Monthly Archives: October 2004

I am reading Songbook by Nick Hornby. Anyone who has read or seen High Fidelity knows what a music fanatic Hornby is. If you look for the book, see if you can find the McSweeney’s edition because it has a cd with some of the songs he talks about.

We’ve had the book awhile and at first it lived in Bob’s stuff but he realized that I must read it and it traveled into my stuff where it’s been sitting, waiting to be read, while I amused myself with screenwriting and not reading and that sort of thing. Now that I’m into it, I love this book. The essays are short and thoughtful and he’s gotten me interested in songs again.

Once upon a time, I was a music freak. But not so much anymore. Music is something in the background while I do something else. My favorite music is usually fast and thumpy and loud, and as often as not, close to 20 years old. I had to drive Bob’s car today (long story omitted) and I had the radio and didn’t have my stations on the buttons so I stuck on the classic rock station and made a point to pay attention to the songs. Beatles. Rod Stewart. Springsteen. It was awesome. I’m going through the random sidebar cds that we have stacked around the house and loading them into iTunes (for example, Morcheeba) and finally listening. We have a lot of great stuff around here. And what a gift that Hornby’s woken me up to it again.

He writes about my hero Paul Westerberg and a song from Suicaine Gratification (an excellent album, criminally overlooked by the world-at-large). He talks about solos and says this: “… his solo on “Born for Me” is just lovely–maybe because he’s the singer-songwriter, and knows what the song should feel like to us. “Born for me” is a Waitsian lonely loser’s lyric and an affectively heartsick tune; the solo is basically played with one finger … . A better pianist would have wrecked the moment, filled in the gaps, failed to recognize how the tune has exerted a spell over the right listener … I can never listen to the solo without thinking that it’s played by a born musician a virtuoso, not even someone who could make a living as pianist in a cocktail lounge, just a man who thinks and feels and loves and speaks in music.”

I don’t think I told you that I’m renting ANGEL Season 4 on DVD which came out only a short time ago. When I finished Season 3 and then the show ended, I thought I was pretty much done with Angel. Turns out Season 4 was on at the same time as Alias so I missed most of it. When I saw the first disc it was my first time seeing all those episodes. It was like Christmas.

Meanwhile, you must watch Lost. Wednesday, 8pm. Rearrange your schedule if necessary.

On Sunday we were invited to Tom Brown’s son’s house for BBQ. The house is in a rural area not far from Washington State University, Vancouver.

It was a perfect day. Sunny and warm. The place was beautiful. We had a wonderful spot outside, surrounded by open green space with friendly dogs, big and little horses, cool cars and nice people. Oh, and a giant barbecue stuffed with a generous quantity and variety of meats. We could almost see Mt. St. Helens and I was still hoping we might see some action. The food was incredible. Probably my highest single-day meat consumption, ever. They brought out the brownies and I said, “I’ll have more chicken.”

I’m trying an online photo service. You can see photos of the BBQ here. I’m still learning how it works but so far I think it’s pretty good.

In the NY Times they do these interviews where one of the questions is: “Last meal?” so I’ve been tossing this out asking people what they would choose for their last meal. Bob paled and asked me not to ask him questions like that anymore. WKB started making a list of every single food he likes (which doesn’t answer the question) so he back-tracked and I think settled for some sort of massive Porterhouse steak and mashed potatoes. Erin said she’d pick Rouladen.

My last meal would be Mom’s Thanksgiving. And it would have to have all the usual stuff. We always talk about trying new things but it’s only one meal a year and I always want the same stuff: oven roasted turkey with sage stuffing, Dad’s mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, cranberry sauce from the OceanSpray bag recipe, yam brown betty, broccoli, little plates with olives and celery stuffed with that yummy herbed cream cheese type stuff that I can’t remember the name of right now, pecan AND pumpkin pie — HOMEMADE for dessert. And those Betty Crocker ancient cookbook Parker House rolls. I LOVE those. I keep thinking if I love them so much I should just learn to make them myself but then I could have them anytime and it wouldn’t be so special. And Mom uses the other half of the dough to make cinnamon rolls and that’s post Thanksgiving breakfast — which if Thanksgiving was my last meal, I wouldn’t get to have.

I remember my first Thanksgiving away from home they had store bought pies. STORE BOUGHT PIES! Why would anyone buy a pie when they are so easy and yummy to make yourself? I would have made pies had anyone told me they were just buying them.

That would be my last meal. My second to last meal would be Tom Brown’s BBQ.

Kelly and family planned to visit Mom for her birthday. As they loaded the car they got a call that Mom had some sort of episode and was in the hospital. They briefly panicked and wondered if Kelly should fly down or what? They finished loading the car and drove all night to get to California.

When they arrived, Mom was fine. She was shopping at well known grocery chain when her vision blurred. She alerted a fellow Shopper of the problem and the shopper immediately prepared to call 911. “No,” said Mom.

“No?” said Kelly. (As she listened to this story.) “No,” Mom said, “It would be too embarrassing.”

The Shopper got the Store Manager and explained the situation and he suggested calling 911. Mom said, “No.” Mom asked Store Manager to phone a friend. He ended up calling several friends but that went nowhere so she convinced him to dig out her insurance card and make an appointment with her doctor.

[At this point I’m telling Kelly, jeez, what was this Store Manager thinking? Surely there would be legal ramifications if something bad happened. Kelly says, “You don’t know my Mom.”]

But before her appointment, Mom wanted to finish shopping. Recall her vision was blurred and she was basically blind for the moment. They put her in a drivable cart and she couldn’t see squat to shop and proceeded to bump into displays and not find what she was looking for.

She wouldn’t let anyone give her a ride. They had to get someone to drive her in her car to the Doctor and then get a ride back.

The doctor took one look at her and called 911 to get her admitted to the hospital. Mom was annoyed with the paramedics because, “They didn’t know anything” and asked her the same questions. She exacted revenge by peeing in the ambulance. Fortunately, she wasn’t embarrassed.

Kelly and Dan enjoyed an excellent vacation except the part where their daughter was sick most of the time. Then it was time to go home. When they checked in at the airport they made the sorry discovery that Kelly’s driver’s license expired during the trip. Oregon is doing some new ID thing starting this month so in Kelly’s mind she had until October. Needless to say the airport hadn’t the slightest interest in Oregon’s new program or the fact that Kelly hadn’t substantially changed during the course of the trip other than brutally destroying her diaper bag.

Everything gets stamped: NO ID. Airline personnel offer to escort her through security. Her in-laws have dropped them off before parking. She asks, “Can I just say good-bye?”

The ever understanding Security Lady says, “I can take you now otherwise you can wait for my convenience.” Kelly gets ready to go. Just then her Mother-in-law comes in and says, “Oh no, not again.” Security Lady visibly flinches. Kelly gets extra special treatment one click this side of a strip search.

When she arrives back in Portland, the car has a flat tire. She needs a vacation from her vacation.

Stay tuned for the last chapter of Kelly’s vacation.

The horror began when Kelly, Dan and their two adorable children were rushing through airport security to catch a flight to AZ. Security performed its random explosives test on their diaper bag and next thing they knew, lights were flashing, alarms were blasting and the $9/hour, high school educated folks protecting our safety and welfare sprung into action. Kelly took credit for the bag, since someone needed to care for the kids. Security gave Dan the boarding passes and pulled Kelly aside and began pounding her with questions while answering none of hers. Does she work on a farm? Has she ever worked on a farm? Is she sure she’s never worked on a farm? The investigation steamed ahead.

Meanwhile, the plane began boarding.

Dan returned to security to consult with Kelly about what to do. They asked if they were almost done. NO! They asked if the plane could be delayed. NO! They asked how long she would be delayed. Security wouldn’t say.

They decided Dan would go ahead and take the flight and the children, sans diaper bag, and Kelly would try to get another flight later.

Then Kelly saw someone she knew working security. “I know him. Can he vouch for me?” NO! The man came over to check the problem. He searched the bag and confirmed, nothing bad in there. At some point around this time the inquest lightened. The security hard-ass had nothing. They delayed the plane. They completed their procedure and allowed Kelly and her diaper bag to board.

Upon arriving at their destination the family destroyed the bag without mercy and switched to paper grocery bags (which they highly recommend for carry-on). Moments later, their daughter colorfully notified them that she had the stomach flu.

Stay tuned for more adventures from Kelly’s vacation.

There is no limit to how naive we can be when we want to avoid an unpleasant experience, such as purchasing a vehicle. Bob has been doing homework to replace his 1990 Accord with 160K miles and permanent stale coffee smell for some time and this kicked up a notch last weekend when he saw an ad for Hertz used sales (where I purchased my Camry and we had a no hassle experience). He had his eye on a Mazda 6 but was disappointed with the test drive. When he went to the credit union to get financing the gal there mentioned the credit union’s special auto sale this weekend with supposedly special pricing and pre-priced cars so you don’t have get into that demoralizing haggling thing.

This morning we were up bright and early and driving off at 9am to go to a car event and serious about coming home with a new car.

I kid you not: it was worse than a regular car lot. There were freshly showered, smiling dockers/oxford shirt guys, standing at the edge of the lot, ready to talk the minute you set foot on that gravel walkway. The ratio of sales people to shoppers was about 5 to 1. I wandered two cars away from Bob a couple of times and within moments faux-cheery salespeople were making a beeline to meet me. We could hardly browse and check out the inventory because every three steps there was someone bugging us. Our first guy, Yuri, was very nice and about as non-greasy as a car saleman could be. We later found out that he used to be a computer programmer and Bob said every other car saleman he meets was formerly in technology.

Yuri walked with us to the other side of the sale to look at some other cars and apparently crossed over the magic line into another dealer’s territory. He was new, his company probably should have prepped him better but there was no excuse for this total THUG to dash over and kick him off with rude words and a hostile sneer, looking as though he could barely keep himself from punching the guy. Yeah: like I’m in the mood to buy a car from Vancouver Mazda now. At this point, (we’d been on the lot less than an hour) we’d already had enough and that little skirmish put a permanent bad taste in our mouths. We checked a couple more models and scooted out of there as fast as we could. (Also the no-haggle thing was partly a myth.)

We went to the new Costco to get a new DVD player (Angel-hooray!) and as we pulled into the parking lot we were still checking out cars: “Oh, there’s a Honda … that Subaru looks nice.” And then as we were inside, we were about 6 feet from the Verizon booth and we both physically cringed and dodged the salesguys, a knee jerk reaction after our experience at the car lot.

We may be returning to Hertz.

Last night Bob and I went to John’s retirement party. Or rather, one of John’s retirement parties. This one was at the bar at the Quay. John and Alice were our across the street neighbors until sometime in July when they snuck out in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. Their youngest daughter, Olivia, did our watering and stuff when we were on vacation. She started at University of Washington this Fall. I gave them a hard time about moving out so quickly because I remember hearing the moving truck and thinking, “Oh no, John and Alice must be moving today,” and it was already the new people moving in. J and A are going to be driving around seeing stuff around the country and having a good time. We’re hoping maybe we see them again in the Spring.

After the party we headed up north to find some dinner and hopefully see some of the action at Mt. St. Helens. By that point, the sky was murky and any ash or steam that might have been hanging around had already drifted off. We went to Ridgefield to find some Italian place Bob knew about but of course we couldn’t find it (or perhaps it doesn’t exist because downtown Ridgefield consists of only 2 or 3 blocks) so we ended up at El Rancho Viejo Your Family Mexican Restaurant which was packed to the rafters except for one table, which we got. And it was super-fantastic. Great menu. Super nice people working there. Excellent meal. I had a seafood soup with shrimp and scallops and had to be rolled out the door and to the car because I was so full.

1 – I ate food from McDonalds.

2 – I heard a new U2 song and I didn’t like it.

The McDonalds thing is hard to explain. Not the part about how I *never* eat there. The part how I managed to eat there this morning. I was starving and forgot all of my breakfast foods. I had 2 sips of a fruit smoothy and a peach at the office which I inhaled with no noticiable effect on my hunger. Slummy food sounded good. WKB was on his way in from the airport from a business trip so I called his cellphone and enthusiastically suggested that he stop at McD’s and get me an egg mcmuffin. First he asked me specifically what mouth-watering entree I wanted, and being unfamiliar with the menu, he had to run me through it. I stuck with my original choice and he arrived at the office a short time later with a piping hot mcmuffin and hash browns.

“You’re a prince,” I said. It was so yummy I could suddenly understand why America loves this food.

About 15 minutes later I felt sick. I had a watery mouth and lurching digestive system for the rest of the day. I tasted that stuff FOR HOURS. I could feel it work it’s way through every step of the digestive cycle. My innards groaned unhappily while processing the greasy, salty sludge. I couldn’t eat my lunch. I did not feel normal until after 4pm. Why does America love this food? I told WKB if I ever ask for McD’s again, not to bring it to me.

The U2 thing may be an anomaly. I sometimes hate a radio single the first time I hear it, and later I hear the whole album and it grows on me and I love it. So this may not be the end of this story. But the last time I hated a new U2 song was something from that dreadful Hum and Drum album that was also a movie. I think I might have owned it at one point but it’s gone now. U2 did a couple of things in the 90’s that I didn’t bother buying but I don’t remember disliking singles. This new thing was … I don’t know why I didn’t like it. I want to say it sounded too derivative. Can a band be too derivative of itself? But also it sounded a little manic carnival Sgt. Pepper that wasn’t working for me. Like I said, maybe after I hear it again or hear the entire album, I’ll feel differently.