Dee-Rob

I have been unbelievablely not writing. Part lazy, sheer, ugly bone lazy. Part ennui or something like it. Any thought to write has dribbled into lack of action then nothing.

But, I was reading Tony’s Blog Emporium. He’s writing more or trying and so should I. He’s like a champion role model, only of the comedic variety.

Meanwhile, WordPress.org released software for the old Droid telephone I be using. So there’s that.

On the creative brightside, I haven’t totally given up or killed my soul. After taking 36 million pictures or so on our last trip I felt crafty inspired. Awhile back on an impulse buying whim, M. had thrown a giant frame with a mat full of windows suitable for throwing up a collage of memories into our shopping cart. It has haunted me.

Haunting became the right word, when I finally felt resolve to do something with it. Back in the way, way east (or the east that white cartographers decided was east) there’s a nifty little tradition based in Taoism. Because ancestral spirits like to keep an eye on things, and venerating the dead is an important pasttime, you’re likely to find some great old family pictures on a Chinese family’s wall. I don’t know from burnt offerings or lighting joss sticks next to a homemade altar heavy with tangerines and whatnot, but I like cool photos. M.’s mom has great ones. I’ve taken a few pictures of her pictures.

Stepping back, one thing M. and I have in common is families that have clocked some years each generation. I think his grandfather on his mom’s side would have been about 10 years younger than my mom’s dad. This grandfather is the adventurer who headed off of China’s Hainan Islands and found his fortune in Malaysia.

We each grew up with images from early last century, sepia and gray-toned history. Like my grandfather’s wide-brimmed hat and gaiters, a young doughboy headed out to fight the Kaiser’s army.

That and our tremendous egos and equally tremendous cache of photos of each other and ourselves and ourselves together provide the nugget and the expansion if the craft project. A collage of us and of family.

When all is settled, I’ll probably figure out a web version or maybe just post something here with the rejects. A little bit of honoring the ancestors and a little bit of self worship.

One with think with a trip to Southeast Asia, well, not all of it, just some parts of Thailand and Malaysia, I’d have updated this fucker. Alas, there was the colossal fatigue, the return to work and the continued biliousness from an alien species of crab. I think it was alien. It didn’t look like any crab I have ever seen, so I ate it. It wasn’t this guy:

The upside of the Thai food-poisoning caper is that it wasn’t the sorry ass white American girl alone. M.’s uncle and aunt didn’t not escape unscathed, despite being adventurous foodie types from Kuala Lumpur. Misery loves company, and no one wants to feel like the giant pussy who can’t eat food while traveling.

One wonderful bit of traveling advice — If ever you should find yourself wrestling with sudden, urgent, unpleasant bathroom yearnings, Bangkok is the fan-fucking-tabulous place to be. In every market, mall, restaurant, hotel lobby, public place of any size I met up with clean and efficient accommodations. Even the sad-looking toilets with a matron collecting 3 baht (less than one thin dime) for a pocket pack of tissue were way better than serviceable.

It gladdened my pathetic, American, toilet-obsessed soul and unhappy belly.

In other news, we rocked in the New Year local Penang-style. This here is Penang, aka Betel Nut Island.

Actually, I’ve never heard anyone calling it Betel Nut Island, even if that is to what Pulau Pinang translates, but the world-wide web says it, so it must be true. It’s a state of Malaysia, it’s an island, and it’s about 10 times smaller than Rhode Island with roughly the same population. One thing about Asia is you do get a sense of huge amounts of sprawling elbow room back here in the U.S. of A.

An adventurous aunt had picked up tickets to a local church function room New Year’s dance, because her friends in the band Rozells would be doing up the oldies and, of course, country and western. NOTHING ever surprises me more whilst traveling internationally than the old C&W. I can go for long, long stretches of time in the country of it’s origin without hearing country music. I have to actively choose to crank up the twangy guitars and sad ballads of failure and misery. With zero effort, I don’t ever have to listen to Billy Ray Cyrus (even if Miley is ubiquitous on the old internets).

I’ve heard Elvis and Carl Perkins in the Ukraine. I’ve caught some Dolly from East African radio stations and knew a Zimbabwean who could listen to her all night long. In London in the ’80s, a popular (and conveniently located) bar was the Lone Star, albeit with a surprising skewed to Australian bunch of waitresses. In Iceland, I tried puffin and heard Patsy Cline lamentl And in Malaysia, if it has a twang, a two-step beat or a line dance, it’s what is getting heard. Man, them Chinese ladies can line dance like motherfuckers. Hugely, crazily popular.

In fact, I would say that I’ve met enough folks who know a line dance or two, that’s it’s kind of embarrassing to answer the natural question you might ask a visiting American — Is it as popular where you are. In a word, NO.

Back to the eve of the new decade.

As Rozells was pouring it’s collective soul into the saddest, loneliest ballads of the American popular songbook, the night was starting out a bit slow. I realized it wasn’t just me when an uncle pointed out this hand-made photo-op meant to advertise the party inside.

You know what livens up a party, though? Disco and beer. As soon as the Tiger started flowing and the hits from the 70s and 80s started kicking into high gear, it all felt a whole lot more comfy. Better yet, the complementary party pack for every ticket holder included not just the New Year’s staple silly hat and noisemakers, there were masks.

Seriously, how could you not have a bit of fun when this kind of party look was going down.

One key question when I’m hanging out with M.’s family and jumping in enthusiastically as a complete jackass, given my lack of dancing abilities, verified once by an actual dancing instructor who patted me on the back for at least trying, why in hell would I let control of my camera slip from my hands?

In the end, I was the sole American or Caucasian in the room, I’m pretty sure. Well, except for maybe the old man in the front of this picture, wearing a red shirt and tie, who crazily and drunkenly and creepily kissed my cheek and told me he was from a country near mine, called “New Mexico,” but not to ask him to speak his native language, because he’d given it up many, many years ago, even though he was a local scholar and expert. It was one of those random, nonsensical conversations you’re lucky to come across now and again, particularly if you chat up the homeless. After the cheek kiss, an aunt handed me a bottle of hand sanitizer in case his brand of crazy was contagious.

It was local, it was unhip, it was Penang, and it was family. Best of all, it was Tiger beer and laughing a lot.

Onward and upward to the 2010s and a brand new decade.

Finally, for anyone who cares, there is a gigantic bucketload of pictures here http://dee-rob.com/zenphoto/Malaysia%20and%20Thailand%2C%202009-10/ with aptly titled subsets.

It’s a banner year in the M. and Dee household. We’re ending it with both a bang and a whimper. Today was quite possibly the whimper. I’m expecting bigger things from our soon to be trip to Asia.

Because Malaysia is beckoning, it’s been a couple of years and M. could get a block of time off of toil, there was no New England Christmas. No snow (yay!), none of my family, no tree. Having just got a visit from two out of four siblings, I was more than ready to take a pass on heading into Boston and the cold and the hectic holiday travel. (It also helped I got to see some good friends during the year, wish I had seen more.)

What to do, then, if it’s Christmas in California and you’re saving dough to blow in Thailand? We decided to volunteer. Those less fortunate, holiday giving, counting our blessings, blah fuck blah, you dig?

M. found what seemed like the perfect thing, particularly where we both feel lucky with big, extended families that (as much as I might particularly bitch) we have each other and others always. It’s an organization that arranges visits to the elderly all year long but has special holiday events with meals and presents hand-delivered to folks who don’t get out and might be alone. We signed up and made our plans.

This morning rose and we got ready, virtually patting ourselves on the back at our own good fortune and generosity. You know, the way one does in the do-gooder vein. We drove into a temple in San Francisco, joined an orientation with coffee, snacks and other fresh-faced, smiling volunteers. We learned about the history of the organization and their choice of “flowers before bread,” celebrating and visiting and making friends not just providing aid. All good, all happy joy. I’m all for that spirit and not setting up the recipient as a charity case.

Nonetheless, my own insecurities made me a little bit nervous. What if the visit was uncomfortable, or we weren’t the sort that would float the conversational vote for our visitee? I kept thinking about how many people you meet in a day or week or month or year with whom you don’t actually click. Some poor shut in gets the ring at the doorbell and on the other side of the door is a well-wishing, do-gooder with fascinating stories about shoe laces or Cat Fancy Magazine.

I imagined myself in the future, when some boring schlub came to “help” me by boring the everliving shit out of me. Really though, I hoped that someone might find M. and me as amusing as we do.

We picked up a card with a name, gender, race, age (which all the older women I’ve ever met probably wouldn’t have appreciated as their statistical description), a map to her house, a wrapped gift labeled “pillow,” a turkey meal with sides and pie and a single rose. We headed out in the general direction.

Thanks to urban parking it actually took us a while to get to our new “friend’s” neighborhood. We eventually parked the car and started up the street. We were told it would be her first visit, and both of us, eager to not fuck it up, decided to call ahead and let her know we were almost there. I actually hate talking on the phone, and I hate calling strangers even more (never mind I earn my keep mostly on the phone), and I’m a total weasel, so I dialed and handed the phone off to M.

I could tell by the flash from smile to serious that the telephone conversation had taken an unexpected turn. After introducing himself as a volunteer for the organization, he got blasted. It seems that on Thanksgiving this woman had been stood up after waiting all day for a visit. When Christmas rolled around, the organization called and she told them, she said in no uncertain terms, to remove her from their lists and to leave her alone.

Someone clearly didn’t get the memo, and we were dispatched. She ended the call with M. telling him that she didn’t know us and didn’t want us in her house. Fair enough, I say.

We schlepped back to the temple with our gift bag and meal failure marking our resolute postures. Three guys were packing up shop, The leader, judging by his cranky, jaded demeanor, took back the small, wrapped pillow gift, but he told us to keep the meal and find someone who could use it. In fact, he led us through the temple’s kitchen back to a walk in refrigerator with a stack of leftover meal trays. He encouraged us to take a few and hand them out or bring them to another organization that feeds people. We did.

A few minutes later we were driving into San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The ‘loin, replete with an air of human urine and the hope of any kind of drug you need, is SF’s Skid Row. Homeless and seedy own the streets. Within an easy 10-minute stroll down the street, we had no trouble finding takers. A shopping cart dude eyed the inside of our bag hungrily, and happily we gave him a full meal, a piece of pie and a festive cheese plate.

The next dude was just a guy on the sidewalk chatting with another guy. But, after we passed them he called out something like “I’ll trade you a drink for a donut.” We turned around and surprised him with more than a donut, but a full meal and a bottle of apple juice. We didn’t take any drink from him, but cheerily in the holiday spirt he wistfully let us know that he had spent the morning doling out the blunts, and he wished he had saved one to give to us. Christmas cheer abides.

We then dropped the last two meals on a cluster of three. M. presented the rose to a woman in the cluster who looked like maybe she hadn’t been handed a long stem in quite some time, if ever.

In the end, it wasn’t what we planned. It was a totally wonderful and awesome object lesson in charity, though.

It’s easy to think of yourself heading out and helping. I’m sure the volunteers and the organization feel good about the good they do in the community, and they should. At the same time, someone failed to pass along the message of what the woman we were meant to visit actually would have liked, i.e. nothing.

So much of the day reminded me of my mother, dear old Pat. To her, “charity” was a dirty word; it strips people of their dignity, forces them to rely on others, reinforces a harsh and negative hierarchy of status. Helping people for her had to come from a place of just helping out collegially. Or, she might find a simple way to flip the status of who was helping whom. Winter coats that my then young nephews didn’t like were passed along to a couple of boys in Pat’s class without proper winter coats. She explained that they were doing her a favor helping her to get rid of them. I think through her I learned that sometimes the story, the pitch, the dialog is everything in the telling.

Perhaps, I actually respect the work I’m paid to do, because it’s non-profit work in the same spirt of Pat’s philosophy, which also had a strong dose of helping folks helping themselves. Charity is easy, it helps feed the ego of the doer. But, change, helping out, being part of community, giving the other guy a chance, letting someone in line ahead of you, sharing what you have, that’s harder.

Moreover, If Pat had ever found herself on the receiving end of a kindly visitor, no doubt in my mind but the visitor would find themselves cold on the front porch on the closed end of a double-bolted door. She would have given that hypothetical do-gooder the same speech that M. had gotten and with the same conclusion of being left alone.

We were 3,000 miles away from my usual family holiday, and we were doing something neither of us had ever done. But, we were together, and I think a little bit of Pat’s spirit was haunting this holiday.

Technorati Tags: childhood, family, holidays, charity, life, growing older, Pat, volunteer

Hope whatever you do today and to the start of the new year is wonderful. Whoever you are.

Here I’m sitting in a very non-Christmas swing. No tree, no gifts, no Jesus, no Santa, no Magi. And, thank fucking Christ, no snow.

Instead, we’re gearing up for the upcoming trip to the other side of the planet. I’m making that sound dramatic, but it’s kind of nice and quiet. I’m digging it well enough. Although it is disconcerting. It’s a little strange to know that the folks with whom you spent a thousand twenty, or I guess in my case more like 45 Christmases, are all assembling without you.

Actually, for Christmas Eve they were down at least one besides me. My sister was planning to bail on the whole holiday thing, why, I’m not sure, but as of this morning she’s booked on a plane for tomorrow. In Dickensian style, I think I may have been her Tiny Tim. Of course, my style was less generous, caring orphan and more bitch, but you gots to use the tools nature gave you, and mine is bitchy observation. Glad to have helped.

The irony is that I was headed off to the circus, well, the Cirque of the Soleil kind, rather than midnight mass. It was pretty damn good. Our evening was then capped with a rather tasty Angus ribeye for two. We went for the beef because of the certainty that somewhere in Braintree my own family had enjoyed some cow earlier this very day.

Once, I had thought of something interesting to write tonight. It’s gone now.

My week barely ended with piles of work and frantic last minute struggling to close up shop and safely leave town secure in the knowledge that I would still have work to which I could return. Miracle of Christmas miracles, as the work day ended, I not only secured a haircut appointment thanks to a confluence of luck and other people’s cancellations, but I also squeaked out some Ambien for the flight. Better living through chemistry.

I’m ambivalent about taking drugs to fly. But, I’m more certain about how much I don’t as a rule sleep on planes and consequently get my ass sorely kicked by lack of sleep and jet lag on the long haul flights. The first flight to Hong Kong is about 15 hours of cramped boredom. The second jaunt is a mere 4 more hours. With luck and drugs we’ll arrive well rested in time for lunch in Kuala Lumpur.

Wish I had a good ending to this ramble…

Tomorrow the holiday. So maybe there’ll be more.

Technorati Tags: Asia, California, family, holidays, tired, travel

A four-day weekend, and my ambitious is about what it should be. That, of course, would be non-existent.

I was talking to a buddy yesterday. She’s establishing traditions for the next generation and, therefore, smack dab in the middle of holiday fun. And by fun, I mean the wonderful sensibility of getting together with those folks who are called “family.” The ones who share your collective history, for good, for bad, for worst and for best. Mia familia.

At a bracing 3,000 miles away, I have no such pressure or joy. Blissfully, I must admit, and lazily, which is really the impetus, I don’t have to do anything “traditional,” and I don’t. For the second year running we had Cornish game hens for two in the privacy of our own home. Quietly. Peacefully. No shadows of the past. No pressure to make it the best or the most memorable or ready for a photo spread in the now defunct “Gourmet” magazine.

In all honesty, my family is casual and informal (is that redundant?) enough, that we never really were working toward a Norman Rockwell set piece. Leastways, I can’t imagine how vibrator jokes or discussions of breast enlargements would ever feature in the “Saturday Evening Post.” Still and all, my mother, bless her worried heart, would pull out all the stops and create a feast of epic proportions. As a young kid, we switched around with our cousins’ families, and there was food from appetizer to dessert, stuffed celery with peanut butter for the kids or cream cheese for the grownups, pies, and a fully stocked liquor cabinet for the uncles (‘cuz back in the day, it was the men who had the highballs).

Over the years, as the families started to do their own things, and time marched on, my mother downgraded a bit and cut herself some slack. Beer and wine, without a selection of booze, and appetizers were bowls of chips and maybe some dip. I liked the greater degree of relaxation.

Doubtless I’ve bitched about this before, but holidays were times for me when I was the sous chef. My mother’s aide de camp, I was chopping, refilling chip bowls, basting, fetching beverages, whatever was needed. There’s a good chance I’m exaggerating, as is my wont, but I do remember feeling exhausted and stressed right along with her. To this day, a full house of people privately sends me into paroxysms of hyperventilation and hand-wringing worry.

(Publicly, I brush off my anxiety, and I allow the pendulum swing to full on go in the opposite direction. I’ve been known at my own parties to allow any guest who wants to cook, clean, serve, lay out food, mix drinks, get ice, whatever, to have there way. Somewhere along the line I figured out the people who like to fidget in the kitchen can be put to use. At other people’s homes, I’m happy to return the favor.)

The upshot of my recollection of performance pressure along holiday lines is that M. misses the full court press. One Thanksgiving and one Christmas together in California, we opened our apartment and invited piles of friends. I cooked, I cleaned, I sweated. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t my pinnacle of fun.

Embracing lazy and eschewing tradition. That’s where I shine.

Cooking for two, I do give it a good run, though. The mashed potatoes were off the hook good, if a tad lumpy, because I like the lumps in truth. The birds were moist on the inside, crisp on the out and bulging with excess stuffing. The dinner rolls were fresh from the day, having started their lives that morning in a yeasty homemade dough that I left on the counter, as we picked up last minute provisions from the store.

The gravy was an unfortunate mauve. It had a bit too much tang from the rosé wine that had turned to vinegar in the refrigerator. Not my crowning achievement, but it was edible. Alas. A humbling note.

For his part, M. prepared the house for our guests who arrive today. Friends from back in the old country of Cambridge.

The down note to the whole day broke my Betty Friedan-loving heart. M. went out for a run, and returned to this entire meal being table ready, for him, the man, returning from adventures, to have placed before him. Jeebus, I hate that cliche.

As for my friend, embracing the holidays for her daughter, but feeling the pain of having to do what you’re supposed to do, it causes me to pause. Had I stayed in Cambridge, would I be relaxing this long weekend or sweating?

Technorati Tags: family, Thanksgiving, holidays, home, Julia Child, photos

There’s an Apple application for the iPhone to update Wordpress-based weblogs. Never really like it.

But, I figured I had to try the Droid equivalent from Google’s market. I like it slightly better. We’ll have to see if that means anything by way of writing.

Doubt it.

Yesterday was one of those days which makes you really appreciate your surroundings. We strolled over the beach nearest us, then we hiked around the coast to the next couple of beaches passing through cliffs and meadows and winding steep paths to another ocean view.

There were high surf warnings and only the craziest and strongest board owners were out giving it a go. Waves that are normally a healthy, rolling 7 feet were towering at 17 feet. We watched a roughly 25-foot log tossed like a tooth pick and thrown to the beach. At high tide there wasn’t even a narrow swath of dry land to stand on along the sand. Beautiful.

Later that same day, we drove over to where the only Northern California monster-wave surf competition happens. (Actually, it happens a mile and a half off shore.) We watched the sun set over some of the biggest surf I’ve seen, and then ended the evening with what else? Seafood.

Out of all the photos I took in the day, this one really made me smile.

We were standing along an outlook on the seawall at Rockaway Beach, and M. kept jumping back when the waves roared over the wall. We actually watched a young and an old guy taking turns taking pictures as they sat on the rocks just next to the platform. Sadly, when it was the old guy’s turn, a monster swept him off the rocks and splayed onto to the asphalt behind him. He was alright, but fucking yeah those were mighty waves.

Naturally, I asked M. to oblige me and get hit.

I was close enough to get wet, too, while four guys from a safe distance laughed out loud at us. As I wiped the salt water from my precious camera and looked at the shot, I exclaimed to them that it was totally worth it. You dig, art doesn’t just happen, you gotta try sometimes.

For the less dramatic and less forced, there are tons of photos here: http://dee-rob.com/zenphoto/Pacifica%20and%20big%20waves%2C%20November%202009/ and here: http://dee-rob.com/zenphoto/Sunset%20at%20Mavericks%2C%20November%207%2C%202009/.

Pretty day.

Technorati Tags: California, ocean, Pacific_Ocean, Pacifica, photos, surfing

Well not exactly today, but still in all 20 times two years back, when Sesame Street hit the, well, streets. I remember it like it was yesterday.

Actually, I don’t remember it like yesterday, but I do remember it. My kindergarten year, and I was counting and learning letters from the television. Not really, I was an early reader who had mastered a lot of the basics before formal education, but I loved me some Muppets. I still love me some Muppets. Not Elmo, though, apart from being all new school and shit, Elmo’s voice cuts through me like a knife.

That’s the kind of Sesame Street I remember. When two men, one orange one yellow, could cohabit and sing. And foreigners counting.

The truth is for a certain amount of kids programming, I don’t know if I remember it more from when I was supposed to watch it, or years later when I “babysat” and spent hours and hours and hours of time with my cousins. The eldest born when I was the oh so grownup age of 8.

Maybe because I was big for my age and ever so precocious, or possibly because the adults figured with the yin and the yang of my skills combined with my slightly older brother’s some semblance of order would reign, but from early on we got to spend time keeping an eye on the youngsters. My aunt’s and uncle’s house was a treasure trove of a house to be staying for a few hours. There were piles and shelves of books of every kind, where I got to read both at a kid’s level and way, way above my comprehension. And the kids themselves had a great array of toys and games and electronics. The first Nintendo I saw up close was at their house.

Somewhere in there, watching PBS and children’s TV is mashed together in my brain. Did I watch Sesame Street on my own in my own home? Or am I remembering Teddy’s and Tommy’s TV way back when?

Technorati Tags: childhood, family, Sesame Street, television

I just read and sorted out that the geeks at Apple made it possible to use one of their tools to publish directly to my server. I experimented accordingly.

So, here we go with a goofy looking page right here: http://dee-rob.com/podcasts/Podcast/Podcast.html. And just in case you can’t work it out from the oh-so-clever naming that you got right there, it’s a shitty podcast. In other words, me talking.

Go there, if you want, and it’s pretty self explanatory.

Technorati Tags: comedy, Pacifica, Pat, relationships