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

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

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