Do Not Attempt

drivin_and_searchin.JPG

After I brought Plooblewagon home in October, Adda and I had a good time riffing on the various admonitions, threats and warnings in the owner’s manual. “Mazda does a pretty good job of inspiring paranoia, but Volvo takes the prize for excess caution; their TV commercials generally feature cars being driven sensibly in a straight line at reasonable speeds on public roads with a superimposed “professional driver on closed course””

One of my favorite recent examples of namby-pamby intrusive mommyism was brought to my attention by my dad, who several of you have pointed out is Way Funnier Than Me, and who it doesn’t take a clinical behaviorist to figure out is the person I got most of this from. On Saturday he handed me a copy of the Raleigh Yellow Pages, and I was momentarily perplexed until I saw the warning notice printed prominently on the cover. Maybe the small size of the new phone book would lead certain common sense-impaired morons to think it was designed for use in the car. Who knows. Maybe it does need an explicit warning to the contrary. But why should you stop at that?

My Kind of News

arcata_police_log.jpg

Ever since I worked for the imaginatively-named Chapel Hill Newspaper “which made a bold lean forward several years ago and became The Chapel Hill News”, I’ve had a soft spot for local papers. When I’m in a small town I occasionally pick up the paper and see how well their reporters fare at covering the Rotary Club meetings and high school athletic contests and giant tomato sightings which make up the core of community journalism.

If you really want to get the measure of a small town though, the best place to look is the police blotter. “When I worked for the CHN, I was surprised to find that the local perps liked to read of their own exploits, a circumstance which nearly got our police reporter into trouble when she mixed up the street names of two local bon vivants and reported that Heavy D had been caught performing crimes against nature in an alley with another man, when in fact it was Baby D. Heavy D was not pleased.”

Many thanks to Carla, a commentarian over at One Good Thing, for hipping me to The Arcata Eye. It’s a newspaper in Humboldt County, California that has the best police blotter I’ve ever read. Here are a few:

1:41 a.m.
A man and his beige leisure suit were asked to leave a Plaza tavern.

2:34 a.m.
After yelling his way up and down the 600 block of Shirley Boulevard, a man was arrested on a charge of cocktail abundance.

5:25 p.m.
Several frequent flyers got into a hissy-spat over he-looked-at-me-funny-related issues on South H.

12:33 p.m.
A man and his dawg, a big yellow Lab, couldn’t be persuaded to leave the Intermodal Transient Facility so that regular folks could use it for, y’know, catching buses and stuff.

6:25 p.m.
A Valley West motel offered weary travelers all the amenities – cable TV, drinking glasses sanitized for your protection and a dark-hooded freak panhandling for spare change in the lobby.

2:33 p.m.
Everyone loves your dog, lady, but not loose downtown.

7:32 a.m.
A bicyclist wearing a denim jacket nipped into a G Street gas station, snatched a container of fuel injection cleaner and scrammed on his two-wheeled steed. Must getcha high or something.

12:49 a.m.
Cultural festivities on Stewart Avenue were highlighted by a crowbar fight in the street.

3:14 p.m.
Duck or goose hunters turned out to be even less discriminating house-shooters, wounding a home on Larry Street. They agreed to be more careful, but that was of little solace to area waterfowl.

1:02 a.m.
Another adventurer who, armed with naught but a passel of adult beverages, had successfully repulsed sobriety for the night and was determined to share news of his condition with others in the never-a-dull-moment 2200 block of Alliance Road, was defeated by an even sterner foe – the cops, who took him to an unforgiving place of hard right-angles.

Blogcentennial

hairy_tshirts.JPG

So I sit down in front of the computer intending to slap up a picture of the snack table at my new job and maybe one of the bizarrely Orwellian panel in our stairwell, announce the opening of the Chicago photo gallery and ask the question, “Why would I want to drink Pimp Juice?, then get back to horizontally catching up on the TV shows I’ve missed in the last two weeks. Then I check my stats and find that this will be my 100th post. Oh for heaven’s sake. I suppose I can’t just ignore that.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve posted 100 times since I started this blog in October, but it’s not so hard to believe when you realize that I pretty much had nothing to do during the day for all but two of those last 22 weeks. It would be churlish of me in the extreme to complain that I don’t have as much time as I used to now that I’m working, and I don’t expect any sympathy. But man. Having to be someplace 40 hours a week really cuts into your blogging. “I’ve set a goal of being there at least a month before I start spending all my time at work blogging, web surfing and IMing. I think that’s prudent.”

It’s definitely an adjustment. I have newfound respect for all of you whose blogs I read and enjoy who I know work hard during the week and manage to find time to post even once a week, let alone those of you who post every day or thereabouts. When do you shop? When do you eat and do laundry? How do you find time to watch Average Joe: Adam’s Revenge? It has honestly been long enough that I forgot what it was like to work full-time. “Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river.”

I also find that my mind doesn’t wander in blogworthy ways as much as it used to. I saw a truck drive by my office the other day that said “Rude Transportation on the side, and the best I could do was think, “Huh. That might be funny to mention” That was a week ago. Could it be that I am becoming more focused? More responsible? More dedicated to my job? Wow. That’s a hell of a concept. We’ll see.

In the meantime, thanks a lot for stopping by.

Who Bared Their Brains to Heaven Under the El

green_mill.JPG

If you’re in Chicago and you want to visit the home of the poetry slam, be sure to visit the Green Mill. But don’t bring your Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Diners Club, debit card or personal check, because the Green Mill takes anyone who wants to read their poetry, and they only take American Express.

Who the hell only takes American Express? The Green Mill, that’s who. The upshot of this situation was that I found myself about to face an open mike poetry reading only able to fortify myself with whatever five American dollars could provide. “Of all the things you can say to impress a cocktail waitress, “What’s the cheapest beer you have? is pretty low on the list.” This did not bode well.

I went to a lot of poetry readings in my younger years, back when I thought a beret was perfectly acceptable headgear for someone not either a British soldier or a Frenchman. I used to go to a weekly reading in Raleigh in the ’80s that started at the Berkeley Café downtown and soon moved to a store called The Paper Plant, owned by a poet and papermaker named John Dancy-Jones. It was a great scene and always interesting, especially when people like Bob Rogers and Ralph Dunn, the Cabdriver Poet, would read. Everyone was very supportive, and it gave me a weekly impetus to come up with something new to read to the group. But you know, poetry readings. You can never tell. I’ve heard my share of doggerel, not to mention the over-earnest style of highly affected angry poetry read in a shouted, hey-look-at-me cadence. And we also got a weekly dose of teenage girl angst. “We dubbed that category “Black Tears Dripping””

Despite the lack of a proper defense fund, the reading at the Green Mill turned out to be very cool. It’s run by Marc Smith, who in addition to being a hell of a poet himself, is also a perfect master of ceremonies, alternating between heckler and coach, with a big dose of stand-up comedian. We heard a lot of good stuff, some read by people who were practiced and comfortable, and a few by “virgin virgins “people who had never read at the Green Mill or anywhere else”, including a novice poet who had traveled all the way from Scotland specifically to make his “highly successful” public debut at the Green Mill, and one skinny young man in thick glasses whose hand shook violently throughout.

Unfortunately, the poet that stands out the most vividly was a guy in his late forties who looked like the kind of high school guidance counselor who truly believes the kids think he’s cool, and is horribly wrong. He pony-tailed his way onto the stage almost meekly, but when he got the mike in hand he turned into some sort of caricature white rapper, complete with excruciating hand gestures. He quickly invoked the name of Tupac, and declared that he was in actual fact not only black but a Rastafarian, which he supposed gave him the right to use The Word That Black People Can Use But White People Can Never, Ever. He also entreated us to “smoke the word and read the herb” which made me want to climb the stage and kick the ass.

The crowd was more than a little shocked, but once they recovered their composure, they expressed their displeasure in the approved Green Mill fashion, by snapping their fingers in ironic parody of a beat coffeehouse audience. MC White Liberal Guilt left the bar as soon as his set ended, which was probably about 20 minutes later than he should have.

It was a great night, though. Because we were sitting right up front “I mean, right up front: I wished I had brought a raincoat to shield myself from the plosives”, Jean got picked to be one of the judges for the poetry slam. During her introduction, Marc had the band join him as he created her impromptu theme song, “Jean, the Sexy Librarian” Once the judging began, she proved that she is not to be trifled with, poetry-wise. Let’s just say she has high standards. At one point I was afraid we’d have to spirit her out through a side door with a coat over her head.

I Yam What I Yeat

popeye2.JPG

In the common room of my new company is a giant table, probably eight feet long and four feet wide, and it is covered, no, I mean covered with snack food. Items currently on the table include:

a case of ramen noodles

a case of individual breakfast cereals

Snickers bars “size full, not “fun””

M&Ms, of two varieties

cans of applesauce

one “1” 3-pound tin of mixed nuts

one “1” 3-pound tin of cashews “whole, not pieces”

two “2” 2-pound buckets of assorted snack mix

a bowl of fresh fruit

cans of fruit

a jar of licorice

a convenience-store pack of Slim Jims

a case of mixed Frito Lay products

a case of Zone protein bars

a case of Power Bars

a tin of mixed candies that must be at least 10 pounds

This is just what I can remember off the top of my head. It’s amazing. They also provide breakfast for everyone on Fridays, and last week it looked like they hijacked a bakery truck.

If I still ate like a student, I could live during the week just by grazing from this table. The worst part though, is that I have finally, more or less, gotten a handle on my life-long love of junk food, so for the first time probably ever, this table does not appeal to me. “Well, of course it does, but I’m trying to act like it doesn’t.”

Even so, I can’t help but check out the selection whenever I walk by. Apparently someone asked the snack buyer for some healthier offerings, because we now have little cans of lima beans, corn and spinach on the table. I don’t think I will ever get healthy enough for a spinach SnakPak to sound appetizing.