From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XX

Introduction

This is the twentieth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, and Volume XIX is here. Today’s post holds the distinction of being only the second instance of two palindromic volume numbers in a row (the first instance being II and III). The brain reels. (No it doesn’t. At least mine doesn’t. Maybe yours does?) The different volumes have nothing to do with one another, and can be read in order, out of order, in pecking order, in good order, in court order, or in compliance with a restraining order.

What are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re the little bits of fascinating literary background that my biographer would be thrilled to discover, were I important enough and/or interesting enough to warrant a biography. They’re the types of things magazines like Us or People Weekly would report on, with regard to celebrities, if they used actual text instead of just photos, and if I were good looking. Most of these are snippets from personal correspondence. Others were written indelibly on my wrist or my psyche with a sharpie.

Pay attention to the dates. Some of these dispatches are hella old. Others are just hecka old.

January 10, 2005

[Background: I had sent around my tire chain saga, and my dad responded at length. What follows is from an email I wrote to a family friend with whom I’d shared some of my dad’s response.] 

I have indeed come to expect pure oddness from my dad. I wasn’t surprised at his overly complicated chain installation methodology [involving jacking up the car on the side of the road and taking the wheels off], since he seems to seek the hardest route between any two points (metaphorically speaking). This has only gotten worse since he’s been retired. The part of his email that was the strangest to me was the following sentence:

When you are in a nasty cold wet situation and have to install chains, breathe deeply and consider how much better it would have been to have studied Vipassana or other Buddhism, concentrating on equanimity.

This is so confusing. It would have been better than what to have studied Vipassana or other Buddhism? Better to have studied Vipassana then to have driven a car in a snowy place? Better than whatever my dad supposes I have done with my life, such as squandering it in earthly pursuit of pleasure centers, instead of something mindful and Eastern which might have done me some good? Better to have studied Vipassana than to have gotten all pissed off about my tire chains breaking and wrapping around the axle? What is he saying: that I’m a hothead? Well, duh! All the Vipassana or Buddhist study in the world wouldn’t help a lost cause like me. I’d be on the side of the road muttering things like “Suck it, Buddha!”

February 1, 2005

I’m reading a book right now by a former college professor of mine, the writer Maxine Hong Kingston, and was amused to come across a term, “spike” (and elsewhere, “spindle”) that she uses to indicate the thing that a waiter sticks paper orders on. It’s amusing because I remember Maxine asking us students what that thing is called, all the way back in 1992. On the one hand, I have to wonder: did she really work on this book for like twelve years? But then I consider: will I have anything to show for the next twelve years of my work?

November 4, 2009

Man, I can’t believe your little town has its own fight club! West Coast Fight Club, huh? Man. I have to admit, I love a good fistfight. The problem is, the aftermath is just too much hassle. If you don’t beat your opponent literally to death, and then kill all the eyewitnesses, or else create a shroud of fear over them all so that nobody will talk, not even to save his family, well then you have to deal with the authorities, and though it would take a whole SWAT team to bring me down, they would certainly assemble one, and then my kids would have to visit me in prison, and despite my kids’ lifelong fascination with incarceration, I think they’d eventually get bored of it and then E— would have to bribe them with sweets to behave and not fidget during visitation. Shoot, I wish we had a fight club here, instead of just a bunch of cannabis clubs, and of course my book club. Man, where’s a guy have to go to work out his fighting impulses? Maybe next time I bring the family up to visit you (which alas won’t be during Thanksgiving this year), you and I will have to head over to the WCFC. Would you want to fight me? Dude, I’ll do it. I’ll totally do it. Are brothers allowed to fight? Encouraged, even? Dang it, I’m getting all worked up! I have to go punch something! Or maybe I’ll just get a drink of water! Okay then!

November 11, 2009

That was really fun last night. I’m surprised to hear of [your wife] G—’s concern [about keeping us up too late] because I didn’t hear [my wife] E— say anything about [herself] being tired. She thought it was G— who needed to get to bed early the next day. Probably we all would have enjoyed staying out later but for this apparent misunderstanding between the wives. Who knows. Guys are sure simpler creatures. We’re like the needle on a speedometer: simple, reliable, easy to read. Women are like some much finer, more sensitive needle, that upon receiving the smallest chance vibration goes shivering back and forth so fast you have to ignore it until it calms down and you can get a believable reading again.

December 9, 2009

What do you mean, which bike should you ride?? Look, Mount San Bruno isn’t a tour, it isn’t a “fun ride,” and it isn’t a granfondo. It’s a race—so you should ride whichever of your bikes is lightest, stiffest, etc. I will probably ride my Orbea, even though it’s probably broken. I did this race on the Salsa last year and was slower than crap. (I know, it wasn’t the bike’s fault … just sayin’.) Now, I know I implied before that this was really short and easy and just for fun … but that was when I was trying to talk you into doing it at all. Now that you’re committed, I need to be clear: it’s a brutal race. It starts like a gunshot and ends like a crippling disease. But the NoDoz is on me! I’ll bring plenty to share and there is no legal limit!

December 31, 2009

I will keep an eye out for you at the [Mount San Bruno] race [tomorrow] unless it’s raining in which case I’ll assume you made good on your threat to bail on it. As for recognizing my new (to you) car, it is another Volvo wagon, of a very light green/gray color. The color of a weak green curry, I suppose. The styling is très moderne, as if my old 240 wagon melted in the sun. Photo attached.

I have refrained from cleaning my bike, so as not to bait the weather gods. So far, weather.com says 50% chance of rain, and NOAA says 60%. If they both said 100% we’d be home free, because the forecasts are always wrong. As it stands I’d say there’s a 40-50% chance of rain. Anyhow, my kids love to run around under umbrellas and stomp in puddles in their monstrously expensive calf-scrotum boots so I’m going regardless (or, as some idiots say, irregardless).

[Postscript: it did not rain and my pal did show up at the race. You can read all about it here.]

January 1, 2010

For the [team] website: I placed 7th at Mt. San Bruno in the Masters 35+. (I like the trend here: 9th in first stage of the Everest Challenge, 8th in the second stage, and now 7th in this race. Maybe next time I’ll get 6th! Or maybe I should quit now before I spoil anything… ;-)

Four years ago today, famished after this race, I took the family to Denny’s on the way home. This year we figured something a bit more upscale would make a more fitting start to the year. Thus, E— made reservations at Skates on the Bay in the Berkeley marina. As I’d hoped, getting there right at opening time meant sitting next to the giant windows overlooking the bay. A— begged me to let her have a window seat, and amazingly L—, whom we seated at the head of the table, didn’t notice the inequity of this.

Quick aside on our restaurant choice: I’ve been going to Skates, albeit only occasionally, for almost twenty years. Being rather pricey, it has always struck me as a place for grown-up, well-off Cal [Berkeley] alumni to take their student offspring after football games. It’s not quite as good as when I was in college (or was I just an uncultured rube then?). They did a remodel about ten years ago that was a big step down aesthetically. For one thing, the art in the entrance area is lame. Someone needs to tell the management that a football stadium is not an appropriate image for an oil painting, unless it’s abstract or satirical (I’d like to see what Hieronymus Bosch would do with football). And the painting of the Golden Gate Bridge is just awful. The “artist” totally botched the ratio between the span of the bridge and the height of the towers, so it looks amateurish, even cartoonish. Heaven will take note. But the food is still good.

After much deliberation, I ordered the bacon cheeseburger because a) the waitress said it was larger than the king crab Benedict and size does matter; b) the beef was grass-fed and local; and c) hey, bacon cheeseburger! I have to tell you, it was glorious. A half-pound patty, onions, lettuce, tomato, cheddar, lots of perfect, thick, crispy-but-not-hard-and-powdery bacon, and of course grease. My heart, and my blood cholesterol, soared like a hawk.

[The friend who did the race with me] had the king crab Benedict, but I didn’t even really get a look at it, so absorbed was I in my burger. I did get a glimpse of his Bloody Mary because it was about a foot tall. E— had the grilled trout, which I also didn’t take much time investigating, though when I saw something had been scooted to the edge of her plate, silvery like balled-up foil, I assumed it was something unhealthy and snaked it for myself. It was the fish skin: crispy and oily but without scales. In other words, delicious!

Skates has a good kids’ menu. L— had the macaroni and cheese, A— the fettuccine Alfredo. Both came with sides; we ordered one with asparagus, the other with mashed potatoes. Why do restaurants do this double-starch business? My kids had already had focaccia (very tasty and buttery), and then they get pasta and it comes with potatoes. I should have asked for a side of rice and some oyster crackers. Anyway, a few minutes into her meal L— said, “I have to whisper something in your ear.” She whispered that I make better mac ‘n’ cheese than Skates does. Then she whispered it to E—. I’m so glad she didn’t bark it out loud, since we’d already tried our waitress’s patience by knocking over L—’s chair (my fault) and many times almost tipping over her water glass.

Frankly, it’s true about the mac ‘n’ cheese—it was tossed with cream and spattered with cheese instead of having a proper cheese sauce made from a roux. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the sizeable portion I inherited. Then, to further make my day, A— lifted some fettuccine onto my plate and said, “Parental tariff.” That I don’t even have to ask makes me think I’m actually raising these kids right. The fettuccine was overcooked, as though the cook assumes children don’t have teeth, but it was creamy and highly edible. The mashed potatoes were rich and famous.

To sum up, racing Mount San Bruno is a great start to the year if you play your cards right, and even if you don’t. In another couple of years I may make another assault on its lofty summit.

[Postscript: I didn’t get back to racing Mt. San Bruno until 2014; full report is here.]

January 6, 2010

I’ve asked around and nobody has ever seen a cashew in a shell. One person said something about them being tubers, not nuts. I won’t look it up on wikipedia because that’s cheating. Anyway, on top of that mystery, I find cashews preternaturally tasty, just like Cool Ranch Doritos which are definitely made in the lab and taste like nothing that can be found in nature. So why doesn’t Big Cashew come clean? They should just own it: “Cashews, from ConAgra ... better living through science!”

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Fiction - Poolside

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language, mild scenarios of violence, and intimations of possible drug use.

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction. All the normal disclaimers apply. Any resemblance of any character to any actual human, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Poolside

I’m hanging out poolside with Dr. Bacon. I would rather be hanging out poolside with a friend, but none of my friends have pools. (I do have a friend who’s a doctor, but he seems in no hurry to start making stacks of money so he can have a pool and invite me over.) Dr. Bacon is asking questions about my health, and I don’t have much to say. I’m thinking, “Why am I here?” He looks like he’s thinking, “Why are you here?” But he always looks like that, even when I’m in his office. He must think all patients are hypochondriacs, and probably not without reason. A neighborhood dad I know complained of not being taken seriously. “You have Dr. Bacon too?” he said. “That fucking asshole, he never prescribes me anything!” I’ve learned, though, that if you can manage to convince Dr. Bacon that you’re actually sick or your back is actually out, he’ll give you gobs of free samples—he’s the king of free samples. He once gave me so many free samples he had to give me a white paper bag to haul them all home in.

It’s not really hot enough in this town for a pool. Today is pretty nice, though. The sun is out and there’s a slight haze in the air that reminds me of SoCal, where the fog doesn’t burn off until noon. Dr. Bacon, pale and old, is wearing swim trunks approximately the color of urine. My own trunks are this orangey peachy color that, I now reflect, wouldn’t look good on anyone. Not that I’d look the part in any swim trunks anyway—I’m not exactly model material and my upper body, which never sees the sun, is as white as uncooked chicken. It’s almost impossible to be embarrassed in front of a doctor, of course; this guy once gave me a rectal exam. Still, his questions make me a bit uncomfortable because I really cannot recall how I came to be here, and there’s nothing wrong with my health. I don’t say much, but the doctor gamely continues the interview, as if to honor my having arranged the appointment, and to pay lip service to my notion (right or wrong) that there is something wrong with me.

“You look tired,” he says. I yawn. I’m semi-reclining on a deck chair, which is made of cheap plastic webbing that sags a bit. This patio and pool wouldn’t be written up in “Architectural Digest” or “Sunset.” It’s all nice enough, but a bit tired. Half the pea-gravel has gone away over time but the pool is clean. I tell Dr. Bacon it’s hard to get enough sleep. “How often do you exercise?” he asks. Shouldn’t that be in my file? Or is he testing me somehow? “Every other day,” I reply, feeling sheepish because of course I sound like I’m lying, though really it’s true. I’m just as embarrassed as if I were lying.

Suddenly, the fence crashes in and an old beat-up van bursts on the scene. It’s ancient and boxy, with a flat windshield. It goes right into the pool, like sometimes happens in a dumb comedy where you, the viewer, have to wonder if the movie producer isn’t just flaunting the fact that he’s got the budget to put a car in a pool, even though it must be a hassle to fish it out, with a crane or something, and surely the pool needs to be drained afterward, and how funny is it, really? A spectacle, to be sure, but is it really funny?

This isn’t a dumb comedy, of course, this is real life and it’s not funny at all. My first thought is, is somebody going to drown? It’s taking surprisingly long for the van to sink, but once underwater it’ll be really hard to open the doors, won’t it? The cabin will fill with water and the driver and any passengers will drown, a miserable panicked claustrophobic death. I yell, “Get out! Get out of the van!” The driver looks unconcerned. Can panic look like that? I keep yelling. Finally, lazily, the driver rolls down his window, cranes his neck to get a look at me, finally seems to understand what I’m saying, and gets his door open. He climbs out of the van, followed by another guy, and then the van sinks to the bottom of the pool.

They must be on drugs, both of them. Somebody’s got to call 911. I go thru the sliding glass door into Dr. Bacon’s house, and pick up the phone. It’s a wall-mounted Trimline phone, but a really old one with a rotary dial. It’s really grody. Actually, I’m just assuming it’s grody based on its age. But why am I bothering to notice this? I’m dialing 911! It’s an emergency! But before I can dial, I hear the 911 operator answer. Bacon has picked up another extension and has already placed the call.

Why are we calling? Because we assume these guys are hurt, or to bust them? Not my problem, at this point. I put the phone back in its cradle and head back out to the pool. Large puddles are forming beneath the guys as they ponder their van and its predicament. Bacon comes back out. The driver, the larger of the two men, says, “Can somebody get me a doctor?” Bacon says, “I already dialed 911.” Something about his tone—smug? menacing?—suggests to me that it’s the police, not an ambulance, that’s on its way.

What he should have said is, “I am a doctor. How can I help you?” Then he could stall the guys until the police arrive. But now the guys are looking a bit frantic and will probably escape. But would that be such a bad thing? What good will it do to punish them by force of law, if they don’t already have some sense that they’ve done something wrong? With a van like that, they probably don’t have insurance or any other means of compensating the doctor for the hassle of fishing this van out of his pool. The van itself probably has a bluebook value of, like, nothing. The doctor will have to absorb the cost regardless, and will this be any easier for him to shrug off just because the driver got probation or jail time?

Still, the law must be served. I’m not going to let this get away like that time in Los Angeles when a guy pulled on gun on my friends and me. I somehow didn’t see the gun (granted, it was dark), and I got not only the make of the car wrong but the color and even the basic type. I was a useless witness. When my girlfriend ran into the house to call 911, she couldn’t find the phone right away because it was some novelty phone, a Mickey Mouse or something, and by the time the cop arrived, the gunman had robbed a liquor store nearby. (Question: would you call him a gunman even if he didn’t actually shoot anybody?)

This time I’ll have to do better. So I trail behind the departing guys and say, “Wait, stop!” I want to get a good look at them so I can tell the cops what they look like. They turn around. The driver is short, stocky, dark, and has black hair. He has a thick neck. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says “Pirates vs. Ninjas.” The other guy, to my surprise, looks like a surfer, a golden boy. Suntanned, tall, muscular, shirtless, with long blond hair. My earlier memory was that the two guys looked pretty similar. What is wrong with me, that I’m such a poor observer? Is this related to how bad I am with names?

The driver evidently doesn’t like the way I’m staring at him, and he comes and gives me a shove. I recoil, not so much from the shove but from the somehow shocking cold wetness of his hand. Of course his hand is wet, the guy is soaked, but I react just as I do when one of my kids, finishing a meal, wipes her jam-covered hands on my shirt as though I were just a giant napkin. Then I grasp the import of the shove and realize I’m about to get in a fight.

Instantly I’m flooded with adrenaline and if I were to look closely at my hands, which have become fists, I’m sure they’d be shaking. I can feel blood coursing through my body and my stomach gets all fluttery, like I’ve had ten cups of coffee. I half expect my nose to start spontaneously bleeding, like it did in the last fight I got in, under the flagpole at school (I guess I’d been punched in the nose, but I never felt like I had, nor did my fist seem to connect with the other kid’s nose, but it was bleeding too). I adopt a boxer’s stance. This registers on the guy’s face—just a flicker of alarm, and then he puts up his fists, too.

Perhaps his lizard brain is telling him, nonverbally, “Your opponent is tall. His arms are long. Your chances are not good.” I hope he’s thinking that. I hope this guys isn’t a trained fighter who has mastery over the instinctive fear response. I don’t want a fight, whatever the odds, because of course I’ll get hurt and it won’t make any difference if I hurt him as well. So I decide to negotiate—without, of course, lowering my fists.

“I have a longer reach than you,” I tell him. “And I’ve been in plenty of fights.” I suddenly realize how ridiculous this sounds. It could be worse—I could have thrown in something about having grown up with older brothers, which would have sounded even cornier. Something like amused disgust flits over his face—or is it just my sheepish imagination? “What, you think I’ve never been in a fight before?” he asks, starting to bounce just slightly on his feet, bobbing and weaving just a bit—his best impersonation of a prize fighter. Or am I imagining this motion, poor witness that I am?

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll do fine, but we’ll both get fucked up,” I tell him. “Who wants that? What good would it do? Wouldn’t you rather have a hug?” My own strange utterance amazes even me, but instantly the guy looks relieved, and just like that we’re hugging, exactly like boxers do when they’re exhausted and, ridiculously, collapse into each other’s arms right there in the ring in front of hundreds of spectators, until the bastard referee pulls them apart and makes them fight some more. But there’s no referee here, so our hug is unbroken, the guy’s drenched shirt gradually soaking my own, and I silently congratulate myself on my quick thinking. The sound of sirens approaches. Help is on the way, and everything is going to be fine.

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