Dead Channel

Even better than the Twilight Zone, it's

Dead Channel

Alternative Rock

I'm forever indebted to a Terry Gross interview with William H. Macy that I heard on the radio years ago. In it, she grilled him on his acting technique, and he held forth on it with perfect confidence and Mametian precision. He said something to the effect that he didn't like method acting or so many of the other popular acting techniques because they all came too close to relying on inspiration, or the Muse. He said that any 'technique' that relied on inspiration or the Muse wasn't a technique at all, and that when you were inspired or had the Muse, you didn't need a technique. You were on fire then, and nothing could hold you back. But for the other 360 or so days per year, you needed a technique to get you through each scene. To reliably produce results in the absence of inspiration. It's common sense, but he put it very nicely and it applies to any kind of work you're serious about, in my humble opinion.

In a sense, his technique turned each scene into a problem, and it was his job to work toward a given solution. I'm a hyper-analytical kind of guy who likes solving problems, so this way of working through things does wonders for me.

So anyway, I'd identified a problem in one of my stories that I'm working on, and I was trying to work through it today. Imagine if all human civilizations were hijacked by a somewhat oppressive power in about 1943. We're not talking about slave-camps-and-hot-iron-on-the-feet oppression, just a power that attempts to put a collar on all humanity's baser instincts (being loud, sensual, indulgent, etc.). So think of it as a giant Baptist church, but without God. So in other words, like the Baptist church in the South. We'll call it The Power.

Now The Power doesn't really understand humans terribly well. It has great technology, superior to humans', but it doesn't understand how good humans are at running around or going under barriers they are confronted with. So The Power is, like most so-called totalitarian authorities, quite inefficient, leaving people with some wiggle room to play with.

So my 'problem' was: what do you think popular music would look like in America by 1983? Pretty soon, I got so fascinated with the possibilities that I forgot about any kind of solution. So really, the exercise worked.

No Sun Records. No British Invasion. And then no hippies, and no Summer of Love. No mass production or distribution of rock or R&B records. It all stays underground. Records are cut in improvised basement studios or in normal studios, after hours, when nobody's around to see it happen. An array of regional bootleg networks bleed over into each other somewhat, but mostly you're listening to records produced one town over. Except when you can tune in a pirate station across the country run by a music fanatic with some balls and a shortwave set, beaming outlaw, raunchy blues out of the South or the latest crazy jump and swing out of Chicago, and it blows your mind because you've never heard it before, and may never hear it again.

Rock and Roll (though it doesn't exist by that name) stays naughty. Even the 'mainstream' of it is subversive when it's not sexy, angry when it's not animated. It's sweaty men in juke-joints playing for that girl at the edge of the stage. It's the obsessed who only find peace in their music, recording it for the love of the sound. Very little in the way of paychecks, very little in the way of marketing. It's country boys with homemade electric guitars jamming with R&B drummers and horn players, after hours, in the back of the roadhouse.

Rock and roll.

I'm getting drunk on thinking about the ultimate bands that might exist in such an alternative universe.

And whatever it ended up looking like, there would be no such monstrosities as this.

New Orleans: It's fucked, no, wait, it's fine, no, wait, it's-

So I spent a couple days in and around New Orleans over the holiday, and yeah, it's an eye-full. You've seen the footage, so I'll spare you. Large tracts of it look quite normal, and then you see large tracts that are totally fucked up, as per the footage you've seen, and then more normalcy, and so on. Katrina definitely had that irrational here-I'm-windy-here-I'm-not, tornado on a really large scale kind of thing going. Many neighborhoods that were not flooded feature rows of houses that look untouched right beside rows of houses of identical construction that were nearly blown to pieces.

Much of the French Quarter actually smells better than it used to, after being nearly blown down and flooded with nasty-ass contaminated water. The cleaning up that was required for re-opening after the hurricane was the only cleaning that most Quarter restaurants have seen in fifty years. Functionally, most everything is back to normal. The twin spans over the Lake are down to one span. They cannibalized the more seriously damaged span to repair the one that's open. There are times when the other span just disappears.

The thing about the recovery is this: New Orleans has always been a nasty, shitty town. My apologies to NO-lovers, but it really is a nasty town for the most part. Blame it on geography. So there's a lot of relatively simple cleanup that could have been done already, but will probably never be done, because for the most part, NO-ians don't clean or organize anything. Abandoned cars remain in the drainage canals, continuing to contaminate the runoff. Trash lays around everywhere. Meanwhile, middle-class New Orleans sits at home watching television, their unscathed, full-size Ram Hemi Super-Hauler Dick-Compensator trucks sitting in their driveways when they could get their lazy asses out in the street to pick up some crap, or tow those abandoned cars out of the way. Or at least repair their own fences or set their overturned garden furniture upright.

But no, that's not the citizens' job. That's the government's job. And don't you even think of raising taxes to do it-- grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I'll try not to get started. So yeah, NO will continue to look like shit for a long time because that's just how the people are. People who choose to live in swamps generally aren't that fastidious.

Cafe du Monde is up and running, and that's really the best part of the city. Apparently, it came through pretty well untouched, though there's a tarp on the roof. Most of the wait staff was Chinese, which seemed like a change, so there may have been some personnel shuffles. But the beignets are still divine.

The huge downtown towers with boarded up windows are a little surreal, but they've still got nothing on Sarajevo.

Most of the poorest people are still gone, by all appearances. Few street performers. Fewer street vendors than there used to be, even though the Quarter is full of traffic as usual. Lines at restaurants are longer most of the time, as there are fewer restaurants open. Many can't re-open because their barely-living-wage employees haven't returned. And yes, the Burger King down the street from my in-laws' place is offering $6000 signing bonuses.

If you've ever wanted to flip burgers in a swamp, there's no time like now.

Death > Money ...sometimes

After dim sum today in the International District, I and my lunch companions set out in search of crazy-looking fish in a couple of pet stores. Along the way, I became intent on finally seeing the Wah Mee, so after the first pet store I asked a couple of my companions where it was. As we stood outside the pet store arguing about where it was, I looked at the doorway right beside me and realized we were standing right next to it.

That's it with the gouged, filthy adobe facade and filthy glass block window. The doors were chained, but were hanging open a couple of inches. Not exactly highly secure.

The ID is not exactly swank. It's not pretty to look at in most places. Yet it's still bloody expensive. And the Wah Mee, right in the middle of the ID, has remained vacant for 22 years due to respect and fear of ghosts and bad luck. There's something comforting about the fact that a neighborhood still has that kind of memory and that kind of heart. I hope it remains vacant forever.

Though it would be the ultimate 'infiltration' project. Just a little chain secures the door. Well, a little chain and a pack of demons from hell...

Strike a blow, gimme some dough

I haven't done the linky bit here at all, have I? And isn't that what a blog's supposed to be about?

So go here

And then check out 'A Form of War.' The message of which appears to be that you will be a true rebel, standing up and giving The Man a Finger if you buy their $500 hoodie. You can change the world by fattening up a designer who thinks you're an idiot.

The beautiful thing is that you just know people are buying it up, and for that exact reason. Because, as I've mentioned before in other venues, people are vermin.

My Project For A New American Century, Step One

The Pharmaceutical Problem

Or, more specifically, the pharmaceutical advertising problem. For too long have gullible Americans been convinced that they needed to ask their doctor whether XXX-itrol was right for them. I believe I have arrived at a convenient solution to this problem.

They can still be advertised on TV. However, all warnings of side effects must now be read by rehabilitated New Jersey mobsters. In their own words. With no musical accompaniment. And with nothing on the camera but a zoomed-in headshot of the mobster.

"Some a youse guys is gonna have a, uhh, what the fuck? Holy shit, this shit says abdominal bleeding. Abdominal bleeding, Jesus fuckin' Christ here. This is a fuckin' hay fever medicine, here. You gonna have blood sprayin' outta your fuckin' intestines, just so's you don't sneeze so much. How fuckin' smart is that?"

"Eh, this here thing says that this shit might make your fuckin' eyeballs shrink. Do I look like I'm makin' this shit up? Your fuckin' eyeballs is gonna shrink up and fall outta your fuckin' head, all so's you can lower your fuckin' cholesterol. What are you, fuckin' stupid? Stop eatin' the two egg breakfast every day, you fat fuck, and then you can keep your fuckin' eyeballs in your head where they belong."

"Hey, listen up, you ignorant fucks! I understand, believe me, not bein' able to control your fuckin' bowel movements is fuckin' embarrassing. Okay? I got that. But holy fuckin' Jesus, read this shit with me here: this stuff helps you control your bowels, maybe, right? Maybe? But maybe it also makes your mother-fuckin' heart stop! Holy Christ! Your fuckin' heart! Don't be a asshole! Buy the fuckin' Depends diapers! Wear bigger pants and nobody'll know, honest to God! Would I fuckin' lie to you? I shit my pants just readin' this shit. I wouldn't take one a these pills if you wacked Johnny Straponi for me and put me in charge of the West Side Mob. Not that I do that kinda thing anymore."

Okay, so that's one problem solved.

The Specialist

"What the fuck is that?"

"It's a yo-yo."

"That's a fuckin' yo-yo?"

"Yeh. See? Here's the string."

"What the fuck kinda yo-yo is that?"

"It's a Duncan Satellite. It's a classic. Looks like a flyin' saucer."

"Like a fuckin' flyin' saucer?"

"Yeh. From the fifties. Or sixties, maybe. A flyin' saucer."

"Looks like a fuckin' pie tin."

"Yeh. Well, that's what a flyin' saucer looks like."

"What the fuck are you doin' wit it?"

"I'm sandin' it."

"You're fuckin' sandin' it?"

"Yeh. Sandin' the inside. To smoove it out."

"Ta fuckin' smoove it out?"

"Yeh. It's turned from a single piece a wood. But it's all rough inside, so it don't go smoove."

"It don't fuckin' go smoove?"

"Yeh. So youse gotta sand the insides. It ain't like plastic."

"It's fuckin' wood."

"That's right."

"So it ain't like fuckin' plastic."

"Yeh. That's right."

"I fuckin' know wood ain't like plastic. What you got the sandpaper on there?"

"It's a piece a aluminum. It's taped on."

"Fuckin' aluminum?"

"Yeh. That's right."

"Where the fuck you get a flat piece a aluminum like that from?"

"From a buddy a mine. He works with aluminum."

"What the fuck does that mean? He works with aluminum?"

"He works with aluminum. He cuts it. He makes parts with it."

"He fuckin' made that for you?"

"Yeh. For the sandpaper, so's you can get it inside and press down-"

"For a fuckin' yo-yo?"

"Yeh. My pops showed me when I was a kid. It's gotta be smoove in there, or it gets all snagged."

"Your fuckin' pops showed you that?"

"Yeh. Didn't your pops teach you nothin'?"

"Fuuuuuuuck."

Clean

"Baby, I was out with Jenny."

"No, you weren't. It doesn't matter where you were to me now, but you weren't out with Jenny."

"But I was."

"No, you weren't, goddammit. Do you know what you're doing? Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"If I can't tell the difference between you and the rest of them, what good is it?"

"What?"

"The lies, the lies, Jesus Christ, you think I won't see when you're lying? What do I do? Huh? What do I do all these hours that I'm gone? Huh? A bird doesn't know flying? A wolf doesn't know killing? I'm not going to recognize a lie?"

"You're so fucking melodramatic!"

"You lie, baby, and not particularly well. There's a look behind your eyes like you're taking yourself somewhere else while you're doing it. You breathe differently, deeper, slower, you think I don't know how you breathe when you talk? After all these years?"

"What, you gonna put me on the box--"

"I don't need the box to see you're lying. Just stop lying; stop lying. Tell me the truth, anything would be better than lies. If I can't tell the difference between you and them, then what good is it?"

"You don't mean that. You can't mean that. What if the truth was something awful, something you couldn't forgive? Huh?"

"It's not a trap, it's not a fucking trap. Just tell the truth. The lies are worse than anything else to me, don't you see that? Nothing you've done could be worse than the lie. It makes you just another liar, just another game to me! You want me to game you? You want to be gamed? You want to see what happens in that little room when I take liars into it and make them sing? Is that it? You're so curious what goes on in there that you want to see the business end? It might take me four hours with a good one, it might take me three eight-hour days in there to figure out a real master. I've been watching you for fifteen years."

"Shut the fuck up."

"You want to try your hand? Really? Should we count to three and start over, and pretend you're not my wife? And see how long it takes?"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

"I've been a son of a bitch for longer than I can ever apologize for, but for God's sake, if anything we ever had ever meant a thing to you, just come clean. We can work it out--we can work through it-"

"You don't know what you're saying."

"I do, I do, just listen to me, just tell me the truth, just start with the little things and the big things will come. I wouldn't tell you that if I were gaming you, I wouldn't tell you that, I'd just pull you into it, but I told you, I told you, we can still do this but you have to meet me half way, baby. Tell me where you were tonight."

Say, man...

A couple of months ago, a colleague of mine from the right coast was sent out here to help me and another colleague out on a little project. Basically, he was underworked and we were overworked, so they sent us a slave for a couple of weeks. He was an excellent slave, and he knocked out a huge chunk of our more tedious work before he flew back out. Shortly thereafter, his immediate employers went belly-up in rather spectacular fashion and he disappeared off the radar. Much luck to you, C, if you're out there.

In those two weeks he was in Seattle, though, he had some odd little run-ins with the local strangeness. One of which was on Capital Hill, when he went there to do his laundry on a weekend. For those of you not in the know, parts of Capital Hill are Seattle's high-freakuency strangeness zone. He obviously walked into one of those areas.

C is a fellow who has traveled all over the world and likes everyone to know it. Ergo, he covers his luggage with crazy stickers from crazy places all over the world. As he exited a taxi with his suitcase full of dirty clothes, a crack-skinny gentleman carrying a plastic grocery bag stopped to chat with him.

"Where you been, man?" he asked.

"Oh, all over the place," answered C with a smile.

"Say, man," said the grocery bag man, "I got a hundred dollars worth a meat in this bag... You want some?"

C declined and, much to his discredit in my eyes, did not even look in the bag. How could you not look in the bag? Or ask what kind of meat? But C was in a strange city, so I guess I can't blame him too much.

Another friend of mine, who is a former Capital Hill resident and fellow conoisseur of the absurd, says that he is pretty sure he's seen this guy--we'll call him the Capital Hill Butcher--and that this is his usual, daily gig. So it wasn't just a one-time thing.

Which I think is good because, you know, some people like meat, but don't like supermarkets. Voila! The Capital Hill Butcher's niche market is born.

While I am aware that the sale of stolen meat is quite a regular occurrence, I am also aware that such sale usually takes place in bars and such, and the meat is usually sold in its original packaging. This is especially common in parts of New England with serious heroin problems, I've been told. I've even talked with a young man who sold shoplifted steaks in bars in Maine to pay for his drug habit. And then, after he kicked drugs (yea for him!) he continued his meat resale business to pay for his four-wheel-drive vehicle habit (boo for him!).

But I can't shake the image of the Capital Hill Butcher sitting at home with a drug habit, a roommate, and a meat grinder, thinking:

"I know I'm sitting on a gold mine here."

Take me to Walter Reed tonight...*

For those living under rocks for the last several months, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission has decided to chop up Walter Reed Army Medical Center, closing the Center's current location and merging its components into other activities, including a joint medical center at Bethesda. There are efforts to stop it, but they will likely fail. Partly because there are good reasons for it. Economic reasons, efficiency reasons.

The US doesn't do monuments very well. We're not big into public buildings to the same extent as other advanced industrial nations. Economy, efficiency and pork-barreling tend to determine where we spend our money on public projects, and on the one hand that's admirable (except for the pork-barreling), and on the other it's a shame.

Walter Reed, Tripler, and Bethesda are names that have enormous significance for me. There are many other big military hospitals that have done similar work, and one of those isn't that far from here, in Bremerton. My father-in-law spent time there decades ago when he was on active duty as a Marine, and remembers that time to this day. But the big ones are cultural landmarks, in my not so humble opinion.

These are halls where heroes were cared for. Whatever you may think of the various wars they fought in, nearly everyone appreciates the often world-class care the servicemen have received at the big three. Whether you think they were defending liberty and justice, or you think they were hapless victims of politicians, it's hard to believe anything other than that they deserved the best we could give them. And if you think they didn't deserve it, then, well, fuck off and go find another blog to read. And yeah, go ahead and see how long your comments to the contrary stay up. I'm a firm believer in the concept of a ruling class. Especially since I rule.

Mind ye, I'm not an idiot. I received terrible health care from military hospitals as a young man, so I know they didn't all get the best. But the big three have often been on the cutting edge of medical techniques and technology, and their patients, military and otherwise, have benefited from that.

So here's to hoping that the realignment doesn't screw things up. That something laudable is done with the old buildings. And that we don't forget Walter Reed's name.

*much love to Michael Penn for the lyric, and for his own thoughts on the matter.

PS: better readability in this font?

It's okay, you're better than I am.

I have this way of making people think I'm judging them. Some people just plain resent it, some ignore it, some feel the need to 'defend' themselves in the face of it, to try to impress or to throw mud in my eye. I'll admit that yeah, most of the time I'm judging people in one way or another. But not in the way you think. More on that in a minute.

I observe people all the time, and I'm constantly sizing them up. Psychologists probably have a word for that, and it's probably not considered healthy. Oh well.

But honestly, folks: if you're a friend of mine, any kind of friend, then I'm not judging you or sizing you up. As a friend of mine once said of me, I pay very close attention to people I talk to. I listen. I watch. I love listening and watching, and I love remembering what I hear from you and bringing it back into the conversation. I love remembering what your face or hands looked like when you said whatever interesting thing you said. People just fascinate me. So I'm studying you, but I'm not judging you, honestly. Maybe that makes me too 'intense' for most people's druthers, but the alternative seems like negligence to me. Granted, I can turn it off, and I do when it's absolutely necessary. But where's the fun in that?

And now back to the observing and judging. I use judging in a broad sense. I'm not sizing people up as good or evil, worthy or damned. I'm trying to figure them out, to recognize their patterns. (For the wigbers: as I've mentioned, I sometimes think of myself as a kind of meatspace Colin Laney.) If you're a friend, I'm past that point with you. But if you're a stranger on the street, or a guy I'll only meet once in a conference, then yeah, you're material for me. You're an animal in a zoo, and I'm loving checking you out. I love to watch how people lie, how they deal with other people, what makes them happy or uncomfortable, the whole package. It comes out in my writing. Spinning out those little interpersonal dynamics, including how people talk to each other (dialogue), is really my only strength as a writer, if I have any strengths. Well, that and a healthy appreciation of absurdity, maybe. And, well, perhaps, the, quite conspicuous mind you, overuse of, yes, commas.

So if you meet me in a friendly situation and I'm staring intently at you, don't worry. You don't have a booger on your face. Probably. And I'm not judging you. I'm giving you the respect that you deserve, and I'm plundering your soul for material.

What could be wrong with that?

How can taxi drivers suck so much?

Back home again from a business trip, and once again, I failed to encounter a single cab driver who knew anything at all. I know that cab drivers have always sucked in one way or another. In many big cities, it's always been normal for them to be surly, or to try to cheat you. But it's not surliness that I get so often these days (except in D.C., which has very hostile cabbies).

It's mind-blowing ignorance. They don't know how to get anywhere. It's not an ethnic thing, and it's not a language thing. It cuts across all ethnicities of cabbies these days. None of them know a damned thing about the streets they drive on for a living.

This is a broad generalization, of course. I have had one cabbie in the past six years or so who actually knew where he was going. A Somali gentleman in Seattle, who never stopped for lights or signs and spent the whole ride cheerfully telling me how America ruined Somalia. I withheld my opinion that while America may have changed the nature of Somalia's shittiness, the information I've seen indicates that it was already a shithole a long time before we got there. After all, I didn't want to get Blackhawk Downed on my way to my hotel. But I digress.

I've had jobs in which driving constituted maybe a good 20% of my duties. And I learned the hell out of the streets on my turf, even though I'm not generally any good at that kind of thing. It was just practice, daily use. How can you drive a cab and not eventually learn something about the roads in your city? These guys should be fucking wizards on the road.

I don't get it.

To Boldly Go Where All You Fuckers Have Been Going For Years Now

That's right. After years of resisting the blog phenom, I have finally started a blog. Why? So I can kick it off with a title that includes 'You Fuckers.' Okay, really it was done so I could post a knee-jerk obnoxious comment to a buddy's blog. So said buddy will probably be the first to see this.

As for the rest of you: Honestly, why are you wasting your time here?