Unemployable

I just re-wrote my Song of the Trees 4th grade lesson plan for the third time based on another list of comments from my boss. I'm a bit frustrated by this process, and certainly not because my boss's comments are unjust (quite the contrary is true, in fact). I'm frustrated rather because the mistakes I'm making are stupid and asinine: not matching tests on reading passages to what actually happens in those passages, using the passive voice, writing 9th grade questions for 4th graders, etc. Pay attention!

It will take time to get used to this. Basically I've been given templates and texts to fit into them, with little guidance. My boss says relax, it takes a while. I get twice as much deadline space as veteran developers to finish my projects. On top of learning the ropes I'm confronted with the 9-5 thing for the first time ever. I've never sat at a desk in an office before, all day every day. Today I fled up to the Towson Farmers' Market and walked around looking at fruit and people-watching just to clear the clutter out of my skull. Then I had a yummy buffet lunch at the Kathmandu Kitchen. The first time we ate there (during the Grand Opening) it SUCKED, but the lentil saag and chicken tikka masala I had today were The Bomb.

Once my lesson plan gets past my boss the editors take it (gulp), and then the production staff (who've already informed me they will beat me with galley proofs if necessary). I could get it back again, and again, and again. I already hate Song of the Trees, and have re-read it more times than any other book in my entire life (this afternoon it surpassed the previous record-holder The Haunting of Hill House).

Music contra the doldrums

After several glorious warm and sunny days, today is all overcast and gloom. Don't get me wrong--I like gloomy weather, and I particularly love fall weather. But there's a certain sting of inevitability to today's weather like a blow to the face. "Hey, losers," Old Man Winter says. "Those heating bills are coming." Gulp.

But The Boss is out today and I have music playing as I read children's books and squeeze them into lesson plans, so all is OK:

Nasty Boh

Only in B'more would a couple have such a cake at their rehearsal dinner. Congrats to Tim and Jodi on tying the knot.

Namaste

Tonight Cha and I took a walk, which is something we can do together now that we work similar hours. We walked up to Pasta Mista for a slice, looked at some furniture, saw Silenus,and found a Yoga center we'd not known about. Not two days before we'd been discussing taking some sort of Tai Chi/yoga class together.

Now that I'm not able to run because of bum joints and feet, I need some sort of low-impact physical activity that's also highly demanding. The problem with yoga is that I'm the least flexible human being ever placed on planet Earth. We used to do those Presidential fitness tests in school, right? I'd get 98% on EVERYTHING (well, excepting lay-ups). I could out-pull-up, out-run in the mile, out rope-climb 98% of Americans my age. But when it came to the flexibility test I always was down in the 30s, going all the way back to elementary school. No amount of stretching has ever changed this for the better. Inflexibility in the lower back and hams and calves must run deep into the foggy prehistory of my mongrel ancestry. Once I had a promo copy of a DVD by some cat named Rodney Yee called Beginner's Yoga. Rodney--bathed in a glorious Hawaiian sunrise--sat majestic on a slab of red stone near the beach, and described how his program was designed specifically for the flexibility-challenged beginner. Then he announced the first pose, "right big toe in the left ear," and I ejected the disc in disgust.

But I Do Yoga offers cheap community classes for $7 a pop, and it's only a couple blocks from home. We'll give those a shot, see what happens, and then if I can manage we'll try the bargain couples yoga rate (hubba hubba). It's been two months since I've had a decent cardio workout, and I fear the fall flab if I don't get active ASAP.

A happier palate

After 7 years working at the University and eating lunches at home, it's exciting to be back in downtown Towson with its variety of good eats. One of the coolest things about my new job is the fact I'm only a block away from The Health Concern. Now I can graze on strange foods to my heart's content. Today's lunch? A sprout sandwich on rye, a double side featuring shiitake mushroom jerky and banana chips, and an after of organic fig bars.

Mmmm, mmm.

Cable News

While rushing to get coffee and put on my shoes and feed the fish this morning I had MSNBC playing in the background. Lou Dobbs was on Imus sounding like a liberal blogger: erosion of the middle class, teachers leaving after five years in the classroom, rampant capitalism, corporations owning the political process, corporations writing legislation, both parties corrupt and complicit in the erosion of civil liberties.

Imus's response: "Well that pinhead Ned Lamont knocked off Joe Lieberman in Connecticut in the primary. We'll never fix the system if that kind of thing happens. He looks like John Michael Karr and is as qualified to be a senator as I am. Joe's going to beat him, too."

Moron. Joe Lieberman IS the problem with the system.

Dobbs is an odd sort of hard-edged capitalist with a xenophobic streak who's turned over the past few years into an advocate a French-style system of restraint and protection of civic society from the rampages of the free market. Of course he'd never acknowledge that the French were right about something. Dobbs has got a new book out like everybody else:



The chances I'll read this are next to nil, but the fact that a business-minded conservative is releasing such a book just before the election is evidence of how strange our politics has become.

Sweet

Last Saturday Yahtzee and I saw Rob Thorworth at The Austin Grill in Canton. If you live in Baltimore you need to go see him soon, and preferably at a *band show*. Now that he's got himself surrounded by good players, he won't be around much longer if there is any justice left in the world.

They blew the lid off the joint. The crowd at the pub was enthusiastic, and an eclectic mix of people were dancing and having a blast. A group of college girls came in and joined all the 40-somethings already on the floor. Lots of booty shaking was going on. I haven't seen such a commanding guitar soloist live since SRV at the Towson Center in '85 (and I've seen B.B. King, Robert Cray, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Adrien Belew, Robert Fripp, David Gilmour, and Jeff Beck since then, to name a few). The addition of a keyboardist who also could rip a harmonica riff made the show that much more special. Rob did a few covers--a spectular rendition of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?," a crunchy electrified take of Neil Young's "Old Man,"* a beautiful "Tangled up in Blue"--with all verses!--that segued nicely into his own song "Shelly," and a version of "All Along the Watchtower" situated elegantly between Dylan's original and Hendrix's re-working. At the end it became a slow reggae jam. He made each song his own with casual and earnest confidence, fitting them to his own vocal style, selling them convincingly.

The rest of the set was primarily from Rob's own album Dig It Up, with some hard-edged blues from his earlier catalog as well. It's interesting to see how far his songwriting has come of late. The Austin Grill has a great new space for live music, I recommend you check it out.

I ended up dancing with a tall blond who kept bugging us to get up throughout the night. She was an attractive woman in her early 50s, and as soon as we got on the dance floor she turned her ass into my groin. Um, sorry. I don't freak dance women who aren't my wife. But I was happy to dance because the music deserved it. Had the wife been with me we'd have been unstoppable.

I first heard Rob Thorworth when Yahtzee gave me a copy of Life is Suffering; and I don't mean a ripped CD copy, I mean an actual shrink-wrapped CD he bought from The Man himself. I was immediately drawn to Thorworth's blues guitar playing. He's got a really sweet touch, good phrasing, and a kick-ass sound. I also like his smokily emotive singing voice.

Dig It Up took a while to grow on me. I listened to it occasionally over a six-month period, but when I 'got' the album I was hooked. I think it's remarkable work by any rock standard, let alone by the "self-produced in my garage" standard.

*"Old Man" was covered recently by Natalie Cole. Ugh.

#77

I liked the idea behind Chimera more than I actually enjoyed the novel. Same can be said for the other Barth I read, Giles Goat-Boy. I began each book reading with great gusto, only to find my enthusiasm waning along the way. In Chimera I found Barth's ingenious re-telling of Scheherezade with its po-mo twists and turns hilarious, bawdy, and interesting. Unfortunately that chunk of the book is only its beginning one-fifth. I was quickly into the second stage, a less engaging revamp of the Perseus legend, and the narrative tricks and authorial interventions and academic puns became stale. There are moments of fun throughout Chimera, which is extremely ingenious, at times hilarious and sexy, but way too academic and overwrought for my taste. The postmodernists tend toward such excesses, even those I admire. I admire Barth more than I enjoy him. Someday I'll probably still read The Sot-Weed Factor out of obligation to some ideal concerning what those with MAs in English should be have read before dying.