The power of the internets

Well, this is the one hundredth post on this blog.  It seemed kind of momentous to me, so I wanted to wait until I had something spectacular to say before I got around to writing it.  Luckily, something spectacular happened yesterday.

Maybe you'll remember a few months back when I wrote about receiving someone else's subscription to Entertainment Weekly magazine?  That person was named Marcus Mungiole.  I was wondering why we were receiving his magazine every week, suddenly, after living in that apartment for 3 1/2 years.  I gave him the old half-hearted Google search, which turned up nothing, so that was that.  Well, whom should I get an email from this weekend but Mr. Mungiole himself! 

It seems he stumbled upon the post I wrote about him, and it made him laugh.  I couldn't believe it!  Fortunately, he was not upset about the fact that I went on and on questioning his identity for three paragraphs.  He verified that he was a previous tenant in our old apartment about 10 years ago, and would you believe that the SAME harpy neighbor was yelling at him even way back then?  Amazing!  So Marcus and I are now email buddies, and he was kind enough to forgive me for not following through with my promise to turn over back issues of his magazines since they were recycled during The Great Move of 2010.

That, my friends, is the power of the internets!  And in honor of this auspicious occasion, I would like to leave you with one of my favorite poems.  You all know it- just be impressed I was able to refrain from posting it this long.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

If Black Books and Inkheart had a baby, it would be this post.

Sometimes when my mind wanders I like to imagine that I run a little used and antique bookstore somewhere around Stratford-upon-Avon.  Hardly anyone would come in to buy things, and the sun would stream through the high windows.  I would sit there reading all day, only to glance up once or twice at the dust settling in the beams.

It occurs to me that many of the best gifts I have ever been given have been books.  For Christmas this year, my family all drew names and then made a pact to only give one homemade gift to that person.  It turned out to be a really special Christmas.  I unwrapped a cookbook created by my mother.  It was hardback like a real book, with a photo of her kitchen on the cover and a picture of us together on the back.  She took some pictures and used others that I had taken and posted online and then typed up some of her best recipes.  It is one of my favorite things ever.

The Christmas before that, my best friend gave me the most unexpected and exciting book I could have ever imagined.  It's A Child's Garden of Verses written by Robert Louis Stevenson, and there's a sticker inside the cover with a 1929 calendar on it.  It's got that musty smell that the farthest reaches of the library stacks have, and sometimes I feel like Mary Katherine Gallagher sitting there and smelling the pages like a fool.

Runners-up in the best books I have been given category are Are You Being Served?: The Inside Story of Britain's Funniest--And Public Television's Favorite--Comedy Series, Catch-22 (loaned to me by a friend and then later given to me by my dad), and The Making of Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version because I am a die-hard nerd).

Here is a poem included in that collection of Stevenson verses.  Do you ever wish you could just live in the pages of a book?

The Land of Storybooks

At evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter's camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books.

"I gave you love, you gave me asthma."

That is what a sign said as I drove by a bus stop today.  Amazed, I quickly tried to capture a photo with my phone, but it came out all grainy:

You're just going to have to trust me when I tell you that some genius marketing person decided that a picture of a baby with an inhaler and the caption "I gave you love, you gave me asthma" was something that would really get people riled up about this issue.  It wouldn't make them laugh.  Not at all. 

Man, I love this so much that I have to let it stand on its own.  No poem today- unless you can come up with one.  It might help their campaign.

Wait, the same guy who wrote James Bond wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

So today I was reading an article about the life of Ian Fleming, who wrote the Bond books.  I never knew this, but the books are loosely based on his real life as a spy for British Naval Intelligence during WWII.  One of their plans to foil the Nazis was to dress as German soldiers and pretend to be injured so that they could kill their rescuers.  Pretty badass.  But word daggers?  Badasser: 

The Brute drew himself up to his full height and yet, both he and they knew he was really no threat. Until he shouted out words that just popped in his head. The words sounded strange and filled the children with dread.

“I AM BIG. I AM TALL. I WILL SQUASH YOU LIKE ANTS.”

There was a stunned silence.  Brute continued his chant.

“I AM BIG.” Was he bigger?

“I AM TALL.” It was true!

His growth spurts were quick. Ten feet taller he grew. He grabbed the word daggers in one meaty fist. He chucked them at trees. Not a single one missed. They stuck to the trunks. They skinned leaves off of twigs. They turned into graffiti, cruel and glaringly big.

The Brute smirked at the kids, though they could barely see. He lifted one foot up the size of a tree. His classmates ran screaming. Their screams clawed at the air.

“Come back and make fun of me now!” he dared.

The Brute stomped the ground. Like an earthquake it shook. He plodded around. He scoured each nook. But the children were quick. They knew how to hide. The Brute paused and let their whispers act as his guide.

The whispers were vapors as fragile as ghosts. They curled into crook’d fingers that beckoned him close. Closer and closer The Brute followed them out.

He deserted the school for a dark, wooded route. The whispered words emitted a faint, glowing light. They made monstrous shadows that played tricks on Brute’s sight. They flashed different images based on what was said. Then the words stopped and pointed. Into a cave they led.

The Brute stomped his way in. There was an intake of breath.

“I know you’re in here,” he snarled. “Or did I scare you to death?”

There was a shuffle, a scurry, a silencing shush. Every sound echoed, bounding off walls with a push. Finally one brave soul piped up loudly and spoke:

“Go away! You’re a freak!”

And with that, chaos broke.

The Brute lunged at the words, but they clamped on his nose. “Freak” balled up and blinked red with a clownish-type glow.

“Now you’ll be sorry,” The Brute howled with rage.

“You sound like a sick cow!” a familiar voice waged.

It was a harsh blow. It nearly knocked him out. He shook his head, disbelieving. He gaped like a trout. The words bounced off the walls. They zoomed and they flew. The Brute filled up with venom.

He spat out, “I hate you!”

A huge echo swung forward, pounding him to a pulp. Then “hate” rose up and gaped, swallowing Brute in one gulp.

Beware: Miley Cyrus and Celine Dion all in one post

I have had a fascination with sign language for a long time- I think since I went to summer camp at age 9 and took a workshop to learn some of the basics.  Basically the only thing that stayed with me was the alphabet and the sign for snake, and now I regret not learning more.  In the same way that an unknown foreign language like Italian sounds like music to my ears, uninterpreted sign language seems like a dance.  It's beautiful.  Now I didn't realize until today that there is American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE).  PSE is not a true language like ASL and lacks the rules of grammar and structure, but it is fairly commonly used.  I learned all of this because of a video on Gawker.TV:



This woman is using PSE and apparently includes some outdated signs.  For some reason I was surprised to learn that signs could be deemed "old-fashioned" as one person in the comments pointed out.  Then someone else posted this video as a response to the one above.  This is modern sign language and it is a.ma.zing.  Seriously, this made my day:



This guy started signing to music as part of an assignment for a sign language class in college.  He posted the assignment on youtube and it went viral because, well, clearly.  I love this!  It makes me so happy.  Maybe I should send the video to my grumpy neighbor. 

The Language

-Robert Creeley

Locate I

love you some-

where in

teeth and   

eyes, bite   

it but

take care not   

to hurt, you   

want so

much so   

little. Words   

say everything.

I

love you

again,

then what   

is emptiness   

for. To

fill, fill.

I heard words   

and words full

of holes   

aching. Speech   

is a mouth.

I know this much is true.

Look, I'm just going to say it: Jurassic Park is the best movie ever.  It was on TV this weekend, and I watched it.  And when it was over, I watched it again.  I ask you, is there a better opening scene than a guy getting eaten by an unseen creature in a crate?  Is anything scarier than velociraptors in the kitchen?  Is there a better line delivered in a British accent to said velociraptor than "Clever girl"?  These are all rhetorical questions because clearly the answer is "no." 

Watching Jurassic Park in the theater in the summer of 1993 was one of the defining moments of my life.  It completely changed the way I saw movies.  If there was a job that consisted of bringing dinosaurs to life, I wanted in.  Think of the power!  That's what fascinated me about movies.  I knew that if I wrote scripts, I could see creatures in my imagination become real.  It was an intoxicating and terrifying idea.  Of course, it could be done badly.  After Jurassic Park finished airing on the SyFy channel, they showed some made-for-TV movie called Triassic Attack about dinosaur skeletons attacking people.  I realize they must have been working within a budget, but dinosaur skeletons?  Weak. 

Now I have a bad habit of writing action scripts and putting the characters in sticky situations just so I can introduce something like a sharkmeleon (that's a shark that's a chameleon) to create a diversion and help them escape.  It blends in with the skyline and then *CHOMP* OMG IT ATE THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AND EVERYONE ON IT. 

Awesome.

To Help the Monkey Cross the River

by Thomas Lux

which he must
cross, by swimming, for fruits and nuts,
to help him
I sit with my rifle on a platform
high in a tree, same side of the river
as the hungry monkey. How does this assist
him? When he swims for it
I look first upriver: predators move faster with
the current than against it.
If a crocodile is aimed from upriver to eat the monkey
and an anaconda from downriver burns
with the same ambition, I do
the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,
croc- and snake-speed, and if, if
it looks as though the anaconda or the croc
will reach the monkey
before he attains the river’s far bank,
I raise my rifle and fire
one, two, three, even four times into the river
just behind the monkey
to hurry him up a little.
Shoot the snake, the crocodile?
They’re just doing their jobs,
but the monkey, the monkey
has little hands like a child’s,
and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.

Take two and call me in the morning.

Last night I tried something new.  I went to a dance class that was more than a dance class.  This one had a live DJ, the steps were really easy to follow, and you do not stop moving for an hour and a half.  For all you LA people, it's called Groov3.  Check it out.  The instructor, Benjamin Allen has a really great philosophy about dance improving your life, I have to say that I agree.  When you're stressed and overwhelmed with life, spending a chunk of time learning dance moves and trying to look cool busting them out in front of a large group of people can really take your mind off things.  Plus, I think by now we can all agree that music soothes the soul (and uplifts it).

When I was in college, a couple friends and I would meet in our dorm common room to take a dance break from studying.  For some reason I can only recall us dancing to Weird Al and Space Jams.  Surely there was more to the playlist?  Napster had just come on the scene and I think we were all learning to harness it.  Anyway, try it sometime.  Instead of a smoke break, take a dance break.  Do it in traffic.  It will probably bring joy to the people around you, as they will count themselves lucky to have witnessed such an exuberant display.

The Dance

In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess

This poem was written by William Carlos Williams about a scene in a painting called The Kermesse:

Rich man's problem

Somehow I have amassed a collection of aprons.  I say "somehow" because it is not something I ever thought of doing.  It just happened.  A couple of years ago my roommates and some friends of ours decided to do our very own version of Top Chef, except it was more like Iron Chef and The Next Food Network Star all rolled into one.  We called it Next Top Iron Chef.  There were two teams of two and I was the sous chef on my team.  My chef friend and I took it very seriously.  The secret ingredient was egg, and my team won.  During the competition my chef friend had let me borrow one of her aprons so we could look all business.  When it was over she let me keep it.  This is what it looks like:

Simple, straight-forward, practical.  I used this apron consistently when I made dinner, especially after coming home from work so I wouldn't mess up my clothes.  Over the course of the next year, my friend who had given me that apron moved to New York.  I was sad to see her go because she is awesome and I missed her.  On my birthday, she surprised me by sending me a new apron.  What?! I was so excited to have such a wealth of aprons.  This one had a little more pizzazz:

I tended to gravitate more to it for cooking and the other for baking.  I didn't want to get flour all over my new apron.  Then on my birthday this year, a different friend gave me a brand new home-sewn apron that was a little more girly and frilly than the others.  It's so pretty!  I couldn't believe my good luck.  I wear it when cooking for guests:

But now, my dear friend Angela has upped the ante.  She embroidered me an apron that is so darling that frankly I don't know what to do with it.  I'm actually afraid to use it.  It's dainty and reminds me of those old-fashioned pinafores that women used to wear.  I hate the thought of getting grease or chocolate all over it (don't you want to know what I'm cooking).  I even had trouble figuring out the best way to photograph it in order to do it justice.  I'm still not sure I did:

My apartment is from the 1920s, so there's an old ironing board built into the wall in the kitchen.  I thought it would be a nice match for the apron.  Now I just need to figure out the perfect occasion to wear it (the apron, not the ironing board).

Why I Am Not a Painter

-Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

(But she still doesn't like Paul Pierce.)

My 87-year-old grandmother got me into basketball.  Back when the Lakers were in this year's finals against the Celtics, I happened to be visiting her.  I knew she enjoyed the occasional football game, but I guess I never realized just how avid a sports fan she really was until that night. 

It was the last game and it was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in my life.  Up until that point, I don't think I had ever seen a full basketball game before, even in school.  My grandmother knew all the players.  She complained about Paul Pierce and the way he always "knows how to get fouls."  Glen Davis was a big baby.  And she thought Pau Gasol deserved MVP over Kobe.  Boy, I learned a lot that night. 

Now, I'm back visiting at her house, and the only thing we could agree to watch was the Bucks vs. the Celtics.  Another nail-biter of a game, it went into overtime that was way past Grandma's bedtime.  She got fed up with 1 minute, 6 seconds left on the clock and went to brush her teeth.  As soon as she walked away, the Buck's Delfino made a 3-point shot.  That gave the Bucks 100 against the Celtics' 101.  Ironically, my grandmother was rooting for the Celtics this time around.  "But, Grandma," I said, "I thought you hated the Celtics. Remember the Lakers championship game?"  She told me she was just going for the underdog.  Wait, the Celtics are the underdog here? 

One minute later they won 105-102.   Aha.  Grandma just likes to back a winner. 

Slam, Dunk, & Hook

Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's

Insignia on our sneakers,

We outmaneuvered to footwork

Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot

Swish of strings like silk

Ten feet out. In the roundhouse

Labyrinth our bodies

Created, we could almost

Last forever, poised in midair

Like storybook sea monsters.

A high note hung there

A long second. Off

The rim. We'd corkscrew

Up & dunk balls that exploded

The skullcap of hope & good

Intention. Lanky, all hands

& feet...sprung rhythm.

We were metaphysical when girls

Cheered on the sidelines.

Tangled up in a falling,

Muscles were a bright motor

Double-flashing to the metal hoop

Nailed to our oak.

When Sonny Boy's mama died

He played nonstop all day, so hard

Our backboard splintered.

Glistening with sweat,

We rolled the ball off

Our fingertips. Trouble

Was there slapping a blackjack

Against an open palm.

Dribble, drive to the inside,

& glide like a sparrow hawk.

Lay ups. Fast breaks.

we had moves we didn't know

We had. Our bodies spun

On swivels of bone & faith,

Through a lyric slipknot

Of joy, & we knew we were

Beautiful & dangerous.

 

-Yusef Komunyakaa