I couldn’t let the day go buy without acknowledging that April 15 was “Tea Party” day. Honestly, I don’t fucking understand one bit of the allegedly grassroots protests “spontaneously” rocking out around the country to start a revolution. I gather people are unhappy and government spending is bad.

I read this article in the Wall Street Journal, and all I could think was “bullshit.” I ain’t a conspiracy theory kind of gal, but come, the fuck, on. Can it really be a huge leap to figure Rupert’s newspaper is writing the tribute to humble Americans organizing all by themselves and getting their activist freak on, at the same fucking time Fox News has spent a lot of time on the airwaves pimping the shit out of the rallies. Wouldn’t the opposite of grassroots activism be a celebrity from the television hosting your show?

Here are the things I really don’t understand about the Tea Party protests: why now, why tea and who the fuck are these people?

The why now question is prompted by the “outrage about government out of control,” as Sean, the colossal douche, Hannity, notes. Where the hell were these throngs of angry citizens when George W. Bush had fucked the country over to trillions of debt and a crazy ass, expensive war? Government didn’t spin out of control in the last few months, this shit’s been building. Why not protest in 2004, when it was already clear what Bush was about, and/or why the fuck did he win a second term?

I don’t get the 2009 ire. Hell, TARP was Bush’s baby that Obama inherited. I’ll just pretend that it’s unlikely it’s sore loserdom or the kind of racism that posters like this
one seem to love. dsc02711.jpg (Credit to wonkette.com)

The why tea question is a twofer. Firstly, I don’t think folks understand metaphor or history too well. In the original tea party, as in the Boston Tea Party, future Americans had their panties in a bunch, because the British monarchy was forcing it’s own (monopolistic) agenda on the colonies and heavily taxed tea was a symbol for the colonists on how they were getting hosed. The Brits owned the tea that got trashed rather than purchased and taxed and drunk by the colonists, who were pissed by not having a say in the whole deal.

How does any of that relate to the fact relate to Americans who did (or could have) voted for a president and legislative bodies, you know the kind of representative government our that got our forefathers all hot and bothered? And, if you’re looking for the revolutionary act of throwing something out that represents your discontent with the tyrants in government, I think you’d have to loot a bank or light a Buick on fire to get the metaphor right. After all, they’re the ones getting the bailout bucks, funded by us taxpayers.

My other problem with the tea action applies to any and all protesters, activists, collective action. Ask the fuck around before embracing an embarrassing double entendre like “teabagging” for your posters and slogans. Holy fucking shit what a bunch of maroons. If your buddies giggle like sophomores lighting farts over your poster, you may lack gravitas.

(Credit to Shorts and Pants)

Finally, I don’t know who these people are. The “silent majority” phrase seems warped here, since there were a record number of voters and last I checked Obama did win. All of the pictures seem a whiter shade of pale, and where I live we got different shades of honest to god voting Americans.

And, they are angry Americans. Why are they so angry? Who stole their rights, and free speech and all that, given that they are freely and lawfully assembling, and there aren’t any gulags springing up in my ‘hood (yet)?

Before you get all angry and shit and feeling all ripped off, shouldn’t you have tried to prevent it by organizing BEFORE a major election. It was like in the news for a long while that we were electing a new guy.

Americans amaze me.

Finally, judging by the beer guts and shitty teeth and flushed, red faces in the crowd, they’d probably really get something out of universal healthcare. A couple of taxes could go a long way when your fat ass needs the triple bypass; you can’t get that kind of operation cheap at your local WalMart.

Technorati Tags: politics, tea_party, tea, right wing

We’ve settled into a 1970s suburbia type deal. But not the radical ’70s with wife-swapping, key parties and bales of sweet bud getting smoked up to the chords of “Norwegian Wood.” Nope, more of the white-washed (as in all-caucasion, or in our case half-caucasion) sunshine of the Brady Bunch or maybe late “My Three Sons,” when the boys got sideburns.

In today’s episode I rode my bike around to yard sales and came back with four wheels to recover my treasure.

By the way, a spring Saturday with my bike as perfect transportation is the most retro, regressive I ever feel. Rolling by perfect little lawns, cruising from cul de sac to strip mall on two wheels is how I spent a hefty chunk of childhood to young adulthood. My bike took me to the now lost in vapors now nameless boy encounter, the older boy who got my phone number and knew my name, but I didn’t recognize. The one who stole a kiss that was met with a clenched jaw of surprise and non-acquiesence. My bike took me to the colonial era graveyard, where older kids from near my neighborhood hung out, and I smoked both my first cigarette and joint.

My bike blazed me home in time for dinner, furious pedaling, to avoid the wrath of Pat when adventures like those above were afoot.

In M.’s imagination, influenced by American TV and the American dream of a white picket fence in the suburbs, our bikes are sissy-barred and banana-seated Schwinn Stingrays, just like Bobby Brady’s. (Only, M. didn’t really watch the Brady Bunch, and in the actual 70s, my child inside a full-grown body was too gargantuan for one. I got a pink, ladies Huffy 3-speed instead.)

Making our 1970s fantasy life in our 1950s house in our beach town that time forget in some ways, we need the right kind of furnishing. For the patio, some kickass (as the owners of the yard sale described their offerings in their craigslist.org ad), no doubt knock-off chrome mesh chairs. I’m digging the Eames-esque Eiffel base. And, better yet, at $10 for all four, the weather can rain and burn down, and I ain’t weeping. All weather, all modern.

For my happiest of move-in to our new home Craig’s List score of October, the fully working and loving it Singer sewing machine desk, I still needed an appropriate chair. Slapping another $5 down over the $10 for the chrome chair, I got this little baby from the same woman. The seat was actually vinyl with a gash in it. Within about 15 minutes, I stretched some fabric over the vinyl and sent some staples flying through my gun and onto rocking like-newness.

The extra joy of that checkered flag is I recycled another souvenir shirt. When M. and I went to the, I think now defunct, San Jose Grand Prix, I bought myself a vaguely slutty winning flag tank top worthy of a car chick enjoying a Coors Light in the grandstand. Now I’ll be sitting on it.

Tomorrow, it’s onto a coastal brunch, no doubt surrounded by families in their Christ-has-risen finest. Dear Lord, please hear my plea, seat us away from the children. Oh Lord, the children.

All week, I’ve been humming a little Patti Smith to myself. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”

If he died for yours, I wish you a joyous holiday tomorrow. If you are a heathen like me, I also with you a joyous day, just less dramatic-like, what without any resurrecting.

Technorati Tags: California, modern, Easter, suburbs

Early in the day, M. was folding laundry to Deep Purple. I was edging and weeding the lawn to early Elvis Costello, the Stones and Patti Smith. Our respective teenage years come full circle.

The 1970s in our very California, very beach-y, very suburban coastal community, rocking out in our 1950s ranch. It was the television repeats and American exports we each were raised on with customized soundtracks. Without the pot and the key parties. Darn the luck.

We continued the vibe, and vibe it was being near a California beach and all, by taking a late afternoon stroll along the Pacific Ocean. Toes in the sand while surfers waited and a gaggle of teenage girls peer-pressured each other into what apparently was “motherfucking cold” water up to their waists. From there it was an easy stroll to a local place for fried chicken and lemonade (M.) and a burger and a beer (me). (That description might have folks on the East Coast imagining some kind of nice, sandy dive like Kelly’s Roast Beef or the Clam Shack. Here in Northern California, where there are more foodies per capita than oxygen molecules, there are no such places. It’s a blessing and a curse.)

We capped the day with a fresh pitcher of lemonade from our backyard harvest and a screening of John Carpenter’s “The Fog.” The original, 1979, the last year in our ’70s tribute, and the tribute, if murderous haunting is a tribute, to Northern California coastal living and incomparable fog.

Technorati Tags: California, classics, 1970s, fog

April is the month I’m swearing to myself I’ll be jumping back into open mike hell. Well, maybe I might not be the demon seed, but no doubt there will be others practicing “comedy” who will be as funny as a hot poke in the eye with a flaming stick.

I have been writing in my head, obviously not here. And, not on that quaint old-fashioned stuff the old folks call paper.

I found thinking while raking, weeding and mowing helped. Actually, as I listened to the loud, disaffected noise of my youth, I was able to rewrite entire sagas in my head. Only this time they don’t quite involve leaving the hell of my high school existence or weeping at my misunderstood sole and alienation from my quote-unquote loved ones. It was more of a whistle while you work kind of a thing.

Jesus, how frighteningly bovine and contented I have become. But I was weeding like a motherfucker.

Here’s one thing I was thinking could work it’s way into onstage story-telling humor. Some how, with some writing or thinking or something.

Here I am, actually we are, playing house just like a grownup, so inevitably we’re standing side-by-side at the Depot, the Home Depot. What we were needing was a fresh supply of spooled plastic to stick into the joy that is our Black and Decker Grass Hog 700. Wait it might be the Grass Hog 400. I may have opted for the smaller cheaper Hog.

As I flipped through the packages, remembering which Hog was in fact the Hog we had, M. hectored me at my shoulder — “Why didn’t you write it down? You don’t know what we need, do you?” (Nota bene: I did know, but I started to doubt when every package they had didn’t fit our model.)

Right about the second it was going to get ugly, a fine-looking middle-class, suburban couple strolled up the aisle with their charming little tot dragging by the wrist and shrieking, howling like the demons unleashed from a particularly ugly lake of brimstone, crying at the top of her know-doubt healthy lungs. They walked right up to the display of various Grass Hogs and Grass Hog supplies, and they, too, started to overturn the same boxes I was, in search of their needed spool.

I could see in the corner of my eye just the wrong synapse fire in M.’s gray matter. He rips the display Grass Hog that I had said was our model off its display hook and marched down the aisle shouting that he’d “get the right one.” About 30 nanoseconds later he reappeared with a woman in an orange bib, who brought him right to the shelf I was searching. Unhelpfully she explained that’s where to find the replacement spools and that’s all there was.

M. was then mute. We got the hell out of Home Depot Dodge. In the parking lot the inevitable outburst descended. M. raised voice and clearly elevated blood pressure announced, “I don’t care what you say, we are not having any children.”

What, um, huh? Seriously, what children? You mean the ones I never asked after? The ones who don’t have and I’m not itching for their existence, those non-living, non-conceptualized, unconceived of or just unconceived, those children?

Oh, OK.

I think I reacted the only way possible, I burst into laughter.

The minute I saw that couple and their spawn approach, I just knew my day would change. And, that is why, we don’t have any children. Well that, and so for 9 times out of 10, I can shop at the Depot without a whole lot of screaming and tears.

Technorati Tags: customer_service, homeowning, Home Depot, relationships

How much do I love that CNN is reporting “an incident” with the old Queen of England. At least that’s the word they are using on the teasers during Anderson Cooper time.

I can’t imagine giving Queen Elizabeth a squeeze. But she seemed to dig it. However, I feel your pain Queenie. I know what it’s like to be thrust in a brave new world of people who touch.

Technorati Tags: Politics, women

On the local public radio station, on local websites and news, all sorts of places where worrying can fly high and wide, I’ve been hearing about the rising sea level, along side the melting glaciers and whatnot. I gather from the experts in another hundred years or so, it’s all gonna be a good three feet higher.

Naturally, I had to look up the study for myself, and thanks to the world-wide webtubes and the Pacific Institute, whose study is oft quoted, I got to look at the maps.

Now I clearly realize that when you are strolling down the street from your house and figure out where the Tsunami Evacuation Route is, you’re flying in the danger zone. I’m generally skittish about the whole earthquake thing that happens around here every now and again, historically speaking.

We can hear the waves on stormy nights, so I know the water is out there.

Me, my lemons, this little guy, could all be washed away.

Or, we could be sitting on a veritable gold mine, if we both live a while too long on the old mortal coil. We could end up right up there, owning some beachfront property. If you look at the pretty maps from the clever folks over at the Pacific Institute, you can close in on a chunk and look at the pretty blues and pinks that spell underwater doom. My ‘hood is somewhere up in here:

View Larger Map

If all goes well, and by well I mean tragic and flooded and sad for everyone else, we’ll be able to watch the gentle lapping of the ocean’s beauty off the lawn across the street from us. We, though, we’ll be sitting on the front porch of ocean view. I’m pretty optimistic I’ll have a rocking home when I’m 145 years young.

Technorati Tags: California, climate_change, environment, lemons, Pacifica, photos, tsunami

Sometimes I totally forget where I live. And, then something happens, and it totally reminds me that this here place is California. More so, there’s a reason that it has the reputation that it has.

Today’s episode came courtesy of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

A while back, M. got nabbed for speeding through Redwood City, “Climate Best By Government Test.” Moments after California’s handsfree law forbid drivers in the state from holding their cellphones up to their heads, M. got spotted by a man in uniform for just that activity. Note to drivers everywhere, pretending that your phone is a scratching device to reach the hard-to-reach side of your head, won’t get you out of a ticket in our neighborhood.

So far, despite his scofflaw tendencies, you could say M.’s experience was about on par for all 50 of the states with some kind of traffic laws. But, today, today he got the kind of notice in the form of a warning that brands this state.

According to the letter and the letter of the law, another couple of notches on his moving violations belt this year, and M. might move into the negligent drivers’ pantheon. The notice was official looking and has that kind of pronouncement ALL CAPS lettering that makes you sure you must fill out some paperwork in triplicate and otherwise face bureaucratic mechanizations. But, primarily it was merely informing him of this perilous state of his driving privileges if he’s not more careful over the next 12-24 months.

There was an action item, however, embodied in this notable line:

Please review your convictions ad points (listed below), and then ask yourself if there is anything you can do to avoid future violations and/or accidents.

Thank you, California. Self-reflection is a wonderful path.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, California, driving

Ah, the day the patron saint of the ancient land of my ancestors allegedly died, probably not having had anything to do with snakes.

Here in the hinterlands there are streets with names like Geary and Gough and O’Farrell from a nice history of Irish folk going for gold and land grants from Mexico or just partying it up in San Francisco’s brothels and casinos. Back in the day, according to the internet, the Hibernian Savings and Loan was a big deal and folks were doing all right out west.

Apparently, there’s a big parade down Market Street or thereabouts in San Francisco. I haven’t seen it. For me, Irish Americans and parades in March are South Boston and drunks. I’m not actually a big fan of either South Boston or its drunks.
‘
Tonight, there was some streets closed or something by way of celebration. I haven’t seen that either. Although, the beau, clearly not Irish-American in so many ways, he was drinking O’Doul’s near beer among equally non-Irish-American co-workers in the thick of things, while I watched our boiled dinner bubble in the crock pot.

By way of reconciliation and recognition of my heritage, he came home in time for dinner a bit later than normal his arms laden with trinkets. Among the swag was an oversized green cloth hat and many, many strands of Mardi Gras-style beads anchored by foaming beer mugs and gaudy shamrock leaves. As a side note, he told me I looked good in the oversized hat. He’s clearly blinded by my many charms.

What all of this means, ultimately? It means next year on Chinese New Year’s, I’ll be out drunk and then come home with a coolie hat and a long braid.

Technorati Tags: family, St._Patrick’s_Day, Irish_American, Irish, history

So much/so little/so what to write about.

Amidst a whole lot of work at work, I managed to see an Indian flick, a real live celluloid release from the ginormous Bollywood industry, at a real live South Asian-run,, Indo-American, samosa and chai-serving movie theater with a gang from work. I went to a house-warming party, I assembled a new TV stand and helped (a little) with it’s installation, and had a couple of friends over (see new media stand installation) suburban barbecue style.

On the opposite of a lighter note, had my moms lived, and I almost wrote chosen to live on account of it feels that way, she would be 80 years old today. Instead, she’s frozen in her early 70s. And, of course, all of the years before those last ones, the ones with the paddle balls and Dr. Scholl’s and sneakers that make up my memories.

Apart from my own birthday demarcating my own mortality falling so close to the anniversary of her birth, a couple of notes of the manufactured melodrama reminded me of Pat. One good thing about the technology I over-use and over-obsess about is access. It kind of makes all things new again and as old movies creep into the public domain, my fancy cellular phone can grab me a young Cary Grant or Gary Cooper.

Way back when, before menstruation was a worry instead of menopause. Oh, wait, strike that, I don’t actually remember very well the time before menstruation. I suppose I was a little girl once, but it didn’t last very long in my precocious life. Anyway, in the olden days, I have to admit that Pat wasn’t all up in the worrying about bedtime for her youngest. She rather indulged me, you might say. I think it was because she liked company while watching old movies on late.

One thing I really miss since cable happened is the late, late movies and the random time of the day movie features. Dialing for dollars, creature double features, and our steady Sunday night date, along with a whole lot of other folks in the Boston area, Frank Avruch and The Great Entertainment.

We watched film noir, musicals, mysteries, murders, tearjerkers, dramas, sophisticated comedies. Whatever they had on tap in the olden days of televisions with tubes and dials, you basically set it and forget it. Although, in the absence of remote controls, in the dark days before people even imagined a clicking plastic box with magic buttons, one solution was large families. As the youngest, I was kept around to change the channel. Come to think of it, there’s a good chance Pat let me stay up and watch the movies with her was so there was someone to turn the TV off at the end. Footsteps saved.

Today, I kind of hate the choices that cable provides. Instead of rolling with what came on and deciding on the merits of a small handful of options, you now can spend hours combing through and deciding among hundreds and hundreds of things and ultimately choose nothing.

I loved Pat’s commentary. She was not one to suffer schmaltz and faux sentiment quietly. Corny got called out. An enigma was her protestations against the foolish excess of elaborate, Busby Berkeley musicals and their ilk. Yet, she watched them all. I have yet to meet anyone who knew more about Esther Williams and her whole splashing oeuvre of work.

By the way, love the internet. Who knew Esther was hawking, appropriately enough, swimsuits?

Pat also seemed to have a hard time accepting any plot line of a strong woman in the face of adversity. The whole Greer Garson as Mrs. Miniver, stiff upper lip drama just pissed her the fuck off at some core place. I don’t know if it was the force of the melodrama, written, directed and otherwise predetermined to squeeze a little juice out of your tear ducts at expected intervals. Or maybe it was the strong and virtuous noble female lead persevering just rubbed her wrong.

Some of me, suspects it was the presumed nobility of Greer Garson’s women. Somewhere in my mother’s own strong struggle, I think she felt no drama, no glory, nothing noble. Nope, it was just a simple life she was slogging through, because that’s what you do. Suffice it to say, Pat wasn’t all about that particularly brand of histrionics. She had way more fun with the drama of the day to day, the mundane. That shit is where she could really sink her teeth.

Who needs the Blitz of London, when you have a field mouse loose in the house?

She accused me of threatening her and locked herself in the bathroom screaming at me through the door at me to leave her alone. Sadistic tormentor I was that day. I had been beckoned to her home to empty the mousetrap that had successfully been tripped. A grim murine reaper.

I did what I was told to do and collected the carcass in a paper bag. I wrongfully assumed the corpus mousey, ensconced and wrapped in brown paper, was rendered harmless and wondered into the living room to ask what to do with my bundle. My mother, no longer in the flower of youth, bolted from the room, Usain-Bolt style. Fast and, I discovered, angry.

There was a solid 10 minutes before I coaxed her out from behind the locked door, promising I had brought the dreaded, dead beast outside and disposed of it far away from her and her bitter memories of its torment (and mine).

The Bollywood movie I saw the other night, Delhi 6, reminded me of late night’s with Frank Avruch and Pat. The movie had it all. Family, romance, angry townspeople (instead of ranchers and cattlemen in old black and white, there’re modern Hindus and Muslims), random songs, awkward exposition, a hero and a heroine and the verge of tears hyper-dramatic conclusion. I hadn’t felt that way in a movie since I was a kid. I only wish the tearjerking scenes succeeded in manipulating me. Not sure if reading English subtitles dampened the intended affect.

If there were an 80-year-old Pat, I wonder if I could convince her to watch an Indian movie over a cup of chai. Or maybe just to nibble on a samosa.

For her, in spite of what she taught me about caution, despite the world that limited her chance to follow her desires, for Pat, I hope to see more of the world and try more and do more. If you got sneakers, where them to work tomorrow. I will.

Technorati Tags: America, classics, family, India, Bollywood, life, movies, Pat, travel, women