Category: General

There’s something pretty much awesome about watching the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica at the Bagdad Theater, with a respectful and engaged audience of fellow geeks. Nobody talks during the show; they all wait for the commercials. It’s gratifying to hear the “shush! shush!” sounds as the episode begins.

That’s not to say that the crowd is dead silent. We all laugh and applaud and gasp at the same events, which for me magnifies the intensity of each important moment. And as the show works its way to a finale, each important moment is already stuffed full of intensity.

Friday night’s episode was described as “action packed” by many sources and, damn, it delivered. The recent past on the show has created a mood of deliberation and sadness and mourning, after the fleet found Earth but discovered it was a dead world. “The Oath” was the point in the story where someone (Zarek, I’m lookin’ at you) takes the darkest turn possible. Or maybe several someones (Gaeta, get in line behind Zarek).

And when that happens, the other characters react. Strongly. With guns blazing.

I guess the message is, if you’re depressed because you’ve striven (strove?) for a goal, only to have that goal turn to ashes and leave you in a self-pitying place, start shooting things; it’ll make you feel better.

I’m trying very hard to not spoil anything, here. But just know that all the characters are being shown in stark high contrast. Character, said a famous mad scientist, is what you are, in the dark.

And the end run of Battlestar Galactica has been very dark indeed.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

“You’re a bad example, because you do things right.”

Snow? Seriously? More snow?

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

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.

The other day, I ran into my Republican co-worker at the coffee cart in the lobby of our building. We made small talk, and I made small talk with Amy, the cute red-headed coffee cart girl, while my Republican co-worker bought an energy bar, and I bought a coffee and donut.

Because I have had to tell him that we should stop talking politics, every new conversation he strikes up with me fills me with dread. Is this going to be the conversation that will finally break the taboo? Will he bust out some crazy story about how the Clintons were actually responsible for Watergate and the Vietnam War? Or will his insanity spill over into some new topic, like cooking or basketball or high definition TV? So I hoped for a largely silent walk through the building.

Sadly, no. On our way back to our office area, my Republican co-worker turned to me and leered. “So, you’re single, right?”

I had no idea where he was going with this but a chill went down my spine.

I kept what I thought was a normal look on my face, though, considered not answering at all or asking him why he wanted to know, and finally just settled on a direct answer. “Yes, I am.” Did I want to know why? “…why?” I added, finally.

He took no notice of the lengthy pauses in my response (he never seems to pick up on any but the most blatant body language, like turning completely around and walking away, for instance) and, still leering, said, “She was flirting with you.”

Who? Oh. Amy. The coffee cart girl.

I quickly reviewed the conversation in my head. Nothing obviously romantic or sexual stuck out in my head. The topics covered were coffee, payment of coffee, the weather, and my favorite kind of donut (of which she seemed unaware).

But my Republican co-worker seemed to get a kick out of it.

I shrugged and said, “No. No… no. Amy’s got a boyfriend.”

My Republican co-worker chuckled. “Well, how’re they doing?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“I’m just sayin’… maybe she’s lookin’ for something else.”

This conversation annoyed me on many levels. “That was just a normal, everyday conversation.”

My Republican co-worker shook his head in disbelief, as we reached my cubicle. He leaned in for one last comment while I dropped my bag, took off my jacket, and began starting up my computer. “Just think about it,” he said, still leering – over what, I was not sure. I silently hoped he wasn’t picturing me in an intimate situation with Amy, the coffee cart girl.

I remember when I thought that normal everyday conversation with women was actually flirting and foreplay. It wasn’t that long ago, actually.