One Night in Cleveland, One Decade in Dinkytown, and One Lifetime in the "Family": 2009 NCAA Picks

I will continue my sort-of annual habit of predicting the NCAA basketball tournament. I will blend my half-assed knowledge of college basketball (some years I know a lot; this year I do not) with my personal experiences with each college and/or city, throwing in pop culture references. Seeds in parentheses (lower number = better team). Enjoy.

Midwest Region

Louisville (1) vs. Morehead State (16) Again, I struggle with the karmic clash between loathsome Louisville coach Rick Pitino and heroic/brilliant Louisville singer-songwriter Will Oldham (aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy). I say that the two cancel each other out. But do they? Is Billy's new album cover really enough to nullify Pitino's arrogant asshole-ish talentless arrogance? Maybe not but Louisville is a far better basketball team. My pick: Louisville.

Ohio State (8) vs. Siena (9)
I got nothing. My pick: Siena.

Utah (5) vs. Arizona (12)
Big Love vs. the Meat Puppets. Uh oh. That's a close one. Big Love is having its best season. My pick: Utah.

Wake Forest (4) vs. Cleveland State (13)
I once spent an amazing few hours in Cleveland one summer night in the 1980s. My pick: Cleveland State.

West Virginia (6) vs. Dayton (11)
Struggling to come up with something funny. My pick: West Virginia.

Kansas (3) vs. North Dakota State (14)
I would love if the gutty hoopsters from Fargo won in a Coen Bros.-inspired upset in a game played in Minneapolis of all places. Marge Gunderson could roll down south and east over the white prairie sheets while her husband hits the buffet back home. She could have lunch with her old crying friend at the Radisson and maybe catch a Jose Feliciano show over at the Carlton Celebrity Room. Maybe that one girl from White Bear and the other one from Normandale could hang out with her. Yeah if NSDU won, it would be a good story. Even if it might hurt (it wouldn't) my friend who spent some time at KU. It would be pretty cool. But god people from the Dakotas are annoying and potentially insufferable. But that's mostly South Dakota. And even within SD that's mostly those upriver folk. Or is it downriver? My pick: North Dakota State.

Boston College (7) vs. USC (10)
This is my first year of employment at USC where I haven't attended at least one basketball game. But I have a feeling this is the year they will go far. Besides, my nephew applied to USC but explicitly told me he would attend Boston College if both schools admitted him so it would be fun to see BC lose. Really? You'd turn down an offer to join the #27 school in the country, to be part of the Trojan Family, you'd turn that down to spend four years in hellhole Boston with its pale drunk college students and its horrid infrastructure at a school that doesn't even get close to the top 40, academics-wise? Would you really do that Tommy? You would? Yeah so would I. My pick: USC.

Michigan State (2) vs. Robert Morris (15)
Abbreviated version of my history with an MSU grad: "It could have been me." Collectible tourist spoons. Pensions. Indian food. Grosse Pointe Blank. Soul Coughing. My pick: Michigan State.


West Region

Connecticut (1) vs. Chattanooga (16)
Whatever. My pick: Connecticut because it's easier not to misspell.

BYU (8) vs. Texas A&M (9)
LDS vs. buzz-cut Texans? LDS. My pick: BYU.

Purdue (5) vs. Northern Iowa (12)
The Big Ten is a horrid horrible horrific basketball conference. My pick: Northern Iowa.

Washington (4) vs. Mississippi State (13)
What I wouldn't do to be offered a magical job with a big salary at the University of Washington. I just might have to take it. Seattle = awesome. UW = great school, cool neighborhood. I might have to work on that one. My pick: Washington.

Marquette (6) vs. Utah State (11)
I've been to Milwaukee three times in my life. Two of those times were among the 20 greatest days of the 2000s. Marquette is in Milwaukee. My pick: Marquette.



Missouri (3) vs. Cornell (14)
My pick: Cornell. Because of that guy <<:








California (7) vs. Maryland (10)
Berkeley. Whatever. Really? My pick: Maryland.

Memphis (2) vs. Cal. State Northridge (15)
When the Northridge quake of '94 hit, my cats were freaked out. They hid under the bed. They shuddered at any noise within 1000 feet. Nobody does that to my cats. My pick: Memphis.


East Region

Pittsburgh (1) vs. East Tennessee State (16)
Jamie Dixon = coolest coach in basketball, the anti-Pitino, born in Burbank, raised in NoHo, schooled all over the place, coaching a fun-to-watch team in a city I've never seen. My pick: Pittsburgh.

Oklahoma State (8) vs. Tennessee (9)
Another reason to note what is special about the state of Tennessee:
1. The blood there runneth orange.
2. It is the land of hot middle-aged women.
3. And it is the land of club soda unbridled.
That's enough to say: My pick: Tennessee



Florida State (5) vs. Wisconsin (12)
The Big Ten is just awful. It's hideous. It's an embarrassment to basketball. None of its teams (except for one) should be eligible for tournament play. My (reluctant because it's FSU) pick: Florida State.

Xavier (4) vs. Portland State (13)
Along with UW, I would totally accept a job at Portland State - great campus, lots of trees, nice neighborhood, amazing town, etc. Xavier, on the other hand, is in Cincinnati. My pick: Portland State.

UCLA (6) vs. Virginia Commonwealth (11)
Number of dates I have gone out on with students of / alumni of UCLA: 11
Number of dates I have gone out on with students of / alumni of Virginia Commonwealth: 0
My pick: UCLA.

Villanova (3) vs. American (14)
My favorite basketball team between 1982 and 1985? Villanova. My pick: Villanova.

Texas (7) vs. Minnesota (10)
Yes, the Big Ten is awful. But there are 11 teams in the Big Ten. This leaves room for one of them not to be awful. Here are 9 reasons why Minnesota will win:
1. I went to school there. Twice.
2. They opened a Chick-Fil-A at the remodeled Coffman Union.
3. They remodeled Coffman Union.
4. I lost my virginity on that campus. Sort of.
5. Espresso Royale in Dinkytown kicks ass. (The other location, less so.)
6. Tubby Smith
7. Bell Auditorium on the campus of the UofM is where I saw: Being John Malkovich, Lola, Judy Berlin, The American Astronaut, American Pimp, Dancer in the Dark, and Vertigo, among others. (Yes I know that two of those films are awful but still.)
8. I saw Soul Coughing on campus back in '00.
9. I liked it there. A lot.

Duke (2) Binghamton (15)
Binghamton? Binghamton??? My family used to stop there on its way to visit relatives in Wellsville, NY. Long time ago. Duke? Well, Duke is Duke. God, I hate to pick another upset but Binghamton fills me with warm memories because it wasn't yet Wellsville. My pick: Binghamton.


South Region

North Carolina (1) vs. Radford (16)
My friend Patrick's cousin went to Radford. In fact, here is Patrick wearing a Radford sweatshirt in the 1980s. I had a crush on Patrick's Radford cousin. Which I probably already wrote about here once. But still - is it enough to go against a number one seed? Well, a number 1 seed has to lose at some point in our history. Here goes. My pick: Radford.



LSU (8) vs. Butler (9)
Nothing to see here, nothing to say. My pick: LSU.

Illinois (5) vs. Western Kentucky (12)
See my above Big Ten-related comments. My pick: Western Kentucky.

Gonzaga (4) vs. Akron (13)
Gonzaga pros: Fun team, lots of talent, been there before
Gonzaga cons: Miniature tea cups!!!!!
Akron pros: That one short story about cheese I wrote in 2000, Chrissie Hynde
Akron cons: In Ohio, smells like rubber.
My pick: Gonzaga.

Arizona State (6) vs. Temple (11)
I've been to Tempe. Oh how I've been to Tempe (interestingly, one letter off from Temple). I've been to Philadelphia. Yeah. I grew up near there, came of age near there, almost went to school at Temple. My pick: Arizona State. Because of that Harden guy.

Syracuse (3) vs. Stephen F. Austin (14)
I have never not liked Syracuse basketball. My pick: Syracuse.

Clemson (7) vs. Michigan (10)
Yes I know someone at Michigan, someone slogging through the Ann Arbor late-winter at this very moment. But you're in the Big Ten, artist friend. My pick: Clemson.

Oklahoma (2) vs. Morgan State (15)
My fingers are tired. My pick: Oklahoma.

As the Intercom Crackles with Love: Songwriters, Career Arcs, and the End of Love (with digressions)

I love music. When I find an artist that I like, one that I champion, one that I listen to for years, I stay loyal. I'll often stick by these bands as their critical acclaim wanes, as their record labels abandon them, as they move to Broadway, as they begin to over-experiment, as they sell out, as they fail to sell, as their career arcs are dismantled.

I'm particularly enamored with underappreciated, quirky, smart, singer-songwriters. In my lifetime I have:

- Written two (of my best) short stories about past-their-prime singer-songwriters
- Written several others that you have not yet read
- Written a seven-part poetry series about the post-fame lives of Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe
- Written a screenplay about a Leonard Cohen-inspired poet-in-hiding who is stalked/worshipped by two escaped convicts, one of whom is named after a toothbrush
- Attempted to write a novel with main characters that (very loosely) combine the most interesting elements of this guy









and this guy













and her












This is why I found this interview with Clem Snide lead singer Eef Barzelay fascinating - he (and the band is essentially him, with a rotating set of bandmates) has been through a lot this past decade - failed marketing experiments, faint critical acclaim, big critical acclaim, TV theme song acclaim replaced by TV theme song abandonment, etc. In the interview he talks about much of this and throws in a mid-life crisis, a possible change of career from music to teaching, concern over mortgage payments, and puzzlement over a swirly career arc. He frets about his mortgage payments. He insults his former rhythm section. He moves from grandiosity to regret and back. He talks about a visit to a college. It's all pretty damn readable.

Let me get this out of the way: I think Eef Barzelay is one of the greatest lyricists working today. And despite the presence of a guitar in his hands onstage and a band behind him, it's his words that take center stage. He's the modern-day heir to Leonard Cohen - he loves his words (enough to repeat his climactic lines twice, a habit that annoys some people), he loves his songs, and he will never stop writing words and setting them to songs.

He might disappear for years (like Leonard Cohen when he succumbed to drugs in the seventies and the monastery in the nineties). He might play maudlin sets to a few dozen people on a wintery West Bank Minneapolis night, like he did in 2002. He might weird people out with paranoia (from the interview - "I think shit is about to go down"). He might write at least one cringe-inducing song per album (e.g., African Friend, Chinese Baby) and toss off a queasiness-creating line here and there ("roads paved with liver and onions") but he won't stop writing songs and I won't stop listening to them.

You see, Eef wrote Joan Jett of Arc. In it, he wrote this verse:

And the birds that were crushed
Once had air in their bones
As oil was refined in her honor.

This followed verses with good/bad puns about Joan Jett, Hall and Oat(e)s, and John Cougar Mellencamp. It's the prettiest tribute to an eighties road trip that's ever put to song.

And Eef Barzelay wrote two of the sweetest love songs ever - Bread and Exercise - which really are about bread and exercise, respectively, but mostly about love. He wrote a song sung from the perspective of a female dancer in a Ludacris video struggling to finish nursing school, a conceit that could easily embarass the hell out of the best songwriters out there but he pulled it off (The Ballad of Bitter Honey).

And this song (and video) from his recent solo album are pretty cool and perfect for the recession/depression/impatience/patience era we live in. Plus it's a good introduction to Eef's white suit which he seems to like to wear:



The Barzelay interview is a reminder of how just how tenuous art can sometimes be. The new album is the one his band tried to make in 2006 but it became too much and someone else's vision clashed with Barzelay's. He retreated to solo work, releasing two albums as bleak as this decade deserves. Then he recorded the new album again, with a new-ish Clem Snide, and it's almost perfect.


(Small-type digression:

About 10 years ago I read an interview with the lead singer of a local Minneapolis band, one whose glory had been 10 years gone at the time the interview was published in the local alternative weekly paper. I remember being distraught at the notion of one of my favorite singer-songwriters not being able to write like he used to, to singing to audiences of a couple dozen people who only wanted to hear the old songs that didn't make him any money anyway. The singer didn't really know what to do with his life. He worked at a Starbucks in Minneapolis while his brother (who was in the long-lost band with him) went on to form a new band that made more money with one song that the first band made with 50. It all made me kind of sad - especially that he had to work at Starbucks and not one one of the many independent coffee shops (though I'm sure Starbucks had/has better benefits).

(Note: There is absolutely nothing wrong about working at Starbucks or any other coffee establishment. It was just the juxtaposition of power-pop-rock-god (in my eyes) and somber barista that got to me.)

Which brings me to my oft-told story about another Minneapolis singer-songwriter, from the era that fell in between when the Starbucks guy had some success and the Starbucks guy had to work at Starbucks. (I know - I could have just said "the mid-90s".) The story about standing next to him at an Of Montreal / Ladybug Transistor show a few years after he stopped recording/performing music and he asked me if the discarded French fries by my feet belonged to me. Because he was hungry. And being big in precisely two places (Minneapolis and Japan) in the mid-90s was not a recipe for certain fame. The fries weren't mine. He ate them.)


Eef Barzelay isn't from Minneapolis. He lives in Nashville where, presumably, you can last a bit longer without having to eat cold soggy discarded fried food. In the Eef Barzelay interview, there's some of that same career angst and confusion but at least he's still getting his music out there. In this MySpace/iTunes/mp3-era, it's harder for a musician to make a living but easier to stay in the collective conscious. Career arcs and record sales aren't as important. Good art gets out there a little easier and I sleep better.

On the new Clem Snide album Hungry Bird (out now! on tour now! Minneapolis on the 25th, Madison on the 26th, L.A. on April 7), there's an amazing song called Hum which drones on for five-plus beautiful minutes. It starts with a lie - "I know that not everyone will die" - and moves on to making the lie into truth.

My Career as a Stalker

As I entered the 101 freeway this morning, my phone rang. Not having my hands-free device handy, I normally wouldn't have answered. But this was someone who never calls me. Someone who never calls me calling me at 8:15 in the morning. Someone who almost always calls me from a blocked number calling me from an unblocked one. So I answered.

I would have expected our conversation to be full of reminiscences and future plans to meet again, plans to meet that would not be met. Instead we talked about mortgage rates and mental health licenses, about difficult relationships (hers, mine) and the economy. There was absolutely no traffic. Considering that this was morning rush hour in Los Angeles on freeways that run through the center of town, I was surprised. I exited the 110 at Exposition, 15 minutes after my drive started. This was my quickest commute ever.

Our conversation spanned the entire drive. I told her I was pulling into the parking garage at work. She casually mentioned that she was passing the exact same parking structure at that very moment, on her way to an appointment at the elementary school down the street.

This would have been a perfect opportunity for me to say something like "You're across the street from me. We haven't seen each other since 1998. Let's meet at the Coffee Bean, the one that each of us could walk to in less than three minutes." And I did say something like that, except I left out the whole 1998 thing. She said no, she has to work, her appointment is in a few minutes. I got out of my car and looked out onto Figueroa from the fourth floor balcony. I tried to see if I could find her car but what would I be looking for? That little white car she drove around Fullerton back in 1989 when I first met her, in college. That's the only car I know.

Later in 1989, I sort of stalked her once. Not in an illegal way, nothing close to that. But there wasn't much to do then. I was living in Brea - glorious Brea, dirty Brea. By that fall, my coterie of friends had diminished - John was in Ohio and that damn circle of close-knit friends and more-than-friends, the circle that spawned hundreds of pages of bad poems (and dozens of pages of good ones) from at least three unpublished poets, well that circle dissolved into stray dotted lines across north and central Orange County, lines walked upon by mannequins and corpses and one or two of the living. She wasn't part of that circle, not even close.

It was late '89, around the holidays. I liked to drive around then, listening to cassettes of bands not played on the radio. One night in particular I drove east from Brea. I crossed the line into Los Angeles County, heading toward the town where she grew up and still lived. I had no reason to go there. It was a good 15 miles away. There was nothing for me there. But still I kept going. I knew what I was doing. I wanted to drive through the streets of her town.

This wasn't all that creepy. It's not like I knew her address. I didn't expect to spot her white car coming towards me. Her town wasn't that small. I just wanted to, you know, drive around.

At this point in the story I'm going to toss in something I call a fact but you might call apocryphal. Like there's no way that happened, like I had to invent it to keep this story going. But yeah - I was listening to the Go-Betweens. I was listening to their best album 16 Lovers Lane. And as I drove around the town of XX XXXXXX, I played the song Streets of Your Town. I played it more than once. I rewound the cassette - side two, song one:



To me this song is more a lament for the place than the person whose town it is. The narrrator associates the town with a long lost love. He begins the song with the chorus (a technique that should be used more often) - "Round and round, up and down, through the streets of your town." He ends it by saying "I still don't know what I'm here for." The "you" of "your town" isn't coming back. The town isn't coming back. They shut it down.

But yeah I listened to that song. Kind of creepy but not as creepy as listening to Every Breath You Take or Elvis Costello's I Want You. By the way, never ever put Elvis Costello's I Want You on a mixtape/mixCD/playlist intended for a person you like/love. Don't even do it ironically. It's never taken the right way.

I only did it once, drive through that town. Even after another 20 years, 14 of which I've lived in the greater L.A. area, I've never gone back there. No reason to. No freeway traverses it. It is not in between places I go.

(Did you catch that last joke?)

Nothing much in the way of love came of my stalking and my pages and pages of poetry about her (pre-Internet, pre-Facebook, all communication between humans was done via poetry). I told myself (and others) that I was in love with her. I never told her but it's likely she knew. We remained friends. We had lunch or dinner once or twice a year through the 90s. I moved to the Midwest. She got married. I got married. She got divorced. I got divorced. Grant McLennan, the Go-Between who wrote and sang lead on Streets of Your Town died in his sleep at age 48 in 2006. Sad.

In 2007, someone gave me a mix CD with a fine cover version of Streets of Your Town by the band Ivy. That meant a lot to me. The one who made the mix CD and the one who refused to meet me for coffee this morning - they live in the same town now, a much bigger town than the one I drove through. I thought about moving there too - Long Beach is big enough for all of us. But I like where I'm living. No one is stalking me as far as I know. Living at the dead-end of a short cul-de-sac in a house with massive picture windows, I can't be stalked without me knowing.

Writer's Block and the Dizzying Distractions: Breaking the Three Golden Rules of Blogging

(First I break the second golden rule of blogging: I write about my lack of blogging. One should never do what I'm about to do.)

I've been trying to figure out the reason for my recent extended blog-writer's block. My posts, though generally longer, have been appearing in steadily declining numbers since mid-2007:

Look to the right and you'll see:

• Posts in 2007: 171
  
• Posts in 2008: 98
• Posts in 2009 so far: 16 (if I maintain the same pace, I'll reach 91)

What could explain this decline? Facebook? Wellbutrin? Age? An uneventful life? Well, let's rule out the final two reasons listed - once you pass the age of, say, 36, nothing really changes. Until you hit 52. And my life has actually been rather eventful over the past 18 months. Let's rule out Facebook because its linking feature actually gives me a reason to post more, with my captive audience and all. So we're left with the anti-anxiety/depression medication Wellbutrin which I started taking in mid-2007 and partially blame for my lack of writing output and maybe some other changes. At the same time, it has had a lot of benefits (e.g., I'm happier. Probably.)

(There, I broke the third golden rule of blogging: I wrote about a relatively personal medication I have been taking. No one needs to know that.)

I debate friends about the romantic notion of the "tortured (depressed) artist," that it's mostly a myth and if Van Gogh hadn't chopped off his goddamn ear and if Cobain hadn't pulled out his gun, there would be no reason for debate. But I actually think the anti-depressant-as-creativity-suppressant argument has some merit in my case. My writing - on this blog but especially in my fiction and poetry - is rather dependant on the idiosyncratic way (that I think) my brain works: thoughts stir around like crazy; random or unexpected connections are made; memories clash with reality; the past is a cloud that gives us shade, and so on. No, I'm not the only human with neural connectors. But there was something going on in my head to make me write this in 2005, from my short story Demolition:

There are buildings ugly as war, their spotlighted hallways showing nothing but a dust trail - their jig is up and out the window. There are buildings beautiful as a split pea, uncovered and cleaved and asking for trouble. These buildings are museums and toy factories and fractions of an earth's material and memory and the weaving in of texts and spoken story. These buildings make the misfits one step closer to the fire, the black water, the eerie joy.

I could deconstruct the meaning here if I could remember (or decipher) it. And standing alone the paragraph isn't much more than a (likely over-caffeinated) brain spilling out language and structure without remorse or a plan from the corner table of the Literati Cafe in West L.A. But in the context of the full story I think it's pretty amazing. These days those words wouldn't come out. Maybe I need to embrace the way they do come out - smaller, more contained. But the true and fictional stories I write now tend end too soon. And I want them to go on.

Between 1996 and 2007, I wrote almost exclusively in the cafes of Minneapolis and Los Angeles. I hardly ever wrote at home or anywhere else. I still go to those cafes. I still drink the coffee. In fact, this morning I drank a $4 coffee ($4 - not for espresso - but coffee) at the Intelligentsia coffeehouse in Silverlake. But now when I sit and try to write in these public places, I get through one page before being distracted by something - an annoying conversation, a need to check my email on my iPhone, a desire to read a page or two from a book that I likely won't finish. In the past, the annoying conversation would become its own short story, the email would trigger a poen, and reading a book would lead to a longer short story. These days, that doesn't happen.

(Could part of the problem be that I go to places with awful names like Literati and Intelligentsia? What name will they think of next? The Algonquin? The Bloomsbury? The Insufferable Elite?)

No these days, I can only write like I used to in the confined quarters of an airplane. I fill notebooks on airplanes. I wrote the only story I've written in the last two years that I'm really proud of on an airplane. What is it about airplanes? I'm still taking the Wellbutrin. I'm using the same pen-and-notebook or Macbook. I'm still me. Is it that I have nowhere to go? Is it that I can't pack up my things and leave the scene, walking back to my car a little disappointed in what I didn't accomplish? Yes, that's exactly it. My wandering, roving mind cannot go anywhere else.

Before Wellbutrin (or before the divorce, or before 40, whatever explanation you like), I was content with my mind racing and my fingers writing it down. Now, my mind moves and my hand reaches for a distraction (iPhone, book, crossword) or just gets up and walks away. I need to go back to that place/time where I was not afraid of my runaway thoughts. How do I do this? Do I move back to Minneapolis or Santa Monica? No, that would be a cop-out, although it may have other benefits. Do I try harder to find a girlfriend or true love or a life's meaning? No, trying too hard to is like love is like oxygen - you can't do too much.

No, the solutions are simple: Keep working on the writing. Have some discipline. Try some new things. Go on more airplane trips. Read more books/see more movies/listen to more music - all the stuff that's always inspired me.

Take today, for example. It's an impossibly beautiful 60-degree day in Los Angeles. The sky is clear and the air is pure. When I drive home later, I will see snow-capped mountains beyond the glorious (underrated) downtown L.A. skyline. I should write about buildings. I should write about the shapes of distances between people. I should write about how things look different from hills. Yes, I'll do that.

(And there I broke the first golden rule of blogging: Never, never, never, ever write about the weather.)

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This week I'm "celebrating" the three-year anniversary of living in my current apartment. Since leaving my parents' clutches, I have not lived anywhere for so long. The closest I've come is the first 17th Street apartment in Santa Monica, where Laurel and I lived for 2 years and 11 months. The longest I've lived anywhere alone was the Emerson Avenue apartment in Minneapolis, where I stayed for 2 years. There were a few other places that clocked in at just under 2 years (Date Street in Brea, the inaptly named Camarillo Chateau apartments in North Hollywood, though I switched apartments from the first to the third floor during my 22 months there).

So really, from the standpoint of a single man, a lone entity, my Melrose Hill apartment is the closest thing I've ever had to a "home."

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

A timeline:

January, 2006: Laurel and I decide (well, really just Laurel) that we should get separated. I spend the next month and a half sleeping in the living room of our second 17th Street apartment in Santa Monica. (I always liked the grittier first 17th Street apartment more.)

February 25, 2006: Laurel and Mike helped me pack my things and half of the things I shared in the marriage. I drive the U-Haul east on the 10 freeway and north on Western Avenue. I make a right on Lemon Grove. My first thoughts upon getting settled in? Thought #1: What a lovely view. Thought #2: This is the loneliest place in the universe / I don't want a divorce.

February 25, 2006 through today: I buck up and recover from thought #2 but not without long months of avoiding the bedroom so I can sleep in the big room, not without a series of 2-week to 2-month relationships that should have been attempted under better circumstances, not without a too-large devotion to premium cable TV series (Weeds, The Wire, Big Love, the late lamented John From Cincinnati), not without long summers and short rainy winters, not without a hornet's nest of hornets.

(Thrown in there were some court papers, a failed cohabitation with a longer-than-2-month girlfriend, two separate furniture overhauls, two near-moves, loud neighbors who have since been quieted, the death of a cat,

quiet neighbors who are never seen, a nearby gang shooting, an altercation of a parking space that turned so weird I haven't parked on that particular block since, and the eternal search for a parking space)

But there have been some benefits. There's the amazing view. From my window or porch, I can see the Hollywood sign, the Griffith Observatory (I watched much of the surrounding hills burn in the 2007 fire), the Roosevelt Hotel, the Capitol Records Building (iconic to me ever since Archie and the gang went to go see it in one of their comic books), the expansive Hollywood Hills, and the garish businesses of Western Avenue. My hardwood floors are lovely, as is the kitchen tile floor. The washer and dryer are effective. I share no walls with no neighbor. And... The list really should be longer.

But enough complaining. I have a home. I have enough space. My furniture is stylish and manly in a post-divorce way but not in a permanent-bachelor way. I have health. I have one cat (Lily, a complainer for sure, but damn is she cute.) And really it's not about where you live but what you do when you're there. In other words, stop longing for the other.

(Quick aside: I just took a break from writing to check my email and play a quick game of (solo) Scramble on Facebook. I broke my old record of 193 by getting to 200. My last word was "dos" for 1 point to reach 200 with 1 second left. So much adrenaline. So much relief. This may have been my happiest moment ever.)

I think one reason I search for something else is that I truly sincerely want something else. For one, it would be great to live with someone else besides my rambunctious little old cat. I liked marriage. Didn't really want it to end, despite the reasons for it ending. So besides someone to live with, there's the (seemingly) eternal search for love. And children would be nice. And if someone could help me organize my CDs. And if I could just press a button to magically update and organize all my iTunes playlists. And if my dishes would clean themselves. That's alll I want. Not asking for much.

The Oscars

Unlike most recent years, I've actually seen many of the films nominated for best picture and the major acting awards. Have I seen them all? No. But that won't stop me from selecting my choices for he various awards. These are not predictions. These are simply my favorites.

Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
He really did pull it off. His scenes made the other 130 minutes almost tolerable.

Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
I'm required to vote for her. She's my favorite actress. And this is one of her finest roles.

Lead Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
The best acting performance of the decade is good enough to win this category.

Lead Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Okay - I saw none of these films. But Kate was awesome in Revolutionary Road so she gets my vote .

Animated Feature Film: Wall-E
Should have been nominated for Best Picture.

Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Because I liked his directing more than I liked the movie.

Writer (Adapted): Frost/Nixon

Writer (Original): Wall-E
Should have been The Wrestler.

Best Picture: Frost/Nixon
By default. It should have been The Wrestler.

17

Eventually I will write a history of Seymour, my lovable loyal cat who died at the age of 16 last week. I'm not ready to do so yet. But it will come. I will say that it was clever of him to pass away on the very day of the bicentennial of the births of Darwin and Lincoln.

In lieu of the Seymour obit, I could write a screed on how bad my past week has been - beginning with Seymour's hospitalization and death, continuing with the bad prognosis for my mostly reliable Honda CR-V (not as bad as it could be but $600 is a lot of money), continuing with my horrific food poisoning episode that lasted pretty much from midnight to midnight on Valentine's Day (at least I didn't have to cancel any plans that night), moving on to my post-poisoning lethargy that has not yet passed, continuing with my discovery of a flat tire on my parked car last night in the rain (unrelated to the earlier auto woes, this will cost another $100. But I won't write that screed even if I just did. Instead, to lift my (and your) spirits, here are 17 things (in the order that I thought of them) to be thankful for this February 17th:

1. The pretzel bread at Corner Bakery
2. Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis
3. Fog
4. Deep deep sleep
5. Light sleep
6. Four months of basketball season
7. Lily
8. Blueberries
9. Elvis Costello
10. Spike Lee
11. That I wasn't driving when I got the flat tire
12. That I was alone at home when the food poisoning hit
13. Hulu
14. Friends
15. My iPhone
16. Flight of the Conchords
17. Oceans

Finally, another photo:

This is me in 1993. I'm on the left. That particular haircut never looked better than it does in this photo taken during my friend Patrick's wedding (he's next to me) which took place the month Seymour was born.

Old and New, Good and Bad

Some poems old and new.

(My health insurance company's prescription department's "hold music" is clearly designed to get me to give up and hang up. I am not falling for it. I'll stay on hold forever.)

I'm sad about Al Jefferson's injury.

I'm happy about the new Lily Allen album.

So things are sort of evening out.

The Chest Pains, the Big Lake, and the Scoutmaster on Highway 61: My Strange First Week of July 2002

1. The Chest Pains

I checked my voicemail. They called and told me to call back. I was pretty sure I got the job. I went to the porch to return the call. I sat on the cushioned wicker love seat. I pressed the 1 and the 818 and then the other seven digits.

In 2002 I was married and living in a cute little house in south Minneapolis. The bungalow had been featured in a series of historic bungalow photographs. There was a tire swing. The porch was big and let in the light from three sides. It was summer, a Tuesday, the second of July.


Laurel and I had made the decision to move to California back in January. We would be leaving in a month. I did not yet have a job in California. It was all very tenuous - with no income, the move would be difficult, impractical, perhaps impossible. So yes - I needed a job.

I had flown to Los Angeles several weeks earlier. I stayed with my mother in the far suburbs and drove to the interview at the hillside community college in Glendale. It wasn't even a full-time job but it paid just barely enough and they even threw in benefits that far exceeded what a 25-hour per week employee would get. I knew I'd find something better and more full-time eventually but, to a career grad student who hadn't really "worked" for more than 20 hours since 1996, the job sounded ideal.

Did I mention that every fiber of my body resisted the move to California? Did I mention that I dreaded a return to the greater Los Angeles area because of my "difficult" early 90s and perhaps the presence of a good portion of my immediate and extended families? Did I mention that I really didn't think our young marriage could handle the change? Sometimes I am very prescient.

(Not that the divorce wouldn't have happened if we stayed in the Midwest but I take my I-told-you-so's when I can get them. )

But still - Laurel had made up her mind to go to school in Santa Monica. Living by the beach sounded nice. And sure we'd be giving up a 3.5-bedroom house with a tire swing in the backyard for a likely to be too-small apartment. But you have to make sacrifices in a partnership. Besides, I couldn't be a T.A. for life (even if it's all I've ever wanted). This move would push me to actually starting the dissertation I should have begun in 1999.

Michelle the human resources person in Glendale answered my call. I got the job. I could start whenever I wanted. Full benefits. Congratulations, you're an institutional researcher for a top-flight community college! Your 12 years of college have finally paid off.

I took a deep breath and let the wave of relief wash over me. I was alone at home. I can't remember where Laurel was but this was before she had a cell phone so I kept the news to myself. I may have called a friend or two but for the most part, I celebrated alone.

And I felt the chest pains alone. I felt the shortness of breath alone. Clearly, I didn't want to go to California. I didn't want to end my career as a graduate student. I feared that I might be having a heart attack. Sure, I was 21 years younger (and 60 pounds lighter) than my father was when he died of a heart attack but I knew something was happening. I needed to go to the emergency room.

Longfellow Avenue in south Minneapolis is equidistant from two hospitals that accepted my health insurance - the busy ugly one downtown and the clean cheery one in the suburbs. I chose the suburban emergency room. I took a bottle of water with me and drove carefully to Edina on an impossibly beautiful Midwestern summer day.

Having chest pains and likely looking distraught and ashen, I was moved to the top of the list. I saw a doctor almost immediately. A nurse took some tests and asked me questions. I remember very few details. I do know that I waited for a doctor for quite a while, in a claustrophobic room. Nurses checked on me periodically. No one told me the results of my test. No one told me if I had suffered cardiac arrest.

Eventually a doctor came. He looked carefully at the test results and my medical history. He listened to my heart beat. He took my blood pressure. He told me to tell him where it hurt. His conclusion: There was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I may have had a panic attack. I may have imagined it all. He didn't know. But I surely did not have a heart attack or anything close to it. I was sent home.

Later that night I concluded that the chest pain was related to a new pectoral exercise I had done at the gym the night before. They had gotten some new machines in. I chose too high of a weight. That's the story I told myself at least. I had to go back to L.A. I had no choice.

2. The Big Lake

To this day I can't remember if I kept my hospital trip a secret from everyone. If I told anyone, it would have been Laurel but I think I really didn't want anyone to know about my imagined panic. Anyway, there were other things to keep me busy. That week, Laurel's family - her parents and sister - had arranged a family vacation to northern Minnesota.

We would be spending four nights in Grand Marais, along the shore of Lake Superior, the big lake, the greatest of the great lakes. We'd be staying suite-style in an inexpensive but charming motel in the heart of Grand Marais, a town that dies in the winter but becomes the most perfect place in the world in the summer. The trip would be coinciding with a local Shakespeare festival. Laurel's cousin Alex would be acting in all of the festival's plays. In fact, on the final night we'd be in town, Alex would be Romeo. The trip would also be coinciding with the Fourth of July and fireworks over the lake. We would drive the morning after the chest pains, the third of July. Two hours to Duluth, one more hour along Highway 61 to the motel.

Maybe it was because our honeymoon 10 months prior had been stressful and eerily quiet, maybe it was because my life would change drastically in a few weeks (I would be leaving for California on July 15, a full month before Laurel) but that 2002 trip may have been my favorite vacation ever. At the very least it was the favorite of my adulthood.

I remember walking on rocks. I remember enjoying satisfying meals at 50s-style diners. I remember continental breakfast and sunshine. I remember fireworks and a thunderstorm. I remember a coastline dotted with abandoned coves and glorious summer homes. I remember one tiny beachfront house, clearly lived-in and unabandoned. Oddly, this house had windows on all sides but had no windows facing the lake. I thought this might be the strangest thing I had ever seen.

I remember my former father-in-law whittling and my former mother-in-law cheating at cards. It's who they are.

I remember my former wife making eye contact. I remember my former sister-in-law.... actually, I don't really remember her.

I remember seeing Alex in a play the first night we were there. But I can't remember the play. Twelfth Night maybe?

On our final night there - the 6th of July, Saturday night - we saw Romeo and Juliet. The Shakespeare Festival plays were staged at a local high school. This was the final night of the festival. I recall Alex kicking ass as Romeo. I recall that Juliet was hot.

3. The Scoutmaster on Highway 61

In the surprisingly well-designed printed program for the Shakespeare Festival, there was a list of names of people - donors - who made the festival possible. One of them was a man who I remember being very visible in the "after-party" that took place after Romeo and Juliet on the festival's final night. He was shaking hands. He was saying "let's do this again next year." I don't remember if he was identified as a donor by Alex or by a nametag or some other way. But when he invited all of us - the cast, the friends and family, everyone - to a bonfire on the private shoreline of his lakefront house, we knew who he was.

We decided to go to the bonfire. I remember we had to drop Laurel's sister off at the motel. Laurel and I had a hard time finding the place. We only had our car's headlights to help us find the address. There were no city lights and starlight was pretty much absent due to the cloud cover. But we knew we were looking for an authentic log cabin. And there weren't many of those on that dark stretch of Highway 61 (even if it hadn't been immortalized by Dylan, this was and will always be one of the coolest roads in America.)

We found the place. The bonfire had already started. Alex and his girlfriend Jei were already there. The cast and crew - most of them local high school kids and a few adults - and some other people were relaxing on the impossibly dark but beautiful-at-night bonfired coastline.

(At this point in the week, I had completely forgotten about the chest pains, the trip to the hospital. I was having too good of a time. Four days had changed everything, even if I knew that everything would be changed right back again.)

The thing about Lake Superior bonfires is that, although fire is indeed hot, the lake is big and cannot be defeated. Despite it being the heart of summer, the cold post-midnight wind was hitting us hard and it looked like the party would be ending. But then the man who organized the bonfire, the man who funded the festival, the man who owned the cabin, had an idea:

"Who wants a tour of the log cabin?"

Being that the log cabin tour would occur indoors and - more important to me - that I was closer to going back to the little bed in the warm motel, I was all for the tour.

The fire couldn't beat the cold. And the wind, though it didn't kill the bonfire, made it difficult and a little scary to continue. I'm sure some of the people gathered went home but about 15 of us went along with the donor's suggestion and took him up on his tour. Besides Laurel and me and Alex and Jei, there were a few other cast members (but not Juliet) and crew. I remember about half of the people being younger than 20, likely high school age. I remember only one or two people being older than me.

We entered the cabin. It was amazing. The man may have considered it an "authentic" log cabin but, to be honest, it was all too clean and perfect to be authentic and rustic. Even Abe Lincoln wouldn't keep his cabin this clean.

The log cabin consisted of two stories: the main floor - living room (with big screen TV), kitchen (with state-of-the-art refrigerator) and an upper floor consisting of a catwalk and three bedrooms and one bathroom built into the sides. I have to admit - it was kind of cool.

But the party wasn't being moved to the cabin. There would be no lounging around. This was, quite literally, a tour and nothing else. The eccentric art patron pointed out the authentic 50s department store signs in his kitchen. He spent several minutes discussing the provenance of his grandfather clock. It involved his very own (estranged) grandfather. Discussing some photographs in the living room, he spoke of his mother. I got the sense that his mother was deceased. It would not have surprised me if he was somehow involved in her death.

Then we went upstairs - 15 of us now, in a line, going up rickety stairs in a sturdy old-looking brand-new log cabin.

As I mentioned, there were three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, all located on a catwalk that circled the structure. From any place on the upper level, one could look down at the lower level and get a sense of the time and care and wood that went into it all.

The first bedroom received a cursory once-over by the tour guide. We were allowed to peek inside and look at a rather benign bedroom. This is where he slept, he told us.

The second bedroom required a little more time. He invited all of us into the room. It was clearly smaller than the first bedroom. But we all fit in there. This is the room he wanted to show us. This is why he invited us inside. This is why he started the bonfire. This is why he funded the Grand Marais Shakespeare Festival.

The second bedroom housed what could accurately be called a Boy Scout Museum. The walls were lined with photographs of boys in scout uniform, full troops posed on faded summer hills, stern and smiling scoutmasters, more boys... no women, none at all. There was one medium-sized bookcase completely filled with scout literature - annual directories (chronologically ordered), rule books, photo albums, scout fiction, etc. But back to the chronologically ordered annual directories. As I said, we were there in 2002. The directories started in 1974 and ended in 1993. After '93 - nothing. These are the things I notice.

And then there was the bed. One bed, centered in the room. Blue sheets. Blood red blanket. Blue bedspread. Blue pillows. All of the blue being unadulterated scout blue.

And at the foot of the bed?

A statue.

Of a boy scout.

Blowing a bugle.

Life-size. A life-size boy scout blowing a bugle.

A look back to the wall photos. Someone, I don't remember who, asked the man if he was in the photos, if he was the scoutmaster in several of the photos.

"Yes, I was."

"Are you still involved in scouting?"

"No." Abruptly. After a silence, he added. "I don't want to talk about it."

We had been standing and walking around the house for at least 20 minutes, in the true middle of the night. Alex, likely exhausted from the slow-moving tour and the bonfire and his winning portrayal of Romeo, didn't want to stand anymore. He sat on the bed.

The scoutmaster immediately and sternly said "DON'T sit on the bed."

Alex apologized and stood. The sternness of the scoutmaster/donor's words and the lingering short-term memory of his not wanting to talk about his scouting banishment left the room silent. And uncomfortable. The scoutmaster got the message and led us out of the room and toward the stairs. Finally, we would be going back to the motel.

But someone had one more question. About that other room. There was a teenager who wasn't following the rest of us downstairs. He wanted to see the third bedroom.

"What's in this room?" the teenager asked?

"DON'T GO IN THERE!" the scoutmaster screamed.

No one went in there. It was left to our imagination to populate that third bedroom. Perhaps more scout beds. Bunks? Dead bodies? Sleeping visitors? We'll never know.

Did I mention the boy scout statue was playing a bugle? That he was four feet tall with tousled dirty blond hair under his scout hat? That he looked eerily like me during my very abbreviated career as a cub - not boy - scout?

Laurel and I returned to our car in the pitch black night. We knew we had been through something amazing. There would be one more night and day in Grand Marais. By Sunday night, we were on our way back to the Twin Cities, my home for just one more week. I still miss the place.

I remembered the scoutmaster's full name from the theater program (I've since forgotten the name.). Back home, I Googled him. I found a series of poems he had posted to an otherwise innocent-seeming scouting website. One of them celebrated the joy of scouting, the "lure of the foot locker" (actual line). He talked about how the time spent with his boys, with his troop, was the "real world," that the rest of his time was just "time in between scouting." I thought of the scouting directories, 1974 to 1993, and wondered what happened in '93 and how the last nine years have been for him.

I moved to California and I'm still here. I worked in Glendale for a full three weeks before finding a full-time job in Encino, a job I never should have taken. I miss Lake Superior. I want to go there again. I haven't had chest pains since 2002 but it wouldn't surprise me. Maybe this summer, on my annual Midwest road trip, I'll take a northern detour. I'll take photographs of those amazing bridges and industrial buildings in Duluth. I'll continue up 61 to Grand Marais and look for that house - not the log cabin - the house with no window facing the lake.


(thanks to the anonymous Flickr photographers whose photos I have borrowed.)

Red

You need a new post. That's what they've been telling me.

So. Here goes.

My new notebook is ruled and mostly empty. My new book has too many pages left to read. Both have red covers. My shirt is red. It's a red day.

I've cleaned/purged my kitchen. But not the cluttered closet and certainly not the ridiculous bedroom closet, with its epic poems of sorted piles. (The Ancient Mariner to the Goodwill, Howl to the dry cleaner etc.)

The days are sunny and the nights are dark. The quiet is deafening and the noise is barely noticeable. January became February and this is where I have been left.

Inscrutable, unreadable, undeniable.