OFF THE 110

Well, the kids start school in less than two weeks...and while it has been a mostly fun-filled summer, I am looking forward to being in a car, or room, or bathroom in the middle of the day without someone needing something from me.  I know, I'm just plain selfish...

Now how 'bout those Olympics?  We all stayed up way past our bedtimes.  Couldn't help but be wowed at times, inspired, excited, yes...Go Misty May!  And it was great zoning out the world for a couple weeks if you could ignore the fact that two seventy-something Chinese grandmas were sentenced each to a year in "re-education" labor camps for asking permission for the fifth time to protest the razing of their homes and lack of compensation.  Come on, any five year old knows that if you ask, like, four times for something and the answer is 'no,' by the fifth time there are gonna be consequences, right?  I mean, if you could ignore that and the fact that the Russians and Georgians want to blow each other off the face of the planet...if you could ignore that and a few dozen other interruptions, and the fact that the elfin Chinese women gymnasts looked at least like they were old enough to have finished third grade, why, the last two weeks were cause, at times, for joy.

That said, I decided in the midst of watching all those super humans that it was time to take up--I want to say RUNNING--jogging.  Yes, indeedy.  Lots of inspiration behind this decision...two good friends of mine have started/re-started in the last few months, Jim jogs and swears by the high, 41-yr old Olympic medalist Dara Torres (minus the $100,000 support team of masseuses and coaches), there's no planning or equipment involved...and I do miss the high because I did actually used to run...a million years ago.  So I started.  Slowly.  Last week.  I'm sore as hell but thrilled.  And I realized, coming home that first day mid-last week that I'd last run exactly (almost to the day) eleven years ago.  Now I know that because the last time I ran was August 23th, 1998, as it was the Sunday of a particular 103 degree August weekend during which Jim was tiling the floor of our then newly purchased home with our good friend Joe.  I was lying around the house all weekend, unable to move except to purchase refreshments for the boys.  I thought fersure that I had mono as I could barely make it off the couch to the taco stand via car.  That Sunday, disgusted with my slothlike demeanor I forced myself to put on the sneaks and dash out the house.   Three miles, I thought, it'll rejuvenate me.  Three miles in the 104 degree afternoon sun.  I did the three, as I used to do and then, simply, imagined that I was going to spontaneously combust.  I'd heard about that happening in rare instances and I was sure, due to the feeling of the raging insatiable furnace inside my chest, that I would be a smoldering ball of fire by the time I reached the front door.  I don't think I'd ever felt so hot within my body in my life.

First thing Monday I called my gyno and told him I had mono.  I was sure.  I'd had mono before and this was definitely it.  I went in that morning for a blood test then went to work.

Monday night I came home from work and Jim told me that I was pregnant.  I told him he was full of shit.  He explained that the doc had called and my mononucleosis was a baby.  Then he felt sad because I had ruined 'the moment' by exclaiming that he was full of shit.  We had a do-over and celebrated with a couple near-beers.

As I said, last jog until last week.

Another circle, another show. 

Happy end of summer.  --K  

Our 'puppy' Sakari, will be ten months old August 1st.  Good guess is that he's about 80 pounds right now and folks at the dog park often ask whether he's a wolf hybrid.  He's not.  Mom was full Husky, dad looked to be some Shepard, Lab, something-or-other mix.  Sakari looks to be like what is called a 'wooly' Husky because his fur is longer than the average Husky and very soft.  I tell you all this because we blew 60 bucks on one of those doggy genetic tests in which you swab the inside of your dog's mouth, send off the sample in the mail and within two weeks you get a certificate verifying your dog's breed.  They'll give you up to the four most dominent breeds making up your canine friend.  Very exciting (Listen, sometimes you take your thrills where you can get 'em).  So we wait in great anticipation and finally, today, we open the very official-looking envelope revealing the results.  Okay.  So the lab has no idea what our dog looks like or what we think him to be.  Voila!  Sakari is verified to be 75% Siberian Husky.  Not a surprise.  But the next most dominent breed in our still-growing monster puppy is....wait...LHASA APSO.  Now for those of you who don't know what those dogs look like.  Here:

Lhasa_apso_v05

Okay, this dog is cute, but full grown it is, like 15 pounds, tops.  I dunno.  Something's very wrong in Highland Park.  I don't have a current pic of Sakari, but this is pretty close (Sakari is bigger and mostly black):

Isis2

Is this possible?

Happy dog days.  Sakari pic soon to come...

I'm supposed to be working as I'm on a deadline.  I should be working out.  I need to walk the dog.  There's laundry to be taken out of the washing machine and dishes to be emptied from the dishwasher.  I haven't brushed my teeth...yet.  Jim just called to say that our 6 year old DOES NOT want to be at camp today (she only goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9-3).  And it's only 9:11 am.  I can't move.  Seriously, I can't get up from my chair, so I came here, to my little Voxplaceblog in cyberland.  Gonna do a little caffeine-fueled dance here and pretend that I'm getting something important done because I can't move to do anything else.  Does that happen to you?  Tell me, seriously.  'Cause I can't be the only one.  I tend to think of these moments as my total body defying 'routine'.  It's my inner grownup (because my cranky inner child very much has free rein of the household already) saying "fuck the routine for an hour."  It's like someone has a voodoo doll of me and is forcing it to remain seated in some tiny ergonomic chair in another place.   Help.  My doll self is tied to a little ergo-doll chair up in a little dollhouse on the highest shelf in someone's twisted doll joke world.  There.  I feel better already. 

I'm supposed to be annotating a movie about a serial killer.  It is the most boring, dull, flat movie one could squeeze out of a story about a serial killer, because, I mean, stories about serial killers are anything but boring.  But this movie is.  I can't stand to listen to one more line of wooden dialogue, let alone annotate it. 

Annotation?  Here, go here to Salon.com and see what I mean, what I do for my "bread-and-butter" gig. http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2001/10/08/annotation/print.html

More after I get up off this chair.

Ciao.

So it's summer.  Yeeha.  And this one is busier than I've remembered a summer being in a very long time.  I've got work, Jim has work...more yeeha.  Kids are crazy active and I'm the designated camp counselor of late, which brings me to the following reflection that I tend to have every, oh, six months or so, that I am a dinosaur.  You know, from the prehistoric ages, back when kids rode their bikes far far from home, alone, in the dark in the '70s.  My folks would leave for work in the summer, when I was my son's age, ten (they worked in town then) and my mom would kiss me on the head, open the door, and say 'I'll see you at dinnertime...don't be late." 

That was at 9am in the morning.  I had a key on a string around my neck and knew where the hidden one was, although I don't think my folks actually locked the back door.  And I'd tool around with Barbara or Nancy ('cause Nancy's mom didn't work and would make ham sandwiches for lunch) and, I don't know, do shit, and then I'd return home usually with a gash on my knee the shape of Texas.  And my mother would say (about the gash) "Let's look at that."

I'd say, it's sore.  And she'd get the Bactine and bandages and that would be it.

Which brings me to the present and the planning of every portion of these summer days.  Because we live in the city of Los Angeles, on a hill...what am I gonna go?  Tell my kids to get on their bikes and be back in a few hours, in time for lunch?  Bye!  Later!  Yeah, sure.  Like every other parent I know, I plan...playdates, camp, lessons, "free time," practice time.  I get smug thinking that I'm not as neurotic as some, but more so than others.  And the truth is that I do love hanging with my kids, but I can't shake those memories of long summer days of self-sufficiency and surprise.  And on 100 plus degree days I can all too easily transform into the crankiest (read:meanest) mom superhero on the planet.  I imagine giving my son five bucks and leaving him at the Venice bus station with a map of the city and seeing if he could make it home.  I think he could, but, (sigh) I'm way too neurotic to try that.  Maybe next year.  Or maybe when it hits 110 in the shade.

So, then George Carlin dies (bear with me).  It's sad, that news.  But I can't help being reminded of one of the fucking funniest comedy routines I ever heard as a parent.  It's Carlin's riff on childhood and survival of the fittest...and how there was a reason for no car seats and bike helmets and childproof medicine bottles etc. etc., because, and I'm paraphasing really poorly here, childhood should be a survival of the fittest, or at least the less idiotic.  And I laugh as I think of his insanely funny renderings.  Listen, I wouldn't go back to the seventies if you paid me, and I know not to wax nostalgic for too long on the way my folks didn't parent me, and I do everything I can to keep my kids safe, but I'll tell you, thinking of that Carlin routine on kids and surviving childhood makes me laugh in a way that makes me feel sane and grownup and glad of it.  Sort of. 

George Carlin RIP.   He was to bullshit what Simon Weisenthal was to Nazis.

Keep cool.

It's been a while since my last posting, I know, but you see, right after the humans in my household got rid of their bugs our computer got some of its own.  About a week ago, everything running doubly slow or unresponsive.  So I turn off and on the computer a couple of times, as always, and POOF!  I open my INBOX to find all emails from 9/9/2003 to 6/3/2008 just GONE.  As in POOF.  Five years of emails vanished, relocated to some faraway cyber dump.  Then my back up system claims that they never were in the first place and, well, you can imagine that we experienced a bit of Twilight Zone confusion.  Five years of emails...important, trivial, funny, sad, you name it...vanished.  I was overwhelmed at first and more than a little dumbfounded.  Friends responded in various ways.  One told me that I was kinda a numbnut to have accumulated five years of emails in my Inbox in the first place.  Another encouraged me to feel liberated and relieved that the 'foolish, inhuman junk of email correspondance' was gone forever. 

Once I started to get a little distance on the matter, I did, indeed, start to feel, oh, I don't know...lighter?  Yes, I'll say it...relieved.  Maybe email is supposed to be like whispers in the hallway, off-the-cuff phone conversations and shout-outs...like post-its that ought be crumpled and tossed at day's or week's or, at the most, month's end.  I'm always throwing shit out, or at least trying to throw away what is unnessary or unused, always trying to make some more room.  Why should the things on my computer be granted any more mercy?  "Just toss it,"  I can hear my mother saying.  "If it's not beautiful or useful, then toss it."  No reason to grant the old hard drive immunity to such a golden rule, right?

I was originally panicked, thinking of all the sentiment lost, thinking of how I wouldn't be able to go back and review/remember/reminisce on my life through my old emails.  The truth is that I'm too busy in my life right now that I haven't the time to go back anyway.  And when I do finally find the time, I hope that I will use it to finally learn Italian, or guitar, or take up jazz singing, or do one of the freakin' thousand and one things on one of my freakin' dozen or so lists of things to do...

Sometimes bugs happen for reasons beyond our immediate comprehension.  Like everything else in life.

Even the Hair Fairies already seem a quaint and distant memory.

Good nite.  --K

New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks

June 27, 1998 |

CAMBRIDGE, MA—Starbucks, the nation's largest coffee-shop chain, continued its rapid expansion Tuesday, opening its newest location in the men's room of an existing Starbucks.

Enlarge Image

Starbuck's logo

"Coffee lovers just can't stand being far from their favorite Starbucks gourmet blends," said Chris Tuttle, Starbucks vice-president of franchising. "Now, people can enjoy a delicious Frappuccino or espresso just about any time they please, even while defecating."

The new men's-room-based Starbucks, the coffee giant's 1,531st U.S. location, will be open to both men and women when not "in use." In addition to offering specialty coffees from around the world, it will serve freshly baked pastries, Italian pannini sandwiches and soups, as well as the rest room's usual selection of toilet paper and soap.

"This is a great addition," said Jonathan Connolly, a Boston-area banker who tried out the new Starbucks Tuesday. "I was enjoying my usual triple mocha latté in the main Starbucks, and I had to go to the bathroom, where three people were in line to use the stalls. The wait might have been a problem, but, to my great pleasure, there was another Starbucks right there, ready to serve me more delicious coffee. And the baristas were helpful and courteous."

Connolly added that after he finished drinking his coffee and using the bathroom, he stayed for a poetry reading near the urinals.

"I was a little bit worried about the new restaurant cutting into our business," said Dave Grobelkowski, manager of the original Starbucks. "But the only people going there are ones who have already purchased items from us anyway. And if we run out of stirrers or cream, we can just go to the bathroom and borrow some."

According to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, the new location represents the beginning of a long-term expansion plan.

"Eventually, Starbucks rest rooms everywhere will sell coffee," Schultz said. "But that ambitious scheme is at least five years down the road. In the meantime, we plan to open an additional location in this Starbucks' ladies' room within months, and are already drafting plans for a fourth restaurant along the corridor leading from the main seating area to the rest rooms. At some point a 'Star-bucks Express' window will eventually open in the walk-in closet of the men's room Starbucks."

"Drink our coffee," Schultz said. "Drink it."

This is a real note left for someone who parked...well as you can see in two spaces.

man alone in the dark

I know it's been a while and I've had so many profound and poetic life observations it became almost too hard to pick which one to write about.  So I'm just going to jump in.  I narrowed it down to butts and doughnuts but just couldn't decide which one was more fascinating so I'm going to talk to you a little about both.  First, my butt.  About 6 months ago I got a splinter in my ass at the car wash sitting on a wooden bench waiting for my car.  You may wonder how that could happen.  Well let me tell you it not only is possible, it happened to me and I have the giant wooden stake lodged deep in my fleshy backside to prove it.  So I come home and ask my dear wife if she would get a flashlight and her glasses and see if she can manhandle the monster of all car wash splinter out of my ass.  She just stares at me.  Really, can you believe that?  There was no, "Oh, honey, that must be really painful.  Why don't you pull your pants down and go lie face down on the bed and I'll see if I can't make it all better.  I'll get the flashlight and my glasses."  Now you may be asking why the flashlight.  Well, it's dark in our bedroom, okay?  So she's just staring at me and I repeat myself.  "Babe, I have a splinter in my butt and I want you to pull it." 

This time she says, "It'll be okay." 

Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?  It'll be okay.  When?  In ten years?  After Bush is out of office?  When the whole planet finally goes solar?  What the hell is she talking about?  She walks away and cracks open a beer or calls her masseuse to set up a full body massage or flosses or God only knows what other important thing she had to do that minute that was way more urgent then my ass...so off she goes.  

So I trot off to Toluca Lake Health Center, where every actor goes when he gets a nose bleed or a splinter, and I pay my co-pay, fill out the forms and repeat to everybody and his brother what's wrong.

   "So, what's the problem, Mr. Macdonald?"

    "I have a splinter in my butt."

   "In your butt?

   "Yes in my butt.  I have a splinter in my butt."

   "In your butt" the nurse says.

  Yes, in my butt...splinter in my butt splinter in butt...how many frickin' times am I gong to have to say those ridiculous words?

  Then I notice that she's just staring at me like my wife did.  "Well," I say.  "Is there a problem?"

  "No," she says.  "Just figuring out how to explain that in writing to the doctor."

  Write down I have a fucking splinter in my butt.  What the hell is wrong with everybody?

  "Well, how long has the object been in your anus, Mr Macdonald?"

  "It's not an object!  And it's not in my anus, Ma'am, it's a splinter and it's in my butt!"

  I could go on but I don't want to tramatize you like I was.

  So to make a short story long, I finally see the doctor.  I bend over, and she says, "I don't see anything."

   "What do you mean, you don't see anything?  Can't you feel that huge bump?"

   "I do feel a pimple here."

   "Oh, for Christ's sake!  That's not a pimple.  Don't you think I know the difference between a pimple and a piece of wood stuck in my ass?"

   "Mr. Macdonald, I'm not about to get my scapel and go rooting around for imaginary things that might not even be there."

   "But it is there!  Don't you feel it!?  That's a welt the size of a small plum."  C'mon, Doc, show a man some love and slice me open.

   "Like I said, I'm not performing surgery on a pimple."

 So she snaps off her latex glove and leaves me sitting there cold and bent over like some piece of meat, like some actor-plaything who doesn't know any better than to bother really important people with his pimply ass. 

  I tried to hold my head high as I walked out of her office past all the other sick and lame out-of-work actors.  I smiled and gave a thumbs up to someone who looked like Scott Baio.   He pretended not to see me and I pretended I wasn't giving anyone the thumbs up sign, rather I was stretching my thumb, which I do from time to time.  I made it down to my car, tipped the valet a dollar, then felt bad and gave him a handful of change and an old Eagles CD I was about to throw out.  And as I pulled out on to Riverside Drive it hit me like a ton of bricks.  I had nowhere I had to be and I still had a huge splinter in my ass.  Now this is where we get to the doughnuts but I'm afraid it will have to wait until next time.