My comrade Franko and his lovely lady Laura are preggers. Way to be procreative, kids.
Also, nice to know that years of bike-riding did nothing to deplete Mr. Robbins’ virility. Big ups to the ball-channel.
I’m looking forward to visiting them this New Years. It’s been too long!
UPDATE: Housing secured. Also, Brie would like to point out that she is not, in fact, a “gangbanger.”
Any of my New York readers know of a place to say in Brooklyn?
Brie is teh awesome. You should be so luck as to have her as a roommate.
In Which I Explain With A Single Quote My Certainty That All My Achievements Will Be Eclipsed By My Sister:
By 7[pm] I was sitting in the back of a really small, really red, bar (alone, I might add. A practice I’m not a fan of) listening to some Columbia graduates read from their first published works. Nothing like hearing words pulled off the page and spoken out loud, it evokes a good feeling, a little internal nudge that this is what I really love spending my time doing. But, for the love of God, what’s with that fucking wispy, ethereal, panty waist voice grown men get when they read poetry? That’s got to stop, people. Let’s put the balls back in prose.
The blog you all really want to be reading.
I’m doomed! Doooooomed!
Some news! My sister (above) somehow scammed her way into this New York City diploma-mill popularly known as “Columbia University.” Seriously though, this is exciting stuff. She’s definitely moving out there along with her man Scott, and is still waiting to hear from some other schools, but Columbia’s MFA Writing program is, as they say, prestigious. So things are looking good. I always knew she’d pass me on the achievement ladder one of these days, dammit.
Also, somewhat selfishly, this is a great reason to get back east more often. I can feel the sweet embrace of her couch already.
For my part, I spent Sunday - Wednesday down and back to the Bay area. It was all business, so not that much fun, but I got the work done and for the first time I tried my new plan of bringing the bike with me and using that to get around the city. Weather was lovely, and it worked out great until I got hit by a car in Oakland: some kid who was already fleeing a hit-and-run with a parked car. I’m fine and so’s my machine, but it was close to being awful. Ironically, one of the bits of business I was dealing with was filing for our company health insurance. Cheap thrills.
On the five-hour drive back, I thought a lot about this whole urban/rural living thing I have going on. I’ve been missing NYC a lot lately, and I’ve also been pondering what it would take to make living here more sustainable. Girl(s), obviously, but there’s also a level of peer-review that I miss, a community of people who I share some ambitions with.
It’s proving harder to make those kinds of connections. I don’t really do that well at meeting new people without a context, and it’s a smaller pool. People seem private though. I don’t know if it’s just the way of country life, or if, as someone recently pointed out, there are proportionately more people here who are stoned out of their minds at any given point.
Maybe getting back on the art-train is the way to go. Maybe it’s just that my close-friend/household relationships have gotten a little stagnant. In any event, it’s slow going, but I’ve got high hopes that the Spring thaw will set things in motion.
Final Note: I think I like this format for now: simple layout, big pictures, etc. I may turn this into the first step on the road to OJ 2.0…
I’m at the bar at Rose City at PDX, loving the free wifi (every airport should do that; they’d see a bump in food/drink sales as a result) and I was just enjoying the scenery across the bar. Portland is a hipster capital, and I have to admit I do love that style on the women.
My “vacation,” which has been roughly the past week and will run through the 1st, has been nice. I had big dreams of hitting the Y a lot, getting my body prepped for a higher level in 2007, but I’m more like my mom than I admit — genetics is a real thing — and so we spent most days perched across from one another at her high-tables working on our laptops, eating pizza and drinking beer into the night. I wish I had a picture. It was nice, but also sort of the antithesis of getting to the gym and hitting the stationary cycle.
On the upside, I did some good work on Chapter Three’s first non-client project — alpha launch coming in early Jan — and I also started my open-source community service effort for 2007, the Drupal Dojo:
It’s basically a place for up-and-coming developers to rub elbows with more experienced types in a less intimidating setting, to help be a middle-ground in the burgeoning Drupal economy. I launched it about 24 hours ago and already we have more than 100 members. Oh boy.
In more personal news, I also made it over to my older half-sister’s xmas for dinner with her mom and husband Fabio and my nieces Sarah and Anna, all of whom I love. Her mom Eileen is my dad’s first wife, who I hadn’t met until I went down to LA for Anna’s Bat Mitzvah at the beginning of December. She’s great, and so is her current husband Gary, one of those guys with an infectiously positive personality; reminds me a bit of Kevin Kuhlke, the old director of the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU (although clearly less weird).
Anyway, it was really cool to see all of them, especially since the Bat Mitvah and associated party were sort of a whirlwind. I’m constantly reminded of how lucky I am to have such a sprawling and diverse family tree full of so many winners and interesting personalities.
Eileen showed me some wedding photos of her and my dad from 1961. He and I have a different mouth, but from several angles we look almost exactly the same. It gives me some pause. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of years, or rather he hasn’t responded when I’ve reached out. Liz and I talk a little about this, how he’d been distant at times with her. It’s good to know it’s not just me, and it’s really sweet and touching to see the photos of him and Eileen (who was a stone fox by the way) and Liz and my other half-sister Nan when they were kids; another side to things.
It makes me wonder. As I said, genetics are a real thing. My mother and I share a similar obsessive-bordering-on-unhealthy relationship to work, among other traits. What do I get from my dad, other than height and a brow-line? Given the loop-de-loops I seem to go through in my love life, it’s not just an academic question.
I’m on my way back to New York, a city of women for me. This is undeniably a huge part of what’s drawing me back. I don’t know what to think of all that. It doesn’t strike me as incredibly rational to pursue transcontinental relationships, and yet I don’t seem to meet anyone I click with in the HC, whereas in the city…
When I first moved out, I had an unspoken dream of landing some big city babe and dragging her out to my rustic hill-country homestead. It was a very Hank Stamper ambition. I can’t fucking believe the internet doesn’t have a page I can link to that will explain what that means (so I must make one, later), but basically it’s a romantic lumberjack notion, which is to say one that may or may not work out in reality.
See, most people don’t have the career flexibility that I do. The femme types I click with in these metropoleis, they don’t have much to do out in the country, away from graduate schools and the bigtime culture industry and suchlike. While it’s true I’ll probably end up living at least part time in an urban setting, for the time being I’m not planning on going anywhere, and where I live now doesn’t offer a lot to the ladies I like.
And I certainly don’t have any interest in getting with a kept woman of any sort. Not my style.
So all that’s sidelined for now; roll with the punches; the most important thing is to stop struggling. I make transcontinental flights for business, but with the thrilling promise of makeout really spurring me on. I embrace this. I’m resolved not to overly judge or self-sabotage if I can help it, but it feels undeniably temporary.
I remind myself, there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Indeed, I recoil from too much romantic responsibility like no other (just ask, they’ll tell you), and while some will suggest it’s the dreaded fear of commitment, I just call it not wanting to get in over my head. I’m cagey when it comes to being accountable for other people’s feelings. I don’t want to let anyone down. Still, I believe that the right thing will come in the right moment. Call me a gambler. I’m holding out for a jackpot.
The heart is a mercurial organ. I can’t manage it. I don’t know how to turn it on or off. I can’t reliably sort out a temporary rush of attraction from true love, and if you pressed me on it I would probably say they’re not really different things. One just grows and blossoms, and the other has a more ephemeral life. Nature is replete with examples in this vein.
So I keep plugging away. Some days I feel the underlying belief that “good things will come” more than others, and I try to hold on to at least that little bit of faith. Many great songs have been written about this — improbably, George Michael and Tom Petty come to mind at the moment, but there are hundreds of others — and in that I take Howard Zinn’s confidence: the poets are on my side. That’s something.
It’s a long life, and it might be the Jameson talking a bit, but I’m feeling good about next year. The trends are positive, and my personal chi is good. Predictions and resolutions soon, but for now a simple beatific smile and quiet confidence.
Great Success! Me and Brie went in together on a travel voucher to sent mom back to France sometime — because if we get her the ticket she has to go — and I cooked up a pretty fine meal (bacon-wrapped steaks, shallot/shitake sautee, garlic mashed potatoes, asparagus and spinach ceasar salad) and dined it up with the Grams and everything. It was a lovely adult night.
I’m off on the road to Oregon. Gonna see my mom and grandma and maybe some more extensive family for the Xmas time. Strange how my perception of this season has evolved. I still dig the spirit, but the importance of that one day has pretty much evaporated, probably will stay that way until I have my own kids to bedazzle.
I’ll be riding with Mark and Zya, who are going to Eugene, then Portland, then Texas for the holiday. Texas being an escape from all family and a chance to get a little lone-star adventure.
Me, I’m trying to make it back to NYC for New Years. We’ll see how that goes.
Probably light posting for the next week or two, although maybe a redesign will happen.
This is the first time I’ve been down to LA under my own power. Previous trips were at the outset of Vagabender and way back in 1994 when my dad took me and the step-fam down for the Rose Bowl.
It’s an interesting place. Lots of bright colors, flash, sizzle, spectacle. It’s structurally totally distinct, but reminds me of NYC more than any other city I’ve been in lately. Something about the international diversity, the smell of a liquor store/deli, the type and tone of affluence…
Tonight I hung out with Julia and my sister. We chatted it up, watched a little Wheel of Fortune, had two beers (one at a depressing bar, the other judgemental) and told some old stories. It was nice. I’m totally beat from the 4am wakeup for the 6am plane ride down here.
Tomorrow 6am flight to Los Angeles, there to stay with my sis, do a little biz, hang out with some friends, and attend my niece’s Bat Mitzvah.
It’s been freezing cold (literally) up here in the State of Jefferson, so 70 degree weather sounds like fun to me.
Was nice having my sister up here for the Thanksgiving weekend.
Reminds me of another classic.
As you can see, we’re still the same wacky kids.
