Old guy tennis last night. I’m still 0 for the century but my partner and I are playing better. This league is pretty competitive and there’s lots of testosterone in the air. Or at least lots of guys trying to prove they still have some. Doing that don’t look at or talk to your opponent, stay ever so silently serious. That doesn’t work for me. I pretty much know going in I’m going to get an ass whooping, so I try to make sure everyone knows I’m not taking it too seriously and that I’m having fun. I crack jokes about the match, keep a running commentary going, catch an opponents eye and make a funny face, and make sure that I compliment everyone on their good shots. It’s infectious, everyone loosens up and hopefully has a good time. One sided contests aren’t usually much fun for me whether I’m the kicker or the kickee (unless it’s old guys whipping up on cocky young guys in hoops) so I try to remind people the real reason that we’re playing. Remember….FUN!

Warning: Sports Post

Spring/Summer Soccer season is gearing up. Q plays for Wings the, local club team. They field three teams at U16, her age group. In most sports around here, by the time girls reach 16, the only opportunity to play is at the high school level and we live in an area of mega-schools. So the pyramid is steep and only the elite athletes get to play. The soccer leagues around here give the girls that didn’t make the cut a chance to play a team sport, with all the positive things that go along with that, and get some major exercise. Our club is a powerhouse at U16 girls. The top team consists of this years sophmores most of which played varsity at the high school. They were promoted to the Premier level last year after winning there conference. There’s only a handfull of premier teams in the state and the competition level is hellacious. Q’s team was also promoted last year. From the C3, the bottom level, to C2. They were the ones cut from the upper level teams. Q played on the upper level four years ago and was sent down. These girls have worked so hard and last year they had a great season. They won their conference, did well in tournament play and had ten shutouts. Q played almost every minute at right outside defender. Sometime I’m going to write about how she makes it look easy. She never looks like she’s hustling, yet the ball almost never gets down the line on her side.
I watched their practice for awhile. At the end they scrimmaged the other C2 team from the club. The one that Q got cut from. As Quinn said, I like those girls and we’re freinds in school, but on the soccer field, it’s different. There is bad blood between them. We played them pretty even. The first five minutes we had them completely bottled up in their end. They scored on a flukey goal, we didn’t have our regular keeper and the girl who was playing goal didn’t have gloves. She bobbled a shot and they scored on the rebound.
Q seemed happy after the practice, it’s nice to see a rare smile from her. I worry about that kid, she’s way too much like me. Endorphins must be good for her. She lifted wieghts in gym class, did a 90 minute tennis drill after school and then went right to a hard 90 minute soccer practice. This is after pretty much spending the winter holed up in the basement at the computer.

Just what the world needs, another way to waste time on the Web.
Compliments Jim, who also introduced me to the music of Jimi Hendrix back in 1967. He and his wife SB were one of the first couples from our crowd to get married and own a house. They rented a spare room to me until they were forced to move in order to get rid of me. I helped prepare them for having teenagers. They acted as my parents until I found Becky who took over the job. I need close supervision.
OK heres how it works. Pick two words (they have to be….
Nevermind, I’ll let Jim explain it:
“Key in a sensible two word ” x x ” phrase in your google search engine, where the
minimum number is two, and where there must be a sensible combination of
the two words . The winner is the one who comes up with the smallest number
of search hits. I can win with 0 hits by combining “nightcrawler honeymoon”
but “nightcrawler secrets” is a loser.”
I tried “albino beanpole” and “porcine historiographer” neither of which are winners except in our hearts, before I won with “ecclesiastical rumpot.”

It’s past 6:30 now and the girls just got out of bed. Not sure why they overslept, but time flies when you’re having fun and as usual, I failed in my duty as a backup alarm clock. There should be a fist fight anytime now while they try to get ready for school with limited mirror space.

Mondays probably suck for everyone. Just the fact that you have to go back to work and you might have had a little to much fun on the weekend is depressing enough. Then there’s Monday duties. I have a status report due to my boss by 9 every Monday. It’s difficult to come up with anything to report that’s any different from any other week. Confirming payroll and timesheets all while lamenting the fact that I have to work for a living.

But Mondays hold a special suckness for me. My wife doesn’t work on Mondays. When I go upstairs to get dressed she will be blissfully sleeping, warm under the covers. I used to try to be quiet so she could enjoy sleeping in. Lately I’ve been turning on all the lights, sitting on the bed and making as much noise as possible. If I have to suffer, everyone has to suffer.

We had a great day yesterday. “We” being Beck and I. She’s been doing our taxes herself since I shut down my business, but this year we decided to have them done. The YaYa’s highly recommened the guy they’d been using for years, so we called him up and made an appointment. We were warned that he had a few eccentricities. Picture this office. A ten by ten room surrounded in shelves, with a desk in the middle.The desk and shelves are piled to the ceiling with folders and papers and pamphlets and what have you. That’s not mentioning the shelf built on top of the computer monitor that’s also piled to the ceiling. One swivel chair behind the desk, two comfortable 80’s vintage office chairs facing the desk from the other side. In the swivel chair sits our guy. Three hundred some pounds of him. Headset on and ready to rock and roll. The man works confidently and quickly, concisely explaining every move as he goes. And when he’s not explaining, he’s talking to himself. I’ve never been quite so entertained in a meeting that involved finances. Things went well too. I’d forgotten about some overpaid taxes that occurred in the middle of the year. REFUND! That is if I can get my insurance company to tell the IRS that I really did not get 11 grand in taxable funds from them last year, like the 1099 they sent out says I did.
After the tax meeting we decided to go looking for a market that one of the YaYa’s had mentioned, and where they’d picked up a jar of Ginger Garlic paste for me. We only had vague and incorrect information on where it was. So we were cruising around in an unfamiliar part of town looking on the wrong street for a market who’s name we didn’t know. In the course of our search we stumbled on “Brand Name Deals” where we bought snacks for tomorrow night’s Oscar party and two shirts for me. The shirts were originally marked at $65. Our total bill was under 15. Then we found the “South Asian Market and Indian Deli” What a find! The aroma when you walk through the door jolts your appetite to attention. Ten kinds of Basmati Rice. Shelves full of curries and chutneys and mystery. I’m thrown back into the chapter in Rushdi’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet in which Rai is rhapsodizing about the food in Bombay. We are the only Europeans in the place. And it’s crowded and alive with conversation. I drift back to the Delhi Deli to scope out the menu. These words jump out of the blur of conversation in a thick Indian accent, “KG has matured now and he’s stepped up as the leader of the team.” I was still grinning from that when a herd of belt high children spun me around as they dashed down the isle. We bought a couple of bags of Basmati for the price of one. We didn’t buy the brand that “Makes You Think of Home.” I went for the sturdy zippered bag. We now have a year’s supply. I bought some pistachios and a brick of chashews cemented together by sweetness. We found a bag of Hot Mix, which is mentioned in The Interpeter of Maladies and Beck asked the man behind the counter, an imposing guy about thirty, tall and handsome and very friendly, “Is this really hot?”
“No, well…You don’t like hot?”
“Well hot’s ok, but I don’t like things too spicy.”
He’s thinking, “God, these Norwegians!”
“Buy it, if it’s too hot, I’ll give you your money back and I’ll eat it myself.”
It’s not very hot.
Next stop a pawnshop to browse. Pawn shop didn’t smell as good as the Market. I was looking for a bass for Q, but there were none. I came to the conclusion that bass players always have gigs so they don’t have to hock their axes. There was nothing at the pawnshop that we couldn’t live without so we headed home.
Simple pleasures. The money for the taxman was well spent!
Tonight is the Oscar party. It’s a girl thing. It’s been suggested that I get out of the house.

Ah, Youth

There’s been a lot of talk around here about how our culture is goiing to hell in a handbasket, and there’s probably some truth to it. But there’s some evidence that the next generation isn’t completely hosed. Here are links to a couple of amazingly talented young denisons of Xangaland.

kiwiichigo A poet who will take you for a metaphorical roller coaster ride and dazzle with her insight. This girl is still in High School.

NDM A photographer in LA with an incredible eye and a deep understanding of light. If you start reading the F bomb post, remember, it’s a quote from 25th Hour before your liberal sensibilities get too jangled.

As long as I’m promoting here’s another one of my favs. Qwindin just turned thirty, which is certainly young to me, but disqualifies him from being evidence for my original point (there’s a point? you say.) (I really love parentheticals)(can you have quotes inside parens?) Anyway, his keen observations of life are priceless. One of my favorites is the barbershop story from February 22. Same day I didn’t get my ear hairs trimmed.

I figure someone will make the point that even the culturally hosed generations produce great artists, often in reaction to the desolation of the environment. I subscribe to the theory that any given moment in time looks like the first minute of the apocalypse.

Last night I dreamed that my flower garden was coming up. It was great, like one of those time lapse films when the flowers pop out and bloom in a few seconds. Crocuses mostly, I’m eager for them to come up because I planted some right in my lawn. But also some plants that came right out of my subconcious, really wierd ones that looked like artichokes. I must be ready for spring. Or I was getting a nocturnal woody.

Don’t Fuck With The Constitution!

Just when I thought the White House had reached the limits of cynical, dishonest and mean spirited self promotion and stupidity, they announce that they are backing a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. I don’t care if you are the most virulent homophobe in the fifty states, this should make you cringe. It’s a bad idea! “Those who can’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.” Anyone remember prohibition? (No jokes about me being alive then) That was a constitutional amendment. Worked great didn’t it.
Not that I think it has a chance of actually happening. It’s a cynical attempt to polarize the coming election. “So, Mr. Kerry, you’re against the marriage amendment? You don’t believe in marriage? You’re in favor of homosexuality?” Let’s just split this country apart a little more. God, I hope this thing backfires. I hope that even the social conservatives see it for what it is. I hope that it mobilizes the political margins (more likely). I think the bushmiester is vulnerable right now. I’m also convinced that they have some stunt up their sleeves that will shoot their ratings over the top as we get nearer to November. Wanna bet that Osama turns up dead around, say October 20th? They probably have him in a cave somewhere, just waiting for the most politically advantageous time to drill him and say he was killed in a raid to capture him.
Mark my words, dreamfish.

The Inbetweener
I said I’d tell you about my career as an inbetweener, but I’m going to have to make it brief. It’s 4:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep because I’ve got nasty work things piling up. I’m going to try to get in early and catch up a bit.
I was trained as a fine artist. “Commercial art” (no one calls it that anymore) was looked down on by the arteests. My plan when I got out of college was to work seasonal jobs and devote my off time to my art. Instead I devoted my off time to working on my jump shot. Either way my chances of making into the MOMA or the NBA were about equal. One of my first jobs in the applied arts was in an animation studio. Ever since I was a kid who never stopped drawing, I’d wanted to do animation, I wanted to work for Disney. We did short spots for advertising. Those of you from the midwest who are old enough might remember the Old Dutch Potato Chip commercials that were film parodies. I got the job by taking a test. They told me they had never seen anyone do as well on the test. They hired about six or eight aspiring young animators. I was 28, all the rest were in their early 20’s.
When I’m at parties telling stories, I say that I was an animator. It sounds so much more impressive and people know what I’m talking about. I never was an animator. I was an inbetweener. The animator would lay out the drawings for, say, frames 1-5-8-10-13-19 and so on and our job was to do the drawings inbetween. There are some artists that can do whatever they want, they can draw in any style they choose and mimic the style of anyone they care to. And there are others who are have their own unique style and can’t really switch gears very well. I am more of a stylist. Needless to say, doing inbetweens it’s neccessary to draw just like the guy who did the extremes. I sucked at it. For example one of the animators, who happened to be one of the owners of the company, had a style that required quick whips of the pencil to mimic his line quality. I found it impossible to move the pencil fast enough to get the line right and still be accurate. I was bored. I became depressed. I became the office ping-pong champ. I drank.
After about a year of hell, one morning I called my wife, sobbing that I had to get out of the job, I couldn’t take it anymore. Are you starting to see a pattern here? That afternoon I was called into the bosses’ office and told that they were sorry, but business was down and they were going to have to let me go. I went into the men’s room to rejoice, to find one of my compatriots weeping in the stall. This was no union environment, so the layoffs were not by seniority. You knew you were considered a weak link. But just to show you what they knew about talent, they also canned the guy sitting next to me. He went on to gain some fame in the very competitive world of super hero comic books and is now employed at Disney. That was the beginning of my freelance career that lasted 12 years.
So much for brevity.

I’ve been experimenting with colors for link text. I’m trying to find something that stands out enough for people to recognize it as a link, but doesn’t completely clash with the pukey pea soup background color that I’m too lazy to change. And I’m supposed to care about this stuff.