Anyhow, I ended up cleaning garbage out of the creek in Dottie Jordan Park. This sounds really dumb to you probably, and most of the people picking up litter with me were also confused about why I ended up wading in knee high, but the idea of a park, of many parks in Austin that have their own creeks is just mindblowing. Growing up in a desert dressed like a garden will do that; the smallest truly naturally occurring groundwater features or the tiniest native frog almost make me gulp back sobs sometime. So I will clean garbage out of Austin streams with pleasure.
But like I said, I really like this day, so I also (well technically I did this earlier in the morning) built a fence at tiny Palm Park right downtown, so that people who want to get their drunk on do not brazenly park in the park, but rather must stop at the parking lot. On paper, and in the way I have crudely worded it, this also sounds dumb, but again, IT WAS NOT. After 2.5 hours, 20 dudes from Texas Gas Service and I made a very nice looking double cedar-rail fency with concrete poured and everything. We joked about how soon it would take some drunky to crash through it, and scrimped on the donated concrete by digging up medium-sized rocks from the parking lot and winter-growth brush. The rocks were my idea and the Gas Service engineers seemed to think this was pretty perspicacious, and I ate a doughnut and said you are welcome.
In closing, please enjoy this City of Austin Parkviewer, probably one of the only remaining non-Google-based navigable satellite maps you'll be likely to see; what it lacks in actual clarity it makes up in home town pride; AWKWARD TEXT+IMAGE MELD KEEPIN AUSTIN WEIRD FTW!!!! As for me, I am going to sit in this chair with the slouchy posture my normally type A spine is only able to achieve tonight thanks to Luis S., yoga instructor of the hilarious Spanish guitar version of Stairway to Heaven which was very hard not to fall out of breath cracking up to, today.
Whenever I have the good fortune to go to the movies with Johnny, he always ends the trip with, "See ya later, good to sit in a darkened room in silence with you, not interacting at all!" Often there is actual dining or other hanging out before or after, and very often it's a funny movie where the good lines are rehashed. But I do think it is an odd ostensibly "social" activity.
I realized when I went home for Christmas this year, all the time I had with people seemed so precious that I only saw one film, with my mom. The rest of the time I wanted to be doing something else with the person.
I know a lot of people won't go to the movies by themselves, but I go alone most often. There are numerous reasons: I really like movies, both because I love reading and because I feel I am supporting my hometown (oh brother, right?). Sometimes in individual cases, it is a matter of taste: I didn't want anyone to know I would pay good money to watch Vince Vaughan in "Four Christmasses," didn't know anyone who hadn't already seen "Slumdog Millionaire," everybody already knew I'd seen "Sack Lunch" and would want to know why I wanted to see it again. And John's right, you don't get a lot of added value by bringing a friend into the theatre with you (unless it's for, you know, making out or whatever) so it's a lot less weird than the idea of going to see a band play by yourself. I do that too, but at a concert, there's the possibility of real live people doing something unique, something that won't be recreated that spot over and over again for weeks.
For this reason, Michele's and my ingenious "virtual movie date" makes actual sense when the two of us are the only people we know who want to see some (usually terrible) movie, but we live 1100 miles apart. There's a time difference, but since Los Angeles and Austin both have tons of movie theaters, a near-simultaneous viewing can be arranged. If something awesome happens two hours in, we can talk about it later. I can't tell if I feel embarrased sharing this strategy.
I was going to say, since my solo-concert-going predates my solo-moviegoing that it paved the way for it, but I don't think that's correct, especially since I am probably at peak group-music-watching age and I seem to like it though I used to much prefer going alone (no one at my high school wanted to see Sebadoh). I think what actually makes me feel comfortable going to the movies alone is having gone to church alone for 10 years, now.
Those two experiences are actually much more the same. I like to arrive right on time (or rather I hate to be early) and this drives some people up the wall. There are ritual food and drink, you aren't really supposed to talk, and it's a time to be told stories and to reflect on them. You're around a bunch of (for me at least) strangers but are feeling roughly the same emotions, and you're there because you choose to be, for no other end than being there itself. You probably paid a little bit of money. Sometimes it's disappointing, sometimes you cry, sometimes you get really angry that someone's trying to feed you a line of bull. In church, a lot, I think about all the experiences piled into the room and how they are coloring the reception of the words I'm hearing differently. I don't get to hear what these different interpretations are because people don't generally say them out loud, which is too bad because "the Bible is such a rich text" by which I mean some of it is totally multifacetedly insane, although not quite as bad as, say "Mulholland Drive." On the other hand, people love to give their opinion about movies, and I love to hear and read them and are grateful to hear them talk in a way that it's hard to get them to talk about anything else. I guess it's the closest I'll ever get to being in a literature class again. I think partly what I am saying is it would be really cool to have someone to go to mass with someday, like, often, but I don't really think that will happen.
"Benjamin Button" was fantastical in just the self-absorbed way that I hate most - it was like the anthropocentric bombast of science fiction made personal. ALSO, it's a little condescending to suppose that I need to watch the most attractive face in the world to get me to care about the aged, or about Hurricane Katrina. "Doubt" was good.
Haha I only blog about movies and church. Don't worry, Oscar season's almost over.
**"Sack Lunch" is really "Garden State."
I am reminded of this sick sense of anticipation of something that could be great but have long term cost-consequences as the "economic stimulus bill" prepares to be passed. Last year, as the news focussed on people's shallow electoral identity politics, I often felt like I had nothing in common with anyone. Now, though I have a job and am free of debt and dependents, I feel as though people are paying attention to the important things (and how little they know about how to preserve them) same as me. I'm happy about the election, but also to see as many vaunted Democratic elders as didn't pay their taxes fall before congressional hearings (JESUS GET IT TOGETHER), and I'm resigned to things being "bad" for part of my young-mid adulthood. Pessimists are happily surprised, right?
I'm working my way through the Oscar nominees, whittling away at the honoree totem (till I get to the Benjamin Button angry lidded osprey head at the bottom and say f--- this) and my favorites have been "Gran Torino" and "Wendy and Lucy" --- oh wait neither of those were nominated ---- but I enjoyed "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Frost/Nixon" and "Milk". My father said he didn't need to see "Frost/Nixon" because he lived through it and I agree, but that, even more than "Milk" reminded me that the world IS different from the time I was born in terms of personal, social freedom.
I don't know if the comments are true, but there are two points in the movie where Nixon asks Frost two questions which are meant to, and do, intimidate him: once he asks if he and his girlfriend "[did] any fornicating" the night before and once when he basically says "your italian loafers are gay." The idea that anyone, even a former president, could belittle someone, especially a TV celebrity, with words like that is almost imcomprehensible to someone like me born in 1980, more insane-seeming than the hairdos and the metallic wallpaper, even. Maybe that's a creepy example of the inversion in public respect for TV personalities and elder statesmen, but if it is, it is of course because of people like Nixon (duh). I'll always have a sticky spot for Richard Nixon, sweaty non-photogenic nose-to-the-grindstone Southern California native that he is, but calling it a soft spot would be wrong.
I told Chance that politicians, like teachers, get short shrift when it comes to job performance - how many of your relatives and friends work their asses off at what they do; how many just do what's required? The private sector has no monopoly on smart, hardworking people, does it? I don't know what will happen in this country in the months to come, but I hope, perhaps irrationally, that some jobs being lost were hateful anyway (show me a person who works at the mall who doesn't owe it to themselves to find something better), and that some good, new, organically needed ones will arise, unexpectedly, for the people willing to see their invisible outlines limned out in the freshly emptied space.
Hello, I have dropped back ON to the face of the Earth.
Yesterday I kept hearing about ham. In the morning as I was tidying my room I watched an episode of Mad Men where the mysterious Don Draper's son asks him, non sequitor, what his father liked to eat, and Don, truthfully for once, says ham and fancy candies that smell like lavender. Then I judged a science fair and a kindergarten project entitled "YEAST Is it Alive?" featured a series of questions, one of which was "What does bread smell like?" Apparently the bread with yeast smelled "normal" and the bread without yeast smelled like ham. Lastly I went to watch "Gran Torino" and Clint Eastwood is finally won over by his Hmong neighbors when they bring him tinfoiled trays of "... what is that grrrrowl ... Ham?"
I had a ham sandwich today, 2 actually because I'm bringing my lunch these days and it's Friday and I was running low on ingredients in the lab non-chemical fridge. This ham was distinctly realist, not the sort of ham that is magical enough to be alluded to in a set of three. That ham is storied and sweet like Turkish Delight was when I was first reading C.S. Lewis, before Steve took me to Sahadi's and I first tried it (in my mind, strangely, Turkish delight was a lot like Sweet and Sour Pork). That ham is something I have not yet tasted.
I liked Gran Torino, because I am an old man, and also because I, left without a president to lambaste, have turned my attention to the really disappointing Oscar nominee list (maybe some perspective is needed, but even Screenplay noms didn't make me smile this year). I am usually try to see all the films, but this year I'm going to try to see all the films just so I can talk about how many of them are far superior to Benjamin Button.
Out of blogging practice. I'll come back slowly so I stick with it.
