Short and Stupid: Another Aleatory List

1. Yesterday morning, I lifted my cat off her perch to put her in the car, and one of her claws got caught. No real drama; she came quietly, though she doesn’t really like the car very much. But once we got in, she sat on the front seat and began biting her left paw. I watched until she hooked one of her claws in her teeth, and yanked it off. It was simultaneously fascinating and gross.

2. It occurred to me today that my cat is familiar with three places: the first is my apartment in Portland, and the second is the place in Bend that I own with my brothers to and take her to a lot. The third is the car. But she has no real idea what the car does, does she? All she knows is that every now and again we go and sit in a shaky box for a few hours, and when we get out, we’re at a different home than before. She probably has no idea why I won’t let her get out of the box for a long time, and then suddenly I will. It must be very confusing to be a cat.

3. I was out running today — wait. No, I had run about 500 feet today and my foot started hurting so I decided to stop and walk the rest of the 3 miles. Normally I would be disappointed in myself, but right now this feels like the best decision of my life. After running 29 miles last week, and spending my off days loading a U-Haul, I think my body may have been on the verge of a breakdown.

4. There is a certain class of person who bitches about how hard to drive it is in Portland. Often I find that these people have either never driven anywhere else, or only driven in smaller towns. Yes, driving sucks in Portland, but this isn’t Portland’s fault, it’s driving’s fault. There are idiots everywhere. There’s shitty traffic everywhere. There are potholes everywhere. It’s like people are afraid to admit that they just hate driving. Admit it, people! It doesn’t make you un-American. It just makes you human.

5. Today I learned that a guy I know has a cat named Brian Downing Kaat. Baseball people will understand why this is funny.

6. Baseball-related names I might give a cat: King Felix; Papi; Andres Galarraga (known as The Big Cat in his playing days); Scratchiro!; Jim “Catfish” Hunter; Catalanotto; Johnny Mize (also known as The Big Cat).

7. Baseball-related names I have given pets in the past: Nomar (cat), Kirk Gibson (dog), Edgar Martinez (goldfish).

8. Cute names for pairs of pets: Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect; Butch & Sundance; Walter and Jesse; Hammer and Horrible; Leslie and Ann; Mick and Keith; Thing 1 and Thing 2; Barack and Hillary.

9. Literary names I have given cats: Phoebe (Catcher in the Rye), Hana (In the Skin of a Lion).

10. Historical names I have given cats: Oliver Cromwell; King Charles II.

11. The one name I would like to give a cat some day, if said cat lives up to it: Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan.

Short and Stupid #4: Another Desultory List

 

 

1. This morning I saw two dildos — yes, dildos — that had been tied together and slung over a telephone wire on a busy section of SE 26th Ave. I’ve seen this done with shoes before. There has always been what I assume is an urban legend that such shoes indicated places to score drugs. One wonders what a pair of dildos indicates.

I wasn't bullshitting you about those dildos.

 

2. Today I learned a new phrase: “establishment gays”. It was used to describe people who worked in increments to get gay marriage legalized in several states before taking it to the Supreme Court. I don’t know why this tickled me so much, but it did.

3. I think I’ve about read myself out of spy novels for a while. I was looking at my goodreads list, and I think I’ve read eleven of them in the last twelve months, most of them by modern master Alan Furst. If I read about one more handsome, stoical, faintly Latin guy who beds several women and gets in over his head with the British Secret Service, I’m going to spontaneously turn into one.

5. I suppose my kids will feel about Neutral Milk Hotel the way I feel about the Beatles.

6. I’m so over the Beatles, you guys.

7. The heat wave has broken. Right now it’s in the mid-70s and occasionally raining, at least in Bend. Did I mention that I’m in Bend? I’m in Bend. I’m trying, in a half-assed sort of way, to get some altitude training in before a half marathon up in the foothills of the Washington Cascades. What I’m really worried about is the marathon I’ve signed up for in December, which is in Tucson. It’s meant to be mostly downhill, but it also starts at 3000 feet — not Machu Picchu, sure, but not exactly sea level.

8. Podcasts listened to today: TBTL, Reply All, Slate Political Gabfest, Amicus, Fresh Air (two episodes), Planet Money, Back Story, On the Media.

Short and Stupid #3: The Boast with the Most Bad Jokes

    First day at KBOO today. It was fairly minor, as days of work go — my supervisor was late, and I had to jump out after only three hours to go take care of other things. Mostly what I did was write radio copy that synthesized news stories. It’s as though someone reverse-engineered a job for me. I banged out six of them in a couple of hours and everybody seemed shocked.

    I write quickly. As a rule, I write these blog entries — the longer ones — in about an hour, sometimes a little less. It takes a little longer to proofread and stuff, but the first drafts are fast and feel self-creating. The act of writing, at least when it’s going well, demands more writing.

    This isn’t a humblebrag, it’s a straight up brag. I feel comfortable bragging about this because I have earned this facility through years of hard work. Often people ask, “How can you write that fast?” The truth is that what you’re seeing is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Underlying this blog entry — which I will wrap up in a few sentences after less than ten minutes of writing — is thousands upon thousands of hours of writing. I have spent at least an hour writing nearly every day since I was in middle school. Some days much, much more.

    Well, that was short and boastful (and therefore stupid). I’m wrapping this up quickly because I have to write the pilot episode of a podcast I’ve been threatening to make for months. Then tomorrow an interview. In order to provide some form of value in this space today, I present to you a joke:

 

    The other day I was walking through a fancy neighborhood and I met an old friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and there was something super weird about him: he had a huge orange head.

    I was like, “Dude. I know it’s been a while, but what happened to your head?”

    He says, “Well, I found a magic lamp. Like, you know, from Aladdin? Anyway, I rubbed the lamp, and sure enough a genie pops out, and he says, Behold, I am the Genie of the Lamp. I will grant you three wishes. What is your first wish? So I say to him, I’d like a really nice house.”

    “Did it work?”

    “See that house right behind me?” He nodded to a mansion I hadn’t noticed before. “It’s mine.”

    “Wow. So what was your second wish?”

    “I asked for an incredibly beautiful wife. And if you’ll look —” He pointed down the block, to where the most beautiful woman I had ever seen was strolling down the sidewalk with a dog. “That’s my wife.”

    “That’s incredible!”

    “I know, right?”

    And for a minute I was impressed, but then I remembered something. So I said, “But man, I have one more question.”

    “What’s that?”

    “What about the big orange head?”

    “Ah, well, that’s where I made my big mistake,” he said, nodding solemnly.

    “What was your big mistake?”

    “You see, I wished for a really big, orange head.”

BOOM! Thank you, I’ll be here all week.

Short and Stupid #2: a Desultory List

1. Steve Earle’s voice is better suited to blues than country, really.

2. “Copperhead Road” is better in concert than on record. This is true of some, but not all, songs.

3. There is nothing grosser than having to use the toilet at a gas station when you’re out running on a hot day.

4. I was gonna watch one episode of Parks & Rec on Friday and now I’m halfway through season 4.

5. I haven’t read a book in two weeks, which is starting to worry me.

6. One of the things that becomes obvious about Parks & Rec if you watch a whole bunch of it in a row is that the goals of the costume and makeup departments on the show changed pretty radically. As late as the second season, Leslie is a frump and the makeup people are going out of their way to make Amy Poehler look unattractive. When Ben shows up — played by the youthful and handsome Adam Scott — Leslie’s wardrobe and makeup improve drastically. This is something that sort of happened on The Office, too.

7. It’s interesting to me that one of the first TV shows I got really into and spent time online dissecting was The Office, but I find that show has almost no rewatch value. Meanwhile I could just have Parks & Rec going in an endless loop in the background and everything would be fine.

8. Reading another man’s master’s thesis on a computer screen is a very taxing way to spend an evening.

9. Reading this master’s thesis, which was about Portland’s own freeway revolt, was really an education in what a masterful political operator Neil Goldschmidt must have been back in the 70s. By the time his bloc defeated the Mt Hood Freeway project, Goldschmidt was involved in three different governmental or quasi-governmental bodies that could have put the kibosh on it. It’s amazing that anybody had any doubt that he was going to find a way to kill the project. It’s also amazing that he found time to diddle middle-school-aged girls in this period.

10. I got nothing for #10. This is my worst blog entry ever. I am not an evening person. Here's a picture of my cat.

It took me an incredibly long time to get her to look at me for this picture.

Short and Stupid: Part of an Ongoing Series

    Well, here we are. I warned you this would happen. It’s time for the first in what I imagine will be a series of short and stupid blog posts. This is where the rubber meets the road on the quota thing.

    I spent the whole morning worrying about interviewing somebody. I mean, pacing around the apartment, checking my questions list over and over again, dreading the moment that it came. And then I drove up to NoPo, and the interview was both easy and relatively brief. Hours and hours of worry for 30 minutes of tape, probably 2 minutes of which will end up in the story. Ah, well. That’s the way it goes.

    I’m having difficulty with this story, conceptualizing it, I think because my contrarian nature keeps getting in the way. Most people accept it as an absolute good that Portland didn’t put in any more freeways than it did back in the 50s and 60s. We even ripped one out, which is all but unheard of. And I guess I agree with that — my own apartment wouldn’t be here if the Mt Hood Freeway had actually been laid up SE Division Street. But then I’d just live somewhere else and I wouldn’t know the difference. Wouldn’t I?

    I dunno. I think maybe the good thing about denial of the freeways is less about the freeways qua the freeways and more about a certain attitude in Portland that persists and makes it the place it is. Yeah, it’s ripe for parody. And, to quote my brother Andy, there isn’t a big city in America that’s nearly so up its own butt as Portland is. But I love it.

    Here’s an example of that whole up-its-own-butt thing: when it came time to ask the woman who I was interviewing if she was from Portland, I had to preface it this way: “I realize this has gotten to be a loaded question these days, but are you from around here originally?” I mean seriously. This is the 21st century. Nobody lives where they grew up. Why should we, the few, the native Portlanders,* be the only ones to pretend otherwise?

*In truth, I am not a native-born Portlander. I was born in Corvallis, about 90 miles south. We moved to Portland when I was 4. My dad told me once that he and my mom always intended to go back to Corvallis one day. Why we didn’t is a long, involved, and kind of interesting story, which is why I’m not going to tell it right now, in this short and stupid blog post.

    And here’s another. Whenever I meet someone new in this town, I find myself — almost against my own will — going out of my way to somehow let everyone know that I grew up here, unlike all the, ahem, Californians who are around everywhere. When I met my friend’s new girlfriend before the MLS All Star game last summer, I wedged in a totally pointless reference to having gone to Portland Beavers games as a kid, just so that she would know that I was from Portland and the fact that I was just moving there was about having gone exploring, rather than come invading. And, oh, my God. Who fucking cares? I actually think that Portland is a much better place for all the newbies around. The Portland of my youth was a sleepy backwater without much going on other than the scenery. Now it’s full of restaurants and clubs and breweries. There’s a radio scene, a lit scene. (I don’t really participate in the lit scene. I probably should.)

    Leave us not forget that Portland inspired the Dead Kennedys classic “Night of the Living Rednecks”. That was then. Now, when famous people are mean about Portland, it’s done with love. 

    Anyway, speaking of being up our own butts, I’ve now been writing aimlessly about my hometown for several paragraphs for basically no reason. It’s so hot you guys. And I don’t think that’s liable to change.

    Anyway. I’m done for the day. Maybe I’ll have something interesting tomorrow. I’ll catch ya on the flip-flop.