Other Stuff

Getting the Bird

It was thanksgiving long ago and my wife didn’t feel like cooking and me cooking was and continues to be a bad idea. So we went out. The three girls were too young to know that the novelty of going out for a holiday meal weighs lightly against the high quality of the food mom normally prepared. Hoping to mitigate that, I selected a rather nice restaurant.

Feeling the need to wander a little out of the box, we ordered their special, which was a game hen rather than the usual turkey. They were…cute. The girls rarely had to tackle food that maintained the shape of the animal it came from. Sure, they had shrimp—under protest. (And animal crackers, which don’t really count.) I even told them that hotdogs were made from a single part of the pig and when they were older and married, they would know what part that was. Oddly, they were barely out of elementary school, and unmarried, before they made sure I wished I had never made that joke.

When they were presented with what they coined as the “Barbie” version of turkey by the server, eating did not ensue. Oh, a couple of them tried and managed a few pieces of protein that they announced as tasty. But, it did not go well. The other diners in the restaurant found us rather gauche as they nimbly dissected and nibbled on the little bird  carcasses. It became obvious that the ridiculousness of the situation outweighed propriety—so we added wine.

The girls’ mom had a pinot-propelled departure from decorum and with two forks made her small Cornish game hen into a puppet, ala Charley Chaplin and the dinner rolls. Soon her small bird was dancing on the plate, kicking into the mashed potatoes. The girls, being children, had to have puppets too. Soon they were squabbling about who would get what piece of cutlery to animate their dinners.  Mom was out of control. When people from other tables looked at her, she would have her “puppet” voice a falsetto greeting and a wish for a happy thanksgiving. They would turn around quickly—daring to cast their gaze no longer upon the crazy lady—which was like chasing away ants with honey. It only escalated the show. Soon the girls had small birds dancing on their plates, too. Being siblings, whole dramatic plots were orchestrated.

I sat back, drank my wine, and watched the show. The server approached our table with a combination of like-I-need-this-shit-when-stuck-working-a-holiday, and thank- God-for-a-break-in-the-boredom attitude. She asked if they could bring us something else to eat. The kids looked a little concerned they were about to lose their (arguably) edible toys. I suggest we leave the puppets alone and just bring the desert. Lowering my tone, I conspired that when they were distracted with the pie and ice cream, she could snatch their plates safely. She could feel her tip growing and decided to play along. Mom, speaking through her fowl puppet, said that was a great idea.

The bait and switch worked and soon the kids were elbow-deep in pumpkin pie and ice cream. As they ate the waitress practiced her ninja skills and relieved them of their plates like a pickpocket working a subway platform.

When the desert plates were bare and the wine bottle was empty, we left through a gauntlet of other diners. They speared us with disapproving looks. The kids didn’t notice. Mom reveled in it. The help just smirked.

 

3000 Miles or Vintage Fetish Porn

She looked pretty miserable, as any sane person would be in these circumstances…

We had pulled over to get gas and to rehydrate, thankful the desert had shown a wee bit of sinister mercy by turning the temp down to a near-polar 106 degrees. Breezy poured water over her head and paced out in the parking lot of the Lake Havasu City AM/PM, which is a lot like every other AM/PM I’ve ever seen. Monty was watching her carefully. If his passenger got dizzy on his motorcycle, he’d be the one to keep her from tipping off and sliding onto the desert highway at speeds unsuitable for human contact. Awhile back the thermometer on my motorcycle had read 111 degrees. That was just before the wicked wind had kicked up dust and the faint smell of sulfur, as if to remind us this was the kind of place that might have given those hunched over, quill-wielding writers variations on a theme for hell.

Highway 97 was a vision of hell, one construction zone after another that sprayed my bike with tar and hammered my spine through the rugged suspension of a 900-pound motorcycle. My first night on the road I dropped from the tree lined Oregon highways into Reno. That bastard child of Las Vegas is not aging well. It was well past dark when I hit her rutted streets and rattled the glass in empty windows. When the drunk in the douche bag, neon bright Hawaiian shirt was so distracted by the screaming he was doing at his girlfriend/wife/stranger that he stumbled into the path of my bike, I decided I had had enough and pulled into the first hotel that appeared.

The room is what you’d expect if you were looking for twenty minutes to eight hours of privacy in Reno, just off The Strip, for less than a pair of twenties. If the walls could sing, it would be verse after verse of vice or worse. I stripped the covers off the bed with as few fingers as possible and stretched out. I was up every couple hours to pull back the tar and nicotine starched curtains and look out the window at my motorcycle, which looked a little annoyed to be stuck outside where the sounds of the streets indicated no one seemed to be having a good night. Morning came soon enough and I was riding east into the rising sun before the smell of the room had faded from the inside of my nostrils enough to where I could eat breakfast.

The desert on a motorcycle is a crazy making thing. There are stretches of untold miles of road with no bends in the midst of opposing horizons hiding even more road. The heat has weight and soul and combines with rapidly morphing clouds to create the kind of mindset that had Hunter S. Thompson seeing bats—with or without the ether binge. You needed to be neither Hunter S. nor on drugs for your mind to succumb to the disharmonious onomatopoeic drone of tires on the hot blacktop, backed up by a chorus of thundering exhaust. The motions a mind goes through to stay awake against all this monotony would scare the hell out of most civilians who never dabbled in hallucinogenics or the writings of Mr. Thompson.

As I watched one traffic sign after another fly by, I imagined if I was a music writer I would name my songs after traffic signs so that people would start humming my tunes every time they saw a traffic sign.

“My heart is an OPEN RANGE, baby. Waiting to bake your pie…,” or

“Your LOW SHOULDERS lower my resistance to you…,” or

“CONSTRUCTION AHEAD for my broken heart….”

Yes, it seemed totally appropriate that road sign music should be of the Country Western genre.

For the most part traffic was so sparse I could stop to take on and let off water (sometimes at the same time) without company intruding from either direction. Even after shutting off the bike, I could still hear the engine turning at the 3200 rpms that had empowered the now still bike to go at 79mph. Usually there was no wind and I found myself turning slowly, trying not to let the sun heat one side of my body over the other. When the water bottle was packed away, I had to sit on the black leather seat sloooowly since it had been collecting sunlight. I always paused for a brief prayer before hitting the starter button, thinking this would be a downright shitty time for the ol’ girl to decide not to start. She always started, though. With the tip of my left boot I pushed the lever that clunks her into first gear and I let the guttural torque of the engine pull the bike to speed. 

Phoenix was cars, construction, and smog-spiced heat. Traffic was aggressive, and I had to punch through to the other side. The lines on the road had been repainted so many times that drivers now ignored them; and a person of diminished capacity had randomly lined up traffic cones to divert cars away from the machines that make highways—or so they would have us believe. I was in the middle lane with cars threatening to hump me from both sides when the cones to the right unceremoniously started squeezing that lane into mine. The struggling little econo-box to my right tried to move into me. The guy on the other side of me was making love to his phone, oblivious to the drama unfolding just outside his passenger window.

I rolled on the throttle, which lifted a small plunger that pressurized a fine mist of gasoline into the throat of the carburetor. This mist was drawn into the twin cylinders of the engine where the pistons compressed it against the spark plug, which fired—exciting rabid oxidation of the gaseous mixture and causing it to force those pistons down into the crank shaft, which sped that energy to the Dunlop tire right under my ass. Like a hoggish rocket, my bike fired from between the cars as my space between them vanished like spilled water in the Arizona sun. I don’t take this kind of thing personally any more, but when the econo-box pulled up next to me, I was looking for something to throw to get this idiot away from me. With my best menacing face, I turned and looked at the driver of the car. Instead of a preamble to road rage, she was mouthing out “sorry” with her hand over her heart. I touched the tip of my helmet visor like I was tipping my hat. 

My dad experienced a slight change in health, and it signified the time was now for me to see him in his natural habitat. So, I combined a visit with him with the yearly motorcycle epic journey I’m compelled by various mental pathologies to undertake. When you say, “a single-wide in the middle of the desert,” it sounds like something to foreshadow the inevitable punch line of a traveling salesman joke. But, Dad’s natural habitat was mostly a nice deck from which to watch the birds and the sunsets and the storms. There was a mobile home, but also a stick-built cottage among other features of the property that kept it well above the level of “quaint.” I, as one would suspect, in no way intoned Martha Stewart when I rode a bug and tar-splattered Harley Davidson up onto what would be his lawn during the wet season. I had endured vicious road construction down through Oregon, a bad night in Reno, and a ride over the brand new Hoover Dam bypass bridge before crossing Arizona on I-10. My skin had shed its Oregon pale for Arizona earth tone, and my T-shirt had stains where the gallons of water escaped my body via other means. I was, by no means, classing up the place. 

The first morning at my dad’s place in the desert I made instant coffee. My PNW coffee snobbery gets shut off when I cross state lines on a bike. I wandered out onto the deck to a symphony of birds performing to a warm morning light. About halfway into my second cup my dad appeared on the deck. He’d been out walking for an hour and was now doing pushups. ‘Perhaps he has his health issue under control after all,’ thinks me, since he seems to be doing better than me at the moment. His mind is fine too, even if it works a lot like mine. I see this in the various appointments around his place that have a kind of Tim Burton elegance meets Rube Goldberg’s whimsy. He had rigged up a barrel with pipes that takes the rainwater from his roofs and pushes it out to the cactus and trees in his front yard. He made his own skunk trap to get the little bastards out from under his house.

Everywhere there was evidence of wind. The bird feeder was wired in place, and the gates had been shimmed against rattling. Days later I would step inside from the deck to get more coffee; and upon returning to my deck chair, the sky would have had clouded up and lightening would be fingering into the hills on the horizon. The wind was familiar. It was the same wind that ripped the face shield off my helmet last year; and just like last year, it came out of nowhere. I caught my coffee cup before it blew off the 4x4 post I’d set it on. The raindrops were huge and coming in at an angle. And in minutes they were gone with the wind and the sun took the moisture back into the sky.

My old friend Monty and his lady Breezy moved to this land of whacky weather this year; so when it came time to return dad to his own devices, we hooked up to get in a few miles together before I left them in Laughlin, NV. Good riding partners are hard to come by, and Monty and I have the years and miles together to make following him down a raised black strip across the barren landscape feel as at home as my own bed and bathroom crossword puzzle. We know when to make miles when the wind is to our backs and when to stop every 30-40 miles to find water when the heat is in our face. 

The shade of the rest stop picnic table cover was welcome, though not nearly as effective as we’d hoped. Monty used the safety wire that keeps my GPS from becoming road debris to clean his pipe so he could have a smoke while Breezy filled our water bottles. When she came back she sat across from us and drank the better part of one of the bottles with a smile. Monty’s cherry tobacco smoke pleasantly wafted toward me in the hot breeze. And I didn’t have a single damn to give about anything that had to do with life beyond right then. I knew I didn’t feel this way enough and nudged Monty. “What?” he asked. “Nothing,” I replied. He nodded. Breezy laughed, oddly knowingly. I realized that this moment would be coming with me into whatever happens next. But angels on Ariels in leather and chrome were not swooping down from heaven to take me home quite yet and we had 200 miles to go before we slept. I’m grateful now that I didn’t know then the temp wasn’t going to drop below 100 degrees until hours after sunset. Since she isn’t prone to complaining, asking her how she’s feeling is a useless way to gauge her health. But we all agreed Breezy’s colour was better so it was time to saddle up.

Why did it have to be motorcycling? Why couldn't it be crocheting or collecting daguerreotype types of vintage fetish porn? Instead of staying at home and needling doilies or marveling at sepia toned, "accessorized" couples and their piercings, I have to point the front tire of my tired Harley down a lonely road and ride until the noise of the V-twin replaces the noise in my head with a silence born of cacophony. It is in these moments that the psychic lid gets pulled back a bit and I can see why I'm here-in this dry, treeless place where I am separated from the things that help me get through my day. For it is from this place I can best see changes that are sweeping through who I am. I can see an industry trading celluloid for pixels as less sacrilege and more inevitability. People I love who are flirting with death are really okay, either way. I see relationships that used to be the most important thing in the world to me atrophy into three sentence emails. And I see all things being the way they are, and maybe, just maybe, for this moment, I'm okay with all of that. Because with all this change brings new possibilities, new people to love, and new ideas to explore. I suspect I will be gone long before I exhaust all of these things. But today, I have a full tank of gas, a half tube of sun block, a few quarts of water, and nothing on the road between the horizon and me. My thumb finds the starter switch on the handle bar and...

 

A Well Heeled Bug

The sounds roaches make in real life: “...”

The sounds roaches make in movies: “Skritchezzechezz...clickity, clicklity.”

The sound I heard when I saw this roach: “SKRITCHEZZECHEZZ…CLICKITY, CLICKLITY. I’M GOING TO KILL Y’ALL!!!!! BWAAAHAAAHAAAA!”

When I saw the roach skitter across the floor, my mouth opened before I could groom what was going to come out. “Oh, look. They have a cat.” Though the roach was only a couple inches long, it was the biggest roach I had ever seen, and hope to ever see. “I guess it’s not a cat…”

The restaurant was of the western theme variety. The quality of the food was what you would expect from a place that lures in Middle America with kitsch. Though the roach was unwelcomed, it was not entirely unexpected.

There were looks of abject terror on the faces of some of the other diners when I rudely informed them they were sharing their space with a large bug that my laughs-before-propriety tendency announced as a cat. The bug was on the floor and it didn’t seem too distressed by being discovered.

She was young and in a pink gown. She rose from her table, strode across the room with purpose, and with a single stab nailed the roach with the heel of her shoe. Since the heel was as pointed as a pencil, I was impressed—and perhaps a little aroused. I had visions of Zena Warrior Princess in my head and a whole arsenal of commentary about her saving us from the filthy creature was loaded and ready to go. This time I decided to stand down before firing off my comments. I hesitated to stomp on it myself due to my girlish fear of it going up my pant leg in a desperate attempt to flee my manly size-13s. This young woman had hiked up her gown like she was about to ford a stream—giving the bug no shade, and stomped it with enough force to kick-start a Harley with fouled plugs. She didn’t even wipe off her heel—she just fluffed up her gown and smiled at the room with a combination of childish “Oops” and an adult “So there.”

Fortunately we had finished the unremarkable meal before the sighting so there was no need to force down food sprinkled with suspicion. I did spend the next few hours fearful of every gastro-intestinal fluctuation—hoping it was not foreshadowing a pyrotechnic night reading and rereading the shampoo label in the motel bathroom.

Our reaction to bugs is as primitive as the bug itself. Some evolutionary prerogative tells us we do not want to hang out with them. This one seemed to know it. This one was so arrogant; it cost it its life. Stupidly, it walked out onto the floor of a crowded room like a boss, unimpressed by the humans trying to eat bad food they paid too much for. I lucked out that nothing came of eating food from a building that housed large cockroaches. Though luck ran out that night for an overly confident bug on the business end of fashionable, sexy heel. I’m sure there is a story about why she sprang to splat the bug with no ceremony, but you don’t ask questions like that of a lady who can wield a black stiletto heel so dangerously.

 

No, It's Not a Dry Heat

It was the kind of heat that burns from the inside out and the forecast was for more. So, this is Texas. I hid for a day in the artificial environment of the 27th floor. Boredom roared and I was compelled to be somewhere other than in a motel room. Even trying to figure out the transit kiosk in the glaring sun couldn't be worse than this.

I gave an old woman on the train behind me the most casual of glances, and she used it as an opening to talk about the heat. Being the only white boy on the train, it seemed redundant to tell her I wasn't from these parts and the heat was killing me too. She talked about getting home where although she didn't really have air conditioning, she could just sit still. Her stop came and she passed out the sliding aluminum doors into the blinding heat. I slipped back into air-conditioned induced paralysis and watched the people and cityscape passing by in the windows. Cell phone conversations provided stories of future employment and trouble with kids--shared with almost brutal volume inside the car. But, it was somehow perfect.

The sushi bar was right by the aquarium. The irony was too perfect. "Dark and dirty" was the review that come up on my phone. The location and the review were an irresistible combination, so I fled the 107-degree heat into the beat-up storefront. There was no smell of fish in the air and the sushi coolers along the bar seemed in order, so I ordered. The flat black on the walls was uneven, like it was a time-lapse of many partial paint cans getting used up. It went nicely with music that sounded like some sort of tragic opera where each line ended with guttural gagging. I sat at a rickety table and a smile-less young woman brought me ice tea.

It was they type of food I hope for when my travel instincts tell me to take a chance on a sushi shop with a negative review next to an aquarium. I'd been living on airport cuisine and hotel restaurant soylent green so I was grateful to have a meal put together just for me--the lone customer in the restaurant. In an act of transparent flattery, the owner of the place said he could tell by how I used chopsticks that I must love sushi. He returned to my table with a dish of raw tuna. I ate the first chunk without soy sauce. It was perfect. I asked him where it was from. "Hawaii," he said as he fled back to the kitchen. He returned with raw salmon and told me it was from Alaska. It was perfect, too. So good I never bothered with the wasabi.

I fought sleep on the train ride back. The spike of energy from the raw nutrients in the fish was almost overpowered by finally being full of food I didn't have to unwrap. A muttering man who wouldn't sit clung to a suitcase. From the suitcase he pulled out tissue after tissue to wipe the sweat from his brow--then frantically tossed the tissues to the floor like they were on fire. He could have been schizophrenic, or just damned hot. Either would justify his behavior. The fare inspector walked by him without asking for his ticket. Me she asked. 

 

SOUR CREAM, FIFTY-CENTS EXTRA

She put her hands delicately on the other waitresses’ hips, when squeezing by her from behind. It looked as though she was being careful to not let her pinkies touch—keeping them a slightly raised above the rest of their fingers, hovering over the convex curve of the young woman’s hips. Her arms moved fluidly, like a dance. Her partner’s hips shifted slightly when met—like a cat being stroked with a feather. Instead of the cultured sound of a studio piano they were dancing to the clattering of dishes.

Clattering of dishes—words that intone sounds that can arouse images of a busy diner: wait staff rushing to and fro; diners nosing newspapers; coffee poured on the fly; classic rock cranking from the kitchen. The diner was awash with the Sunday morning breakfast crowd. The Formica playing field of tabletops and counters was buzzing with players. Servers passed food to the customers, who passed money to the cashier. Amidst this activity, one waitress sweetly dragged her thin hands down the hips of another. They might have been lovers—young enough to be undamaged by the consequences of mixing hormones and work. The way they touched was contrasted by the speed and din of what they were doing. They seemed to be surrounded by a bell of slow motion silence when they pressed past/into each other.

The Latino workers were careful to not make eye contact and stayed in perpetual motion—trading racks of washed mugs for bus bins full of dirty ones culled from the playing field. They could snake quietly and quickly between the knees and elbows of servers hustling plates of hot food. They were a world away from the young men at the counter who looked right through them. These young men with eyeglasses too modern for their hipster garb tracked the asses of the young women behind the counter like they are watching a parade. The guys were speaking of something else, but they are all looking at the same thing. The waitresses offered them no reaction—not on the menu.

The only timeout from the game was when one dark haired waitress brushed against the other. That moment of electric stillness was only for them, and only for a moment. Then, like a well-placed rest in a bar of music, in one beat the tempo picked up and they were back.

The rain kicked up outside and the new arrivals brought with them rain drops pealing off their clothes. They stomped at the door, knocking loose a couple drops before coming all the way in—a meek gesture of consideration toward those who would have to navigate a wet floor.  The hostess was in control. She rang out the names of those to be seated and the chosen fell forth to be led. And it didn’t stop—but, only for a moment, when two young women in aprons and name tags snuck a moment of intimacy through a passing touch that could only be seen from the counter seat, second from the end, across from the twin coffee makers and the new microwave.

 

The Patron Saint of Fabulous!

Norman Borlaug is credited for saving more lives than Oskar Schindler by a factor of roughly 84,000.  That’s 84,000 TIMES. Norman Borlaug is the father of the “Green Revolution.” He is an agronomist and humanitarian who developed high yield crops, which are considered to have saved millions and millions of people. Oskar Schindler is the guy they made that movie about. He saved about 1200 people.

No small part of my youth was misspent ingesting various substances with friends and contemplating questions like: Who is the person who is responsible for saving the most human lives? We would come up with Jonas Salk, Louis Pasteur, and Shakespeare. As we started drying out our brain cells we would consider the contributions of Gutenberg; the folks who came up with the Scientific Method; and, eventually, after watching a few of our own crash and burn, Bill W. We noticed that it was the hard work of those little-known names that did the most good. It is an interesting commentary on our species that the news is ripe with stories of heroic rescues propelled by adrenalin, yet the lone woman or man working late testing batch after batch of vaccines in a dark university lab loses her/his parking space to a football player.

When Dan Savage spoke at OSU as the keynote speaker for PRIDE week last Monday, I showed up with 800 of my closest friends to hear him speak. I have been reading his sex advice column for years, and you’ll find a few of his pod casts on my phone. His flamingly gay, uncensored, and (arguably) nonjudgmental responses to those in the midst of sexual angst are captivating entertainment—and perhaps offer a little hope that someday we will be able to discuss sex without having to apologize for being sexual beings. But what really sparked my interest was hearing him speak of his It Gets Better project.

The It Gets Better website (itgetsbetter.org) describes the project as: “Many LGBT [Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] youth can't picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can't imagine a future for themselves. So let's show them what our lives are like, let's show them what the future may hold in store for them.”

In response to a spate of teen suicides by LGBT teens last year, Dan and his husband, Terry, made a YouTube video informing bullied, hopeless teens that it does get better. Moreover, they invited others—gay and not-so-gay—to make videos, too. Most teens at risk feel that they cannot talk to their parents about what is happening in their lives since their parents disapprove and often follow the twisted advice from the unenlightened fundamentalist groups, shunning and shaming the kids at home.  In their present environment these teens are not going to meet gay adults modeling the great lives that are waiting for them at the other end of their adolescence. So for now they find their support under the covers at night when everyone else is asleep by watching YouTube videos on their phones. People like Dan and Terry (as well as the Obamas, who have made a video for It Gets Better, along with tens of thousands of others) can  join these teens in their own beds  without the permission of their parents and show them that they are not alone and that there is a big world out there where gay people get to be gay, safe,  happy, and productive.

How many gay teens have found hope through this program? How many lives have been saved by this video project going worldwide? Do we now count Al Gore as one of the people who saved the most lives because he invented the internets that allows this project to exist? It seems like a silly question, but it makes the point that acting on a vision can create a new world.

This is far from a call for Dan Savage’s canonization. I know someone who is intimately involved in research and treatment of teen suicide that has gone toe-to-toe with Savage on a few issues—and got Savage to change his tune—be it ever so slightly.  Although my friend gladly praises Savage for this program, he is not a total fan. Let’s just say that Savage’s column can be an acquired taste. He boldly goes where many people’s minds have never gone before, and that can shake up even the most open minded among us. I have to be in the mood to read it and to get into the heads of those whose kinks are so outside my own interests that they rate high on my “Eww!” scale.

Savage has what I perceive as a subtle straight-intolerant background hum. When he asked the straight people in the OSU audience to raise their hands, I paused.  My initial reaction was:  With whom I pick out curtains is not something I have to proclaim, and who the hell is anyone to be asking?  However, I had an interesting subsequent reaction:  If I don’t put my hand up, people might think I’m gay. Was he making a point, or did I make it myself?

I’m glad I was able to make the mistake of denying a gay friend’s gayness when I was in middle school. It’s a mistake one should get out of the way early in life so as to never make it again. Because I wouldn’t participate in the bullying of my friend, presumptions were made. After losing this friend, I realized that refraining from having made fun of him with the rest of the boys was not the same as helping him. Rather, I had been helping myself. I channeled that guilt into a high school career of viciously defending my gay teachers and classmates. This was not cool in a small Oregon logging town in the 1970s. In the 1990s, I helped get my stepdaughter through the school system of another small Oregon logging town.  Now that kid wasn’t into Barbies. She and her partner now have a nice house in Eugene and a couple lovely dogs.  Furthermore, she doesn’t hesitate to call me on it when I perpetuate stereotypes.

Savage ended the two-hour talk with a story about a man who married his horse and was offended and mortified when asked if the horse was a female. The man frantically assured everyone that he was NOT a homosexual.  According to him, that would be sick.

I attended the event with Cassie—another Savage follower. We beat the crowd out of the place and landed in Tommy’s for a late dinner. She expressed gratitude for her good luck at not getting too much crap for being a lesbian in high school. Then again, she wasn’t even born when I graduated from high school, so we high schooled in different worlds. We were both tired and not really talking up a storm like we usually do. So we just looked at each other across the table. There was something in the way that she looked at me that reminded me of my kid, and I realized that things are getting better. Without having to say that, we just nodded at each other as I helped myself to her fries.

I don’t think of Norman Borlaug when I have my morning bread and peanut butter. (Though I never take my morning coffee for granted. Ever.) Is Dan Savage in Norman’s league? Well, no. But, I hope in the future we take LBGT teens living safely and happily for granted—as much for granted as I take my whole grain wheat toast.

 

Film Festival Fondness

I had lunch with the director of the Best Documentary. Sounds impressive, but really we happened to be standing in the Pita Pit at the same time trying to get something to eat before heading off to the next screening. We had 20 minutes.

Such is the nature of film festivals. I crammed about 25 films into about 3 and a half days.

We have our very own da Vinci Days Film Festival here in Corvallis. It’s very good on so many levels and every year I’m up to my elbows in it—from being a judge, which I’ve done since it was on training wheels over ten years ago, to hosting the event at the Avalon, then the Darkside. However, I do not get to see a lot of film. I’m too busy burning NTSC DVDs from PAL discs or moderating a filmmaker panel. Fun stuff. Important stuff.  But, not watching films.

When I go to the Ashland International Film Festival, I watch films. This year I went with a buddy of mine, Brad. I hadn’t planned on going to the fest for a pile of personal reasons that stacked sentimentality over practicality, all of which failed to impress Brad. He had a room with an extra bed so all I had to do was get my pass and show up. One by one he popped the top off of each of my other excuses until I was checking road conditions in Southern Oregon and tossing the tire chains in the trunk anyway. We were like a couple of college kids watching film from nine in the morning until past midnight, eating not-so-good-for-us food, and generally hanging out with anyone who would talk to us anytime we were not in the dark watching a flickering screen. Brad is not in the biz. He is a geologist who loves film the way I love Yosemite’s Half Dome. We had a ball.

Ashland is a lot like Corvallis in so many ways it is a little freaky, from the political atmosphere to the general vibe of the downtown area. It seems to be a caffeinated version of our town. But I go for the film, not for the familiarity, and there was film. Ashland International Film Festival presents film that lives outside the Michael Moore pop documentary world where emotion is cheap and profits are high. At this film festival people with a few bucks and big ideas come to show off what they can do with those two things.

Local-Boy-Made-Good Peter Richardson was a Philomath kid (who now lives in Portland) whose 2006 movie CLEARCUT played at the Avalon to sell-out crowds. His most recent documentary won Juried Best Feature Length Documentary at the AIFF (and won Grand Jury Prize for a documentary at Sundance). HOW TO DIE IN OREGON is an intimate film that follows the end of life process for terminally ill people who choose to legally check out on their own. When the screening was over there was not a dry eye in the house. Peter took the stage for a Q&A. Soon he was joined by family members of the people whose last moments of life we had just witnessed on that screen. The emotional tidal wave swept through the audience all over again. This is not the type of experience you get through Netflix. This is why we go to the movies rather than make them come to us.

There is so much technology out there now that allows people to watch movies anywhere. This same technology puts in the hands of anyone the power to make a movie.  For the price of a shitty used car you can get the same camera BLACK SWAN was shot with. And at film festivals, like Corvallis’ own da Vinci Film Festival, people who have stories to tell can have a place to tell them. In this age where everyone is getting Twitter-pated and YouTubed in lieu of actually sharing an experience, film festivals are one of the strongholds of those who refuse to give up the notion that  a huge part of what makes art art is the human contact. Being in the same place at the same time to feel something cements our bond to each other and allows us to celebrate life or call for change. Cinema is the bonfire of today. It is still a place where we gather to tell stories and learn.

A film festival is also a filter. With the availability of technology comes the availability of a lot of crap. Just because everyone can make a movie doesn’t mean everybody should. With film festivals popping up like iPads at Starbucks it pays to look at how long a festival has been around. I just returned from the tenth annual Ashland film fest. This year will be da Vinci Day’s twelfth. This is a good indicator these fests do an effective job of filtering out the films best shared between those whose life experience hasn’t learnt them getting hit in the crotch is not high comedy. In other words, the chances of you having to sit through something that sucks out loud is pretty low if it is being played at an established film festival.

When the press and crush of people and film cause what feels like will be a permanent ringing in my ears, I head for the park. The sound of Lithia Creek knocks the whitecaps off the top of my adrenals. As I was leaning over the rail of a bridge watching the water dance, I noticed a young woman walking onto the bridge. She was one of the family members of a terminally ill person in HOW TO DIE IN OREGON. She looked like she, too, was detoxing from too much human contact. I watched cancer do its dirty work with a parent and there was no way in hell I would be in a movie about it, let alone answer questions about it in an auditorium full of people who had just seen my life unfurled on the big screen. My reflex was to turn to her and thank her for her courage, usurping a minute from her walk. Instead I smiled and nodded. She smiled back and looked like she was about to put on her game face when I turned away. When I glanced at her again she looked  slightly relieved. We were in the park for the same reason. We were also at the festival for the same reason. However, sometimes art is best digested away from the bonfire. She turned back and smiled when she crossed the bridge before disappearing down the trail. I’d like to think she was acknowledging my restraint.

I’m lucky that my trip back to Corvallis is a trip home to film. With a handful of titles to try to bring to you I also bring with me the faith that there is a place for independent cinema in Corvallis. We host a couple film festivals every year at the Darkside and do dozens of special events where projects get to see the light of the big screen with more than a sofa full of people watching. As much as I enjoy the occasional big-budget special effects showcase that passes as a movie these days, the soul of cinema lives in the minds of those who make the little films with big ideas. Make time for them when you can. The future of film depends on it. 

 

The Best Films (to be in) 2011 and Ignored films of 2010

Okay, I've been doing a little thinking about next years movies and I had some premonitions, if you will. I know we will all be on pins and needles to see if any of this stuff comes to pass.

 

Best new Film Festival of 2011

Christmas Film Festival commemorating the best of Christmas films as seen through the eyes of reindeer called the Venison Film Festival. This one is in Oregon, not Italy.

 

Best Films of 2011

Dennis Hopper, surviving his death last year, teams up with Darren Aronofski to once again make ballet accessible to the masses in a film about schizophrenia induced by the 60s hippy drug culture, EASY SWAN. Hopper/Aronofski will achieve an ironic moment as perfect as Wynona Rider's character complaining about someone stealing her stuff.    

 

Charles Ferguson (INSIDE JOB) teams up with the Swedish director Tomas Alfredson (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN) to produce THE WRONG INSIDER, a lightweight musical comedy about a government run by 12 year-old vampires that suck the life out of banks, leaving the people drained. The American version will show the bankers as the victims.

 

THE SOCIAL NETWORK star Jesse Eisenberg will be play a computer gamer who spends 127 consecutive days playing WoW. His hand has become biologically attached to the keyboard and he has to gnaw his arm off to go outside of his mom's basement to hunt for more Hot Pockets. ALIVE! will only be available on illegal Taiwanese torrents.

 

The Most Disappointing turn out for Darkside films we really did play: 2010.

I don't list films that have played previously at the Darkside. If you want an idea of what to rent rather than coming to a real movie, you're on your own. But if you rent one of these movies below, maybe when you see it on the little screen you'll understand why I tell you a movie should be on the big screen. So when I say to see it big, you'll come in rather than waiting until you can watch it on your smart phone.

 

MOTHER: Her son is accused of murder and she's pissed. She goes from mixing herbs and doing some acupuncture to kicking down doors (figuratively).

 

LEBANON: Think Das Boot in a tank. Not underwater, but on land. Things go very bad and four soldiers try to cling to their humanity in the race to survive. Welcome to serious cinema.

 

A PROPHET: A light-weight, musical comedy...Um, not even close. Prison, violence, revenge. 97% on Rotten Tomatoes so my affection for this film is not unfounded. A nice palette cleanser after watching anything with Adam Sandler.

 

I AM LOVE: Tilda Swinton. That pretty much covers it.

 

And my favorite film no one came to see:

MICMACKS: From the people who made AMELIE. Some people liked this one even better than AMELIE! Seriously, why would no one come out for this? It was funny, cute, took pot-shots at the gun industry. The mysteries of the movie exhibition biz... Maybe I'll write a book about it...Hummmm...

 

A Ripping Good Time

I've known Ron too long. We can read each other way too well and both have a rather large arsenal of things the other will never live down. Thank goodness I was able to add another arrow to his quiver of commentary.

It was a 1968 Cadillac Eldorado, an exquisitely designed American icon of power and function. It was black, with all the chrome pieces right where they belonged. The engine compartment alone was big enough to protect a medium-sized family picnic, complete with potato salad and ants, from a spring shower. And it was long--both ends could have their own zip code. To look down the side of the car is to see all the lines converging and departing with elegance. Today's cars have pretty much hit the snooze bar on styling and are designed for getting from point A to point B with little attention to luxury for the time between. Cars have been downsized, and some use technology to upsize what was lost with the shucking of a couple tons of iron.You can have your airbags (Your vote counts!). I'd rather have an old-fashioned three-point seat belt and a couple of yards of American steel between oncoming traffic and me.

 But, I digress.

Ron collects cars and has a farm building where the livestock have been displaced by cars made decades ago in Detroit. The lean-tos around the farm are laden with carcasses of extinct vehicles content to be picked apart to lend life to their cousins of the road. There is an unexpected order to all this, even if it might be a result of panicked preservation of automotive history before taken by rust, the crusher, and apathy. This is not a place you will find a singlewide with grass growing through the lawn furniture.

He also has motor homes. Not as collectables--more of a mobile comfortable place to stay when he lurks about car flea markets for days at a time. Why he needs three is a moving target.

Whenever I visit his farm--usually a few times a month--we seem to have to play vehicular Tetris. RVs, cars, trucks, and trailers have to be moved to make room for the latest acquisition--in this case, the Eldorado. "I just put in a low-ball bid on it on eBay. I won the damn thing! I beat out a classic car dealer by one dollar." A week later it arrived at the door of his shop on a trailer from Florida.

Moving around the RVs is the most challenging of this dance. They will often sit for years before tickled and teased back to life. This involves finding the right keys on a ring heavier than most of his Lincolns, using jump-starting boxes, swapping out batteries, opening up clogged fuel lines, and spewing liberal amounts of blasphemy--all the necessary ingredients to get these old V-8 engines to sing again. 

It was the smallest RV and it was running roughly. The old Quadrajet was busting loose from years of stale gas and insect habitation. I did a lap around the farm to wake up the sticky transmission parts. Though this was the most diminutive of these land barges, for me it was like piloting the Queen Mary. When I finally let her cool down, Ron walked over and leaned against the side of the motor home. Now, knowing him so well, I could tell by subtle nuances of his voice he was leading up to something that he would consider funny.

"These things are a lot bigger than most people think, and driving them takes a lot of forethought-gotta be sure where everything is." He patted the monolithic side of the beast.

Thus directing my attention to the five-foot long, six-inch wide gash through the aluminum siding. Then he slowly pointed to the corner of a post and the bent bracket protruding from it. The bracket wasn't bent before I took the RV for a spin.

My blood turned to something colder than ice water. "I don't suppose you have an insurance company anxious to cover this."

"No, not even a chance."

Now, I have been known to poke fun at RVs hogging the road with their lumbering hulkiness. Well, today I paid for that.

It struck me that I will now be spending a little more time out at the car farm learning the fine craft of aluminum repair. The aluminum gap I ripped open to expose insulation laughs at me like a maniacal grin.

"Well, we better do something with it. The rain is coming," Ron said.

By the time we were done it looked like something from a Steinbeck novel. Knowing I tend to embrace the poetic rather than the practical, he made damn sure I didn't think this was a permanent repair--no matter how much it intoned one of North America's most celebrated authors. 

He also made sure I knew this was not the end of the world, though I will not be living it down anytime soon. I was going to try to defend myself by intoning one of his more spectacular faux pas, but it was useless. Though this was not the most epic of mistakes we have shared (there was that 18 mile night-hike to a phone through the sleet when he dug a 1963 Chevy truck with a positraction rear end up to its axles in mud), this one was serious and will need to be fixed-properly. So, I will pop out there a couple more times before the end of the month. Somehow I suspect I will be relieved of the duty of moving the RVs.

 

Old Hog, New Tricks

Funny how a planned group activity can quickly whittle down to just a couple of people. The only person in my group that didn't bail had never set foot on a motorcycle. What the hell was I doing here? After all, my motorcycling skill set was a little beyond a beginning motorcycling class.

When you've done something for more than two-thirds of your lifetime it inspires the illusion that there is nothing left to learn. An instructor ten years older than me, who spoke with such affection for motorcycling that he garnered my attention, helped me overcome this. It took only 11 minutes before he talked about something I did not know: suddenly, I was learning something new.

The next day we were on the range, AKA: a cordoned-off part of the LBCC parking lot. We were supplied with motorcycles to ride. There were a variety of bikes--none with an engine bigger than a 200cc. My bike has 1450ccs. You do the math. I felt like I was on a clown tricycle.

 Let's talk rain. We in the PNW have more than a passing flirtation with precipitation. I have probably ridden more miles in the rain than not. Thus, one would expect that my purpose-specific rain gear (designed for 70mph motorcycle rides through rain that's falling so hard animals are lining up in pairs) would laugh off a rainy October day. I wasn't laughing. First the water made its way past the "sealed" neck opening. Then it seeped its way up from the arm openings. I got the best/worst soaking from having two inches of jeans hanging below my rain pants. Water wicked up my pant legs to my knees. And that was before I even got on the bike.

 You think that's bad?

 Both of you who read my recent essay about getting vertigo might appreciate the irony when, the first morning on the range, the demon vertigo made a slight return. I was standing on a wood floor in the shelter and discovered that the floor had a fair amount of spring to it. A springy floor is the fast lane from recently acquired normal balance to hell. I quickly went outside and stood in the rain on firm blacktop and discovered that staring at anything but my feet didn't do a lot for my stomach. Fortunately, the first half of the day on the range we did very simple maneuvers that allowed me to focus on the instrument cluster above the handlebars.

 There are those who would see participating in such a class while positionally challenged as foolhardy and downright bull-headed. But, many of us have passions that supersede health. I've known rock climbers who have climbed while suffering the stomach flu (look out below!). I've known distance runners who have run zillion-k marathons on a broken foot. I have intentionally ridden motorcycles through some of the worst conditions that Ma Nature can dish out. Something wonderful happens when we indulge in our passions. Often, no matter how stupid it might seem, as soon as we are doing what we love we start to feel better. This day, it took a couple hours to feel normal--as normal as I ever feel.

 Did I mention the rain? Almost all of the other students had an advantage over me: no experience riding in the rain. They had not enjoyed the jarring experience of having your motorcycle tires lose traction on a slick road, so they trusted their traction. When we started the riding portion of this class, I found myself apprehensive about pushing too hard into the corners; I expected the tires to slip out from under me.

 Then it happened. My mind let go of the fear and I was slapping that bike between the cones like a skier bouncing between moguls. This was the most fun I've ever had with my rain pants on. It was like flying. I was struck with the epiphany that this is why I was in a class so rudimentary. There was some very basic stuff I hadn't taught myself. I have to say this joy was followed closely by watching new riders slaloming around the range like they owned it-though they had never touched a motorcycle before that day.

 Did I mention the rain? I was soaked all the way through my raingear. My buddy's leather jacket was soaked and everyone in the class was in the same boat, including the instructors. When the blessing of the lunch hour came, we leapt into my car and turned the heater up full blast. I had to keep my window open so the humidity from our clothing wouldn't fog up the windshield. We got our food to go so we could sit in the car and pull off our soaked boots and wiggle our bare toes under the heater's blast. We had to wring out our socks before putting them back on. Yes, this is considered "fun."

 

What happens after being chilled to the bone and then warming up-especially after lunch? That's right, you get sleepy. Just in time for a couple hours of classroom instruction. I literally nodded off a couple of times during the PowerPoint presentation. We even dared to drink AM PM coffee, which has cathartic abilities immortalized in songs sung before the white man came to this valley. Nothing keeps you awake like an intestinal tract coming to life. But, we still dozed. This had nothing to do with the quality of the material.

 The next day on the range was a little more challenging.

 Technical note that might bore the civilians: 
In 1973, Ralph Nader pushed through a law that all motorcycles had to have their foot shifters on the left side and the rear brake peddle on the right. Since the Brits don't even know what side of the road to ride on, their shifter/brake is set up opposite that of the Japanese and indigenous motorcycles populating American streets. Many people on those pre-'73 bikes were not keeping the rubber side down because the brake was not where it was supposed to be.

 I learned to ride on these Brit bikes, and it took decades to rewire my brain to the "proper" position of the controls. However, once back on a bike about the size of my old Norton, my brain unwired. A couple of times on the range I tried shifting the gears with the brake pedal. Not my finest moment showcasing my decades of experience.

 We practiced braking. Get 'er up to 20mph and then squeeze on the binders. The wet pavement did a wonderful job of letting us know when we were applying too much braking to either wheel. We practiced turns, lane changes, evasive maneuvers, picking up chicks, and so on. Through all of this, no one dropped a bike, which is a fine testament to the capability of the instructors.

 Something I was grateful for: no one talked about how much experience they had on two wheels--even the other experienced riders in the class. Everyone was starting from the same place: the basics. One of the instructors is a regular at the Darkside. He knew this was not my first day on a motorcycle and made only one comment: he apologized for not having a Harley for me to ride--but only when we were out of earshot of the others. 

 I was persuaded to take this class because several of my homies said they would take it if I would. I forgot to say I would take it only if they did. I wanted company because it was scary for me to take the class. My safety record on a bike ain't bad. Did I really want to mess with a good thing by taking a class that will change the way I ride? When I got my motorcycle endorsement long ago--a long, long time ago--the "test" consisted of answering a few questions and taking a ride around the parking lot. The trickiest question was, "How did you get your motorcycle here?"

 "I pushed it?"

 "Good answer." He signed off on my endorsement and set me loose.

 I have a friend who is an ER doctor and he calls riding a motorcycle "risk-taking behavior." I guess compared to a day spent golfing, it is. When it comes right down to it, I wish Team Oregon classes had been available when I was commuting on an old CB350, back when disco ruled the airwaves. As the class progressed and I acquired new skills, I watched more and more of the "risks" of motorcycling fade away. Yes, motorcycling is more dangerous than driving a car. In this world of airbags, crumple zones, ABS brakes, and computers that call the mother ship if an airbag inflates into a crumple zone because the ABS brakes failed, it is a good thing to have a motorsport where you are the only person responsible for your personal wellbeing. Even as basic as this class was, I feel like I now have a few more tools to deal with the student drivers returning to Corvallis, and a few of the year-round residents. You know who you are.