More of the same

Set aside Gov. Palin's experience and judgment.

What does his choice of a vice-president have to say about Sen. John McCain's judgement?

Did he choose an unknown "surprise" candidate simply to steal the news cycle away from one of the most important, historic speeches in modern history? Is this his attempt to say, "me, too! I can be historic!"

Sen. McCain appears to me to be acting like a spoiled 2 year old, out of jealousy.

Isn't that already the kind of man we have in the White House? Do we want another four years of that kind of disaster?

I say "no". • 10:11 AM 0 comments

I will always remember

I will always remember exactly where I was when Sen. Hillary Clinton suspended the roll call count of delegates for the Democratic National Convention, and called for the party to nominate Sen. Barack Obama by acclamation, officially making Sen. Obama the first non-white presidential candidate for the United States of America.



I was sitting in a hospital room, with my sister, as she was waiting to find out if she was going to need surgery. In spite of her and my worries about her health, we were momentarily proud to be partisan Democrats, the only party in America currently capable of this decision.

Congratulations to the Democratic voters, and to my country, for making this historic moment happen. It's not the end of an era. It's the beginning. But I hope that it is a good step forward.

And congratulations to Sen. Barack Obama. Please make us proud to have chosen you.

PS: I hate hospitals. • 8:17 AM 0 comments

City of Portland, city of corruption

I consider myself a writer. An unpublished one, but even so. I think in terms of story and plot and character. I try to structure my conversations into beginning, middle, end. I've attempted several novels. I dissect movies and TV shows with an eye towards the story being told.

I've lived in Portland, OR all my life. OK, some of my earliest years were spent in various parts of Washington state, and I did have that 8 month term of duty in Austin, TX. But I was born here, and the bulk of my life has been spent here. Me and my group of friends, years ago, decided that the best answer to the question "what's your hometown?" is the town from which you graduated high school, and for me that would be Milwaukie, a suburb of Portland.

I love this city. I love its quirks, and its beauty. I love the parks, and hills, and coffee shops and strip clubs. I love Portland's public spaces, like Pioneer Square and the Rose Quarter. I am vastly entertained by the local underculture, an intoxicating mix of left-wing, Vegan, strippers and bouncers and musicians and improv and theater and writers. I celebrate the fact that President Bush I called us "Little Beirut". I love how it's basically a big small town.

And having worked for Multnomah County for the past 9 years, and having various friends and family members employed by local government, I've got a pretty good grasp of how corrupt local politics is. It's all about protecting business interests from any kind of social responsibility and increasing their profits. Maybe that's true of other towns, too, but I can see the mechanisms and lines of power very clearly here. Mayors, commissioners, District Attorneys, state representatives, Federal representatives, all seem to get elected with the help of developers and the business associations.

Likewise, as a writer, I have my influences. If I had to give an elevator pitch about my personal ambition, I would say the following: "I write about Portland in the same way Carl Hiaasen writes about South Florida". I can see the interaction between the high culture, the business and politics, with the low culture, the strip club owners and dive bar staff and musicians, and it fascinates me. When Phil Stanford pens another column about some retired beat cop trying to nail a known criminal and being stymied by the higher-ups, that's red meat to me.

When a friend and fellow county employee is fired in order to cover-up the mis-use of contract workers as a scheme to funnel money into un-elected county managers... that's both real-life and red meat for my writer's brain.

So I've been trying to come up with a fictional, but realistic, plotline that I could use to explain and expand on how corruption works in Portland. And in the last couple of years, I sketched out a bare skeleton of a plot.

Basically, I envisioned a couple of mid-level managers in the county tax assessor's office conspiring against a local, long-time fixture of a strip club. They would fudge the facts, and "find" a bunch of violations of the tax code, and pretend that back taxes were owed, and then use that leverage to force the strip-club owner to go bankrupt or sell the business to a local developer (who is working in cahoots with the county manager) at a loss. Then they'll build a condo tower with claims of it being for "low-income housing" but in reality, making massive profits from the sales of those apartments. They'd use the construction to funnel money back into their own pockets with the use of contractors and kickbacks.

In my version of the story, fictionalized, of course, the bad guys would over-reach and end up killing someone who found out about the scheme. Maybe one of the strippers at the club is also a law student who digs into the problems the club owner is having. Maybe a shop steward at the county finds out. In any case, in my fictionalized version of Portland, the scheme is uncovered and upended, and the city takes a few steps towards cleaning up the influence of business and the puppetry of its civic leaders. Y'know, until next time.

So imagine how chagrined I am to find out that something very much like that appears to be happening: Is Commissioner Randy Leonard abusing his power to drive out "undesirable" businesses?

Is my book idea too late? Or will it be even more timely? Decisions... decisions... • 2:55 PM 2 comments

Eighties night

Dante's is a brick oven. I knew that, and yet, I still wanted to dress up a bit. Black jeans and a black t-shirt.

Considering it was The Retros I was there to see, an 80s New Wave cover band, along with Tracy, Gina, and Arlene, maybe I should have busted out my skinny tie. Sadly, time has not been kind enough to leave me the option of Big Hair - not without a wig.

But it wasn't deathly hot inside. Just normally hot. And with plenty of water and booze (Bombay Sapphire and tonic for me, please) it was bearable.

For the record, the song that finally got me up out of my chair to dance was The Cure "Just Like Heaven". Love that song.

Tracy had a headache most of the evening, but even she got up to dance eventually! I forget which song inspired her. Maybe she'll chime in on the comments to remind me.

All that music reminds me of the summers right after I graduated high school, when Amy, Terry, Rod, Andy and I would spend weekend nights at the Blue Aardvark in downtown Portland, dancing and laughing and smelling like clove cigarettes (and Terry would actually smoke them). It was right out of a John Hughes movie, at least in my head. Sadly the club is no longer there. I think it's a shoe store now. • 1:49 PM 1 comments

Awww

I never got my text from Barack Obama.

I feel kind of left out. • 7:06 PM 0 comments

Things to do this weekend

• Possibly go dancing at Goodfoot.
  
• Avoid Highway 30 due to the Hood to Coast Relay
  
• ...but watch the runners run past my house (especially hot women runners)
  
• Run an interval run Saturday morning
  
• Visit the Geek Fair Saturday afternoon
  
• Go see The Retros at Dante's with Tracy and Gina, Saturday night.
  
• Spend Sunday doing laundry, cleaning house, and generally recovering from all that activity on Saturday.

• 7:45 PM 0 comments

Don't do this

When a bartender has reached the point where she remembers what you're drinking and has it mixed for you when you reach the front of the line, don't tell her you only wanted water.

In other words, don't do what I did.

Gonna pay for that one for a while. • 6:50 AM 2 comments

Genius

Cary Tennis, genius, speaking the invisibly obvious:

"If you create this condition that you must believe in yourself to go forward, you might not go forward. You must find a way to go forward without that condition. You do not need to believe in yourself. You just need to find a way to move forward and embrace the activity you are engaged in. You think that believing in yourself will give you the strength to go forward? It may not work that way. It may be that you go forward simply by going forward."

• 3:39 PM 0 comments

"Don't juuuuuuudge meeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Ben Stiller's comedy career has been on the downslope lately. Without doing the google, I can't really remember any great Ben Stiller comedies since "There's Something About Mary" and "Zoolander". OK, maybe "Meet The Parents". But those were his high point, I think.

In fact, the more I think about it, great Ben Stiller comedies rely on Ben Stiller sharing screen time with another comedic actor. "Zoolander" had Owen Wilson. "There's Something About Mary" had, incredibly, Matt Damon - and who knew he'd be great in a comedy? "Meet The Parents" introduced the idea of Robert De Niro being genuinely funny.

And "Tropic Thunder" benefits greatly from Robert Downey, Jr.

Yes, I love Jack Black. The man owns a lightning suit, for fuck's sake. And Jack Black has many funny moments in "Tropic Thunder" (including, but definitely not limited to, the line quoted in the title of this post). But Robert Downey, Jr. and Ben Stiller are clearly sharing the starring roles in this movie. And that was a wise decision on Ben Stiller's part, I think.

In fact, this is nearly an ensemble movie. Tom Cruise is so freakin' awkward and try-hard that I can't help but laugh at him. Jay Baruchel, of all people, is the straight man, the guy who grounds the rest of the comedy. Nick Nolte's mumbling burnout nonsense-philosophy-spouting veteran is note-perfect.

Holy fuck I loved this movie. I was barking laughter, looking around at the rest of the audience, seeing that they, too, were laughing just like me, and then giving in to the laughs.

Labels: movies

• 2:39 PM 3 comments

Unread items

I have 541 unread items in Google Reader.

Wait... that means I've been too busy to surf.

Yay! I've got 541 unread items in Google Reader! • 11:47 AM 1 comments

First time

I think that was the first time I ever closed out Devil's Point. They brought up the bright lights, the bouncers chased everyone out, I made a bad play for a drunk girl walking to her car, I drove home "fuzzy"...

...it was grand. • 2:51 AM 0 comments

"Vicki Christina Barcelona"

I'll admit that the main reason I saw "Vicki Christina Barcelona" was to see Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz kiss.

I knew, going in, however, that it would likely be very brief and not the main focus of the movie.

I was correct. Duh. But the rest of the movie was entertaining and made me laugh, as Javier Bardem's shallow but charming artist seduced two young American tourists, only to be completely upended (and upstaged) by Ms. Cruz.

Labels: movies

• 2:22 PM 1 comments

Doing, done

I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop, sipping coffee and eating a delicious, Nicole-made cinnamon roll. I've taken a few days off from work, a little vacation.

What can I do with this time?

• I have a novel in first draft that still needs an ending.
  
• I have a rough collection of short stories, all about strip clubs or strippers in one way or another, that I'd like to compile into a book.
  
• I need to revise and extend my financial plan for the near future.
  
• My backup system for my two servers and my new sexy thing isn't working right. Needs fixing.
  
• I want to install Parallels and Windows XP on my laptop.
  
• I'd like to upgrade my wardrobe.
  
• I'd like to spend some time with friends I don't often get to see.
  
• I have had an invitation to write a recurring column for another website, and I need to work on putting together a proposal - ugh, marketing. I'm an artist!
  
• Need to research some real, going-far-away type vacation plans.

Mostly, though, I just like not being at work. • 8:14 AM 0 comments

Skirt versus kilt

As soon as she saw me sitting at the table near the stage, Stormy walked over and leaned over from the waist, which put her face level with mine, and not-coincidentally showed off her tits. "Hi! You're not usually in here so late." It was close to 1:00 AM.

"Right. But here I am." I'd started the night at a different bar but still wanted to hang out with Stormy.

I pointed at the tiny skirt she was wearing, which was little more than a four-inch wide ribbon of pleated plaid wrapped around her waist. "I have a kilt at home that's the same tartan!"

"This skirt? A kilt?" She posed and held out the sides. "Is it this short?" She turned around and flounced the back up and bent over again from the waist, looking back at me. "Can people see your butt when you wear it, like this one?"

I laughed. "No. Oh, hell no. No one wants to see that."

I was glad to be here. Stormy always makes me smile.

Labels: stripclub

• 6:15 PM 0 comments

Winning is good

My friend Paul emailed me a couple of days ago and asked if I wanted to check out the Summerblast at MacForce, a local non-Apple-owned computer retailer, located in the inner industrial Eastside. Sales of cool Apple shit, a barbecue, ice cream, and raffles? Sounded fun and I don't hang out with Paul enough, so I said, "sure!"

When we walked up, we each got a free t-shirt, and a goodie bag. In the bag was a program, showing the schedule for the free seminars throughout the day, and a schedule for the raffles. Every half-hour they were giving packages of stuff away. We were there around noon - the next one was in less than a half-hour, and it was from a company I hadn't ever heard of. The big one, of course, was the Adobe giveaway, but that was an hour away. Each person was given 10 tickets, which were to be distributed to the various half-hourly drawings.

Summerblast couldn't have been a more apt name, with the heat wave rockin' the temperature over 100° F for the third day in a row. MacForce had filled up their parking lot with tents, and lots of Apple-related vendors (but not Apple itself, strangely - maybe Apple Retail sees them as competition?), but, man, standing around on asphalt for hours on end wasn't that appealing. Paul and I figured we'd scarf our free burger and drinks, get our free ice cream, and wait for the Adobe raffle, then split.

Since we were there, though, we entered the upcoming raffle at 12:30. I tossed in three of my tickets, and we waited.

The first ticket drawn wasn't the same color as my tickets, so I mentally disengaged. The emmcee read the number off several times, reminding the crowd that "you must be present to win!" but no one stepped forward. So they drew out another number.

And this time, it was one of my three! Whoo-HOO!

I stepped up, showed the guy my ticket, and was whisked away into a fabulous world of showgirls, luxury cars and dream vacations... OK, no, not really. I filled out and signed a model release, allowing MacForce to use my likeness to promote their store, and then they had me hold up the major goodies I got while they took a picture of my likeness (with which they will promote their store).

What all did I get?

• Freeway Pro from softpress, which appears to be web design software. OK, maybe I will use this.
  
• AccountEdge from MYOB, which is accounting software for small business. I probably will be selling this craigslist.
  
• A serial number for Parallels Desktop for Mac, software that lets me run Windows XP as a process within Mac OS, which for the non-geeky is something called virtualization
  
• A 1GB and 2GB USB thumb drive.
  
• 6 tickets each to any 2008 season Portland Beavers baseball game and Portland Timbers soccer game at what I will always refer to as Civic Stadium.
  
• And last but certainly not least, my favorite of all the prizes, a Timbuk2 Commute messenger bag, in black and "mineral heather". Sweet! And it's "sustainable", made from hemp and PET fabric. But don't try to smoke my sweet new bag, man. This thing has so many pockets and zippered enclosures and straps, it's crazy. I'm still finding new ones, a day later. I love it.

I thanked Paul for asking me to tag along with him. Heh. We stuck around for the Adobe giveaway, and Paul's wife, Ellen, joined us briefly, but when Paul read the fine print and found that contestants can only win once, I realized I had no chance. But even though Paul had 19 tickets in the Adobe raffle, some dude with the worst tattoo ever got it. So it goes. • 4:31 PM 0 comments

A good suggestion

While I was finishing my dinner (a chicken Caesar salad) at my favorite diner, A., a cute snarky waitress with whom I chat, showed up on her bicycle, coming inside to the cool restaurant from the hot hot heat of late afternoon.

The waitress that was already on duty was surprised, and asked A. about it; she responded that she had switched shifts with another girl, and they talked about A.'s beach trip, while A. took off her bike helmet, stowed her bike out of the way, and drank copious amounts of water.

I was the only customer in the diner. I waved at A. and as she ran around getting ready for her evening shift, she chatted with me.

"It's hot outside," I said, truthfully if unoriginally.

"Yes, it is! It's just too hot," she replied. "It's so hot that I just don't want to wear a lot of clothes!"

I perked up at this. A. is petite yet athletic and very attractive. "I have no problem with that, at all!"

"Hey," she said, "I just like bein' naked. Or semi-naked."

"It's all good," I smiled. • 9:07 AM 1 comments

Vacation countdown

32 hours to go until my five-day weekend gets here.

Unless I sneak out early tomorrow. But why would I post about that on the public internets? That's just silly.

I'll probably spend my time and money here in town on booze and strippers. • 9:16 AM 0 comments

Stupid boy project #2

Reading Cary Tennis this morning, I see the following:

"You experience isolation and loneliness. At first, you think the antidote will be a person. So you seek a person. But contact with one person will not solve it. Two isolated people fleeing their isolation is not a cure. Isolation is a problem of pattern and structure, of temporal and spatial arrangements. Isolation occurs because the patterns of your life don't bring you into contact with enough like-minded individuals on a regular basis in a comfortable, low-intensity setting. That's what you need. It's called regular life, or street life, or family. It's a structure, or pattern."

I need to do this, too.

Wait. Maybe I already have this?

I have regular places I go, places where I know their names, and they know mine. Outside of work, I am a part of a community of people, my beloved Sellwood.

I know the two Daves at the corner market - one Dave is only ever seen at work behind the counter, or coming from or going to the Black Cat tavern, the other Dave is funny and diabetic, and recoils in horror when I come in late at night to buy donuts.

I know Nicole at the coffee shop is nervous about her upcoming wedding, and Nicole's mom, Sandra, was upset last week because the new girl she was training decided she didn't think she could hack it.

I know that the video store was closed for several days without notice a couple of weeks ago, and have been meaning to stop in and ask C.J. what was up.

I know that Stacy left one waitressing job to work at a different bar in a different neighborhood, and yet at the end of a long day she still comes back to her first bar for a beer before going home.

And I know that Brewster still annoys me, daily, by making the same joke at the end of the day about the day being over. Brewster, who was evicted from my building (and I secretly rejoiced) and who then convinced another tenant, Peggy, to let him stay there, somehow, using some level of charm to which I appear immune.

I know more. I could go on.

But why doesn't this feel like a community to me? Why do I still feel disconnected? They're all part of the landscape of my life. But few of them feel like friends. I share chit-chat with them. I make small talk. I make note of their daily comings and goings, as I assume they take note of mine. But few of them are people I could share things with, personal things. Could I talk to them of my fear of dreaming of something for years and failing (like Mark in that documentary I saw), or about the non-existence of God, or how sad I was that Smacky ran away.

Or maybe I can, and I just haven't taken that step.

Maybe I just need to take the next step.

Introducing stupid boy project #2: building a community.

Stay tuned. • 9:15 AM 0 comments

"American Movie"

Tonight I saw a documentary about a scrub from Wisconsin whose dream had been, since he was 14, to make movies. And how he'd worked all his life to film one, 35-minute horror film, in spite of being up to his eyeballs in debt, and father to three kids with a woman who didn't want him, and borrowing money from his elderly, frail uncle, and using his jailbird and stoned friends.

And how, after years of effort, he finally did it.

And all through the movie, I kept thinking, "the director of this documentary is more successful than the subject of the documentary." How twisted is that?

Labels: movies

• 11:03 PM 0 comments

I hate rebooting

I had to reboot my web server this weekend because of a required security update.

*sob*

Up 'til yesterday, I had a good streak of uptime going, as you can see from the midnight update that ran the night before:

The current date and time is:
Sun Aug 10 01:01:00 PDT 2008
The currently logged-in users are:
xxxxxx console Feb 2 15:56
xxxxxx ttyp1 Feb 2 15:57
The current uptime is:
1:01 up 189 days, 8:06, 2 users, load averages: 0.06 0.03 0.01
The current disk utilization is:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s3 80G 30G 50G 38% /

I hate rebooting. • 8:34 AM 0 comments

Next time

Next time I ask a girl for her email address, I've got to remember to ask for her phone number, too. Also her sexual orientation. That's important.

Sorry I've been so un-blog-y lately. I'll work on that. • 8:27 AM 0 comments

The only kind

There's only one kind of magic that I believe in, and it's this:

Take one cord - USB, ethernet, power cable, doesn't matter. Straighten it out, and lay it on the ground.

Take another cable - same kind, different kind, longer, shorter, doesn't matter - and straighten it out, and lay it on the ground next to the first cable.

Look away for a moment, and then reach down to pick up the first cable.

...and it will be tangled up with the second cable already. What the!!!

Everything else has a reasonable scientific explanation. Yes, everything.

Also? I hate cables. • 3:25 PM 0 comments

"Pineapple Express"

Even though I've never smoked pot (OK, once, just to confirm that I don't like it), I giggled so hard during the first half of "Pineapple Express" that I'm sure others in the audience thought I was stoned.

Stoner humor is some funny funny shit.

Labels: movies

• 10:28 AM 0 comments

Good to know

Y'know the Oregon Lottery self-check machines found in any lottery-equipped store or bar?

When I've had a winning ticket, it's always said:

Congratulations Please See Retailer

...and then I've been disappointed to find that I've won a whopping four bucks.

I've wondered if the machines say anything different if the ticket is a big winner. So I asked one of the Daves at my local market about it last night. He said that if the amount of the winnings is over $600 (the limit that a retailer is required to pay out), it says:

Congratulations Please Report to Salem

or on the retail machines it says:

Congratulations Retailer Call Salem

So... good to know.

Dave had no idea if a ticket that won the top jackpot got a different message or not. He'd never seen anyone win that much.

Imagine checking a ticket late on a Friday night, in some convenience store, and finding out that you were a big winner? You'd have to wait through the whole weekend, knowing only that your little slip of paper was worth more than $600. Unless there's a 24-hour hotline you can call...

That would be the longest weekend of my life. I'd probably have to spend lots of mental effort not burning through my life's savings. • 10:49 AM 0 comments

Wonder words

These are the some of the things I wonder about:

• Does saying a girl has a "great rack" automatically imply that she has huge breasts? Can't a "great rack" just be aesthetically pleasing in shape and proportionate to the rest of her body without being huge?
  
• Is rain considered 100% humidity? If so, what would being underwater be?
  
• Why is it that you can brush your hair, and you can brush your teeth, but you can't comb your teeth?

Just wonderin'. • 7:37 AM 3 comments

Holy. Shit.

Did Paris Freaking Hilton actually come off sounding smarter than John McCain?



Politics is so freakin' weird now. • 10:23 PM 3 comments

Like a riddle

Debi thinks I look fabu.

Even though she hasn't seen me lately. • 8:46 AM 0 comments

It's spelled wrong

• 8:16 PM 0 comments

Stupid Boy Project #1

Track down and re-contact all of my high-school (and post-high-school) buddies. • 7:44 PM 2 comments

Contrast

When I wear black t-shirts now, sometimes, I'll look down and see one or two chest hairs poking through.

Not so bad when it's one of the darker ones. But the gray ones really stand out.

I imagine the opposite would be true if I wore white t-shirts. • 9:57 AM 0 comments