Visiting my parents this week, and so far this can be counted mostly in hours slept, meals eaten, East Coast beers consumed, and DVDs watched. That's okay. It's a good extension of the downtime I granted myself last week while school was out (when I really should have been catching up on some freelance writing, but found I would have rather driven a spike through my head. Somehow, it's easier to work 10 hours a day than one...something about inertia...)

Our one "tourist" activity so far has been our pilgrimage to the Lou Costello statue in Paterson, NJ, his hometown (and my mother's). Lou stands a mere five miles from my parents' house, but it's quite a five miles. Sometime in the 60s, the local garment economy broke down and Paterson went from Silk City to Lean on Me in just a few years. Today's Paterson, just over the bridge from my middle-middle class hometown, is your typical urban blight. Parts feel like urban neighborhoods I love, like Dorchester in Boston; other parts feel like the worst parts of LA I've seen, ie even I would have been uncomfortable getting out of the car and walking around.

My parents, in general, were NOT amused. They left the car ignition on while we hopped out and snapped our photo of Lou. Suffice to say my mother doesn't recognize much of her old city.

Then the ghetto yielded to some Dorchester-like stretches, then we were over the bridge and back in white-white middle-middle land, which is less middle than the town in my memory, now that a one-bedroom condo goes for 200 large.

I know enough about urban economics to sort of understand what happened to Paterson, and I know enough about the value of bedroom suburbs with "good" schools to understand what's happening to my town. I'm still amazed on both counts.

I recall working fast food after school during my senior year, and that most of my fellow employees were high school kids who took the bus in from Paterson. What, I wondered, was wrong with a town where a kid couldn't even find a fast food job, and had to commute to one? What, I wonder now, is wrong with a town (mine) that can't get its own high school kids to fill the minimum wage jobs?

My time in the land of fast food chicken is another story for another day.

Time for another edition of "Real? Or the Onion?

Kyrgyz Prtstrs Vrthrw Gvrnmt

This girl always looked young for her age, so she is probably in middle school in this picture. I don't know what's up with the umbrella and the watermelon ball. She's just that way -- eccentric, like so many geniuses.

This girl got to go to the college of her choice and do exactly what she wanted to do when she grew up. She traveled, she read, she stayed busy. I think she was one of the few people in her field who had a life. Especially for someone who spent most of her life in school, she lived well.

She also died well, if stupid-early. She didn't linger in a hospital bed. I don't know if it took a minute or several hours, but she didn't spend a whole lot of time on it, as though she knew it was going to be a boring project if she drew it out. Isn't that all most of us really want at the end? Not to suffer, to be remembered like we were instead of wasting away?

That girl grew up to have a good run. I think Little Beth would have thought Grown Up Beth was insanely cool. And so, she would have been okay with how it turned out. The more time goes by, the more I'm okay with it, too.

I know all the standard suggestions for what to do on the one-year anniversary of someone's death. What I'm going to do instead is ask myself what my inner 12-year-old has to say about my life and my choices, and ask you all to do the same.


With love and squalor,
RIP Dr. Elizabeth Katherine Anastasia Fishtank Holmes
6/24/73-3/23/04

Weekend road trip, continued

We woke up at 10am in Fremont, having slept some very good sleep. Jen fed us toast, jam, and coffee then we followed her to the nearest gas station. Then we headed out of town to Milpitas, just north of San Jose, for take-out Vietnamese food.

Da Koa Sandwiches is in a strip mall in what seems like a fairly dull neighborhood. Just like in LA, it's all about knowing where to look (and how far to drive). We got sandwiches to go ($1.75!) and some plates for dinner ($2.50!) and were pleased that we'd avoid road food all day. As we paid, an old Asian man looked in disbelief at our purchases and said something incomprehensible to us. Jen answered, "They eat everything!" What he'd said was "You eat fish sauce?" It was in English, I just couldn't hear him.

It's East of Eden, alright

We decided to go down the slower, more scenic 101 for a while before crossing over to the faster, duller I-5. I told Rick I'd accept crossing the mountains that connect the two highways if we could stop in Salinas, John Steinbeck's hometown. I mostly know it as the town that's eliminating its libraries, which I've railed about before. (They're at least fighting it now.) It's supposed to be a poor town, but as we drove through the "Salinas next 6 exits" sprawl looking for a sign to downtown, we saw nothing but rather upscale looking shopping/entertainment complexes.

When we entered downtown, Rick quickly observed that Salinas must be one of those towns that has destroyed its city center in favor of superstores on the outskirts and out of town. Signs everywhere touted downtown's "redevelopment;" this may be too little too late. They are, at least, putting in a movie theater. Once a town loses its movie theater, that's the fast track to being a sucky town.

I'd imagined maybe a statue of Steinbeck and a converted house with a tiny museum, but found the state-of-the-art Steinbeck Center, which supposedly takes several hours to see. Yikes. Instead, we ate our Vietnamese sandwiches (they didn't give us any hot peppers -- we'll have someone Asian order for us next time) and decided to have a pint at the brewpub, Monterey Coast Brewing, conveniently located near the Steinbeck Center. It didn't have anything adventurous on tap or on the menu, but it was a cozy little place with brick walls and hanging at the bar felt comfortable. After seeing so much new, slapdash, tan, soulless California architecture all weekend, I appreciate anyone putting out the effort to lay some bricks. The prices were not low, but not absurd, and the beer was quite solid. In short, if we lived there, we'd be happy to make it our local.

After visiting the gentrified, shiny new part of Pasadena they've got the nerve to call "Old Town," it was at least something to see an actual OLD TOWN called oldtown. I hope it continues to become a pleasant place to spend a few hours without pricing out the 16% of the population that lives below the poverty line, because all the surrounding towns are froofy, and I don't know where else in the area a poor person could go. Oh, and GET THE FUCKING LIBRARIES BACK!

Okay, time to go home...

I made it through the mountain pass without vomiting, and then we were back on the 5. Not much to report, except that the Tule Elk State Reserve was woefully elk-free. We could see a few way off in the distance, but there wasn't even a ranger on duty -- perhaps s/he knew something we didn't. Oh well.

The Vietnamese dinners were delicious.

The end.

So I got myself out of LA for the weekend, which is often nothing short of a medical necessity. Also, it's amusing that I've become the type of person who will drive six hours for a party. The party was a good excuse to revisit the Bay Area, anyway.

New love for the 5

I-5 is famously boring. I thought so last time, driving it from SF to LA, but that was after days of breathtaking scenery in Oregon and northern California. Now, after months of LA traffic and sprawl, the emptiness of I-5 was more refreshing than boring. That's scary.

New love for the rest of the Bay

We rolled into the South Bay without having to refill the gas tank once. Our friend Jen, whose family house we were crashing at, drove us around town and told us all the urban legends and stories of colorful lunatics/murderers associated with the otherwise dull suburban town of Fremont. We also saw various houses MC Hammer used to live in. Can't touch that!

Next, we hit Oakland and checked out Lake Merrit in the middle of town. Oakland is suppose to be San Francisco's ghetto cousin, but the lake are looked pretty damn nice. Then we spent some time tooling around Oakland's Chinatown, which has apparently been around since the damn 1870s. It was pretty laid back, and free of tourists (except us), unlike San Francisco's Chinatown. We had dirt-cheap, yummy Chinese pastry at a little hole in the wall Jen's been coming to since she was a kid. Egg custard!

We were still feeling exploratory, so Jen took us to the famous hippie-but-turning-yuppie Telegraph Ave in Berkeley. It reminded me of Venice beach, except that the street vendors took credit cards. But you can imagine it: buskers, homeless, Hare Krishnas, way too many people selling beaded jewelry (and dog leashes), acutal tie-dye, used CD stores, bookstores. I imagine we missed its heydey by a few decades, but it was still very much worth seeing. We also glanced onto the Berleley campus, said "Yep, that's where all the protests were! We've got hippie cred!" and that was about it. We were a little touristed out by then.

Old love for San Francisco

We nixed the idea of any more tourist activity and demanded a beer at Rogue in North Beach. We each got samplers, four 4-oz. taster glasses. I had the bitter, hefeweizen, barleywine, and stout. I'd had the stout before and it was still delicious. The bitter was to style. The hefeweizen had some Belgian flavor and was funky (in the good way). The barleywine could have been a bit better balanced, as it tasted a little too much like a glass of alcohol.

That's possibly why I felt drunk after just those four little glasses. Oh, and I suppose Rick ordered another ten ounces of beer that we split. And Jen didn't like two of her samples and gave them to us. Still, that's less than two pints. What the hell? Clearly, it was time to get some food in my stomach.

We stumbled into Giordano Bros., a "Pittsburgh style" sandwich shop (not that I've ever been to Pittsburgh to know the difference). At the counter, I ask what the hell "hot coppa" is and receive a sample. What it is is spicy and yummy; I order a sandwich. And an Anchor Steam Porter (what the hell, I'm on vacation). The sandwich comes to me with cole slaw and fries INSIDE THE SANDWICH, and this is somehow awesome. The SF Bay Guardian sums it up: ""Pittsburgh-style" means modeled after Primanti Brothers, the famous steel city all-night hangout, where the assumption is you're too drunk to count to three, let alone distinguish between french fries and coleslaw, so they slop it all onto your sandwich."

Luckliy Owen is an old enough, good enough friend that we can show up at his apartment two hours before the party already half-lit. Highlights of the shindig include the gourmet beer, the cheese, drunk-dialing our senior year roommate, and me not saying anything embarassing to any strangers. Good deal.

Next up: "You eat fish sauce?", John Steinbeck's hometown, and where the hell are the elk?

To be continued.

Dead horse beatin'...yet another Terri Schiavo bitch 'n' moan

Incredibly biased headline of the day, spotted yestesday at a gas station, was, I believe, "Congress meets to help Schiavo."

As I said at time, "Which verb in this sentence does not belong? Hint: it's not 'meets.'"

If you really think keeping Terri Schiavo's body alive is helping her, it's time to read Johnny Got His Gun and meditate on exactly what "life" is worth when you can't communicate with anyone or leave your hospital bed. And that book's main character wasn't even brain damaged.

I'd love to see a picture of her now, since the only one the press ever seems to treat us to is the pic from 2001 where she appears to be smiling. Stand at a bedside with a camera long enough, and as long as the patient's muscles still work, you're going to catch an alert-looking expression eventually. It's not enough justification for keeping her propped up by tubes for all these years.

In short, I think her parents are incredibly selfish.

I also find it interesting, from a ball-dropping media point of view, that it's very difficult to find out what brought on Sciavo's heart attack. Most articles never mention that she was brought down due to a chemical imbalance caused by an eating disorder. Are we using this situation as a public health wake-up call about the dangers of eating disorders? Of course not. It's not on the Republican agenda.

The irony of our neo-con "culture of life" only caring about fetuses and vegetables has been mentioned elsewhere. Insert your own pithy comment here.

I've got a little Bloglines search feed for the phrase "la marathon," and as a result, I've checked out some runners' blogs lately.

Goddamn, runners can be an incredibly boring lot.

I know I was a bit overly race-y in the days before the marathon, but that's partially because I was hanging out with two other marathoners and a triathlete and I knew it was okay. Kick me up the ass if I ever start to blog in detail about my exercise habits (or, God forbid, eating habits, which I do not expect to change except during carbo-loading pre-race weeks).

I mean, I know I'm sometimes in danger of becoming an edu-blog, but we've all been teenagers and we've all been to school, so I hope that stuff is a bit more general-interest. I'll use movies as a general guide: there have been a ton of popular flicks about inner city schools (Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, Dangerous Minds, etc etc etc) but running? Chariots of Fire? Which I've never even seen.

Another unnecessary yet amusing pop culture reference from the LA Times:
Walt Whitman "was akin to a gay, hirsute Eminem."

It turns out there is a name for those doctored vehicles like the chicken car in Santa Monica: art cars. Very fun.

I'm partial to the ones with a ton of crap glued to them, like toys, more toys, tile, and postcards. Uri Geller has one, too, adorned with -- of course -- cutlery.

Most LA-centric religious propaganda I've ever seen:
The billboard I drove past today that read,
"Stop using my name in vain or I'll make rush hour even longer.
-God"

Unsettling compliment:
"You weren't here the day we learned this, so I still don't get it."

Thrift store buy:
An In-N-Out Burger t-shirt for $1.49.

Other thrift store buy of the day:
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" for $0.54, causing me to return to the hospital where I'd just visited one of my students and give it to him.

(Yeah, any day that involves the airport AND a hospital could have been a better day.)

Petty annoyance:
Why has the school cafeteria started draping the Wednesday spaghetti 'n' meatballs in processed cheesefood?

Major annoyance:
So, Children's Hospital is still a hospital, so it's icky regardless of how it's decorated. But, in an attempt to make things less traumatic for the kiddies, there was a fair amount of colorful art and other decor around the place. I'm not saying adult hospitals should have the "giraffe elevator" (you can picture it, I'm sure) -- but maybe a little bit of effort to make them less damn depressing. It's not only kids who hate hospitals, and it's not only young patients for whom we should be trying to improve the experience.

Unrelated bitch 'n' moan:
I still can't walk correctly.

Amusing insult:
"You're walking like a 30-year-old!"

Yippee! I finished the marathon. I am somewhat crippled, but did manage to get out of bed and can walk (hobble).

The "unofficial" results don't back me up, but I even finished in under 6 hours.

I am *so* never doing this again.

And here is a blurry photo of me with greenish-blue hair and Rick with blueish-green hair.

Go me, it's my birthday
Gonna run a marathon like it's my birthday...

And the hair turned out more green that blue, but s'alright.

This is what 30 looks like.

My boss gave us the dress code lecture today.

"If you're still wearing blue jeans to work, it's insubordination at this point."

I wonder what she'll think about blue *hair*...

Quote of the day:

"The Punk Rock Minute is brought to you by Carl's Jr."

Carl's Jr. is a regional fast food chain in the McDonalds tradition; the Punk Rock Minute is a perhaps self-explanatory radio news segment hosted by Dickie Barrett of Boston ska band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. (Look, another Bostonian couldn't take it anymore and took a job in LA!)

"Indie" 103 has been a pleasant part of my Los Angeles since it started broadcasting what I referred to as "alternative oldies" - without commercials at first, the golden age of any radio station - on a frequency that used to hold dance music. Their version of a heavy rotation playlist included the cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" best known from the movie "Donnie Darko." Inevitably, they eventually had to hire on-air personalities and run commercials. The ad space was to be sold by Clear Channel.

Okay, we all thought, it's sort of hurts us to have a station with any ties to that particular corporate radio behemoth calling itself "indie." But they hired former Sex Pistol Steve Jones to do the lunchtime show, and then they hired Henry Rollins to do the single best radio show I'd ever heard. Their playlist remained pretty sweet and not too overbearing on the new, hip singles. They programmed some reggae, country, and other random tunes on Sundays. It was all good.

I got disgruntled when I started hearing The Killers every hour (as much as I enjoy "Mr. Brightside") and even more so when Henry Rollins' show disappeared (he cited schedule conflicts). I really got suspicious when they started a morning show a month ago, since I HATE HATE HATE radio morning shows JUST PLAY THE MUSIC DAMMIT. Ahem. But yeah, they hired yet another amusing celebrity host, the aforementioned Dickie Barrett, and it was pretty fun to hear ska-punk on my way to work at 7 am.

I'm forever ambivalent about the mix of college radio sounds with the corporate radio format, but I can live with it as long as they keep playing The Pixies once in a while.

So I hope that when Clear Channel is forced to turn it back over to Entravision, they don't change the format. There have been rumors that Entravision, which does mostly Spanish-language programming, would turn it back into a Spanish station as it was many years ago. I wouldn't mind getting to know some rock en espanol, but I'd like it in addition to my favorite radio station, not instead of it.

PS radio gods: Don't mess with KDAY ("hip hop today and back in the day"), either, unless it's to make it even more old skool.