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

Here’s the view in the sand of folks in my town getting into their 350.org formation.

In unrelated news, I plan to head back to the open mike at the Octopus Lounge. Apart from hanging in SF last night for a dinner and a movie, I’m feeling positively entrenched.

Technorati Tags: beach, California, fog, ocean, Pacific_Ocean, Pacifica

For the last couple of days, I’ve been sinking my head a bit into trying to understand the local political and community scene. We’ve now been here a full year. I can’t fucking believe that we did the whole home buying thing, got through the anxiety, down-sized to sharing one bathroom, and we’re still here. And, I think we’re staying.

So, yesterday, we decided to check out a local version of an international event. We sat in the sand in the outline of the numbers 350 and had our picture taken. I wish I knew where the local pictures are, and I would link away. Alas, I fear the photographing folks aren’t uploading folks, since I checked the main website and all the area ‘blogs. The point of the action was to highlight the environment, global warming and the parts per million of carbon dioxide that may not kill us all.

Before heading to the beach, I had been reading up on the local ‘blogs. Basically, there’s one called the Pacifica Riptide, which seems to be one guy’s vanity project along with help from his friends. It skews pro-environment, anti-development, but most of the time it’s local tidbits, like who’s playing down at the local bar that advertises on the site. Because it purports to want friendly discourse, and because it’s run by one guy, the editorial policy is that John decides whether your comments stay or go.

(My own experience with that editorial policy was harmless and happened around when I started living here and discovered the site. Somebody had posted some pictures from Africa with a headline that said something like “Running with the bulls in Nairobi.” It was some city or country, but I can’t remember where. Anyway, I commented that the caption was clever enough but kind of dumb, because the picture had to be cows, the docile women-folk of the bovine world, because the local variety has horns. I got the joke, but I have a pet peeve with factually inaccurate jokes, and had the picture actually been of bulls, the photographer and the dude posing in the picture would likely be hurt or very dead. My Africa-correcting, joke deconstructing comment never saw the light of day. No loss to the blogosphere.)

There’s now a newcomer in the wonderful blood sport of ‘blogging, Fix Pacifica. It’s slant is clearly pro-development, anti-hippie liberals, and quite possibly has come into existence to fuck with Pacifica Riptide. No doubt in my mind everyone in both camps knows each other, and I don’t know who slept with whose wife or who bitchslapped the family dog, but they all hate each other. There’s just a whole lot of name calling going on, and now they have both been slinging poo back and forth.

The best episode of yet another lame internet fight is this weekend’s. Fix Pacifica FIRMLY stated at it’s outset that it would be the new, sweet clean voice in town, unafraid of the truth, and, therefore, no censorship. In less than a month’s existence, that policy was sorely tested and lost. Cue interwebs hilarity.

In the midst of sorting through my own stance on development within a clearly anti-development town, one with a hugely negative local reputation for its NIMBY zoning policies, I figured out for the locals, it comes down to two big issues: (1) restoring a golf course that the City of San Francisco actually owns, which was designed in the late ’20s, built in the ’30s, below sea level with the kind of regard for environmental impact that folks had back then. As time and the elements have marched by, the original course has had some holes washed out by the inevitable storm and ocean rage, and it’s back nine got exiled to the other side of the spanking new highway projects of the ’50s and ’60s; and (2) the depending upon to whom you talk, the dream multi-million dollar complex or bill of goods planned by Don Peebles, a Florida developer who bought an old quarry near the beach on the cheap.

I don’t play golf, and given that Northern Cali isn’t lacking for holes, I’m not sure if I give a rat’s ass one way or another about the course. It’s falling down, and one camp wants to give the land away to the frogs and snakes and national park system. The other side, cautions that economic collapse will afflict us all if the one clear revenue stream dries up.

I plan to ask my co-workers who work in land restoration and conservation and with the national parks to figure out which plan helps me the local resident.

As for the pro-developer rhetoric, never in my life have I been given evidence to trust a dude from out of town out to make money who tells me his plan has my best interests at heart. In a good world, I expect to occasionally align with a developer’s dreams, but I’d be foolish to lie down and take it with a hand shake.

It’s only a matter of time, before M. and I show up at a city council meeting. And, if we do, it’s thanks to a nice man named Lazar(?) who explained the local politics as we all sat in the sand and made a 350 for the cameras.

Technorati Tags: beach, California, email, Pacifica, politics, right wing, suburbs

I open miked. I didn’t die. It was marginally fun. I totally forgot a key word in a punchline. I got cotton mouth. I came home. I recorded everything. When I got home I accidentally erased everything I recorded.

In the middle of all of the above, I came up with three things two of which could work as something, and a third throw away line that is very true for the town in which I now live. I also talked with some folks who hang with an improv group just down the coast a hair, one of whom may be a lead in getting together with some women-type folks for workshopping some writing.

Just so I won’t forget, here are the few things that might work.

I like living in Pacifica, mostly because of the dress code. Pretty much it’s just deciding which hoodie to wear. (The locals, who know from fog and coastal breezes, laughed.)

I work in a soulless cubicle farm, but it’s non-profit. That way, I have no money and have the life sucked out of me, but”I’m helping people.” Yay!

One aspect of my job is helping to orient the best and the brightest from the country’s best universities. There’s a lot that the 20-something don’t know, like how to collate, blah, blah. But, there’s one thing they all know — How to do my job. (That line worked better than I expected, especially since I figured it out while standing on stage with a premise and no laugh.)

Damn, I think there was something else. But, it’s gone for now, or gone for an eternity. Hard to say.

There’s a few other things rumbling in my brain. I think I’ll go back next week.

Technorati Tags: comedy, Pacifica, writing

I’ve pretty much taken a hiatus from performing, from writing, from everything but being aggravated I am not wealthy enough to get all Johnny Paycheck on the universe. Partially, it’s been the joy of simply not worrying and spending my time doing shit like riding waves late into the day. A few things got me thinking about a winter writing regimen, though.

A big part is death, you know that mortality thing. I recently had a long rambling conversation with someone who lost a baby and then couldn’t and didn’t ever try again. One of those kind of profound life moments from which you never quite recover, maybe aren’t meant to, yet everything moves forward. Life goes on and all that.

Meanwhile, I shared the litany of tragedy from my own family growing up. From my point of you, it wasn’t my father’s death that broke the little place that deaths leave you, it was my little cousin, Tommy. Forever, that’s an experience I will hold, and a person I will miss, and it’s a story that just hurts. No Hollywood ending.

Where my father is abstract. His death surrounded me later in the form of other people’s grief that I was slow to comprehend, but I didn’t feel it (relatively speaking, as I’m not a total psychopath).

And, then there is Pat. An adult death, the one that I think passed me into another level of adulthood. It helped me understand my grandfather’s death when I was in high school and how my mother dealt with that. No more parents, no more turning back to a place where someone solely relates to you as their child.

My dining companion made an interesting point. According to her, old Sigmund Freud said that every death is the first one. The grief is based on that original episode. It has me wondering if my obsession with all of the above, my tendency to dwell on and review and think about and try to honestly (I hope) face what changes folks go through all sources back to all the things I never understood in 1968. Of course, that does make me mentally stuck at 4 years old, very believable if you ever see me at a toy store.

I do tend to divide friends into two camps — Those who have lost someone and those who haven’t. Like losing your virginity (or better way after when you figure out how to make the parts fit more enjoyably), it’s a secret fraternity of people who have know something. From that perspective it was a good dinner conversation.

But, all of the above is stupid navel-gazing, I know. That was prelude to a few thoughts maybe coalescing.

Another gelling agent to my blob thoughts was this interview with Ruth Reichi, who’s just written a memoir about her mother. Her mother kindly left behind a box of journals and letters unraveling some of their shared past and her mother’s own. Pat was not so generous.

Finally, there was a conversation with my sort of mentor, who’s also a psychiatrist, because I like to pick influences that are more challenging than the Sunday New York Times crossword. After a long heart to heart over lunch (all of my deep conversations involve meals), he asked why I feel the need to write, and he told me that it was OK to consider that maybe it’s not meant to be. I took it to heart, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Consequently, i haven’t wanted to write.

I haven’t figured everything out yet. At all. Maybe I never will. I think there’s a chance that I will never be able to set my laziness clock up against my inspirational one and get the balance just right. I admire people I know with that eternal fire that pushes them forward, pushes them to finish things, to market themselves as writers and performers. I long to be that person, but often, my path is too internal to blaze one like I should. And, sometimes, there are just too many things I find interesting (right now boogie boarding chief among them) to blind myself in singular pursuit.

However, I have to conclude the psychiatrist is wrong or wasn’t really in my moment as much as his own. For him, writing has largely been in conjunction with his academic career. Work not love. Moreover, in retirement now, he had a difficult time plowing through a not completely academic book, which he ultimately decided it would be easier to get published through an academic press than jump through all of the challenges to make it more general, mainstream and commercial. Despite having a daughter who’s a working artist and a writing wife, I don’t think he entirely understands that kind of impetus.

Irony of irony, he’s now working on a memoir. Even if it never sees the light of publishing day, he wants to leave something behind of his life for his family.

OK, back from the navel gazing. What ties all of this gibberish together?

My writing, Ruth Reichi’s mom, my mentor’s writings, death? What’s all in it for me? The shred of a plan. The edge or kernel of a thought.

I want to be able to explain myself. But, moreso, I think, I want other people to appreciate Pat, because she deserves it. I also want other people to appreciate whatever their version of Pat is. The flawed by good influence in their own lives. I hope some day or in some manner my words can maybe make someone else laugh or think. Actually, I would take my words causing any kind of action, even loss of bowel control. Who wouldn’t want that?

Technorati Tags: family, death, motherhood, Pat, work, writing

First big rainstorm of the season, and Northern California lost it’s collective, freaking mind. Off the hook crazy hype. Not just stockpiling toilet paper and bullets for the upcoming deluge, but sandbagging regular homes.

On the local news, a man who had been in some reportedly hour-long line for his share of government-issued heavy plastic bags of clean sand explained his need. Last year, the rain came and some water created pools, puddles I think are the technical term, on the floor of his garage. This year, he wasn’t going to relive the devastation, he was preparing for the worst. Bags would be dropped in a line along the crack of his garage door.

Foolishly, M. and I took our chances with no protection. My only plan, if puddles were to form in our garage, was to hope for drying and evaporation once the storm had passed.

Work was somewhat subdued and empty, as the word had gone out to take caution. Truth be told, it is dangerous here when the winds blow and the water falls from the sky. Dangerous, because Californians are collectively fucking morons and pussies in the rain.

Highway driving involves a lot of high speed braking in low visibility. The news and safety officials are smart to discuss the dangers of hydroplaning, because stupid shits jamming two-footed on their brakes, as opposed to say, reducing speed gradually, do have a tendency to glide over the skies’ fallen water. Sharply turning your wheel while braking also helps, along with switching lanes for no, ungodly reason.

After I braved the highway and made it to work, I couldn’t avoid the hysteria. A native Californian was scheduled to board a commercial flight, in the rain. By god the rain, people, the rain. The mere thought of being hurtled through space while there was precipitation in the atmosphere. Unimaginable.

i was a lone voice of sanity in the wilderness. Actually, I wasn’t a lone voice. Everyone around who has ever lived in another geographical area with actual weather was mocking the hype. The Californians, well the susceptible, gullible ones, succumbed to fear. Unfortunately for me, I was directly in the path of a quaking, quivering native.

Technorati Tags: California, fear, tired, weather, work

Last week I had some serious ups and downs all about the toil that pays me.

For one, I applied for another job entirely that had my pulse veritably racing, or at least as much as anything I do for a living would ever get me pumped. Pretty much a direct arc of 20 years of non-profit, but with a whole kind of start up vibe, it hit me as something I’d like to do. It read like one of those jobs that, rare as the diamond when de Beers was full-on withholding, perfectly matched not just what I can do but what I like to do.

Despite feeling good after the initial phone screen, they finally let me know that I wasn’t in the running. Fuckers. I blame the economy and the likelihood of people on a dicier path than me and higher levels of education and experience jamming me out of my dream. Or, maybe not my dream, like sex, ice cream and the chance for a life of leisure are my dream, but at least a pleasant life plan.

On the other side of the workaday reality, we had a solid week of meeting after meeting. But, somewhere sprinkled among the meetings, was a morning spent in a corporate training on coaching. Humbling the experience was, as I realized that not all of my happy inspiring leadership thoughts in my head come out of my mouth just right. Actually, despite the humility, it was a pretty good session.

One side effect of one of the coaching exercises got me re-thinking my schedule. We were paired up with another eager co-worker to improv a coaching discussion that jumped from whatever thing you decided you needed to the coaching. For the woman with whom I was paired, she was looking to develop into a “leader.” There’s a thought I’ve never had. Mine was starting an open mike and, of course, actually writing and preparing for one.

The exercise continued and I got my partner to confirm that she would have a dinner discussion with her husband and plan a future iPhone App or other lucrative Silicon-Valley-esque project. For my project, though, we completely stalled out on the coaching conversation. So, the pro, the facilitator, she walked by and tried a little life support to our convo. What came of it was her nailing me to add writing during my lunch hour to my daily schedule. Coached I felt. Warm and tingly too and ready to update my daily calendar.

I needed that kind of focus lest I got myself all itching for a fight at work just out of sheer boredom.

One of the exercises we did in the coaching class I wish you could walk around and force people to do. I could actually, in a kind of Improv Everywhere, guerrilla action. Unfortunately, without the context of a professional coach, I’d just seem like a completely anti-social asshole.

Here was the exercise in its entirety. Person 1 tells Person 2 about they best vacation of her life. Person 2 does everything and anything not to listen. As anyone who’s done standup comedy at a shithole open mike can attest, there ain’t no low feeling quite like talking away to a disinterested audience. One on one, it’s brutal.

I work with someone who’s convinced he’s an effective multi-tasker. He’s not. It is for him that I wish this exercise was a universal tool in corporate living. Perhaps, with a little theater, he could comprehend just how frustrating a conversation that runs roughly like this one is.

“Hey, can I ask you a quick question?”

“Sure.”

Insert brief question here.

“Huh, what, sorry. I wasn’t listening what did you say?”

Repeat brief question.

TAP, TAP, TAP, Keyboard keys. No eye contact.

“Should I come back?”

“Oh, what? Yeah, I’m really distracted. But, wait, hold on a sec.”

SILENCE, more keyboard tapping. SILENCE

“So, should I ask my question?”

“Sure, sure, yeah, sorry. Did you have a question?”

Repeat brief question.

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine. OK.”

Oooph.

After a week with about 20 of those exchanges, I was overly ready to call it a day by week’s end.

With a week like the one I had (and by the sounds M. shared in overall suckitude in his workplace), there wasn’t anything that could be done but head to the beach. I’m not convince I’m cut out for winter waves and frolicking with them, but we picked up a couple of not badly used wetsuits from a surfer’s swap meet up in San Francisco. Wetsuits do work. Psychologically, though, when the air is hovering around 60 degrees and the water is around 53 degrees, it takes some will to dive into the waves.

Nothing clears your head quite like an October day at that beach, though. I survived, and my teeth didn’t even chatter.

Technorati Tags: beach, bodyboard, California, comedy, coaching, corporate politics, ocean, Pacific_Ocean, Pacifica, surfing, tired, work