The People in Your Neighborhood

One of the best things about living in a city like Portland for almost your whole life is that there are people all over the city that become part of your living community, just by virtue of the fact that they too live and work in the city. There are many places I can go and see the same faces that I've seen there for years--some of the booksellers at Powell's (especially Hawthorne, but downtown too). Barisitas like super hot Corey (that's big M to you, Qwanty) who works at Stumptown, but worked at Common Grounds for years. DJs--especially the kind who spin 80s tunes and favor velvet pants. Bartenders like Kip and BLT. Or regulars like the guys at BOG (including the artist otherwise known as Justin, of the painting of the girl with tiny hands).

One of my favorite neighborhood people, though, is Ivy. Ivy works at Arvey's Office supplies on Grand. I have long preferred to service my considerable office supply habit at Arvey's rather than at one of the huge suburban chain stores, and Ivy is one of the big reasons. She's very cool--always smiling, always sporting some arty jewelry, always quick with the small talk, or compliments, or catalogs for special orders. She has been at the front register at Arvey's ever since I started going there, which was not long after I started driving. To me, she's a one-woman institution.

Today I stopped in to pick up some of the black pens I like and I got into her line to check out. She mentioned, as she was ringing up my purchase, that she was retiring at the end of this week. She's going to devote herself to relaxing and making art. This is awesome for Ivy, because I'm sure that she totally deserves to spend time doing something that makes her really happy. This is much less awesome for Ivy's longtime customers, for whom shopping at Arvey's is not going to be quite the same anymore.

Speaking of

Qwanty and social networking sites. I told her a long time ago that I would write on the following subject. Maybe now is the time.

So, there were these two guys that I knew growing up--Stace and Lance. They were older guys (probably 5 years older) who lived in the neighborhood. They were enough older than me that I never really had much to do with them, although I think that they stole money from me the one time that I had a lemonade stand with my 1st brother (the one who Qwanty likes to call "Rimmy"). Anyway, L & S were the kind of neighborhood guys who remained friends all the way through high school. And they were seniors when I was a freshman. This was the first time since elementary school that I was anywhere where I'd see them on a regular basis.

Coincidentally, freshman year is when I met Qwanty, who ended up having a crush on Stace.* Now, don't hold this against her. I think that we had a silent pact in high school to split all the guys we knew down the middle so that between the two of us we had crushes on most of the male population of CHS.** I did think that this particular crush was ridiculous though. And you will soon see why.

You may be thinking that this is just a nostalgic post, but I'm giving you background so that you can understand why this is particularly silly.

Here's the deal. A few months ago, while hoping that a very old crush of mine could be found on Facebook (no such luck!), I came across Stace's Facebook page. And curiosity dictated that I check out a website dedicated to this guy and his apparent wife. I find this website shocking. I mean, G-- knows that I've got enough internet presence to not throw stones, but, really? They have their own swag? I can order a tank top with a picture of Stace as a child with the word "player" written across it? I can contact Heidi about her semi-precious stone jewelry? Or I can book Stace to DJ at my next blowout? I can check out their latest theme party and/or vaca pictures?

I don't even know what to say about this kind of bizarre self-promotion. I mean, we probably could have predicted something like this. This website seems completely in keeping with his personality. Here' s the problem. Thirty years ago, a guy like Stace would have been the type to invite people over to his house to have dinner, look at 400 slides of his last cruise to Greece, and then maybe listen to a pitch for the latest multi-level marketing scheme in which he was involved. Now this personality can bring his special kind of self-absorption to the whole world via the internets.

Listen, I'll continue to write pointless, self-indulgent, and sometimes snarky posts--but I promise you--dear readers--no coffee mugs with pictures of a young KRD with the word "princess" underneath.

*She also, and for the life of me I can't remember why she did this, drew a picture of Lance at one point. It was amazing, because it looked exactly like him, but also exactly like Mozart at the same time. It was a picture of Mance, or Lozart. I still have it in my dusty, dusty archives.

**I think that we only overlapped once. On Chris Clark, of all people. But I've written about that before.

Teaser

True story. Last night I got a text message from J-Bro that consisted of the word blog typed over and over again. This is not the first time she has pressured me. My recent writing hiatus has also prompted promptings from other readers.

The good (?) news is that I have a list of things that I have been needing to blog about. (And I use the term "need" very loosely.) Now that part of my employment picture is settled for the next few months, I have the time/energy to devote to the Make-Ready.

However, at this very moment, I have limited time--so I'll just provide this little nugget and promise you more to follow.

Earlier this week I went to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Keri T. I thought the film was totally delightful (maybe more on that later). But something really funny happened while we were there. When we entered the theater, we were the only patrons. But by the time the film started there were about 4 other parties seated. The most interesting of these was a group of 4 seemingly straight guys in their mid-twenties. As soon as they walked in, I started to wonder about how THAT came about. How did this group of guys decide to see this movie together on a Tuesday night? Weird, right?

As I was puzzling it out, the trailers started. The second or third trailer was for that remake of The Women. You know, the one with every female actress in the world in it. This is not a film that I am going to see. And I would bet that it isn't a film that Keri T. is going to see either. But we sat quietly and patiently during the trailer. At the end of it, however, one of the 4 guys in front of us said, a little too loudly, "I'd rather slit my wrists . . . "

The other guys laughed kind of quietly, but I laughed not quietly at all. Because that is funny. Not funny because it was really witty or anything. But funny because this guy apparently is the kind of guy who WOULDN'T see The Women, but WOULD come see V C B with 3 of his buddies on a Tuesday night.

I appreciated the unintentional irony.

(And before I get a bunch of comments that make this point--I sort of figured out the motivation eventually. These guys clearly expected the film to have significant girl on girl action--involving Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz. Hmmm. That had to be sort of a disappointment.)

Real Time Report

OK, shhhh. Don't look. But there is a guy frantically scratching his belly, standing in line at the coffee shop. I'm sure that it looks weird from the front, but from the back, it looks downright dirty. Also, I could swear that he is wearing one white shoe and one black shoe.

Even though there have been about 100 customers in here since I got here at noon, this is the first decent piece of people watching material that has walked through the door. And, to be honest, he is freaking me out more than intriguing me.

"Hey you look like . . . "

There is a guy who is a regular at one of the two coffee shops where I spend the most time here in Austin. This guy looks exactly like Brad Garrett (yes, the guy from Everybody Loves Raymond). I'm super serious. Exactly. Only he's not so freakishly large. If you doubt my judgment in this matter, consider the fact that I brought this up during drinks with Rebecca and Rodney tonight and Rebecca started laughing and said that she immediately knew who I was talking about.

I saw this guy today and, as I was marveling at his likeness to Brad Garrett, I started thinking about the other "celebrity" look alikes I have known in my life. Qwanty can attest to both of them, and she will probably remember more details than I will---

The first is a person that we only knew as "The Nick Cave Guy" for a long time until one night at BOG when we actually had drinks with him. I'm sure that we were introduced to him, but I promptly forgot his given name, preferring instead to continue to call him "The Nick Cave Guy." (Oh, by the way, we called him that because of his shocking resemblance to Nick Cave.) We used to see this guy at BOG a lot, and I also used to run into him at the Flesh--oops, I mean Fresh Pot--on Hawthorne. Here is where my memory gets a little hazy. I want to say that we finally met him the night that we saw the Snifter Guy (some guy we used to see at the bar who we once thought, after we had both consumed many, many Black Butte Porters, looked like he should be smoking a cigar and drinking some sort of brandy or something out of a snifter. I also do not remember his non-descriptive name, but Qwanty may, since she had a little bit more of a relationship with him than I did. Also, in retrospect I think that the whole snifter/cigar thing had less to do with the way the Snifter Guy looked, and more to do with the fact that the first time we saw him he was sitting in a giant, overstuffed red velvet chair that sort of looked like a throne. But I digress.) drink 18 Olys out of the stubby bottles. One right after another.

Anyway, I think that Qwanty asked Snifter Guy about Nick Cave Guy and that he told us that Nick Cave Guy cultivated the look. The fact that he was capitalizing on the slight likeness he had naturally sort of disappointed both of us, since we wanted to believe that the look was completely organic. Then, as I recall, Snifter Guy invited Nick Cave Guy to sit with us. He told us all kinds of stuff about himself, but I don't remember any of it--except for a vague impression I have that he told us he was leaving town to do a program in documentary making at a jr. college in New Mexico. I think that the only reason I remember this is because it seemed like a giant, giant lie.

Guy number two was the "Chad Lowe Guy". (Do you notice a pattern? We favored descriptive nicknames for people that we didn't know well, but saw often. These nicknames almost always followed the pattern "The ________ Guy". We also sometimes would decide that someone reminded us of someone else we knew, but with different intensity. So, for awhile, we could talk about Toddy--Qwanty's special friend--but we also had a "Todd Light", who was Toddy-like, but with a little less Todd, and "Todd Heavy", who was extra-saturated Todd. We actually knew this guy's name, but we preferred calling him "Todd Heavy". His real name was more ridiculous, if you can imagine that. Some people had unusual enough names to just be called by those--our bartender Kip, for example, and the Flesh Pot boys, Skip and Vinnie. Our other bartender, BLT, had a hybrid nickname. It was descriptive, but also included his real name. BLT stood for "Big Louisiana Tom". I don't think that needs explanation.) ANYWAY. The Chad Lowe Guy was someone that both Qwanty and I began seeing in high school. He sometimes showed up on the public bus, and sometimes at the mall (the two places that Qwanty and I frequented, along with the volunteer room at Sunnyside Kaiser Hospital, prior to turning 16). I don't have a lot to say about that guy, other than the fact that he was a dead ringer for Chad Lowe. Unfortunately this was the early 90s and I know that wherever this guy went he was constantly being stopped by people who said, "Do you know you look like that guy on the show with the actor who has Downs Syndrome? You know, the guy who has AIDS?" I mean, that isn't very auspicious, is it? (Although it is probably better than what he gets now, which I imagine is something like, "Do you know you look like that guy who was dumped by that horsey-looking chick who keeps winning Oscars?")

Which brings me to the point of this post--and I do totally have a point--why do all the guys I ever see looking like "celebrities" look like lame celebrities? For once, I'd like to meet some regular Joe who looks like Henry Rollins, or Jeremy Irons, or Val Kilmer, circa Real Genius. You know, some celeb who I actually think is hot? (Wow. That list took me a long time to come up with. Qwanty, who else do I like?)

***

(Totally Unrelated Thought) Also, Jennifer is always asking me what my favorite word is. But I can't ever think of something when I'm put on the spot like that. Then she reminds me that Ken's favorite word is "aluminum". But today I thought of one that I do really like--sarcophagus. It's a cool word. It is fun to say, and cool to look at--it looks a little bit like it should be a part of the body.

My Day at the NCAA Men's Basketball Tourney

Yes, that is right sports fans. You can be eating your hearts out right about now because I, non-sports lover and non-UT fan, was in attendance at the Texas/Memphis game in Houston on Sunday. Thanks are due to my good friend Nikki (who also deserves thanks for the lovely purple nails I'm sporting this week), who took me with her on this adventure.

If you saw the game on CBS you already know that it was dismal. Texas was thoroughly outplayed. If that wasn't bad enough, the officiating was downright offensive. By 5 minutes into the second half the Texas fans had stopped even reacting to bad calls. Perhaps the worst and most overtly egregious call came then--a Memphis player very obviously swatted a ball away from a Texas player. The Texas player wasn't even close to actually touching the ball. The ball went out of bounds and the call went to Memphis. Although there was almost no verbal reaction to the call, heads were shaken and eyes were rubbed all around me. The reactions indicated the extreme weariness of the fans.

In spite of the outcome of the game itself, the experience of going to the game is one that I'm awfully glad that I got to have. As we all know, large-scale sporting events can really bring out the crazies, so it is a place for great people-watching. Since you didn't get to see this part on TV, consider this your insider look:

1) As we got out of the car in the parking lot of Reliant Stadium, a huge white SUV-type (you know, Suburban-sized) vehicle pulled in next to us. Inside there were 2 gentlemen who I would guess were both in their late 30s (or early 40s) and were surely frat boys at UT twenty years ago. Before they got out of the car they pulled out a fifth of something (I'll guess vodka) which they then poured mixed with Sprite in their Starbucks coffeemugs. Nikki pointed out the conspicuous carseats in the back. (This is, by the way, the exact moment that I started to get excited about the 2 and a half hour drive back to Austin after the game.)

2) Once inside the stadium, we visited the vendors and then sat at the empty bar (NCAA rules prevent the selling of alcohol at most or all[?] NCAA-sponsored events) to eat and chat. Mid-story Nikki interrupted me and told me to look over my shoulder. About 20 feet away stood a man who must have been 75 dressed in Memphis blue. He was doing some very elaborate calisthenics. He seemed to be counting as he went. After a period of time, he began doing a different routine. This went on almost until the playing of the National Anthem.

3) Since Austin was really, by proximity, the "home team", the stadium was packed with burnt orange. Those of you who are not in Austin, or who have not been in Austin, can only really imagine seas of burnt orange--because they do have to be seen in person to be believed. Sometimes I wonder what the more awe-inspiring perspective on the burnt orange phenomenon is because, in case you don't know, there are two perspectives. The first is the "forest" perspective: when viewed this way, your wonder is piqued by the sheer amount of burnt orange that can be assembled in one place at one time. It's overwhelming. Like standing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean for the first time. The other perspective (and perhaps you have already anticipated it) is the "trees" perspective. If you look at the crowd as a huge group of individuals, you soon become dizzy with the variety of expression of burnt orange possible. Button-downs, polos, tee shirts (representing every sport, every UT logo, every academic discipline, every extracurricular interest), tank tops, sweaters, jackets, shorts, jogging suits, Hawaiian shirts, and skirts with rhinestone longhorns on the back pocket. And flip flops. LOTS of burnt orange flip flops.

4) Since the UT fan base seemed to outnumber the Memphis one about 10-1, it was not surprising that the noise generated by the UT attendees in the first half was considerable. But, by just a couple of minutes into the second half, the crowd had been almost entirely hushed. (Not just in reaction to bad calls, but in reaction to anything that happened during the game.) By the time that the second half was half over, the stadium began bleeding streams of orange. At one point the announcer said, "We invite you to stay seated for the rest of the game. The game is not yet over." The reaction by most Texas fans seemed to be, "We invite you to kiss our burnt orange asses." By the last 2 minutes of the game, the roar of the tiny Memphis team was deafening, while the (loyal and sportsmanlike) remaining Texas fans sat in what can only be described as stunned silence.

5) Lest I leave you on a sad note--let me assure you that the spirit of the Longhorn is one not easily squashed. Losses are easily forgotten, and victories loom large in the imagination of the people of Tejas. As we pulled out of the parking lot, Nikki spotted a truck in front of us about to enter the freeway, a can of Bud Ice perched precariously on the back bumper as if to say, "speed and wind, I defy you." The car had a Texas license plate and a Longhorn medallion.

Hook 'em.

Who DOES that?!?

So I'm a little ashamed that THIS is going to be the topic of my first "real" blog entry, but I saw something really messed up tonight and I think that the only way that I can stop thinking about it is to write it out.

So here goes: I went to have my haircut today at a certain rock n roll barbershop. As it turned out, I had to wait a LONG time for the cut, since 3 people in front of me were waiting for color. But I didn't mind--I had one of the collections of Nick Hornby's Believer columns (which I had enough time to read cover to cover). And the guys felt bad for us having to wait for so long, so they kept us supplied with beer. And there was people watching--both inside and out on the street. So it was cool.

There was this other guy waiting at the same time I was. I didn't particularly like the looks of him. He seemed sort of, well, you know, snotty. And he was making a big show about how irritated he was about having to wait (listen dude, that's the way they rock it at Bishops. If you want an appointment, go to a damn SALON). Anyhoo, he went up to the desk and asked how much longer he had to wait, and he was told that it was going to be a bit longer, so he grabbed his coat and took off. I figured he was gone for good, but he returned a few minutes later, with a snack.

Now at this point I feel that I should warn you that you may be sort of disappointed about the "climax" of this story. Because it required too much explication, and the fact is, the thing I'm about to tell you (the thing that HAPPENED) isn't really worthy of the amount of explication that I've provided. This is the point in the story where, if I were telling this to Mikey J, he would be frantically nodding his head, and saying "right, right" and he might even be doing that weird get-on-with-it hand gesture.

So, here goes. This guy's snack was a bread product of some kind (like a roll?), and a relatively large chunk of cheese. Like maybe 8 or 10 ounces of cheese. Make a fist. He had THAT much cheese.

He had stripped the plastic off the cheese and he was, my hand to G--, eating this giant chunk of cheese like it was an apple. Just taking giant bites out of it. Like it was an apple. Which it was NOT. It was a large chunk of cheese.

I don't know what you think, but in MY America, we eat cheese in slices. Or maybe in small cubes that we pick up with toothpicks. We are not Vikings. Or Goths. Or Geats. We do not hunt giant woolly, tusked animals with clubs. Or drink mead. Or sleep on pelts. And we don't walk around in public eating fist-sized pieces of gouda.

(This has, by the way, trumped the last upsetting thing I saw someone doing with food--which was order an ONION bagel with STRAWBERRY cream cheese at 8 am. I mean, it violates the rule that states that you should restrict pairing savory bagels to savory or neutral cream cheeses and sweet bagels to sweet or neutral cream cheeses. And if THAT is too difficult to remember--just don't put strawberry cream cheese on anything. Ever. And onion bagels at 8 am. Is that necessary?)