Monthly Archives: September 2004

Highway 60

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Location: Traveloge, Globe, AZ (map)
Miles: 11256.1

I knew as soon as I turned up Highway 60 out of Socorro that I had made the right choice. Not only is this a beautiful and interesting stretch of highway, but for me it is filled with history.

Before I hit the open road, however, I took a spin around my old Alma Mater, New Mexico Tech, which back in the old days when I was there went by the moniker New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Two shocking things have happened to the place. One I witnessed myself, the other is hearsay from a fellow alum. First, the campus has been beautified significantly. I almost didn’t recognize my old dorm. It doesn’t look like a Motel 6 anymore. The second thing is (are you sitting down?) there are almost as many female students there as male now. Some of them are even attractive. Contrast this to when Bob challenged me to name seven attractive students at Tech and I got stuck at six. It made me want to go up to each male student and shake him by the shoulders and holler “Do ya know how good you have it here now? Do ya? DO YA?“

But I restrained myself and made my way to the south end of town and the highway. Ah, Highway 60. That critical artery of commerce connecting Quemado, Pie Town (right on the continental divide), and Magdalena. Wide open plains. Rolling hills. Grassland. Forest.

Memories.

The first fifty miles I could still do in my sleep. I drove it five times a week during the summer of the first bacchanal, 1985. It’s hard to believe that was more than 19 years ago. VLA By the time we reached the VLA the pups and I were ready for a break and a walk, so we spent some time stomping around my old “office”. If the place looks familiar to you, yes, it was on a Nightranger album cover. (It was also in a couple of movies—you don’t want to watch Concact while sitting next to me. The movie’s OK, but the radio astronomy’s complete and utter crap.) Knowing the woeful state of science education in this country, let me put on my Dr. Science cap for a moment and give you the rundown on the VLA. The Very Large Array (Those guys were poets at heart when they named this baby) is a set of 27 antennae set up in the shape of a Y to act as one huge antenna (map – railroad tracks marked indicate the branches of the Y). It is, in fact, an enormous pinhole camera for radio waves. The dishes move on railroad tracks to change the size of the virtual antenna to optimize looking at big, close things (like the Sun) or very distant things (like quasars and white dwarfs. Actually Quasars are pretty honkin’ big, but they are all very, very far away.) This photo and the others over in the album reflect the widest spacing of the antenna, which is when the tiny-thing scientists try to book time. One side effect of the wide spacing on a day with scattered clouds is that it’s almost impossible to get all the dishes in a picture to be in the sun at the same time. Each arm of the Y stretches for miles. The dishes in the pictures are more than a mile apart.

Past the VLA is the continental divide, Pie Town, Quemado, and Springerville, AZ. Ah, Springerville. It was a chilly spring weekend in 1985. It was the weekend of my 21st birthday. A day to be celebrated, to be sure. My birthday was on Sunday, and at that time one could not buy alcoholic beverages on a Sunday in New Mexico. No problem. Being college students, when we learned of this crisis we quickly devised a plan to buy all the necessary beverages ahead of time. Saturday afternoon we stocked up. Saturday night we had a party and drank it all. Sunday dawned, bright and bleary, and we came to the realization that we had invited every female on campus (there weren’t that many, remember, and as a rule of thumb half the women who said they were definitely going to be there would show up, and twice as many men would be there as women. As long as you didn’t invite any men.) and we had no party ammunition. After trying to work a couple of local connections we determined that it was time for an interstate beer run.

Now, you boys back east with your dinky little states probably think nothing of this. It turns out the beer store closest to my dorm room that was open on Sunday was 158 miles away, west on Highway 60 to Springerville, AZ. Glen and I set out in the Alpha Romeo, top down, bundled up against the cold, heater blasting and tunes craking. 316 miles and one speeding ticket later (The State Trooper was bemused by our top-down stance when it was freezing cold. “Yeah, I remember when I was young and stupid,” he said, and it was clear he did. He was a cool cop.) we had our booze and the party was a resounding success, despite the fact that not one single female showed up. Perhaps because of that, things got pretty crazy that night.

Salt river canyon, on hoghway 60 Speaking of driving a long way, Highway 60 came into play again a few years later, when I was living in San Diego. It was on the eastward leg of another trip in the Alpha, this time with Bob as copilot, as we set out one Memorial Day Weekend to get Green Chile Cheeseburgers at the legendary Owl Bar in San Antonio, New Mexico (map). The chile isn’t the same every year, but after driving 800 miles I took a bite of the burger and blurted out “This is so good!” I was getting misty with the emotion. It was a damn good green chile cheeseburger. After we ate we drove a few more hours to visit our folks, and after sleeping a bit we headed back to California by a more northerly route (not all of it paved).

Highway 60 was also the road I took when I first drove out to San Diego. The Alpha was running in top form; I outran the raindrops and tasted freedom. It’s my favorite flavor.

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Pup Report

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Warning:
This is the type of blog entry that is the bane of the Internet: The Pet Story. The power of the Internet has given people who used to bore their friends to tears with tales of how fluffy responds to the sound of the can opener a new, larger, and even more disinterested audience. The Pet Story in a blog is a sure sign that you are dealing with someone who has nothing of interest to say to anyone. Sadly, the stories these people tell about captive mammals are often more interesting than their stories about themselves. That said, a dog falling on its butt in the dirt is kind of funny.

First, since I made mention that one of the dogs was not well, I’d best explain. Spike pulled up lame the other night. I didn’t see what happened, but he wasn’t using his left rear leg. He kept it pulled up way under himself. I couldn’t see any obvious injury, but when I tried to straighten his leg he snapped at me.

One thing I learned is that Spike is decidedly a right leg lifter. His tiny little dog brain struggled with how to raise his right leg while keeping his left leg up as well. He didn’t succeed in peeing at all on our first outing, even with me trying to lend what support I could. I’m kind of glad he didn’t let loose during those experiments; it could have been messy. Just picture a gimpy dog trying to hold up both back legs at once, and a concerned idiot trying to help.

On one occasion, though, he did manage to hold a handstand for about a second. With training and practice, we could be in the circus. More often, he just seemed to forget about his left leg and drop right on his ass when raising his right. Circus of the stupid.

So Spike’s on some kind of anti-inflammatory (for a 4.6 pound dog, I had to cut the pills in fourths) and is starting to put his leg down occasionally and he has learned to pee the other direction, but you can tell he’s not comfortable with that yet. Lefty, on the other hand, was sitting my my lap yesterday when I noticed a big ‘ol cactus thorn sticking out of his leg. Lefty seemed oblivious to it. He was playing and squirming as always. I tugged on the needle. It was really stuck in there. I tugged harder. No release. Lefty jumped up to find a toy for me to throw.

The next time we were out back, Lefty ran into another cactus while chasing a bird. (He hasn’t worked out yet that he will never, ever, catch a bird.) When he hit the prickly pear he yelped and jumped back. This time the needle wasn’t as deep and seemed to bother him more. I pulled it out and gave another tug on the first needle. No luck. It seemed like pulling it out was going to cause more harm than leaving it in. Finally last night I just cut the needle off to keep it from being driven farther in and decided to let Lefty’s body handle getting rid of the rest of it.

Other than that, the dogs have been having a great time exploring the wide open spaces in Northern New Mexico. But then, they’re dogs. They lack the imagination to have a bad time. Every moment is the best it could possibly be.

Thanks!

Early Morning Vibrations

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Location: Little Anita’s, 2811 Cerrillios Rd, Santa Fe NM
Miles: 10708.8

Got up before the sun this morning and after a brief dog-draining followed by a speedy shower I was on the way to Santa Fe to have some work done on the car. When I had called for the appointment the guy asked “What time do you want to bring it in?” I said “As early as possible.” “OK,” he said, “7:30.” “Uh, how about eight?” I asked.

At the dealer in San Diego there is a long line right at opening and that determines when your car gets worked on. So even though my appointment was at eight I wanted to get there closer to 7:30 so I would not be kicking up and down Cerrillos Road all day. As I came out of Los Alamos I got behind the Slowest Driver On The Planet. It was right where two lanes went down to one, and I almost zipped on past him but I told myslef, “Relax, Jerry. This is New Mexico, land of mañana, you’ll get there.” That whole ethic was lost when I realized just how slow the SDOTP really was and how many miles it was going to be before I could pass him. In seconds I went from New Mexico Mellow to Raging Green Impatient.

After finally finding open road I breezed along for a while until hitting the 14-mile constructivitis (announced by a sign reading Scheduled to be completed Summer 2004 – the days are getting shorter, boys!) but things could have been a lot worse through there. Deep breathing and flashing signs that said “Friendly Officers Ahead” kept me rolling along at the posted 45 mph.

When I reached the dealer I realized that all my high blood pressure was for nothing. There was no long line of impatient customers. There were, in fact, no hassles at all. As the mechanic entered my information we talked about San Diego and road trips. I asked him what his favorite place to get breakfast was, he told me to get the huevos rancheros at Little Anita’s, across the street. Little Anita’s had been my first choice anyway, so that was a done deal. He told me that the car would take about two hours unless there were leaks in the air conditioning. I was almost disappointed to hear that; I’d been planning to walk over to the Green Onion for an exceptional Chile Relleno for lunch. With an ailing pup back at the ranch, I feel guilty about staying down here longer than necessary.

Little Anita's warm interior The breakfast was excellent. The eggs were cooked right, the chile was good, and the service continues to be outstanding. Breakfast done, green chile afterglow warming the base of my brain, fresh tea bags with refills of hot water, it was all good. I started to write about my morning. I had just typed “OK” above when the manager (owner? he doesn’t look much like an Anita) asked if I was getting good wireless reception where I was sitting. It turns out he had just installed the system and hadn’t advertised it yet because he wanted to make sure it worked well first.

Oh, man. It just doesn’t get much better than this.

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Episode 3: The Widow’s Tale – Part 1

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I watched her as she wrapped her lips around the cigarette again. The tip glowed cherry, bathing her pale skin momentarily with the light of the fire that burns down below. Fair warning, if you’re into that Sunday School stuff. The glow faded but my feeling that this was not going to be an ordinary job stuck with me like a long needle just brushing the skin at the base of my skull. Best to move forward then.

“What sort of help?” I asked.

She gestured toward the darkness out of which she had risen. “May we speak in private?”

I looked at the shlubs lining the bar. Not much danger there. Still, she was my meal ticket and the booze wouldn’t be too far away. I gestured for her to lead the way. Before she turned she called out to Jake, “Another Scotch for Mr. Lowell, and another Manhattan for myself. Not so much Vermouth this time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jake said in the most polite voice I had ever heard him use. “I’ll bring ’em on over to ya.”

She flashed him a smile. “Thanks, Jake.” Jake smiled back. His face, surprisingly, was capable of the expression without cracking. She turned and swept into the booth in the farthest, darkest corner.

Among a certain type that booth is legendary. It’s the booth where Louie the Skunk shook hands with Precinct Captain O’Malley, giving Louie Control of a large slice of Midtown, the booth where Six Finger Frankie proposed to a dancer named Lorraine before she took off with Old Ed in Frankie’s car, and it’s the booth where Lumpy Gannett accidentally shot himself twelve times with his revolver. There’s a mystique surrounding that booth, and it repels those who don’t belong. Maybe the faint smell of corruption and blood speaks to some part of the human animal, pushing them away. If she noticed it she was unaffected.

I settled myself across from her in that booth and our drinks weren’t far behind. She sipped her drink delicately and nodded, dismissing the hovering Jake. I took a sip of my own hooch. “What can I do for you, Miss…?” I finally asked.

“Fanutti. Lola Fanutti. You may have heard of my late husband.”

The excellent Scotch turned sour in my mouth. Everyone had heard of Vittorio Fanutti. Until last winter when they hoisted his car from the icy East River with Fanutti still and blue in the back seat. The papers had carried it on the front page with lurid photos. Fanutti had walked the tightrope between legitimacy and the underworld; he had money and he was using the money to buy power. He planned to be mayor one day and what he wanted he usually got. People weren’t so worried about where a man’s dough came from in those days, as long as he spent it.

When Fanutti got hitched to a girl from out of town there was much talk but not much substance. She seemed to appear from out of nowhere, and the courtship was brief. The wedding was a spectacle, with all the big shots from the East Coast in attendance. Everyone wanted to know who the girl was. The rumor Fanutti denied loudly every chance he got was that she was a Contessa from the old country down on her luck. He denied it just often enough to make sure most people thought the story was true. I’d seen per picture in the society pages and I had heard that she was a real looker, but nothing prepared me for the real thing. She was a lady, all right, but she was no Contessa.

I sat across looking at Mrs. Fanutti and I knew I was out of my league. That the man had been connected there was no doubt. If she was coming to me that meant she didn’t want any of her former husband’s associates involved, which meant they weren’t going to be happy about whatever it was she wanted me to do.

I have two rules in life: know who the boss is and don’t make the boss mad. I kissed San Francisco goodbye, at least for another day. At least I’d gotten a couple of drinks out of her first.

“You’re about to tell me you can’t help me,” she said. The Kentucky in her voice got a bit stronger as the Manhattan reached her head.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have a fondness for my shoes.”

“Your shoes?”

“Yeah, I prefer them to the cement kind. Especially when I’m swimming.”

“You haven’t even heard what I need you to do.”

“It doesn’t matter, sister. Not with the sharks you have swimming in your pool.”

“Please, Mr. Lowell. It can’t hurt you to at least have another drink and listen.”

I wasn’t so sure she was right, but she had a persuasive way about her.

Tune in next time for the conclusion of: The Widow’s Tale!

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Freeloading

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Location: The patio behind Jojo’s house (map)
Miles: whatever they were before

I’m here with my long-lost brother, pL, sitting under a dark and cloudless New Mexico sky, the Rio Grande Valley sprawling before us. The lights of Santa Fe shimmer in the distance. Coltrane is spilling out of the not-bad-for-a-laptop speakers of pL’s slick new machine, and the night creatures are singing along. Jojo and Spencer’s dogs are in the house and take to barking occasionally. I can’t blame them; their masters aren’t at home and there are strangers on the back porch.

It’s a little dark right now. Turning on the light in the kitchen would be ideal, but I don’t want to just go barging into the house, since Jojo and Spencer are not here.

But their broadband is. Oh, sweet heaven. So my brother and I are sitting on their nice patio furniture, plugged into their AC, enjoying high-speed Internet access.

Next to me there is a big bucket filled with suspect water with a bare tree branch sticking out of it. The story goes like this: Jojo and Spencer catch rainwater in the bucket and use it to water plants. Unfortunately, the water was also a magnet for ground squirrels. After two of them drowned and were reduced to icky masses, Spencer put the branch in the bucket to allow the squirrels a way to escape.

Jojo and Spencer have arrived, and just in time. Our second six-pack requires a bottle opener.

Thanks!

Back to the Canyon Bar and Grill

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Location: Canyon Bar and Grill, Los Alamos, NM
Miles: 10632.4

There was a place I liked more, but right now it’s Saturday afternoon. The other bar is closed. I suppose that makes sense; I mean, who would go to a bar on a Saturday when there’s no work tomorrow and the cable channels are filled with college football?

Granted, I don’t give a rat’s ass about a semi-pro league masquerading as “student athletics”, but I know a lot of other people enjoy that stuff, and the only reason football exists is so you can go to bars and watch it with your buddies. My only concern was whether anyone would mind if I watched the Czech Republic play Canada. I pulled up to the Aspen Lounge and it looked dark. I went to the door and saw that it opened at four, about half an hour hence. Then I saw the lettering beneath the hours. Closed Saturday and Sunday. I blinked a couple of times to make sure it didn’t say Open late Saturday or something like that, but alas, no.

There is a fairly new restaurant on the edge of town, and I had noticed that it’s sign said “Restaurant and Bar”. No problem, I thought, I’ll head on out there and have some vittles while I type. Nope. There were two sets of hours, summer and winter. I didn’t know which applied but it didn’t matter. They were both Monday through Friday. Not only do people not go to bars on the weekend, they don’t even go out for a bite to eat.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. People do go out, they just drive an hour to the nightlife in Santa Fe. A Get-Poor-Quick scheme that has been tried many times is to bring night life to Los Alamos. Forget about it.

Now I’m back at the Canyon, where for all its warts it has one key advantage: It’s open. They gave me a beer, I paid for it, and I sat down. There are a few people here, including one rabid Macintosh fan who responded to the antediluvian glow from the lid of my machine by making sure I knew he had been using the infernal machines since before they were invented. At the bar they’re having a good ol’ time; the only female in here is attached (by the lips) to the Mac fan, and collectively they’ve hit that perfect part of the afternoon where the buzz is just right and every joke is funny. It is a communal perfect buzz. A group like that makes any bar better. You know this place is home for some of these people. And in the end, isn’t that what makes a good bar? If there was a pretty bartender I’d probably hang out and fall in love.

Time has passed since I wrote the above, and things have moved apace. I have a nickname, at least from a couple of the regulars: Mac. I like it. It’s the quintessential bar nickname. Mac. I’m going to write myself into a story with that name someday. No one has to know it’s a reference to the computer I was using in the bar. In all the years and years of going to Callahan’s, I never had a nickname, probably because they already knew my real name and my impact was gradual and constant. Now I’m the welcome stranger, and lacking my real name they just went and gave me one. Mac. I’ve never been anything remotely close to a Mac before.

One of the flys left and came back with a guitar. He’s much better at playing than singing, but he’s been taking requests from the others at the bar. Right now he’s covering “All along the Watchtower” with far more passion than skill, but it’s passion that counts, baby. Earlier he was doing Eagles tunes at the request of other patrons and, well, he doesn’t know the words very well but that doesn’t stop him.

Another guitar has arrived. A jam session will shortly ensue. There are two guitars. There are five patrons. Three are guitarists. There is one geek pounding away on his laptop. There is one female taking it all in. Finally, there is one bartender, far more attractive than the dude she replaced a few minutes ago.

I miswrote before. There is one guitar and one mandolin. The mandolinier is just getting his confidence up, and it’s starting to work. So for the record there is one guitar for two guitarists. The guy that brought in the guitar just lamented, “I have to get drunk to play in front of people, but then I suck.” He’s right, but that never stopped most of his peers. They’re finding a rhythm now, drunk guitarist doing the vocals while the other two play the blues. Vocals are becoming increasingly rare.

Man I wish I could just pick up someone else’s guitar and make it sing and cry. Hats off, then, one and all, for those who can. It takes a lot of work to make it seem easy. Writing is different. It still takes a lot of work, but in music all the work you put in comes down to a moment when you are in front of the public and it’s all on the line right then. With writing, you hone and tweak until the rewrites make it worse instead of better and then you put it out there as a pile of paper glued on one edge and you hide in the dark while people judge it.

I think I’ll stick to stacking rocks.

The jam session has lost the drunken guitarist, and while the quality is much higher, the soul has gone out of the endeavor. It’s still OK to be in a dive and hear good musings, but there was a fire before. Oh, well. Dive bar geeks can’t be too picky.

Thanks!

Programming note: Recent Comments!

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Unfortunately, the list of the last ten is as much as haloscan provides in the RSS feed. Most days there are many more than ten new comments, so you’ll still have to look around, I’m afraid. I do wish you could bring up all the comments in a single window the way I can, but alas, it is just not to be.

My ultimate goal is to provide a list of the entries most recently commented upon, instead of just the comments themselves, but that, alas, will require considerable effort on my part unless Haloscan decides to help me out.

Anyway, enjoy! I’ll be working on the formatting over the next few days.

Thanks!

Litho, Ergo Sum

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I need to be going soon, to get the pups back to Los Alamos and to meet up with Jojo et. al. to go watch Zozobra. So this morning I was right here in this chair, checkin email and whatnot, generally procrastinating. Outside the window was a stack of rocks. A few feet away was another rock, and as I looked at it I realized that rock had to go on top of the stack. It went from being an observation to an obsession in just a few minutes. The rock was yearning to be put in its proper place.

Time to take the dogs out. While the dogs explored I put the rock where it so clearly belonged, a definitive refutation of Aristotle. Mission accomplished, I noticed that there was a nice flat spot on the new rock that called for another rock on top of it. Thus was a monster created. There are now five new sculptures (if I may be so bold) in the area surrounding Five O’Clock Somewhere. Well, four and a half—one’s just a little guy.

rock pile 1
Rock Pile 1. I added the top three rocks to the existing pile. Hey, this is fun!

Rock Pile 2

Rock Pile 2, going for altitude!

Rock Pile 3

Rock Pile 3, defying gravity.
That top rock is pretty big.

Rock Pile 4

Rock Pile 4, getting fancier.
I almost knocked the whole thing down while doing “one last little adjustment”. This picture doesn’t show the structure that well, but I like its drama.

Thanks!

The Monster Within Reaches Puberty

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Yes, the novel is undergoing changes, reaching maturity at a frightening pace (some days frighteningly slow), and is beginning to turn from potential into reality.

As the fuzz on it’s electronic chin starts to look more like the goofy and pretentious little beard that Lit majors inevitably sport at one time or another, the story’s purposes and goals seem clearer. Still, there are the bad days, when it despairs as it looks in the mirror and sees zits everywhere, and it’s voice seems to crack and change with every sentence. On those days it wails in despair: How am I ever going to meet a nice Chick Lit looking like this? It hangs its head as each word of the lament is in a different octave.

But the novel has friends, many of whom will likely read this, and the book knows that with their guidance and faith it will reach a noble and fine maturity, one that will make us all proud.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a bunch of zits to squeeze.

Thanks!

I See Beauty and Stuff

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Moonless night now here on the upper floor of the Earth. I step out into the darkness, into the humming cloudless night, and they are all there. All the names I know, and even more I’ve forgotten. Polaris, constant enough for our sorry lifespans. Antares, heart of the scorpion, named for what it isn’t. How would you like your name to be “Not John”? Alkaid, shining at the end of the handle of the Big Dipper. The name is Arabic, and means “the base” or “the fortress”. The street I used to live on was named for that star. Osama bin Laden also took a shine to the word.

Cassiopeia lies along the Milky Way, stretching her wings across the galaxy behind. As my eyes embrace the darkness she is almost lost among the clamor and light. The bears are there, diminished in reputation by the dippers they support. Draco, I never could pick out. It seems to be all the leftover stars that couldn’t fit into any other shape.

Arching almost directly overhead is the Milky Way. I look and try to turn that mysterious band into a disk of countless stars, but it is too much for me. There are enough stars I can see already.

Across the backdrop of the untouchable infinite crosses the works of man. High above but almost close enough to touch pass the blinking rumbling jetliners, crossing the sky but not daring to leave a trail behind them. The stars will not tolerate such impudence tonight. Another light moves across the sky, brightly lit as it crosses the plane of the galaxy then quickly fading. After a few seconds I lose sight of it, but I keep trying to look sideways where I think it might be, hoping to catch a hint of motion out of the corner of my eye. Whatever it was, it was big, and far above the atmosphere. ISS, I have chosen to believe. I could look it up, but I’m not going to.

Earlier tonight, driving back from a shopping run (the store closed early), our local star had just dipped below the horizon, carelessly leaving behind a rich sky full of pink and lavender. The ponds I passed stole from that palette and shamelessly reproduced it. The grass, green and haughty and still filled with the rain I had called forth, chose to contrast the colorful solar residue rather than echo it, which just made it all the better for me. I drove too fast, choosing to skim across the tops of the washboard ruts. It was good. It was thus with fondness that I said bon soir to out giant plasmic meatball, and welcomed the night.

Alone in the dark, more air below my feet than above my head, the stars blazed forth, barely bothering to twinkle. The hum of night insects surrounded me, supplemented by the vague, uncertain alarmism of Spike, who has obviously been paying too much attention to the government lately. Better to bark and have your ass kicked than to simply have your ass kicked.

The stars, and, strangely, no planet that I could identify (except Earth), continued on their vast journeys, unaware or our ridiculous fears.

Thanks!

The Best Sound in Sports

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You’ve heard me rant about what makes a real sport. This is a corollary to that discussion. Great sports make great sounds. A sound in a stadium must be simple and sharp. Maybe there are times when boot hits ball that soccer can create that visceral *thump* that sends a shockwave through the audience. Probably not, though.

American Football has a sound. It is the crash of two men clad in hardened plastic smashing into each other. In fact, the “protection” those men wear is designed more to make loud noises than to preserve the health of the players. Hundreds of injuries a year could be avoided if the league adopted quieter pads. So for me that sharp smash is a tainted sound. I can’t help but think that every collision could be the end of a career, or even a life, just to give me that sound.

And there are better sounds. There’s the sweet purity of the crack as a baseball meets the sweet spot on a bat. Fielders listen to that sound and play the hit accordingly. The sound is not just something for the fans to enjoy, it’s a critical part of the game. Should the Majors stop using wood bats, I’d stop watching. I love that sound. Subtler, but equally important, is the sound of a strike-three fastball burying itself in the catcher’s glove. POP! “Thureeeeee!” Beauty.

That’s not my favorite sound, however. In the same category as the well-struck baseball is the slap shot. Crack! Hockey is full of great sounds. There’s the schuuuus of skates at full brake, there’s the crunch of bodies at midice, there’s the blammo of bodies into into the boards, and the whistles of irate european fans. Then there’s the sharp crack when stick meets puck with a force so huge the stick sometime breaks. Bam!

But as great as that snap is, there is one sound more powerful in sport. When that enormous crack! is followed by a resonating piiiiiing! you know deep in your heart that nothing could have been closer. In a live and die world where fate is decided by the dimensions of a hard rubber disk and the arbitrary diameter of the metal that supports the net, that sound is a call to prayer. That sound will drive the fanatics of both teams mad. It is the sound of victory and the sound of loss. It is the decision of the Gods of the Bounce, against whom we will never argue but at whom we will always curse.

There is no other sound in all of sports that comes close.

Thanks!

Googleicious!

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  • pictures of nice cheap cars in orem utah – very specific, nothing to do with me.
  • buffalo milk shot catalina cacao – that’s the second hit on that recipie, so I went back and corrected it.
  • blimp races – this may have been an insider, who else would search on blimp races?
  • touring california in a winnebaggo – bad spelling meets pun
  • driving from san diego to bozeman – almost relevant!
  • czech girlfriend blog – I hope they enjoyed my homage to Marianna
  • “best trophy” sports – Lord Stanley’s Cup, of course!
  • “wait to be seated” sign – pointed to the regularization episode
  • Pacific Solarium Homepage
  • every name on the stanley cup – I’d be interested in that, too
  • crazy license argeements – linked to my EULA episode, of course
  • megan smells – linked to my extremely important discussion about the proper use of perfume
  • pictures of graves – I have a few here, but I don’t know if the searcher found them
  • Pictures drawn of trumpets – linked to my old coaxial trumpet get-poor-quick scheme

As usual there are tons of people looking for cooking advice. It doean’t appear to be the same people over and over, at least not on the same day, and why would someone come back repeatedly and read only that entry? All I can figure is that there is a real demand for assistance with chicken ova and for some reason I’m coming up higher in the search results. I need to rant about improperly prepared dishes more often. People came to my page for searches on four different bars, from Wyoming to San Diego.

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Episode 2: Encounter At Jakes

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As I left the Phelps Building the sun smacked me in the face like a gorilla swinging a preheated frying pan. There was no shade to be found in the stone valley between the blank-faced buildings as I beat it up 2nd Avenue. As I crossed 57th Street I thought I was going to leave my shoes behind in the melting asphalt. Halfway up the next block was Jakes.

It was a blessed relief coming out of the murderous day into that cool sanctuary. I left my hat on the rack by the door and tried without success to sop the sweat from my face with an already sodden handkerchief. The bar was quiet despite the row of the usual derelicts and bums lined along the rail. Jake saw me come in and set me up with the usual before I managed to grope my way through the darkness to my stool. “Whadaya say, Charley?” he asked.

“I’ve got to get out of this town,” I said.

“Sure, sure,” said Jake. He went back to spit-shining the glassware with a marginally clean cloth. The booze would kill anything he left behind.

“I mean it, Jake. I just need one score and I’m packing it up. West. I’ll go out to San Fran and set up there. Living’s good out there.”

“You ever been there?”

“Course I’ve been there. You know where else is nice? Seattle. Lots of fine dames in Seattle.”

“I couldn’t live there with all that rain. It’d drive me crazy.”

“You been outside today?”

Jake poured me another. “You ain’t going nowhere. You’re stuck here like the rest of us.”

“Not me, bub. I just need one good one to put a little dough in my pocket and I’ll write you from Frisco.”

“Sure, sure,” said Jake, and he moved to serve one of the stiffs down the bar.

My eyes had adapted enough that I could survey the usual suspects propped against the mahogany bar. About the saddest bunch of rejects and losers you’ll ever see. I don’t know how I ended up there so often. Still, the booze was cheap. There was something different today, however. An odd feeling that didn’t belong, like someone had opened a window in the back room that opened onto a meadow of wildflowers in their riotous color fed by an icy mountain stream. Something that told of another place, beyond the sweaty stink of run-down men in a broken gin-joint somewhere in midtown. The others at the bar were glancing my direction in nervous anticipation. I glared them back into their own drinks.

The scent got stronger. I heard the sound behind me just as I caught motion in the corner of my eye. I spun around, ready for anything.

Anything except what I found there. “Mr. Lowell?” she asked in a soft, breathy voice with just a hint of Kentucky. I sit facing the door, so she must have been there the whole time, in the shadows of one of the dim booths along the back wall.

“That’s right, sister.”

“May I buy you a drink?”

I have a saying. Never say no to anything free. “All right,” I said. I have another saying. Nothing is free. There’d be payback, I knew. Looking at this lady I was willing to pay the price. I had no idea at the time how steep that price would be.

That she was a lady there was no doubt. She had more class in her little finger than all the rest of us in the bar combined. She was dressed in a sleek black number that hugged her graceful contours like a coat of silk paint. Her hair was long and fell in waves as dark as her dress except where they reflected the feeble lights in the bar. She looked at me, one eye lost behind those raven tresses, the other a bottomless pool in the dim light, her eyebrow a perfect dark arch against her porcelain skin. She smelled like wildflowers and money. She smelled like San Francisco. A cigarette hung unlit from her full, deep red lips. I produced a match and did the honors. When I was done I discovered a fresh drink waiting for me. The good stuff.

She breathed a plume of scented tobacco over her shoulder and fixed me with her gaze. “Mr Lowell,” she said, “I need your help.”

Tune in next time for part one of: The Widow’s Tale!

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Random stuff

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My parents have been married forty-five years. That boggles my mind. It’s longer than I’ve been alive. (Wait for it… wait for it… bingo. You get it.) They’re planning to whoop it up for their 50th, and why the heck not? Turns out there’s an eclipse just then, so the party will be off the shore of China. Count me in! My parents are very good at being married. They’re so good at it that they are constantly working to get better at it. They are the Tony Gwinn of marriage; they take batting practice every day.

Does a one-eyed dog dream in 3-D? Does a blind man dream in color?

My cousin John opined (if you knew John, you would know that ‘declared’ is a more appropriate verb) that the electric guitar is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. It sure made protest music louder. When the man has a microphone, turn up the amps. When the man has a media empire, no amp will be loud enough. The Internet is the next electric guitar. Carry on, Dr. Faustroll! Carry on, Dr. Pants! Médecins Sans Sanités! The fate of the republic rests on your shoulders! Oh, yeah, and I’m a candidate for president. (Note: that was mock French. The actual phrase for sanity is not as graceful.)

I just heard Transvision Vamp on the TV radio. I think that’s the second time I’ve heard them when I wasn’t playing the music myself. It was Baby I Don’t Care (not to be confuesed with the You’re so Square song by some other band), which is an OK tune, but further over on the pop side of the spectrum than the tunes I like the most. If I figure it out, I’ll give you a little slice of the love with a music posting á la Pants. If only learning weren’t such hard work.

I’m thinking that perhaps blasting East to hang with Jesse in his pre-fatherhood, pre-travel days, then working my way back west might make sense.

I am stunned, flummoxed, and amazed that anyone still wants George W. Bush to be president. Are you not poor enough yet? Do you not realize that being in debt is the same as being poor, and that government debt is your debt? Aren’t you tired of the billions and billions he’s spending on his war ending up in the pockets of his buddies? Have you not noticed who benefits from high oil prices?

The Czech Republic has now played hockey for exactly 1/3 of the time they’ve been on the ice. Now they’re going to have to play all 60 minutes to get past Sweden or Finland. At least the ice won’t be the slush pile it was in Prague. Those guys were wading, not skating. With so many NHL players the Czechs should be comfortable on the smaller ice, but they’ve built a team almost exclusively of skaters, and a fast rink can only help them. I really missed the mikes down on the ice while watching the Czechs demolish Germany. None of the voices of the skaters, none of the smack when stick strikes puck, and none of the crashing of skulls into boards after a good check. And, the best sound in hockey, the sound of the puck bouncing off the pipes.

According to Sam-I-Am Lujan, Rio Arriba County is where rookie state troopers are sent. “They’re all rookies. They don’t know crap.”

I still haven’t deleted the epilogue from The Monster Within. It has nothing to do with the rest of the story anymore; there are characters that don’t show up anywhere else, and obviously some history of events that never happened, but I like the way it feels. It’s a nice way to exhale at the end of the run. I guess I’ll discuss it in more detail over at the hut forum so I can put spoilers in.

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The Power of Positive Drinking

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Some people ruin their drinks with ice,
and then they ask me for advice.
They say, “I’ve never told this to anyone else before.”
— Lou Reed, The Power of Positive Drinking

I was thinking of that line even before Brian mentioned not putting ice in his beloved Lagavulin. It’s a sad day that that even needs to be said. Ice. pff.

Holy Crap! Sweet Jane just came on the TV radio station. It’s a cover, but it still counts as a plate of shrimp. It’s a good cover. Oh, man I feel good right now. I was feeling pretty good before, but then with head-slap thunder the chama monsoon rain started coming down just as the second beer was finding my nervous system. Late in the season for a monsoon, especially considering the dry August, but just what the doctor ordered for heart and land. And the smell, the smell. Ozone and soft mud. More thunder, punctuating Buffalo Springfield.

The temperature has dropped a few degrees: It’s whiskey time now. On each side of me a dog lies twitching, running with the wolves they’ve never learned they’re not.

I’m trying not to resent the arrival of the family later this afternoon. It’s their house, after all. They paid for it and everything. The only thing is, I have put the Jerry vibe into this place the last few days, and it’s just now building up to critical mass. I feel the vibe most intensely right now. It is a calm feeling despite the loud music. (Next time I get up I’m going to turn down the bass just a wee bit, bringing the vibe incrementally closer to perfection.) My quiet madness reaches out across the Chama Valley and reflects back to me off the far Brazos Peaks, rolling with the distant thunder, dancing with lightning, and I know the storm is here for me. I have called it from the place where storms sleep, roused it for one last grumbly dance across the land.

The thirsty land feels my energy, and amplifies it. The rich mud hosts tiny creatures fleeting across brief puddles, in a madcap accelerated cycle of life. Water! Grow! Sex! Die! In this frantic call to life I am unnoticed, but something rises from the muck that I smell and understand. Some bugs are getting laid tonight.

Ooo! Look! A can of mixed nuts, sitting right here next to me! Truly the Universe is resonating with me today, responding to my needs even before I know them myself.

My vibe, apparently, is a fragile one. Bringing other personalities too close to it pains it. In a bar, I can create a vibesphere, and close myself in my own aura for a few precious hours, but in a house with other people around the bubble shatters into tiny red fragments, needle-sharp little brain jammers. Better not to even try to bubbleize in the first place.

But for now I sit, pupflanked, Scotch Guarded, open, resonating. Feeling the power.

Thanks!