Dammit

I love this film. I adore Zhang Yimou and Gong Li. I've waited for this on DVD since DVD began. And what do we get? A shit video transfer with picture quality inferior to my worn-out ten-year-old VHS tape, awful sound, and poorly synched subtitles. WTF!?

Thank God I got it via Netflix instead of buying it (that's how I ended up with a shitty DVD of Ju-Dou). I couldn't sit through ten minutes.

I suppose the new Story of Qiu Ju is probably as poor. These films cry out for Criterion treatment!

Censure

Enjoying very much the C-SPAN coverage of hearings re: Feingold's cenusre resolution. Lindsay Graham is a pipsqueak and John Dean just smacked him with a rolled up newspaper.

Hatch, Specter, Leahy--how long have I been watching these guys?

Home Alone

Cha leaves next Thursday for 10 days in Milan, then upon her return almost immediately leaves again for five days in Miami. I used to be the busy business traveler, dammit! Now I'm home more often than not pining for the absent Mrs.

I don't miss business travel, however. Bleary-eyed layovers in Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, Detroit, Taipei, Cleveland, LA, Logan. Wretched experiences on Northwest, the world's worst airline. Staying in those abysmal "suites" in Ann Arbor in January, negative 7 plus (minus?) windchill and snow every day.

I do miss Vegas once a year. I recall fondly getting so drunk playing dollar roulette at the Hard Rock that Shank and I missed the morning meeting where we both were awarded awards but were embarrassingly not present when called to the podium (and our boss called us on the carpet for it too). Good days, those. I could stretch $50 into 10 hours of free drinks at those tables, and usually left a few hundred bucks ahead; attending seminars and workshops and trainings and giving presentations and winning awards were not a priority in Sin City.

I could've gone to the Maryland Librarian Association convention in a few weeks in goddamn Ocean City, MD. The Liberry would have even paid for half a room.

Mmmm, no thanks.

Chinese Checkers

As my Grandfather's possessions were divvied up amongst my Mother and her two brothers I held out scant hope that I'd get the one item I truly cared about, but last week it was delivered to me: his Chinese Checkers set.

I can't really explain how important this is. At a time when my parents were at each others' throats in a vicious divorce, when my Mother and my sister and I lived with my grandparents, I had no male role model aside from my Grandpa. I didn't even have male friends my age--my friends were all girls. But no matter how tired he was after working at the shoe factory or the book factory all day, after mowing the lawn and weeding the garden and changing the oil, Grandpa would always play Chinese Checkers with me, his fat fingers with yellow nails like horn almost too big to pick up the round pieces and move them. I think after Yahtzee that Chinese Checkers was my favorite game, and Grandpa taught it to me. We'd flip the set over and play regular checkers on the back after a while.

I'd rather have this tin game with its glass marbles than thousands of dollars.

Those were odd times. I remember my Mother waking me up in the middle of the night when I was seven and saying "Look what your father did to me." She had an enormous black eye--it wasn't the first time Dad had hit her, but it was the first time he'd made a visible mark, as if to announce he didn't care if everyone knew he used his fists on his wife. More often than not our neighbors would make comments like "she musta had it comin'." A few weeks later she woke me again in the middle of the night and the police were in the house and a friend of my Mom's was there and all of my sisters' and my clothing was in plastic garbage bags on the living room floor. Dad worked third shift at Caterpillar in York and we left around midnight while he drove a forklift load of bolts around.

At that time, and in small-town Southern Pennsylvania, divorce was unheard of. I might not be close to my Mom, whose politics embarrass me no end and whose naivite makes me uncomfortable, but she was a hero to do what she did, and she might despise feminism but at least once in her life she was a feminist heroine. So was her buck-toothed red-haired friend whose name I can't remember for the life of me--Peg? We lived in Peg's(?) living room for three weeks until Mom made arrangements to move back home with her folks, and I had to walk up a half-mile hill to the busstop while we were there (and no, not barefoot in the snow because it was spring).

Grandpa had a temper, but he never hit his wife. He beat his kids when they were little, but never spanked me (Grandma took care of that) or my sister. Their home was a haven. No more screaming and physically violent fights, no more drunken sloppy Dad barking at me to "stop wearing those glasses, sissy" and punching me in the stomach or head in a rage. I never played a game with my Dad. Not once. I never touched a baseball or basketball until I lived at Grandpa's house, and my Dad was an all-star athlete in those sports. My Grandfather took care of himself and lived at home until a couple months before he died. My Dad got evicted years ago, has been unemployed for a decade, and lives at the Y. My sister says he steals from local retailers and sells the stuff to buy cheap wine. Hope he gets his just desserts.

Today's Music

Again I'm going through old stuff I haven't heard for a while. Having fun, too.



Sometimes I need The Who to get through the day. Keith Moon rules, elephant tranquilizers aside.



I remember when I thought this music was scary and new. Now it's almost quaint.

I can say the exact same thing about:



Still love them, though! The intro to this LP makes me nervous to this day. It's just wrong.



Neil kicks ass. Love the harmonies by Emmylou Harris, Nicolette Larson, and Linda Ronstadt--and that crunchy country rock guitar.

Laura Ingraham's dream

We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq.
Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.

-Howard Kaloogian, Republican candidate hoping to replace the disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

I'd say he's qualified. Dumbass.

Perchance to Channel Surf

I love the first spring night each year when I can sleep with the bedroom windows open and the down comforters on the bed and the air is fresh and cool and moist but almost too chilly.

Of course when I can sleep is the operative phrase. Last night it simply wouldn't happen. Sleep was a vague glinty outline in the full-length mirror, a whisper of the curtains in a steady breeze, the restless sussurating of the fish tank filter. Sleep was my wife soundly breathing and occasionally kicking the blankets as I lay watching shadows move gradually across the ceiling. Sleep was all about but I could apprehend her not.

I gave up trying around 4:30am and channel-surfed infomercials for a while; they've really deteriorated since my last bout ineffectually wrestling Hypnos. Yoga Booty Ballet? Get the fuck out of town. I want to punch those people. Eric Estrada tried to lure me into buying land in Florida for ten minutes, and Kirk Cameron and some rude Aussie bastard force-fed Revelations to passers-by on an LA street corner. At least that was entertaining for a half hour. I imagined Kirk trying to pull that shit on me on a dark street one night and had a good laugh.

Imagine Arabic class at 8am after 24 hours with no sleep. Then imagine trying to learn a plural system more erratic than any I've encountered before in such a state. Some nouns change their vowels in a haphazard way to form plurals, others take a variety of endings depending on an astrological chart, a third group shifts form based on gender. I was in hell. After class I went for a four-mile run, tried to nap before work, failed, and then began drinking coffee. We'll see what tonight holds.

Kutsinta

My mother-in-law excitedly told me she'd remembered a long-forgotten filipino dessert recipe. "I remember how to make kutsinta!" she said, at the same time of course proferring a Tupperware bowl full of them. "You try!" I ate one of the very tasty steamed rice pastries, then she gave me another, and then she gave me another. "Ok, ma, they're delicious! Thank you!" She gave me a fourth, watched happily as I ate it, and then said in a scolding tone:

"You know, don't eat too many kutsinta. It's very bad for you!" She cackled at the dismay on my face.

"Ma, you gave me four!" I shouted (she's nearly deaf). I asked her what was in it, and she laughed: "Half white sugar, half brown sugar, and a little rice flour." With shaved coconut and powdered sugar on top!

I love my mother-in-law, but she is bonkers.