Found in our Underground Parking Garage

What bizarre stuff awaits us in the bowels of our building? Mostly soot and gasoline fumes, galvanized rubber odor and the sounds of a creaky chain-operated door.

I park up against a chainlink fence, but next to Corrie's Subaru. It was a trade off: you can park next to each other, but it also means that you won't be able to get in on the passenger side. We worked it out.

Anywho, each day when I reverse into my spot, and each day when I drive away, I glance over at an old Star Wars poster right behind the chainlink fence:

On the top it reads: "The Original is Back," which I took to mean that it was an advertisement for a re-release of the OG Star Wars. The poster is on cardboard, so...cool. Maybe it's worth some cash, but being exposed to the quality of air in the garage is probably less than ideal. 

But eventually I had the time to read the gray slashing marquee on the bottom righthand corner:

Can you read it? Do you see it? The original was being released to keep attention high for the upcoming third installment called "THE REVENGE OF THE JEDI."

This poster was made back before they'd changed the name from REVENGE to RETURN. Lucas decided that Jedi wouldn't be seekers of revenge, so he opted to change the name.

So...this poster would be worth even more...? I'm guessing? I just don't have the energy to pursue anything like that...and to do it for my nominal landlords would be annoying, because I wouldn't be ripping them off...

Anyway, pretty wild little bit of history that I'd been looking at for years before realizing what exactly it was.

Last Bookstore Discovery

On my days staying in downtown LA I made sure to swing by the Last Bookstore. It's LA's baddest biggie indie bookstore (like Powell's in Portland or The Strand in New York) and as such, as a personal rule, I tried to find something to purchase. This visit I made with about twenty-five minutes before closing, so walking around was mostly rushed.

I came to a spot and saw the following binding:

Stars...of the New...Curfew? I read sideways. Ben Okri, as the author's name, had me thinking Africa, and I pulled it off the shelf.

It was slim and inexpensive, and Ben Okri was a celebrated Nigerian-British author whose works were finally getting published in the US (the blurb said---this book was from 1988). I'll say...Ben Okri is now Sir Ben Okri, a poet, screenwriter, novelist, and activist, and winner of Booker Prize in 1991 for The Famished Road. (The Booker Prize is the one other writers perk up for.)

That was all research done after I had read the stories contained inside. Where has this dude been, and why am I only finding out about him now? I guess that's true of so, so many fantastic writers, but still...

The stories take place in and around Lagos and some cities in the interior. The city is war torn, people are hungry, angry, and desperate, and a connection to the occasional magical realm is natural and realistic. In the second story after a car crash things go so sideways in Okri's descriptions (people's feet are on backwards, their arms bend the wrong way, the huts in the village all have mirrors on the outside, et al) that you start to think it's turning to sci-fi. It doesn't, but it opens the world up similar to Murakami.

In the titular story, Stars of the New Curfew, there are occasional sub-headings. The first is "The Nightmare of Salesmen," in which our narrator explains how his nightmares came about: he sold fake meds to needy people that mostly mad them worse-off. Another section's subheading is "The Salesmen of Nightmares," in which the new wonder drug he's selling causes a wild, placebo fueled fracas on a crowded bus, with a bus driver---on the new drug---racing another driver and sending the bus off a bridge and into a river, drowning seven passengers. After this the narrator flees to his home village, only to encounter the ongoing and escalating feud between the town's two richest families. This 60-plus page story goes all over the place in surprising and enjoyable ways.

I'm waiting for some time to pick up The Famished Road. New post-Modern fiction is always exciting, and from Africa! Hell yes.

Farm Centennial

The Farm, outside of tiny Clarendon, TX, celebrated the centennial of the Harrison family having moved it---piecemeal---from a second location to its current spot.

It was a big party this year, as evidenced by the number of cars representing the array of visitors:

What can a person say about this kind of party?

I guess this person, me, will struggle with things to say. It feels like it's been years for me since the Centennial Reunion.

We made the drive like usual--two days from Long Beach to an hour southeast of Amarillo, a pretty straight shot on I-40 (once you get there). We stayed at the El Rancho (again) and cruised into panhandle Texas near dinnertime the next day. From there it was a steady flow of beer and starting fires (for the briskets) and kilns (for the glazed pottery to make room for the bisqued work that needed to be glazed and fired). Having just arrived, and already in the weeds with work, and all being flooded with beer.

Going to bed late and waking up with a headache while dozens of people pass through where we're trying to sleep (the new bunkhouse that Corrie and her brother Peter worked on regularly the last few summers). "Uggh...look at these two...still cuddling," I could hear as I tried to block out the sound and sunlight.

Cooking. Lots of cooking. As always I appreciate the need and I like doing the work, and as always it was rewarding. Briskets, slicing briskets, cooking all manner of things for dozens and dozens of people. On one of the Big Days, Chef Gonzo himself (Mr. Eames) and I blasted through a hundred burgers, worked six bags of fries in ovens and I even made my famous green pasta for a Texan audience (I brought my homemade pesto from, eh, home). Once the food was done, I shed my sweaty and greasy tanktop and re-donned my short-sleeve button up and still managed to look like an insane person:

Seeing the cousins and second cousins interacting was great. All the different combos were classic, especially Camille and Colton, born on the same day ten years apart:

My niece Brooklyn took a special shine to me, likely stemming from the time we got to chill back in May, and she kept at me with a special attention. Here she is taking off with my water bottle, one of my never-let-this-go affectations I afforded myself:

My mom, Grandma Kate to the kids, got Cass a kite a while back (between 14 and 26 months) and we finally got it kicking ass. In the picture below, the kite is up in the upper right corner while Cassius is down on the lower left...it's pretty epic:

The time is always so magical, like being transplanted to the early twentieth century, or the late nineteenth century, in rural Texas to made a go of it. But it's not a fake transplant, it real. Very real, as the AC doesn't work and its relentlessly hot, and the bugs are fierce, and the laundry needs t be hung up, and supper needs to get made, and dishes pile up with alarming frequency.

At least you get to get into chaaracter:

This year I left early, needing to fly out of Amarillo for a conference. Corrie and I got to leave the kids with Ron and Carol, the former of which had foot surgery the day before my flight. Carol had a mending Ron and two Starling kids to look after for a single night, so Corrie and I could get away and spent a single night in a hotel in Amarillo. THE FIRST TIME WE SPENT A NIGHT AWAY FROM CAMILLE, and only the second we spent away from Cass. The first real date night in 8 years.

I flew from Amarillo to LAX, and took a cab from the airport to the hotel where I stayed in downtown Los Angeles. I didn't even make it home until four days later, by which point my feet were a little worse for wear, since I had been wearing the same pair of sandals since mid-June:

I took no shoes to Texas.

They're also worse for wear, but I enjoyed looking like Huck Finn all the time. Having to wash my feet each night before bed was annoying (and I didn't do it every night...eww). I love the sandals, but I'm glad to be back into some real shoes.

Happy Centennial Harrison Farm!