Then there was the time

I love road trips. No, I mean I really love road trips.

Solo ones, ones with friends, spur-of-the-moment or planned out in detail, trips to the coast or just one state line crossed, or multi-day multi-state trips.

Sometimes there are consequences, fairly dire ones. But usually, just good times and amazing memories.

What is it about the lure of the open road? Our world’s dependence on cheap gasoline and oil will change, must change, in the future, but I hope future generations can still see past their anger at our indifference to the damage it did and see that long trips in a car through the wide-open countryside were romantic, dammit. Or am I just romanticizing it all?

When I was a kid, growing up, my family would go on road trips. California, to Los Angeles for Disneyland, was the big one, but we’d go to the beach, or to Seattle. But the first road trip I remember taking without my parents, with just me and some friends, was a trip to Kah-Nee-Tah resort in Central Oregon.

It’s difficult to pin down the exact date, but it was after I graduated from high school. I was dating Amy, who would be my first long-term relationship and the first girl I had ever slept with. Funny how those two things go together, huh? We would be together for about 3 years total, spanning my senior year in high school until I got and kept a job two years later, and my opportunities for dating exploded. Is that bad to point that out? I basically broke up with Amy because I had built up some confidence and wanted to see other women.

But in the summer of 1983, all of that heartbreak was ahead of me. I’m pretty sure it was a weekend, and Amy’s mom was away or at work or something, so I had stayed the night. In the morning we were woken up by a phone call.

It was my friend Terry. He was trying to track me down. He had somehow gotten a friend to loan him a car for the weekend. Terry was always doing things like that; trading favors, making deals, making connections and benefiting from them. He was far more socially adept than I was, or would ever be. It was a skill he had; and one I envy to this day.

The car was a brand-new, black, Pontiac Grand Am. Turbocharged, sleek, T-tops. Terry wanted to put the car to it’s paces, and that meant only one thing.

Road trip.

Did we want to join him?

Our answer was not just yes but Hell yes!

An hour or so later, he drove up to pick us up. The car was a black monster, all metal and rubber. I had never seen tires that wide or low before. Terry tried to keep it cool in town, though, and drove it rather sedately. For him. But just sitting behind the wheel of that car put a huge smile on his face. C’mon, we were 18 and had few responsibilities.

Terry picked our destination, a resort out in the Central Oregon desert, on a Native American reservation belonging to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. Since the Fourth of July was coming up, Terry figured we could pick up some illegal fireworks while we were there.

I have to admit today that most of that trip is a blur to me now. I remember the long drive up Mt. Hood and down into Eastern Oregon (anything on the other side of the Cascades is “eastern” to a Portlander). Google Maps tells me it’s a 2 hour and 20 minute drive from Sellwood to the resort; somehow, I think we made better time than that.

Driving that car intimidated me, I won’t be afraid to say it. I didn’t have much experience at the time with driving, and didn’t even have a license. But I took a turn behind the wheel all the same. But not for long; it wasn’t Terry’s car, after all. Mostly I rode in the tiny back seat, and allowed my girlfriend to sit up front. The tape deck, which may have actually been an 8-track, competed and won against the wind noise from the open roof and the growl of the turbo-charged V-8.

In my memories it was a warm, sunny day. We wandered around the resort a bit and swam in the pool. They had a few simple video games, which were brand-new back then: I remember a Pong game and the ultimate (for it’s time): Lunar Lander. Trying to get that damn spaceship to land properly with just rotate and thrust was so hard, I burned through many quarters trying. Arcades back then were full of pinball machines and not CRTs and computers; real bells and whistles, not simulated sounds.

We ate dinner there, and as much of a food lover as I am today, I barely remember what I ate. Probably some kind of steak. It was fancy for a trio of teenagers. White cloth napkins and crystal goblets. Terry, who was the only one of us with a job, picked up the check.

And on the drive home, just after sunset, I remember a moment when Terry pulled over to the side of the road, and we all got out and stared up into the brilliant night sky. With the mountains blocking most of the light from distant Portland, out there in the high desert, the stars were brighter than I had ever seen them. I could make out constellations that I had only seen in books; all the stars in Ursa Major, the long dragon tail of Hydra, and I could even see the red mace head of the Orion Nebula.

Not sure I’d ever want to be 18 again, but with memories like these, I think I had it pretty good.

Remember when?

Han Solo once said, of Lando Calrissian, “Of course I don’t trust him. He is my friend, y’know.”

Wait, maybe you don’t know what that means. It’s simple, really.

‘Cause, see, Han and Lando were friends way way back but they hadn’t spoken in years because Lando thought that Han had cheated at cards.

So Han needed Lando’s help to escape the Empire and repair the Millennium Falcon (Han’s spaceship), but it turned out Lando had already betrayed Han to Darth Vader and arranged to have Han and Chewbacca tortured and Han sold to the bounty hunter Boba Fett, the droid C-3PO broken down into parts, and Princess Leia turned over to Darth Vader for nefarious purposes.

So Han was right not to trust Lando – but it was already too late when he said that.

That’s how Han got frozen in carbonite.

Luckily Lando had a change of heart and, at the last minute, helped Chewie, C-3PO and Leia escape from Cloud City, and even eventually helped rescue Han from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt, to whom Han owed money.

Man, I miss those movies.

But, still, bottom line: Lando shouldn’t have been trusted until he’d earned Han’s trust again.

Really, I shouldn’t have to explain this. It’s elementary. But some people aren’t as interested in a classical education these days.

The first time

I’ve written before about my first time at a strip club. Except it wasn’t my first time inside the club. Just my first visit to the club. And I’ll never know for sure if the girl I drove to work that day was a waitress… or a dancer.

A missed opportunity, to be sure. Life is full of those.

But the first time I ever stepped inside a strip club was a bit different.

My best friend in high school, Terry, had, after graduation, gone away. To Japan. To be with the woman he eventually married and had children with.

I had moved in with a couple of high school friends, three single guys sharing an apartment, while I kept a dead-end job as a sales clerk in a boutique game store. I spent way more money than I made, which was a recipe for disaster. But I didn’t really care.

And then Terry and his wife came back from Japan. This was before they had had any kids. Terry was going to help manage his mom’s business, which was a boutique clothing store.

The night Terry came back, or shortly thereafter, found the four of us guys hanging out. And Terry suggested we hit the Acropolis for a steak.

Even then, the idea of the Acrop as a steak house, rather than a titty bar, was the cover story. Don’t get me wrong; I like the steaks there. Locally grown beef, cheap and cooked simply.

But, c’mon. People go because of the naked women.

I was reluctant to go but gave in because, hey, my friend was back, just like in the song. We almost had to go to a strip club.

Sadly, my memories of that night are slim. I remember the discontinuity of being served a steak while a woman showed her naughty parts just inches from my face, in a dark smoky room. I remember being almost unable to eat, so distracted was I.

I’m almost positive I didn’t have a beer; hard to believe now, but back then I wasn’t much of a beer drinker. The question is – what did I drink? I can’t recall, but it was probably scotch. I was going through a scotch whiskey phase back then, single malts. Mmmmm.

And I can’t recall the dancers, except that they were busty. One of them was able to make her breasts move asymmetrically – first one bounced, then the other, back and forth. That was worth a dollar.

Terry introduced me to the ways of strip clubs – a dollar a dance if you were sitting at the rack. If you didn’t want to pay, go sit elsewhere. And talk to the dancers. Make them laugh and don’t treat them like servants or robots or animals. They’re entertainers, first, and foremost, and believe it or not, human beings with lives and thoughts outside of the club. They were working for many different reasons and each one had a story to tell. And if you were lucky, they’d tell you a story. Was it true? Who knows and who cares? That’s all outside the club.

Which is where I always wanted to find a dancer – in the mythical realm outside, where I wasn’t a customer and she wasn’t a stripper; we were friends. I chased that dream for many many years. I still sometimes catch myself thinking, mistaking the dream for the reality.

The reality is: you don’t meet strippers outside the club. You meet women. You meet people. Some of them may work as strippers; in Portland, which is known for having the highest per-capita number of strip clubs, there are so many girls who strip or used to, that it’s inevitable for a single man to eventually date one or two or more.

But that’s a lesson I did not learn my first night. The first night was just the taste, the hint, of what was to become my favorite hobby, my abiding eternal entertainment, the sinkhole into which my free time and spare thoughts would disappear for years to come.

It all started there. Dammit.

So many ways to say it

Tracy and I have so many different rituals around saying hello and goodbye. Almost all of them in text or IM.

I was just thinking about this the other day. It was morning, and I was on my way to work, and, per usual, I decided to pull out my iPhone and text Tracy a message. And I thought to myself, “Which greeting do I feel like, today?” In other words, which one accurately represented how I felt right now?

Because there are various combinations of words and punctuation. If I gave the wrong one, she’d have the wrong impression. Can’t have that.

Here are the various ways to say “hello” or start the day off, in order from least enthusiastic to most:

  1. Hey.
  2. Hi.
  3. Mornin’.
  4. Hey!
  5. Hi!
  6. Yo! / To!*
  7. Mornin’!
  8. Good morning! (rare)

* My iPhone auto-corrects the word “Yo” and replaces it with “To”. After a while, I eventually gave up changing it back and the word “To!” has become its effective equivalent. I even use it verbally now.

But there’s more. If, on a weekend, one of us takes a nap, we have the greeting “G’nap!” which can be used both as a wish for the other person to have a good nap, and a warning to the other person that we will be napping for the next hour or two. Tracy invented that one.

At the end of our work day, we’ve devised a shorthand call-and-response for when it’s time for us to leave. Using our enterprise IM system, we send:

Call: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Response: ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Whoever thinks of it first gives the first one, and the only proper response is the second one. The lack of initial capitalization is important, as is the correct number of exclamation points (Tracy doesn’t always follow the punctuation rules but she’s still my best friend). Also, I tend to send enough letters to flow over onto a second line.

The “eeeeee!!!” is short for “Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

The “oooooo!!!” is short for “You, tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!”

Whoever notices first that it’s 4:20 (nearly always PM not AM) will text the other “4:20!” or some variant. The standard response is “Dude!” although sometimes we will embellish on that, especially if we’re late in responding by more than 2 minutes. I, personally, started this one because neither Tracy nor I are potheads. At all. No, seriously. In fact, I’ve lost opportunities to hang out with strippers because my automatic response to “Hey, do you smoke pot?” is “No”, even when it’s being asked by a beautiful naked woman. If that doesn’t convince you that I don’t smoke pot, nothing will.

And then, of course, every night before we go to bed, we send “G’night!” to each other. Often also adding “…bestie!”

Which, of course, is short for “best friend”. Which we are.

Zones of comfort

As has been the case this winter, it was cold out in the wee early hours of the morning while I was waiting for the bus. I just wanted the bus to get here, so I could be warm until I got out and walked the several blocks to my office. I was dressed warmly enough; as warm as possible. But still the chill crept in around the seams, and up the sleeves and down the back of my neck and on my cheeks.

I’ve been really cold this winter. Yes, I’m probably complaining a lot about it. But damn, I’m cold. When someone touches my hand they’re shocked. I just can’t seem to warm up.

I’ve joked that maybe I died and didn’t know it, and I’m now a zombie. I will admit that brains seem more delicious to me. But mostly because fresh brains would be warm, dammit.

So there I was, at the bus stop on that cold morning last week, waiting for the bus just for a chance to warm up.

It showed up, I stepped up, showed my bus pass, and went to sit down. My stop was early enough and near the start of the route, so I was the only passenger.

And the bus was still cold. As cold as outside had been. And I wasn’t even out of the wind, at least, because the driver had the fans on full blast.

Ah, I thought, he’s got the fans on. Soon enough, the bus will warm up.

But three stops later, and the fans were still blowing frigid air. Arctic air. Nanook of the North couldn’t take this kind of cold air. Other passengers had boarded and they all seemed resigned to the cold. And they all had noticed it. One girl who often knits while riding pulled out her knitting, and then had to stop, her hands so chilly in the blasting frozen wind.

I knuckled down and pulled in my arms and legs to conserve warmth. I rode it out. No use saying anything to the driver; the ride was only 20-25 minutes. Soon enough I’d make the walk to my building and have a chance to warm up.

My stop approached. I rang the bell. As the driver pulled up to the stop, I walked up to the front door.

…and into a tropical zone.

The area where the driver sat was warm. Very warm. Hot, even. I lingered there as long as I could, soaking up the heat. I did not say anything to the driver. What could I say? Was he aware that, after 20+ minutes of running the fans, the middle of the bus was still freezing?

Or was he just passive-aggressive?

Missing something

It had been a hard Friday night so far. My friend Ken had totaled his car in a traffic accident on the drive home, on the night we had planned to see Battlestar Galactica at the Bagdad Theater; a little chance for Ken to get out of the house and have a “guy’s night out” away from kids and the wife (if Merry’s reading this, that’s my words, not Ken’s).

Ken had decided to go out, anyway – mostly because his wife was studying and didn’t want him underfoot while she did so (again, that’s my interpretation of events). So there we stood, in the beautiful old lobby, standing in line with more than a half-hour to go until the show started, waiting to buy some beer.

Then I discovered that I had forgotten my apartment keys. Oh, boy. I do that a lot, it seems, which is why I have several backup plans: my sister has a spare, and so does my best friend Tracy. So I started with my sister, just because she was closest (in theory). Sadly, she wasn’t home, she couldn’t get a hold of her teenage son, my atheist nephew; and her husband wasn’t home. She thought my key was in a drawer in the laundry room, but without someone at home to check for it, she couldn’t swear that I could get it. Plus, I was going to be late – BSG wasn’t going to end until 11:00 PM, and I wasn’t going to miss the show even if it meant being locked out overnight.

So I checked with Tracy. She was home, but she lived in Canby, which was approximately 23.2 miles from the theater. Y’know, give or take a little. Plus it was going to be late. Tracy was worried about having to drive to where I was; I was worried about asking Ken to drive me to where Tracy was. I offered to get a ZipCar, but Ken graciously agreed to drive me there after the show. Treat your friends well. I owe Tracy and Ken both.

Oh, and I got to apply a little guilt to my sister. That was fun.

So all that had occurred and had been straightened out. Now Ken and I just wanted some beer and some sci-fi.

A dude with a camera walked up to us. “Hey guys, can I get your picture in front of the KUFO sign?” I looked, and there it was: a cheap plastic banner with the logo for the local radio station that was sponsoring this weekly event.

I shrugged. “Uh, sure.”

I stood there while the stranger in front of me in line made some kind of finger-gesture. Ken made an air-guitar stand. Me, I just stood there, dumbly, not sure what pose to use.

That’s not very rock-and-roll of me.

It wasn’t until afterward that I thought of what was missing: half-naked chicks. I mean, if this was supposed to be some kind of rock radio promotion thing, where were the half-naked chicks?

I’m pretty sure I would’ve had a much better pose then.

Seriously?

Snow? Seriously? More snow?

This is the worst Portland winter ever. And by worst I mean coldest and snowiest.

Rags-to-riches

Yesterday I scratched another movie off my Oscar best picture list.

I saw “Slumdog Millionaire” in a packed matinee theater.

Here’s what I knew going in: it’s a rags-to-riches story about a poor kid who gets on a game show, and it might be a musical. Oh, and the leading lady is stunningly beautiful.

Here’s what I learned while watching it: it’s set in India, specifically in Mumbai. It is not a musical. It’s directed by Danny Boyle, an Irish working-class guy whose previous movies include an awesome zombie movie, a sci-fi flop, and a movie about drug addicts. And the structure of the movie intrigued me as a writer.

Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is being tortured because he’s suspected of cheating in India’s version of the game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Seems the local corrupt constabulary don’t believe that a kid who grew up in the slums could possibly know all the various trivia that lets him work his way up the ladder until he’s on the verge of winning twenty million rupees (about US$407,000 – not a lot to you and me, but I’d imagine it’s a life-changing amount of money in India).

Jamal has had no formal education, he’s scammed his way around India with his cruel but loyal older brother, Salim, and his only goal in life is to find, and rescue, Latika, the young girl who joined the two brothers as the third Musketeer to their Athos and Porthos but was kept by a Mumbaikar Fagin and forced into a life of crime.

But as he tells how he knows the answer to each trivia question, the movie flashes back to show the specific circumstances that led to him gaining that knowledge. The coincidences add up as the movie fills in his squalid life until he’s got a semi-respectable job as a “chai wallah” (tea server) in a customer call center, but I never lost my willingness to suspend belief. I did sometimes recall Cliff Claven’s dream board in Jeopardy, but Boyle and his screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (who adapted the novel “Q&A” by Vikas Swarup) never play it for laughs and each incident seems organic and natural. It’s only on reflection after the fact that I began to question it all, and by then the charm of the story had overcome any misgivings I had.

In fact, now that I think about it, the story parallels the rise of an adherent of Hinduism through the ranks of the four Puruṣārthas, or goals of a human existence. But I don’t know much about that beyond what’s in Wikipedia. Someone more scholarly than I is invited to analyze the story from that perspective.

Me? I just enjoyed the hell out of that movie.

It’s like 12 years vanished down the memory hole

The New York Times thinks partisan bickering began when Democrats took control of Congress in 2006.

“For the past two years, majority Democrats often denied Republicans the chance to alter legislation on the floor, mainly so they could not force politically charged votes or scuttle important legislation.

Now, heeding Mr. Obama’s call for cooperation, Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, is tentatively testing the notion of letting Republicans offer amendments to legislation and having the parties engage in a battle of ideas on the floor. The fact that Democrats now have a majority of 58 seats rather than the 51 seats they previously held makes the concession far less painful.”

Weird. Do they not remember now-indicted House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX22) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and the myriad ways they prevented the minority from amending or introducing legislation on the floor of Congress? The “nuclear option” that was named by Sen. Lott (R-MS) and which option was used as a club by Sen. Frist? Rep. Delay’s misuse of the FAA to track down and attempt to arrest the Democratic representatives on a private plane? Rep. Delay’s K Street Project to force Washington lobbyists to only hire Republicans?

To the traditional media, as well as those inside the Beltway in general (including, I’m afraid, our new President Obama), “bipartisanship” means marginalizing and silencing the left. It’s Democrats giving Republicans what they want.