The bruise on my thigh is the color of eggplant; it covers all of my inner thigh. With assurances from doctors, I know the bruise will fade and heal (looking like "a Rothko painting" per my orthopaedic surgeon's comment).
My psychic bruising is a different story. Passing cars startle me, and vigilance has become hypervigilance. Seeing African-American men of a certain age makes me tighten my grip on my umbrella (which in turn accompanies me to and from work). With work, the base anxiety and uncertainty will be resolved.
But will there be scars? Will I be able to move smoothly, without visible distress or discomfort through any situation?
15 July 2008
What's good for the goose
From a comment yesterday left at Joe.My.God:
Good satire is lost on Americans, particularly after being satire desensitized, first by the Reagan administration, and now by the Bush/Cheney administration.I'm not quite sure where this originally appeared, but I find it mighty amusing.
The equivalent McCain satire of Senator John in Depends and Cindy with her Amex card and prescription drugs in the Oval Office would have the networks and NPR (nice polite republicans) baying.
08 July 2008
Bruise
The follow up from last night's adventure. This is what happens when a thrown tire iron hits one's leg.
No, there are no naked pictures. Please move along. Nothing more to see.
07 July 2008
Target
I was walking home from the Metro on a warm summer night, on a street I’ve walked pretty much every day since we first moved into our house in March. I wasn’t paying too much attention to my surroundings as I was listening to Joni’s “The Hissing of Summer Lawns”. I’d smiled at the couple walking past me on 9th Street NE. I saw the dark blue Chrysler drive past as I turned the corner on to Kearney. I admired the day lilies and saw a young man jump out of the car and walk toward me.
He was holding a tire iron. And he was motioning threateningly at me. If he said anything, I couldn’t hear it. “Edith and the Kingpin” had just segued into “Shades of Scarlet Conquering”. I play my iPod loud.
I’m pretty sure he wanted the iPod though.
I was carrying an umbrella, a heavy messenger bag, and my cell phone.
I don’t think he expected me to swing the umbrella at him. I swung at his jaw and missed. He ran back to the car, throwing the tire iron at me while on the run. It hit my leg. The iron didn’t damage my khakis. However, there will be a bruise.
I picked up the tire iron as I was dialing the cops. I thought about throwing it at the car, or smashing a window. But then I exercised some judgment.
I called the cops immediately. They answered, and at the same time, a patrol cruiser rolled past, and stopped when I flagged him down.
The officer very patiently took down the information, and asked for more details. I provided them as best I could. I should have taken a picture of the license plate - or the kid. Oh well. If charges are filed, it will be for simple assault.
I’m pretty shaken. G Squared is a bit more shaken, I think.
I’ve said that if you stay aware, and walk with confidence, you’re pretty safe anywhere you go in the world. I still feel that way. But I won’t be wearing my iPod on the street any more. I was lucky. This guy was not.
And I will be carrying an umbrella, or a walking stick.
That is all.
05 July 2008
Good Times
It follows from this (disco redux) and this (chamber punk) that I love the outsider music of the late seventies and early eighties. It won't be a suprise that I made this playlist (good times) with the purpose of it being the soundtrack for our housewarming party.
The Brazilian Hipster The New Gold Standard Fort Knox Five
Ain't It Funky (Fort Knox Five Dub) Ain't It Funky / Tricka Technology A.Skillz & Krafty Kuts
I Love to Move In Here Last Night Moby
World's Famous Duck Rock Malcolm McLaren
Soweto Duck Rock Malcolm McLaren
The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance Vampire Weekend
Wordy Rappinghood (Remix) Tom Tom Club
Do What You Wanna (Mr. Scruff's Soul Party Remix) Verve Remixed 2 Ramsey Lewis & Mr. Scruff
Blue Monday - ('88) (The Best Of) New Order New Order
Les And Eddie Cinco De Mowo! Mocean Worker
Sound Of Silver Sound Of Silver LCD Soundsystem
Money In the Bag (K & S Remix) Boogie Angst Kraak & Smaak
Dancin' At The Bains Douches Kid Creole Redux Kid Creole & The Coconuts
Good Times (LP Version) Dance, Dance, Dance - The Best of Chic Chic
Cowboys And Gangsters Fabriclive 36 - James Murphy & Pat Mahoney Gichy Dan
Blind Blind - Single of the Week Hercules and Love Affair
Workinonit Donuts J Dilla
D.A.N.C.E. Justice Justice
Ghetto Train Chaos Restored - Justin Martin Justin Martin
Back To The Raw (Ruff Mix) Louie Vega Presents Dance Ritual Kerri Chandler
I Am the Black Gold of the Sun Nuyorican Soul Nuyorican Soul
Housequake Sign O' The Times (Disc 1) Prince
Kiss Parade Prince
Anotherloverholenyohead Parade Prince
A Noite Sem Fim Sao Paulo Confessions Suba
It's not a suprise to me that its more fun today to dance around our family room, looking over the lawn and the roses and the kitchen garden than it is to claw out a bit of space at a big room dance event. I've experienced the highs and lows of street life, and while I may go back from time to time, I'll be a tourist. No more for me scrambling for a cab at 4 in the morning after a long evening of drinking, dancing, and sometimes more. I'll do most of my dancing in the sunshine, thanks.
The Brazilian Hipster The New Gold Standard Fort Knox Five
Ain't It Funky (Fort Knox Five Dub) Ain't It Funky / Tricka Technology A.Skillz & Krafty Kuts
I Love to Move In Here Last Night Moby
World's Famous Duck Rock Malcolm McLaren
Soweto Duck Rock Malcolm McLaren
The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance Vampire Weekend
Wordy Rappinghood (Remix) Tom Tom Club
Do What You Wanna (Mr. Scruff's Soul Party Remix) Verve Remixed 2 Ramsey Lewis & Mr. Scruff
Blue Monday - ('88) (The Best Of) New Order New Order
Les And Eddie Cinco De Mowo! Mocean Worker
Sound Of Silver Sound Of Silver LCD Soundsystem
Money In the Bag (K & S Remix) Boogie Angst Kraak & Smaak
Dancin' At The Bains Douches Kid Creole Redux Kid Creole & The Coconuts
Good Times (LP Version) Dance, Dance, Dance - The Best of Chic Chic
Cowboys And Gangsters Fabriclive 36 - James Murphy & Pat Mahoney Gichy Dan
Blind Blind - Single of the Week Hercules and Love Affair
Workinonit Donuts J Dilla
D.A.N.C.E. Justice Justice
Ghetto Train Chaos Restored - Justin Martin Justin Martin
Back To The Raw (Ruff Mix) Louie Vega Presents Dance Ritual Kerri Chandler
I Am the Black Gold of the Sun Nuyorican Soul Nuyorican Soul
Housequake Sign O' The Times (Disc 1) Prince
Kiss Parade Prince
Anotherloverholenyohead Parade Prince
A Noite Sem Fim Sao Paulo Confessions Suba
It's not a suprise to me that its more fun today to dance around our family room, looking over the lawn and the roses and the kitchen garden than it is to claw out a bit of space at a big room dance event. I've experienced the highs and lows of street life, and while I may go back from time to time, I'll be a tourist. No more for me scrambling for a cab at 4 in the morning after a long evening of drinking, dancing, and sometimes more. I'll do most of my dancing in the sunshine, thanks.
17 June 2008
On Aging
Nothing brings aging home like a parental birthday. I wrote this as I was high above Illinois returning to Washington, DC from celebrating my mother’s 85th birthday in Oregon. As birthdays go, it was a very low key affair – a visit to an old friend that my mother and I hadn’t seen in four years, some shopping, a dinner out at a favorite restaurant, a drive in the country. What was lovely and touching and difficult was to see how much less flexible my mother has become, and how much she both needed and appreciated my accommodation of her changing needs.
One of my personal phobias is discussing underwear with my parents and family. It’s an odd phobia, because I’m neither embarrassed by my body nor am I particularly sensitive to other people’s bodies. But should my mother ask me if I need new underwear, I go into a tizzy: I don’t want my mother to know that my current preferred underwear are Champion C9 briefs and boxer briefs sold only at Target. And I also don’t want to know what kind of underwear she’s wearing – it just feels a little tawdry and unseemly. (Sort of like the infamous Bill Clinton “boxers or briefs” questions, only more so.)
But I had to confront the phobia head on. Mom wanted to buy some new brassieres, and so off we went to Nordstrom, a store known for a dedication to customer service and attention. I dropped my mother off in Women’s Foundations (translated from retail: brassieres, girdles, panties, and hosiery) and wandered off to do my own shopping. She’d asked for 20 minutes, and I obliged her, having in that time bought four “work” dress shirts and two “fancy” dress shirts. My mother was beating a retreat from the dressing room with a chastened looking young sales woman. I asked the sales woman if she’d had any luck and my mother loudly exclaimed, “they don’t have anything for me here.” When I questioned the sales woman, she pointed out a couple of bras that my mother had rejected because they “were too bulky”. Now, while I have great admiration for my mother, slinky bras and underwear were never observed, even tangentially in our house. Apparently the shop girl misunderstood “easy to get in and out of” for “skimpy”, imagining that my mother meant to go to “TRL Cancun” or “Grannies Gone Wild” and rip off her bra and show her tatas.
So it took a fair amount of interrogatory to find out what the issue really was: the bras that my mother had been shown had multiple clasps which made it extremely difficult for my mother, whose arthritic digits more resemble knotty wood than fingers, to either fasten or undo. And while I am sure that Nordstrom’s stock did include far more selection that my mother had seen, and which certainly would have had something appropriate for her (as the dowagers of Portland all shop at Nordstrom) we bade our age-challenged shop girl farewell, and decamped for Macy’s.
Following a brief stab at shoe shopping (Mom has cut back her shoe habit from Imelda Marcos levels to a couple of pair a year, as her feet no longer welcome Salvatore Ferragamo and Kate Spade flats and pumps she prefers) we wandered into Macy’s women’s underwear. There’s always a frission about being a man in a women’s underwear section: it’s the straight world equivalent of a man or a transsexual crashing the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. The Women’s Underwear department is supposed to be a safe and empowering place for women. My Y chromosome, penis, and testicles clearly violated that, never mind that I haven’t had sex with a woman in 14 years. I was glared at by a number of women, including one of the sales staff.
Luckily, I was able to recruit an attentive and sensitive woman who helped Mom find two bras (both age appropriate and easy to get in and out of), a girdle, and panties. She was sensitive to my mother’s needs, and was able to adapt to a challenging customer. The world did not end for me, nor did I feel the need for any kind of brain bleach (associated with the bra and panty purchase).
My mother was satisfied with her purchases, I survived unscathed, and I learned a valuable lesson about how to actualize accommodation. For Mom, it means ensuring that the script she has for her encounters with people is closely followed, and a minimum amount of improvisation takes place. She wants what she wants, and at 85, she deserves getting it as she wants it.
And I can live with that.
One of my personal phobias is discussing underwear with my parents and family. It’s an odd phobia, because I’m neither embarrassed by my body nor am I particularly sensitive to other people’s bodies. But should my mother ask me if I need new underwear, I go into a tizzy: I don’t want my mother to know that my current preferred underwear are Champion C9 briefs and boxer briefs sold only at Target. And I also don’t want to know what kind of underwear she’s wearing – it just feels a little tawdry and unseemly. (Sort of like the infamous Bill Clinton “boxers or briefs” questions, only more so.)
But I had to confront the phobia head on. Mom wanted to buy some new brassieres, and so off we went to Nordstrom, a store known for a dedication to customer service and attention. I dropped my mother off in Women’s Foundations (translated from retail: brassieres, girdles, panties, and hosiery) and wandered off to do my own shopping. She’d asked for 20 minutes, and I obliged her, having in that time bought four “work” dress shirts and two “fancy” dress shirts. My mother was beating a retreat from the dressing room with a chastened looking young sales woman. I asked the sales woman if she’d had any luck and my mother loudly exclaimed, “they don’t have anything for me here.” When I questioned the sales woman, she pointed out a couple of bras that my mother had rejected because they “were too bulky”. Now, while I have great admiration for my mother, slinky bras and underwear were never observed, even tangentially in our house. Apparently the shop girl misunderstood “easy to get in and out of” for “skimpy”, imagining that my mother meant to go to “TRL Cancun” or “Grannies Gone Wild” and rip off her bra and show her tatas.
So it took a fair amount of interrogatory to find out what the issue really was: the bras that my mother had been shown had multiple clasps which made it extremely difficult for my mother, whose arthritic digits more resemble knotty wood than fingers, to either fasten or undo. And while I am sure that Nordstrom’s stock did include far more selection that my mother had seen, and which certainly would have had something appropriate for her (as the dowagers of Portland all shop at Nordstrom) we bade our age-challenged shop girl farewell, and decamped for Macy’s.
Following a brief stab at shoe shopping (Mom has cut back her shoe habit from Imelda Marcos levels to a couple of pair a year, as her feet no longer welcome Salvatore Ferragamo and Kate Spade flats and pumps she prefers) we wandered into Macy’s women’s underwear. There’s always a frission about being a man in a women’s underwear section: it’s the straight world equivalent of a man or a transsexual crashing the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. The Women’s Underwear department is supposed to be a safe and empowering place for women. My Y chromosome, penis, and testicles clearly violated that, never mind that I haven’t had sex with a woman in 14 years. I was glared at by a number of women, including one of the sales staff.
Luckily, I was able to recruit an attentive and sensitive woman who helped Mom find two bras (both age appropriate and easy to get in and out of), a girdle, and panties. She was sensitive to my mother’s needs, and was able to adapt to a challenging customer. The world did not end for me, nor did I feel the need for any kind of brain bleach (associated with the bra and panty purchase).
My mother was satisfied with her purchases, I survived unscathed, and I learned a valuable lesson about how to actualize accommodation. For Mom, it means ensuring that the script she has for her encounters with people is closely followed, and a minimum amount of improvisation takes place. She wants what she wants, and at 85, she deserves getting it as she wants it.
And I can live with that.
12 June 2008
One for the good guys
Thank you Justices Kennedy, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer, and Stevens. Let's hope Bush and Cheney understand what this means.
10 June 2008
the future of cars?
I've loved two BMWs -- the 2002 and the Alpina 3.0 CSI coupe. In the last thirty years they haven't made a car that I've even been tempted to buy or drive.
I would buy and drive this in a heartbeat. It's the first radical rethinking of the automobile in a very long time.
Editor's note: I completely forgot that the Mini Cooper is a BMW product, and that I both love to drive, and would love to own, a new Mini Cooper, particularly in the S version.
16 May 2008
Music Friday
Originally meant to be two posts, I'm combining them into one
Chamber Punk
Vampire Weekend is one of the cool kids' indie bands of the week. Four Columbia University students and their friends turn their record collections and educations into homemade music that is alternately funky and arch. The alleged Afro-pop influence and connection is more name and timbre checking than real and deep, but its still refreshing. Also, any band that uses cello with a South African walking beat and steel guitars wins my vote.
If David Byrne had a sense of humour, the first Talking Heads album might have sounded like this.
Disco redux
Bought and have been listening to Moby's "Last Night". Moby is far from a cool hunter, in the sense of identifying and popularizing trends before they become huge. But in the same way he captured something of the spirit of house music in a way that made it accessiible with "Play," he does the same with new disco and "last night." No, it's not a cocaine and poppers filled tribute to Studio 54 and the Paradise Garage, but lights at a moment around 1984, after Joy Division had become New Order and released "Blue Monday" and Annie Lennox was inventing the sound of the disembodied Diva, when the Pyramid Room and Danceteria and Limelight were serving up the first syncretization of disco and punk.
Of course, the release of a compilation of August Darnell's work (not just as Kid Creole) makes Moby a moot point. Darnell, Giorgio Moroder, and Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers (Chic) pretty much defined disco in the 70s and 80s.
Chamber Punk
Vampire Weekend is one of the cool kids' indie bands of the week. Four Columbia University students and their friends turn their record collections and educations into homemade music that is alternately funky and arch. The alleged Afro-pop influence and connection is more name and timbre checking than real and deep, but its still refreshing. Also, any band that uses cello with a South African walking beat and steel guitars wins my vote.
If David Byrne had a sense of humour, the first Talking Heads album might have sounded like this.
Disco redux
Bought and have been listening to Moby's "Last Night". Moby is far from a cool hunter, in the sense of identifying and popularizing trends before they become huge. But in the same way he captured something of the spirit of house music in a way that made it accessiible with "Play," he does the same with new disco and "last night." No, it's not a cocaine and poppers filled tribute to Studio 54 and the Paradise Garage, but lights at a moment around 1984, after Joy Division had become New Order and released "Blue Monday" and Annie Lennox was inventing the sound of the disembodied Diva, when the Pyramid Room and Danceteria and Limelight were serving up the first syncretization of disco and punk.
Of course, the release of a compilation of August Darnell's work (not just as Kid Creole) makes Moby a moot point. Darnell, Giorgio Moroder, and Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers (Chic) pretty much defined disco in the 70s and 80s.
03 May 2008
Cooking, Gardening, Galactica, Julips
Some random thoughts -- hell, even musings.
Crock pots allow for very long, very slow cooking, turning tough cuts of meat into something extraordinary. Not quite sou vide but very, very good.
Gardening is a tremendously cathartic activity. One is able to actually accomplish something visible and measurable. And you feel something at the end of the work.
This season of Battlestar Galactic is going into some very strange, very dark places. I'm not sure I like it.
On this Derby day, I made and drank my Mint Julip.
Crock pots allow for very long, very slow cooking, turning tough cuts of meat into something extraordinary. Not quite sou vide but very, very good.
Gardening is a tremendously cathartic activity. One is able to actually accomplish something visible and measurable. And you feel something at the end of the work.
This season of Battlestar Galactic is going into some very strange, very dark places. I'm not sure I like it.
On this Derby day, I made and drank my Mint Julip.
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