Sister Novena's PortaPulpit

2010-03-16T03:26:00.003-05:00

Hello, Goodbye

Obviously, I didn't get the new blog up yet. I got it almost done, but I couldn't quite get the code to work right, and I'm currently in the process of re-doing the whole thing. But if I don't publish a link to a new spot soon, I'll lose my ability to do so.

So for now, I'm re-grouping over here:

http://next600words.wordpress.com/

2010-02-07T03:35:00.002-06:00

Sunrise, Sunset

This blog is just about to go kaput. Several key components are dropping dead at once. First, the Haloscan commenting system I've used for so long is shutting down, so all those comments people have left over the years will soon be but dust in the wind. Very soon after that, Blogger/Google is ending FTP service for blogs, so the very engine that publishes my posts here will no longer function. Which is fine, since I'd already determined I didn't want to use Blogger anymore, but it's not the way I'd have preferred to end things.

The good news is, my new domain is just about ready to go. I'm tentatively planning a March 1 launch -- six years to the day since my first post here. This place will still function until then, so I'll post one more time here telling people where to go for the new one. It'll be a good change. Keep an eye out.

2009-12-31T17:13:00.005-06:00

The Wretched Decade

I thought about doing a long post about all the ways in which the 2000s sucked. You know: the wars, the Bush administration, the relentless economic awfulness, the long, slow slide downward from optimism for a new era, to dark laughter and bitter resignation at our collective failures.

But fuck it, you were all there, you already know. So instead I will simply say this:

Thank fuck that's over.

Goodbye to you, wretched decade, and good riddance. Can we finally have our bright, shiny 21st Century future now, please?

2009-11-18T18:03:00.005-06:00

A Sheepish Hello, And A Not-Quite-Goodbye

So, uhhhh.... how's it going?

Okay, look, I know: it's been too long. I've been ignoring you, but not because I don't like you. I do! It's just that, well... I think maybe we're done here. With this.

Wait, stop crying, it's not what you think! I still want to hang out with you and be friends and all that kind of stuff, but I also want things to be different, you know? We've been just sort of dicking around here for, what, five years? And that's been great, I've had a lot of fun, and I've learned so much from you. But we're different people now than we were back then. I don't think I want to be Sister Novena anymore, and lord knows you've changed. The whole world has changed. And here I am, still sitting here surrounded by elementary-level CSS code in a simple three-column layout, pictures neatly centered in the middle column, as if it were still 2004. Christ, have you looked at the blogroll lately? Half those links don't even go anywhere anymore. It's fucking depressing!

What I'm trying to say is, I'm moving out. I know I've been saying that for a while, but now I've got another little place all picked out. It's not quite ready to move into yet, but I'm working on it, and this time it's real. I just can't stay in this white box anymore.

Of course I'll give you my new address, just as soon as it's settled.

Yeah, I've got other news too. Nothing big, having to do more with plans than events, but also related to a pretty big change. Except that it's not really a change, I guess... I don't know, see what you make of it.

Things are okay around here, but not great. Not what they could be, and not what I moved all the way to Portland hoping to find. Portland is awesome, don't get me wrong, and as far as my personal life goes, I'm very happy here. No plans whatsoever to change that. But work is fucking horrible. It's a bad job for me in the first place, to which I'm not well suited. You'd think being a vaguely grouchy bookseller would be right up my alley as far as disposable jobs go, and you'd be right if that's what my job was. But they don't want book people anymore, they want salesmen, and I am the opposite of a salesman. My job has become ridiculously high-pressure for a crappy, low-paying part time job, and coupled with the high stranger-interaction demands I am now constantly on the verge of snapping. I'm breaking out in hives, grinding my teeth, occasionally breaking down into tears after getting off work. I am far too stressed out for $9/hr., and struggling with mild depression because I can't seem to be able to find a way out.

Oh, I didn't tell you about PCM, did I? Well, to make the story as brief as possible, I truly loved the work, but the place was a wildly dysfunctional, terribly mismanaged clusterfuck. As soon as I started they laid everyone off, and I was converted to contractor status (though I suspect the IRS would have some quibbles with that if they ever had reason to look into the matter.) Once I'd finished that current round of classes -- which, again, I loved -- I was basically just not invited back, nor was anyone else from my group. Which was a fucking shame, because those were some talented, smart people who put a lot of effort and care into their work, and all of their skill and dedication were basically thrown away. So, so much for that.

I continue to scour the city for any other opportunity, and have had some infuriatingly near misses. A good half dozen times now I've been contacted after interviews only to be told that they loved me, thought I was awesome, and knew I'd have no trouble getting hired... but as for them, they'd hired someone else. These calls and emails are the bane of my existence, the one single thing I hate most of all. Most frustrating of all, it's not like these are decently-paying, full-time jobs; most of them are just more crappy, low-wage shit jobs -- not quite a shitty as my present shitty job, but nothing special. With everything I have and everything I am and my best efforts applied, I can't even seem to get hired on as a shipping clerk, and that's fucking demoralizing.

But obviously it's not just about me -- a quarter of this city is miserable, and probably another third beyond that are ready to jump out of their current jobs as soon as it's not financial suicide to do so. I'm "lucky" to have my shitty, miserable job and should be "grateful" to have it, however badly I'm treated while I'm there. And so I stay, grinding out another depressing day just so I can stay here in Portland and wait for better times.

But a situation like this forces you into some very frank, clear thinking. Some of this is difficult stuff to face up to when you've invested so much time and energy and love, so it takes a while. But I think I've made some decisions.

Film isn't really working for me. It's not the technical part -- I am a decent filmmaker, as far as the actual filmmaking goes. And I'm a pretty good, if still very green, film teacher. I still care about it, and still have some hopes of using this hard-won skill set during my life. I still have my little business idea, and I still think it could prove useful. But there's so much that goes along with filmmaking that doesn't work well for me, and it's crippling my progress.

I'm certainly clever enough to do the work; that's not in question. But my basic demeanor is not that of a filmmaker. Filmmakers have to be incredibly assertive, brazen, action-oriented, and willing to endlessly hustle to get their work done. And I have tried -- oh nonexistent god, how I've tried -- to be that person. But I'm not. I'm introverted, quiet, not passive, but certainly retiring. And that's all fine with me, I like the latter description a lot more anyway. But you can't really be that person and be a successful filmmaker, not even as a documentarian. And after ten years, I'm getting pretty tired of fighting against my own basic nature.

But more significantly, the main realization I've had to come to terms with is that I can't do this work alone. I cannot, I am incapable of solo filmmaking. It's not in me. I need associates, I need other minds, other hands, some connection that can create more than the sum of its parts. When I'm left on my own, everything collapses; my mind starts feeding on itself, the doubts attack in full force, motivation falls off the chart, and nothing ever gets done. And whatever love I have for film, it's not the kind that can overcome that obstacle. Without a partner or a crew, I'm useless. And as long as I refuse to acknowledge that problem, I'm just wasting time I could be spending on things I might do better at.

And yes, certainly, there have been candidates for partners-in-crime, but for one reason or another, and without assigning blame, they've never worked out. I think incredibly highly of each and every one of them, am so glad to have known them. But a successful collaboration is as intense a relationship as a love affair, and things can go just as wrong, or fall just as flat. And for me, it's never worked out, and I can't afford to spend any more time waiting and hoping.

So, then, what next? That's the question I've been pondering for the past few months. And here's where I've arrived, at least so far:

1) Whatever I do, I have to be able to do it independently.

This whole "waiting for others to give me an opportunity" thing is a huge bust. If my travels through the organized economy have demonstrated anything to me, it's that I'm never going to be able to do my best work within it. I'm not a company person, and while I can certainly survive within that environment when I have to, I'm never going to thrive in it. And then, as before, getting involved in something that requires a partner is probably also not worthwhile. It's not that I want to work in isolation -- I don't, and in spite of my introversion I do like people and like working with others. But whatever my work is, it seems that it would be for the best if it were something the bulk of which I could do on my own.

2) Ideally it wouldn't be physically tied to one location.

I love Portland, but clearly this city can be economically vulnerable. Given that I want to stay, but also want to be able to survive even when things here are not so great, it would be a very good thing if whatever I did was something that could be easily ported around to other geographic locations. It would have the added bonus of leaving me at my liberty if I wanted to travel, which is actually pretty important to me, so it's worthwhile to add it to the list.

3) It has to be in tune with who and what I naturally am, no more fighting against the prevailing currents of my personality.

Look, I'm pretty damn lazy -- I like to stay home, be quiet, sit in a comfortable chair and stare out the window while thinking about stuff, maybe ride my bike up the street for coffee in the afternoon for a change of scenery. Not that I'm unwilling to put effort into things -- I love effort -- but if it involves a lot of running around the city and dealing with a lot of unfamiliar people, I'm probably not going to be that successful with it. Phone calls are fine. Emails are better. Occasional strangers and trips to meet people are cool. I can even do more intensively social stuff for periods of time when necessary. But mostly I expend my effort inside my head, so that's where I have to be able to do my work. I'm not saying I'm proud of that (and I'm not saying I'm ashamed of it, either); I'm just saying, this is what it is.

4) Whatever this work is, it has to be something that I can absolutely, unequivocally master.

All that stuff I've written above is, obviously, a much-lusted-after situation. There's lots of demand to be able to live that way, and certainly I don't assume that I'll get all of it, or even get any of it to the degree that I want. But if I'm going to have any hope of getting any of it at all, I'm going to have to be working at something that I can be really, really fucking good at. It's going to have to be THE talent that I can develop further than any other. Mastery is the only thing people are willing to pay for, and even then, they probably won't pay much. So my only hope is get extremely good at something, and then do it constantly.

So, with all of that in mind: Film is out. Writing is in. Period.

I love working on films, but it's not organic for me; it's always a slightly over-intellectualized pursuit. Writing, though, just happens. It's my primary way of interacting with the world and with myself, it's what I turn to first when I have a problem or a question or a decision to make or even just have some thoughts to analyze and synthesize for my own understanding. It's how I communicate best, how I relate to others best, how I make sense of things. I understand it deeply, I grok it, I get how it works without having to think about it (though I can articulate it when I need to, particularly if I get to write it out.) Writing, for me, is like breathing: it just happens on its own.

And I think I'm already pretty good at it. I have no idea how many pages of prose I've written so far in my writing lifetime, but I can't imagine that by now it doesn't easily exceed 100,000, the quantity popularly assumed to imbue the practitioner with a basic degree of mastery. To put it into perspective, I've racked up just over 1800 posts here on this blog in the last five-and-a-half years, averaging about 1500 words per post, or equivalent to roughly 2.7 million words written here, which is equal to about 9000 standard manuscript pages. That's like seven Stephen King novels, guys.

And that's without even really trying. Imagine what I might do if I stopped fucking around and really applied myself.

Still, there are obstacles to overcome. I think it's safe to say I've got enough practice under my belt, but my writing is not as good as I know it could be, even when I'm working at it and not just casually tossing off text. I need to reach for greater depth, stronger style, much better discipline and consistency. If I ever want to make a living at it, I'm going to need a better understanding the business, and I need a strong source of critical editing so I can figure out what my weaknesses are. I need to build up a basic portfolio and body of work to show to potential employers, and I need a little structure to help me change tracks and get started.

So yeah, I'm applying to grad school for next year. MFA program, nonfiction writing. I don't need it to make a writer out of me, I just need some specialized training. Plus, it gives me some shelter from this economy for a couple more years. Plus, it's cheap to go. My mother knows, and she's okay with it. Assuming that I get in (and I am), the program doesn't start until next fall, so I've still got some time to get through before then.

Which brings me back around, at last, to the beginning of this post. This blog has been great, but it feels a little claustrophobic to me now. It's full of good writing and bad writing, but not a lot of genuine intent. It was just whatever blahblahblah dribbled out of my brain transcribed in real time; it was, to paraphrase Capote, more typing than writing. Much of what I've got here isn't stuff I'd want to hang my name on -- I'm certainly not ashamed of it, and I'm proud of it in many ways, but none of it is the writing I want to be identified with. And that's the writing I need to start doing.

So I'm starting a new blog/website, and eventually shutting this one down. I'm still cobbling the new one together, but my intent is for that one to be a little different, or at the very least fresher. I'll let you know when the move is imminent; until then, this joint is going to be decidedly quieter than it has been in the past.

I do need to ask a favor, though. I need to pull together 30 or so pages of prose for my grad school application, and like I said, I've written about 9000 pages on this blog. Obviously the vast majority is in no way appropriate, but some of it probably is... but this is a lot to sort through. So I was hoping you might give me a hand by pointing out any old posts you particularly liked, or thought were well-written, or even just thinking were the most like me (if you know what I mean.) It won't all be drawn from the blog, but as I've got all of this here, it seems silly not to use whatever parts of it are usable. Subject matter isn't really important, and they won't be going into the submission without first undergoing a lot of review and revision, but it would be a big help to know which pieces y'all thought were most effective.

Anyway, there it is. There's always more to say, but there will be plenty of time for that later.

PS: The word count for this post, including this bit here, is 2,747 words, or about 10 pages. For the record.

2009-09-10T20:46:00.003-05:00

What Happens After Health Care Reform?

Let's start with a few assumptions first: I'm going to be assuming that in the near-ish future, we'll be passing some sort of major health care reform, and one which will enable essentially all Americans to secure coverage. My hope, of course, is that a solid public option will be included, mostly because to my mind that will supply us with (eventually) a straight road to single-payer universal health care -- but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's just assume for the sake of discussion that as of January 1, 2010, everybody has health insurance. What happens next?

The first thing that comes to mind is a massive run on the health care industry. Will 44 million uninsured people, and god knows how many tens of millions of under-insured people, all start going to the doctor at once? How many bad backs and ignored lumps and painful wisdom teeth and problematic gallbladders (at least one, I can tell you) are out there waiting for this thing to happen? Would any plan, no matter how well thought-through, inevitably look like a massive clusterfuck for the first five years as hordes of neglected people hit the clinics all at once, along with all the bills and costs they bring with them?

On the other hand, with the economy in the state its in, surely having a major industry compelled to grow by 10-15% in a few years to meet the extra demand would be an enormous stimulus in itself. And, unlike the war, this one might be a stimulus that draws wealth back into the national economy rather than hemorrhaging money into parts unknown. And if the population gets healthier, productivity would likely increase, bringing the GDP and per capita income up with it, right?

And then there's the possibility of a renaissance in entrepreneurship. All those people who stay in unproductive/hated/dead-end jobs for the health insurance might finally be free to strike out independently and start new businesses. Or those who simply want to move to other careers might find the confidence to take the risk. Universal health care could spark a massive reshuffling of the economy as well as an expansion.

That's what I'm hoping for anyway, apart from the chance to finally see a doctor again. What do you think?

2009-08-15T15:22:00.003-05:00

Look, They Can't All Be Great

Whenever I have something I want to write about, I never have time. And then when I have time, I can't remember what I was going to say.

So, instead, a brief summary in list form:

- I have a business idea. A pretty good one, I think, but I'm trying to figure out how the numbers would theoretically work. The short version: biographical films for rich old people. What do you think?

- I also have a film idea, but I don't know if it's actually feasible. I mean, some of it is, but by their nature the subjects won't make for much b-roll, and I'm tired of watching interviews in prisons. Also, I hate shooting in prisons (and yes, I have.) But I really, really like the idea. What to do?

- Last week I went to help out at a stop-motion animation workshop for kids with a few of the Laika animators who worked on Coraline. (Seriously, kids are fucking spoiled in this town.) Met some interesting people, and it made up for having to work with the social justice kids a couple of weeks earlier. I like working with old folks, and I like working with younger kids; not so hot on the college-aged bastards.

- I've got a story -- an actual piece of writing -- almost finished in its second draft. Fucking amazing.

- And lastly, I'm planning for a series of short (very short) interview-based films in the next few months. Really, I just wanted some willing subject who would sit still while I freely fiddled around with microphones and tweaked lights and experimented with different interview techniques -- all the stuff I'm too nervous to do when setting up with strangers -- but in order to use the equipment from the station, I have to produce something for the air. So hopefully, for the first time since I got to town, I'll have some fresh material to show by the holidays.

- I hate my other job so much it makes me want to vomit blood from my eyeballs. Seriously.

Good day.

2009-07-22T01:50:00.004-05:00

The Top 7 Ways To Be Hopelessly Naive

So apparently I only post about once a month now. It's not intentional -- I still have things to talk about, I only seem to have less available time to talk about them. Or maybe what time I have, I'm spending elsewhere. Anyway, it's not you, it's me.

I'm in the middle of an unusually busy couple of weeks -- last week was all fun, and this week is all work. The good news is that this represents almost entirely good stuff. The bad news is, I'm awfully tired all the time. And we're currently living through Portland's annual two weeks of obnoxiously hot weather, so even what vigor I have is dissipating in the heat.

A week ago I was having coffee with an older, wiser filmmaker friend of mine -- who, incidentally, just published a book -- up in NE near the Hollywood Theatre. He's one of the few long-standing professionals I've known who is completely realistic about the business and the process of making a film. He has never said a single word to me that struck me as expedient or false; in an industry full of smoke-blowers, I've never heard him blow smoke. And in spite of his blunt realism in the face of cinematic dreams, he's also one of the most encouraging people I've ever met -- this is some hard shit to pull off, and he has a more-than-passing acquaintance with failure as well as personal success, and knows that doggedness is the best tool in the long run. Which is just my way of saying that I trust him, which counts for a lot.

We'd arranged the meeting so I could pick up my copy of his book, and to catch up in general. While we were sitting outside with coffee, an associate from PCM happened by on his way to the theater, and told me to call another co-worker because he needed help on a week-long course going on at the station. Then, heading back to the MAX stop on my way home, I was stopped again by one of the Hollywood's staffers, wanting to know whether I could pick up a day at PYD. (You'll notice I'm not teaching the program again this summer -- it's been a hard year for everyone, particularly non-profits, and the funding for the New Columbia program I worked last year just didn't materialize this year.) The point being, a week of almost no scheduled work turned into a week full of decently-paid one-off gigs in a matter of two coincidental meetings over about twenty minutes. Best coffee date ever.

And I know, a week's worth of work isn't much to brag about, but it's a lot more than I could've managed six months ago. I'm also getting offers from students for one-on-one tutoring on an hourly basis -- Final Cut Pro is intimidating to a noob, and some of them are willing to pay nicely for a little hand-holding while they figure things out. But I may be holding off on that until the fall. My part-time job at PCM will likely be morphing into a freelance contract-based job when the next session starts up -- a development which promises exciting new vistas of both aggravation and potential -- at which time I believe I will be less beholden to the station and would have more leverage to offer such services without pissing anyone off.

To put it as succinctly as possible: there are a limited number of well-paying jobs on film crews in this town, but there's a seemingly endless supply of people who want to learn how to become Famous Film Directors, and who are willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money to that end. And I enjoy the work for its own sake. That equation suggests some possibilities for the future.

Right now I'm working with college-age white kids who want to make films for "social change." I just picked up with this group today, and the one thing I can see immediately is that I very much prefer teaching working-class, middle-aged folks. These kids' hearts are in the right place, but good fucking lord -- how totally divorced from reality can four purportedly-educated people be? The group I'm working with is making a film about an organization that facilitates home ownership for low-income people in Portland. That's awesome. Alas, not one of these kids has any direct experience with a) buying a house; or b) being poor. The ideas they're coming up with are consistently missing the mark, perceiving the entire exercise from the pity perspective (oh, sad poor people! they need houses!) and have apparently no conception of what the program actually achieves. They keep wanting to go shoot expensive houses in Laurelhurst -- and I keep wanting to ask, would an immigrant family from El Salvador even want to live in Laurelhurst? They talk about the New Columbia projects as if North Portland were Compton. I ask, what's the goal of this project from the perspective of the community at large? And why, really, should a poor family necessarily want or need to own a home rather than rent? They stare at me blankly. So I STFU about their uninformed assumptions and instead focus on trying to get them to focus. They are well-prepared for writing academic papers, but hopeless about planning for a video shoot. And that's fine; that's why they're taking a class. But it's frustrating listening to them continually ramble on about social justice when what they really need to figure out is what and where we're shooting at 11 AM tomorrow so that it's not a complete waste of an afternoon.

I can't bitch much; I've spent my time as one of them. But the naivete, it burns.

Speaking of which: also a week ago, E., my much-younger acquaintance from college (21st cen.) arrived in town. He had two small suitcases, neither of which was fully packed. He had an invitation to two nights on our living room floor, but otherwise no job, and nowhere to live. And look, he's a sweet kid, really. He's not dumb. But his first contact with a major city revealed a depth of naivete that my acquaintance with him at Marlboro had never revealed. It's not his fault -- he's lived a very sheltered life in rural Vermont, but after a few hours it was obvious that he should be regarded as a farm boy newly arrived in the big city. He. Has. No. Clue.

The first day, I took him a full tour of the city, provided him with materials to help him get oriented, tried to explain how the city is laid out and how public transit works. I'm not sure how much of it sunk in. He actually commented on not hearing as many sirens as he'd expected -- as if the city is defined by constant crime and personal injury. There was, on the one hand, an instinctual urge to coddle the poor lost lamb, to give in when he commented on the difficulty of finding a place to stay after just two days and letting him stay on a bit longer. He was creeped out by the presence of prescription pill bottles on the counter of a house offering a short-term room. He disappeared temporarily at precisely the moment when another guest of an evening brought out a bowl and offered it up for passing. He has, it now seems, spent his entire life thus far sheltered in an snowbound eden, with only theoretical knowledge of the real world of good and evil.

But hell, kid, there's really only one way to learn: out you go, and none too soon. Boundaries were drawn and kept. Invitations to stay longer were not extended, even though it likely meant he spent his third night in town sleeping on a towel on the floor of an empty room in a house of degenerate pill-poppers. It wasn't done out of heartlessness or a lack of sympathy, but the moment is going to come sooner or later, and his chances will be a little better this way. I remember my own third night in town, sitting lonely on a bare mattress in an empty room in a strange house in a strange city filled entirely with strangers. I felt lost then, and I'd already gone through that process a few times before; I can certainly sympathize with E. now. But I've tried to tell him that as hard as it is at first, if he can make it stick, it gets better. And it was very encouraging for me, too. I was in his place less than two years ago, and by comparison it's easier to see how far I've come in that time.

Also last week -- last Tuesday was a very full day -- my best friend from college, R., arrived for a week-long visit. R. has been trodden upon quite thoroughly by life over the last few years, the details of which are irrelevant. Suffice to say, it's been a rough time, and my hope was that a week in Portland might provide a little relief. And anyway, I haven't gotten to spend more than a day or two with him in ten years. We had a fantastic week -- saw the city, spent a little time just hanging out, went to the shore, went to the falls, and ate and drank a little too much. I even managed to win tickets to a Decemberists show for his last night in town -- we are both ardent Decemberists admirers -- which was the best possible ending to a great week. Everything somehow snapped into place for the entire week, and I never get tired of having him around. When he left yesterday morning, I was genuinely sorry to see him go -- we're old friends, but I still miss him when he leaves.

And seeing him again crystallized some things I've been pondering over the last year or so. We each get during our lives, I guess, a tiny number of real friends -- not only the people who are good for drinks and a movie on a night off, but the very few who are still around when you're sad, when you're weak, when everything has gone wrong, and still there when things change again and get better. I still remember the day I met Randy, still remember the shared jokes from a couple of years living in the same dorm. We're not day-to-day friends so much, and we don't keep up on the contents of every lunch or the minor, routine workday incidents that make up our lives. But years can pass, and when I see him again somehow we can pick right up where we last left off. Within a few hours of picking him up at the airport, we might as well have been back in the basement of Marlboro North, cracking sick jokes at the expense of E.'s poor maligned sister.

At the very least, we are bound together by a disgusting sense of humor.

I love all my friends, and still love almost everyone I've ever counted as a friend, if sometimes at an arm's length. My friends mean more to me than almost anything else in the world. And I've struggled a bit recently with some ambivalence -- I honestly wonder sometimes whether the secret to caring about people is to never, ever admit that you do. And then I despair for the sanity of a world in which telling people you care about them is somehow an offense. I finally realized this year that I consistently draw people closer when I pretend not to give a shit about them, and am then rebuffed when I display any warmth or concern. It's a pretty sick joke, I think.

But then there are a few people, a tiny handful of Real Friends, with whom I can -- amazingly! -- just be myself, and say what I think when I think it, up to and including "I love you", and everything is just cool.

And as for the rest of them, those too wounded or too proud or too guarded or just too weak to bear up under the weight of human connections: let them go, let them fall away. And fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

PS: Riding home on the bus this evening, I saw a young guy with prison tattoos and a wispy little goatee, the word "HATE" inked across the knuckles of his left hand but no corresponding "LOVE" across the knuckles of his right. At one point he leaned across the aisle and asked another man for something -- I couldn't hear what -- and was denied. He asked again, with a hint of pleading, and was denied again. Then he sat back, eyes hidden under the bill of his baseball cap, and started to cry.

2009-06-30T01:38:00.003-05:00

Lutheran Ladies

Maybe it's just the summer; all these long, mild evenings are making me feel especially mellow. Down south, we get maybe a few weeks of this a year and the rest is relentless muggy heat; here that pattern is reversed. And I sit in a sunbeam with my window open and enjoy the breeze and listen to the sounds coming from the street. I'm back into a reading phase -- I've picked up Infinite Jest again in order to follow along at least approximately with the Infinite Summer reading challenge. I'm sort of cheating, because I last left off at page 350, and I certainly wasn't about to start over from the beginning. I figure I just have that many fewer pages to read each week. And I genuinely am enjoying the book. It's just that it's sooooo long, 900-some-odd pages, and that doesn't even take into account that every page equates to roughly two or three pages of your garden-variety novel.

And god, the tennis sequences. The Eschaton sequence! Some of these passages are like the Battle of the Ents in LOTR -- you know there's cool stuff on the other side but it seems like the long slog to get there will never end. David Foster Wallace was a brilliant, crazy motherfucker, nonexistent god bless his soul.

I'm looking foward to some visits over the coming month or so; one friend from college (c. 2005) is moving to town in a couple of weeks, and then my best friend from college (c. 1998) is hopefully/probably visiting not long after. The mover, E., has his work cut out for him -- he knows how bad the unemployment situation is here, and still he wants to come, and I can't blame him so I shall try to help in whatever small ways I can. I'll take him on the grand tour, introduce him to some people, try to help him not feel too lost. This is, if I'm not mistaken, his first real venture away from his home turf, so I'll be playing a bit of big sister. If he can just find a job, he'll do fine.

I might even be willing to give him mine. The situation at Fnorders is becoming intolerable -- the flailing and grasping of a dying corporation is never pretty, but these days it seems we're being subjected to a random, chaotic series of diktats coming from somewhere in Michigan, all of which seem to involve small humiliations and added stresses for us. This started out as a not-so-bad short-term job; then it morphed into an unsatisfactory-but-tolerable cage once the economy turned. Now I have come to profoundly loathe the entire company, and want nothing but to watch my store burn to the ground. And yet, I stay. I fight with myself over it, struggle against the deep desire to walk out on bad days. It's actively detrimental to my life -- all of it, not just the hours I spend there, leaving me cranky and discouraged the rest of the time as well. But without that paycheck, everything else falls apart; and I want to be here, want to stay long enough to get into something better. So I swallow the anger and stay.

I am actively looking for other work -- hell, it doesn't even have to be a better job; just being shitty in a different way would at least be a refreshing change. My hope is that (maybe? please?) I can find something else before summer's end if I try hard enough. The other job remains a good thing for the most part. There was a bit of a hiccup a couple of weeks ago -- nothing that affected me, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The two full-timers, who'd been working there for five or six years each, and who were teaching me the job and everything that goes with it, were summarily laid off one afternoon, right before I was supposed to begin teaching a new cycle of classes with one of them. It was so sudden, in fact, that in the forty minutes before the first class began, nobody knew who was actually supposed to replace the instructor who'd been laid off. The job was given to a long-timer who used to teach many of the classes, and he and I have made a respectable team. But it was still a shitty thing. And I have to wonder how much of this was already in the works before I came on -- I was told this was a job with room for advancement, that it could turn into a full-time position over time. And then the two full-timers they had were shitcanned. What does that mean for any long-term prospects I have? Did they know this was going to happen when they hired me? Was I hired as a replacement -- you know, get in some part-timers to replace the expensive full-time employees who are entitled to vacations and benefits? I would really hate to find out that had been the plan all along.

And yet, they still swear that the department is expanding. A local public-access cable station like this one obviously makes a strange fit in the world now -- when we have YouTube and bittorrent and Vimeo and blip.tv and all the rest, what do we need with public access cable? What's the point of pouring millions of dollars into what is arguably a white elephant? And yet, the place still serves some important functions, first among them accessible media education. I mean, the art colleges and film schools are all well and good, but not everybody can cough up the money to attend one. And that's where an organization like this one can fill the gap. Our classes aren't free, but they cost a fraction of the market price for what you get. We provide access to good equipment essentially for free. And there's something to be said for a distribution channel that's specific to the community.

And regardless, you could still do some pretty awesome shit in our studio if you had a mind to.

But whatever. I never expected this to be a forever job, just a for-now job. And there may be some future in it yet, at least over the short-term. They talk about opening satellite facilities around the city -- designed more for field-based work than studio productions -- and that plan sort of hinges on people like me. I've filled in some big gaps in my knowledge -- I'm comfortable in the control room now, I've got the studio stuff down pretty well -- and gosh darn it, I really enjoy the work. Whereas the prospect of going in to one job every day fills me with dread and frustration, I look forward to going to my classes here. I like the students. I like their projects, as amateurish as most of them are. And if the situation is kind of fucked-up on a political level, at least I can have some fun with it for a while. And anyway, I need the fucking paycheck.

The only thing I still enjoy about the other job -- sometimes, anyway -- are the people. I mean, mostly I hate them; and I feel bad about hating them, because very few of them deserve it. I admit that I'm not really very good at that part, and am not at all cut out for the job I have. I can fake it well enough to convince most people, but pretending to care, about the customers or about the company, isn't something I'll ever be really good at. In fact, not giving a shit has become my primary survival mechanism; it's the only way I can keep my soul and my sanity intact.

However, I get to interact with people in a way I never get to otherwise. This last week, for example, Portland hosted a huge convention for the Lutheran Ladies Missionary Society (or something like that), and like clockwork on Sunday afternoon we were deluged with prim, plucked, purse-lipped old women in twinsets and pearls, clucking disapprovingly at everything that intercepted their line of vision. They did not approve of Portland, no not at all. They bough up all our Glenn Beck and ravaged the Christian Inspiration section. The were needy and high-maintenance and ungrateful. And god, there were hundreds, thousands of them! I rode down MLK Blvd. one evening as they all congregated at the MAX stop and Burgerville; it was a full regiment in knit pants, sensible shoes, and tidy, highlighted hair. We all laughed at them afterwards.

I now take guilty pleasure, I'm vaguely ashamed to admit, in fucking with people, something I never did before. My favorite thing is to let a customer say something to create an awkward silence (which can be almost anything) and then to let it hang like a turd in the air between us. I've gotten really good at ignoring the stupid commentary that accompanies even the simplest transactions -- the redundant statements about rain, the tiny complaints, the veiled insults, the too-obvious jokes. I've also become adept at faking cheerfulness. I can deal with a customer without making eye contact or smiling, and still impart a sense of cheery eagerness through voice inflection alone. If I talk to customers with a hint of condescension -- as though I were talking to a small child, say -- they buy it every time. And I should feel bad about it, I guess, but I don't. I don't care that my interactions are rote and robotic, that my enthusiasm is 100% artificial, because they don't care either. They want the gesture, but their own end of the interaction is too rote and automatic and shallow for them to notice that I'm responding in kind. It's fucking depressing, but from a sociological perspective, it's pretty interesting, too.

2009-06-23T16:48:00.002-05:00

A Brief Interlude

To all my friends back down south:

While you're suffering through 103F temperatures and humidity that makes walking outside feel like being smothered under a hot, wet blanket, up here it's 73 degrees and mostly sunny.

Just sayin'.

And sorry about the long gap between posts. It's been an unusually busy, relatively stressful few weeks, and the blog has just fallen by the wayside for a while. Things should settle down soon, and I'll have stuff to talk about.

In the meantime -- before it gets too old to post -- here's a video of a few hundred happy, naked people on bikes* and one closeted, repressed fundie:

(not strictly safe for work)

This is why I love Portland: the majority are on bikes and naked, and one of them is trying to calmly reason with the solitary raving religious nut yelling at them to "get raped." So, it's exactly the opposite of Mississippi.

PS: I threw that in just for you, Nelson. I think I'm caught up on my nudity quota for a while.

* full disclosure: more than a few of these naked bikers were friends of mine, though fortunately my vantage point on the proceedings was nowhere near this asshole.

2009-05-29T05:05:00.005-05:00

Hot-Blooded, Check It And See

May has proven to be my own personal cold and flu season. Having gotten over the rhinovirus a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd paid my dues for the year, but it turned out it was just the flu lining me up for a clean shot. In the morning I was fine, out running errands, in the afternoon I started feeling a little funky, and by nightfall I was up to 103F and reduced to little more than an animal shivering under a blanket. All my usual methods of controlling a fever worked poorly at best, and for several days I couldn't get much below 101. I don't know if it was the dreaded H1N1 or just a garden variety influenza, but I'm calling it my swine flu either way, because that virus was badass enough to deserve a title. It was literally the sickest I've been in a decade.

So I spent the entirety of last week in bed struggling against a stubborn fever and doing not much else. Not reading, not writing, not watching TV, not fucking around online, just laying in bed sleeping about 18 hours a day, and staring at the wall for most of the rest. After a week, feeling considerably improved, I attempted to go into work, and discovered that within that context, a wide gulf can separate "considerably improved" and "fit for work." Apart from the wooziness and my inability to regulate my own temperature, several days of violent coughing had absolutely shredded my voice (which now, ten days after first getting sick, is still fragile and comes and goes), rendering me unable to speak. And as my mother can attest, if you can't talk, you're not much good to anyone in a work environment, yourself included.

But it's mostly over now. The voice is still rough, and my right ear is cut off from my brain by a small, unmoving lake of snot. The cough is going to be with me for weeks. At 33 I am robust enough to shake it off, but it's easy to see how a bug like that set loose among the very old or the immunocompromised could be catastrophic.

Anyway, that's been my week.

I've developed a recent thing for typography. I mean, in retrospect, it's been an obvious passive interest for a long time -- nothing I particularly want to pursue, but something that piques my interest whenever it comes along. It seems to me that there are picture people, and there are word people; I know for sure that I am very much the latter and almost not at all the former. I can appreciate pictures, and I can definitely appreciate others' skills with images, but for me, the picture part clicks only superficially, if at all. I can tell a good image from a bad one, but as far as understanding the differences between the two, I'm lost. Even hand-holding me through the process will only get me so far; the synthesis just never forms in my mind. Words, I get. I got them early, I got them deeply, I grok words. I'm more often careless with them myself, but if you drop a really masterful composition in front of me, I can understand how it works, why it works, and can make some good, educated guesses about the processes used to write it.

So maybe typography, then, is my bridge between two disparate styles of perception. Maybe I like it because it adds another layer of meaning to something I tend to take for granted. Maybe I like it because it offers me a handhold on the slippery world of images. Maybe I like it because, if you can look past the words, letters are just cool. And sometimes it's good to see them treated as beautiful in their own right.

I'd say that well-designed, well-chosen black letters against white space is probably one of the loveliest things humans have ever created.

2009-05-16T23:44:00.001-05:00

Does Andy Live?

Today (well, okay, technically yesterday, as late as I am getting to this) is the 25th anniversary of the death of Andy Kaufman. According to at least one website, he's still alive.

Personally, I don't buy it. And that website is the biggest reason why.

It would be wonderful, delightful, heartening to think that he'd pulled it off, that he'd faked his death and gone to ground waiting to re-emerge, or not, at some future date. But this far on, that almost seems too obvious for Andy. I mean, to "die" and then reappear after one year or three decades would be interesting, and sort of cool, but really, where's the fun in it? For him or for us? And wasn't that always the ultimate point with Andy? The fun?

The person who slapped up that website is blatantly obviously not Andy Kaufman, and doesn't even seem to especially understand Andy Kaufman. Which is either the best evidence that it really IS Andy, or the best evidence that not only is Andy gone, but that even if he reappeared, he'd be irrelevant now.

Put it this way: if that really were Andy Kaufman, then I'd just as soon Andy stay dead. If that was what he became, then he's outlived his usefulness to us anyway. But the better joke, the more sublime joke, is almost certainly also the reality: that Andy died of cancer 25 years ago today, and all these years later, we're still doubting.

I mean, that's pretty fucking funny.

2009-05-06T03:57:00.004-05:00

Possibilities Are Endless

As I write this, I'm at the end of about 48 hours sitting in this apartment. I wish I could say I was the first on my block to contract swine flu, but it turns out to be a garden variety cold, if a particularly unpleasant one. Fortunately it came over me at the beginning of a long stretch of days off following a couple of months of constant, hectic activity, so a couple of days of convalescence was something I could both accommodate and enjoy, apart from the sniffling and spasmodic coughing.

Some people's lost weekends consist of drugs and booze; mine are made of rhinovirus and streaming episodes of Heroes on Netflix.

Just under a month into the new job, I'm beginning to see its potential. There's nothing remotely cool or glamorous about it -- I'm there to teach, and to help people make really, really bad TV shows. But driving back from a shooting location over the weekend, P. and I got a chance to talk a bit, and we were experiencing the same reaction: elation. There's none of the usual bullshit in this environment, no ego or attitude, just excitement of people doing something they thought they might not be able to do and finding it manageable, and an intense earnestness about the work. It's so easy to look at what they produce and laugh at its gracelessness and ineptitude, but I would take my earnest students over every creative classist in the city.

The class I was with this last weekend was shooting a short piece on a local comic book artist, a guy who's about to see his best-known work released as a movie. The week prior to that I'd been with a class shooting a studio piece with a different comic book artist, less well-known but very talented. Next weekend we're working on a piece about urban farming, and that unit, I believe, is working on getting a quick spot in with our scandal-ridden mayor (in conjunction with the organic garden they just planted outside city hall), but we'll see if that works out. I've already met the mayor twice anyway. The point is, this is actually not a bad spot from which to meet interesting people, both in the classes themselves and during their productions.

And then, as well, I've got access to the entire station -- the 5-camera studio, lots of good field equipment, a mobile production van, lists of people who want to work on productions, blanket shooting permits for the city and county... why, there's not much a girl couldn't do with all of that at her disposal.

This job isn't what I was hoping for when I left film school, but finding myself here, I'm realizing that it could become a comfortable spot that offers me a lot of possibilities and a lot of resources. It leaves me enough time and energy for other things; it will, hopefully, provide me with enough income to maintain my cozy, if simple lifestyle; it should help me accumulate all of the solid production experience I've constantly felt I lack in the years since I left school; and it offers me access to all the tools and toys I could reasonably ask for. That is to say, it offers me a lot of freedom. I like that.

The summer will be bumpy, since that's when the media education department is undergoing some top-to-bottom restructuring -- P. and I were hired in anticipation of that, as part of the station's plan to subsequently expand the department. I'm not going to be able to get really comfortable just yet. And I still have a lot of work to do -- I have to prove what I in turn have to offer. But so far things are going well, and I'm working from only hopeful assumptions.

In completely unrelated news, the Mandelbrots -- remember them? -- seem to have vanished. Following the last round of discoveries, I managed to get John (the intelligent, swollen one) chatting about movies on the phone a few times at work. Nothing much, but chit-chat -- he was so eager to talk, although while I was on the floor I was pretty restricted. But I managed to get him, barely, to send a couple of emails to one of my numerous addresses telling me about his screenplay. It was all just by way of establishing some sort of connection, building some thin bridge to see if it led anywhere. And then he just stopped. And Eunice never came back in, nor did Mark. They stopped ordering DVDs, and nobody's heard from them since. With two of the three suffering major physical ailments and the third apparently incapable of caring for himself, anything could've happened. Or nothing. It's sort of a shame either way.

Otherwise, things are comfortable. I'm beginning to glance tentatively towards the future, buoyed by the sensation of my retail-deadened soul beginning to stir. It turns out they grow back, who knew? Not soon, but on the horizon, I can see interesting things coming. New developments tend to bring new growth. Maybe a fresh round of significant connections? Maybe new collaborators, new projects? I'd like to dust off my passport sometime in the next few years, maybe. There are endless possibilities. We'll see what comes.

2009-04-25T02:02:00.004-05:00

Sinking Roots

By now, I've done six sessions at PCM, and I'm feeling much more at home. P. joined the staff officially this week, and I was quietly pleased to find that during his first night in the studio class he was as confused-looking as I must've been; he even graciously complimented me on how assured I seemed on the studio floor. And it's true, I'm gradually figuring things out, becoming a bit bolder. Tomorrow (well, today technically) is my first session as a co-teacher, equally responsible for managing the class. The other teacher, being an old hand, will of course still be guiding me through it, but as far as covering the material goes, it's as much my job as his.

The station does basically two types of class: project-based, multi-session courses for the studio and field; and then single-session component classes designed to cover particular topics in greater depth. Tomorrow's session is just a component class in using video on the internet -- I spent a couple of hours tonight reviewing my codecs and the peculiarities of a few major video-hosting sites, but having looked over the syllabus for the class I think I can probably get through it without embarrassing myself too badly. It's not rocket science, after all.

And from here on out, I will only be co-teaching (with the exception of the field production course already in progress, on which I'm essentially a TA.) We sat down a few days ago and hashed out which of the upcoming classes P. and I each want to teach, and I surprised myself a little by volunteering for courses that I find more intimidating -- the studio production course, and component classes on switching and directing, audio, and using the character generation system. I guess I'm thinking that the best way to get more confident in those subjects is to damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

Other than that, life is quieting down a little. I've got my bookcases up and full -- today I took some leftovers to Powell's and turned about a dozen French and anthropology books into enough money to buy a bottle of decent cachaca for our upcoming house party. But the books are unpacked, the boxes are gone, and it's been nice getting re-acquainted with, by weight, the bulk of my few possessions. I still have a couple of boxes of assorted crap to finish putting away, but I'm getting to the lighting and art-hanging stage in my room, which is nice.

In a couple of weeks, one of my closest friends in town, Rick, is leaving. Rick is considerably younger than me, though he scoffs at the idea of attaching any significance to that fact. The reality, though, is that Portland is the second place he's ever lived, and the only place outside of Detroit, his home town. Which is to say, it's time for Rick to go see something of the world. Somehow he got it into his head to undertake an epic journey by bike down the Pacific coast, over to Arizona, and then on to Tennessee. He is spectacularly under-prepared. Lots of people are very worried about him, me included. But as I see it, this is the kind of thing a young guy (and pretty frequently a middle-aged 40-ish guy, probably even a elderly 75-year-old guy) just has to do sometimes, and so I'm happy to see him off. Rick's a great guy, but he needs something to age him a little, something to test him, make a man of him as they say. Crossing the southwestern desert on a bicycle in May or June could probably do the job.

I'll miss him for sure. I don't really expect to ever see him again. But part of the understanding here is, if I am to settle in one city, then I'll have to accept that I'm no longer the person who continually leaves; I'll be the one who's left behind. It's a little sad, but I'm willing.

2009-04-18T03:04:00.003-05:00

My Awesome Aunt Vicky

My Aunt Vicky is my favorite aunt. I mean, I've got a few cool aunts, and I don't mean to diminish their importance. But Vicky is particularly special. She gives me a sense of continuity with my mother's side of the family, demonstrates that I make sense as a part of the extended clan. My mom is awesome, but there are traits that I share more in common with Vicky -- the bookishness, the unapologetic liberalism, a certain kind of mellow, it'll-all-work-out-in-the-end philosophy. She was arguably the one among her siblings most willing to step outside of the life that was expected of her, and go off on her own path, a proud tradition among a certain kind of woman in our family.

And I suppose a beloved aunt is a bit like having another mom, except one who doesn't always get on your case about the same old mom stuff.

Anyway, today is my Aunt Vicky's birthday, and it's a bit of a landmark occasion. I don't think she would object to stating her age -- in fact, I bet she's rather proud of the accomplishment -- but I'll still leave her to give the precise number if she cares to.

So a very, very happy birthday to my Aunt Vicky, whom I admire and respect and love very much.

2009-04-16T01:59:00.003-05:00

Cool

This new job is going to be so much fun.

I've worked on two classes now. The first one was a studio class, already in progress. I was in for their seventh session, so they're already prepping for their final production, which starts tomorrow. The studio stuff is my weak point -- I know the basic processes and I understand how the production room and its contents work, but a) it's been a long time, and b) I never got to spend much time with this stuff in the first place. So I spent a lot of the session mentally reviewing the function and operation of the switcher and audio board and various decks and routers and monitors and assorted buttons and sliders and bells and whistles. I have always found studio direction stressful, and found it to be so again last night, but I came away feeling more confident -- I understand what does what, so if it's just a matter of figuring out which button specifically for what function, then I'll be fine.

Tonight I went in to begin the first session with a field production class that'll be focusing on location work. This is stuff I've taught over and over again, so apart from picking up the structures that the existing instructors use, it was very familiar territory, and a lot more plain old fun. We had a nice mix of twenty-something hipsters with a bit of experience, middle-aged hippies who want to make docs about social issues, and african american elders who just want to try it out. It's the first time I've been able to work with new learners in such a well-equipped environment and with such thorough organization. The students have to pay to attend (though the fees are on a sliding scale so the lower-income folks aren't excluded), so they have something invested. And we have the equipment and facilities to justify their investment. Given what I've worked with in the past, this is an unimaginably luxurious set of circumstances under which to teach.

After we'd adjourned for the night tonight, the instructor I was working with said off-handedly, "oh, by the way, did you know it was unanimous? About you, I mean." He told me that after they'd reviewed forty-something applicants for the two positions, the media ed. department scheduled a meeting to pick their two new hires. The other new hire, referred to for now as P., had already done some teaching work at PCM and was a shoo-in, but they all anticipated a long session sitting, hashing out who the second new hire would be. But when they met, the first member said, "I want P. and Amy," and the second member said, "well, I also want P. and Amy," and then the department director said, "then this is going to be a short meeting, because we're all in complete agreement."

And when he told me that, I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. They really wanted me!

I'm still finding my feet. I'm trying to jump in more every session, take more of load. P. will be joining as co-instructor next week, and as he's taught this class before, I'll then be basically serving as a TA. But this initial period is for me to get up to speed so I can co-teach on a fully equal basis down the line. My learning curve is steep -- so many details to remember, names and processes and where things are -- and I fret a little about the first night they send me to set up the studio control room, because I'm going to miss some stuff. But in the meantime, I'm studying the studio handbook so I miss as little as possible, and taking copious notes, both mental and ink-and-paper.

I told the management at Fnorders today that I've got a second job. The manager I told is a decent and reasonable guy, so he was cool about it, congratulated me on landing something that's in line with what I actually want to be doing. It's the GM I worry about, because he can frankly be a passive-aggressive, petty little man. I anticipate that my hours at Fnorders will drop to almost nothing purely out of spite -- I would not be the first person to whom he's done that. I'm giving him no grounds to fire me, but he can make it clear that he'd prefer I leave if he has a mind to. But I have no intention of being pushed out. Even if he drops me to one four-hour shift a week (we call it a "princess shift"), I still come out ahead, financially and qualitatively. So there's not much he can do to make me miserable at this point. And that in itself is a big boost -- I am no longer dependent on one floundering, flailing corporate employer to pay my bills. That said, I still need a second job if I am to survive. Once this situation is stabilized -- once I'm no longer new at the job, and in a new apartment with a new flatmate in a new part of town -- then I might be looking to get a different secondary job. But for now, I don't need any more fresh upheaval. Not that it hasn't all been for the good, but there's a limit to how much I care to deal with at once.

When I talked to my mom yesterday, she pointed out that my whole life has changed in the last three months, and thinking about it afterward, I realized how right she was. Three months ago, I was just home from my illicit trip back to Texas to see family, and had an idea that maybe I would move to a new place when my year was up, but nothing in the way of real plans. Now I'm in a much nicer apartment, in a far more satisfactory part of town, working at the kind of job I'd hoped I might find when I moved here. My car's gone, I get around on my bike and by bus and train, and I'm in a position to do lots more cool things and meet lots more cool people, in a more significant way than I've been able to previously.

Things are really starting to work out, you know?

2009-04-11T13:29:00.007-05:00

Pandora, That Ignorant Slut

When I was a little girl, I had an illustrated book of Greek mythology that I loved. One of my favorite pictures in that book was of Pandora opening her box, and all the kid-cartoon evils flitting out, labelled with words like "sickness," "poverty" and "war." And as the story goes, she slammed the lid back down on the box just in time to trap the last one inside, "hope." Even at nine years old, the ambiguity was delicious. Is hope the lost antidote to evil, or is it just another hazard of living? Maybe it says something that to this day that image is still in my mind, although the nasties in the box have acquired subtler, more grown-up names over the years. Names like "ambivalence," and "self-doubt." But hope is still in there, and sometimes I still wonder what side it's on.

A month on, we're almost completely moved into the new place -- I've still got 17 boxes of books stacked up against my bedroom wall, but I'm trying to devise a way to get them out of those boxes at last. It probably says something about how I've been living the last X years, though, that the idea of actually unpacking all those books makes me vaguely anxious. I've been living such a transitory life, a life in which most of my belongings were always packed away in boxes, that settling in (and accepting the risk/hope of staying put for an extended period) makes me nervous.

I woke up last night wondering what I'd do with the boxes my books are in -- keep them or throw them out? Most of them are structurally compromised at this point, and even if I were to move again, I'd have to get new ones. But I seem to associate stuff in boxes with a different kind of security: the freedom to leave for something better. I've lived the whole first part of my adult life on the lookout for something better, and even though I'm now genuinely content with where I am and the choice I've made to stay, it's a hard habit to break. There's a part of me that hungers for permanence and says, "wait until you have a place all your own, wait until you're sure you can stay." But that hunger for permanence seems to translate into anxiety about being tied down. Funny, right?

I'm not actually struggling with the question itself. The books are coming out, the boxes are going away, sooner or later. And some of this is a reaction to my roommate's mother, who's currently here to help unpack, and is a lovely person but sort of overbearing -- especially, it seems, where my stuff and my stake in our shared space is concerned. But I'm still curious about this tiny anxiety I feel. It's an odd thing.

Yesterday was my new-hire orientation at PCM -- I got keys and access codes and the employee handbook, and filled in a fair amount of paperwork. It was all pretty casual, just a quick tour around the facilities and "any questions?" If I'm not mistaken, the other person taken on as a part-time educator is a guy I met and worked with very briefly over the summer, when I subbed in for a sick co-instructor one day on a different Project Youth Doc class than the one I actually instructed. From what I saw of him that day, this guy has immense chops. On the one hand, it pleases me to think that PCM considers me on a similar tier as him; on the other, I feel a little intimidated because I believe he's better than me. I know that I know this stuff; and I know that the bits I don't know, I'll pick up quickly. And I know I can teach it, because I've done plenty of that before. But always there's the doubt in the back of my mind, the voice that tells me I'm not good enough yet, that even though I never so much as hinted at over-stating my skills, my fraud will be discovered, especially next to someone so obviously masterful.

The self-doubt, it's awful. Why couldn't I be one of those arrogant assholes who will assume that he naturally knows how to do everything, even when he's at best one step away from incompetence? Do I ever just get to relax in the knowledge that I'm finally good enough? Does that point even exist for me, or is the doubt so ingrained that no amount of validation, internal or external, will ever convince me?

But still. The next few weeks are apparently going to be all training, so I'm aiming to just go in every day, throw my full effort behind whatever they ask of me, and trust that whatever they saw in me that convinced them to take me on is really in there. I realize that it's irrational to worry that I'm going to fail even before I've been given a task, so it's best to set it aside and focus on moving forward.

Waiting at the bus stop yesterday, on my way up to the studio and quietly fretting to myself, a sort of tweedy man came to the stop, sat next to me, and asked if I knew when the next bus was due. Fourteen minutes, I told him (as I'd just checked). We then somehow (mostly by his volition) fell into a conversation that ranged from colored staples and why don't they exist yet, to the necessity/seeming futility of independence in film and/or publishing, to antiques dealers who covertly deal in nazi paraphernalia. Portland has a way of bringing on these conversations in a way no other place I've lived has done. It's enough of a city that you come into contact with a lot of people, but it's small enough (on various geographical and philosophical levels) that those people talk to each other. I've had a few memorable discussions with random people, usually on public transportation. One night I was waiting for the train home when a middle-aged black guy toting an enormous upright bass sat next to me on the one bench and we ended up talking for nearly 45 minutes about Obama and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Another time, I talked with a little El Salvadoran guy about the photographs he takes and sells as souvenirs at suburban latino clubs. There have been a handful of conversations with various guys about their adult children, their time in the military, assorted chitchat. None of them ever want anything, and it never has that tone of ulterior motive -- I mean, sometimes it does, but I can usually sniff that out immediately and dodge the conversation before it begins. But generally it's just people being friendly, and there's something to be gained by being friendly back.

It's funny that's it's virtually exclusively men initiating these conversations. Though it's understandable, I expect -- striking up conversations with strangers is often too fraught with social tension for women. The most I've ever heard from non-psychotic, non-intoxicated women is "I like your shoes, where did you get them?" But it's sort of a shame, isn't it?

Anyway, this guy turned out to be a publisher, and he gave me his card. What I'll end up doing with it, I don't know, but he seemed like an interesting person, and it would be good to know a few more people in the city who don't work at bookstores. Maybe sometimes interesting opportunities just walk up to you at bus stops and start chatting.

Lastly, so far it seems that having the new revelation of a better job elsewhere is only making my time at Fnorders seem worse. Being treated decently at the new job brings up a lot of suppressed resentment at being treated badly at the job I've had for the last year and a half. One day earlier this week, I was standing at my post suddenly seething, thinking "I could just leave. I could just quit right now, go to the back, grab my stuff, clock out, and leave. Fuck these people, fuck this shitty job. I'm worth more than this." It's not the first time I've had that impulse, and it certainly wasn't the first time I've stuffed it back down. But as the company flounders and flails, the anger is getting worse. And it's not just me -- everybody I work with is also worth more than their jobs, all of us are daily degraded by our employers, our customers, and all the people who look down on us for doing what we're stuck doing for the time being. But having a new window onto how things should be makes the contrast that much more obvious, and the discontent that much more keenly felt. Hope does sometimes have a way of making some things seem worse than they did when you were thoroughly demoralized.

But whatever -- it's what I have to do for now. I need more work, not less; and the truth is, from Fnorders' perspective I am infinitely replaceable. There are hordes outside eager to find any job, no matter how shitty, and would happily take my place and my paycheck. I'm fortunate to have what I do. So I'm not leaving yet. But there are days when it takes every scrap of will I have to stay.

Sometimes you just do what you have to do, I guess.

PS: I'm happy, really. Life is good. I'm just impatient to get to better and more interesting things.

2009-04-05T02:39:00.004-05:00

In Which Things Gradually Begin To Get Better

I've been in Portland about eighteen months now. The first six months were great, but hard -- the struggle just to find and keep a handhold in a new city took everything I had. The last twelve have been hard in a different way, less challenging but saddled with growing discontent. It seemed all I could do was maintain my position, trudging through the months under adequate (barely) but dissatisfying conditions.

The last month has finally seen some real improvement, though. As of yesterday, I'm 100% free of my old house and completely moved in to the new apartment on Belmont. I'm not settled yet -- there's so much still to be put away -- but I realized last night that over the course of a week I'd gone from thinking of the house in N. Portland as "home" and the apartment in SE as strange, to thinking of the apartment as home and the old house as a depressing chapter of my recent history. Walking in for the last time, I was struck at how gross and squalid it was, exactly as it had been for the previous year, and what a relief it was to not have to live in the midst of that anymore. Our new apartment is still chaotic, but Liliana and I are already proving to be very harmonious flatmates, there's an underlying sense of order behind the boxes and un-arranged furniture, and the place feels comfortable and welcoming to me.

The neighborhood, too, is a big step up. Rather than come home after work and retreat immediately to my room, here I hang out in the living room or wander out to see what's going on on the street. Just having those two options available is a revelation and has done great things for my mood. So that's a major improvement.

More significant though, at least in the long run, is the news I got this afternoon. You'll remember that almost exactly a year ago I put in for a job at a local media organization, did well in two interviews, and then lost out on the job to someone else. I was crushed at the time, because I'd felt very much that the organization would have been a good fit for me, that I could have made a real contribution there, it would've been an opportunity to do work that I genuinely care about and really enjoy, and it would've gotten me out of my retail purgatory. And since then, with the economy collapsing, there have been so few opportunities -- I've applied for any number of positions, and gotten exactly nowhere. It has sucked beyond reckoning.

But a couple of weeks ago that same organization posted a new position for a media instructor, and after some initial doubts, I sent them my resume again. They remembered me, and I went for another interview. And not only did they remember that I'd been there before, they remembered specific things about me. And I knew in the interview that I'd done well and given them all the right answers, but after last year's disappointment (and all the other little disappointments that followed) I was disinclined to invest too much in the outcome.

But this afternoon I got the call -- they want me. I am hired. It's a small job to begin with, only part time, working with the main instructors at the facility. But over the next year or two, they told me, they plan to expand this position into a real, full-time education position, and from there there's further room to advance if I want. Until then, I'll be spending part of my week there assisting with the existing courses, and between those courses I'll be in training myself, filling in the gaps in my own skill set. And they'll be paying me more than I would ever get at Fnorders. I'll get to spend my time doing work I enjoy while simultaneously getting better at what I do. That's a pretty fantastic combination.

My time at the bookstore isn't completely over, of course -- this new opportunity will hopefully lead to a final departure eventually, but for now I'll still be there a few days a week. But it should cut down on the time I have to be there, at least, and I'll take any opportunity I can find to get off that sinking ship. Now that the company is circling the drain, it seems every new week brings down some new torment from corporate. Part of me wants to stay on just for the satisfaction of being on hand when the company finally dies.

Elsewhere, I'm writing more steadily, which has a lot to do with why I'm posting less frequently here -- it turns out it's pretty hard to write for a blog and for other purposes at the same time, and I'd rather spend my energy on that than on this. It just feels like I'm finally starting to rebuild some momentum, that I'm turning the proverbial corner, that my life will gradually become more about the awesome and less about the suck. There's still a long way to go, but I feel like I'm now definitely traveling in the right direction.

2009-03-20T11:25:00.003-05:00

Unhappy Anniversary

I don't think I can stand to roll out the old annual post for a sixth time.

This is going to be year seven of the Iraq war. SEVEN, for fuck's sake. And I have no doubt I'll be doing this again a year from now. What a waste. What a complete, utter, pathetic waste.

PS: I am now moving myself, rather than just my stuff, to the new place, and over there we are still without internet connectivity, and likely will remain so for the next week. So if anyone needs me, don't email, call.

Update: As of Wednesday, I am re-connected to the intertubes. Recommence emailing. More to follow.

2009-03-10T00:32:00.003-05:00

Moving, And Not

Today was the first half of moving day for me -- my new flatmate Liliana and our friend Rick came over to help me get most of the boxes out of the basement and over to the new place. This was the first time I've ever had help moving, and I'm stunned at how much of a difference it made. Rather than feeling totally shattered afterwards, as I would've been after the three days of hard work it would've taken me to move twenty-eight heavy boxes of books, I felt merely pleasantly tired. When we were done, we went to Burgerville for dinner and then went to the Roseway to catch a movie.

We saw Watchmen. What a fucking disappointment. It wasn't all bad -- the ending worked a little better for me than the original -- but some of it was really bad, and none of it managed to achieve the tone and devastation of the novel. The book genuinely affected me; the movie just kind of bored me.

And seriously, how many production meetings do you think they had about how big Dr. Manhattan's dick should be?

Oh well. You'd think by now I'd have learned that, inexplicably, movies based on comic books just generally suck. I was hoping this one would be an exception, but I guess not.

I'll be sort of between places for the next couple of weeks -- I'm not sure at what point I'll actually be living at the new apartment, although having finally visited it today I'm aiming for sooner rather than later. When we went to look at the place last month, we didn't actually get to see our apartment; we saw the one downstairs, which is basically identical but was empty whereas ours was still occupied at the time. I was happy to find that ours is, if anything, in better condition. I'm really, really pleased with it. It's a little bit 70s-cheesy in places, but opening the window and seeing some street life outside (and not icky crackhead street life, either) was exciting. After having been so removed from everything in Mississippi, I came to Portland hoping to live right in the middle of things. After a couple of tries, I'm there.

2009-03-01T00:08:00.005-06:00

Time For Stormy Weather

I don't know if it's because today was the first day of Lent, or because of the unwelcome drizzle, or because of the economy and the general sense of malaise, but it was a fucking rough day out there today.

On the MAX ride downtown, I and my fellow passengers were treated to a 20-minute oratory by a street lady on the subject of her snatch, and how often she shows it to crackheads. It was one of those situations where she was talking to nobody and to everybody, and for the first five minutes after she boarded we all sat there in uncomfortable, forced inattention. Then the silence turned slowly into guarded snickering, and finally into outright giggling and amused glances shared between strangers. It was a rare kind of situation in which I and the cholo sitting across from me could briefly be united under the umbrella of one crazy old lady's hyper-sexualized ranting. I suppose you could say that old lady's crotch brought us all a little closer together.

Having reached my stop, I walked over to the credit union ATM to make a deposit, and on my way back saw coming towards me a young guy in glasses screaming that he was in the FUCKING WAR and we were ALL PREJUDICED. I crossed the street, partly to avoid being in his direct path and partly because I was headed that way anyway; a fuzzy hipster on a fixie grinned and said, "why are you antagonizing him? that's so mean!" We had a little chuckle together and stood and watched his progress for a moment before heading back down our respective paths. I arrived at work and was greeted by my friend Castle, who seemed downcast. "How's it going?" I asked. "Not so great, I just got called a racist." He'd only moments before had to remove a guy from the store for getting belligerent after being asked not to lie on the floor. A little questioning revealed that the guy in question was the same guy I'd just seen cursing up and down second avenue. The guy had told Castle that he was telling him to leave "just because I'm another race..." and it's worth pointing out that both Castle and this guy are white. Later on in the evening we had another crazy street guy threaten to "cause fear" in the store. It was like that all day.

And then, upon coming home, I had the unpleasantly awkward task of telling my roommates that I'm moving out. Not that they were angry about it or anything -- I've fulfilled all my obligations to them, and I'm going to do everything I can to smooth the way. But still, it's going to be harder to get someone to replace me now that they've got a baby in the house. I could see the brief flash of "oh shit" cross Bob's face... but hell, I've got to do what I've got to do, and I don't want to live here anymore.

On the plus side, Liliana and I snagged a place right on Belmont near 30th. It's no dream home, just an early-70s vintage apartment with almost exclusively hipsters for neighbors. But it'll do, and Belmont is one of my favorite streets in town. It's not right in the middle of the thickest part of the hipster district, but it's close enough to walk when I want to go there; it still has a little bit of scuzz factor mixed in with some rather affluent surroundings. It's close to everything, it'll cost the same as this place, and I'll have the luxury of having only one roommate. So I'm excited about that.

These days I seem to swing between chipper optimism and anxious dejection. There's so much opportunity and possibility, and yet right now every attempt seems so fruitless. Work is death by a thousand cuts; people are angry and snappish, and many of us are feeling quite demoralized. And yet, I'm relatively free of burdens or obligations, I somehow manage to stay pretty well on top of things, and I do a little work every day on things that have meaning to me. Earlier this week I was told to shut up by a guy spending my entire month's rent on CDs, but I still find a little time to do something for little girls whose families have considerably less to work with than I do. Things aren't great, but I've been through worse times (so far.)

And when things get really bad, we whisper the words "President Obama" to ourselves, and feel a little better.

PS: For whatever it's worth, today is this blog's fifth birthday.

2009-02-26T00:15:00.009-06:00

Would Bill Have Had A Podcast?

Today marks fifteen years since Bill Hicks shuffled off to his eternal damnation/ heavenly reward/sweet oblivion. I am now slightly older than he was when he died, but I've accomplished only a tiny fraction as much as he did. I've lamented before the injustice of it -- how Bill should be an elder comedy statesman now, living in London, on his third wife/mistress/concubine, doing some voice work for Shrek 4, richer than even Robin Williams.

Having spent eight years wondering what Bill might've said about our journey through collective madness, I now have to wonder what he'd have thought about our gradual return to relative sanity. He did a bit a long time ago about the celebrations following Clinton's initial election, but what might he have made of the literal dancing in the streets that followed Obama's election? For that matter, what would he have made of Obama?

(audio only, not safe for work or republicans)

And what would he have done when the anger passed, and social tranquility returned? (For the record, I wonder the same thing about Jon Stewart, who's been filling essentially the same role -- in a much softer, gentler way, but he has still served as the primary filter for our anger during the Bush years. It has to be weird to be relieved of that job.)

But, then again. Even if the man had lived beyond 1994, I find it hard to imagine him surviving the Bush era. No man could have withstood that kind of psychic strain.

However, there's one thing I really, really wish he'd lived for: the modern video explosion. In 1994, everyone had cable, but content wasn't nearly as thinly-spread as it is now, with four hundred channels as well as the entire internet to fill up. He had a few ideas for TV shows, you know. And not "Let's Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus," although that was a fine idea (and how sickening is it that Bill is still dead, but Billy Ray Cyrus is not only still on TV, but has brought his demon brood along with him?) Every time I see any of the current crop of geniuses and the sheer freedom they're given to create -- that is to say, whenever I see David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Patton Oswalt, Zack Galifianakis, Ricky Gervais, Eddie Izzard, Tim and Eric, etc. etc., I just wish Bill could've stuck around long enough to join in. The world is finally ready for him, but he's already long gone. The crickets we've been hearing for the last fifteen years were the sound of Bill waiting for the rest of us to catch up, I guess.

2009-02-18T19:50:00.002-06:00

Again With The Little Girls

If you recall, last spring I spent a few weeks working with a bunch of 11-year-old girls, helping them make a silly little video on behalf of a nonprofit group. It was surprisingly hard work, but immense fun. Starting earlier today, I am repeating the process with a second group of 11-year-old girls.

They're a bit different -- this time I'm working with them at their elementary school up it St. Johns, and rather than the well-to-do girls I was teamed with last time (several of whom owned ponies and were brought to our sessions by their Mexican nannies), these are solidly working-class kids from somewhat more diverse backgrounds. Apparently they're also more given to fighting than the last group. And yet the first day was almost exactly the same. The biggest part of the job is to try to focus that much excitement -- and I don't mean tightly focus, more like "herd in the same approximate direction" -- into any kind of film at all. There are two teachers with the group, plus me, for only about nine girls, but it's still challenging just to maintain their attention long enough to issue an objective.

Still, we managed to finish out the hour having introduced everyone to everyone else, explained the project, and gotten a few ideas down for next week. Next time I'll be taking the equipment along, probably imposing a little artificial consensus ("yeah, we all agreed we were going to do X, remember?"), and maybe even get something shot. That's my hope, anyway.

The main point from my perspective is to ensure that these girls get to make this thing as much by themselves as possible. I hand over my camera (though I stand very close by), I hand over the mic, I show them how they work and then I let them do their own thing. I'm a facilitator more than anything. And the resulting films are, frankly, awful; they look like they were shot by 11-year-olds who didn't know what the hell they were doing. But who cares? The point is that they get a chance to do something that nobody ever tells them they can do. The first question they always ask when I tell them about the camera is whether they'll be able to use it -- especially when they see it they tend to feel intimidated initially. But I let them look through the viewfinder, I show them how to focus as zoom and pan, and suddenly something that seemed much too difficult is ridiculously easy and they start giggling and making faces in the lens, and they're very proud of themselves.

But mostly, it's just a lot of fun to give them a chance to play at making films and have something to show for it at the end. Particularly given my own misgivings about the whole film thing right now, it's a nice break, and a chance to just enjoy the process without all the usual accompanying bullshit. It's one of the best things I did last year; I'd do a lot more of it if I could.

2009-02-17T02:20:00.002-06:00

Here And Gone Again

Just a quick one to do the birthday thing for three people: Doug, who is still one of my favorite people in Memphis; Stefan, who was part of the pack of strays back in college; and Sonja, who's one of my better friends here in Portland.

Two of these people I don't get to talk to often enough; all of them I am fortunate to know. So happiest of birthdays to that lot.

Incidentally, Doug, is it just me or has Chess Club been resurrected? What news?

2009-01-30T15:48:00.011-06:00

Books, Musical Comedians, Dead Comedians, and Upcoming Changes

I've been putting off posting. Not for lack of subjects, but rather because at the moment, my subjects are just a random assortment without any connection other than their cohabitation inside my head. I ask your indulgence.

I want to talk about books. Not any specific books, but books as a general concept. I've happily discovered that spending much of my time unhappily surrounded by books hasn't diminished my love for the books themselves in the least. It hasn't even diminished my love of bookstores, although I'll always be a little more circumspect in them now. But handling books all day every day has led me to one sad conclusion: the vast majority of them are crap.

Again, I don't mean the contents of the books -- a lot of that part is crap, too, but that's not what I'm getting at. I mean, the physical objects themselves are poorly made and badly designed. Every book, of course, is more than the sum of its physical parts, but often the parts are woefully unworthy of a book's contents.

What I'm saying is, why is it so hard to find a beautifully made, beautifully designed book? Even among the expensive hardcovers, the actual structure of a book seems to be an afterthought. All of the effort is put into designing a flashy dustjacket (and I still don't understand what the physical point of a dustjacket is -- it certainly doesn't do much to protect a book from dust) and almost none into making the book itself anything special.

There are exceptions. The various volumes published under the McSweeney's label are always interesting, and they put a lot of effort into design. Around Christmas I picked up a copy of Kenny Shopsin's Eat Me, and it's one of my favorite books this year. I still drool over the detailed design of Chris Ware's bigger releases, which to my mind are what every book should aspire to be. I understand that some books are only designed to be practical, and I certainly understand that people are less and less willing to fork out much money for books. But these days a full-color dustjacket has replaced any effort to create really handsome, well-constructed books. And so many books deserve better.

I think about this against the backdrop of declining book sales and the presumed rise of electronic books (eventually, anyway.) I've gotten to play around with all of the current electronic reader type thingies, and so far they've got a hell of a long way to go. But I'm certain that before much longer someone will finally figure out how to do it right, and more text will be read on electronic devices. They make a lot of sense for some things -- for reference texts where a search function would be a key benefit; for cheap, light reading where the paper-and-glue book itself is merely a disposable medium; for reading newspaper and magazine articles, etc. And a lot of people, given a comfortable electronic device from which to read, would probably do almost all of their reading that way. But I have trouble believing that electronic readers will really spell the end of paper books. Digital music, after all, is simple and portable and cheap; and yet vinyl record albums are now the medium of choice for people who really love and care about music.

It seems to me that the rise of electronic readers could similarly provoke a resurgence in fine publishing -- of really beautiful books designed and built for their own aesthetic appeal as well as a housing for their content. If I were a writer with all options available, I think it would obviously be a smart move to release books in any viable electronic format, and ideally with an option for cheap, disposable paperback editions. But for readers who really care about books, it has to be hand-printed, hand-bound volumes.

Hey, look: here's a really good blog about book design.

So, remember that Tim Minchin piece I linked to a couple of weeks ago? The one with crap audio quality that disappeared almost immediately afterwards? Well, he's recorded it properly, and here it is, complete with jazz-esque musical accompaniment. Something about his meter reminds me of Philip Larkin.

I don't go for the "funny musician" school of comedy. A dude with a guitar singing humorous songs is one of the things I typically turn off about thirty seconds in. And yet it's so in the ascendancy right now it's hard not to catch a few who aren't completely hopeless. I'm not on the Flight of the Conchordes bandwagon -- they're fine, and they do what they do well enough that I can appreciate the joke. But I can't call myself a big fan. I'm all but required by social obligation to be up-to-date on Jonathan Coulton references, but it's my choice to associate with nerds so I don't complain. And Zach Galifianakis -- does he even count?

Regardless, I do like Tim Minchin, though I like him a bit better when he's reciting rather than singing. Singing creeps me out a little.

Finally, with the arrival of February I'll have been living in this house for ten months of the twelve I originally promised, so it's time to decide whether I'll stay here or pick up and move somewhere else. There's a lot to like about this spot, but there have been issues -- only minor issues, but enough of them that I don't much care to stay on. So it looks as though over the next couple of months I'll be moving again. I have a friend, Liliana, whom I've known almost as long as I've lived in Portland, who's roughly my age and of a similar philosophy when it comes to what makes a pleasant household. So she and I are going to be getting a place, probably in approximately this part of town. I'm both dreading it and looking forward to it -- I hate the physical act of moving, but it would feel really good to finally live in a place that's my home as much as anyone else's. That was the idea when I moved in here, but the dynamics of moving into a space that's been occupied by your roommates for a long time just doesn't allow for real sharing of space -- they're too entrenched to make much room, and the room I'm allotted isn't quite enough.

Mostly, I don't want to stay here, but contemplating the stress of moving in with another group of strangers exhausts me. I don't regret any of the strangers I've lived with so far -- they've all been good people, and we've always gotten along. But Liliana is a quantity well-enough known that the prospect of yet another household negotiation isn't too daunting. She's a little more loud where I'm quiet, a little more outgoing where I'm reserved. But she's stable, grounded, disinclined to take bullshit, we agree on all the major details of sharing a house, and we're friends, with many other friends in common. So I'm not worried; we'll work it out.

PS: One other way to know that the world has finally begun to head back in the right direction: David Letterman finally aired that old Bill Hicks segment he cut all those many years ago, and publicly apologized to his mom. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

2009-01-20T20:59:00.000-06:00

The Old Chief Is Gone; Hail To The Chief

I've spent the whole day today trying to think of something insightful and witty to write about President Obama's inauguration, and have come up empty. Perhaps one of the definitions of an historic event is that there isn't anything to be added to it -- it simply happens, and the only commentary possible is the way we change as a result.

I can say that I got what I wanted from the address. I was looking for some hard truth -- that our country is a mess, that the way we've been conducting ourselves is no longer tenable, and that hard work and sacrifice will be necessary for us to recover. But I also heard a determination to get things back on track, and most important of all, a promise that no more time will be wasted. Because that, ultimately, is how I view the Bush years in retrospect: valuable time wasted. Lives wasted. Energy wasted. Effort, goodwill, and credibility, all wasted.

Dubya didn't look like he was having a good day. What with booing crowds, his final escort from office, and the barely-tempered public rebuke from his successor, I would imagine that today was a sharp slap of reality for him. It would be enough to earn my sympathy, if he hadn't so thoroughly earned every bit of it.

I know for a fact that I will frequently disagree with Obama -- I already do on a number of points. The presence of Rick Warren, while I understand the thought behind it, leaves an icky taste in my mouth. And seriously, Aretha is great, but she should be living in graceful retirement from public performance, at least on that scale -- she started out fine, but a 66-year-old voice hasn't got the flexibility to warble the way she insists upon warbling. (Personally, I think Mavis Staples would've been the perfect choice, but nobody asked my opinion.) I was irritated by Obama's decision to defend telecom immunity; I hope in coming months he'll be more aggressive about investigating wrongdoing by the exiting administration. Those who do not remember the past, etc.

But for now, all I want is to be able to read tomorrow evening that during his first full day in office, Obama did something constructive. It doesn't even matter what it is -- just that will be enough for me, for now.

Here in Portland, it seems we are newly embroiled in a mayoral scandal, not even three weeks after our new mayor was sworn in. This is a little discouraging; there's something about this city that seems to inspire our mayors to get skeezy with people who are too damn young. The funny thing is, from what I can gather, the first guy to do this was one of the most influential mayors the city has ever had, largely shaping what Portland has since become. And this new mayor appeared to have the potential to be the next such influential mayor, except without all that icky having-sex-with-a-borderline-minor business. Except that, well, ewww.

Oh well... politicians are just politicians, after all. Even the once-in-a-generation ones.

Congratulations to everyone on surviving the Bush years. I'm a long, long way from Canary Wharf Underground, where I first learned from an Evening Standard barker that he'd been installed in the White House. The dejection I felt that day has finally found a happy resolution.

PS: Today, incidentally, also marks twelve years(!) since I met my lovely Christopher. He is still, after all this time, one of my best friends. Much love to Smithers.

PPS: See? Didn't even have to wait until tomorrow -- the Obama administration is already in action. And this as well. That's what I voted for.