Year in Review, 2023

Now we have two kids, BUT none in diapers. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SEVEN YEARS, WE'RE NOT DEALING WITH DIAPERS. If that's not the best summary for the year, I'm not sure what is.

Here's some stuff I wrote this year:

1. Playing Santa
   
2. Mike's Birthday at Gardena Cinema
   
3. Mom's Letters
   
4. My New Car (In the running, Best of the Year)
5. The Cabin Trip
   
6. The Farm Trip
   
7. Post 1500
   
8. Rules of the Kitchen
   
9. Car Dies on the Bridge (In the running, Best of the Year)

I tried to clear some of the stuff out of my drafts folder, with some of them being pretty cool, or rambling messes (like plenty of other things here):

1. Rumination on Bar Trips and Having Kids
   
2. Rambling Shoe Piece
   

Happy 2023! Happy 2024! 

Flying on Christmas Eve, Ten Years Apart

It was Christmas Eve. Corrie and I were in Santa Monica, eating Auntie Peg's crab feast for dinner. Afterwards, we went to LAX and caught a plane. We flew through the night, landing a dozen-plus hours later, now in the morning on the 26th, in Taipei, having flown over the International Dateline and timewarping. Pretty cool.

It was Christmas Eve. Corrie and I were in Clarendon, with our two kids, driving to Amarillo. We caught a flight to DFW, and then connected to LAX. In the darkness on Christmas Eve, we drove directly from LAX to Auntie Peg's for the crab feast dinner.

The first paragraph was from 2013, ten years ago. Flying from LAX to Asia for our Angkor Wat adventure, we left on Christmas Eve. The second paragraph is from THIS year, 2023. Flying to LAX from the Farm, we arrived on Christmas Eve.

Before, we had the itch, traveling from this continent to Asia. Now we have two kids, still have the itch, but it manifests differently. I realized the juxtaposition the other day...thought I'd mention it here.

Bizarre Releases from Bad Idea Comics

Bad Idea comics produces very few titles. They have been on a kick for Kickstarter items lately, but as a comic producer, their comics are all very off-kilter. Their latest releases, only two since this summer, came out within a few weeks of each other in November, and I captured a picture of the pair just to show off the weirdness:

In the first, "Inebrio Horsefeathers," Inebrio is a platypus (I think, but it isn't ever mentioned) and a mate on a sailing vessel. In order to get rid of some unwanted kraken advancements, he concocts a beverage of rum and turpentine. It eventually ends up in his stomach, which is where the cover image comes from. (The name is based on Horatio Hornblower, if you couldn't figure that out.)

In the second, "The Destroyer," one of Oppenheimer's crewmen in NM has a bit of an accident, gets all weirdly powerful, and, er, visits the center of a atomic explosion.

I wanted to post these two pictures together because they highlight two wildly bonkers stories, totally disparate styles, and fantastic covers.

Our Big-Ass Tree!

The story so far:

2022

2020

2016

Those are links to past posts about our Decemberween tree shenanigans.

Across those links, I may have described about how I grew up in a fake-tree household. We would get wreaths for the smell, but the tree itself was plastic. At first, anyway, as eventually we got a very nice fake tree, the kind that photograph well.

One year we got a real tree, a small, scrawny tree, that today is called a "Charlie Brown Tree" and is both fashionable and expensive. That year we got it because we were leaving town (I think) and wouldn't be around for so long. But most years it was not real. (The scrawny tree year may have been the year in between our two fake trees.)

The first real tree I was a part of while I lived on "my own" (with Corrie instead of the fellas) was when Corrie and I bought a real tree for Tux to wreck. We thought it would be cool for him to destroy it, or to pull it down and smash ur ornaments. Turns out he was terrified of it.

We started getting real trees (again?) when Cass was born. The 2016 link above talks about the bushy-ness, the wide girth, if not having the height of a grand tree.

This year we may have purchased the largest tree we've ever had. The 2022 link above has pictures of both 2022 and 2021, and I was thinking of mocking something like that up here. But check it out, nearly 10 feet with the stand:

I love our big-ass tree!

Who's that kissing Santa?

Both of our kids went to the same daycare, and while it was far across town, it was homey and they did a lot of domestic stuff that we didn't have to do or never would do. Like Easter Egg hunts. We don't celebrate Easter, but to have a egg hunt for kids? That's pretty cool, I guess. Kid experiences make good memories.

Trick or Treating is another thing. We live in a downtown area which makes Trick or Treating challenging under normal circumstances, and the fact that jobs and such make it even more of a nuisance lead us to generally skip the event itself. Plus, our kids just don't really know, but they're getting to the age where they DO know, the Boy at least knows that we're kinda sheisty about it.

Santa visits are another thing. We've never "gone to see Santa," like at a mall or...where else do these Santas do these photo ops? The daycare hosts a Christmas Party and has Santa come in and hand out gifts for all the kids and their siblings who are in attendance. This has been our Santa excursions.

Every year someone else gets to be Santa. Like earlier, when they asked Corrie to be the Easter Bunny, they asked someone else to be Santa, someone who's daughter will age out of their establishment next year, someone who was already a bespectacled, hairy, and jovial dude:

When it was Cass's turn to get his gift, near the end of the bag searches---a fairly long time in which he spent staring at me quizzically---he approached Santa and said, "You remind me of my dad."

"Woh, ho, ho, why do you think that might be, little dude?" I asked in the same cartoony baritone I'd been using the whole time. I enjoyed the moment, and as he left after collecting his new Slinky he leaned in close and said, "Thanks for the Slinky, dad."

One of the gifts said "Mrs. Claus." When I pulled out the box and called out for Mrs. Claus, Corrie came bouncing over, said "Thank you, Santa, darling," and gave me a kiss. 

In the picture above, Camille, our daughter, is the little girl in the blue-topped dress and blond hair in a bun, mystified as to why mom's kissing Santa. She never seemed to realize the gig. She never let on, at least.

For our last daycare Christmas party, it was pretty special and cool.

Thinking About Cartoon Ducks

Because, why not?

I was talking with my kids about some of the side characters in cartoon shows. I'm of an age that means I grew up with both Heathcliff and Garfield television shows. I'm not here to dig into that (yet, anyway), but...do you remember that both the Heathcliff and Garfield and Friends shows had B-stories, full of other characters that had their own little universes that were essentially separate from their titular characters?

Really, this conversation started because of Wade, a cartoon duck in the B-story farm-living characters from Garfield and Friends. These stories were based on Jim Davis's US Acres comic strip, in which Orson, a pig, is the lead character, and his world is rounded out with Roy, a loud mouthed rooster; Wade, a cowardly duck; and Booker and Sheldon, twin chick siblings with Sheldon never exiting his egg.

On the weekends we let our kids get up early, get breakfast themselves (or forage for snacks, as it turns into sometimes), and then watch cartoons. Or movies of their own choice. Occasionally I come out and force them to watch other stuff, and here is where Pluto comes in. Pluto is essentially broadcast television; it is a free app on our TV that streams a ton of channels, and they have commercials (remember when to go get more food? use the can?). But the channels are usually just for shows. We had a good time a few months ago with the I Love Lucy channel, and the Bob Ross channel. Even spent a few minutes with the Unsolved Mysteries channel. But on weekend mornings, if the kids end up on Pluto, it'll be on the Garfield and Friends channel.

So that's why they ever saw US Acres and Wade, and it was because of Wade that Cass ever asked about cartoon ducks.

We chatted about Wade, about how he was definitely not better than Donald Duck. Donald's MO of flying off the handle with rage, while funny, may not the best way to deal with his emotions; but it may still be preferable to the cowardly disposition of Wade. Cass then asked me who my favorite cartoon duck was. 

I answered quickly: eh, Donald. But it got me thinking. While my quick reaction was Donald, how does the chaotic-neutral Daffy fit in? I love the chaos. How about Launchpad McQuack? Or Darkwing Duck? Or Uncle Scrooge?

I decided to examine a few different ducks that I enjoyed from when I was my kid's age, but in order to not have the discourse be about mainly Duck Tales, I decided to limit it to one duck per company...universe...er, schema? So, no Launchpad or Darkwing, because Donald is the Disney choice. No Plucky Duck from Tiny Toons, even though Daffy is the obvious choice. Also: I never watched Baby Huey, so they're not here either.

I included Wade from US Acres, but otherwise here is the quartet, each representing the next step in the development of my sense of humor and my maturity as a dude:

When I answered so quickly about Donald as my favorite animated duck, it was because Donald could be my favorite animated character, full stop. As a kid I liked to make categories in my imagination, and often pitted animation characters against one another...maybe animation houses against one another.

The three main studios for me in my head were, in descending order (for me personally) 1) Disney; 2) Warner Bros.; 3) Hannah-Barbara. Disney had Mickey, Donald, and Goofy; Warners had Bugs, Daffy and Porky; Hanna-Barbera had Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and Snagglepuss. 

While the kid-me saw the quality of the animation dipping from Disney-->WB-->HB, that's not exactly fair to what was happening. The Disney shorts that I grew up with, like the early WB shorts, were all produced for cinema houses. The Hanna-Barbera studios were making both shorts later and for television as well as popular primetime television shows: Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, and the Jetsons. The aim had changed. Also, I'm ignoring Tex Avery and Fleischer's Superman shorts. Droopy Dog and Betty Boop were wildly popular, and Tom and Jerry helped frame the vocabulary for cartoon violence, and they dated back to the studio era.

Um...derailed myself there. Donald vs Daffy for me was about primacy and content. I was already predisposed to Donald, but his rage filled antics made me laugh so naturally. The Daffy I grew up with was more of the petulant, jealous-of-Bugs version, than the unbridled id version where he seemed to exist in the early years. Unbridled id is a classic state of being for an animated character, and I think the scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit between Donald and Daffy is the perfect juxtaposition: unbridled rage vs unbridled id. It's only now, as an adult, that I realize that its disappointing I didn't grow up with the chaotic version of Daffy, rather the jealous foil for Bugs.

When my brother and I watched Garfield, I liked the US Acres scenes, but not as much as the Garfield scenes. I liked Orson and Roy, and Wade filled in the cracks by being the coward/perpetually terrified character. There's a place in group dynamics for the coward---think Shaggy and Scooby---because they often add to either the problem solving element of the group, or for the hilarity factor. I'm not sure I remember what Wade offered to the group in US Acres. The ongoing joke of his inner-tube's duck-head always matching his own expression and direction was amusing.

The last duck in that quartet represents the later years of my childhood, the cynical adult themed Duckman. Based on a comic book from 1990, Duckman aired on the USA Network from '94 to '97. Voiced by and aggrieved Jason Alexander, the titular character was a private investigator in a world where animals and people coexist. His assistant is Cornfed, a pig who sounds very similar to Jack Webb from Dragnet. 

Frank Zappa did the music, Dweezil voiced one of Duckman's kids, his status as a widower adds a dimension that is usually absent in animation. But, this was a primetime animated program aimed at adults. I enjoyed it as my sense of humor matured. I haven't yet shown more than an occasional clip to Cass.

My kids love Donald, and Cass has seen some of the old Daffy shorts, but it's been a while I'm sure. I think they enjoy US Acres, but the impact of Wade, beyond resembling Shaggy, remains a mystery. 

Sometimes all I want is to make pictures of disparate but connected things...

Like:

Happy Thanksgiving from Yosemite

We're chilling with our friend Lauren, her two dogs, and one other couple for Thanksgiving out near the southern entrance to Yosemite. It's my and Corrie's first trip since I proposed back in 2006. Yikes. Anyway, she was spreading her dad's ashes at the park---permits all up to date---and we're all here for her. And us, since this place is fantastic.

We're staying at a crazy AirBnB, a giant cabin on HWY 41 itself. Above is the living room and dining room zone. The kitchen tile is lava-red and screams late-70s.

Yesterday we went into the park, and it's spectacular as always.

The iconic shot above is the view from Tunnel View, a small parking lot at the end of the 4,233 foot long Wawona Tunnel.

Visible below is the upper portion of Yosemite Falls:

We stopped at the Ahwahnee for a cocktail and a snack, before turning around and heading back to the cabin. Many of the interior shots for The Shining were filmed at the Ahwahnee lodge, and it had a familiar feeling, albeit in an eerie way.

Here's to hoping you and yours get to celebrate Thanksgiving. Show gratitude! Be thankful! Enjoy loved ones. Be safe.

Birthday Party at Gardena Cinema

Back in January 2020 a comic shop opened in our building in downtown Long Beach.

Atomic Basement was both a publisher and a comic shop, as Mike Wellman, one of the two owner/operators was also the writer for two of their titles. Tony was the name of Mike's partner, but by February he was gone. Mike ended up in a beef on the Internet with a blowhard, and both Mike and the blowhard got banned from Facebook for a couple months. Tony was shook by the whole thing, and sold his half back to Mike.

He got out just in time, as it were, since opening a brick-and-mortar store in January of 2020, a store whose business already had razor-thin margins, would prove difficult to find lasting success. The pandemic caused a rupture in many things in this country, and Mike's run as owner/operator of Atomic Basement turned tumultuous.

The neighborhood looks like it would have great foot traffic, something mandatory for a downtown comic shop without easy to find or use parking. But in reality it never materialized. By May Mike was running the joint with natural light only, and from there things went downhill.

When I would take a break from talking to my laptop, I would stroll down and chat with Mike and share a beer or a cup of wine. We'd talk about a great many things as he would sell comics to the random passersby that only wanted current Marvel fare. By that time he was a cash- or Venmo-only status.

On Sundays, one of Mike's friends, Judy Kim, would hold arts and craft activities for neighborhood kids. One day they colored shirts. Another day there was a prize wheel to spin. Since the only "neighborhood kids" who ever really came by were Cass and another kid from our building, both kids ended up with great gear and/or plenty of attention.

The sad day came and with it the end of the shop in our building. I tried to stay in touch with Mike, but my time on social media is limited, which made the endeavor difficult. One time I made my weekly, or monthly, trip to Facebook, I was excited to see that I got an invite to Mike's 50th birthday party at his friend, Judy Kim's, movie theater, the Gardena Cinema:

After working out the details---I would go by myself, as the party was for a Wednesday, and started at 8pm---I ended up the first person to arrive. Judy was going to show Mike's favorite movie: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Freaking rad.

Both Mike and Judy spoke before she started the movie. Mike was happy that his newfound sobriety may prove advantageous to the people he counsels; and Judy gave us a brief history of the theater, and it's glorious 800-seats:

It was opened in December 1946, during the postwar boom, and Judy's father bought it in the summer of 1976, while it was doing so-so business showing not-quite-so-new releases. In Citrus Heights we called this phenomena the "dollar theater." By 1979 Judy's father noticed that the Wednesday night Spanish-language feature at the drive-in was always sold out, a change in programming was warranted. Showing exclusively Spanish-language films proved the secret for success for the Gardena Cinema. 

After the Mexico City-based production company they'd partnered with collapsed in 1994, the theater went back to their precarious spot on the margins for nearly thirty years, where it remains today. Looking for a buyer, they try to do cool and weird new things. Events and the like. In any case, support your local independent cinemas. Check out what they're up to. Go to something if it seems like your thing. They'll certainly appreciate it.

Then, the movie finally started. It was exciting and glorious and fun and heartfelt. Temple of Doom is very brutal and quite heavy, what with kids being kidnapped and tortured and enslaved. Indy and Ke Huy Quan's Short Round hit differently now that I have a kid the size of Shorty (if younger), and Kate Capshaw's constant screaming seemed less annoying. It is a very gross movie, as well, what with the huge-snake-filled-with-screeching-tiny-snakes, the bug slurping and the post-slurp-belch, the eyeball soup, the monkey brain dessert, the hallway full of bugs... The humor hits as well: one of my favorite scenes is how Indy's puppy-dog eyes look after pleading with Willie, "WE ARE GOING TO DIE!"

Every minecart level from video games (Donkey Kong Country), as well as the previous cave level in that same Donkey Kong game are taken directly from this movie. So are classic one-liners like "No time for love, Doctor Jones," or the absolutely best, "Cover your heart, Indy!" I've shouted Cover your heart! so many times, but I can't remember why, and I'm not even phased or ashamed.

Corrie and I watched Temple of Doom before Cass was born, and I remember thinking, Whoa! Enslaved kids? Punching chicks? Eating brains? WTF is up with this flick? 

After this evening at the Gardena Cinema, my appreciation for the movie blossomed, and I can see how it could become Mike's Favorite Movie. 

It was a magical evening.

Limited Time Flavors...?

On a trip tot he grocers the other day I noticed two different "limited time" flavored options at the checkout, in the impulse buy zone. The first was this style of potato chip:

Um...what? At first I thought it was an accident. But ketchup is a pretty rad combo of flavors---salty, sweet, savory, and tangy---a combo that it took me far too long to appreciate. It seems basic, but it seems like it could be good. I would try them if someone offered, but since I never buy chips like this anyway, I would likely avoid them. (Writing about it now...I may try them...just to say I did, like I did with the 'dill pickle' peanuts a while back (those were NOT good)).

The next made more sense, given the season:

These I would try, and I do like eggnog. Er, occasionally. We get at least one jug of the nog each season, and we like to cut it with whiskey. At least the kids like it, too---sans whiskey. What exactly is the flavor? All spice and cream?

Both is a single trip to the store, good times.

Jack-O-Lanterns and the Warm Cities

This year, like all f the recent years, we've purchased and carved pumpkins for the Halloween time:

This year we did it at a Halloween party. In the past Corrie would buy the cool paper overlays that you tape onto the pumpkin, and then trace out, and then carve out. This year, I was abandoned at the tarp with instructions (do Batman! do Godzilla!), and I did the best I could. I carved a pretty basic Jack-o-lantern (seen above and below on the left), and then I carved a Batman ('89) logo on one of them (as per the request).

Upon returning to check my work, I was told, No, do Godzilla. I handed a marker over and proceeded to carve out the (duckbilled...?) Godzilla that was there, opposite the Bat-symbol, seen below:

One other Halloween decorations I loved seeing everyday was this, visible right as the elevator doors opened on our floor.

It puts the lotion in the basket!

When we were kids, my brother and I, and out friends, in Sacramento, it was chilly! It was Fall in Sac, and it was basically cold-ish. Pumpkins would chill on the stoop for a while, preserved by the, eh, basically refrigerator-like air outside.

But now, once you pierce the pumpkin, you start the quick deterioration of said pumpkin. It will last only a few days before essentially liquifying on the counter/table. In the lotion/basket pic above, you can see at least one of their pumpkins, and it has been drawn and painted upon (both were---the other isn't quite visible). This helps them last longer.

I guess each year I'm surprised by how fast the pumpkins die, rot, liquify...quite horrifying, really, but that checks out due to the season, right?

Happy Halloween and an Age Old Question

Cassius is Aquaman, Camille is Elsa from Frozen, Corrie is Anna, which makes me, who cares very little about Halloween in general, Kristoff, Anna's love interest from Frozen. Super cool.

Also, I was thinking about Halloween monsters. Are you Team Vampire or Team Werewolf?

I tend towards team werewolf, and maybe later I'll explicate my theory about these monsters. Because nothing is more interesting than a long-winded breakdown of pros and cons concerning fictional characters...

It's boring even to write it.

I never saw the Twilight movies, but back in 2010 Corrie babysat my coworker's kids and the elder of the two, the daughter, had the trio watch one of the Twilight films, the one with the werewolves. Corrie came out of it, like, "Ooh, I'm team werewolf, for sure!" Having no idea what she talking about specifically (hot hairy tan boy versus hot pale goth boy), I was like, "Of course! Team werewolf is where it's at. They don't live forever, they're tragic in that thy can't control themselves, but it can be kinda safe in that it's once a month and be planned for..."

She said, "Uhh, sure honey."

We've been watching the Hammer horror movies and showing them to Cass. Well, I guess "them" isn't accurate, because so far it was only the Mummy ('59). He paid attention the whole time, which was pretty cool. Also, just saying, holy heck Christopher Lee as the decrepit old mummy was fantastic with his eyes and halting body language. That guy was a total professional.

Anyway, Happy Halloween!

It's either Ming Na Wen or Andy Serkis...

I guess this rabbit hole jump started with Harrison Ford, playing integral parts in two film franchises that defined my childhood:

And inspired by the weird fact that Bill Paxton is the only actor to be Terminated, Predator-ated, and, er, Alienated:

Look at that, Lance Hendrickson was also done in by all three...does that mean AVP is canon? I'm losing focus...(I stole the image from the Internet)(Most of the rest of these I made myself from individually stolen pics...)

I started to think about the different actors who played big roles in the two tent pole franchises of today's era: Star Wars and the MCU. Two obvious candidates are Natalie Portman:

And Samuel L. Jackson:

But then my brain went a little more obscure. Like: did you remember that Forest Whitaker, Paul Bettany, and Woody Harrelson are part of both the Star Wars Universe and the Marvel Comics Movieverse?

I said the "Marvel Movieverse" because Woody played Carnage in Venom 2, which isn't quite the MCU proper.

That Paul Bettany and Woody Harrelson were in the Solo movie I think gets overlooked.

What about Ewan McGregor? Not the MCU, but the DC movie, er, deal(?) and the Star Wars Uni, naturally:

He plays the bad guy in the second Harley Quinn movie. But I guess that Tatooine sand ages you quickly:

That got me thinking about who played roles in multiple franchises or comic book movies. As far as that goes, how about big roles, like Batman and the God Killer, from Thor 4, both Christina Bale:

Or Venom and the Batman villain Bane, another Englishman, Tom Hardy:

How's about Josh Brolin, playing Dwight from the Sin City prequel, and Thanos, and Cable in Deadpool 2:

Oh jeeze, what about Ryan Reynolds, now that I mentioned Deadpool:

How about one of my favorites, Stellan Skarsgård, in both the MCU (the Thor films) and Star Wars (in Andor), and I threw in his role as Bootstrap Bill in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies: (Where's the Chernobyl picture?)

Or Oscar Isaac, also of Dune, but surely Poe of the sequel trilogy and Moon Knight and X-Men baddie Apocalypse:

Even Rosario Dawson got in on the act, as Gail in the Sin City movies and as Ahsoka:

But to settle on the thesis (finally) for this whole endeavor: who is the ultimate king or queen of the super-hero/tent-pole movie cinematic universe shenanigans? 

I direct our attention to the title of this post for the two most likely culprits. For "king," as it were, I think it must be Andy Serkis. I mean, sheesh, check it out:

That's Klaw from the MCU (and Black Freaking Panther!), and Alfred from The Batman (so...DC comic movies), and as the prison boss in Andor (so the Star Wars universe too). BUT, he's also the motion capture king, starring as Golem in LOTR, Caesar in the reboot of the Planet of the Apes films, and already in the Star Wars universe as Snoke.

But ultimately the crown could go to Ming Na Wen. She's the only person who payed a Disney Princess (Mulan), exists in the MCU (from the A.G.E.N.T.S. of Shield program), exists in the Star Wars universe (as Fennec Shand from the Mandoverse) AND was Chun Li from Street Fighter AND was in ER. She even made a cameo in the live action Mulan, seen below:

I've been trying to put this together for at least a year now. In my head for longer. Finding the pictures and trying to paste them together taught me a few things:

• There are a few more lists like this I want to, like different actors playing the same character across multiple interpretations (not quite the exact premise from this piece, but that one acts like an intro or preface);
• I waste a bunch of time NOT working on shit I probably should be working on.
• What about Ah-nold movies, or Sly and/or Jason Statham? All those guys mostly make up their own...things. What was I trying to do again?

This is where I lost the thread. For the three-hundreth time. And started to be annoyed at myself.

So...Andy Serkis or Ming Na Wen. I'm telling you! Who'd I miss? Plenty, surely...

Sea Goat?

I was today year's old when I learned about Capricorn. I noticed a bizarre image on some printed material. I thought it was a hilarious fail by the printer, but it had the zodiac name "Capricorn" printed over it, or under it, looking silly like this:

I was born in April, making me an Ares. My brother is a Taurus. Ares is a ram, Taurus a bull. Cancer is a crab, Libra is a scale...I think...my knowledge of astrological entities is limited. Rams and bulls are easy to think wrap your head around. But...WTF is up with Capricorn?

Is it...half goat and half...fish? 

The answer is emphatically YES. It's the sea goat. I looked it up. The Greeks tried to work this sea-goat entity into their zodiac, it being a remnant of the Babylonian representation of Enki one of their gods. A holdover, if you will.

I never knew that Capricorn is a mer-goat. WHERE HAVE I BEEN? Maybe this is silly and obvious to most people, but I'm not most people...?

It made it onto coins?!?

I love how weird this world can be...

Mom's Letters

In May of 2020, while we were starting Month 2 of sheltering in place---if we weren't deemed essential workers (remember doing grocery shopping is masks at local restaurants? I do! We got arugula and fancy cheese from an Italian restaurant down the street...)---my mother started sending letters in the mail. She let us know that she was trying to do her part to help keep the postal service solvent, and getting physical letters is exciting.

Her plan was to send letters to me, to my brother Dan, and to our adopted homey Norm, and postcards to all four of the grandkids (Norman, Simon, Cass, and Camille, who was only a few months old when she started). And her plan was to do this every week until she lost steam or interest or energy.

And she still hasn't lost steam or interest or energy. So 3+ years in (nearly 170 weeks in a row!), we've received an enveloped letter and two postcards. And because I'm a paperwaste-packrat, I saved nearly every letter:

This stack is a Russian-literature scale epic of the minutiae of, er, my mom's life. I love the letters. Imagine sitting at a computer everyday and writing a paragraph summarizing that day. And then doing it again for rest of the week. Then printing the week's summary out and mailing it away. And then keep doing it for years. You may imagine the mundanity tsunami-ing a reader. But the pacing, the events, the beefs---major and minor---add to the beauty of everyday life.

At first, as we would read them, I would get a weird sense of: why would this be shared? Then, as the weeks went on, as they turned into months, and as the pile grew and the months stretched into years, the letters would make us laugh. We'd laugh for a few different reasons: sometimes the mundane would end up incidentally profound; sometimes the stories were genuinely amusing, as my mom's a funny person in her own right; and sometimes the absurd difficulty in running down the minutiae of daily life just leads one to crack up.

We all have things and activities in our lives that we find exciting. But I'd wager that many of us think that those exciting activities and things are buried in the mundane. From what I've heard from the masses, it sounds like one of life's primary goals is to survive the mundanity, to persevere, to just make it to the next stretch of excitement. And that's the connection these letters makes with any reader: we can all see ourselves getting frustrated at a grocery store or with a coworker, we can all feel the dread of possibly having to move and then dealing with the hassle of actually moving.

Who hasn't ever been annoyed with their partner but still happy to be on the adventure with them? Who hasn't ever had to bite their tongue in someone's presence for myriad reasons (maybe they're your supervisor and wildly ignorant; maybe they're a stranger and you're not sure if they're a lunatic, et al)? Who hasn't had to deal with getting old and how aging effects their joints? (Well, eh, kids obviously...)

It's also pretty neat to see ones-self in the stories and anecdotes. A holiday visit here, a trip to Legoland there. Please give so-and-so a call, or send this person a card. This person's sick, this one got a new dog, a grandson's marching band is competing for trophies...the prosaic mosaic of life, in a huge stack, becomes a poem.

Over the last few years the postcards have also stacked up. The stack got so high that the clutter was eventually dealt with: some came to my work to be handed out or stapled to the wall; some were tacked up here; many were destroyed by young hands and confined to the trash. 

Also, over the years, babies were born and elders passed on. (Love you always Auntie Erm! Welcome to the world of air-breathing Enzo and Luna!) The pandemic still seethes in the background, mostly becoming endemic, but people seemed to be different. Less willing to put up with shit. Workers are having a moment. As office workers began to be forced back to the office full-time, laborers and white-collared unions started to fight back. Teachers standing with service workers in LA; entertainment writers; actors and crew workers; auto workers in Detroit; Kaiser workers...

Not sure if those changes could have been accomplished without the severity of the global shutdown. It wasn't the wholesale change some of us wanted, but it's better than before. The status quo may have shifted.

And through it all, documenting one woman's interior, the granular activities of a week's worth of days, my mom's letters persist. And they're beautiful. And, come to think of it, there's probably one in my mailbox downstairs right now. I'll go get in a minute, and read it out-loud (as we do here), and then add it to the stack. Three years on...

A Gentleman Caller? (Quick Spider Update)

I checked out our new spider neighbor one morning this week and saw:

Is that a gentleman caller?

The day after this, the web was mostly wrecked and had been started again much closer to the white trellis. And as of now, the large spider seems to no longer be living among us. Maybe she was ready to lay some eggs, or maybe they hatched.

But the more I think about all that, I shudder and change the subject in my brain.

Maybe I should beef up on my arachnid ecological studies...

We're just sharing the balcony

We have a new flatmate as it were:

A large orb weaver spider has constructed an enormous web on our tiny urban balcony. It looks pretty cool silhouetted against our stormy sky this past weekend:

At night, and at different times of day, it's quite hypnotic to watch her go about her business of cleaning and maintaining her web. And some of the silhouettes are spectacular:

Hazy afternoon

Hazy night

I expected a bird to have had it as a snack by now, but not yet. Until then, its been a nice series of encounters, and hopefully when Corrie waters the plants the web won't get too messed up. 

Urban nature encounters must be celebrated whenever they happen. A lesson from a city dweller...

Symptoms of Getting Old

I joke often about getting old, and sometimes it's because I'm achy bending down to get something, or because my neck and shoulder may hurt for days after sleeping funny. I'm generally not a knee-jerk "things were better back in my day" kind of guy. Many things are better today.

What I'm talking about here today is how things that used to matter, used to get a person riled up, or anger up the blood, or, eh, activate the unending sense of injustice or derision, those things? I just don't have any energy to even consider them anymore. I don't care anymore. 

Like my new car. Norm and I used to clown Hondas, and/or people who drive them. If you told that version of me that one day I would buy a 2020 Honda, I would have believed it, but would have asked for context. (You still want to drive stick-shifts, and those are very hard to find, so when you find a great a deal in the future, you are forced to take it because of the aforementioned circumstances.)

Or my Birkenstocks. During the first few months of the pandemic I ordered a pair of Birkenstock sandals. I wanted the Monterrey, but it was discontinued, so I settled on the Arizonas. They are very similar to each other, and both resemble the normal, hippie-looking two-strapper. Because I didn't need to wear socks for anything, I didn't...for months and months. Eventually I wore them out and destroyed them like I always do (through the sole and the cork middle---thanks faulty back!) and eventually one exploded as I forded Mill Creek on our Cabin trip. It nearly slid off my foot and away with the stiff current, but somehow my foot hooked itself inside.

I had planned on trashing them once we returned to Long Beach, but on that day I had to walk back to the car with only one sandal, and trash them before we left the mountains.

Anyway, back in 2020, when I bought the sandals, I had to choose between the classic cork/leather and the weird foamy-plastic version:

Duh. No decision at all. There's no way I would ever buy the foamy plastic facsimile.

Three years later and I'm done wearing socks for a quick trip to get milk and eggs, or beer, and Corrie says, "Just buy a new pair of Birks already." I go online and now, I'm looking at the choices, and I realize I don't really care anymore.

I do want to be able to wear them in water. It would be nice to go to the beach and not freak out because sand got in them and would stay for days. The price point now kinda does interest me.

So I got the weird, plastic foamy Birks. And I love them! I admit it! They're so comfortable and light. It's like I'm wearing weightless cushions. I'm not even concerned about sweaty foot issues because it would be impossible to be worse than regular Birks for me! If you know me and my Birkenstock habit over the decades, then you know what I mean. At least these sandals I could rinse off in the sink or tub.

Wait...because I care less about somethings and more about others (the quality of local elementary schools; the quality of the olive oil I buy) means I'm getting old? 

I guess forgetting my thesis means I am getting old...

There's a Simpsons Reference for Everything

For those of us of a certain age, Simpsons quotes may come rapid fire. They fit so many different scenarios while also being fantastically hilarious. Sometimes they're so far ahead of a curve, it takes years to figure it out. Like that time Homer danced with Princess Jasmine, and Bart's photograph of them went viral (before that phrase came to be what it's called now in 2023) in 1990:

Anyway, during Long Beach's contentious mayoral campaign this past year, I got the following mailer:

I was like, "Good on him, but what's with the ominous ad?" I realized it was from his opponent, a wealthy pro-police business woman. When I realized just what exactly was going on, my Simpsons-tuned brain went to this scene immediately:

    

EVEN MAYORAL CAMPAIGNS CAN BE FODDER FOR SILLY SIMPSONS REFERENCES.

Tropical Storm Hilary

One thing I don't want to do is normalize the climate-change driven changes to our current bizarre weather patterns that will continue to define our new normal. The first tropical storm to hit the west coast of North America in 84 years is just another piece of a larger example puzzle.

Also, at first I took issue with the possible name of Hurricane Hilary, since I was under the impression that enormous storms are called different things on this side of the continent. It turns out I was wrong, but only about the Eastern Pacific. Typhoons and cyclones are the names for tropical storms in other parts of the world, certainly, but in the Eastern Pacific---our neck of the woods---hurricane is still the term used:

Typhoons tend to be the most powerful because of the larger amounts of warm water, as the warm water is the fuel for these storms. The most devastating storms in recorded history have slammed into the Philippines and China.

Anyway...Hilary. On Sunday it drizzled on us for a few hours. If nobody had mentioned anything, I wouldn't have thought anything else about it. I've definitely seen much worse rainstorms at our apartment over the years. We don't live up in the desert, though, so we didn't feel the brunt of their experience.

Work was closed on Monday for us. Okay, cool...? It was hot and sunny, blue skies and sunshine. I got some chores done. 

I think the local freak out helped get people prepared, since I think much of the area feels under prepared for earthquakes and wildfires and mudslides, maybe they wanted to show off how we do for a possible hurricane.