To mark the occasion, I just sent him a message that read, in part: “I think it’s awesome that Paul McCartney is sixty-four now that it was twenty years ago today that it was twenty years ago today that it was twenty years ago today that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play.”
Category: personal
Mother, May, I
Not that long ago, I wrote:
Now if we can just get out of April […] Our May calendar, it need hardly be said, is becoming alarmingly full of things pre-empted by April events. I dread the prospect of our new in-joke being, “In June.”
If I had known what May held in store — the death of my mom, the collapse of the Democrats, and in a little twist of the knife, the sudden closure of Sushi Ya in Palo Alto — I would have wished for April to go on and on and on.
May, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
August 5th, 1977
May 25th, 1977, was not an especially significant day for me. I was aware that some science fictiony thing called Star Wars had just opened, and I even saw a brief clip in the film-review segment of that evening’s news, but somehow, despite being a nerdy ten year old, the idea of seeing Star Wars held no appeal for me.
The decades of Star Wars mania that were soon to follow did such a thorough job of entombing my pre-Star Wars mentality that I can’t even construct a plausible theory to explain my disinterest, let alone remember the actual reason. A big-screen space adventure should have hit me right where I lived, and later, of course, it did, in a very big way. Could there really have been an earlier version of me that was immune to the prospect? In any event, the opening day of Star Wars came and went almost completely unremarked.
For the next many days I was subjected to my friend David‘s ravings about the film. He’d seen it on opening weekend with his dad. I regarded his lavish praise with skepticism. I knew David was also heavy into “hard SF,” to which I, a confirmed Trekkie, had not yet graduated. He had never been able to interest me in his sci-fi novelettes or his hex-grid sci-fi boardgames, which all seemed the same to me, lots of galactic-conquest-this and enslaving-races-that.
Well-thumbed
Before long, though, I could not escape the Star Wars phenomenon and decided to check out… the novel. I picked it up at the bookstore and was immediately hooked! I must have read it twice in one week and was determined to see the movie immediately. But it was too late: the summer had come and it was time to go to Monticello!
When we were in “the country” during the summer, my dad stayed in the city to work and came up to be with us on the weekends. While he was away, we were without a car. The bungalow colony where we stayed had everything we needed, so we never missed it — except that without a car, we couldn’t get to the movie theater at the Jamesway mall, where Star Wars was playing.
Each weekend that summer I pleaded with my parents to take us to see the movie, but there were always other things to do and never enough time. Meanwhile I read and re-read and re-read the book, and my parents tried to placate me with related Star Wars items like the LP of the music. Being surrounded all summer by a day camp full of kids abuzz about Star Wars, they were small comfort.
Finally, on the first Friday in August, my dad arrived from the city a little earlier than usual and announced, “Let’s go see Star Wars!” The drive from Sims Bungalow Colony to the mall could not have been more than five miles, but it seemed to take forever. Waiting for the movie to begin I fairly vibrated in my seat, possibly hyperventilating. Two hours later my parents reported, with equal measures of amusement and alarm, that they had not seen me blink once since the movie began.
I’d lost my Star Wars cherry and life was never the same. As soon as we were back in Forest Hills after the summer, I made my way to the Continental theater on Austin Street to see it again. And then again a week or two later.
By fall it was still playing, but I began to worry about the day it would disappear from the theaters. I hatched a scheme to tape-record the audio of the movie. I fit my Radio Shack cassette tape recorder inside a shoulder bag. I got fresh batteries. I got blank cassettes and took off the cellophane in advance — I didn’t want it crinkling when the time came. I put on my watch, said “Seeya tonight” to my folks, and sat through three consecutive shows of Star Wars at the Continental.
During the first show I used my watch to locate silences in the film during which I could flip or change my tape. During the second show I recorded the audio, deftly ejecting, flipping, and changing cassettes (all surreptitiously inside my shoulder bag, as I had practiced at home) at the times I’d marked down. And the third show was for — what else? — just being able to sit back and enjoy the movie.
A week later I did the exact same thing in order to have two recordings. The crappier one would serve as a backup. Of course they were both crappy, but they were good enough to listen to again and again, the way most other kids listened to their favorite records. In no time I had memorized every word, every note of music, and every sound effect. Where other kids would go around singing their favorite songs, I would recite Star Wars.
I must have driven my family and friends to distraction, but they were all very tolerant, even supportive — surprisingly so, in retrospect. I was not quite as bad as the character in Diner who compulsively quotes The Sweet Smell of Success to anyone and everyone rather than actually talk to them. But I was close. Fortunately I was still a few years away from trying to get laid.
Thirty years later I still remember the movie with near-perfect fidelity. When I read about Edward Copeland’s Star Wars blog-a-thon to commemorate the film’s 30th anniversary, I asked myself, “What can I contribute that’s more than just another reminiscence of the first time I saw Star Wars? What’s left to say that I haven’t already said?”
Then I saw Charles Ross’s One Man Star Wars show and thought, “I can do better!” That gave me my answer; and here it is. I whipped it together in a few hours with Audacity, Transcode, and a very cheap microphone. I apologize for the terrible “tape hiss” and the strange audio artifacts. I’m no sound engineer — and as this makes clear, I’m no voice actor either. I have a new appreciation for what Charles Ross does on stage — though I do think I nailed Mark Hamill’s reading of, “Are you kidding? At the rate they’re gaining?” And all of Chewbacca’s lines.
Update: I just found this online: the General Cinema feature-presentation “snipe,” which preceded my first viewing of Star Wars at the Monticello Twin Cinema. As far as I know, I only saw this “snipe” that one time, but its jazzy tune was seared into my memory and I’ve been humming it from time to time ever since. God, I love the Internet.
Update 2: The YouTube copy of the General Cinema snipe is gone but can still be found here.
LASER: Likelihood Abatement by Synchronicity Exceeding Reality
- 9 May: My mom dies.
- 10 May: I help my sister start going through my mom’s apartment. Among the few items of interest I manage to find amidst thirty-five years’ worth of accumulated clutter is the December, 1966 issue of National Geographic, whose article, “The Laser’s Bright Magic,” about the invention of the laser, made an enormous impression on me when I was young. I also find the presentation I gave in fifth grade based on that article.
- 11 May: Theodore Maiman, inventor of the laser and central figure in the aforementioned National Geographic article, dies.
Remembrance of thing that rolled past
Thirty years ago or so, while my friend Jon and I crossed the street to enter our elementary school one morning, a car rolled into the crosswalk and knocked Jon down. Jon wasn’t hurt, and the driver got a tongue-lashing from the crossing guard. The driver’s M.D. license plates said: MD 48205.
Yes, I remember a license plate from thirty years ago. Weird.
Mercy mission
Moblogging from the Lindbergh terminal of the airport in Minneapolis-St. Paul, unexpectedly en route to New York, where my mom’s health has taken a turn for the worse. By tonight I should be back at my dad’s house near Roosevelt Field, where Charles Lindbergh took off on his history-making flight. And the book I’m reading on this trip (Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut) just mentioned Charles Lindbergh in passing. I just can’t get away from that guy!
And once again, my connection appears to have required about the longest walk between gates that it’s possible to have at this sprawling facility. I’m not complaining — it was a nice walk, and I can certainly use the exercise. But how is it possible that that happens every time I fly?
Just got it
Ringo: Hey, I wonder what’ll happen if I pull this lever?
Old Fred: Oh, you mustn’t do that, now.
Ringo: Can’t help it, I’m a born lever-puller.
This quote comes near the beginning of Yellow Submarine, which I have seen dozens of times since age eight or so. I’ve been a Beatles fan for about as long.
Ringo pronounces lever with a long “e” (rhymes with Tom Seaver). It only just now occurred to me that this is a pun: Ringo is a born Liverpool-er.
This breaks my previous record of not realizing for about twenty years (mid-70’s to mid-90’s) that Gnip Gnop was Ping Pong spelled backwards — which in turn displaced ten or so years of not getting the gag behind Fargo North, Decoder.
Can’t help wondering what long-overdue realization is next…
“In May”
I was surprised to discover how tapped out I was after writing my seven-part cross-country drive saga. (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.) But my writing muscles are finally starting to return to fighting trim.
Now if we can just get out of April. This month includes birthday parties for both our sons, multiple visitors from out of town, the culmination of one big project each at my day job and my sideline, and taxes — all on top of the usual little excitements like flat tires, school functions, and so on.
This month is so inhumanly busy that Andrea and I have a new in-joke: “In May.” As in:
“We need to give the kids a bath.”
“In May.”
or
“Wanna go grocery shopping?”
“In May.”
Our May calendar, it need hardly be said, is becoming alarmingly full of things pre-empted by April events. I dread the prospect of our new in-joke being, “In June.”
A boy and his dog, part 7: Winnemucca to San Rafael
(Continued from yesterday.)
Alex and I woke up fifteen years ago today in Nevada, a few hours’ drive from our final destination of San Rafael, California. My first thought, though, was to play some roulette.
All across the country I had been planning to place a single five-dollar bet on the number 28 when I got to Nevada. Why 28? Because 28 is perfect.
A perfect number is a mathematical curiosity, of interest mainly to math nerds. It’s any number that is the sum of its factors (excluding itself). The factors are all the ways you can divide the number into integers. So 28 can be divided by 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14; and 1+2+4+7+14=28. Very few numbers are “perfect.”
Like all the other motels I stayed at during this trip, the management would not permit me to leave Alex unattended in the room while I went to one of the tiny casinos along the main street of Winnemucca. So I found a place to park in the shade and left her in the car while I ducked into a saloon-style casino, bought a single five-dollar chip at a roulette table, and placed it not on 28, but on 14.
Why 14?
When I left Pittsburgh with Alex, Andrea and I had been together for three and a half years. We agreed that she would follow me to California some indeterminate amount of time later, after I’d had a chance to settle in and find us a place to live. But would we stick to that plan? I was severing my ties with Pittsburgh; Andrea was not. Moving clear across the country was an almost irresistible opportunity to make a fresh start. When would Andrea feel ready to move — in a month? A year? Would I still be the same person she bade farewell in April? Would I have moved on? Would she?
These thoughts were ever-present as I headed west all week. I fully expected to arrive in a place full of tanned, blond beauties, and that thought was ever-present, too. Who would I be — the swinging bachelor, or the committed boyfriend? Who was I?
On the spur of the moment, in a tiny casino in Winnemucca, without even realizing I was doing it, I chose. 28 was my number, just as a swinging single lifestyle was my fantasy. But 14 was a number that Andrea and I shared. It’s the day each month that she and I celebrated our menseversary.
I placed my bet on 14. On sharing my life with Andrea.
The wheel spun, the ball bounced. It landed… on number 28.
I spent the rest of the drive — through Reno, into the Sierra Nevada, past Tahoe, and down into the Sacramento Valley — cursing myself. What had I done? The plan was 28. It had always been 28! There went a hundred and seventy-five dollars I could have had, free — not to mention an infinitely more valuable opportunity to polish my “Mr. Lucky” cred and enlarge my legend. What on earth could have made me change my mind so unexpectedly? What interfered with my plan?
I wrestled with this over the following weeks as I settled in to life in California, and slowly it dawned on me: this is what love does. You can try to control the way your life unfolds, but that’s just an illusion. A seductive illusion, to be sure — easy money, like the hundred seventy-five I didn’t win. But if you always insist on controlling your life, you renounce the incidental, the random, the serendipitous. You miss all the interesting stuff that you can’t possibly anticipate. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Though it hadn’t gone when or how I’d expected it to, somehow I’d found the right person for me.
Alex and I passed up the turnoff for highway 37 (which led more directly to San Rafael), intent on riding I-80 to its very end. We crossed the Bay Bridge, wended our way through San Francisco, crossed the Golden Gate, and took 101 up to the Freitas Parkway exit, as I’d done back in February. We walked into Z-Code late in the afternoon to a very warm welcome. At Dan’s signal I let Alex off the leash and she tore across the wide-open lobby area, a black and tan blur, greeting all my new co-workers for an instant apiece before racing to explore more of her exciting new environs. A short time later we followed Dan to his house, where a guest room was ready for me and Alex.
We lived there for a few weeks, then found our own place. A few weeks later, Andrea left Pittsburgh, had her own cross-country odyssey, and joined us in California — the rest is history. My doubts had disappeared. Who was I? I was the steadfast guy, the committed boyfriend.
Perhaps I had found myself after all.
(The end.)
A boy and his dog, part 6: Salt Lake City to Winnemucca
(Continued from yesterday.)
A short distance outside of Salt Lake City, en route to Winnemucca, Nevada, I pulled over to the side of the road in order to investigate the fascinating salt flats we were passing. It was moist and squishy! (As you’ll see, it was not the only moist and squishy stuff we encountered on this leg.) Alex was unsure of her footing and didn’t want to explore much. I wondered if the squishy stuff we were standing on tasted like salt. I almost tried, but chickened out.
With one glance back to marvel at the Salt Lake City skyline against the majestic backdrop of the Wasatch mountain range, Alex and I resumed our drive, crossing before long into Nevada — and an honest-to-goodness western desert. Once again I had to stop the car to tread upon the unfamiliar terrain, appreciating the tiny puffs of dust I kicked up with each step, cowboy-like. As we continued on our way, we saw tumbleweeds — tumbleweeds! — tumbling by, and an enormous migration of yellow butterflies crossing the highway.
A short time later nature called and I was obliged to pull into a rest stop. It consisted of a roughly rectangular patch of packed-down desert dust, with a few parked cars surrounding a solitary outbuilding. The only thing leading to or away from that spot was the highway itself. Where were the power lines supplying the rest stop? Where was the plumbing? There was no sign at all of any utility infrastructure existing below the desert floor.
Sure enough, the restroom had neither electricity nor plumbing, other than a cistern that permitted a trickle of water for hand-washing. A skylight let in more than enough sunshine so that there was no need for electric lights. (I shudder to think of what it would be like at night.) And the toilet was mounted atop an enormous pit — at least, it seemed enormous from my cursory inspection. I didn’t examine it too closely. It was my very first experience with a composting latrine. Undoubtedly this place saw plenty of use, so there should have been unmentionable amounts of filth in it. But to my surprise, the foul odor I would have expected to be wafting from it didn’t exist. Instead, the air that intimately caressed me as I sat in quiet contemplation was delightfully cool and fresh. Incredible!
The bathroom wasn’t disgusting, but I wasn’t getting off so easy. As I strode out of the restroom I was amazed to see a multihued layer, at least a quarter-inch thick, of smashed-yellow-butterfly goo coating the leading edges of my car. Bleah.
(…to be continued…)