me to solve?

Clever.

He also sent me this, which is timely, this being Memorial Day Weekend, and all.  The music accompanying the slide show is from the movie, “Glory”, which is about the first US Army unit comprised entirely of Blacks.

The combination of the two got me to thinking about immigration and time spent in our nation’s service.  One immigrant I met baffled me somewhat – we met in boot camp.  He was a lunatic Brit from Liverpool…a “Liverpudlian”, as I have since learned…and twenty-seven years later, I remain astonished by his choice to join the Navy.  Why?  What was it about this country that inspired him to make such a choice?

If I may be permitted to put his choice into context, joining any branch of the military at the time was an unpopular thing to do; we were then just four years out of Vietnam, and a neatly-worn uniform nearly always came with the epithet, “Baby Killer”.

I never did get to talk to him about the reasons behind his choice.  I was in awe of him simply for making it.

I have since met many immigrants, most of them Filipino, who were allowed to join the Navy by virtue of winning a lottery established for the purpose of limiting their recruiting numbers.  One Filipino sailor I spoke with told me that many of his countrymen joined the US military to gain their US citizenship, a goal worth tremendous sacrifice.  For them, the cost of a better life is paid up front.

During one man’s security background investigation, it was discovered that though he had already been serving for a dozen years and held a lower-level security clearance, he was not a US citizen.  His mother had come from Mexico to be a cook for itinerant farm workers in central California, and had brought him and his brothers and sisters here when he was very young.  He was serving his country.

President Theodore Roosevelt said, “In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.  But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here.  Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all…we have room but for one sole loyalty and that is loyalty to the American people.”

You didn’t hear Teddy shouting, “All right, we’ll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but WE DON’T WANT THE IRISH.”  As Americans, we should all feel welcome here.  Certainly, immigrant veterans have assimilated themselves by their very service.

He also said, “We have room for but one flag, and that is the American flag…”  This morning, I read this post by my friend Betty.  Towards the end, she writes, “At one point, the flashlight caught the image of the tattered flag I have had hanging on my porch since September 11, 2001. Last First Date Guy gasped in horror, immediately offering to take it down for me, to buy me a new one. Very calmly, I explained that I had a brand new flag in my foyer, but that I had no intention of taking the tattered flag down.

“I hung the flag that day because I was so proud to be an American, so proud to live in a country which could rise to the occasion, process our grief in a constructive way, help each other get through the cold night aftermath. Since then, I have been dismayed at the atrocities that have followed. I am appalled by the war, by the Patriot Act, by the dismantling of our civil rights, by the greed of the oil companies. I am confused by the hypocrisy of anger following the killing of American citizens by Iraqis, while the blood is still cooling in the bodies from the bombs we dropped on the homes of countless Iraqi women and children.“My flag reflects my dismay at the performance of our current president. I have not mutilated our country's flag, Mother Earth has. She is just as dismayed as I am. The wind and the rain has wreaked identical damage to my flag as George W. Bush has done to our country. My flag will fly until January 8, 2009, when his reign will finally be over.”

It goes without saying that I don’t share many of the sentiments Betty expressed, nor do I agree with some of her more emotional statements (quite the contrary; I take personal umbrage at the assertion that we dropped bombs on “the homes of countless Iraqi women and children”), but I am very grateful that we live in a country where she can write such things without fear of reprisal, where she can display a mutilated flag as a form of protest.

There are those among you who might be astonished at how much I do agree with her.  I, too, am appalled by the USA PATRIOT Act*, the corporate juggernaut of greed, and by the way the war has been conducted.

I am deeply suspicious of the current debate about immigration, and whether it is indeed about the security of our borders.  Why now, nearly five years after our border policy led directly to the loss of three thousand lives?  Had President Bush announced immigration reform the day after 9/11, I might have understood such an argument.  Now, however, I can’t escape the parallels with German National Socialism in the early 1930s.  (No, I am not comparing Mr. Bush with Adolph Hitler.  The President seems merely to be reacting to public outcry on the subject, and I believe there are far more sinister players on the field.)

Having spent my entire adult life in the service of the United States, first as an active duty sailor, and later as a consultant to the US Navy, I can’t help but think of all these things on a personal level.  My direct experience of immigrants has been, on the whole, overwhelmingly positive.  Surely, others must feel as I do.

At the end of Batman Begins, Police Lieutenant Gordon says to Batman, “I never got to say thank you.”

Batman replies, “And you’ll never have to.”

To Betty and to all Americans, whether you feel as she does or not, I must say that I am proud to be but one of the men and women (immigrants or the descendents of immigrants all) who have, over the course of some two hundred and thirty years, earned for you the privilege of hanging a tattered flag in front of your home.

No thanks are necessary.

* The “USA PATRIOT Act” is the correct title for Public Law 107-56.  “USA PATRIOT” is an acronym which stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”.

Jumping On The Blasphemy Band Wagon

2006-05-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

Belated Blogiversary

2006-05-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

My glasses are not clean.  Dr. Lori would consider this a sin, I know, so I will not tell her and I ask you to, please, keep this a secret between us.  (Actually, Lori would be amused, even as she clicked her tongue at me.  We began our friendship as chat room compatriots, graduated to sailing buddies, then had a standing arrangement to be each other’s New Year’s date if we were both unattached, and now she is my eye doctor.  And for the record, the New Year’s thing lasted less than a year.  But, I digress.)

So I am sitting here with unclean glasses, listening to the iTunes playlist entitled “mix”, but which has become my “writing mix”.  I’d rename it, but that would screw up the convenient alphabetical place it currently occupies.  At the moment, it is playing a very cool tune from the Kill Bill Vol. I soundtrack called “Battle Without Honor or Humanity”.  This tune is so cool that when I play it in the car, I drive like a fighter pilot…the kind of guy Sihaya calls a “multi-zippered sun god”.  The song makes me want to wear leather and walk in slow motion.

Aside: Is anyone else annoyed by the fact that the WB’s Pepper Dennis uses KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse & The Cherry Tree” as a theme song?  Maybe they just play a snippet of it for the commercials, to send the message that this show is supposed to be hip even if it is about a dorky-but-hot chick.  Which means she’s still a dork, even if she is hot.  Seriously, how many variations on the “pie-in-a-pretty-girl’s-face” theme can there be?

Back from aside: I know I’m several weeks late for the traditional Blogiversary Post, as it’s been almost thirteen months since I began this blog.  It began with this promise: “…I am going to document the process of dieting and exercise and self-reclamation here...and intersperse the whole thing with tales of single fatherhood, friendship, volunteerism, career headaches, growing older, girl-watching, dating, and if I'm very lucky...sex.”

How have I done with that?  Have I lived up to my self-imposed obligation?

For starters, you could read everything I’ve written after that first post and not find anything about dieting and exercise.  Sorry…not much of that has been going on here.

I have, however written about connecting with my daughters.

I’ve shared my thoughts on simply being friends with a woman.  I confess that I am still mystified at what motivates a woman in the romance department, but these days, I am not complaining.

There have been a few posts inspired by the volunteer work I’ve done, such as this one on the cost of education, and this one on simply being the PTSA President at my daughter’s school.

I know I said I’d talk about career headaches, but really haven’t had many to speak of.  There was this one, and as an update, I have to say that the guy I flame sprayed is still the same.  After he was disrespectful to B in an e-mail he sent to the entire command, B’s boss suggested that he and I hold him down while B beats some sense into him.

I’ve talked some about dating, mentioning a brief crush and a number of interesting dates that didn’t lead anywhere.  I’m not dating any more, having been taken off the market.  Last Friday night, Sihaya said that she feels a bit like she’s cheating, that being able to read my blog gives her an unfair advantage in getting to know me.  She has nothing like it to offer in return.  I replied that I can be patient; that I can wait for my knowledge of her to unfold over time.   I like that she has access to thoughts I had before I knew she existed, and that those thoughts make me more attractive to her.

At some point in that conversation, I made her cry – in a good way – and no, I’m not going to write about what was said.  She returned the favor the next night, but then, she does have an unfair advantage.

This has been a good year – writing here and sharing my thoughts elsewhere has brought me into contact with a number of people I deeply respect and admire, none of whom would ever have been more than phantoms at the barely visible fringes of my awareness otherwise.  I am intensely grateful for such friendships.

Thanks for reading.

Cats and Dogs

2006-05-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

I'll start off with an update on Clara: My sister was given a handheld device that serves to monitor the function of Clara's pacemaker, and was concerned late last week when it appeared that the pacemaker wasn't providing any stabilizing signals to Clara's heart. She called the cardiologist, who downloaded the data (cool use of technology), and it turns out that the reason the pacemaker isn't firing is because Clara's heart is doing just fine on its own. No word on removal of the pacemaker, yet...but good news, indeed.

Here's something I couldn't avoid commenting on: Madonna's kicked off her new world tour. At $380 a ticket, I will not be going. Not that I would anyway; for the same price, I can get season tickets to the San Diego Opera, where I can be assured of three things:

1. The music will be excellent.
2. The social commentary will not include statistics.
3. The choreography won't involve giant disco balls or bare-breasted dancers with ball gags.

Item 3: "The Da Vinci Code" made $224 million over the weekend, despite middling reviews and threats of protests. Thus far, no one has seriously threatened to kill author Dan Brown for writing the novel, which illuminates a notable difference between the predominant faiths of the world. Salman Rushdie is still living with the bounty on his head for writing "The Satanic Verses".

Back to the Madonna article: Rosie O'Donnell is a "Gay Icon"? Does she still qualify for that if she ditched her spouse in the Ueker Seats to sit in the $380 seats? She couldn't spring for two seats? I wonder what the conversation was like when they got home. Did Rosie get the silent treatment for a while, and then have to sleep on the couch? Is she going to have to make it up to her spouse for the next six months? If so, she's truly a Gay Icon. If life was fair, we'd all be getting a Microsoft XP-style bubble popping up right about now that says "There are unused icons on your desktop. Would you like me to delete them?"

Annoying Bit Of The Day: Websites that redirect you to their advertisers without first allowing you access to the site you want. I don't mind seeing adverts on your pages. I mind-but-can-deal-with popups. But don't make me click the Back Button to get into the website I wanted to go to in the first place. (I'd wonder if it was just my computer being sent a virus, but it's the only website doing it.)

This just in: Oh, crap!

United 93

2006-04-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this film.  In fact, until this morning, I was against it.

The review I read this morning changed my mind.  Sure, there’s all the talk about the passengers of Flight 93 as heroes (they were), but what brought me to this film this afternoon was the notion that it should stand not just as a tribute film, but as a reminder of how life has changed since before 9/11.

I spotted two right away – the cavalier approach to airport security, with cursory searches of passengers entering the security area, and the hot meals being served in flight.

Much was made in the press stories about this film that the passengers of United 93 were the first to realize that everything had changed.  I’m not entirely sure that’s true.  By the time they were presented with their final array of choices, the World Trade Center had already been attacked, and both towers were on fire.  It’s more accurate to say that United 93 was the site on which Americans first fought back.

I learned of the terrorist action at around the same time they did, when I got a phone call from the woman I was dating at the time.  She often called during her commutes when the traffic was slow, but this morning, her voice was a mix of shock and anger.  “Someone bombed the World Trade Center,” she said.  Not, “Good morning,” but, “Someone bombed the World Trade Center.”

I had been sound asleep, and it took me a few minutes to process what she’d said.  I could hear the car radio in the background, and she’d listen for a moment and relay the sketchy misinformation to me.  “No one knows who, but they used airplanes.  Both towers are on fire.”

At that point, I remember throwing off the covers and stomping out to the living room and turning on CNN.

I was stunned by what I saw.  Instead of the burning towers of the World Trade Center I expected, I was looking at the stone edifice of a shorter building.  Seconds later, a banner appeared at the bottom which read, “The Pentagon.”

Oh, fuck, I said.  Oh, fuck.  I gotta go, Sharon, we’re at war.

The guards at the gate to the base where I worked wore body armor and carried firearms.  I’d never seen them carrying shotguns before.  As the off-going duty section leader, I raced back to the security office, where everyone not monitoring traffic through the gate was riveted to Fox News.

None of us knew it yet, but United 93 had already torn a hole a 115 feet deep in a Pennsylvania field.

My relief showed up, and together we made what decisions we could about security, which weren’t many.  We made sure our students went to their classrooms.  And we waited.

Just before 0800 or so, Regional Security called and directed us to lock the base down.  Gates on the incoming side were to be closed, no further incoming traffic was allowed, for any reason.  All students and non-essential personnel were to be sent home.

My boss had been Command Duty Officer the night before, and she arrived just as they were sliding home the bolt on the gates.  She was sent home.  Because she was still responsible for the command, she called my cellular phone, and though I would normally have been considered non-essential, I became her arms and legs inside the fence.  At least, that was the plan.  There wasn’t much for either of us to do but vent our frustration and calm each other’s fears.

I called my older daughter and found her home sick from school.  She’d been watching the television, totally bewildered.  I told her not to worry about me, that I was okay, and that I loved her.  In retrospect, I might as well have just shouted I’m scared shitless!!!! into the phone, because I don’t think she was worried until that moment.

None of us knew that morning, of course, the extent of the changes in our lives.  We simply sat, dazed, and watched as the inexorable moment washed over us.

The next morning, my cubicle mate and I sent e-mails to every ship in the Pacific Fleet: “Need a Tomahawk chief?”  Several ships did.

On the 15th, my cube mate and I met separately with our department head to sign our annual fitness reports.  He’d gone in first, and apparently spoken of our intent to find ships to go to so that we could do our part in the war, whenever we hit back.

Then it was my turn.  Before I could say more than a few words, the department head slid my fitness report across the conference table in his office and said, “Chief, I just have one question: if you both go, who can do your job while you’re gone?”

“I don’t know, sir,” I answered.

“Neither do I, Chief.  You’re staying right here.”

Shit.

That afternoon, I suggested that we double the number of training exercises we ran, and for the next eight months, I worked twelve hours a day preparing ships to go to war, an effort for which I received two medals, one as an active duty sailor and the other as a civilian.

Someday, I may travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania and bury those medals in the field alongside the passengers of United 93.

*     *     *

As I waited for the film to begin, I wondered about my fellow moviegoers; how many of them had anguishing personal stories to tell about that day?  How many could claim some connection to the events depicted in the film?

For me, there are two more connections.

One of them is fairly direct: a friend was a United flight attendant at the time who did a schedule swap that got her out of flying aboard Flight 93 that day.  It was purest luck; 93 was one of her regular flights.

The other was a strong sense of personal responsibility for the events of 9/11.  I cannot explain many of my reasons for feeling this way, but for years after the attacks, I believed them to be well-founded.  The release of the 9/11 Commission Report has largely changed those feelings in ways I have yet to fully explore.

There has been a great deal of debate over whether enough time has passed for us to confront the events of 9/11 through the arts.  I do not believe more time should pass; I’m sorry Leroy Neiman didn’t set up his easel and do one of his speedily rendered impressionist paintings while the towers were still standing.

It doesn’t take much observation to conclude that we Americans have become even more decadent, more complacent than we were when Osama bin Laden ordered the 9/11 attacks.  Go stand at any major intersection for twenty minutes and count the number of people holding cellular phones to their faces while driving.

It’s long past time.

We should have been reciting the names of the United 93 passengers who fought back every day.  (We’ve got time, after all, now that we can’t say the Pledge of Allegiance.)  (LeRoy Homer, CeeCee Lyles, Sandra Bradshaw, Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, Andrew Garcia, Jeremy Glick, and Richard Guadagno are believed to be the key players in the counterattack on the cockpit.)

It is definitely long past time for heartfelt remembrance.

I keep the flag presented to me at my retirement on the book shelf in my living room.  It is in a triangular display case, the only formal display of career memorabilia I’ve allowed myself.  The flag was flown on September 11th, 2002, over the ship which hosted my retirement ceremony, one of two such flags flown that day.  The other was given to a shipmate who was so badly burned in the attack on the Pentagon that a year later he was still wearing artificial skin on much of his body.

Long past time, indeed.

*     *     *

Now, the movie does contain a few deviations from the official account.

First Officer LeRoy Homer is shown to be the first man killed by the terrorists, and the pilot is also shown being stabbed to death, both during the initial struggle for control of the cockpit.  The transcript of the cockpit voice recorder shows that one of the terrorists had a problem in the cockpit and asked one of his comrades to bring the pilot back to the cockpit to help.  Clearly, he’d have had no reason to do so if both pilots had been killed in his line of sight.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the film shows the passengers gaining access to the cockpit and the crash as a result of their struggling for control of the plane.  Again, the CVR transcript proves this was not the case.  While the passengers were futilely bashing at the door with a service cart, the two terrorists in the cockpit considered turning off the oxygen to the passenger compartment, then argued about whether or not to fly the plane into the ground to prevent the passengers from regaining control of the flight.  In the end, the two terrorists rolled the plane inverted and pulled as hard as they could for the ground.

Neither of these discrepancies detract from the essence of the film, which perfectly captures the sense of shock, confusion, and powerlessness we all felt that day.

Go see it.

Seeing Stars

2006-04-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormless night.  That part of the sky that was unblocked by the mountains among which our little valley nestled itself was, well, luminous.  There was no moon; all the light by which I could see the shape of my car, the curve of the top of our tent, the lumpy shapes of the rocks, and the grasping branches of the scrubby tree I stood near came from the stars.

If you’ve never been where you can see by starlight, you haven’t lived.

For a moment, gazing up in awe at the early Sunday sky from our camp in the Blair Valley, I considered waking Sihaya…a gentle whisper beckoning her to join me in a few moments of the sublime.

In a minute, I thought.  I’ll get us a bottle of water to share.

I cringed when I unlocked the car, the silent blinker-flash and the fading-in of the interior lights trod heavily on the stars.  I pulled out two bottles of water and gently closed the trunk.

Twisting the top off one bottle, and tipping it up, I took in more of the sky.  Yes, I thought.  Sihaya will love this.

The breeze that had so whipped the camp fire during our earlier revelry had died; in its place was only silence.  Even the coyotes seemed to be sleeping.

And. then. she. snored.

It’s a gentle sound, and one I find endearing, though I have not yet convinced her of this.  Perhaps I will, someday.

Standing in the flawlessness of the predawn desert, holding one and a half bottles of water, I decide to let Sihaya sleep.

In that moment, I know that she would love to come see the sky with me.  I am certain of it: next to the case of water in my car, there are two books on astronomy that she brought as an afterthought, in case we should have a moment to give to the sky together.

I love her for thinking of such things.

And I love the sound of her snoring.

Something To Talk About

2006-04-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

There’s an e-mail going around the Internet that includes pictures of some California high school students protesting the Immigration Reform Bill by hauling down the Stars and Stripes at their school, turning it upside down and hoisting it below the Mexican flag.  The e-mail suggests that recipients of the e-mail should help defend America’s sovereignty by forwarding the e-mail and the pictures to “every English speaking person” in their address book.

I submit that doing so only broadens the audience of the original “protesters”, and inflames emotions…something that we ought to avoid.

I've never found the practice of Free Speech disgusting or objectionable, even when I find the method or content of a message to be repugnant. Make no mistake, I think that displaying Old Glory upside down for any other reason than as a distress signal is disrespectful.  Burning one that has not been soiled is repugnant.  But I also think that such things are protected under the First Amendment, and that anyone who resorts to such means of protest is only reaffirming the true meaning and value of the flag.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, and I fully respect the right of every American to disagree.

I’ll get back to my point.

At my daughter's high school, students walked out of class to protest the Immigration Bill, prompting the school administration to put together a formal discussion of the issues at stake, and two teachers volunteered their time to facilitate the discussion. Very few students attended; as my daughter pointed out, it's more fun to practice civil disobedience with your friends than it is to learn the facts about the issue.

A wise young woman, she is.  I agree.  I’m continually amazed by the number of people who will argue someone else’s point as though it was their own, without taking the time or trouble to form their own opinion.

So, to help foster an educated debate, here’s the summary of the bill.

If you'd like to know more about the current policies of the US Government regarding citizenship and immigration, go here: http://uscis.gov/graphics/index.htm

Now, armed with some understanding, I'd like to ask these questions of those who oppose measures to reform our immigration law:

1) What do you suggest as an alternate method to prevent identity theft by undocumented immigrants? Or by those seeking to profit from undocumented immigrants?

2) If you're opposed to stiffer penalties for the smuggling of human beings, what do you suggest as an alternate method to curtail the exploitation of economically disadvantaged aliens seeking a better life here?

For those in favor of immigration reform, I have these questions:

1) Are you comfortable with being required to keep (and possibly carry) a machine-readable identity card that proves your citizenship?

2) Are you ready to be required to present proof of employment eligibility every time you apply for a new job?

3) Is it okay with you that this bill offers no restrictions against the use of any information gathered for the national employment eligibility verification system by anyone, including the government itself?

Free Speech is a good thing, and always has been. It's what we, as a nation, are all about.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew what we were talking about?

Update

2006-04-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

Clara is doing very well…not quite out of the woods, but her pacemaker is doing the job it was put there for.

If her progress continues as it has been for the last couple days, she’ll be coming home at the end of next week!

Thank you all for your continuing prayers!

Decrazed

2006-04-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

I made myself crazy one afternoon last week.

I could see it happening, and dagnabbit, I felt powerless to stop it.

I second-guessed myself into a snit.

I had suggested to Sihaya that we spend an evening in rather than out, and did so late in the day, by e-mail.  When she didn’t respond right away, I began to wonder if I’d been too forward.  What if she thinks I’m suggesting we have sex, and she’s not ready for that?  I’m not suggesting that, but does she know me well enough yet to know that?

You get the idea.

So, I wrote another e-mail, apologizing and assuring her of my gentlemanly intent.  Thankfully, she was patient with me.

Note to self: Sihaya isn’t going to do anything she doesn’t want to do, and she’ll suggest we do something else if she’s not comfortable.

Note to self (Part II): Stop being a bonehead.

All of this offers me an excellent opportunity to look at my feelings about relationships.  I want one.  (That’s a good thing, since it appears that I am in one.)

The truth is that for the first time in quite a while, I find myself in the presence of an attractive woman who not only finds me desirable on several levels, but also actively seeks out my company.

I’m scared shitless.

Not because I’m afraid of having Sihaya want me, but of having her not want me.  And that fear can, if I let it, unman me, as Shakespeare would have put it.

Not an attractive quality.

I’m paying attention here: Sihaya knows who she is and what she wants.  She’s thoughtful and kind and considerate and direct.  She’s not at all afraid to speak her mind.  I need to trust her.

She seems to trust me.  And more than that, she trusts herself.

Note to self (Part III): I can trust her, too.

Prayers Again, Please

2006-04-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

Clara is in surgery; the doctors are inserting a pacemaker.

Update: She's through the surgery, and the surgeons were pleased with how well she did. She's a little fighter.

The reason for the pacemaker is the ongoing arrythmia; the doctors had hoped that it would correct itself within a few days, but no such luck. The arrythmia may be caused by the allegedly benign tumors growing on Clara's heart (one manifestation of Tuberous Sclerosis Complex), but (and I'm speculating here) may also be caused by the allegedly benign tumors in her brain. Operating on an infant's heart must be a difficult proposition, since it's about the size of a walnut. The tumors must be truly tiny. And if the arrythmia is caused by the brain tumors, there's almost no point in removing the heart tumors...it'd be an extremely dangerous procedure with no payoff.

Of course, the presence of the pacemaker means that the MRI to look at the brain tumors won't happen, so whatever is happening in her head will be that much harder to diagnose.

Still in the woods.

Since You Asked...

2006-04-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

What did I say? I thought I might borrow a few words from Mr. Darcy:

"Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

Trivia question: What was Mr. Darcy's first name?

Check out the link to the right...Clara Jane's pictures.

So, I've Already Proposed

2006-04-05T22:23:00.000-07:00

It began with a simple post on Craig’s List:

“So, Here's The Thing...I'm not looking for the classic "babelicious babe"...I really don't care about that.  What I want most is creative, smart, funny (and let's face it....sane).

A little about me:  I am divorced, with two kids, one of whom lives with me most of the time and the other with their mother.  I'm creative, smart, and funny (and reasonably sane), and my friends tell me they appreciate my integrity.  I'm respectful and emotionally generous.  Most of the women I know tell me that I'm sweet.  My kids will tell you I'm a good father, unless you catch them when I'm on their case about something, usually grades.  Having served for 23 years in the Navy, I understand the nature of commitment, and somewhere around here, I have the remnants of some of the self-discipline I picked up during my time in the service.”

I got two responses.

The first was from a woman who admitted that she smokes.  Thank you, no, even if you’re trying to quit.

The second got my attention for two reasons: She was writing from work at noon on a Sunday, but cautioned me not to expect a response until Monday if I wrote back, and she asked for a response whether I was interested or not.  “I can handle rejection,” she wrote, “and would definitely want to know!”

We wrote for a few days, and by Wednesday I had her number.  (“You like apples?  I got her numbah.  How you like THEM apples?”)  Our first conversation consisted of a lot of laughter, plans for Saturday morning coffee, and ended with “good night,” instead of “bye”.

Coffee on Saturday lasted four and a half hours, and included lunch and an hour of playing in the toy store.  It turns out that she is creative and funny and very, very smart.  Inside an hour, I knew I wanted to kiss her.  An hour or so after that, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t mind if I did.  It turned out that I was right.

Part of the conversation was about Frank Herbert’s Dune, and partly for that reason, I’m calling her Sihaya.

I called her the next night.  I hate the Three Day Rule.  Usually, I follow it anyway, but not with this girl.

Last Saturday afternoon, I went to see her dance at the Renaissance Faire…she performs Middle Eastern dance with a troupe (the other reason she’ll be called Sihaya here, since the girl in Dune was a woman of the desert).  Before her performance, we walked around to see the sights at the faire, and as we came out of one stall, we had to wait for the Queen and her royal entourage.  As they passed, I bowed and Sihaya curtseyed.

The Queen stopped.  “And who do we have here before us?” she asked, grandly and not unpleasantly.

I introduced Sihaya, and gave my own name.

The Queen asked who we are to each other.  I looked at Sihaya, who grinned at me.  “We are dating, Your Highness,” said I.

“And how long have you been thus?” asked the Queen.

Another grin from Sihaya, and I returned it.  “About a week,” I replied.

“In that case,” said the Queen, “We have a game for the two of you.”  She bade us stand in front of her, and face each other.  “We wish you to imagine a time in the future.  Perhaps it will be five years.  Perhaps it will be two.  But, Kurt, We would give you a glimpse into this future time, when on one knee, you ask this beautiful lady for her hand in marriage.  So that is the game We have for you…to ask this wonderful lady to marry you, and to do so in a way that she cannot say aught but yes.”

And so, I did.  And she did.

She's Here!

2006-04-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you all so much for your prayers!

Clara Jane was born last night at 7:42 pm, at 7 lbs 11 oz, and 19 ½ inches.  She has long black hair, just like her mother did when she was born.  The cardiac arrhythmia continued after she was born, so they whisked her off to the NICU right away, but when I saw her she was pink as pink can be, and working a pacifier as hard as she could.  There was a brief incident during the night when her heart was beating more rapidly than the doctors would prefer, but when I talked to my brother-in-law this morning, Clara was stable and doing fine.  She’s not out of the woods yet, but she’s doing about as well as can be expected.

When the doctor came in to take my sister up to surgery, he looked at the fetal monitor trace and said, “Hmmm…you’ve been having some pretty good contractions there.  We’d have had a baby tonight, either way!”

So, I’m back at home…my parents got in last night and it was about to get crowded enough that I’d have just been in the way.  I’ll go back up on the weekend and help with all the stuff they weren’t able to get done this week because the baby came early.

Thanks, again, so very very much, for all your prayers and thoughts.  I know they made a difference.

Please Pray

2006-04-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

I just got the call from my sister...the cardiac arrhythmia that the pediatricians were concerned about has happened, and she's scheduled for C-section this afternoon at 4 o'clock. We don't know much yet, and won't until Clara is born, but please, please pray.

Well Met

2006-04-02T17:29:00.000-07:00

Got together with a friend this afternoon…a friend I’d never actually met. Ramblin’ Girl was in town for a friend’s wedding, so we met up for a drink in the airport lounge while she was waiting for her flight.

It turns out she’s even cooler in person than her blog would lead one to believe, which basically means she’s really cool: smart, funny, easy to talk to, and cute.

On my way to the airport, I cursed myself for not having a good digital camera, because these kinds of meetings deserve pictures. When we met up, I forgot to ask if she had one with her, and the conversation ranged for a while in several directions, so neither of us thought of it…thus, sadly, I must report that there are no pictures of this Truly Historic Event.

Spending part of an afternoon with RG made me think again about how lucky I am to have such friends, and the often convoluted paths that cross in unexpected ways. I am happier with my life than I’ve been in many years, and friendships such as this one are part of the key.

It's In Our Nature

2006-03-30T12:54:00.000-08:00

As I write this, Nature is literally tapping at my window, in the form of a starling who thinks that his reflection in the mirrored glass is another male encroaching on his territory. He flies up and pecks at the window tappy-tap-ta-ta-tappy-tap then rushes back to make sure his family and nest are safe before making another run on his equally aggressive reflection.

This has been going on all week, and I suspect that the eggs have hatched now, because today, there is a female starling joining him at the window from time to time.

The mating pair of hawks has also returned to our hillside, as they do most every year. This year, one of them is trailing a sort of string from one of its legs, and I wonder if it wasn't here last year because it was in captivity. Three years ago, the pair had two little ones, and year before last, the yearlings could be seen hunting with their parents in the afternoons.

Most often, the smaller birds harass the hawks without mercy, for this week, the starlings are entirely consumed by the perceived threat from non-existent members of their own species, and the hawks are enjoying the freedom to swoop down to the corner and pick up a fresh rabbit or squirrel without an entourage.

The reason the starlings haunt the hawks is because the bigger birds don't seem to have any scruples regarding the raiding of nests.

(I imagine that this is the sort of conversation they might have, if I can be permitted a small amount of anthropomorphization:

He Hawk: "Hmmm. I'm feeling a mite peckish, Portia. I could do with a snack, perhaps a little chickie-morsel? Do we have anything in the scrub-pine to munch on?"

She Hawk: "See for yourself.")

All of this makes me think about how sometimes our instincts can fail us. We get so focused on something inconsequential that we ignore the really important stuff close at hand.

Tap, tap.

It Had To Happen Sooner Or Later...

2006-03-30T07:23:00.000-08:00

Catching Up

2006-03-27T18:11:00.000-08:00

Yep.  Been away a while.  Can’t say that I haven’t missed writing…just haven’t had much to say.  I’ve sat down a few times, but if I can be permitted a vulgar analogy, I’ve been afflicted with a kind of literary constipation.

After taking a moment to arrange a bit of music to write by, I’m ready – at last – to set down a few thoughts, paced by the tapping of my toe.

As if I have any.

Thoughts, that is.

What is it with people these days?  According to an article on the news page at imdb.com, Morgan Spurlock (Oscar-nominated documentarian responsible for Super Size Me) delivered an over-the-top lecture at a Pennsylvania high school, mocking special education students and teachers.  Apparently, his talk included the use of the F-bomb.  Now, I’m a sailor, and the use of the F-bomb generally doesn’t offend me…unless I’m in the presence of someone who will be offended by it.  I’m a big fan of language, and let’s face it, fuck is a word, and pretty useful one, at that.  What offends me about this, if it’s true, is the mocking.  Spurlock later said that he couldn’t understand the unfavorable reaction on the part of the school, saying, “The greatest lesson those kids learned today was the importance of free speech.”

Dude, it was a health fair.  You were there to talk about the risks of eating too much fast food.  How do jokes about pot-smoking teachers tie in, here?  Right.  They don’t.

And since when does spouting crap in public teach anyone about the importance of free speech?  Not to be contrary, here, but all Spurlock actually did was teach his audience that free speech exists, something they probably already knew.

If you want to teach a lesson on the importance of free speech, ditch the disrespect and start talking about Abdul Rahman, the man facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity.

I know, I got off on a tangent there.

In other news, my sister’s baby seems to be doing well.  There is still concern, and after her last ultrasound, the doctor made the decision to move her delivery to a hospital with a better-equipped NICU, in case there are complications.  (As if tumors on her heart and in her brain aren’t complications enough.)  My sister reports that the baby is very active, though she hasn’t yet turned head-down in preparation for being born…so, in yet another challenge, she’s slated for a C-section on April 7th.  I’m headed up to LA that day to join the crowd in the waiting room.

I’ll also be joining them on the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance Walk for the Cure on June 25th…they have a website set up for sponsorship donations, and if you feel inclined, check it out: http://www.firstgiving.com/clarajane.

And as one last bit…I’ll point you to one of my very early posts.  Shortly before I wrote that post, my hairdresser tut-tutted over my soft-but-thinning locks and remarked, “You know…you might consider just shaving it all off.”  I must say that over the last ten months, I’ve uncorked every excuse in the book not to shave my head, and even rebelled by not cutting my hair at all for nigh on to five months.  I let myself get – as my buddy Bear put it – scruffy-lookin’.

Last Sunday, I took the plunge.  It actually looks pretty good.  I’ll offer a photo as soon as I have one.

Inaccessible.

2006-03-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

I have been taking a pseudo-break from blogging.  You may have noticed.

Actually, I’ve been taking a break from most forms of writing.  I’m not sure why.  There haven’t been many things on my mind that have seemed worthy of throwing out there for the sake of whatever flavor of posterity comes as a side dish when the entrée is Blog.

I have felt mostly like retreating from the world, of late.  I am not unhappy…far from it…but I simply have not felt like I have the energy to extend myself and deal with other people.

Part of it stems, I’m sure, from the realization that I’m still carrying around quite a lot of anger, which manifests itself primarily as self-abuse in the form of bad eating habits.  I have also been quite a bit shorter with people than I like – also rooted in anger.

So, fat and unpleasant to be around, I’ve taken to being a bit reclusive: I’ve ignored voice mail from friends, failed to call when I said I would, blown off e-mails, brought my noise-canceling headphones to work, retreated to the virtual world of Microsoft Flight Simulator (where lately, I have been flying a model of a World War II-era fighter plane – with its virtual guns disabled…paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!), and have started to learn to swear in Mandarin.  (青蛙操的流氓) You probably don’t want to know what that means – and part of the joy of swearing in a language no one understands is…that no one understands.

The funny part of all this (and that’s not to say that learning to swear in a foreign language just for the sake being able to do so isn’t funny), is that I’m actually not depressed.  I’m quite content with my life, which is, on the whole, pretty effing good.  I am healthy (more or less – aside from my weight), I make a good living doing a job I love, and despite being solitary (a term I prefer to “single”), I’m not unmanageably lonely.

You know that feeling you get when you’re in the midst of something, feeling in the groove, and you’re surprised to find that you’re bleeding, but you have no idea when it happened or how?  It isn’t particularly painful, or you’d have noticed the injury right away, but you need to stop and tend to it…and then you don’t quite feel safe any more, doing what you were doing.

That’s how I feel right now.

What’s bleeding?  Certainly not my heart, which you’ll know from reading my last post.  I’m not sure.

I do know that I’ve become aware of the perception people seem to have that I am damaged.  And not just me…but the women I seem to be attracting.  Not all of the women who’ve found me attractive of late would qualify as “damaged”, but the one who is not falls squarely into a category that can only be called “inaccessible”.

Which makes me wonder: Do I choose that?  Do I have something against being in a healthy, supportive relationship?  Have I chosen to isolate myself?  Which of the two of us is really the inaccessible one?

IA

2006-03-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

None of the military folks I know are happy.

Normally, these are people who greet life with ebullience neatly camouflaged behind a façade of darkly twisted humor.

I’ll give you an example.  One morning at sea some years ago, I stood with two of my shipmates on the fo’c’sle (all the way up on the bow) of our ship, USS COWPENS (CG 63), as one of them prepared to lob two concussion grenades over the side as sound effects for our battle-readiness training.  I had another role to fulfill that morning, but wouldn’t be needed until later, so I hoped to have an opportunity to toss one of the grenades.  No particular reason, I just wanted to be able to say I’d once thrown a grenade.  As leading chief of the division we three were in, I could occasionally do things like that.

Our conversation may have been jovial, but none of us was anything less than serious about the task at hand.  A single mistake could kill all three of us.  Basically, it was a regular day in the U.S. Navy.

The sound of a rapidly clanging bell cut our conversation short, followed by an announcement on the 1MC*: Fire, fire, fire!  Class Charlie fire in After Steering.  Away the Flying Squad, Away!

We exchanged glances.

There was a moment of reflective silence, as we all shifted a little nervously from foot to foot.  A fire aboard ship can always lead to a long dip in the Deep Blue.

“Well,” I said, “if there’s got to be a fire in After Steering, I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than up here on the fo’c’sle.”

“You’re glad to be here!” said my buddy Matt.  He pointed a thumb at Dan, and chuckled, “He’s the one holding the grenades!”

In short, sailors are fun-loving and fatalistic about the dangers they’ve chosen to face.

There’s a key word in that last sentence: chosen.

Two weeks ago, our command got a message announcing its obligation to support a program called “Individual Augmentation”, which is an attempt to help the Army and Marine Corps meet their personnel rotation requirements in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Horn of Africa, and Guantanimo Bay by sending sailors to work in supporting roles such as communications specialists and prison guards.  Each “Individual Augmentee” serves in his or her role for a minimum of one year.

There was a list of names accompanying the message.  One of my office mates has been slated to go, and as of this morning, the rest have been put on notice that they, too, may be expected to go at any time.  At the school next door, seven people are going.

Before they are assigned to a new and exciting location, they’ll undergo three days of medical screening and be offered time to take care of any legal matters (such as the writing of a will), followed by seven days of physical fitness, weapons, and tactics training.  They’ll spend an hour or two learning about “Improvised Explosive Devices” (IEDs…booby traps), another hour or two on land navigation, a couple hours on convoy operations, and a couple on urban combat operations.  The last of the seven days will be a practical exercise offering them an opportunity to put the things they’ve learned in the classroom to good use.

This is a Bad Idea.

First, these are people who bring a skill set that is entirely alien to the ground-pounder’s battlefield, and virtually none of what they know now will stand them in good stead when they climb aboard that first convoy.

Second, this lack of knowledge will make them a danger to themselves and to the units they are sent to augment.

Third, the danger that these individual augmentees bring with them will undermine the esprit de corps that is essential for a unit’s ability to perform its combat function.

Finally, no one volunteered for this shit.

In the short term, more American military members will die, and the war will last longer.  In the longer term, our all-volunteer military will collapse from the inevitable wholesale departure of smart, well-trained professionals who won’t put up with such an egregious misapplication of their talents.

By now, you may be questioning the intelligence and sanity of our current leadership.  Even if you hadn’t been already.

Actually, gentle reader, this is the cost of, “Oppose the war, support the troops.”

I turned it around on you, didn’t I?

The simple truth is that those who did choose to serve in the military are now being asked to accept the unthinkable because the average citizen couldn’t be bothered to pitch in.  If you look back at past generations…your parents and grandparents…you’ll see that they rallied to their cause in ways our generation has dismissed as quaint, ignorant, and misguided.  The members of Easy Company, 506th Battalion, 101st Airborne Division didn’t start asking about going home until the Germans capitulated.  The men who commissioned the first USS COWPENS (CVL 25) deployed to the Pacific Theater in 1943 and didn’t come home for twenty-three months.  No one told them they’d be able to go home in six months, or eight, or ten, or a year; they were shown a job, and they simply did it the best they could until they led the procession of American warships into Tokyo Bay in August 1945.  They were prepared to go longer, if necessary, and nothing short of Unconditional Surrender could have convinced them that their task was done.

For the average citizen in this country today, guts are quaint and tenacity is misguided.  Relationships are not the only things we can’t commit to.

There is a principle of strategy that was taught by the great samurai Miyamoto Musashi that went like this: Do not commit to combat until it is certain that you must.  When you do, turn neither to the left nor to the right; drive directly toward the center of your enemy, and do not stop until one of you is defeated.

Perhaps it was never truly certain that we should commit to war in Iraq.  But once committed, we should…as a nation of citizens…have pressed forward until we achieved unconditional surrender, instead of settling for what we have -- the hellishly slow descent through stalemate into self-induced defeat.  Anyone who thinks we’d simply have installed a puppet government and left it to its own efforts to rebuild needs to visit Japan or Germany…both of which are leaders on the world stage, and neither feels any particular obligation to support the US at the expense of its own interests.

Opposed to the war?  Fine.  Noted.  Like it nor not, we are there now, and if we were to leave now, we’d cause more harm than if we stayed to get the job done.  So we might as well roll up our sleeves and get it done.

Support the troops?  I have a suggestion for you, then: Become one.

* PA system aboard ship

My Work Here Isn't Done

2006-02-24T18:42:00.000-08:00

Have you ever watched a film, or read a book that truly moved you?  One that made your heart swell in your chest, but didn’t stop there…it made your life swell?  I just watched such a film: Meet Joe Black

Granted, this film is now eight years old, so I should have seen it by now, but I hadn’t, until today.

It’s a daunting film, running just shy of three hours, with very little action…this is a film about the last days of a man’s life, a man who knows that Death could take him at any moment, and yet it lingers over tiny, exquisite details.

I had a busy week, this week, traveling for business and meeting with compatriots who mostly think of me as an oddity, a genius-cum-crackpot, a heretic.  As is the community’s habit, they dismissed months of my work out of hand, without a whole lot of discussion.  We’re not comfortable with this, they say, when they say anything at all.  It is disconcerting to propose an elegantly simple solution to a complex problem and be met with neither disdain nor acceptance, but merely…silence.

My boss reminded me that this community is famous for doing just that, and that a good many of the current practices were once met with disapprobation.  Heresy is important to progress.

After seeing a film like Meet Joe Black, I find myself taking stock of my life, wondering if I’ve done all I can, if there’s anything more I can or should be doing.  Is it enough that I helped coordinate a wish for a Make-a-Wish child?  It was just the once, after all.  Is it enough to have served as a rape crisis advocate?  Is it enough that people often rely on me when they feel they have no place else to turn?

There are times when I withdraw.  I say I’ll call, and then I don’t.  I forget a meeting or fail to come through with the help I offered.  Is it enough to simply apologize, to admit that I’m not perfect?  Isn’t there more?  I always feel I can do more.

People have helped me so often, have sacrificed in large and small ways to bring me to this point that I feel that I should earn the things they’ve done for me, and I will always wonder if I’ve done enough.  It is a powerful drive that comes almost entirely from the uncertainty in my center.

Perhaps that is what makes me a good man.

Good Things

2006-02-14T22:30:00.000-08:00

Have you ever met anyone who, without trying, or even meaning to, changes your life? Not just your life, but the way you view your life?

It’s hard to quantify, the effect we have on other people’s lives. It can be even harder to say, “Your presence in my life makes a difference.”

A couple weeks ago, someone suggested to me that we boycott Valentine’s Day, we solitary people. I responded by proposing the opposite – that she be my Valentine. I sent her flowers today…virtual flowers, actually, because I’m a dork.

See, I don’t think that Valentine’s Day ought to be just for lovers, or people who want to be lovers, or even people who simply want to encase their lovers in chocolate. I think it’s about communicating to those around us that we appreciate the changes they bring about in us.

To all of you who read this blog, a late-evening Happy Valentine’s Day. And thank you. You’ve helped me to trust in my skills as a writer, and that makes a difference.

And what happy changes have been brought about by my Virtual Valentine? That’s a question I’ll answer only for her.

All good things.

TSC

2006-02-14T15:42:00.000-08:00

I’d like to apologize for not writing more. I haven’t forgotten you all! Far from it: I’ve been incredibly busy over the last couple weeks.

In the meantime, you may recall that I asked for your prayers for my unborn niece, who was diagnosed last month with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex.

I’d like to direct your attention to this web site regarding Tuberous Sclerosis, and ask again for your prayers.

My sister and her husband are meeting with another specialist on Thursday, to discuss the results of last week’s MRI.

Because Prayer Helps

2006-02-02T15:43:00.000-08:00

…and because Meg asked:

If you pray, pray for Ruth, Rowland, Emily, Marie, Jamie, and Loni -- for comfort, healing, and peace. It's important. And pass it onto your friends. Thanks, guys.

Tilapia Is The New Cod

2006-02-02T15:34:00.000-08:00

In honor of completing my Five Weird Things post, I took my daughter to Red Lobster…thought it would be a fitting tribute, since Sherri loves the place so much.  For that very reason, I will not mention the vague contempt which I, a New Englander, have always held for seafood restaurant chains.  I will say that I remember very clearly how nice it was that I used to be able to get live lobsters for a buck seventy-five a pound, or a buck and a half if I happened to catch a lobsterman in the parking lot at the seafood stand.

The service we received tonight was noteworthy, as I shall attempt to relate:

“Good evening, sir, my name is Gabe, and I’ll be taking care of you this evening.   Can I offer you something to drink?”
Heidi orders a Coke, and I order iced tea – no lemon.
“Excellent. Would you care for an appetizer this evening?”
“No, thank you.”
“Alright.  Would you like to hear the specials?”
“No, thank you.  I think we’re ready to order.”
“Great,” says Gabe, turning his attention to Heidi.  “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll have the shrimp Caesar salad.”
“Excellent.  And for your choice of vegetables?  We have mashed potatoes, rice pilaf, steamed vegetables, or cole slaw.”
Heidi and I exchange quizzical looks.
There is a moment of bemused silence, with Gabe’s pen hovering patiently over his order pad.  I recover first, and ask the obvious question, “There’s a choice of vegetables with a salad?”
Gabe smiles benevolently at us, his apparently uber-bumpkin patrons.  “A salad comes with the shrimp, yes.”
Still bewildered, I frown slightly and ask again, “But she ordered the shrimp Caesar salad.  Doesn’t that pretty much already have vegetables?”
“Oh!” exclaims Gabe.  “Of course.”
Gabe scribbles a dozen horizontal lines on his pad, then writes furiously.  While I cannot see what he is writing, I imagine it to be, confused chick gets SHRIMP CAESAR.
He then turns to me.  “And you, sir?”
“I’ll have the Sam Adams battered fish and chips.”
“Excellent.  That comes with chips, which are actually French Fries.  You can order another side of your choice, if you like.  We have mashed potatoes, rice pilaf…”
“Another side?  Sounds great.  I’d like the cole slaw, please.”
Gabe fixes me momentarily with a glance that, in retrospect, should have seemed significant, but at the time could have meant…confusion? Disbelief? That he’ll be blogging this later?
“Great,” he says, “I’ll be right back with your drinks and cole slaw.”
And he is off before I can ask, What did you say? Did you just say that you’d be right back with our drinks and cole slaw?
I ask Heidi instead.  She agrees, that’s what he said.
Couldn’t be, I postulated.  It’s noisy here, and we must have misunderstood.
When he brought our drinks (and my dinner salad), he hesitated for a moment before asking, “Would you like me to bring your cole slaw now, or with your fish, sir?”  He fixes me with a look of concerned confusion, as though I had ordered a steak with chocolate sauce.
I see his confusion and raise him a puzzlement and a confloption.  (He doesn’t realize it at this point, but I can see that he’ll be flummoxed at the turn.)  “With my dinner will be fine,” I say.  I am in no mood to have cole slaw with my salad.
When dinner arrives, he sets down Heidi’s Caesar salad, and then turns his attention to me.  He places the side dish of cole slaw at my left, and sets the basket of fish in front of me.

It is a large-ish basket of fish.

There are no chips.

It is a basket containing only fish.

“Is there anything else I can get for you?” Gabe asks.  From the look on his face, it is clear that Gabe wishes to escape us and what clearly seem to him to be bizarre requests.
“Yes,” I say.  “Where are my chips?  I thought fish and chips would come with actual, you know, chips.  French Fries.  Pommes frites.”  (Okay, I made the “pommes frites” part up.)
Gabe casts his eyes about in a manner reminiscent of a garden-raiding rabbit caught snacking by a Rottweiler for whom the moment carries no real urgency.  “You ordered cole slaw instead of chips, sir.”
“I did?”
“Yes, sir.”  He wheels over a chalk board and proceeds to draw a flow chart of our initial conversation, in which it seems I did, in fact, order fish and chips, hold the chips, add a side of slaw.

At Last, Five Weird Things

2006-02-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

Five weird habits.  Sherri wants five weird habits.  Of mine.  Actually, it’s five more weird habits, because, evidently, in Sherri’s mind, the ten weird habits I already wrote about aren’t enough.  (But I think she owed me a tag, anyway, so she’s forgiven.) (Not that she needed to be.  I’m just saying, is all.)

So here goes.

1.  I obsess about things…just not for very long.

Dennis Miller refers to this as ADDOCD: I keep changing the things I obsess about.  Work projects will do it for me.  I’ll get focused on a problem at work, then bring it home with me (in my mind, not on paper), and lay awake that night working on a solution.  The next morning, with or without a solution, I will find something else to be concerned about.  I have been known to go from losing sleep about a satellite communications issue to ranting for half a day about finding the coffee pot empty even though I was the third coffee drinker to arrive that morning.  The vast amount of energy I poured into online dating some months ago is now almost entirely devoted to flight simulation.  If I lose focus on one thing, I have to compensate by giving far too much of my attention somewhere else, as though my freaky little world is defined by some Newtonian Law of Conservation of Obsessions.

2.  I am insanely defensive about my computer.

This one has two parts, one for work and one for home.  At work, I have a system of placing files that makes sense to me and I don’t give a Yugo mechanic’s expletive whether anyone else can find one of my PowerPoint presentations or not.  If someone adds an icon to my desktop or changes the content of a database, my customary reaction is to unleash a passionate string of colorful and highly original invective.  At home, keep your grubby dick skinners off my machine.  I built it from parts, and it is unique.  No, you do not know how to fix the problem, so shut up and go back to watching TV.  That whole thing in Chaos Theory about a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon and the weather changing somewhere else?  Absolutely true.  Hurricane Katrina began shortly after I vented my…er…opinion…to the atmosphere because a friend “just checking e-mail” tried to replace my unresponsive wireless mouse with a standard PS2 mouse instead of telling me so that I could change the wireless mouse’s batteries.  Seriously, the IAEA could rid themselves of a huge problem if they quietly suggested to Iran that it should surprise me by up-clocking my motherboard.

3.  I am often stunningly creative in my expletives.

Granted, sometimes I resort to whatever fricative comes immediately to mind, but there are moments of sublime inspiration when I should really stop in mid-rant and write some of this shit down.  Anything less than fifteen syllables and I’m just doing it for laughs.  I am not at all unlike the Old Man in A Christmas Story, who, as we know, worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay.  And thanks to Erica, I have a colorful new addition to my arsenal – er – repertoire: corn-speckled dog turd.  Which leads me to the fact that…

4.  I collect colorful phrases.

I discovered a long time ago that if you’ve got an unexpectedly descriptive phrase at the ready (and these are not necessarily profane), people might actually remember a point you’re trying to make.  For example, gathering a large number of minute details for a particular project might be referred to as sweeping the marbles.  Any project that is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own ineptitude is a self-licking ice cream cone. That idiot over there doesn’t need to pull his head out of his ass, he needs a rectal craniotomy.  If I’ve just said something terminally embarrassing in a crowded and noisy room, it is inevitable that I time it so that the room will be as quiet as a mouse pissing on a Q-tip.

I actually write some of these down.

5.  I flush the toilet while I’m still peeing.

Yes.  I know.  I have no idea why I do this, but I catch myself at it at least once a day, and the mental conversation goes something like this:

No-no! No!  Awwww!
Why did I just do that?
I don’t know.  To mask the sound of my urinating?
But no one is home.
To save time?
Yes.  That’s it.  I’m saving time by flushing twice.
Thank you.  It’s nice to know my efforts are understood.