Category Archives: Ramblings, ravings

To the Tooth

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There’s an Italian term of art in cooking, al dente, which means food (usually pasta, but veggies and other things as well) that is slightly under-cooked so it is still firm. Directly translated it means “to the tooth”. There’s another meaning I take from al dente. It not only means “to the tooth,” but to me it also means “in the teeth”, like I just took a kick in the teeth.

Today I’m having an al dente day.

I’ve been recently working on a story in my spare time, and while I like the idea I realized a lot of what I wrote was bad. Well not bad, just boring. The irony is I took a big slug at the story the other day, throwing down well over 3000 words, so naturally I was excited about it.  That was until the next day when I realized much of the work I had done was under cooked. Al dente.

When you’re a creative type being honest with yourself about your work is probably the most demanding part of the gig. You not only have to ignore the rest of the shit going on in your life, and somehow find the energy to get off your ass and do the work, but then when your work is done you have to turn right around and be critical enough about your work to ensure a high standard.

Essentially there are two standards at play here:

  1. Is the work done?
  2. Is it any good?

The first standard is easy, and can be roughly translated as “am I happy”. This is what the creative person aims for internally. This is the first goal in their work, making themselves happy. And it is quite satisfying when you do the work. I always love it when I get a stretch of time to really dig into a story. It is relaxing and exhilarating, much in the same way that a good workout at the gym is relaxing and exhilarating. You get the excitement of the “burn”, you get the very real sense of accomplishing something. Its that feeling you get when doing a project around the house, or working on a hobby or craft. That feeling you get when you complete a project and then turn around to admire your work.

But the second standard, the one that asks, “is it any good?” is the more important. This is this question that separates the amateurs from the pros, the question that elevates a piece of art beyond one’s own horizon to that of the world’s. Of the two, this standard is also, not surprisingly, the more difficult.

When one is a creative type then they will spend a huge amount of their time learning and polishing their craft. Perfecting their ability to do their work, because, after all, doing the work is what its all about. Because of this it is easy and natural to learn from others, to study the great masters, to attempt to learn all that is possible within the craft. Painters learn to paint, writers learn to write, singers learn to sing, etc. But where does one go to learn how to be critical? How does a newbie learn to break down the flaws in their work and make it better? Where does the neophyte artist/writer/singer/etc. learn to develop an expert critical eye or ear?

These are the tough questions, the ones not easy to answer. To be creative means to ignore the other clamoring voices in the world, to lock yourself up in your own head, and to produce the work that only comes after years and years of practice. But to be a professional in your craft means your have to then turn around and listen to those very same voices you just ignored, and also, at the same time, hold your work up to them for comparison. This is a brutal thing to learn, and it is every bit as demanding as mastering the work itself. Only the rewards are not nearly as satisfying. It does not feel good to criticize one’s work. In fact, it feels like shit. Yet, it must be done.

So yeah, my story is both under-cooked, and being honest about it to myself feels like a kick in the teeth. Thus, al dente. What’s a guy to do?

Anyway, it looks like its time to do a bit more cooking. Which means its time to turn up the heat.

Anybody else suffer from learning the right amount of criticalness? What’s your story?

Another Saturday Morning

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When we woke up the morning, Teri and I sat in the living room and leisurely sipped our coffees while watching the day slowly come alive. A little mini vacation, as it were, after a very hectic week. Trevor had a friend stay over, so he was happily out of our hair.

While we sat I told her the story of Rob Tepper meeting President Clinton (if you know Rob, you need to get the story from him.  I’m sure my retelling doesn’t do the story justice. Its one of those stories that is probably better over a beer). This in turn reminded Teri of the dream she had last night that included a recycling festival on our block (complete with kids throwing candy on the front lawns), and President Obama sticking his head in our kitchen window, and talking with us while I made him pancakes. Because of time constraints, The Leader of the Free World had to suffer through my Bisquick pancakes, and not Teri’s Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes, which irked Teri to no end. He seemed to suffer no ill effects, she reports.

This is quite possibly the best part of being married. Leisurely mornings where you sit with your spouse and catch up on the events that you missed over the previous week. A lovely moment of calm before the storm of breakfast, and dishes, and shopping, and a day full of stuff you need to do NOW because you don’t have the time to get to it over the week.

So how was your morning? Any good dreams you’d like to share?

Driving back

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I just spent a long weekend in Yosemite with family. Mostly it was lovely, but it was also work as my parents were wrapping up the sale of their B&B. We hauled away heavy stuff, went through boxes of papers and camping gear, and looked over a lot of old photos.

My mother made a habit of keeping things we sent her, especially in our youth. Over the weekend she was kind enough to hand them back now that we’re adults. These were not always the happy things one normally associates with their parent’s keeping. For instance, mixed in with the first paid magazine article I wrote (and immediately sent to her) was a note from way back when I was a born-again that is filled to the brim with Christianese. This is a part of my past I am not always fully comfortable with, but curiously she kept a memento from then any way.

But I bring this up because I think this is a great idea. Most parents keep mementos of their children. But even better, I think its a good idea to keep them, and then hand them back to your children when they are old enough to have children of their own. Certainly it better to receive these things from your parents hand, rather than after a funeral. That way you both have time to reflect over them, the good and the bad.

IMG_1550One the way home I took this shot while driving south on Highway 41 near Fresno. You can see the hammerheads forming over the Sierras, which means its warm and moist in the valley. The clouds look small in the photo but each one of them is the size of a large town. These kinds of clouds are common in the Sumer, but not nearly so much in the early Spring. Also we saw yellow daffodils in bloom at my parent’s place, which is some 6200 feet in elevation. This time of year the Sierra’s are usually still packed with snow. This year I didn’t see any snow, not even in the shady parts of the road. And flowers this early, especially that high up, are very rare.

I don’t know what all of this means, except it was a lovely way to say goodbye.

 

My Book of Ideas

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Way back in 2003 I bought a little note book. On the cover I scribbled “Eric’s Book of Ideas.” It wasn’t my first notebook. I’ve had several, most of which are stuffed filled of poems, songs, sketches, and whatnot. In a way, these notebooks work like crumbs to mark the trail of my emotional journey as I slowly worked out how to be a man and deal with the outsized set of emotions with which I was born. To say a lot of the writing is tedious and overwrought would be fair. They are. It is. Perhaps you had a better way getting to where you are, but I didn’t. In some ways I still don’t.

But that being said, I hardly write poetry any more. I haven’t really since I met Teri. Its as if poetry was some strange language I spoke only when I was single, and when I settled down I somehow lost the ability. I find this idea fascinating, and wonder if you, dear reader, have also had a similar transformation. Have you? I can assure you, mine was not intended, it just happened. Moreover, I am all the better for it. At least the marriage part. The poetry, I’m not so sure. Even now, when I look back over it, I find my poems tedious and overwrought. I can’t imagine you would experience them differently.

In any event, I mention this because I pulled out this particular notebook the other night, and read through it, cover to cover. Over the course of its use (I’ve since switched to using my iPhone, and thus do not write in notebooks anymore) I went through a lot of changes. Trevor grew up. I grew into appreciating fatherhood. (believe me, I wasn’t so sure at first, even though it was my own idea) I took a screenwriting course at the local college, and I switched back to writing fiction. All of these transformations are marked in these pages. Not by the words directly, you’d have to know the transformations were there to see them, but echoes of these changes are clearly imprinted in the words.

As a diary of sorts, it makes for fun reading. Its good, I think, to be occasionally reminded from whence you came. But as a journal it is extremely lacking. There’s no direct connection to any part of the real world. With the exception of a single note, which remarks that Trevor turned 20 months old on that particular day, there is almost no connection to my day-to-day life. Its as if a drunk monk went over your life, randomly picking things important only to him, and somehow used this as the basis of your biography.

So I suck at my own history. Sue me.

But I did find, on this recent excavation, a few ideas worth mentioning here. One was a story idea called “I Know Americans” which I jotted down in 2003. To my knowledge, this is the only story I’ve thought of that takes place in an advertising agency. Considering I’ve spent the better part of 24 years in one ad agency or another, I find the absence funny.  This story I have already started, and hope to finish soon. No promises yet on when it will come out because I think it’ll be good enough to send out for publishing. You can be sure, though, that I’ll post here on its progress. Its a fun one, and I think my peeps who have had been stuck sweating with me in the advertising mines will appreciate its scope and ideas.

The other thing from my notebook I find worthy of your attention is a poem. This one is a rare poem I wrote it in 2013, well into my marriage. It is also less about my own emotional mess (or my fears of being single forever, and ever, and ever, and ever) and more about helping others. I guess marriage has been good for me. I’ll post it tomorrow. Look for it then.

In the mean time, if you have something to share from your notebooks, or whatever method you use to measure your progress, feel free to share it here or on Facebook. I love to see how other people work out their shit. If for no other reason than to feel like I’m not the only one.

From on old poem

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I want to cry at weddings and funerals.
I want to laugh at the sky,
and call down the stars.
Speak to the moon as a friend,
and the stars as close family.

I want to reach, grasp, and obtain,
my life.
With my own two hands.

 

From Late Night Coffee (Manipulate III)
-ERK 8/3/95

Art Cinéma at the Thai Restaurant

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Last night, in a pique of laziness, and after eating bland food at home so often because we’ve been sick, I rebelled and went out to the local Thai restaurant. We’ve been there often enough, even though its new, that the girl who works behind the counter recognized me on sight and greeted me with a warm smile. We talked for a bit, I paid, left a tip, grabbed my food, and left.

Now the parking for the place in accessed through a alley between the restaurant and a pharmacy next door. So I walked out the door, made a u-turn to the south, and started down the alley. It was a dark out, 8:30 or so, in the winter, and the sky had that curious quality to it I’ve only seen in LA. It looks like it is night, but that everyone had left their night-lights on. That’s the best way I can describe it. If you’ve ever been in a house with lots of night-lights stuck in the outlets all over (something we did when Trevor was a baby) there’s this curious thing about the lighting. It is both night, and yet you can see quite well, especially if you get up in the middle of the night and your eyes are adjusted. Both night, and not night, dark and not dark, if that makes any sense.

The alley I walked down is paved with dark asphalt, but the walls on both sides are either white or a light shade of off-white. Straight ahead of me was a massive sycamore tree, blocking out my view of the 2-story apparent right behind it, and most of the LA skyline. In fact, my entire view of the night sky was proscribed by either wall or tree.

Now you have to understand, around here, in the San Fernando Valley, the horizon line is a dominant feature. It really is a lovely bowl of a valley with mountains all around. Almost no matter where you go you at night see the bright stars of houses twinkling upon the jagged edge of the mountains. After the flatness of the San Joaquin Valley, where I grew up in the subtile shadow of the distant though much larger High Sierras, the more constant and visible relief of the San Gabriels and the Santa Monicas against the sky are a joy.

So when I walked down that alley, it was suddenly like being transported to a different town. Gone was the skyline which the eye longs for with every outside walk. The walls around me practically glowed in that “night-light” effect. The tree ahead was dark, with a few apartment light peaking through its bare branches. And it was at that moment I looked up into the sky.

Have you ever seen the milky way? I mean really seen it? Gone to someplace so remote, and clear that it stands out in the night sky like a river or stars? Its a lovely sight; worth every effort to go and see. Alas one of the flaws of LA is that the milky way is not accessible in a place that looks like everyone has left their night-lights on. Its way too bright down here. But when you cut off all the light around, say by a wall on either side, a curious thing happens, the night sky appears darker. Not quite dark enough to see the milky way, but darker still.

So when I left the restaurant, and looked up into the night sky, I got a real treat. The sky was dark, darker than it normally looks. I don’t know if it was the absence of the bright horizon line, or what. Even thought the walls on either side of me were light colored, and relatively bright, they were still dark enough to not leave my eyes night-blind. There were  a few faint clouds in the sky, not enough to brighten it, but just enough to add a slight texture to the dark. Almost like seeing the milky way but faintly. Orion, that constant winter companion, was up and bold, as were a few stars and a planet or two. They twinkled above in their lovely way, made more crisp by the relative darkness of the sky.

And it was at that moment that I stopped, literally in my tracks, and looked around. My ordinary trip to a restaurant, a rather perfectly mundane errand, was transformed by a bit of natural theater, and happy accident of lighting, into a piece of Art Cinéma. As if I had stepped out of my ordinary life and was suddenly standing in a Jean-Luc Godard film.

And it was breath-taking.

*&@%#$ Lawyers

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The other day I got a letter in the mail. It appeared to be from my health insurance company, but in fact, upon closer inspection, was from a third party. On the top it says “On behalf of Anthem Blue Cross”. The words on behalf of was my first clue.

Below the fold the letter states:

Dear Member. We need your help. On behalf of our client listed above, you are being asked to complete this questionnaire. Meridian Resource Company is reviewing your claims to determine if the services you received were a result of an accident in which another party may be responsible for payment. Examples include, but are not limited to…

So its a money hustle. Turns out, I’m not the only one to get such a letter. JohnMac from the Daily Kos got one as well. His response is much more polite than mine.

It turns out that there’s a name for this kind of thing. Its called Subrogation. Apparently, when I signed up for my health insurance, I signed up for subrogation as well. I guess I missed that clause in the sea of lawyerese. Still this kind of crap irks me.

Last summer my right shoulder started bothering me more than the normal amount. Way back in college I injured it playing flag-football, and ever since then its needed to be warmed up well to function. Add a few decades, a kid, a pool, and a busy father with no time to think about warming up first, and eventually you get a problem. In my case, Frozen Shoulder.

At the time I didn’t know what it was, I only knew I couldn’t move my shoulder, and whenever I did it hurt enough to knock my knees out from underneath me. Even worse, it got to the point where the pain was keeping me from sleeping. No sleepy, no worky. In the course of seeing my doctor about this I got asked a bunch of times if this injury was the result of a car accident of work related injury. I always answered no, because it wasn’t.

Apparently that NO was sufficient. Now a company I have no direct relationship with is asking me for information so they can fleece down somebody else and raise corporate profits. And to think I have friends who call taxes theft.

Does this kind of sleazy money hustle piss off anyone else like it does me?

On outsiders crossing the wrong lines

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…or an alternate explanation as to why Phil Robertson got into trouble.

There are lines in the world that don’t appear on any map. You will not find them in a travel book or a website, but they exist as ways of dividing otherwise comfortably homogenous areas, and if you cross them they can cause you harm.

The first time I can recall crossing one of these lines as an adult was just after I moved down to LA.  My roommate and I decided to got clothes shopping at a store called International Male. For those that don’t know, IM started as a clothing catalog. For all I know there’s still one today. At the time I first noticed it, I thought IM was just a catalog for trendy men. It was only later, when I visited the store in West Hollywood, that I realized there was something more to the store. Perhaps is the was unusually large number of good-looking young men on the streets, perhaps it was the absence of women in the store, but I think what clued me in the most was the giant billboard featuring two attractive men and advertising a gay cruise line. I had one of those, “I think we’re not in Kansas anymore”, moments, and did my best to act cool.

See I grew up in a smaller, more midwestern town. A town where you could openly call someone a faggot, and never be mistaken by your meaning. Nor would anyone stop you because you weren’t being political correct. This is because that was how the town’s social structure worked. There were no jack-booted thugs (presumably with red necks) wandering around making sure everyone was sufficiently homophobic. You didn’t need that. All you had to do was pay attention to those around you, and mimic how they acted. And in that town, at that time, being gay was an insult. In other words, it was politically correct to be homophobic.

And yet in parts of Los Angeles, only a few hundred miles south of Clovis, calling someone a faggot would earn you stares, and social rebuke. Everyone spoke the same language as they did in Clovis, wore (for the most part) the same clothes, but judging by the billboards it was such a different town that it might as well be another country. Just like in Clovis, there were no jack-booted things (presumably in pink satin with shirts reading “fag” on the front) wandering around keeping the PC standards in place. There were just people with slightly differing expectations of social intercourse.

And that the important point here. The lines were drawn by the people. It was the people who chose what was acceptable and what wasn’t. And it was the people who enforced these unwritten rules. There were no signs, there was no way to tell, except by close observation, but there were some places where “faggot” was an insult, and other places were it was only used for irony.

So yeah, for those that don’t know, there are places in the US that have been staked out by homosexuals. Again, they don’t rove the block in well-appointed gangs, but they do enforce their own community standards, and if you happen to cross those standards you can expect to get in trouble.

Which leads me to Phil Robertson, the guy from the show Duck Dynasty. Much ink has been spilled lately over his words in an interview, and his subsequent firing, and rehiring. I don’t have a lot to add to any of what has been said except to say, “so what?” I disagree with his expressed opinion, but I’m also old enough to understand that there and many people who feel the way he does. As a gay friend of mine said, “my skin is thick enough for the Phil Robertson’s of the world.” Indeed, it is.

But in the brouhaha over this incident, I’ve also read a lot about the gays taking over, and making everything PC. I don’t see that either. I think there’s another explanation, a simpler one. One which has the benefit of being easier to prove.

Much like that part of West Hollywood I mentioned, earlier, the city of LA has its own moral code. And while there are places which are exceptions to this rule, most of LA frowns upon homophobia. This goes double for what they call in this town “The Industry”, which is short for the entertainment industry. There’s a reason for this, and it shouldn’t be a surprise for any one near my age.

We all grew up with that special guy in high school who maybe liked musicals a little too much, hung around the drama club, or spoke in a high voice. Or maybe it was that gal who was a bit large for her size and excelled at sports, or wore here hair a little too short. We all knew people like this. You can’t escape this experience in high school. The point is not that these people exist, but what happened to them after high school. You see, a lot of them left their home towns, and moved to the big city. LA, NY, SF, and the like. Places where they would feel more at home, where they’d fit in. Places where knowing all the words to every Rodgers and Hart musical made you a star, not someone to be scorned.

And when these self same people moved to the big city, they needed to get jobs, because, well all those fancy close and trendy haircuts aren’t cheap. Amiright? And have you ever priced a good interior designer? OMG!

So where I work, meaning advertising for The Industry, probably one quarter to one third of the men I work with are gay. Maybe one quarter of the women are as well. Not enough to organize into squads in pink jack-boots, but enough that calling someone a faggot could very easily cost you your job, and would certainly earn you rebuke. Again, this may not be your social standards, but they are mine. They’re not enforced by thugs, but they are enforced all the same.

And this is where I think Phil Robertson caught so much hell. From what I can tell, Phil was merely expressing his own social values, values that honestly come from the place that he lives. Unfortunately for Phil, he doesn’t just work where he lives. A large percent of the people who work to make his show a success live in towns like mine, with social rules like mine. And this, I think, is where the people at A&E got mad. Phil had crossed one of their lines, crossed the unwritten contract that says, “that shalt not act the bigot, unless its against conservative politicians.” In short, he was an outsider who crossed the wrong line, and said faggot when he should have said, Republican.

This, I believe, is an easy mistake to make. Phil can rightly believe his show is an invention of his social structure, and not that of Hollywood’s or New York’s. After all, it is almost entirely shot on location, isn’t it? Except…except, its not just a show from his duck hunting swamps. Its also a show that is edited, advertised, sold, and distributed by people living in gay friendly cities. Moreover, I think Phil should know this too.

Perhaps he does. Perhaps Phil was just doing the red-neck version of using controversy to increase his value right when it was time to renegotiate his salary with the network. Personally, I hope this is the case. I would rather think of Phil Robertson as being calculating and shrewd than your garden variety bigot. But whatever he thinks, I doubt he’ll cross this line again. Or as the old adage goes, “Don’t shit where you eat.” Phil may work in the swamps of Louisiana, but his paycheck comes from an office in New York. And the odds are very likely that his paycheck was cut, ironically, by a faggot.

And that, I think, is the best irony of all.

Scrooge is in the House!

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I’m about to rant here. If you don’t want to see it, look away.

There’s a WestJet commercial going around FaceBook featuring an elaborate set-up where passengers are asked what they want for Xmas, and then their wishes are fulfilled when they land at their destination. Everyone is wearing blue hats and such. Even the old fart himself, Santa, makes an appearance.

All of this is great except for two things. 1) Its a commercial for an airline. Granted its a smart one, a perfect ad champaign that is well suited for both the holiday and the internet, and 2) This is not a celebration of life, caring, or even happiness. Its a straight up selling of consumerism, albeit dressed up in a fancy blue outfit.

Perhaps I’m old fashioned, perhaps I am WAY off base, but I always thought the gift aspect of Xmas was a way to acknowledge family and friends. You give gifts to those you wish to express a “thank you” to. Sure giving gifts to random strangers is nice, especially if they have a genuine need–I mean nothing say Merry Christmas like giving a legless veteran a wheel chair–but these were not “needy” people, they were regular Joes. In fact one could say they were probably all fairly well off as airline travel is still one of the marks of middle class. You want to help the needy, go to your local bus station. They’re not hard to spot, believe me.

Moreover, they didn’t deserve these gifts. Had they done something–some charity event, helped the poor, worked in a food line at the local YMCA, anything–I’d feel different. But these people got gifts solely because they were at the right place and the right time.

So what we have here are needless gifts being given to a few (relatively) rich strangers for doing nothing. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t strike me as Christmas. That strikes me as rampant consumerism. Apparently nothing says merry Christmas than an over extended credit card.

How about for Christmasy stuff we celebrate, caring. We celebrate giving, especially to the needy or to family and friends. We celebrate the hard work of others, especially the unsung heroes who make all of our lives better. But most of all, lets celebrate the love that we see in each other. Not the happiness we get when we’re given yet another large screen TV.

And I’m not even going to touch the religious aspect except to say that if Christmas is supposed to be about the birth of the Christ, then let us celebrate it with all the joy, reverence, and respect such an occasion deserves.

 

For far too long Xmas has looked like an episode of “The Price is Right”. Lets put an end to this crap.