Feeling Blue and Maturity

When I was searching for the pictures I used for this year's St. Patrick's day post, I was back at Corrie's lappy, the computer from which I made every single post up until it became full of pictures in late summer 2010. It had been so long since I sat down and perused the pictures that exist in nice little folders...the thousands and thousands of pictures.

I found a folder labeled "Last Day Market" followed by "Last Day Packing" in the New York folder. It transported me back to our last thirty or so hours in New York City. Looking though the pictures stirred up the feelings I was having on that last day, how I went from blue to ready, in just a matter of hours.

We were going to start our drive out of Brooklyn, and away from the East coast on Sunday the 20th of December. We picked that day specifically because it was after a Saturday, a day I could earn some cash from the market, and still close enough to land us in Austin by Christmas Day. The morning sky was white, like plenty of days in late December.



A large storm, the first major one of the season, was due by nightfall, but it seemed to start before that.



It was almost an emotional day for us dairy shills, and, loaded down with butter and yogurt--gear we were planning on bringing to Texas--I said some goodbyes to Tom, the old school head now long sober, and Katie, a newer addition to the group that added some needed Canadian-Asian flavor (not pictured).



Marc and I started crossing the street; he was going to do some shopping, but was cursing his already full load. Barnes and Noble was the bookstore across the street. We always used to cool down in the summer and warm up in the winter in its five stories, as well as the obvious patronage of their restroom. At that moment, Saturday, the 19th of December at 5-ish, with the light failing, the slush coming down sideways, my best friend's arms full of enough dairy to choke an elephant, we finished our last smokes together while he faced the prospect of braving the chaos of the bookstore to get more things to carry--heavy things.

We hugged and said our farewells and fare-thee-wells, he braved the store and I went for the chaotic subway. This was the first time I really felt blue about leaving. I'd been pretty much numbed from feeling most anything that last year, likely the dulling of feeling that had been slowly working since we arrived three and a half years earlier, but leaving just felt like the right thing, the next thing to do in life.

Right up until then, though. Right up until I walked through the sludge to get to the stairs for the subway, I hadn't started to feel sad about leaving the only good friends we ever hung out with with any regularity.

I wasn't able to read anything in my paper, or magazine, or whatever I brought to read. I looked at the pages, looked at the words, but I couldn't read any of it. I walked home from the subway in Bed-Stuy to our apartment in a snowy daze. This was the last time I'd be walking home from the market, laden with dairy treasure. This was the last day Marc and I would get to talk about the Giants or sip our "coffee" or scarf those awesome sausage-egg-and-cheese rolls in between helping the Line That Never Ended.

When I made it home I didn't mention anything. Corrie had the apartment all organized after spending the bulk of the Saturday packing the truck. The only thing left was to toss a few pieces of shitty furniture, the mattress, and pack the plants. We awaited the morning, lest they be killed from the overnight cold.



The winter up until then acted like it understood that winter started on December 21st. There had been a few slushy flurries, but the season had been incredibly mild, and a few days before we were to depart we were feeling good about our chances of making it a relatively easy drive with mild, if chilly, weather.

So I got home, tried to block the blue out, and Corrie and I discussed the remainder of the evening, our last in Brooklyn. We decided that after procuring the special lock for our truck, that we would head out for O'Keefe's, or Brooklyn Irish hangout. We would dine there for the evening. This was the same bar we went to to watch the returns from the 2008 election.

I re-donned my gear and headed back out into the weather, sparing Corrie the hassle. There was a hardware store a few blocks down Malcolm X that I passed everyday but never entered, and remember seeing them with the lights on when I had just walked by returning from the market.

This, I remember thinking as the distance between me and the hardware store diminished, this is what you need to remember about New York, about Brooklyn. On the walk to get that lock I made a breakthrough in my melancholia. New York is more than just a pair of good friends in Marc and Linda. Yes we loved them, but New York is more than that.

Alone. On your own. You can only rely on yourself, and you're perpetually the outsider. Everything is a trial, and while it's possible to make a life work, the fact you can is often the only reward.

All of those thoughts come flooding into my brain as I trudged past angry teens and bickering baby-mammas, the parts of my head playing with the notions of being alone in Brooklyn, about doing it ourselves, and about how now is definitely a good time to get the fuck out. It was time. I was ready. At that moment I gripped the handle of the door to the hardware store.

Walking back to the apartment I realized that, yeah, I was ready to go. When I got back, I relayed to Corrie how my last day at the market had progressed, with me feeling blue for the first time, allowing myself to feel sad for the first time, but then having to go out to get the lock brought me back to the realities of the life, back to the grand solitude in the truly great Urban.

She said she was glad that I'd finally made peace with leaving. I hadn't thought about it like that at all until right then...another symptom of my overall numbness.

I tried to take a picture of the falling snow, the large storm such a slap in the face to those of us leaving the next morning. We almost had to laugh at the cosmic joke of it all. The picture is blurry because of the constant movement.



Here I am, apparently at peace.



I do miss the seasons, though.

Sometimes, at least. I definitely miss Marc and Linda, and still haven't replaced what we had with them in the regularly-hanging-out-with-friends department.

College Basketball Season

I've been catching some of the college basketball tournament games on my TV in the mornings, at least recently, as the tournament has sputtered into some kind of Madness. Corrie and I are making picks for our own brackets, and I must say that while there have been some upsets (I was rooting for you Lehigh and Norfolk St, even as you wrecked my bracket), I correctly picked 9 of the Sweet 16 teams. That's over half, baby!

Now, a few observations:

Screen, pick and roll, post up, screen, pick and roll, rushed shot from too-far out. Is it just me, or am I describing every single possession in the tournament so far? Well, I did see some zone-defense breakdowns and fast breaks where someone actually entered the paint, or dribbled the ball for what seemed like a reasonable amount of time, sheesh...I'm not saying that it's boring, but...um...maybe if, like NBA games, we could just fast forward to the exciting part at the end.

While there are no teams from the Pacific or Mountain time zones left, the state of Ohio is 8-0, all four teams winning both games each: Ohio St., Ohio University, Cincinnati, and Xavier are all in the Sweet 16. Good for you, Ohio. Something nice to think about while the Indians try to get Fausto back under his real name, the Browns try to figure what to do with Colt McCoy, and the Cavs continue to dominate the lottery draft. Go Blue Jackets?

No, I like Ohio, I really do. Try and imagine another time when one state had four teams, exactly one quarter, of the Sweet 16 teams? Maybe California, maybe North Carolina, maybe even Kentucky... Right now Kentucky has 2, Wisconsin has 2, and North Carolina has 2.

For the record, Corrie got 8 of the Sweet 16 teams, which is pretty good, as far as we're concerned.

Happy St. Paddy's 2012

So this seems like the first Saturday St Paddy's in a while. Maybe, a number of years ago, back in San Luis Obispo, there was a Saturday's St. Pat's where we, er, did our thing.

The memories I have from those small-town college days, with the lone Irish bar, are as fondly considered as they are barely present.



I only made it for opening once or twice. It opened at 6 AM on St. Patrick's Day and on graduation day for Poly. Being the only Irish bar in town, a line would form starting around 3, and if you wanted to make it inside the cramped bar in the first round, you needed to be in line by at least 3:30.

(Tony and Jimmy waiting:)



Waiting in line in a daze, in the cold darkness, having forgone sleep, enjoying the camaraderie, the drunken conversations fueled by cigarettes...once daybreak would start to gray up the sky, we knew the time drew near. By then the line would usually be stretched around the corner and down Higuera St, in front of the old Moe's location, even past Louisa's.

(Getting close:)



One year, having decided to forego the "making it for the opening" routine, Tony and I went to McCarthy's after work at Hudson's, an easy jaunt across a parking lot (that no longer exists--thank you very much "new development"). We met up with close friend Dylan, where, near the end of the night, we were toasting Pa Chomp, Pa Chomp, Pa Chewy-Chewy Chomp.

Me Stan.

It was a lovely evening...any night where you eventually toast lines from South Park is bound to be one remembered fondly.

A different post-midnight sprint over to McCarthy's from Hudson's had us bringing our entire staff; dish guys, all of us line guys, and the server staff too. We ran in for Irish Car Bombs, the quintessential quick this-day drink. I remember seeing all twenty-two or so drinks lined up, as we were handing money over to the bartenders.

The next day I remember seeing Salomon, one of my favorite Hudson's dishwashers, leaning against the dish machine, looking like he had been run over but a lawnmower. I smiled sympathetically and asked "Que paso, papa?"

"Oh Patricio, no bueno, no bueno. Whiskey es no bueno, Patricio, no bueno..." shaking his head, his long face indicative of his poor condition.

There was a St. Patrick's Day when I was off in New York, and I walked from our Irish bar in Manhattan (on the West side) across the dense island over to Corrie's work for lunch, passing by the cops mustering for the parade, getting tanked in their dress uniforms, some even wearing kilts, drinking out of large plastic cups.

(One cop's giving me the stink eye:)



Backing up, here's one group of "Oceanaire Guys", on Corrie and my last St Paddy's in SLO:



Here's one of the badge's of honor that McCarthy's liked to wear:



This is view only a select few will recognize:



Heritage getting distilled down to a day of drunken celebrations. How should we feel about that?

New Target for Thieves

I read yesterday that there is a new hot item that's being targeted by thieves from retail stores. This item has two things going for it: it's relatively expensive, and so can be sold at steep discounts on the street for all profit; and it has a relatively low getting-chased-for-snatching score, lower than jewelry or medicines used for cooking up meth.

I'm talking about Tide.

The laundry detergent.

In an alarming new trend, the theft of Tide has been increasing in regularity. Some establishments put those electronic alarms on them. The thieves just run out of the place and remove them later. Some stores have started putting Tide behind glass, like they would over-the-counter pharmaceutics.

Authorities have said that the uses for Tide laundry detergent seems to be of the non-nefarious type: actually doing laundry.

A dealer speaking to an informant was recorded as saying that he was out of weed, but that after he re-upped he would accept cash or bottles of Tide as payment.

Procter and Gamble, makers of Tide, were unaware of the new trend, and expressed concern.

If this article had run on April Fool's it would have made more sense. Maybe it was a hoax, but it seems just strange enough to be legit while sounding totally fake. Doing a quick internet search yields dozens of articles and news clips from television channels. Weird world...

Happy Pi Day

March 14th is celebrated by the math nerds the world over as Pi Day. See, the date is 3/14, which is the two-decimal representation of the transcendental number pi.

Pi is the ratio a circle's circumference to its diameter. It's one of those magical things that exists in the world, and yet can only be represented using Arabic numerals with only so much accuracy. 3.14159 is the common five-decimal representation you'll get from math heads.

The Egyptians recognized the importance of the number, and tended to approximate it as the square-root of 10. That's about 3.16.

The Greeks used to use a handy fraction to approximate pi: 22/7, and this is more accurate that sq-root(10).

Go forth and enjoy the math nerd day!

Happy Pi Day!

"Nobody sits like this rock sits."

"You rock, Rock, and that's what's important."

The LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) has a new installation going up in a few days: a monolith. "Monolith" means "big-ass rock".

Out in the mountains a 340-ton granite boulder was chosen as the rock of the day, and has been on a slow trip from the high desert to the LACMA facility. It's not like a stone this size can be carried by a helicopter or plane; it weighs more than each combined.

My definition of art is generally wider than most. I tend to see art in many places most folks don't, and I draw the "not-art" line a little further down the list. I'm not quite sure what the LACMA tends to do with this boulder, but a giant granite thing in the corner of a room doesn't quite speak to me as art. As a thing of great natural beauty and importance? At least there we're using the correct vocabulary.

But last night, last night might have been the art that's inspired by this monolith.

Such a large object has only one way to be brought the total distance: by truck. That truck, though, can only go five miles per hour. Last night it came down Atlantic Ave, right down the street from our apartment. I saw folks standing out on the corner as I walked home from my nighttime parking spot, and asked what they were doing out there. They explained that the Rock was coming by shortly.

Looking up the street you could see flashing lights in the distance. Hmm, I thought. I went home, changed out of my scrubs, grabbed my camera, and ended up chasing after it as it went for a few blocks and then rested.

The true art, to me, seemed to be the masses of folks who came out to take pictures of this thing past one in the morning. Like me.

Here it is, the drivers and walkers taking a break. You can see it looking like a mountain, wrapped in white plastic.



Here'a shot of the base of the rock as it's suspended for it's slow trek across the LA basin.



As the caravan started, I remember thinking, What a badass truck, to be able to pull so much mass...



Then, as I started off home, I saw the two pushing trucks; note one is ahead of the other. They were attempting an ATM--Advanced Traffic Maneuver, a right turn for a 340-ton rock.



I got the feeling that it it fell out of its suspension, it would rock the ground enough to be able to feel from a certain distance. Then, as I walked home I passed a church that was used in an Ice Cube movie (Second Sunday) as a stand-in for a Baltimore location, and thought that if the monolith fell from the top of the steeple, it would create a shock-wave that would knock people over within a certain radius.

That feeling gave some definition to the presence the rock stirs up in you.

The Power of the Line

Just recently, thanks to Netflix, Corrie and I got to see the Disney animated film The Princess and the Frog, the "traditionally" animated feature.

The story, set in the teens and twenties New Orleans and rural bayou Louisiana, is lightweight but fun. The prejudice at the time is there, but not directly spoken too.

The animation is spectacular, and the music...well, it was the first time for me since the South Park that I honestly didn't wince when characters began singing. Uhh, I mean I liked it, which I really had given up on, liking music in musicals I mean.

The animation though, the colors, the design, the look of the bayou and the Crescent City, are inspired. One aspect of the animation was the inspiration of the name of this post.

Computer animation is the vogue of this day, and why argue really, when Pixar makes such incredible art and is the cream of the crop of that industry. They, as well as the other groups, pull feeling and conflict and drama out of the volume created by the animation style, similar to claymation.

A character in The Princess and the Frog named Louis, a trumpet playing alligator, exquisitely shows off the power of the line (versus volume). Louis is a talented fraidy-cat, which contrasts with his rotund body. Watching him dance and move and walk, you get the sense of how different the character would look if it were animated with computers and had that volume.

A similar notion/moment can be seen in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons, when both Homer and Bart cross over into the 3rd dimension fans get to see something inherently "wrong"; the stark difference between the styles is made plain and obvious.

What The Princess and the Frog has done (besides make it possible for Disney to continue traditionally animated features (one every two years)) is remind us what the line can do, how powerful it can still be.

March, Spring, and Strange Days in SoCal

I've been lagging and busy since I finished the last few posts of the trip to Central America. I've got a few posts ready to go in a few days, probably my next day off. One's about language and a world built on white lies, another's about a smartly written television show (and not The Wire!).

So, if you're paying attention, thanks, and I'll be back at it soon.