the gathering

when i tell people what i am doing this weekend they generally say something like:

“ooh, sorry.” or “that’s kind of a drag.”

but they could not be more wronger.

what i’m doing this weekend is going up to my cousin’s property and camping with my extended family. this, is excellent times. we all really enjoy one another, and the activities usually include some or all of the following:

• drinking. lots. part of why we camp.
• laughing. also lots.
• fires. tall ones.
• copious amounts of amazing delicious foods.
• horsey rides.
• shooting.
• rambling walks through the national forest located up the road.
• fever pitch political/religious/social/psychological debates
• intoxicants of a more exotic variety.
• singing.
• mountain climbing.
• feats of strength.

oh, these times, they will be good.

 

FORE-play

newly added to the list of things i really like but am not that good at: Golf.

at least i look the part

i went out with my friend Darrin last week and played my first round of big girl golf. up til then it was all par 3’s and pub courses and the driving range.

at the first tee i had a misleadingly good start: swung and connected first thing. ball flew straight and reasonably far. i was all cocky for a minute. then, well, my moment of luck passed, not to be seen again in that round. ah well.

i did really enjoy the scenery. the evening was sunny but cool enough to be pleasant. the greens were lovely. we had some drinks… so the golf cart part was fun. all in all a really nice evening and something i cant wait to do again.

i have the gin & tonic portion of golf DOWN!

 

Things the Bridge Pedal Taught Me

in Portland every year there is a fundraiser hosted by Providence Health Systems. it essentially involves all of the bridges across the Willamette being closed or modified to traffic so that the bikers can descend and ride over them. i’ve been meaning to do it for years, but this was the first time it all worked out. TBIL hooked me up with some of his coworkers who were doing the 8 bridge course and we were off.

this process was not only really fun and rewarding, it was instructional. i learned the following things:

• you can appear to have all the trappings of a semi-serious cyclist and still have a gigantic ass
• getting into a traffic jam with bike is just as annoying and actually more scary than in a car
• the more derisively you yell “ON YOUR LEFT” the less i want to move aside
• the sense of superiority you achieve by yelling “ON YOUR LEFT” with such derision is illusory. everyone else thinks you are a fucktard.
• just because an event is hosted by a health care system does not mean first aid will be available when and where you might need it. (poor Gindy)
• riding all the way to the top of the app roach to the St John’s without stopping is ALMOST enough to make me pass out, and IS enough to make me see stars.
  
• there may be no greater pleasure in life than getting OFF one’s bike.
• when you send someone a text that reads “sweet holy baby jesus, my ass hurts” it is helpful if they have the context that you were riding 30 miles on your bike that day because otherwise they might assume you are just mentioning consequences from the party they hosted the previous evening.
  

feeling proud of myself, if still sore and tired. next weekend: climb mountain. time with family. can’t decide which is more daunting…

 

The Waterworks

by E.L. Doctorow

this book suffered mightily from me having previously read Caleb Carr’s excellent novel The Alienist. These two books hearken back to roughly the same time and place, and even share a plot structure of a newspaperman’s recollection of a mystery long since solved, but Carr’s story is so much more finely crafted, engaging, and dramatic that The Waterworks fares pretty poorly in comparison.
The disappearance of a freelance writer occasions little notice apart from his editor who embarks on the trail to discover his fate. this leads him through a strange warren of crackpot medicine, social darwinsim, and the quest for eternal youth.
The mystery lacks a certain momentum and urgency. i felt myself skimming pages and still feeling totally capable of grasping exactly what was happening later on. no great surprises in store at the end, and the resolution seemed to linger longer than it needed to.
for all of that Doctorow seems to be a capable enough storyteller with a decent command of language. while i cannot recommend it outright, i think its a fine quick read for someone less picky than myself.
( )

 

The Master Butchers Singing Club

by Louise Erdrich

somehow, with this book, i felt the setting most particularly a character. the spare and arid emotional lives of these people are played out in a setting that is flat and lonesome and empty, yet still sustains life.

our main character Delphine is a woman out of her place, yet contented there in strange and compelling ways. whip smart, driven, and capable, she inhabits a world where these traits seem few and far between. her emotional life is complex and rich, but seems only to reveal an inherent longing that is clearly unquenchable.

an absorbing character study as well as a reflection on the cultural evolution between the two world wars, this novel had much to offer in its depiction of a simple life with extraordinary moments scattered throughout. beautiful evocative language, lovely altogether.

recommended.
Harper Perennial (2005), Paperback, 416 pages

 

what did i just SAY?!?

i ask myself this question quite a bit. i talk too much and have no filter. so, i do and say embarassing crap all the time, it just turns out i don’t seem to care that much, mostly.

this time, i’m blushing.

patient in the clinic is setting an appointment. the following exchange ensues:

me: would you like an appointment card?

he: yes please. my short term memory isn’t so great.

me: (slyly) too many drugs in your youth?

he: no. too many IED’s in Iraq.

me: (momentarily dumbfounded…) i’m sorry. that’s WAY less fun!

oh. my. god. another patient in the clinic came up after and expressed his sympathies.

“I mean, you never know when something like that’s going to come up.”

seriously? its less that i attempted the lame joke in the first place, or even that it went so very wrong, but that THEN i went ahead and said something EVEN MORE ASSININE to try and smooth things over.

can it be the weekend now, please?

 

and this feels so very true indeed

“This is the story of the boys who loved you
Who love you now and loved you then
And some were sweet, some were cold and snuffed you
And some just laid around in bed.

Some had crumbled you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart
This is the story of the boys who loved you
This is the story of your red right ankle.”

From Red Right Ankle Her Majesty The Decemberists

for i am feeling rent, and crumbled.

 

weekend wrapup

it was a wild one, no doubt.

hodie-related drama friday night cut short plans for evening. made it out for shoe admiration and drinks with Lyza but no karaoke. sad.

on the whole, it might have been for the best, since i woke up in the wee hours for my race. it went really well, though it turned out that the swimming was better than i feared, and the running was harder than i’d imagined. i think the momentum of exhaustion just built up. but! i ran the entire course and didn’t wuss out and walk at all. hooray me!

this medal is the hottest accessory EVER!

brewfest was less than thrilling. dusty, hot, crowded, and spendy. i saw some peeps i like and heard some juicy gossip, so that was fun anyway. got a bit drunker than planned due to low food intake coupled with heat and alcohol. staggered a little on the way home. designated driver fetched me out for an additional party later that evening. announced my arrival with bellowing belch. as usual.

sunday morning

dawned with golf on the agenda. met up with pops and went out to the course and hit some balls at the driving range.

which, being only the second time i ever picked up a club, went pretty well! then i hit a hole in one on a par three. so… strange luck that i have. that was pretty cool. steakburgers after. yum.

after the golf-stravaganza, i went off to ann taylor to get the dress for the wedding i am going to be in come march. it’s GORGEOUS and AWESOME and it was KILLER to walk into ann taylor and a) get to buy something b) put on a size 4 and have it be too big on me. ha. i heart shopping.

mike & les are going back to the mitten state and we had a little farewell feast for them at madison’s last night. drinks and food, wee bit o’ crying on my part because i am a sentimental slob. nice way to say goodbye.

premier of Mad Men was last night and went to Lyza’s to enjoy with wine and her lovely friends. the new motto of the moment is: take off your hat. on behalf of womanhood: thank you, Don Draper. thank you.

on the whole a capital weekend! hoo-rah.

 

this weekend = hells yeah

i must say, spring was singularly uninspiring in the sense of having much going on. so far, summer has been making up for this in spades. awesome things i have going on this weekend:

• acquisition of domain name, blog improvement plans, & shoe-admiration with Lyza
• birthday celebration for friend Darrin including (but not limited to) brewfest, dinner, karaoke, strippers…
• triathalon (mini, yes, but still)
• more brewfest w/ different friends. don’t want to deprive anyone of the opportunity to see me drunk after all, spectacle that it is. besides, i heart beer.
• golf with daddy. as long as he doesn’t spend the whole time cursing at me for wrecking his game, this should be enjoyable.
• shopping for bridesmaid dress with friend Danielle, other girlyness likely to ensue

ocean viewing weekend component missing, as well as smooching, but apart from that, all elements of amazing weekend are in place. can’t wait to take 952 pictures of shenanigans so as to properly recall said shenanigans later free from alcohol haze.

 

The Dark Knight

i went to see this movie last night with some friends. it was an experience.

first let me say, i usually LOVE going to the theater. despite the skyrocketing ticket prices and nausea-inducing concessions, nothing else allows me to submerge into a movie like going to the theater. videos at home don’t have the same power. i think it’s something about being buffetted by sound and in the pitch darkness confronted with larger than life imagery. whatever it is, it works better than drugs. and sometimes when i really need to NOT THINK, there is nothing better than the movies for it.

this theater experience was not that. firstly, there was serious street-concert jam-band action happening outside the metroplex. to which i can only sound an enthusiastic boo, which would of course, need to last 13 1/2 minutes.

once we went indoors we seated ourselves in relative comfort (due to our early arrival, the theater did end up with a full complement of viewers, even on a wednesday night) but i was then unable to unseat myself due to the almost comically sticky floor. wearing flipflops, this is especially unsettling; i do not want to lose my shoe and end up barefoot in this mess.

there were no less than 8 previews. mostly for poop like,

• The Mummy: Brendan Frasier is Balding so let’s go to China where no one is tall enough to see the top of his head
• The Day The Earth Stood Still: What was a classic sci-fi gem now treated to a Reeve-ing (Keanu)
• Something I can’t remember the awful name of but it involved lying: a faux Syriana style film starring Leonardo DiCaprio (who i hate) and Russell Crowe (who i hate more) both looking fat and hairy.
• New Bond Movie: THIS LOOKS AWESOME! (not just cause Daniel Craig is hot as hell, but it doesnt hurt)
• The Spirit: this also looks good. dark, sexy, stylized, very comic-y and SinCity-esque
• Watchmen: looks spooky and graphic intense. might be ok.

whatever the case, even if i LOVED every one of these films, that is still too many fucking previews. seriously.

then there was the film itself. which was CHOCK FULL of action. perhaps a little too chock full. this seemed like 2 films in one. there were several potins at which i thought: huh, that was a pretty good movie! oh, wait… it’s not over? and asking Mr Pencil (who was there too) this feeling was not mine alone.

there were 2 or possibly even 3 sequences which seemed to be the “penultimate scene” which then simply led to more stuff happening. what’s more, when the climax finally DID happen, it was pretty, well, anti-climactic.

this was still a really good movie, and well worth seeing. lots of excitement, interesting effects (i was sad to see the tumbler didn’t make it) and a pretty sound plot line, though i felt it would have served the movie better to have been made into 2 films each about a seperate villian, rather than smooshing them into one.

finally i feel i must comment on the remarkable performance of Heath Ledger. i have always had a good deal of respect for his talents, but this was something else. obviously watching this film with the understanding that it was his final work, and the haunting and tragic details of his passing lent me a particular lens through which to view his portrayal of the Joker. It was a nuanced and thoughtful rendering of a villian who is often simply made ludicrous. this Joker is primarily interested in chaos and attempting to turn his fellow Gothamites into unwilling subjects of violent social experements. he never explains himself to anyone’s satisfaction (which satisfied me completely) and he is not glamorous or flamboyant so much as shocking and awful in aspect and mein. the tics, twitches, cadence of speech, and the knowledge that this hideous creature hides a truly beautful man underneath made the performance that much more riveting and provocative. the unwillingness of the director to suffer pop-psychology fables about why the Joker wears his scars supremely wrought.

on the whole i think this was an excellent action film, well-made and worth watching, if i would have preferred two movies with all the plot points covered, rather than the extra long one we got.