Year in Review

 Um...pass.

I wrote some posts this year that I enjoy reading, which is as high of praise as I can give.

1. Camille Joins the Fam
   
2. Cass has Surgery
   
3. Voting in the Primary, before the Pandemic
   
4. Does the Virus Sleep?
   
5. Society Begins to Dissolve
   
6. Systems Collapse
7. The Western States Burn
   

(Sigh)

I'm getting some work in on my own publishing arm, and maybe sometime soon (like during the next calendar year) I hay have some of it done. Perpetually working on something...

Happy Old Year! Happy New Year!

Just Me and the Boy

 Cass's preschool has not returned to class yet, but Camille's daycare was open for our normal Tuesday, so yesterday the Boy and I went on a tiny adventure.

We went on a drive two towns over to San Pedro, gabbed some donuts and coffee, and started to see some sights, like looking back at our own city, visible behind the port structures:

We made it over to some bluff point lookout that I hadn't been to before, andn Cass made a friend with whom he ran around with for nearly an hour.

Both surfers and the breaker were visible from the spot. The breaker was our next destination, as the anchor for the miles-long breaker that surrounds our own beach and eliminated our surf is down here in San Pedro.

Because it had just rained the previous day, the sky was clear enough that Catalina was very visible:

Not doing justice to how close it looked

Finally down at the breaker and the true dimensions become clear. Each one of the blocks that has waves crashing over it is the size of my car, and they are stacked up like Legos:

Mr. Cool needs his own sunglasses so he doesn't look slightly out of place:

Masks on, and we're walking...

One section of breaker that we can visit with our feet reminded me of the strand at Morro Rock, with waves crashing on one side:

And again, the entire recreational strand visible below, with hilly San Pedro in the background:

We drove around the peninsula to take the scenic route home, a half-hour jaunt of easy-going curves with the ocean on the left the entire time. Eventually you make it to Torrance, meet up with PCH again, and head back to Long Beach.

It was a great little after breakfast/before lunch adventure. We need to do this kind of thing more often, but...times are tough and the world outside in the air is...dangerous?

Just our new normal, that is now no longer new, just "normal."

Making the Most out of Winter Vacation

"Vacation" has a funny ring to it during this pandemic.  

1. So this Happened

One of my family's traditions during this season is a series of baked goods that my mom makes and now, as we've all grown and moved further away than down the hall, mails to us. She sends family recipe biscotti, other cookies on occasion, and a wonderful treat we call "cheesies."

Cheesies are like cookies, but they're made from cheese and flour instead of sugar and flour. I was making dinner one night, removed one from the just-arrived package, and warmed it up on the lid of a saucepot. Babygirl came into the kitchen to "help" as she usually does, and so I let her try the cheesie.

She promptly shoved the entire thing into her gob:

I took that picture and sent it to my mom, letting her know that Camille was a fan. She asked if Cass was also a fan. I was texting her my answer, and then took a screen-capture of my phone because I couldn't believe my eyes on the auto-predictor...

"...regaling Corrie with exploits of his..." TESTICLES?

Also, I can't be the only person to use words like "regaling" and "exploits" in my texts...I even (properly) use semicolons...

2. Trips to the Beach

We try to keep things fresh with neighborhood walks, like to the PAC for photo-ops, or to the beach:

And since the weather generally helps out on these capers, we should be going more often.

On this day, sometime before the 25th, we frolicked and cavorted, without our masks, and for a few minutes it seemed like a regular December day when adults don't have to work and the world is carefree.

That's...unfortunately not the case in our year 2020 (5502 MHs), but sometimes we can fool ourselves.

But then, you know, almost time to replace the mask and go home...

And make dinner and go back to shuttering ourselves inside to beat back our surging invisible foe.

Vacation in the time COVID...where's Gabriel Garcia Marquez when we need him?

Decemberween 2020

We thought it may snow here in LA; that would have made sense for this year. Instead it was beautiful and blue. Poor us.

Like so many others, we held tight and stayed put. And, like so many others, we spent more time on Zoom, first with my family and then with Corrie's, and since I used the same code, we had a virtual window open to our world for about four hours, a digital portal, a vortex of attention. Or nothing but our own living room during the in-between times.

But the kids look adorable.

On the 24th, we went walkabout once darkness fell so we could examine the light show down the street at the Performing Arts Center (AKA Long Beach Terrace Theater). The tree is SO enormous:

Once we put everything together after the kids went to bed, we stood back and gawked at ourselves: what have we done?

Hot Wheels tracks up the wall; triangle wooden jungle-gym that folds up neatly (with slide/ladder); tiny strider bike for Camille.

For wanting to take it easy with the presents, we had what seemed like an unreasonable number of gifts, but the kids know they're loved by their grandparents and aunties and uncles. And that's priceless.

Right?

Quarantine Thanksgiving

 If someone had told us that we'd be relegated to our homes for both St. Paddy's and Thanksgiving, and everything in between, because of a global health crisis...

...I probably would have begrudgingly believed it. My view of how this country duly operates has no blinders, especially since the election in 2016.

Anyway, we celebrated the November holiday at our beach-y apartment in the nice So-Cal weather, like...like...er, every other goddamn day since March?

The turkey was a gift for our starting a butcher box subscription, and I got to work on it once it thawed. I carved the breasts off, and then the thigh/drumstick combo, and then deboned the combos. Next they went into the salt solution to brine for a few days. My brine was a tablespoon of salt and a quart of water, and I was nervous that it may be too heavy for the days it was working on the meat. I had two bags going, one with the breasts and one with the dark meat, and that solution in each: a quart/tbsp in each.

In the end it was perfect. The meat was juicy and flavorful. I tied up the meat so it would cook evenly, and slathered it with the compound herb butter.

Funny thing: with no bones it takes just over an hour to cook.

Days and weeks are still running together, blurring in my brain...

The smoke returned, as swaths of both Orange and Riverside counties are burning:

Morning orange glow

That picture doesn't really do the glow justice...

(Sigh)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Movie for Our Times

Corrie and I watched a movie the other night that shocked me how much it spoke to our time, how much it presaged the youth of today. It was released 35 years ago, was written by a woman (Leora Barish), produced by two other women (Sarah Pillsbury and Midge Sanford), directed by a woman (Susan Seidelman), and gave a pop-star her first movie roll:

"Desperately Seeking Susan" was way more accurate in the depiction of the world, or, rather, the foundation for our current celebrity driven/social media perusing youth culture can be found in this film. I recommend it for anyone who would like to get a sense for how we got to this point.

The first time we see Madonna in this movie, this is what she's up too:

Kids today, and plenty of non-child-aged "adults" are very familiar with the selfie.

This image, and scene, claims that this is Madonna inventing the selfie. Besides being inaccurate, I think that's low-hanging fruit and doesn't discuss the fact that the rest of the '80s depicted here would be recognizable to us today.

Madonna, while playing the titular Susan, isn't actually the focus of the movie. It's really a movie about a bored housewife played by Rosanna Arquette. She reads, rather religiously (if that can be used in this context), the personal ads, and knows some of the social history of at least one of the, er, stars(?) or celebrities(?) of the personal ads.

Now, young people from today are NOT familiar with personal ads, or, "the personals," nor are they familiar with CraigsList, so there you go.

BUT, unsatisfied people who live vicariously through social media and the celebrities created by such, IS DEFINITELY A THING. Sitting around scanning the personals is the same as sitting around scanning Instagram or Twitter.

Madonna is an "influencer" in that era: she's confident in her sexuality, confident in her garish fashion choices that become fashionable simply by being sported by someone with this personality, and she has none of  the ties that normal folks suffer.

I haven't even mentioned the screwball plot; it blends amnesia, Hitchcock-ian mistaken identity, and antiquity theft into a wholly original conclusion.

Throw in early performances for Aidan Quinn, Laurie Metcalf, and John Tuturro, and you've got the makings of a classic, an underappreciated gem that's got Girl Power written all over it.

Also, you may be arruffato if this turns you on:

Sogno di un domani arruffato!

Celebrate First, then: the Work

It was a Saturday morning, with Cass bouncing around, enjoying his second waffle after his cereal. Camille laughing and gazing at her brother, happily alternating between her yogurt and eggs.

I had the curtains open, since it was after 8 and we try to flood the place with natural light. My neighbor was again in her makeshift garden, in a small patch of private space outside their apartment door. Then, a commotion. Her voice from inside her apartment carried...a shriek: giddy and truthful. Then, she was back outside, screaming, "It's over!"

Soon, car-horns and cheers would resonate throughout our neighborhood. People would take to their roofs to shout at the sky. Catharsis. Regime change.

Old-fashioned regime change. The election of 2020 was called on Saturday, five days after the titled Election Day, after it was apparent that Biden would be taking over the Oval Office.

One telling thing from that Saturday was the amount of celebration spontaneously commencing. When people celebrate you losing an election like the Death Star has just been blown up, it SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT YOU OR THE REST OF US. OR BOTH.

But now the real work begins. Does anyone have any illusions to what lies ahead? 

The answer to that emphatically: YES.

While we can celebrate the 74 million folks voting against the dude, we need to soberly try to strategize working with the 70 million folks who were, in the least, not turned off by the racism and misogyny, by the lies and ineptitude, in the glorification of unthinking machismo. The story of this country's ailments goes beyond one-dude, goes beyond one destructive quartet of years. Is Joe Biden the answer?

Would Bernie have been the answer?

How will we move forward with dismantling systemic racism? With dismantling the patriarchy? How much does Biden even care about all that? Kamala, sure, okay, I could be convinced she's an ally.

But the DNC? The RNC is obviously against any altering of the status quo, but so are the Democrats. They torpedoed Bernie, just like they torpedoed Howard Dean in 2000 and tried to torpedo Obama in '08.

I'm afraid they'll take the W for the White House and try to "move forward" while not actually doing anything positive for the greater good.

First order, though, is avoiding the million-cases-a-week projection of this pandemic. And a subset of the the 70 million thinks they shouldn't have to wear masks.

All I can say is: IT ISN'T ABOUT BEING FORCED, IT'S ABOUT GIVING A SHIT ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE.

This is what we're dealing with, and the outgoing regime just made this kind of personality somehow socially defensible and mainstream, a truly terrible and sickening thing that's come out of the last four years.

Meanwhile, we ready the torches and sharpen the pitchforks.

A return to normalcy would be a waste and a mirage at best. The time for civility may have passed, but I'm open to talks about the best way to get the results we need.