From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXIX

Introduction

This is the twenty-ninth 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, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, Volume XXVII is here, and Volume XXVIII is here. If that seems like a lot of volumes, rest assured it actually isn’t. Why not? Because I say it’s not.

So what are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re brief bulletins I wrote to entertain family and friends when I was young and brash and just didn’t know any better. This is back when people actually wrote letters. Wait, did I say “people”? I meant me. Anyway, within each volume these are in chronological order, but the volumes jump all around through time and space. Read them in order, out of order, in alphabetical order by Roman numeral, in numerical order by word count, or according to whatever your preferred algorithm dictates. All of today’s dispatches were written when I was attending UC Santa Barbara.

January 18, 1989

There’s a girl in my French class whom I’m trying to “get to know.” Today it hit me how ridiculous the whole thing is. First, I’d arrange it so that I would sit by her, and chat her up, and then when that routine seemed to be established I’d show up early and sit somewhere else to see if she deliberately sat next to me. And then today—bonus!—we had a conversation after class that lasted all the way down the stairs and out to the bike racks. So I was basically gauging my “progress” through some kind of spatial measurement system. A real man wouldn’t bother with all this incremental BS, he’d just ask her out to coffee or drop a clever line like, “Women pay to go out with me.” At least this girl said something pretty interesting today: she said if she could buy a new car, she’d buy a Dodge Ram Charger. That seems sort of cool. In fact, I just realized she’s probably out of my league.

April 5, 1989

Today I slept throughout my first Physics lecture, then forgot about my Psychology class, and then slept through my English class. Why? Well, there are several factors. Like the weather, for example. It has been in the mid‑90’s here all week, not a cloud in the sky. You know, that dependable heat that isn’t going to leave you out in the cold all of a sudden. Even the evenings are nice and warm. So I’ve been riding more than ever, to enjoy that, and then when I’m not riding, the tropical torpor tends to induce a lackadaisical lifestyle which doesn’t involve being bright-eyed and bushy‑tailed when I get to class.

Today we got our cycling team sweatshirts –now that it’s 90 degrees in the shade. They’re way bitchin’. They’re like a grey heather, like with the white fibers running through the fabric? And with the big hood, and the white pile lining, and they weigh like 500 pounds. And the best part is, if I’m wearing it and fall asleep in class, which happens a lot because I’m so exhausted from training in the heat, it sort of holds me upright.

April 28, 1989

The cycling team meets once a week (in addition to all the rides, of course). The meetings don’t really get going until about half an hour after the scheduled time, so that’s when I show up. Meanwhile, the location of the meeting changes from week to week. It’s really hard to figure out where they’ll put it next. A veritable wild goose chase, if you’ve ever been to one of those. So anyhow (I’m not boring you, am I?) I showed up yesterday evening in front of the UCen, which is sort of a plaza, and everybody was there just sort of riding around. Naturally, I joined them. This guy M— was there on a totally rad Schwinn beach cruiser from the ‘50s. M—is pretty cool because he works at a bike shop and races pretty well, but he’s also kind of annoying everybody lately because he started one of those dreaded cycling team romances we all hate so much and has basically turned into a total sap. Every time he sees his little woman (who, incidentally, isn’t much of a looker) he drops everything, even if in mid‑sentence, to go pal around with her. But his old Schwinn is a total gem. The coolest part? It’s a two-speed. Not a back‑pedal kind, either. It’s got a brake lever sized shifter, made by . . . guess who? It ain’t Sturmey-Archer. It’s Bendix. Yes, the very same Bendix that makes the aerospace stuff. I asked Mark how often he had to adjust the shifting. He said never. And I tried it. It works flawlessly, 35 years into its life. So anyway, after about half an hour of bike combat, general socializing, et cetera, I realized that maybe the meeting wasn’t going down at all. I asked somebody, and he nonchalantly said, “Oh, yeah. It got moved to tomorrow night.” I almost asked, “Then what are we doing here?” but realized that I knew exactly what we were doing: hanging out.

Eventually we all decided we’d better study and a bunch of us headed over to the library. I never get much done there when I’m with friends, but I had to try—my Physics midterm was the next day. I have a knack for test preparation, I think. I start by going through my notes to try to guess what the teacher will put on the test. Most of my notes are written for my own amusement, because if I’m not amusing myself, the professor sure isn’t either, which means I might fall asleep and not write anything. Here’s an example from my actual notes:

4/27/89 Thurs: WAVES

Waves are characterized by speed, wavelengths.

• “Heat wave”: if ya got a heat wave, then ya got temperatures soaring into the nineties for days on end
• “The Wave”: a certain dance characterized by wobbly arm movements
• “Rad wave”: a 20‑footer or bigger that’ll take you all the way to the beach, dude
• “Permanent wave”: a hairdo characterized by tight curls that don’t require styling or setting gel

October 6, 1989

This friend of mine doesn’t have a mountain bike so I loaned him mine so we could cruise around the beach and some nearby trails. I rode my commuter death bike. Everyone calls it that because I have these bolt-on cantilever brake bosses (aka Moots Mounts) and to make them stiffer, I have a section of steel chainring spanning them (custom-cut to fit). They look really cool but everyone’s like, “What if you crashed? Couldn’t they, like, puncture you?” So we rode on the beach for a while, and then on these really sandy trails, and suddenly my tires washed out, and then the handlebar and the wheel stuck into the ground and I almost went over the bars. By “almost” I mean that I almost made it out okay, I mean I should have gone all the way over the bars, but my groin caught on the end of the handlebar that was sticking up and it impaled me. I was up there for like a couple of seconds, with all my weight concentrated on the plastic handlebar cap, right in my groin. Then the whole bike toppled on me and something raked across my leg. It was the chainring brake stiffener. It gave me this huge gash in there. It actually would’ve been funny as hell if it didn’t hurt so bad. [I still have a scar, over a quarter-century later.]

You know how you always wish you could get a crash on videotape? Well, I did. Later in the ride I spontaneously decided to ride down this big concrete driveway that goes right down to the beach, to lower boats into the water on trailers. There was a guy standing at the top making a movie with a little VHS camera, and I asked if it was cool for me to ride down. He said yeah, so I went down, taking advantage of its being sandy by doing this big gnarly zorro [where you lock up the rear wheel and do big fishtails]. What I didn’t know was that there was like a foot drop-off at the end. But hey, no problem, I had plenty of speed, so did a big jump and made a perfect landing, rear wheel first. Thing was, once the front wheel landed it bogged in the sand instantly and this time I made it all the way over the handlebars. I tucked and rolled and landed in tons of sand so it didn’t hurt at all. In fact, I rolled all the way over in a complete somersault and came up on my feet, throwing my arms up in a victory salute. Like 20 people were out there sunbathing and all cheered. I wonder how many times the guy with the camera will watch that footage, laughing his ass off.

October 10, 1989

A couple of days ago Andy, our Korean neighbor who’s in the ESL program here, came over and hung around while I made Spaghetti Francisco. He seems lonely – he often cruises right into our apartment, and starts looking around, picking objects up and inspecting them, and talking. His English is surprisingly good, considering he’s only been in the U.S. for eleven days, and (he says) he was really bad in his English classes at school. He doesn’t get along with his roommates very well –one is Japanese and barely speaks a word of English, and other guy, who’s Swiss, only bothers to speak German because he always has at least half a dozen other Swiss guys couch-surfing in the apartment and borrowing Andy’s stuff. Anyhow, earlier that day Andy’s cousin had come to visit and smashed her car into one of the pillars, shaking the building. I think she was planning to have dinner with Andy, but was so upset she left and got a motel room or something. Now Andy asked if he could use our microwave, and had this big package of meat, and I figured he needed to defrost it in a hurry or something before taking it back to his apartment and cooking it on his stove. It was in there forever, and I got the Francisco in the oven while Casey heated up some chicken noodle soup with little round noodles. Andy said, “They look like little doughnuts.” Casey said, “Yes, they do indeed look exactly like tiny miniature doughnuts.” I replied, “Yes, it’s in fact rather astonishing just how closely those noodles do resemble diminutive doughnuts.” If Tesh had been around he would surely have made a similarly astute observation employing equally precise vocabulary. Suddenly Andy pulled out the big plate of meat, set it on the table, and said, “Dig in.” Wow! I’d had no idea it was for us!

Man, it was so good. I guess it was a cross section of the cow where all the ribs stick through, all sliced up so that there were three little discs of bone in each slice. I don’t know how meat can turn out so well in the microwave. It wasn’t just plain , but prepared with some Korean recipe, swimming in a spicy, fatty sauce. Once we started eating nobody was talking, just grabbing the meat with our fingers, picking the little round bones clean, smacking our lips, and grabbing another piece. I was worried Casey wasn’t moving fast enough to get his share, but he hardly eats anything anyway and I end up finishing off his last piece. Then we dug into the Spaghetti Francisco. Poor Tesh never showed up—too busy studying, I guess—so he missed out.

November 13, 1989

The stupidest trend has caught on here. All these students buy mountain bikes, and all these bikes have quick-release seat posts [the idea being that you should lower your seat before gnarly descent]. As if any of these people ever rode off-road! Since the QR post means your seat can be stolen in five seconds, these students take their seats/seatposts off and take them to class for safekeeping, down on the  floor under the desk. So their bikes out in the racks have this exposed frame tube so rain can fall in there, and I occasionally see trash stuffed in the hole by some mischievous passerby. Worse yet, the students look like idiots carrying around these seats, with the post getting grease on their clothes. I was in the library with a friend and we just had to laugh, watching all these students milling around with their bike seats.

February 19, 1990

Last Thursday there was a lab due in my socioeconomic geography class, based on a research article we had to borrow from the reserve book room of the library. (I guess that’s what makes it a “lab” instead of just another paper.) I kept putting off the assignment and then Wednesday rolled around and I forgot to do it because it was Valentine’s Day and for the first time, I actually had a date. The next day, the reserve room opened at 8:00 a.m., and the lab was due at 9:00. So I showed up there just after 8:00, got the article, ran over to the microcomputer lab to use their word processor, pulled out the article, and started really stressing because it was super fricking long. I couldn’t even read it in an hour, much less write a paper on it. But some student before me had left all these notes in the margin and totally outlined it! This guy knew what he was doing, too. So I wrote the damn thing without even reading the article and finished by about 9:10. Then I ran to my class, and the T.A. hadn’t even shown up yet. He walked in two minutes later and I turned it in like I’d done it in advance. Sometimes I think I lead a charmed life.

March 1, 1990

I’m completely broke. Go figure. S— always sent me my monthly support check, but now that she left my dad, I haven’t been getting it. I guess he figures since his wife left him and he’s all full of woe, he shouldn’t have to support his son anymore. My mom’s on vacation in Hawaii and forgot to send a check before she left. [My parents’ divorce settlement decreed that my dad would pay 5/8 of whatever I got, and my mom 3/8, but no actual total amount was specified; I was generally pretty strapped even when they didn’t forget.] So I’ve been eating nothing but pasta (with Ragu Old World sauce from a gallon can), and burritos that are just beans and tortillas—I can’t even afford cheese. And I just got my tuition bill: $550. Plus I need to get glasses because I’ve finally admitted to myself I’m totally nearsighted. I was sitting in the front row in a lecture and asked the prof to focus the overhead projector, and everyone around me was like, “Dude, it’s totally in focus.” But I guess I’ll have to keep squinting until I start working this summer. Man, how did I get here? And how will I get out?

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXVIII

Introduction

This is the twenty-eighth 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, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, and Volume XXVII is here. I never expected my collection to be so, well, voluminous, but here we are.

So what are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re the closest thing to tweets or X posts you’ll ever get on albertnet, in that they’re rather short bulletins. But then, they’re nowhere nearly as short as the original 140 characters of SMS and Twitter updates. (In fact, today’s post might include one of my longest-ever Bits—or is it a Bob?— at over 500 words.) These are excerpts from letters or emails to friends and family, which I’ve decided ought to be amusing to a much wider audience (i.e., all 6 billion users of the Internet).

Since many of my friends and family probably ignored these bulletins originally, you may be the very first living human to pay them any attention! Read them all at once; one at a time over days or weeks; randomly; sequentially; capriciously; deliberately; repeatedly; not at all; or according to your own scheme that I haven’t even thought of. For each dispatch the date is provided and where I was living.

April 5, 1989 – Santa Barbara

I showed up late to my English final, and started in on the first part, which was looking at ten quotes from stuff we’d read, and identifying the work and the character quoted. Assuming (for some reason) that the exam was open-book, I started flipping through one of my books. The professor said, “Dana … what are you doing?” I was like, “Uh, just looking up one of the quotes.” The prof stated, “The identification section of this exam is not open-book.” The entire class started laughing. I said, “Uh ... sorry.” Then the whole class was on the floor. “You’ll go far in life, I can tell,” said the prof.

April 12, 1989 – Santa Barbara

Today I gave a pal a ride home from the cycling team meeting. He’s big for a cyclist—over 175 pounds, looks a bit like Bob Roll—and he was sitting on the handlebars of my mountain bike. I had the tires (Farmer John’s Cousins) at real low pressure because of an incident I suffered a couple of days ago. But that’s another story. A good one, though, so I’ll share it with you. 

It all started when I went to visit Geoff [in San Luis Obispo] for spring break and took my Tioga City Slicker tires with me. Why, you ask? Well, we held the first SLO Parking Garage Invitational Midnight Criterium last week. The parking garage, a brand new building that has received harsh criticism for its avant-garde architecture, has five, count ‘em five, floors, with hairpin turns all the way down—perfect for testing people’s bike handling skills. If you take the turns too wide, which can happen when a competitor forces you out, you hit these six-inch-high domes of painted cement. Gnarly! It was a total blast. 

Anyhow, when I returned to Isla Vista, I forgot to bring the City Slicker tires back with me, and had to mount up the Farmer Johns. They were really old, had been sitting around a good while. Well, on Monday I was just riding along, minding my own business, on the celebrated UCSB bike path when all of a sudden . . . BLAM! The rear tire just blew clean off the rim. Everybody in the vicinity jumped about three feet in the air. Being late as usual, I had to just keep riding the dang thing. It was pretty funny. Anyhow, upon careful inspection when I got home, I noticed that about a four-inch section of the rear tire had a severely damaged bead. I should have replaced the tire altogether but don’t have the time or the money, so I’ve continued to ride that baby, just at real low pressure. 

Which returns us to my original story. So I’m giving this guy a ride on my handlebars; the bike’s squirming around everywhere due to the low tire pressure; I can hardly see around the guy; I can hardly reach the brake levers; his full backpack is smashing into my face; it’s dark; and we’re wearing sunglasses. (Okay, it wasn’t dark and we weren’t wearing sunglasses … just couldn’t resist the “Blues Brothers” reference.) But hey, none of this is any problem because I’m a bike racer, right? We crash up and down off the bike path a number of times, narrowly missing other bikers and pedestrians, wobble quite a bit during slowdowns, and I actually enjoy some success in creating the illusion that I’m in control. That is, until we come within a block of [my apartment building] La Loma and a tiny Chicano kid, a toddler really, rides right out in front of us on his tiny bike. 

Well, his reflexes obviously haven’t developed yet, and ours are severely limited, and we’re on a collision course! I don’t know which way to go around him because I can’t predict what he’s gonna do, I mean it could be anything, or nothing. So my friend and I both begin yelling, like the two convicts in “Raising Arizona” when they realize they have left a man behind: “AAAAAAAAAUGH!” After narrowly averting disaster through my expert bike handling and our ability to remain cool in a pinch (well, okay, maybe it was just luck), we look over at the parents of the kid, expecting them to be super pissed, ready to kill us for recklessly endangering their child. But instead they’re laughing. Laughing! Cripes, don’t these parents know danger when they see it? They certainly wouldn’t have been laughing if little Junior had been trampled into the asphalt by over 350 pounds of man and bike, the unmistakable tread of the Tioga Farmer John’s Cousin embedded in his face!

October 12, 1991 – Berkeley

I need to find a dentist out here. I’ve asked my pals for recommendations and usually get kind of a blank look. But a guy at the bike shop, B—, who looks and acts like Bill or Ted from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” did give me the name of his guy. I think I’ve mentioned B— to you before, he’s the guy who separated his shoulder mountain biking and then sold all his prescription Vicodin so he could buy ganja. Anyhow, he said his dentist is “totally kickback” to the point that B— talked the guy into dispensing unnecessary laughing gas, just for the hell of it, and for free no less. (B— is quite the salesman.) That doesn’t seem entirely professional to me. And then, as if an afterthought, B— told me about the last time he had a cavity filled. He’d had all this Novocain, of course, and then afterward he decided to smoke some weed, which of course gave him the munchies, so he went and bought this big sandwich, and he was eating away on it and then something seemed wrong and he looked closely and the sandwich was all covered in blood. Turns out he’d been chewing on his tongue because he couldn’t feel it! Daaaaamn!

March 13, 1992 - Berkeley

A couple of my roommates and I have a Thursday tradition of boys’ night out. (Not like there are any girls in our lives to exclude from these outings, of course, and if there were girls in our lives, we’d surely bring them along, or more to the point they’d bring us along … but I digress.) We sometimes start at the Come Back Inn, which is a barebones place, not much furniture, mainly linoleum, and I think their name is based on how they routinely get shut down for serving alcohol to minors, and then they do their time and re-open. It’s not uncommon to stand around there with a pitcher of beer since there’s no place to set it down. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen dudes drinking right out of the pitcher. But we also like the more upscale places, Henry’s and Raleigh’s. My roommates are always hoping to hit it off with some hot coed, and they have this theory that if they pump iron right before we go, their muscles will look bigger and they’ll become irresistible to women. (They have a home weight set, including  a bench press.) That strategy just might work for them one of these times, but as you know I don’t have any musculature to speak of and if I tried to pump iron I’d just injure myself.

So anyway, we were at the pub and E— was scoping out the babes, kind of like a lion surveying the savanna deciding what prey to go after, and finally decided on this cute blonde. He caught his reflection in a mirrored beer ad, checked his hair, straightened his red Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, shot us a quick look as if to say, “Watch this,” and set out to start a conversation. He headed over and exchanged what couldn’t have been more than a few words before turning away and walking back to us, tail between his legs. Man, he was pissed. “NorCal sucks,” he said. “In L.A. and San Diego women were actually cool, they’d give you the time of day. But you get a chick up here who’s even halfway good-looking and she’s totally stuck up.” M— and I gave him a hard time for getting shut down so hard, but we held back a bit as he was clearly smarting.

Well, then he spotted some other young beauty but speculated that she’d be just as snooty, even though her blond hair was obviously dyed. Somehow we got to daring each other to go ask her what color her hair really was. We all liked the idea in principle but nobody was volunteering, so we ended up doing roshambo (i.e., rock-paper-scissors) and of course I lost. So I went over, sat next to her at the bar, said hi, took a few moments and a few sips to get my courage up, and then—looking her right in the eye—popped the question: “What color is your hair, really?” She said, “Oh, this is my natural color.” What could I say? Looking at her dark eyebrows, I said, “Well, what about your eyebrows, then?” Without missing a beat she said, “Oh, I dye those.” Wow. I was impressed. Such quick thinking, totally unrattled, and best of all not hostile! I replied, “Well, you did a great job. I never would have guessed.” 

I was kind of pleased with myself for not seizing up completely at her retort. And since she was pretty fly to begin with, it seemed well worth trying to turn this into an actual conversation. So I tried, and I’d say I lasted at least another 90 seconds before completely running out of things to say. I suppose I felt like how a rodeo rider must feel, where every second he stays on the bucking bronco grows his achievement. It didn’t even occur to me to buy her a drink, which would have bought me at least a few more minutes. But what can I say? I got no game, and eventually I wandered back over to my pals. “Well, you didn’t strike out as fast as E— anyway,” M— remarked. Gloating just a bit (I have to admit), I tried to deploy some swagger: “You know, that’s actually a pretty good pickup line. At least it was novel. I’m gonna use that again. I totally could have gotten her number, if I’d wanted.” Of course my pals just laughed in my face. That’s what friends are for, right?

July 15, 1997 – San Francisco

For my birthday E— bought me this cool a magic lamp thingy. It’s is a cube-shaped wooden frame, open at the top and bottom, with rice paper for walls. Inside is a cylinder of thin paper with figures cut out of it, with colored cellophane covering the cutouts. The cylinder’s roof is a paper pinwheel, and the center of it is a tiny glass dome that sits on a little needle, to form a bearing. Beneath this there’s a little light bulb. Heat from the bulb is turns the pinwheel, and thus the cylinder, so that the figures of colored cellophane are projected on the rice paper walls. The effect is a moving picture of the figures (dancers, animals, etc.) that seem to dance across the rice paper, seeming to grow in size as they near the edges. I guess this would typically be a nightlight for a kid’s room. We’d seen it in a shop window in the Marina when we were out for a walk and E— noticed that I liked it, so she sneaked back there and bought it. Anyhow, we had a friend over who just stared at it, perplexed, trying to understand the point. Finally her eyebrows went up like she’d had an “aha!” moment and she said, “Oh, I get it! It’s because you guys don’t have a TV!” Um… right. That’s it.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXVII

Introduction

This is the twenty-seventh 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, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, and Volume XXVI is here. These volumes speak volumes about my past, but they don’t speak these volumes clearly; I guess I set the volume too low.

So what are albertnet Bits & Bobs posts? They’re just sprinklings of prose I wrote in my youth, typically in letters or emails because I didn’t have a blog yet. (I mean, nobody did.) I’m posting them here to backfill all those people, all those years ago, who typed “www.albertnet.us” on a typewriter and then scratched their heads because nothing “loaded.” Or they searched their email folders for “albertnet” or “blog” and never found anything.

Since many of my friends and family ignored the printed materials and/or emails I sent them back then, yours may be the very first pair of eyes ever to land on these bits and bobs! Read them back to back, front to back, back to front, left to right, right to wrong, top to bottom, bottom to top, randomly, frequently, occasionally, or not at all. The date is given and where I was living.

January 18, 1989 – Santa Barbara

Today I lost concentration while biking home from class, because I was looking at this hot chick in her VW Cabriolet. (I thought it was this girl Molly from my French class.) I took the turn onto Camino Pescadero too fast and too wide, and drifted just a bit into the oncoming lane, and there was a car coming the other way. It almost pegged me, and easily could have, had conditions been only very slightly different. For example, if the girl in the VW had waved, I could be dead now. But life is full of risks, especially at a college like this with so many fine ladies. And life itself is the ultimate risk, with a terrible track record (i.e., nobody's survived it yet).

October 17, 1989 – Santa Barbara

The UCSB cycling team is has a new sponsor: Gold’s Gym. Next time you see me I’ll probably be huge. We also have a sponsor for heart rate monitors. They’re pretty expensive because the company that makes them mainly does medical equipment. But the team still isn’t getting any real cash. And Fletcher Brewing Co. (the maker of Firestone) is no longer a sponsor of collegiate cycling. What a blow!

I can’t remember if I told you this story, but this brewery is pretty new and is trying to popularize non-alcoholic beer by promoting itself through cycling events. Last year they sponsored the collegiate national championships in Colorado. We got it at dinner the night before the road race, and since it’s non-alcoholic there was no reason we couldn’t partake. I didn’t much care for it, and the next day right after the road race I asked a teammate, “Dude, did you try that Firestone last night?” My teammate shook his head and I was about to say, “It was disgusting!” when I noticed somebody in my periphery who seemed to really perk up and take notice. This guys was in a suit, which seemed really odd. I mean, who wears a suit to a bike race? So, acting on instinct, I did a 180 and proceeded to tell my friend, “It was amazing! I could drink that stuff every night!”

Well, the suited guy walked up at this point and said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.” He stuck out his hand and introduced himself: “Hale Fletcher, Fletcher Brewing Company.” The head honcho! And this was great because they’re in SoCal and our UCSB team had been courting them as a sponsor. I chatted the guy up, praised his product to the high heavens, etc. Alas, I didn’t follow up later, and this promising conversation came to nothing.

[Interesting footnote: while Firestone the NA beer never took off, the project eventually became Firestone Walker Brewing Company, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Adam Firestone and David Walker are the founders, and it was actually Adam’s father, Brooks Firestone, a vintner, who got the NA thing going with Hale Fletcher. My older daughter, who graduated from UCSB fairly recently, says Firestone 805 is the go-to beer for partying frat boys. And recently I discovered Firestone’s 8Zero5 NA beer, which is excellent—and which they’ll tell you is their first foray into the NA realm (not acknowledging the original Firestone product). Now you know better. For a neat article on this, click here.]

January 5, 1993 – San Francisco

While I was visiting Boulder I managed to get a dental appointment with our old dentist, Dr. Lewis. That was pretty cool. The hygienist was the one I remember, too, and carried on the usual conversation, chattering happily away. It was more of a monologue actually, since my mouth was obviously full, though I tossed in a quick sound bite every few minutes after rinsing that hideous yellow water away. She’s always asking questions but won’t let me answer. I even bit her once. But anyhow, she’s about eight months pregnant, and was talking about how she had a scare with the baby seat in her car. Seems the seat got disconnected from the seatbelt somehow, so when she braked suddenly the whole thing lurched forward. By the time the cops got there the little kid was just sitting there, trying to scream with his face ripped off. Just kidding—couldn’t resist a “Mad Max” quotation. The kid was fine, his feet stopped him on the back of the front passenger seat. But she was wigged out, and not long after the incident her husband brought home a rented movie—”Raising Arizona,” of all things. So before putting in the movie, he said, “Now listen: there’s a few pretty crazy scenes involving the baby, but I’ll tell you now, nothing bad happens to the baby. He always comes out fine. So don’t flip out.” She’s saying, “What? What the hell are you talking about?” Of course when the scene occurred when Gail leaves little Nathan Junior atop the car, she almost flipped out anyway. “Why did you even rent this?” she cried. So that was pretty funny. Then, I got more than the usual token cameo appearance from Dr. Lewis. He attacked the barb on the inner surface of my right big tooth, which had been damaged in my bike accident last June. He used a dentist’s version of a Dremel tool and just ground it smooth. He says if the tooth turns grey (!) or begins to hurt or be abnormally sensitive, I’ll have to have a root canal. That would sure be a drag. But he said that if it hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t.

April 17, 1995 – San Francisco

I hear you about dads, and how intimidating it can be to have one, especially if you’re a male adult trying to become a man. [My brother] B— called our dad for advice because his (B—’s) refrigerator had died and he was having trouble fixing it. Our dad seemed really disappointed that B— hadn’t figured it out, and in fact seemed a little bewildered at his son’s total incompetence, like we should all be born knowing how to fix this type of thing. Didn’t offer much advice, really—just placed a really hard pit in B—’s stomach. I mean, our dad designs and builds interferometers, for Christ’s sake. I don’t even know what an interferometer does (other than measuring interference, presumably—but to what end?) As far as refrigerators, I know how to procure and replace the light bulb, but that’s about it. (One time when vacating an apartment I unplugged the fridge to save electricity, after which it eventually defrosted and spewed water all over the carpet of the shithole apartment, which cost me my entire damage deposit.) Anyhow, B— bit the bullet and eventually fixed his fridge! We’re talking A-Team or MacGyver here. I think he had to install a small piece of beef liver somewhere to complete the repair. I don’t know if he even mentioned his ultimate success to our dad. It was probably too sore a subject by then.

June 23, 1996 – San Francisco

A colleague of mine made a comment about a business contact being attracted to her. I joked, “Don’t let your husband know that.” She replied, very casually, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’re getting divorced.” I thought it was a deadpan joke. I mean, how could she be so casual about it? I was so sure it was a joke that I replied in similar deadpan fashion, “Well, isn’t that why the modern wedding vows say ‘Till divorce do us part?’” She said, “Well, that’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

I still thought she was joking. “Well, no point letting a failed marriage interfere with your life, right?” To which she replied, “Gosh, you know, I think you’re right. I like that!”

A day or so later, I learned to my horror that she was getting a divorce, and that what I’d taken as deadpan humor was actually dead seriousness … meaning I’d seriously put my foot in my mouth. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t been angry with me—could she have my cynical comments seriously? It seemed impossible. When I profusely apologized, she said, “No, you had some good points!” She actually seemed to find some wisdom in it. I was horrified.

September 27, 1996 – San Francisco

I’m pretty bummed because one of our favorite retail shops has folded: the Schlock Shop. Since you obviously wouldn’t know what the Schlock Shop is—or, well, was—it was a dimly lit, mildew-smelling old place that carried ancient hats of all kinds, including World War I helmets, pith helmets, and English constable hats. They also had pipes, razors, and other oddities. That these items were authentic was suggested by their either being hung from the ceiling just out of most peoples’ arm’s reach, or behind glass. That place was really more like a museum than anything, and I suppose it was somewhat rare that they actually sold anything. I guess I’m complicit in its demise in that I never even considering buying any of the very cool but ultimately useless stuff they offered. I mean, what would I need with a pith helmet? Anyhow, in its place there’s now a brightly-lit store selling modern-day, actual schlock, like $50 ceramic cookie jars in the shape of Homer Simpson, and $25 Star Wars commemorative plastic statues. The new incarnation makes me want to wretch.

April 14, 1997 – San Francisco

We went to Target a few weekends ago to buy a baby shower gift for my friend and his wife. They’re only the second couple we know to have a baby. It’s crazy to think we might get there within a few years; from here it’s as weird as if they’d become astronauts. Anyhow, the bridal registry racket has evidently spilled over into baby showers now. My friends had registered at the Lullaby Club at Target, and we picked out a product I’ve never heard of: the Diaper Genie. In a perfect world you’d rub a lamp and this genie would appear and change your baby’s diaper, but this thing basically looks like a fancy garbage pail. When [my wife] E— and I were in the checkout line at Target the woman behind us, who looked the quintessential suburban mother, said, “Oh, you will just love the Diaper Genie. I bought one and boy did it come in handy. Thing is, it sure fills up quick. But it’s great, keeps the smell down. I used it with both my kids, now, ha, my sister’s got it, she’s just had her first. Anyway, good luck!” We didn’t have the heart to explain it was a gift and we’re childless. Besides, we surely looked the part, hauling that Diaper Genie out to our Volvo station wagon.

October 1, 2001 – Albany

I was trying to assemble our new Diaper Genie, and could not get the damn thing to work. I didn’t even want the Diaper Genie. It was a baby shower gift and we hadn’t registered or anything, our approach being “surprise us!”—and I guess we were. But hey, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, right? But I absolutely could not figure out how to install the bag cartridges that are supposed to ensconce the soiled diapers in a long linked-sausage configuration. Like all new parents I am horribly sleep deprived so my brain barely works to begin with. The only instructions were printed on the ring-shaped cartridge, which is called a “refill.” (Seems like a stupid name for the very first cartridge I’d ever install; it should be called a “fill.”) The stupid thing is, the instructions become obscured in step 2 out of 5 when you put the cartridge into the Genie. Why print them on the cartridge? How about on a damn piece of paper? I had to keep pulling the cartridge out and reading ahead and trying to hold the steps in my head but it was just a fog in there.

Some of my frustration, I’ll concede, was ego-induced. I figured this thing had to be intuitive enough for a high-school dropout trailer trash teen parent to use; why couldn’t I, a college-educated Subject Matter Expert, get it to work? The refill contains this endless plastic bag and you’re supposed to pull some of it out and tie a knot in the bottom and then stuff it back in push it down to the bottom, but the refill didn’t really fit in the DG compartment no matter how I tried to angle it in there. Finally I beat on the top of it with my fist, as if I could just hammer the damn thing into place, and then I hurled the entire contraption down the stairs with a tremendous clatter, much to the amazement of E— and a friend she had over.

I phoned a fellow parent, for whom I bought a Diaper Genie years ago, and after extensive troubleshooting he determined that what I have is an old, small-mouth DG presented in the box of a new, large-mouth DG, along with the “refill” for the new, large-mouth DG. This is why it wouldn’t fit. Probably somebody re-gifted us a barely-used but obsolete DG, throwing in the modern-style refill to make it look new. How could they? But obviously I can’t go complaining to them, that would be ungracious. So instead I think I’ll march into Target with it and demand a replacement. If they don’t pony up, I’m going to spread model airplane cement all over the damn thing and torch it right there on the showroom floor!

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXVI

Introduction

This is the twenty-sixth 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, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, and Volume XXV is here. Thematically these are all over the map. Geographically they are also all over the map, come to think of it. Well, within California to be precise.

What are albertnet Bits & Bobs posts? They’re more or less random compilations of short form prose I wrote in my youth, typically letters or emails but sometimes essays or graffiti. I post them to albertnet on the off chance that one of them will garner widespread adoration and propel me to worldwide fame, or at least notoriety. Read them in order, out of order, out of ardor, or outdoors in the arbor. Pay attention to the dates because some of these are rather old, some are just old fashioned, and others are merely passé.

October 17, 1989

I wonder how many unwanted pregnancies are caused by college kids using Trojan Magnums when they ought to be using the standard size. You know, guys aspiring for largeness, refusing to accept that their schlongs are merely average. In our school paper, an outfit called ZPG advertises wholesale condoms by mail. They offer a variety pack … I wonder what that is? Different colors? Textures? I can't understand this wholesaler advocating a variety of sizes, unless students are supposed to share, or just collect them like stamps. My roommate T— says his favorite condom is the Trojan Rough Rider. My neighbor, an exchange student from Korea, says he’s fond of leather ones. That's right, leather. If Vittoria made a CX Seta condom, I think that would be the ultimate, though I don’t have any use for such a thing, at least at the moment (sigh).

September 20, 1993

On Saturday I overhauled my Guerciotti over at the Square Wheel where I used to work back in college. (The owner is cool enough to let me use a bench there.) The bottom bracket spindle was pitted, along with the bearing races in one of the cups. The shop got swamped and I went out to the floor to help out, and actually sold a bike. Not such a big deal, of course, but it becomes more impressive when you consider I sold nothing more than a hypothetical bike. The shop didn’t have the right size GT Outback, aka Outhouse (or Compost, another fond nickname for this low-end model). Their stock is really low because business is bad and they’ve run out of credit with all their suppliers. I could’ve sold this kid and his proud parents an 18” bike, but you know how it is: he’s clearly growing like a weed and would outgrow the thing before its 300-mile tune-up. His dad, who had appropriated himself to be the boy’s official spokesman, said, “Well, he’ll be growing at least another four inches,” looking hopefully at the lad, who stared at the point two inches above his dad’s head that he would reach, if he truly did grow four inches. Hope springs eternal I guess…

Having come clean about the kid needing a different size, I faced the prospect that they’d just leave, and buy a bike from a shop that actually had one for sale, vs. ordering one that the kid wouldn’t even get to test ride. So I played up the shop’s free service plan, and how valuable that is. To emphasize the importance of proper servicing, I showed them the pitted BB cup I just pulled off my own bike. If they can’t see or touch the bike I’m trying to sell them, at least they can see this random thingie, right? Besides (I told myself) there’s nothing more impressive than the grease and grime of a real mechanic who knows what he’s talking about and handles real bicycles every day. I didn’t mention that I’m not actually even an employee of the shop. I hope when they come to pick up the bike they won’t ask for me. (“Dana who?”)

November 1, 1993

I went to a wedding where alcohol seemed to be the main theme. The venue was a winery, and each guest was required to have a glass of wine in hand during the ceremony. The bride and groom kind of slurred their way through the vows, very sentimentally, which I found kind of sweet. The drinking only accelerated at the reception, beginning with open bar before the food was even served. By the time the dancing and games had started, everyone was good and heated. One of the games was the throwing of the bouquet, and as usual, the tallest maiden won. Do you imagine that tall women in general have better chances of marrying, just like the taller presidential candidate usually wins? Anyway, following that was the male version, the tossing of the garter. I find this game especially absurd, but it was a hard-fought battle nonetheless, since drunk men tend to play full-contact, whatever the game. The garter (which was little more than a silky, frilly band) bobbed up in the air, was snatched from hand to hand, and eventually ended up on the floor where it was batted about like hockey puck. I was fighting hard, and eventually—likely due to reflexes less dulled than those of my competitors—I came up with the garter. Everybody cheered as I did a touchdown dance, and then the horrifying realization hit me: they’d all taken a dive! It’s only women who earnestly seek the prize of the soonest betrothal; men delay this as long as they can. Sure, it was a good fight, but was only fought in order to appease the woman: “Sorry, honey, I tried, but....” Had I realized this, I too would have intentionally lost. But I, of course, am a born competitor.

January 6, 1994

The Oregon trip went fine. The Landlord’s new computer, an Apple, is fun to play with. This new CD-ROM technology is pretty amazing. I went through this Great Works of Literature on Disc CD, and it’s got a huge number of stories, poems, etc. on there, and shows various pictures, all from the original works, but only in black and white. This doesn’t bother me, since the originals were in black and white, after all; the Landlo’, on the other hand, was fuming mad about something, as usual. I think it’s that I was spending too long reading individual works and not letting him show me enough different features of his Mac. And he seems to have basically given up on those discs that don’t have full-color motion graphics and probably wishes he hadn’t let me stumble upon Great Works of Literature. My best find was “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe, and—I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit—I’d never really sat down and read it closely before. The CD-ROM featured a few sound samples, where you can hear stanzas read by a professional, which was fun. For some reason, I still somehow expected the recordings to be in that cheesy computer-synthesized voice, but no, they were a human voice, in digital stereo. I ended up spending over an hour reading and rereading the poem, before realizing I had lost interest in the technological wonders of the CD-ROM technology itself. I mean, I was reading a printout, for crying out loud. I highly recommend the poem. I guess CD-ROM ain’t bad either.

We also visited Grandpa, Aunt J—, Uncle W—, and [cousin] J— on the way to a New Year’s party in SoCal. I’d sent them a holiday card with a photo, taken at a recent company party. This photo apparently caused a bit of a scandal. Aunt J— gave me an ominous warning over the phone prior to our visit: “Daner, I just have to warn you: your grandfather, well . . . he’s just not the man you used to know. He’s just turned 97, and he’s, well, old-fashioned. W— and I have been harassing him all morning, but he just won’t stop grumbling about the length of your hair. Anyway, he has no tact, so I just don’t want you to be offended if he says something. We’ve tried to get him ready for you, but you know how he is. Anyway, I think your hair is gorgeous, just don’t let him offend you.” I told her I’m totally used to being hassled for my long hair, but I doubt I successfully conveyed to her the extent of my immunity to criticism. All the same, I put it back in a ponytail for the visit, just to make it a bit more tidy.

Well, at first Grandpa didn’t realize it was a ponytail, and thought I’d actually cut my hair. He said, “Aaaah, now that’s how I remember—” and at this point the game was up: he realized I hadn’t cut it. “What’s this!” he said, yanking as hard as he could on the ponytail. Ow! That was about all he said for a while. Dinner was fun: Uncle W— dragged out his legendary electric carving knife and was sawing away at the ham when I made a comment to E— that nobody was supposed to hear. I imagined I was speaking pretty quietly, but that thing makes quite a racket when you’re sitting right next to the man wielding it. I said, “The electric model is a big improvement over the earlier, more cumbersome gasoline-powered one.” J—, clear at the other end of the table, laughed and said, “Yeah, you don’t need to run an exhaust pipe out the window anymore!” I hope I didn’t offend Uncle W—. He does seem rather proud of that thing. I was pleased that E— had the opportunity to witness it in action.

April 20, 1995

Mr. Albert has received your gift of the Tom’s of Maine Natural Shaving Cream product with moisturizing glycerin. He asked me to give you his most sincere thanks, and is very enthusiastic about trying out this product.

He was, however, slightly perplexed by the statement made by Tom & Kate Chappell on the packaging; they state that they “use no animal ingredients,” and that “nature does offer wonderful and simple solutions.” Mr. Albert cannot think of anything more natural than animals, and asked me to remind you that the Genesis chapter of the Old Testament very clearly stipulates that Man has been given, by the hand of God, dominion over all the beasts of the field and has at his disposal “every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”  He asked me to inform you that most toothpaste uses sponge spicules for an abrasive, and why not?

One last note: Mr. Albert expressed some concern that the coconut oil used in the Tom’s of Maine shaving cream product may be very high in saturated fats. He requests that you investigate the availability of a “Lite” version of this product. Beef tallow, he suggests, would be significantly better than coconut oil in this regard.

May 4, 1996

I’m bummed because I’m all set to “roll over” my Avocet 40 bike computer (i.e. exceed the mileage that it can display, so it shows all zeroes) but I’ve come to realize that this newer model has a far-left-hand “1” digit so it won’t roll over after 9,999 miles like the old Avocet 20s and 30s. Here I was, thinking I was just miles away from that, well, milestone, but I’m only halfway there. I’ll have to log another 10,000 to roll it over, and I can’t imagine the batteries will last that long.

May 25, 2013

My opinion of the wild turkeys in our hinterlands turned around 360 degrees today. I had considered them a nuisance until early this morning when, riding up South Park, I saw a mother turkey with her little turkey chick riding on her back. It was the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen.

But then, heading down Claremont, with the whole road to myself, I opened ‘er up a bit, enjoying the smooth, fast descent (but being ever-vigilant of course). And then suddenly there were four giant tom turkeys ahead, each with the whole peacock-like plumage disk puffed way the hell out, spaced evenly across the road like some kind of patrol, all facing me, bringing to mind a shooting gallery. If I had the Star Trek universal translator I’m sure their gobble-gobble-gobble would have been translated as, “You wanna piece of me!?” I pounded the brakes with a quickness. This was an eight-finger, full-force, Bluesmobile-style-both-feet-smashed-into-the-brake-pedal kind of braking, where I was waaaaay, waaaay back on the saddle so I wouldn’t skid or face-plant. Sure, I stopped with plenty of time to spare, but imagine if this were a month or two ago before I’d trimmed down the ol’  aero-belly, or if the road had been a bit wet! So now my opinion of turkeys has come full circle and I consider them a nuisance again.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXV - Holiday Edition

Introduction

This is the twenty-fifth 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, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, and Volume XXIV is here. There is no common thread running through all these volumes, and they jump around in time and place, so you can read them in any order, disorder, preorder, reorder, or backorder. You can skip around, rip around, take little sips, mouth the words with your lips, and dip in and out.

What are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re passages recycled from old letters or emails to friends or family. For this special 25th edition, today being the 25th and of December no less, I’m doing something different: all of these are taken from my past holiday newsletters, which—being satires of the newsletter genre—tend to be a little dark. So brace yourself … in fact, you may wish to fortify yourself in advance with some spiked eggnog.

1999

This year has been really fun and exciting. We’d have liked to travel overseas like most of our friends do, perhaps to see some ruins, maybe in Greece, but we didn’t. We did go to Moab, Utah, for camping and mountain biking in Canyonlands National Park. The Slickrock trail made E— cry, and we came home early, but we had a great time!

Another big thing we’ve been doing this year is trying to buy a home. We’ve learned a lot about classics, charmers, indoor/outdoor living, and understated elegance. Unfortunately we can’t seem to afford anything. But those of you who have been to our apartment know we’re just fine where we are!

If you aren’t mentioned in this newsletter, please don’t feel bad—we’ve been so busy it makes us forgetful. One thing keeping us busy has been business travel. On my last trip I found out the hard way that the cough syrup bottle has to be stored in an upright position. During my layover in Denver, in the airport bathroom, I discovered that the syrup had completely emptied itself into my travel bag! It was the cherry flavor, bright red and really sticky. As I was washing the things in my toiletry bag, it fell into the sink, and because of the little electric eye, the water turned on automatically and filled the bag before I could stop it. The syrup got all over everything in my entire bag—my socks, my underwear, my shoes, clothes, everything. The airport janitor says it happens all the time.

2002

We did a newsletter three or four years ago and just never really got around to writing another one. So, let me fill you in on what has happened in the last few years. I sure hope you remember us.

We bought a house a few years ago, in Albany, after a whole bunch of unsuccessful offers. It was a very frustrating process. E— even cried, but I didn’t. I guess you could call me the “man of the house.” We got a cat too, M—, and we were really excited about her for a while but now we have a baby, A—. She is so cute. She’s really, really smart. Like today I gave her her lunch, and then handed her a wet paper towel to see if she would wipe her own face. Well, what did she do? She tried to wash her foot! I’m actually a bit worried because I’m told that exceptionally intelligent babies are a lot more work. I guess that’s the price you pay.

A— is so fun to watch when she’s playing with other babies. She’s very assertive. She takes away the other kids’ toys, which isn’t very nice but you have to admit, those skills will be very useful when she’s an executive of some kind some day. That’s what I tell people, at least people whose babies haven’t lost out to her. Actually, it’s mostly the non-parent friends I tell this to. I’ve definitely learned that some people don’t want babies of their own, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love babies. They even “get” the kind of parent-style joking that we parents do. It’s very subtle. For example: this friend of mine (no kids) takes me aside one day, and gives me this little speech about how not everybody is going to be as interested in the details of A—’s development as somebody who has a baby. And at first I’m thinking, What is this guy talking about? And then I realize he’s joking! Total deadpan. That was so funny.

2003

So, about this Christmas season. I’m just going to say it: above all other feelings, I just find its obligations oppressive. On top of that I can’t stand the music. Those songs get stuck in my head and just sit there, agitating me like a chunk of peanut stuck in my teeth. I try to get rid of them, try to do a song-graft with something equally catchy but non-holiday-themed, but it’s futile and I get the mental equivalent of a tired, sore tongue that can’t stop pushing against the nut fragment. Why do I hate the music so much? Beyond how insipid it is to begin with, it’s the way the songs are enhanced, groomed, and molested. Usually you hear this music in malls and stores (I haven’t heard a caroler in decades). These places have two objectives in mind when meddling with the music. First, they believe that it’s old and tired and needs to be freshened up (when actually the whole holiday is supposed to be about honoring tradition). Second, many of these venues don’t want to be exclusionary, so they have to stick to the non-specific winter holiday songs. Shrinking the list of candidates means that the remaining songs become terribly overplayed, like “Winter Wonderland” and “Jingle Bells” (which was originally a Thanksgiving song, by the way).

I want to comment on one song in particular that I cannot stand: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It’s just plain stupid. You mean to tell me this was the first year Santa encountered fog, and that he couldn’t have the elves make him a powerful headlight? Couldn’t the songwriter have thought of something more plausible, like Santa took pity on the poor deformed reindeer and created a position for him, at the head of the group no less, just to show those other snooty reindeer a thing or two? That would be a lot better lesson than the one we really get: that you should be loved and included based on your usefulness. My indulgent sense of moral outrage is not satisfied. I want to see those other reindeer pay for their earlier bigotry. The other thing I hate about this song is that it’s inextricable from the made-for-TV movie, so you can’t hear it without having all the cloying visions return, like how you picture dancing hippos when you hear that song from “Fantasia.” So I have to picture those cutesy reindeer with their absurdly oversized eyes, and that stupid elf Hermey with his swoopy blond hair, and the abominable snowman with the messed-up teeth. And now, as a parent, I even have the Rudolph board-book that, of course, A— loves. So I read it sweetly, suppressing the snideness that threatens to creep into my voice (although I can never help embellishing the story; for example, Rudolph’s nose is red because he’s a drunk and all the blood vessels in his nose have burst; Clarice is attracted to him only because he’s an outcast and she wants to gall her father; Hermey the Misfit Elf is actually kind of a narcissist; and the Abominable Snowman only wishes he were abominable, when in reality he’s just as uptight and judgmental as everybody else).

2004

I have to admit, it’s been really tough trying to think up what to say in my newsletter this year. So much has happened, and yet I’m still in the same place I left off at after last year’s edition. And beyond that, I just don’t feel like I’m in the right spirit, I guess you could say. It’s time for jolly things, and happy things, and I guess I feel happy enough and jolly enough until I start thinking about writing the letter itself. I talked to a friend about it, and he said he totally understood—that given the shaky state of world affairs, he couldn’t get into a cheery holiday mood either. But he totally misunderstood me. I’m talking about the little, private humiliation of not having anything impressive to report.

Well, not humiliation, really, but what I mean is that a Christmas letter is supposed to be high-spirited and optimistic because of how well the year has gone. And though it hasn’t been a bad year, I just somehow feel like my family came up a bit short. For example, I’ve always been a bit embarrassed when people ride in my station wagon, because it’s so old and doesn’t even have drink holders. Well, this year we went out walking with another young family and I felt the pain all over again, because their stroller had drink holders! So I looked at my second-hand stroller closely for the first time, and not only does it not have a drink holder, but it’s just old and beaten and kind of corroded. So whenever I’ve tried to think of happy things to say about my family all I can think about is that stroller. So tawdry.

And that’s not the only thing that’s giving me writer’s block. I look back on the year and my kids were just, well, I don’t know, they just screamed and melted down and made all kinds of messes. Not very impressive, which they seem to know themselves, and E— and I don’t kid ourselves that we’re much better.  Home life is just one fiasco after another it seems (well, I don’t make messes, though sometimes I get irritated and maybe break a few things and E— calls it a tantrum). It’s like somewhere along the line this family just lost its pride. Maybe I’m not the only member of this household who notices the shabby station wagon and stroller.

2005

A magazine called “Real Simple” appeared in my bathroom. It’s an easy read. It really is simple. There’s a recipe in there called “Cupcakes with Ice Cream Frosting” that has only two ingredients. One is “cupcakes.” I’m not kidding! Anyway, there’s a column in “Real Simple” where readers write in with their time-saving tips. I’m going to send them this one: stop worrying about cleaning out the car. The next time you forget the diaper bag, you’ll be glad you can get by with what’s strewn on the floor. We keep a bag of clothes in the back that we intend to donate to the Salvation Army. When we’re really behind on laundry, it’s nice to be able to dip back into that bag to dress the kids.

I wish life could actually be “real simple.” Ever since I became a parent, it seems like things have gotten completely out of control. Kids just seed chaos constantly, in practically every interaction. For example, A— broke down crying during an argument she started about whether “Mulamimoto” (the name of her imaginary cat) begins with an “M” or an “R.” She’d asked me how it was spelled, and I correctly answered “M,” and then she totally refused to accept this answer. How can I teach her to read when she refuses to obey the most basic rules about what sounds a letter makes? I finally capitulated, just to shut her up, and as if to cement the new spelling she made me program the imaginary cat’s phone number into our phone, with the label “RULAMIMOTOR.” Fine, kid, whatever. L—, meanwhile, will fixate on some food item, cry because it’s not presented quickly enough, stop crying when she gets it, but then start bawling all over again. Why? Too hot? Too cold? Too much? Not enough? Not living up to its promise?

But despite being frazzled a lot of the time, I think my attitude was generally pretty good this past year, and that my enduring emotional health must surely rub off on the kids. Still, I sometimes worry. Tonight A— asked me to play a game with her. I expected it to be our standard game, in which I surgically remove her appendix. But tonight she announced she wanted to play a new game: Deathbed. I told her I didn’t know that game, and she told me we could make it up together. It went fine. At the end I told her she had to speak her last word. Her choice: “Done.”

Other albertnet holiday posts

• 2025 Last-Minute Online Holiday Gift Guide!
• 2024 Online Holiday Gift Guide!
• 2023 Last-Minute Online Holiday Gift Guide!
• 2022 albertnet Last-Minute Online Holiday Gift Guide
• 2021 albertnet Online Holiday Gift Guide
• 2020 albertnet Last-Minute Online Holiday Gift Guide
• The 2019 albertnet Online Holiday Gift Guide
• Interview With Santa Claus
• The 2018 albertnet Christmas Guide
• The Christmas Eve Doldrums
• A Cure for Holiday Consumerist Bloat
• The Black Friday That Wasn’t
• Santa Denial, and How Lance Armstrong Taught Me to Lie
• Fiction — The Happiest Christmas Story I Know
• My 2012 Holiday Newsletter: the Cat’s POV
• My 2011 Holiday Newsletter — Head Lice!
• My 2010 Holiday Newsletter — Importance of Santa Mythology
• Holiday Mall Report: the Lotion Sniper
• My 2009 Holiday Newsletter — Retail in the UK
• The Suppressed 2008 Holiday Newsletter
• Descent Into Chaos: My 2005 Holiday Newsletter

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