Everything I Tell You is Hearsay

Not everyone was as fortunate as I. Some people had to grow up Other Places and as such, a good lot of them missed out on some truly awesome things about Portland which are no longer extant. If you were a child in Portland you will certainly remember:

Ramblin’ Rod:

This was the quintessential local children’s show. Ramblin’ Rod Anders would come on KPTV-12 every weekday morning and introduce Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, and Tom & Jerry cartoons. He rode out from backstage in a tiny little boat and wore a sweater FESTOONED with buttons given to him by audience members. Said audience members were children who ranged in age from Still-Drooling And Apt To Cry If Addressed Directly to I Am Almost A Teenager And Must Affect Chagrin But I Have Waited My Whole Life To Sit On These Bleachers.

Once during the show, the camera would pan the audience looking for the winner of the coveted “Smile Award” and only the truly hammy could hope to achieve this pinnacle of childhood recognition. It was also classic Portland tradition for children to celebrate their birthdays in Rod’s audience and recieve CITY-WIDE attention for the pleasure. I alas, missed this opportunity.

The Meier And Frank Monorail:

My primary cohort in lifelong Portland residency and I were talking about this today and it turns out, we had the same sense of the monorail being something we had hallucinated as small children. It wasn’t in fact until I had a hodie of my own, that I was looking for likely Santa interaction events that I realized this had been a real thing. More, it was about to happen to my kid. The old anchor Meier and Frank on 5th and Morrison has been co-opted by Macy’s and The Nines. On the whole, I approve of the changes they’ve made as imporovements for the downtown district in general. However, I will always feel nostalgia for what used to be one of the most bizarre Christmas traditions imaginable. The top floor used to be transformed into the domain of The Cinnamon Bear, and children could come frolic and delight at the Christmas trees and general festivity. But even more than that, they could survey the tableau from a monorail in the ceiling. Why this had anything whatsoever to do with Christmas is utterly beyond my capacity to imagine. But it was a good way to terrify the kiddies into behaving themselves:

“Smile for the camera Sally or we’ll put you back on the monorail!!”

It was at a dizzying height for anyone small enough to fit into the damn thing. Really.

Expose Yourself To Bud:

Yes, yes, yes. I know the poster was from the 70′s thanks very much. But the subject of the poster didn’t become mayor of our fair city until the 80′s. Bud, not the statue. I have no idea what her political ambitions might have been…

He was a character, in the truest sense of the word. A tavern owner who stepped forward to run when no one stood to oppose the terrible encumbent. No political experience left him refreshingly candid and open to ideas that other people would have rejected out of hand. He created and administered The Mayor’s Ball for his entire term in office as a fundraiser that became one of the hottest tickets in town. He ushered in the Convention Center and lobbied hard for MAX. He also had some of the most awesome facial hair in the history of politics. For reals.

Also In The 80′s:

Farrell’s! Ice cream shop that, apart from Ramblin’ Rod was THE place to be on your birthday. Had a dish served in a pig trough, that if you managed to finish it, they would strap a pig snout upon your person with much fanfare.

Senn’s Dairy!  The last dairy in town that still sold milk in glass bottles closed during the 80′s. If only they’d been able to hold on, they’d be sitting pretty right about now…

Lloyd Center Was Still Open Air! This was mostly cool because the skating rink was open to the sky, and it felt more adventurous to be skating outside, somehow.

My Mom Worked At The Zoo! Okay, this wasn’t something everyone could enjoy, but for me, it kicked ASS! We got to go in through the kitchen, even after the gates were closed, and have as many corndogs as we wanted. Apart from all the other awesome things about growing up in this town, I had that. Jealous much?

Of course you are.

So, take it then.

From Explodingdog

By Jonathan Franzen

Much praise indeed has already been heaped upon this novel, and justly so. It is one of the most deftly written pieces of modern American fiction I have had the pleasure to read; poignant, witty, and deeply insightful, this book offers a tremendous opportunity to anyone who will bend its spine.

We enter the family life of the Berglands, who at first seem very ordinary, but soon reveal themselves as each in their own way a very archetype of American culture; their interactions with each other and those around them providing a perfect vignette by which Franzen can flawlessly satirize the stereotypes he reveals. His use of language is inspired and leaves no one unscathed:

“[T]he Berglunds were the super-guilty sort of liberals who needed to forgive everybody so their own good fortune could be forgiven; who lacked the courage of their privilege.”

The attention to the family as a whole gives way to a portion of first-person-writing-in-third-person voice. The effect seems slightly tried at first, but it becomes obvious that this is partly because the “autobiographer” Patty, is only just learning to speak in her own voice. Doing so, she is somewhat clumsy and self-conscious; perfectly reflecting the emotional state of her character. She describes herself as undefined without competition to shape her, but most of her reflections lead one to think it is rather opposition she craves. Her portrayal of her mother is a singularly unsympathetic, if nevertheless amusing bit of vitriol:

“[T]he Honorable Joyce Emerson, known for her advocacy of open space, poor children, and the Arts. Paradise for Joyce is an open space where poor children can go and do arts at state expense.”

She classifies the rest of her family of origin in similarly wry and less-than-flattering terms, and in her way she has chosen to be as unlike them as humanly possible, less out of any wholehearted contempt for them, as simply having always thrived on antagonism.

When Patty goes away to a mediocre midwestern school to pursue an athletic scholarship she does so as much to enjoy the best chance to exercise her talents as to confound her parents. Once there she meets Walter who finds her contrariety charming instead of exhausting, and her height enchanting (this was a basketball scholarship after all) instead of merely odd. And while she finds his attention pleasant enough, it is really his glamorous rock-star-wanna-be best friend and roommate that Patty finds herself drawn to.

For Walter, is boring. He is the epitome of The Good Man. He has risen from his humble Minnesotan roots to become a lawyer and advocate of zero population growth. An avowed and vocal feminist, he is impressed by Patty’s independence, her toughness, and her body.

“Patty had never been around a man so obviously in love with her. What he and she were secretly talking about, of course, was Walter’s desire to put his hands on her.”

Which in no way diminished his desire to be respectful and honorable at all times. Which ends up being a bit of a drag for their sex life, as time goes by.

Richard, on the other hand, is Walter’s best friend and the Bad Boy to Walter’s Good Man. Richard (Dick?) is a tosser aside of women. A user of drugs and a shirker of responsibility. Though he knows full well that Walter is more-than-half-but-less-than-all-the-way in love with Patty, he agrees to take her and her heaving bosom across country with the intent of letting something “happen” if it was going to. Though nothing does, it remains a point of almost obsessive regret on Patty’s part after she realizes that the Bad Boy would not think wonderful things about her the way the Good Man would, and flees, mid-road trip, to northern Minnesota to give herself body and soul to Walter’s eager love of her.

Married life produces children also struck in an archetypal mold; the dutiful daughter and the favored son. Jessica, like her father, is hardworking and earnest. She does all that she should and;

“was smitten by books[...] not so pretty as to be morally deformed by it.”

Also like her father, she does not seem to have the natural gift for getting what she wants. All that luck has landed on her brother, Joey.

This golden boy seems possessed of all the traits required for great success; he is handsome, witty, charming, and strong-willed, but he has inherited his mother’s need for opposition. Or at least a healthy unwillingness to submit. In this vein he moves out of his parent’s house while still a teenager to live with a girlfriend he is largely ambivalent about, largely because he knows how much the idea will madden his mother.

The family drifts away, not just from the home they had together while the children were small, but from one another as well. As the fabric of the Berglund family begins to unknit itself, Patty no longer knows who she is or what to do with herself. Having chosen to forgo a career and be a devoted homemaker (as opposed to the working mother she had herself) now that the children are no longer small or dependent upon her, she has no idea of her value or purpose. She falls into a serious depression and as she puts it in her autobiography “mistakes were made.”

These archetypal figures work on each other in mysterious but beautiful ways. Patty seems empty-headed and obstinate at first, but exposure to her Good Man and a series of wounds inflicted by the Favored Son and the Bad Boy create in her a greater sensitivity to her own ability to hurt others. The Favored Son continues to get almost exactly what he wants in every possible situation, but rather than spoiling him, it makes him increasingly mindful of the responsibilities this implies.

Jessica becomes rather a bitter figure, retreating increasingly into the distance, and Walter develops and ultimately unleashes a heretofore unseen rage against a system that he has incrementally become entangled with. All those good intentions getting him much further down the road to hell than he can credit. But when he finally chooses to embrace his anger, it is utterly cleansing.

The collapse the family suffers is inevitable, but heartrending nevertheless. Recriminations fly in the face of the beautiful discoveries they were always on the verge of. Each one of the Berglunds seem unable to relinquish their position; a stance that propagates the unwinding of their lives together until they no longer have one at all.

However, they manage, somehow to pick up the threads of their lives, and weave them back together again. The pattern of their family is irrevocably changed, but what emerges is a more honest and fully realized version of each person as well as the clan as a whole.

By the end of this novel, the family and the autobiographer in it have matured and changed enormously. There is a confidence in Patty’s voice that lends her a sympathy that was hard to muster in the earliest chapters of her story. The greater understanding she extends her own family of origin extends itself around all of the Berglunds like a mantle. And with this, we have the freedom to love them unstintingly.

Recommended

I’m in Seattle with Hodie visiting her godmother Allison. It’s been drizzly all day, but we had a pretty nice time nevertheless.

We went to H&M and I bought her various accessories because that is what I do.

Then we went out to Ballard and looked at the shoreline a bit. Technically, just Allison and I did this, because by this time, Hodie was interested less in scenery and more in avoiding the drizzle. Which, to be fair, was wise since most of the scenery was clearly visible from the car.

We then went and had dinner at a place called the “Hi-Life” and I can say that the only thing to recommend it was the lovely historic building in which is was situated. The food was underwhelming and overpriced while the service was just plain lousy. Ah well, it was a last resort after Hodie got us kicked out of the first place we went to…

Allison and her husband Michael suggested we go get some ice cream, and they were talking to the right pair of girls. During the course of this outing I kept making accidentally inappropriate comments. By which I mean to say, they were fine in context, I wasn’t trying to be nasty, but then M & A would snort and make them dirty. For example;

M: “You’ll want to take a hard right here.”

me: “Yes because god forbid I do anything that isn’t hard”

(snort, cough,heh)

M: “It looks like Oregon beat Washington 53 to 16″

me: “Yeah, they beat the pants off the huskies and now they’re going to cream the beavers.”

(baha, mert, ha)

Hodie was fairly mystified, thank the baby Jesus.

M also created on purpose hilarity of his own when he said:

“I’m better than average at that; you could call me outcompetent.”

A’s laughter was echoing off the buildings and we had to make sure she didn’t collapse in the street. It was wet there.

(heehee, haha, ahem)

During the actual awesome 80′s I was a bit of a cultural retard. We were pretty much dirt poor. We got the government cheese and peanut butter. We also did not see movies very often (I had a long list of films from this decade that certain people were appalled I had not seen; working on it one Alien movie at a time) only rarely had a car, never went on vacation, and didn’t have a telephone in the house until I was about 13. Moreover, my parents, god bless them, had what I now recognize to be less than totally sophisticated taste in music. Mom’s love ofZeppelin and The Beatles is totally understandable, but Andrew’s passionate fondness for Firehouse still leaves me sort of mystified.

It was a lot of Foreigner, Journey, Pat Benatar, and Metallica around the house. On cassette. I mostly wanted to listen to stuff that I could sing, and with the notable exception of the boys And Justice For All, I was well satisfied by the situation at the time. I had no idea that other FAR MORE AWESOME kinds of music existed. But then…

I went to high school and met people who were not so deprived. I was introduced to all manner of movies and books and music I had no notion about in my young life. I vividly recall taking home Pretty Hate Machine on tape and seeing the look of fascination turning to disgust and rage when Andrew heard

And the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car

come larking out of the speakers. That was a liberating moment, let me tell you. Though I knew, even then, it wasn’t so much the reference to the devil that bothered Andrew as the homoeroticism implied. Apparently fighting off dudes at shower time in county left him a little tetchy about the subject.

Even admitting my dim understanding of pop culture it is hard to know how I had come by the impression that The Cure was a speed-death metal band of Pantera’s ilk. But I had. And so I was sure to hate them. And whevenever anyone suggested we should listen to The Cure, I objected vociferously (as was my strident way in those days; believe it or not, I’ve mellowed considerably) and thus managed never to actually hear  The Cure until I was parked in front of MTV one evening and the seminal LoveSong  came on.

I still consider this to be one of the best songs in existence. And in the way of all codgers, when it was remade recently by Jack Off Jill, I was deeply offended. This song was perfect. It needed nothing, and was diminished by tampering.

Even still, I didn’t listen to the whole album until about 6 years ago, when I was feeling particularly sad and lonesome and isolated. I decided to adopt the attitude Paul Simon proclaims

I have my books and my poetry to protect me

I always expand it to include music. It seems like such a sane and enriching strategy, but doesn’t work for shit. I suppose my readers have this failure to thank for the material they are enjoying(?) now, but still.

At any rate, the opening strains of Plainsong  became a cue to my battered heart, to accept a small respite in the form of a musical analgesic. And all the rest that followed was a beautiful plaintive reminder that everyone suffers, that I am not so singular in my pain or my longings, and I somehow found this comforting. There are moments dark and bright, but never lacking an essential communicativity. It is a hand reach out toward you, rendered in song.

This album made being melancholy more tolerable by glamorizing it just enough to make it seem like a choice, rather than a condition from which I could not escape. I understand explicitly now, that this is what goth is all about; embracing the darkness such that it cannot overwhelm you. The owl tattooed on my spine is testament to the idea that embracing pain can make it beautiful and instructive, rather than simply something to be endured to no end. The music on this record is truly a aural manifestation of this same truth.

Don’t thank me, thank Lyza.

As may be plain by this time, I have a large tender place inside full of fondness for movies of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy ilk. And though I am prone to enjoy them generally, I am also aware that they vary wildly in their quality. Plot and production value all contribute to the relative merit of any film, but the differences are especially marked in this particular mien.

Which is why perhaps, this movie stands out as such a fine example of the school. This film lacks for nothing; it is dramatic without being overwrought, well-paced and consistently amusing. The cinematography is deftly executed and beautiful. A score by Alan Parsons (SCORE BY ALAN PARSONS I SAID!) is joined with sets and costumes which provide great compliment to the storytelling, and the cast is simply superb.

We begin with Matthew Broderick even before his Ferris Beuller days. As Phillipe, his face is young and earnest and full of a remorseless glee in his own cleverness. He first becomes the only man ever to escape the dungeons  of Aquila, and then swept up by his own adroitness, proceeds to ramble straight home to boast of his exploits, never suspecting he might find trouble waiting for him there. Quite soon, the soldiers sent to kill him are well on their way to doing just that.

Rutger Hauer is at his inscrutable delicious best. He arrives just in time to save our hapless Phillipe. The very line of his jaw conveys his strength of character and just intentions. In this opening fight scene, he does not kill anyone by design: this is to alert you to the fact that he is a good guy. Wrapped in black and leather, he is no less than the epitome of a hero cast into darkness.

Michelle Pfeiffer is luminous. Her beauty is utter simplicity and breathtakingly devoid of glamor. The object of the desire of nearly every man in the film, she earns her place with a remarkable poise. She fairly glows, her innocence is so strongly conveyed. The grace of her form and features have done her no favors here, in that they have called upon her the attention of our villain, and all the sorrow thereafter.

John Wood is the delightfully terrible Bishop of Aquila. I mean really, who doesn’t love a man of God gone bad? In a rather bizarre take on “if I can’t have you, no one will” his grace made a pact with the devil to keep them from each other forever: By day the beautiful lady becomes a hawk, while at night our hero assumes the form of a wolf. They are with one another evermore, but may only meet in the brief moments of dawn and twilight.

Always together, eternally apart.

Who doesn’t like a little opposition with their romance?

In the end, our lovers are reunited in the very place the evil was done them, and rejoined in a rarest moment of perfect eclipse. If only every love story was that easy to resolve…

I admit to being an Octophile. Lots of things I love came from there. I am going to spend the next little while talking about some of them.

In this case: C-64

i am not likely to be elected spokesman for any video gaming company. i have terrible hand eye coordination and lack the obsessive devotion to repetitive tasks so necessary for video-game mastry. however, when i was a young thing, i was madly in love with the commodore 64. and i am willing to bet i would still have a kick ass time playing with it, if i had one.

a few games in particular stick out in memory as being extra-strength awesome. my absolute favorite was REALM OF IMPOSSIBILITY.  Hells. Yeah. this game consisted of threading your way through various levels of mazes to obtain keys which would then allow you to access other levels of mazes. pretty sweet. you were hampered in your attempts to obtain these keys by pesky zombie dudes who were all up in your shit like the SECOND you came into the place. and your only recourse was to keep away from them. you could hide behind structures, but you had no weapons to speak of, you were only slightly faster, and if they touched you, it hurt til you died. your one means of protection was to drop behind you, as you ran away, a trail of little crosses which would impede the zombie progress for a while until they eventually disappeared and once again leave you vulnerable to zombie touching. it was best to play with a partner who could also participate in the cross dropping, but you had to be careful cause you couldn’t leave the screen area without your homey and if they died the mission was a fail. so, if you were, say, my older sister, who’s approach was to view her “partner” as nothing more than an expendable cross dropping pack mule of sorts, this was not necessarily the most effective strategy. i never actually managed to beat this game, as the final level, the Realm of Impossibility, was, well FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE. so.

another gem was RACING DESTRUCTION SET this one was neat primarily for the level of customizability built into game play. not only could you select your car, you could build a unique track out of a variety of surface materials like ice, dirt, mud, or asphalt in any configuration you chose AAAAAAND select the degree of GRAVITY you wanted your track to have. so you could pick moon gravity and be flying all AROUND the place, or pick jupiter gravity and stick to the track like glue. was fun stuff.

and then there was ARCHON which was like wizard’s chess.  your pieces would move across the table and attack each other in interesting ways based on what kind of mythical critter they were.i liked being the Dark Side since the snakes and nasties were way more entertaining in terms of the wickedness they would unleash.

Not to be forgotten: RUSH N ATTACK (get it?) this game had the worlds most annoying precussion sound track. i can still hear it in my head: dat dat da da da DAAT dat dat da da DAAAT. it played relentlessly overtop your rambo style recon mission of doom. there was a lot of running, and jumping, and leaping from the tops of tankers to the tops of bulidings and the occasional stabbing action. i do remember liking the bazooka and flame thrower quite a bit.

i also remember playing something i want to think was called DREAM HOUSE. it was like playing dress up, but with paint and furniture. i remember being excited BEYOND ALL REASON when i discovered you could ANIMATE the scene by hitting the correct sequence of keystrokes. this mean the kitty would swing its tail, the clock would tick, and the fire in the grate would flicker. awwww yeeah.

thinking about it, i’m pretty sure the reason video games dont appeal to me anymore is cause they are no longer so basic and limited by technology. for me, the more simpleminded the better. ahh for the old days…

But it is not my customary way. When I do, most often, my mouth fills with blood and then I must decide if I will spit it out, at last, or swallow and feel poisioned. Maybe I just need to practice more…

Once upon a time in the Sixties there was a band called Steeleye Span, and they were amazing. Their singer Sandy has a lovely and powerful voice and deft phrasing for these traditional English folk songs. Pair this with the electric instrumentation that accompanies her and you have a truly unique and undeniably compelling final result.

My favorite of their songs is called “One Misty Moisty Morning” and is about the seduction and eventual marriage of a milkmaid. It is a romp, quick-paced and utterly charming. If ever I marry again, you can be sure this song will play at my reception to riotous laughter and unbridled delight. Maybe, just mine, but still. How can one resist a song wherein the lover admits “with many idle phrases I stroked her double chin, singing how-de-doo, and how-de-do, and how-de-do again!” When Hodie was little, she would clamor to hear this one

“Play HOW DE DOO MAMA!!!”

and then we would join hands and spin around the living room singing to each other at the tops of our lungs. I still feel the urge to do this whenever I hear it, though she is now much more mature than I am and just gives me a tolerant look when I holler

“HOW DE DOOOO!!!!”

They are also moderately renowned for their redition of “Gaudete” which is a classic and hauntingly beautiful Christmas carol performed flawlessly a capella. It regularly appears on compilations of the best carols ever, and justifiably so. When, on occasion, I go to listen to my voice echo in the silences, I will often choose this as my means of filling the quiet.

For a stark and unusual insight into the political climate in Great Britain during the reign of George V we have “Cam Ye O’er Frae France” at least, as much insight as one can have with the admixture of Old and modern English employed in the lyrics.

Each of these songs is posessed of a particular and wonderful energy, no less “All Around My Hat” which is a cautionary tale about the costs of a romance with a distant and possibly fickle lover. A rollicking tune and matter of fact emotional tenor make this song both sweet and slightly wry, just as the best romances are.

I love hearing these songs. They lift my spirits and send shivers through my body. They are enlivening and a pleasure to listen to, and even more to sing. Whether or not Hodie will spin around with me while I do.