For the next couple of days we will be holding the official ceremonies to commemorate my sweetie’s embarking on her fifth decade of life. Heady times! Yesterday I got to meet a sister-of-sweetie, one I had not had the pleasure of meeting before, and tonight we will be gathering at the parent’s house for The Casserole.
I’m not sure what The Casserole is, but when the light of my life mentions it I can hear the capital letters.
Not sure why today is the day, but it's a story.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was sitting on a floating dock on a particularly cold lake in Arkansas, early in the morning, with Dad. We were fishing. Funny the details I remember. I had a white fishing rod with a black Zebco reel, and I was using a lure called Rebel something-or-other, which was made to go fairly deep, with an enticing wiggly action. The trout were rising at that time of the morning, looking for the morning bugs, which made the choice of lure suspect. Thirty-plus years of retrospect and that’s the only real lesson learned here.
A Boy and his Trout
I was getting better at casting, which isn’t to say good. I’d send the something-or-other out there, and patiently haul it back in, knowing that if I pulled it in too fast it would dive too deep and snag. Still, it was a good morning, me and dad out there. We had some good times, Dad and me, but not so many simple hanging-out times like that. The good ol’ boys were out in their bass boats, and more than once Dad cautioned me that my voice would carry a long way over the water.
I’d fallen into (my memory says was) silence (ha) and just thrown out a good cast when the fish struck — before my lure had time to dive below the dining line. Splish-splash, tension on the line. I spazzed. I lost the fish.
Here’s where memory gets a bit vague. As I remember, Dad cast to the point of the hubbub, hit it bang-on, and reeled in the fish. Only vaguely do I recall that the fish hadn’t even bit his hook, but he’d hit the fish on the head. I could be confusing memories there. I was young. It wasn’t a spectacular fish, eleven inches as I recall, measured on the ruler embossed on the lid of my plastic tackle box.
In any case, Dad brought home the breakfast. We agreed, there on the dock, that I would take credit. And I did. With gusto, to the point that I really believed that I’d done most of the work catching the fish — Dad had merely scooped up the opportunity I’d created.
I don’t expect many people remember that fish, but I do. It’s time to set the record straight. Dad caught that fish, plain and simple. That notwithstanding, it was a great morning sitting with Dad on that quiet lake. I’d remember it even without the fish.
The kid's growing up fast!
Z-Dawg gets his paws on the cake
Bar 301 on the tour turns out to be one in the riverside village of Mlčechvosty, in a building fuego and Marianna happen to own. The occasion was Lumír’s (rhymes with z-dawg’s) first birthday, but the party was a bit late for logistical reasons. The photos over at the gallery are a combination of looking around fuego’s place and photos that can be trotted out when the kid brings home a date and requires public humiliation.
Happy 13th, dude!
I conceded the beard title some time ago; my brother can grow a hell of a lot of hair out of his face. It only stands to reason that the same follicular overdrive should also rule his scalp. I had a head start of maybe a year, but now fuego’s hair challanges mine, with, I must admit, impressive volume.
I can still compete on style; my hair has a wave his doesn’t. But if you’ve read previous episodes you know I don’t put much stock in style points. That Girl will probably vote for me, but, well, she’s biased (and also the only vote that really matters).
Please pause with me to appreciate the phrase ‘follicular overdrive’. It’s the best thing to come from this comparison.
I’ve been even more reclusive that usual lately, and I’ve decided to give myself a challrnge that may prove substantially more diffucult than writing a novel in thirty days — instead the challenge is to get out and see friends twelve consecutive days. Just being in Little Café Near Home working while people are around doesn’t count; I actually have to interact. In fact, I should probably make a rule that LCNH doesn’t count, or I can only count it once, or something like that. I’m making this up as I go along. The goal is to break my bad habit of finding reasons not to go out when friends invite me, and maybe even come up with my own plan from time to time.
Today’s kickoff was easy; I was invited to a family dinner. Historical trivia: “Good King Winceslas” is not a Christmas carol, but a boxing day song. The 26th of December is St. Stephen’s day. While there were no Vaclav’s (rhymes with Winceslas, who was Bohemian) at the dinner, it was still a festive (and belly-busting) affair. Mmmm… duck and knedliky (potato dumplings). Homemade cookies. No carp. One bit of bad planning: I wore my “nice” blue jeans. They’re nice because I don’t wear them much. I don’t wear them much because they’re a bit on the snug side. Not the right outfit for gluttony. Whatever the reason, I was a little concerned when I declined more duck that I might hurt my host’s feelings. I was stuffed.
It was a relaxed and pleasant dinner, some conversation in English and some in Czech, and then it was home to take a nap. (One topic of discussion as dinner wound down: the amount of time different animal species spend sleeping. It’s good to be a lion.)
So day one of Twelve Days of Social is a success! I really don’t know how I’m going to pull all of them off. New Year’s Eve I’ll be going down to the center of town, which I’m told is completely crazy. You know all those warnings on fireworks? They will be disregarded. “Wear eye protection” is a common piece of advice. Not really my kind of thing, but worth seeing once. (At this point it’s such pyrotechnic madness in my imagination that I’m probably heading for disappointment.) Anyway, anyone who reads this is welcome to join me. We can meet at the statue of Winceslas. (Did you see how I brought that back around to where I started? Not bad, huh?)
So the big ol’ Seeger family reunion has wrapped up; it was good to see old friends and hang out with that bunch. Now some of That Girl’s family is in town, and we have been spending the evenings at her folks’ place. There are some interesting stories among them, and since I’m a newcomer I am also represent the perfect opportunity to drag out old stories that everyone else has heard a few times. It’s a fun group; tonight is the designated Drinkin’ and Playin’ Poker night. That should be interesting…
It is sunset, or getting on that way; the sky is still light, but starting to show pink over toward the ocean. The koi are splashing happily in their pond (or at least they seem happy from here) and the sound of the waterfall is soothing.
That paragraph took about ten minutes to write; I thought I was out of the traffic lanes but several family members stopped by to say hello. I am at a family reunion, a gathering of friendly folk who have quite a bit if DNA in common — and the people who went and got married to them. There are a lot of Seegers here, and a lot of Jerrys, but I am the only Jerry Seeger.
The kids and the koi have developed a working relationship — the kids bring bread and the glorified carp eat it. It’s a relationship that brings satisfaction to both parties.
Only, as I typed the above, the elder of the younger set informed me, “we’re going to try to annoy the fish.” Which makes me wonder: Is the ability to be annoyed a measure of intelligence? Angry’s pretty easy, but it seems like annoyance might require a little more imagination. He’s going to do it again, I just know it. Oh! There! He did it again! I knew it! Damn that pisses me off!
The youngest of the young ones just showed me her stick. “Nice and sharp!” she informed me. Oh, to be young again.
What was I going to write about again?
Those who don’t want to read me droning on about my day may wish to skip to the #—> symbol below. That’s where the story actually begins.
It was a productive day – I spent the morning recording audio as a test to see if I was qualified for a new “job” — reading texts out loud to help a professor somewhere with his research. The pay is insignificant, but I like the idea that I’m helping out. Of course, the first recording session is always the most complicated, and it wound up taking most of my morning. Next time (if I pass this test) will be much easier. I was reading about the history of mathematics, and the subject is actually quite interesting, so that’s all right.
Next came some tweaks to the upcoming release of Jer’s Novel Writer, which promises to be a small but tangible step forward in utility. One or two fewer things to think about when working, and support for the newfangled gestures that the latest macs support. (None of my equipment does, which makes debugging a crapshoot.)
Next it was out on the town with fuego; we both had computer hardware to buy. I needed an external drive that I could use to boot my laptop into the latest version of the mac operating system while leaving the old-school install intact. It would be cheaper to wait until I get to the US to buy it, but I need to make sure I can maintain the software before I leave.
#—> (don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything)
Hardware purchased, we stopped off at a café to get some writing done – me on my novel package for the writing workshop, fuego on some advertising copy he’s been hired to write. “You’re invited to dinner,” he told me. Thinking of the barren wasteland that is my refrigerator at home, I gladly accepted. fuego exchanged messages with the missus and I was committed. It was a while later that fuego told me “Oh, by the way, MaK’s mom and a friend of hers will be there.”
Hm. I like my brother’s mother-in-law, she’s a cool lady, but this night was starting to sound like more than I was prepared to handle. “I expect they’ll just cluster around the kid and we can escape unnoticed,” fuego said, or something to that effect. We stopped by the store on the way for beer and cheese, then headed up to their apartment. Already there was a mother and daughter, neither of whom fuego or I had been warned about.
Fast forward. I’m sitting at the kitchen table in a very small apartment, watching the women gathered around MaK as she cleans the baby’s butt. The conversation is about baby poop, in czech. I am not in my element.
Skip forward a little farther. MaK produces a table that lists the time of every feeding the baby has ever had. The older women are impressed. “They’re not like us,” fuego says, but not in exactly those words, although one of the womenfolk, whom I’d met once before, is quite a charismatic lady. We hadn’t counted on her when we figured how many beers to bring.
Join me in another hop forward in time as I witness jealousy among the women toward the one who is currently holding the baby. When I’m holding a child, I’m am thinking nothing except “please oh please don’t let me break this thing.” Apparently something on the missing leg of the Y-chromosome is capable of convincing one that holding a tiny helpless thing that you could kill by sneezing is relaxing. Therapeutic, even.
Not long after that, the baby was asleep (despite periodic checks by enthusiastic fans) and I sat and listened to the flow of conversation. I understood more than I expected, but even if I had been able to form sentences in a timely manner I would have remained quiet. It was not my conversation, and the language it was conducted in was not the largest obstacle. Soon after I was expressing my regret that I had to go. Yes, sadly, I had no choice. Things to do and whatnot. You understand. They certainly did.
I haven’t been very regular about posting lately; sorry about that. It’s not that nothing has been happening — quite the contrary in fact. One thing I’ve been working on is a small documentary with fuego. It’s not entirely my story to tell; but it all begins one night in the distant past when the Little Café Near Home didn’t close at the usual time. In fact, it stayed open for a long time, and there were beers, and Becherovka, and other beverages involved. Exactly what happened next is the subject of great speculation, so fuego assembled a crack forensics team (himself) and a camera crew (me) to trace the route he possibly took on the way home that fateful night.
Somewhere out there is a bush fuego fought. (Judging from appearances later, the bush won. This may or may not be when he dented his laptop.) Somewhere out there is a hotel foyer with vending machines, between which fuego decided to take a little nap. The hotel might or might not be near a gas station. The rest is shrouded in mystery.
We knew it was going to be a major undertaking, so we got an early start with breakfast at Café Fuzzy. fuego was carrying the backpack he had worn that night, a pair of headphones similar to the ones he lost that night, and various other props. Once I had a bit of tea in my bloodstream we repaired to Little Café Near Home to begin the quest — after a wee bit of Becherovka for inspiration, of course.
The trek took us from my quiet little neighborhood, past a sprawling cemetery or two, and then into a busier part of town that I don’t frequent very often. We stopped at key intersections along the way, trying to figure out just why fuego ended up walking the direction he did. We tried a few experimental shots as well, and the traditional view-from-the-passing-tram shot and whatnot.
Finally we reached the neighborhood of Karlin, where most evidence indicates the hotel should be. (The bush may have been the victim of construction.) We walked the streets of Karlin as the sunny morning gave way to clouds and eventually rain. Still we persevered, searching for clues that would lead us to the fabled hotel, stopping only at a little bar called Bistro 4×4 to transfer data from cameras to computer — and have a wee nip of Becherovka — and another break for a late lunch and all that. Then it was right back out on the streets. The rain eventually moved on.
We didn’t find the hotel. There are only so many streets to search, and we did them all. No hotel. After something like ten miles of wandering, we realized that a new plan was called for. The new plan: go to a bar we passed on the way and watch hockey. This new plan turned out to be much simpler; and after a short tram ride we were settled comfortably in an old rail car turned into a bar called Orient Express.
It turned out to be a day of questions rather than answers. We still have more filming to do, and more research as well. Will we ever find the hotel? Does it really exist at all, or is it some sort of ghost inn, that only appears when the moon is full, a Shangri-La for weary, disoriented travelers?
Pivo on the Orient Express
Here it is Sunday already and I haven’t mentioned that my sister, Carol Anne Byrnes, is on the cover over at Piker Press this week. Check it out!
First, let’s get comfy with the facts. Maybe you think you’ve got a pretty good mom, but mine is better. (Sorry, mom, don’t mean to embarrass you, but facts are facts. You can’t argue with Science.) I grew up in one of those bizarre stable households where the children are loved and supported by both parents. Maybe you’ve read about something like that. I lived it. I still live it, but from a safe distance.
Because Mom is so great, there are three important lessons I did not learn.
Mom takes good care of us. Almost every meal I ate as a child was a home-cooked masterpiece. As the Pickiest Eater On Earth, I did not fully appreciate how much toil went into each dish I pushed away. Years later, at a dinner with mom’s side of the family, I watched Dupes push a plate back that still had squash casserole on it (he feels the same way about that stuff I do), and say, “Thank you, Munzy, that was a wonderful meal.” I realized he never, ever got up from the table without thanking the cook. I, on the other hand, had never given the wonderful meals I had been served my whole life a second thought. I try now to always thank the cook, but I’m sure I miss sometimes.
There are a lot of things I’ve probably forgotten to say thank you for. Big things like plane tickets, little things like, well, all those thousands of tolerances and smiles that made me who I am now. It’s impossible to say thank you for each and every one, there’d be no time for anything else. For all those little things my only way to say thank you is to crash ahead with this big dumb experiment called life and do the best I can. For the big things, though, the numerable things, specific thanks are in order. Thanks, Mom.
Now, forty years later, I’m pretty good at please and thank you. Better than some, not as good as others, but ahead of the curve. I’m a nice guy, polite out the wazoo. (Mom may beg to differ.) But that leads me to the third thing I didn’t learn so well. The thing that’s going to decide whether I’m hanging out with the sheep or the goats when the final horn blows. Please and Thank You are phrases to show appreciation for something someone else has done. More powerful than either of those, and the lesson I have yet to master, is the phrase “Let me do that.”
There are lots of permutations of that phrase, but it comes down to pulling your ass out of the comfy chair after the Thanksgiving dinner and helping with the dishes. It’s about running to the store when you’re tired, or folding someone else’s laundry. There could be a lot more ‘Let me to that’ in my family, but after all these years it is a lesson I’m still working on. Living alone is good practice for that.
I guess. like the rest of humanity, I am a work in progress. Overall, however, things are going well for me. I’m on a good road, and it was Mom who pointed the way.
fuego is getting married this week, and I have been swept up in the activity, the non-stop go-go-go of preparation and hanging out with a bunch of people who are on vacation in a foreign country. I’m not even sure when I’ll be able to post this notification that I won’t be posting much.
Episodes should return to their irregular schedule around May 7th.
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.
I discovered quite by accident while looking at where my visitors come from that my brother has started a blog called Fuego’s Place. I put its link over there in the “fun things” section. I’m not sure he wants anyone to know about it yet, because he hasn’t actually told anyone about it, but too bad. Go take a look. If you like it, send him some bourbon.
That’s not the official name of the night. It’s something like $2 pint night. But I’ve always called it Cheap Bastard Night. Others have tried to rename it Two-for Tuesday or Tightwad Tuesday. Nah. It’s Cheap Bastard Night, because I’m a cheap bastard. I named it after myself.
It was like a reunion at Tiki tonight. Old faces I hadn’t seen in a long time. Some I never expected to see again. The biggest surprise was Connecticut Bill, an incredibly sharp guy whose life is vanishing up his nose. Was vanishing, perhaps, if his time in jail gave him a chance to straighten out. Observers are not optimistic on that score.
I didn’t notice Connecticut Bill right off the bat, so I don’t think he was there when I came in. He’s hard to miss with his energy and his opinions on everything under the sun. He’s also the one who will play Velvet Underground on the jukebox. When I walked in the front door I saw Bevins sitting there and I climbed aboard the stool next to his. After a brief moment of non-recognition (he hadn’t seen me clean-shaven yet) I recieved a warm welcome and unbidden Tiki Dave was pouring me an Anchor Steam. The game was coming on soon and I was in my happy place.
Suddenly on my left appears another old buddy from my days hanging out at Joe’s Place. Tom had selected alcohol as the drug for destroying his life, but for the last few months he has managed to get it back together. Naturally, that means a lot less time in bars for Tom. They’re just not as fun when you’re drinking non-alcoholic brew. Tom is one of the only people in the world to have read The Test, an incomplete work that I set aside when it started to spiral out of control. The story has gotten so big that it will probably end up being a series. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in an author-driven genre, but I feel strongly that even in a series each book should stand on its own. Which means The Test needs an ending, even if it is just volume one. Tom’s commentary on the story was, well, embarrassingly gushing. And protracted. He had read the incomplete work in 16 uninterrupted hours. I promised him I would put an ending on it and get it published. He gave me a dollar to help offset my expenses in the meantime.
Somewhere during that time, Connecticut Bill showed up and there we all were, lined up with our elbows on the bar, watching the home team blow a lead, Billy feeding the jukebox and telling about his time in jail. We talked about this and that, nothing important, favorite comic strips, rehashing some of the old stories that had been dormant too long.
Finally it was time to leave that place. I moved on without ceremony, as if it was just another day at the bar. Things to do, etc. I left, knowing that we might or might never all be there again.
For your protection, Science has established the above threat level. Adjust your duct tape supplies accordingly.
The Great Adventure
Stories
Bars of the World Tour
Idle Chit-Chat
