Nightwing

This is the only post my parents asked me not to write.


They relented, though, after determining the statute of limitations had probably put them in the clear by now. I doubt Los Federales will come knocking but I can understand their trepidation, I suppose. You see...we had bats. Lots of them.


As I explained last time, our house was very, very old. Such old houses have a way of becoming host to uninvited guests. I never saw a mouse or a bug (that started when we moved to the country - HUGE spiders) but damn did we have some flutter-mice. The attic, technically the third floor of the house, was host to who knows how many bats, sleeping and pooping during the day and leaving and swooping at night.


It wasn't a constant, swirling maelstrom of nocturnal nuisances, but it was definitely a problem. You would be sitting and watching a movie with the lights off, not even considering the risk of rabies, when a dark shape would flit across your field of vision. Instinctively we would all duck and cower and make a bee-line for our parents room, which contained our only method of pest control.


A tennis racket.


Wii remotes have nothing on the feeling of swinging a tennis racket as hard as you could, connecting with a terror-inducing bat (Bruce Wayne was a dick, it seems) and sending that little airborne menace flying across the room. Seeing them thwack against the wall and drop to the carpet, lifeless, we would then grab a folded newspaper and sweep them onto it, to be deposited in to the trash barrels outside. So it would go, for the foreseeable time - them, occasionally finding their way into our living space instead of the night sky, us killing a protected species in a shameful act of self-defense/cowardice.


The dynamic shifted one day when my father said he'd had enough. Enough shrieking children. Enough cats doing nothing while a free meal circled overhead. Enough siting up in bed, grabbing a racket that was sitting next to the damn night stand and killing them without even getting up. He had hit his limit. He created something that astounded and horrified us all.


The Bat Trap.

You see, bats can't take off like a bird. The have to drop from a perch and swoop up to take flight. My dad figured out which eave of the house they were mostly flying out of at night and set about devising a solution. A containment system. Risking a broken neck, he climbed up to the top of the house (an impressive height, especially without scaffolding or any safety gear whatsoever) and affixed a bucket and pulley mechanism. At dusk he would raise the bucket. Bats would drop in by the dozen, unable to alter course in time. In the morning, he would lower the bucket full of bats and do something horrible - kill them all. I won't divulge the method he initially attempted, but I'm still impressed and horrified he was able to do it and then put on a clean shirt and have a cup of coffee. After this disastrous first attempt he realized he needed to simplify and streamline his approach. The solution: put water in the bucket. Bats drop in, bats splash around, bats sink. Voila.


Secret best part to the story - he found out he had to kill them because he tried simply burying them alive one morning, only to have a league of furious bats claw their way up from the earth, obviously in search of vengeance. So my dad decided "I'll have to kill them before they can rise from their grave."

Being a fresh homeowner now, I can sort of see how he arrived at his course of action. I just hope I'm not driven mad in a conquest against a similar vermin like some villain from Batman.

Kitsch/in

Hi kids, ya miss me?


It's been an interesting couple of weeks, getting settled in our new house. There's no finish line anymore, essentially. It's the kind of thing where you just keep improving and fine tuning. All of our furniture is in, a strong majority of the boxes are unpacked and it feels like a home. Not necessarily OUR home yet, but at least A home instead of an empty building where we've been crashing. We just need to give it time while we make it ours. Wallpaper needs to come down, things need to be rearranged, designations need to be assigned. We need to get our scent in there, you know?


In the meantime we're trying to resume life as we knew it. We've slowly been regaining the ability to prepare a decent meal instead of just sandwiches and salads. Cooking is what makes it feel like home, it would seem. Also, we still have no Internet. That makes getting posts done a lot harder. As a mea culpa, I thought I'd share a few anecdotes I recall about the house in which I grew up.


The Big Butt Alarm.


You see, our house was already over 100 years old when I was a kid (for vanity's sake say mid 80's to mid 90's). While it was a great old house with loads of...character...it had definite flaws, one of which was a stove/oven deal from the 70's that had a broken face plate on it. It still worked just fine, but the knobs and dials on the front for setting the oven required a bit of familiarity/intuition. Not really a guessing game, but you would be much better off leaving the cooking to someone well versed in its idiosyncrasies.


As a result of the broken plastic on the front, a timer would occasionally go off when jostled. It sounded like an incorrect answer tone from The Family Feud. Lean a little too close to the stove and touch this innocuous little knob and "BZZZZZT!" you get the sound of angry bees. Having a family of five in a small, outdated kitchen, our table barely fit in the space we used. Anyone who tried to sit on the stove side of the table ran a significant risk of knocking their butt against the knob as they sidled into their chair and setting off what we all began to refer to as the Big Butt Alarm in that short-hand way all families make jokes. Being a bunch of miscreants, we would all announce it when it went off.


My mom also tended to sit opposite of stove side when she would have coffee with her friends, most of whom were not aware of our dumb jokes. So when a friend of hers slid into place one morning with a cup of coffee and brushed against the faulty knob too hard, my mom gave the Pavlovian response when it buzzed and called out "Big Butt Alarm!" to her own dismay.


She told me her friend looked mortified and cocked her head askew, asking just what she was talking about. Cue my mom's profuse apologies and her swearing up and down that it was something the family joked about, and not a personal dig.


We don't have a Big Butt Alarm at our new house, but I'm sure we'll find something.

Crown Jewel

Hi, gang.


It's been stressful times, as of late. I'm not speaking solely of the moving process; in fact given the potential for stress and heartache in a huge move like that, I think it went amazingly smooth. No, I mean more in the last 8 months or so. Basically, since the time I stopped having a place of my own. It wasn't solely the living situation, though, and I mean in no way to impugn my wonderful housemates. I mean more the external, coincidental factors coupled with being a married couple cast adrift while we weathered the seas of uncertainty.


Times got to be overwhelming.


The little things, the simple pleasures got to be reassurances. I liked being able to cook a meal. I'm no foodie, but I am a growing sous-chef to my better half, who has become a talented chef on her own. Most of our free time was spent preparing meals and dissecting what made things good. She reads cookbooks like literature. I try to keep up, but mostly my skills have favored pouring wine and doing dishes. One little bonus we had lost was the ability to watch copious DVR'd shows from the Food Network and the Cooking Channel. Honestly I think it was about the only TV my better half would watch, save the occasional Simpsons or Daily Show. So being without a kitchen staple, missing the lovely white noise of those specific shows, took a toll.


There was a life raft, though.


While we had no cable to speak of, we had access to the local PBS-esque affiliates. Turns out, on a regular basis they show cooking and food related programming. The best of the best? Our cream of the crop? Old episodes of Julia & Jacques Cooking At Home. It's a bit dated, being filmed and broadcast in 1999, but it is all kinds of awesome. So while we go about our business, getting settled in our new home, we make sure we tune in whenever possible.

In short, it's a classic cooking program and Julia Child is every bit as legendary as you'd expect. She was 86 when they filmed these! That she would have the gumption to still shoot these instructional shows, with the energetic yet patient Jacques Pepin, is nothing short of incredible. One cannot help but admire her spirit and passion, even past the point most others would have simply retired and coasted. No, Julia Child is amazing. She's totally the embodiment of all the parodies and jokes and SNL skits. She's so sincere and genuine that you can't help but find her endearing. Whether or not my palate can handle the amount of cream and white wine in her recipes, the shows are still a sight to behold. There's nothing quite as astounding as seeing a woman as old as your grandmother grab a gargantuan meat cleaver and hack a gigantic fish in two, without skipping a beat. Nothing broke her composure. She was super fun. Plus, I'm learning just from watching.

The stress will alleviate over time, certainly as we get more boxes unpacked and more things put away. In the meantime, we can cook with the limited means we have available and tune in to these hidden gems from a generation ago. If this is suburban living, I'll take it. Even if it means doing more dishes until our furniture is delivered.

Warming

So I'm writing this as I lie on an air mattress.

I spent the day closing on and moving into my house.

Sure, there's a certain amount of white knuckle terror that keeps the blood and adrenaline pumping. But! There's also a fair deal of exhilarating freedoms that keeps the fish swimming! None of that made any sense, did it?

We're lying on an air mattress watching Wall•e right now, more tired but more alive than I'd care to admit. It's been a solid year or more of planning, but we made it here in one piece. Having spent all that time in preparation, it is a strange feeling to finally be here. We kept saying, since before the wedding, that we can "sort all this out once we get a house."

Well, we're finally here and we're gonna get all our ducks in a row. Long road and a longer haul, no doubt. But! We've got time and space out here, and by golly, we're gonna make use of it!

My apologies for the lack of updates as of late, but we needed to prepare for the big move. Now that we're here I can't wait to set up my office and ensconced. Most of my writing as of late has been via pen and paper, so letting a keyboard handle the weight sounds fantastic, as does the idea of a permanent home and a place to customize/trick out to my hearts content.

This is the next step into a new chapter. Boots on the ground, we're ready to make it together. I'll keep you posted.

Worlds End

I've been thinking about The End of The World. 

Not in the biblical sense, fire and brimstone. Although I suppose in this case it would apply. Moreover, it's in the sense of my life as I know it ending. 

Like any human in this modern age, I have too much imagination with too little to exert it against. I wake up, go through my work day and come home. During that time, things are always happening. At home, more stuff happens. Something is always going on. Decisions are being evaluated, plans are made and executed. Meals are prepared and eaten, chores and duties are dealt with. During all the usual stuff, I'm also writing, tweeting, consuming pop culture and doing the usual 20-something crap that seems important but in actuallity is frivolous. Also, I'll get up at offensively early hours and go running, sometimes in the dark but now there's at least a little sunlight. Despite all of this, that imagination never seems to run out. 

See where I'm going? 

There is no shortage of stuff to deal with in this modern life. You get an extra hour and it fills up with obligations. Indulging in relaxing activites usually has a subcurrent of guilt permeating it, as though worrying about what I ought to be accomplishing makes it acceptable that I'm otherwise supposedly wasting time playing a videogame or reading a book. It's become hard to simply relax. The mind is constantly fretting, worrying, anxiously creating scenarios in which things go wrong or disaster falls or who knows what else. Having no actual dangers to avoid (war, pervasive crime, large predatory animals), my mind is constantly presenting potential scenarios, no matter how unrealistic, in which my world and life as I know them cease to exist and All Goes Wrong. 

Who cares? 

No one. 

Should I worry about it? 

Absolutely not. 

But see, that's the problem. Try to convince yourself that you shouldn't worry about a thing in the future. There's a reflexive instinct to reassert the notion that by not being concerned about it, it will come to pass in a negative light. 

This is not true. 

Worry is not a talisman against bad fortune. 

There is a world of difference between being prepared for bad fortune and constantly being wary of it. One is intelligent and resourceful. The other is a needless waste of energy. "But what if this and what if this and this thing could happen and then all this would happen" but it hasn't. Not yet. Odds are it most likely won't. This is just a wishful direction of energy in the hopes that we can exert some sort of control on the universe. 

The world hasn't ended. It won't. Even if it does, what does that change the here and now? Say I go broke, get cancer and lose everyone I love. Okay. Done. Then what happens? Wailing and gnashing of teeth? Perhaps. But whatever the series of circumstances, my life will have to continue on. War could happen, more terrorist attacks. What good, what possible benefit is there to fretting about it? It simply expends energy I could use to tell my better half I love her, or cook a nice meal, or finish the same book I've been slowly writing. 

Enough worrying. Enough self-caused anxiety. 

I'm going to go enjoy my day. You do the same. 

Voice Over

So that's it, huh.


I had known Beastie Boy Adam Yauch was sick for a while. I remember hearing about the band postponing albums and performances and being genuinely bummed about it, even though the shows were nowhere near me and the news of a fresh album had been beyond my knowledge. They are (now were) such an immensely likable, talented group that any ill that should befall them seemed to be a slight against all that was good in the world.

I know, I know. 


This all smacks of the bandwagon-jumping, post celebrity death fervor that grips the social current in the wake of a high profile death. I'm sure to some extent, that's exactly what it is. In my defense, however - I was a longtime fan of the group and adored them for same reasons anyone would. Not to be that hyper dramatic self-involved type that claims the closest relationship to the trauma or loss, I just mean to say it's a real sad loss of a talented, intelligent and funny person.

I can't even begin to summarize all of the amazing music and the impact it had on popular culture. More talented writers have said better about the significance of their mainstream success, being three Jewish rappers in the then-nascent genre. They went from being a hardcore outfit (with a woman on drums, to boot) to frat rap/rock before it was a thing, to some of the smartest, funkiest hip hop in the alternative landscape in the 90s and beyond. In short, they were amazing. 

Back when I was a pimply teenager, Ill Communication was the first rap album I bought. My stealth obsession with oddball hip hop was forged then, listening to the crazy loops and eclectic mix of sounds on the record. 'Sure Shot' is still one of my all time favorite songs of theirs. I remember the crazy anticipation for Hello Nasty and the absurd fun they had with their videos for 'Intergalactic' and 'Body Movin'. I look back fondly on bonding with my younger brother over his discovery and obsession with the group as soon as he started drumming. Above all, though, I remember falling in love with the group sound of Check Your Head. Read up on why I love it here, and check out Max Tannone's remixes that fold the album back in on itself like an ourobourus. 

The fact that MCA is gone is one I can deal with. He was sick, but he led an amazing life that saw him grow in huge leaps and bounds into the farthest thing from the horrible clips the news keeps showing, as though the only thing anyone ever knows them from is 'Fight for Your Right to Party'. Please. MCA was incredibly smart and talented, and that's why we're all so sad to see him go, but as a Buddhist, he wouldn't be. He's just moving on.

Now, let's remember the Beastie Boys for what they are - disembodied heads in jars, still dropping crazy lines in the 31st century. MCA had more rhymes than he had gray hairs, and that's a lot because he had his share.

Cabin Fever

Okay.

So.

I saw a little movie called Cabin in the Woods this weekend. 

I adored it.

This is, of course, the kind of thing I usually follow with a synopsis and digestion. Due to the nature of the film, however, I'm going to refrain from engaging in my typical activity. Instead, I strongly encourage you to see the movie as I did - in as much of a void of context as possible. While I can't explain the movie, perhaps my reasoning for the experience warrants dissection.

The less I say about the movie, the better. Here are the few facts I can divulge without spoiling the viewing experience: written, directed and produced by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, it has a fantastic pedigree. The dialogue and plot are natural despite the horrible things that happen. Characters are surprisingly believable given the circumstances that unfold. It's about some good looking young people that go to a Cabin in the Woods. Bad things happen and we are given a bit of a mystery to piece together. Saying more than that would begin to chip away at the unexpected delights in the movie.

You know what? 

I need to stop here.

I can feel a full, spoilerific rant waiting to gush out. It's hard to withhold, frankly. I'm even reticent to post any links or images to go along with all this. All I can really say at this point is that if you have any love whatsoever for horror movies, or the ritual of going to the movies or even just smart, incredibly well written and engagingly directed movies - do not hesitate. See it now, before anything gets spoiled. It worked so well in a vacuum. It was so amazing to see a movie that trusted the audience to keep it, to assume we were smart rather than play down to the base level.

Go.

Go now.

Don't read reviews, don't watch trailers. Just know that it has been incredibly well received and warrants seeing on the big screen.

Trust me - you won't be sorry.

Timing

So I read Stephen King's novel about the Kennedy assassination. 

It was surprisingly good. 

Unfortunately, the enormity of the subject makes an elegant and simplified analysis difficult, if not impossible. I was 18 when the terrorist attacks occurred in New York and DC. Considering how much that shaped my world, I can't begin to fathom how such an event like the one on 11/22/63 would shatter innocence and alter lives. To my admitted dismay and shame, it made for absolutely engrossing reading and fascinating storytelling. 

Let me explain a bit. 

11/22/63 tells the story of Jake Epping, a man who is given access to a gateway to the past by an elderly friend. This friend, being not long for this Earth, has become obsessed with using this possibility as a means to divert history and save Kennedy, hopefully setting the world on a different chain of events that would undo Vietnam and spare thousands of lives as a result. Jake, fascinated by all of this, goes along with it and travels back to 1958, into a world of heavy smoking and the red scare. After some exposition and a series of trial and error establishment of rules regarding time travel, he decides to go along with the plan and sets about changing history. What follows is an engrossing adventure into the past, aided by an impressive amount of research and historical details from King. 

While I could give my typical emphatic endorsement of the book here, I'll sidestep the process to offer a few thoughts on the idea as a whole. I've certainly made my apologist stance for King's canon clear before, so instead of making a plea for you to give in to his writing, I'll simply say that it's the best he's written in years and it feels like he moved away from his wheelhouse a bit, in a good way. Give it a chance. 

Now. 

I can't imagine what it would have been like to experience an event like the one in Dallas in November of 1963. I was 18 when the attacks happened and I could most likely spend the rest of my life trying to make sense of what happened. I probably will, in some ways. Such events are so massive in effect, despite their simple human beginnings, that our instinct is to force them into some sort of comprehendible, easily digested capsule of logic. This is, of course, impossible. 

For my generation, the scale of the events on September 11th will always be too large to grasp on any human scale - they are, by matter of fact, larger than one person can easily reconcile. All the more difficult it must be, then, to fathom how one lone person can be responsible for skewing the world off on to another course of events. It is of no surprise that conspiracy theories arise when we try to explain what happened in either event. To have some shadowy cabal of power players be responsible somehow seems so much more comprehensible than the reality of the actions of a few people. The events fly in the face of our understanding of how the world works. 

This being said, King's exploration of the subject is harrowing and humanizing. His exhaustive research into what (most likely) drove Lee Harvey Oswald to do what he did grants him an exhilarating yet horrifying place from which to tell a story. In some ways it's an the ultimate example of wish fulfillment - saving Kennedy is one of the classic cases cited for the potential of time travel. Who else is better suited than the long winded and exhaustive King to delve into the specifics of time travel and life in the 60s? 

I have to admit, I was almost giddy with excitement to see little scenarios play out, like rigging sports bets like in Back to the Future, or reveling in classic cars and examining knowingly outdated world views. Every time the protagonist started to risk revealing his nature or started to change the past in any way, I was on the edge of my seat, furiously flipping pages. Granted, I'm a fairly sizable nerd and time travel is some of the nerdiest stuff in fiction, but as engrossing as it may be for someone still under the age of 30 it was fantastic. I can't imagine how interesting it would be for anyone who actually experienced that time. 


I think, though, that some of the most significant lessons of the book come from the authors closing notes. In particular, a single sentence about our current state of vitriol and political fervor - "If you want to know what political extremism can lead to, look at the Zapruder film." That single, sad sentence says more about what our actions can lead to than the preceding 800 pages of human drive and desperation. One miserable, crazy person can do terrible things. It's a fascinating, scary ride to read about what makes them tick, but the moment they take action, it can't be taken back. The past won't change for us.


It would do us well to remember that.

Endless Nameless

Naming bands is hard.

Actually, choosing a good band name is hard.

Let me back up.

I've been in a few bands in my life. Some had longer lives than others. A couple were no more than impromptu jam sessions. Others recorded EPs and built (incredibly minor) buzz in their areas. Looking back at my choices, I can say with confidence that every single one had an abysmal, face-palm inducing name. Let's delve further into the mess, shall we?

Yellow 5 - the first band I ever played in with a name. I joined as the lead guitar. A punk outfit that played a lot of Aquabats and Green Day. Broke up after a year.

Harris Avenue - the first band i started. I chose the name at random from a book I was reading. The band stuck together for a surprisingly long(ish) time. I cut my teeth here.

John's Band - joined this band, not named after me. I swear. Different John. Only one or two shows and we all went separate ways.

In Like Flint - some reoccurring faces. Name chosen when overheard in conversation. Both band and name were too toothless to take hold.

Casual Hijinx - worst name, yet most prolific. Isn't that how it always works? Name came from a repeated phrase. Played a lot of shows and still have some recordings. Not half bad, in a Get Up Kids-aping sense.

High Five - sat in on a couple sessions with these guys. I take no blame for this one, but I did have the fortune of playing alongside my younger brother, who I still consider to be the best drummer I know.

I know for certain I'm forgetting the name of two other bands that fell in between a couple there, but then again they may never have gestated proper names. A lot of bad jokes maybe, but nothing that stuck, apparently.

See how bad all of those were? Granted, I was anywhere from 15 to 19 when picking names, but man - see how your own bad ideas can betray you? I actually thought they were decent at the time. If anyone I know can recall a name I've forgotten, please let me know and I'll add it to the list.

(Special mention goes to my younger brother's first band. Their name? Grandpa's Pirate Ship. Awesome.)

Fog Light

Hey gang!


I know, it's been a while, but sometimes that's just how it goes. I feel bad about that, but hey - what can you do?


I've got some things planned, a couple larger pieces in the pipes, but they're not finished and another's just starting. I also started a tumblr, because I like to both post inane Pop Art and overextend myself. In the meantime, I'll try to drop some things here that I've really been digging. There's never a shortage of new stuff for me to paw through, it's just a matter of what stands out from the pile. 


For example! The Wombats - you guys heard of them?

They're great. I totally was not on board for this Liverpool trio. Missed the boat, if you will. However, hearing their single 'Jump Into the Fog' was enough to shake me from my moorings. It's a brilliant piece of weird pop music that shifts and slinks into your head with fantastic synthesizers. 

Released off of their album This Modern Glitch earlier this year, this single sounds both old and new. It seems to possess that unassailable British swagger that bleeds cool, yet plays it so nonchalant despite this. The single possesses these odd tones that almost feel eerie and morbid. They play so well with the bright, poppy bass running beneath the verses, though. The hook is something that calls back to the 90s alt rock scene in the most British way, like I said.

It's just such an odd song, but I can't help but love 'Jump Into the Fog'. This is just one of the things I've been tripping myself over, as of late. I'm aiming to be updating a little more often going forward, so keep an eye peeled, kids.