A Parting

Thick, round, heavy rivets bound the massy painted layers of steel that supported the throng of passengers and seers-off who hugged, laughed, cried, and conspired to smuggle illicit bottles of vodka and rum disguised as purified water.

"I guess this is goodbye," Ellen said.

"I guess so," Richard replied.

Ellen was not dressed for travel. She wore maroon sweat pants, a white sweatshirt with maroon lettering that spelled out "CSULB", and white sneakers with no socks.

Richard could not stop staring at her bare ankle. It was what attracted him to her in the first place. Long ago, they had both been working in an industrial kitchen, scraping food off airline crockery and dropping the dishes into a pool of ultrasonically vibrating water. Both of them were wearing standard issue pajama-like work uniforms, rubber gloves, and hair nets. But Ellen wore no socks, and Richard, without forethought, asked her if he could bite her ankle. She had said yes. Later, in bed, she told him she had not expected him to actually do it; he had turned her on and unlocked her heart. But now, this bit of exposed flesh had become a fetish for him; it was no longer part of the whole Ellen, and never really had been, for him.

"You know, I still can't believe you're going to do this," Ellen blurted.

"What's the difference? What do you care what I do? Why did you even want to see me off? I thought you didn't love me any more."

"I still care about you. Come on, Richard, we've been all through that. Look, I don't want to be here if it's too hard for you. I should go."

Panic seized him, and he dared not show it, lest she flee.

He gazed at her and breathed; he did not know what to say to make her stay, and had no idea what he might say that would give her cause to leave. He was afraid to speak, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. Their relationship was a house of cards, the outer layers of which had already toppled, and the weight of the collapsed parts threatened what little structure was still intact. Richard knew that the least upset would bring it all down for good, and he was nowhere near being able to admit that to himself.

"You're gonna have a good time," she said hopefully.

He bristled, sensing pity. Every word wounded him. He could not reply without wincing. "Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be great."

Neither of them believed that, but both needed it to be so.

Great. Now I'M angry.

From Yahoo, today: "Video Game Angers Families of September 11."

Why is it news when some group gets "angry" over some perceived offense? The presumption is that I want, or need, to know when some group gets "angry." The news media love this kind of headline; we see it and hear it all the time, do we not? Shrill voices sell papers.

Muslims get angry. Christians get angry. Dems and Repubs get angry. Unions are angry. Illegal aliens are angry. Blacks are angry. Whites are angry. Latinos are angry. Women are angry. Men are angry. (Funny, you don't hear about Asians getting angry much. They're too busy getting ahead to care about bullshit.)

Well, I don't care at ALL. Their "anger" is none of my god damned business, and mine is none of theirs. Only comedians--good comedians--have anger worth sharing with strangers.

On a related note: I wish one of these Olympic gymnasts, male or female, would turn around and administer a sound beating to the camera person who is literally up in his or her grill. The moment of pride or pain is interesting in a voyeuristic way, but does the camera have to be so close to these poor people? Especially if they're sad...Christ, give them a break. We don't need to count their teeth or their teardrops.

Chowing Down on Jesus

I should have torn the wings off that butterfly before I ate it. It's hard to maintain a flinty survival attitude toward weaker prey when it's tickling your soft palate with its desperate flailing about. Biting into the thorax (and thus quickly extinguishing its brief existence) required only enough nerve to withstand the taste and texture; the wings, on the other hand, stuck to the roof of my mouth and proved nearly impossible to swallow.

When I was seven years old, I received my First Communion at St. James Catholic Church in Redondo Beach, California. Daily for two weeks prior to the big day, we trudged out of our school rooms, across Pacific Coast Highway and Vincent Street, and into the airy church to rehearse our movements. Into and out of the pews we marched, up the center aisle two-by-two to the communion rails, then peeled off like members of a marching band to assume the right- and left-most positions at the rail, upon which we kneeled, hands folded, and awaited the priest's administration of the sacrament.

Nowadays, communion consists of lay people handing you a chunk of bread or a communion wafer which you pop into your mouth at your leisure. Then you have the option of taking a slug of wine out of a communal (retch) chalice. Presumably, the fact that the wine has transubstantiated into the blood of Christ ensures the total annihilation of bacteria, virus, or cootie. Fortunately for me, I stopped receiving communion long before the modernization of the sacrament. No, when I was training for communion and for years afterward, the administration of the body of Christ (only the priest got blood) was reserved for priests and they were the only ones entitled to touch the small round wafers. Every Catholic kid of a certain age knows the story of the woman who removed the wafer from her mouth and put it in a linen kerchief in her purse, only to find later that the kerchief was soaked in blood. Evidently Jesus could still be mortally injured (on top of having been crucified) by contact with profane hands. So only priests were allowed to touch the hosts. You would be kneeling at the rail, hands always folded, and the priest would walk up to you with a fancy chalice full of hosts and say "The body of Christ," to which you would respond "Amen" and then lean your head back and open your mouth (optionally sticking out your tongue and closing your eyes) so that the priest could feed you the divine disc. You weren't supposed to chew it; Jesus would melt in your mouth! If the priest dropped the host, or if you somehow fumbled getting it into your mouth, an altar boy stood next to the priest holding a fancy metal tray (platen) under your chin. I never saw the platen actually used for its purpose, but it was insurance against the host hitting the floor and creating a bloody puddle, I suppose. The platen, being blessed, was okay for contact.

On the Big Day, we filed into the church as rehearsed, and waited restlessly for the Mass to unfold its tedious mysteries until Communion time came. This was it! We knew just what to do. March up the aisle, kneel at the rail, fold the hands, reply "Amen", and above all DO NOT TOUCH THAT HOST. I don't remember much about the procession up the aisle or what it felt like kneeling at the rail or whether I closed my eyes or stuck my tongue out. No, all I remember is that as soon as that dry, cardboard-like wafer entered my mouth it attached itself to the roof of my mouth and would not budge. No amount of mental pleading or desperate pushing with my tongue (I figured my tongue was okay) would peel it off my hard palate. I began to panic. I had to get up from the rail and start my walk back to my pew...what should I do? Oh my God, what if it stayed stuck to the roof of my mouth until it turned into blood like the lady with the handkerchief? I would be drooling a mouthful of blood! I would get my white shirt all bloody, with my parents and Sister Rosalia watching! I needed to pee, and I had a decision to make: Whose wrath would be worse, my parents' for bloodying my shirt, or God's (and Sister Rosalia's) for sticking my finger in my mouth to detach the damned thing from the roof of my mouth? Ah, but I was young enough to let my instincts take over (I was still learning how to overthink but not yet a professional at it.) I stuck my index fingernail right in there and popped the host off my palate and commenced to chew it up, thus completing my sacrilege. At that very moment I found myself looking at the scowling face of Sister Rosalia. I kept walking, though, past my beaming parents (I imagine they were beaming; I have no recollection of their expressions in that moment; they were probably trying not to laugh at my predicament) and into the bathroom where I checked my mouth for blood which, to my profound relief, was not to be seen.

Chivalry or chauvinism?

All the best parking spaces are designated "handicapped" spaces now. There's no point in looking for a good space at Target or Wal-Mart, because ALL of them are off limits to those with no connections at the DMV. Now, I used to date a girl whose dad was legitimately handicapped (leg amputation due to phlebitis), and I am extremely sympathetic to those in genuine need. But how do you determine that? What do you look for in your disabled people? Crutches? An extremity encased in plaster? A cane or walker? A wheelchair? Well, don't look to closely here in Dixie. Most of the preferred parking spaces are occupied by cars and trucks driven by the morbidly obese. These gluttonous connoisseurs of the deep-fried Twinkie and the Flamin' Hot pork rinds not only monopolize the good parking spaces, they are the first to use those little motorized shopping vehicles that your kid begs you to let him play with. No longer able to walk without pain or without tipping over, these gelatinous junk food junkies can't be bothered to make the connection between NOT EATING SO MUCH and NOT BEING SO FAT. I know this because I see the contents of their carts. Oh, and they usually SMOKE too. None of which would bother me, if they would just STAY THE HELL OUT OF THOSE PARKING SPACES. The walking would do them good; try telling THEM that.

No offense.

Anyway, I told you all that just to tell you this. My local Best Buy (and, I'm sure, other places) now reserves a parking space NEXT to the handicapped spaces, with a sign that says "This space reserved for expectant mothers and families with infants." Now, wait a minute. This might as well read "If you're a woman of childbearing age, park here." What the hell are people going to do--challenge a woman to prove she's pregnant? Is that a baby bump or too many nachos and Zima? And why do families with infants need to park closer? What's that stroller for? Are we worried about the wheels falling off? Or about the mother getting tired carrying that infant? Well, maybe that mother and infant should be at HOME instead of spending money they don't have buying gadgets they don't need. I know people will think I'm wrong (or would, if they read this crap) but I don't care. How about a space for middle-aged white men who are just fuckin' beat from teaching teenagers all day?

Cui bono?

The biggest fad in public education is called "inclusion." It means that stupid kids, immature kids, mean kids, and criminals should all be in the same classes as your kids. This (supposedly) preserves the self-esteem of the defective ones and teaches "tolerance" to the normal ones. What it really does is force teachers to water down the curriculum so that all are working on the same (low) level. These classes are ostensibly "regular" classes but if they are "co-taught" classes, then one of the teachers is the special ed teacher and the other is the regular teacher. These co-teachers are supposed to plan together, teach together, assess together, etc. It's a myth. It is impossible for two teachers to create effective plans for 30 or more kids who range in IQ from 125 to 72. Used to be that there were separate classes for "low" kids, but thanks to the shrill voices of PC and spineless politicians, teachers are forced to rob normal kids of precious time while they try to tame the wild ones or try to remediate the infantile skills of the low ones.
There is NO science to support this "collaborative teaching" effort (retch). Putting like-talented kids together used to be called "tracking" and it ensured that teachers could do the most with the group they had, without worrying about losing the dummies or boring the einsteins. "Teach to the middle," teachers are told. This makes sense in a 20 point IQ spread. It's totally impossible in a 50 point spread.

Parents, beware. If your kid has anything on the ball, keep them out of "co-taught" or "mainstreamed" classes.

The devil likes nice weather, too.

MAN (mid 40's, early 50's, mild mannered, friendly face, jovial disposition)

LIBRARIAN ( late 50's early 60's, bespectacled, mostly gray-haired, wears trousers)

The place: a generic medium-sized public library. Could be in Florida.

The time: now.

MAN: Hi. Could you tell what I have and overdue? I have my card.

LIBRARIAN: Let's see. You have one overdue item, "Cartoon Network Haunted Halloween."

MAN: What are the late fees on that?

LIBRARIAN: Twenty-five cents per day late. It was due four days ago.

MAN: OK, no problem, I'll get it back tomorrow or the next day.

LIBRARIAN: You don't have it with you?

MAN: No, I was just stopping by to look at some other stuff and I thought I'd check in, see what's outstanding.

LIBRARIAN: Have a nice day.

Two days later...

MAN: Hi, I'd like to settle my overdue account. I dropped off the video last night in the after-hours slot.

LIBRARIAN: Your card please? (MAN hands her the card.) That will be six dollars.

MAN: What?

LIBRARIAN: Six dollars; it was six days overdue.

MAN: But you told me two days ago it was twenty-five cents a day! That's a dollar-fifty.

LIBRARIAN: It's twenty-five cents for videotapes. This was a DVD. DVD's are a dollar a day.

MAN: You saw it was a DVD when you looked up my account two days ago. You remember me, right? You remember telling me it was twenty-five cents, right? Why didn't you tell me it was a dollar a day two days ago?

LIBRARIAN: Sir, it's six dollars for the late fees on this DVD.

MAN: (paying the six dollars) It's not the money; I have six dollars. It would just be nice if you would admit you made a mistake. I know you remember me from the other day. You know you told me it was twenty-five cents.

LIBRARIAN: (throwing her hands up) Sir, I don't want to argue about this.

MAN: I don't want an argument. I only want you to be honest. Why can't you just be honest? Why can't you just admit you made a mistake? I paid you the money already.

LIBRARIAN: Can I help the next person please?

Just say please.

If I hear about one more celebrity "doing battle" with some addiction or another I'm going to vomit. Why? Because it's not a "battle" at all--until you decide to stop. So honestly, let's cut the crap. Before you stop, it's called a "party." Then, when you try to stay stopped, you can say you're "battling your demons" or whatever pseudo-noble term you want to use.

Proverbs 11:29

Before I moved here--Central Florida--I flew out here to visit my sister in law's high school English classes. I figured it would be a good idea to see what a teacher does, before actually applying for a job. A couple of her more astute students spotted me as an outsider and asked me what I was doing there. I told them, "Well, I'm going to move here and become a teacher." To which they replied, "Why? California's better. Florida sucks."

If I'd known then what I know now, I would have taken their advice and stayed put. Why? California's better. Florida sucks.

Look, I make the best of things, which is all any of us do anyway. I have things the way I want them, so I won't make too much noise about the ways in which Florida sucks. But I will say without hesitation that California is better. Way better. How?

1) Geography. Southern California's "landscape diversity" is unmatched except maybe by New Zealand's. When you can go body surfing, desert biking, and snowboarding on the same day, you are not going to be bored by the lay of the land.

2) Climate. Southern California's climate cannot be beat anywhere in the solar system. Never too hot, never too cold, no rain, no snow except in the mountains. And none of this GOD DAMNED HUMIDITY. People who move to Florida from the Northeast are ignorant. They think the weather is so beautiful here, just because it doesn't snow. They do not know what they are talking about.

3) IQ. People are smarter in Southern California. They have to be, because there's so much more competition for jobs.

4) Jobs. There are JOBS in Southern California. Other than "waitress" and "cook" and "housekeeper" and "geriatric nurse," I mean.

5) Beauty. A Central Florida 10 is a Southern California 7. Yes, really.

6) Entertainment. Los Angeles is no worse than second to New York City for entertainment options. Music, theater, Hollywood, Venice Beach...really, the list is too long. Sure, Orlando has some cool Disney and Universal stuff (the suckiness of the Magic Kingdom notwithstanding), but that grows stale all too quickly.

7) Opportunity. In any field, Southern California's occupational opportunities are unmatched anywhere. If you want to be a dancing fish smoker, you can develop that skill at the Learning Annex at Santa Monica College. They'll even help place you.

8) Gambling. LA to Vegas in five hours; Daytona to Biloxi in...who cares?

I'll stop here. My point is that the kids were right, but here I am anyway. See, when I went back to SoCal for Christmas and New Year's, I was expecting this huge emotional wallop along one of two lines: 1) "Oh my God, what have I done! I miss California! I need to move back here!" or 2) "God in heaven, get me out of here and back to Florida! This place is crazy!"

As it turned out, my reaction was somewhere in between. Yes, I miss California, but not like I missed it a month ago. Now I see that it's not going anywhere, and that I can always get on a plane when I need to bury my feet in the cool sands of Redondo Beach. And yes, I felt a little relief coming back to Florida, but only because it's now my home. I've made it so. I'm living how I want and doing what I please. And besides, wherever my wife and son are, there is home. "Home is where the heart is" -- I finally get it.

So I feel a little like John Scopes. I've been dragged through the ringer, and although I have to admit defeat (leaving So Cal for Fla), my penalty (like his $100 fine) is not nearly as bad as it might have been. I came out ahead; let the wind blow.

Tropical depression

The flash and rumble of a rainstorm woke me at 5:00 AM. I shuffled into the living room and turned on the news, to see if there was a "named storm" brewing. That's important here in Florida because if the National Weather Service officially "names" a tropical storm, then your homeowner's insurance grinds into low gear. They'll only cover 80 percent of your losses, and you have to pay something like one and a half percent of your purchase price as a deductible. Or something usurious like that. There's nothing to be done about it by watching the news, of course, but at least you find out how much to worry.

Anyway, the weatherman didn't say anything about a named storm. He did, however, issue a tornado warning for my county and others. He said that he "wasn't trying to scare" me, but he wanted me "to take action". Such action, he noted, included hiding in a closet or under a bed! I wondered for a moment whether he meant I should actually stop watching his weathercast and leave the room, or just rest assured that he was concerned enough to offer the advice and thus prove that Channel 2 Action News is the caringest news organization in this one-ass town.

I did the only prudent thing; I went into denial about the tornado warning and punched up SportsCenter. I love football!

It's hot here.

Putting up Christmas decorations in Florida feels decidedly ridiculous. Although I did have to scrape frost off my windshield last "winter," it's just so damned balmy here that inflatable snowmen and polar bears and penguins seem as out of place as snowballs in hell, which figures. ("Florida--Like Hell, Only Hotter" reads the popular t-shirt.)

I went up to the attic to fetch the boxes full of seasonal stuff, and came back down looking like Harry Belafonte after the banana harvest. I was dripping. Then we started putting up stocking holders, snowman sculptures, reindeers, and the decorative fireplace screen. I love this stuff, but even when it's cold here, there is nothing remotely wintry about the great state of F.L.A.

I'll be spending Christmas and New Year's in Los Angeles, though...where the weather figures to be about the same. But at least on a clear day in SoCal, you can actually see snow-covered mountains from Redondo Beach. The only thing you can see from any beach in Florida is water and sand. In case you've never been here, it's flat as a flounder.

There's one born every minute.

The New York Dolls, or what's left of them, appeared on "Soundstage," which is the new "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert." To his credit, DJ was still slim, albeit a little creased, and long in the false tooth. The band sounded as good as they were supposed to, but it was weird seeing them on a high-tech stage with TV monitors all around. It was like they were a museum piece instead of a band with a new album out. Everything was too slick on stage and the camera angles came fast and furious. Well, hello? The band is supposed to be fast and furious! Which they were, so the camera work was totally superfluous and downright annoying. But then the band pulled the ultimate boner: they played "Personality Crisis" at much too fast a tempo. This is not uncommon with long-established bands playing their biggest--or only--hit. There's a tendency to rush through it, almost apologetically. But to make matters worse, DJ was laughing during it, as if to say "Hey, we're just doing this for a lark; I'm not taking this seriously." That's his prerogative, of course, and maybe I'm the pathetic one for expecting him to try to deliver a sincere performance. Maybe he was laughing because he knew he couldn't hit the high notes any more. But why would any performer purposely mock his own success? The only answer I can think of is that it was for the money--in which case, I'm the sucker for watching.

The feeling will pass...the feeling will pass...

There was an advertisement on the school district's website. The ad was for a job opening, and the opening was for a DBA. I know I could have gotten deep into the interview process, and maybe even won the job. The salary range's bottom end was ten thousand dollars more than I'm making now, and the high end was off the teacher salary charts. I thought wistfully, and with much heavy sighing, about how nice it was to make lots of money and never give it a thought. I can't do that any more. Then I imagined myself back in a cubicle, fixing errors, analyzing code, carrying a PAGER...and I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I wouldn't be able to go back (unless I was really, really desperate, which I'm not), so I didn't apply for the job. After I'd made my mind up, I still felt a kind of longing, almost a yearning, for the old moneyed days. That will pass, right?

I'm in Florida, and I'm a teacher.

Has the ratio of smart kids to stupid kids changed? I'll never see 49 again, so that puts me over the hill in the eyes of many, but I think we were smarter in my day. I blame TV, consumerism, and uninvolved parents, and not necessarily in that order. Sorry, but families worked better when Mom (or Dad, I suppose) stayed home and reared the kids and made damn sure they did their homework. And kids were smarter when they didn't have so much god damned television so they played more and read more. Why do I finger consumerism? Because back in the day, if you couldn't afford something you just did without it. Now, both Mom and Dad work in order to afford the big screen, or the house they can't really afford (don't get me started on the real estate debacle). So who's minding Junior? MTV, that's who. Which would be OK, if Junior was studying MTV with a critical eye. But most Juniors are not. They are passive receptacles for the ideas of others, and they are not critical. They have few opinions, if you define "opinion" as a thought-out position. They have reactions, of course, which they flatter themselves as being opinions, but they are not. I keep telling the kids, fine, play the games, but learn to write the games as well. Most will not. We're teaching our kids to be consumers and not producers. How long can a nation of consumers hold out? What happens when the money runs out? Who knows...we can't even count back change any more.

Why do I live here?

One reason is the carefree adventure I just had with my kid. Unobstructed (mostly) and unmolested (mostly) by automobile traffc, we rode our bikes all the way to the bakery where my wife works and then we stuffed ourselves, gratis. Then we ambled across the parking lot to Target and lounged about on the patio furniture, cracking jokes and cracking up. All the while, we're basking in the gentle warmth and tropical breezes that sometimes caress this godforsaken peninsula. When it's nice here, it's very nice.

I don't care what you think. Wait, yes I do.

I'm only writing a blog because it makes me write, period. I can defend what I'm writing, but that's not my purpose. I'm exhibitionistic enough to want to see my stuff on a screen, but not so insecure that I care whether anyone else does. Perversely, however, I hope someone's reading this.

I ask my students what they think about the war in Iraq. Why should they even care? Has war always been so meaningless? I wonder what the vibe was, back in WWII. If we were bombed again, would enlistments soar? I don't count the WTC as a bombing, by the way, because it wasn't. It was wrongheaded to focus the USA's resources on anything other than finding and imprisoning OBL. Now, of course, we've squandered all that global goodwill on the Iraq fiasco. Which raises the question, do we feel safer? Well, did you feel safe before? If you did, then you probably feel safe now. If you didn't before, then probably nothing's changed for you, either.

If I have to explain it, it's not funny.

There's nothing funny about the trend of deliberately misspelling (or concocting) baby names. These are pathetically uneducated attempts to make our offspring "unique" but it only makes them confusing and defensive and, eventually, embarassed. As a school teacher, I've come across such idiocies as "Kyla" (whatever the hell that means); "Shreall" (pronounced "Shirelle"); and "Savahannah" (pronounced "Savannah"). Other insults include Jazmyn, Antawn, Chone ("Sean"), and, God help us, "Jhon". Which is worse: deliberate stupidity, accidental stupidity, or accidental stupidity that just thinks it's being deliberately stupid?

And speaking of stupid, Bee Movie. Don't waste your kid's time.