The Rumblings of Planet Earth

The Earth is once again giving us just a minor taste of how insignificant we tiny bags of biologic chemicals and mostly water are in the grand scheme of this planet's evolution.

The earthquake in Chile this morning, though one of the largest ever recorded at magnitude 8.8, didn't cause catastrophic loss of life anywhere near the scale seen in Haiti.  Which might seem odd to some, since the quake itself was 500 times more powerful than the one which ripped through Port Au Prince last month.  Chile is obviously a much more prosperous country than Haiti and its infrastructure has evolved specifically to deal with earthquakes and other natural disasters in mind, which helps limit the damage.  In many ways, Haiti and Chile are on opposite ends of the two extremes in this regard.  Another difference is that the epicenter was 22 miles underground, 70 miles from Concepcion and 200 miles from Santiago (it wasn't a direct strike on a large city).  Still, over a hundred are known dead so far and likely many more before it's said and done.  The direct strike was on the coast, resulting in a massive tsunami whose destruction is spreading far beyond the local region, threatening a good chunk of the pacific (warnings are in place as far away as Hawaii and Australia).  Good thoughts to our brothers and sisters in the southern hemisphere and pacific basin while they deal with this crisis.  

This is a good time to remind folks that the people in Haiti are still hurting and will be for a long, long time. Without any sort of lasting infrastructure to help them.  Please give if you can.  The global news cycle and associated throng of media have largely moved on to more recent events as is natural, but that doesn't mean things are all that much better here ...

Perhaps it's too soon for jokes but I've given fair warning that my humor trends toward the dark side.  When I first saw the news this morning on TV and they were showing damage in Santiago, I immediately thought of Something About Mary.  Specifically, the scene in which Pat Healy, pretending to be an architect, slings bullshit at Harvard educated and renowned  British architect Tucker, who he thinks is the real deal (but who later turns out to be a pizza delivery man named Norm from New Jersey).  Hint: neither of them have ever been to Chile.

Tucker: Really? Where would I have seen your work?
Pat Healy: Well, have you been to, uh well, let me see... Santiago, Chile?
Tucker: Twice last year. Which building's yours?
Pat Healy: Oh. Emm ... are you familiar with the soccer stadium?
Tucker: Did you build the Estadio Olimpico?!?

Pat Healy: No, just down the street the Celinto Catayente Towers. It's quite a fine example, in fact!  I recommend that next time you're up that way that you drop in and take a gander at it yourself.

Here's hoping the Celinto Catayente Towers is okay.

And in all seriousness, best wishes to all affected by this tragedy.   Give to the Red Cross, please.  For Chile, Haiti, and all those hurt by Mother Nature's wrath.   The Red Cross is pretty good at getting the cash to those who need it most.

"Talk" to you again maybe next weekend.  My flu's in the rear view mirror and it's time to tackle all things technology again for awhile.  If you're a masochist who finds something interesting on these pages, you can always visit my technology blog as it's more likely that I'll post there during the week.  Of course, I can't guarantee you'll like the subject matter much; often times, I don't either :-).

Stacking The Brooms

I've been watching the women's curling gold medal for the past two hours.  And I don't even have a fever anymore. As I write this, they're going to "extra ends."   A real thriller, with Canadian pride hanging on the line!

I've really been getting into this sport with a vengeance over these Olympics and don't understand why others can't see its genius.

I guess that's why there hasn't been a decent curling movie produced (or any curling movie at all, for that matter).  To that end, I'm going to write one, inspired by the '70's classic Slap Shot. 

Burt Reynolds will be perfect in the Paul Newman role as player/coach Reggie Dunlop (the "skip" in curling parlance).  Of course, we'll need to have the Hanson Brothers.  This time the boys will forever be getting in trouble for "high broom sticking" and "rock greasing."

Finally, let's not forget Ogie Ogilthorpe, the notorious Federal League goon.  In my curling-infused re-telling, he'll be infamous for his "prison shower" shenanigans (suffice to say it involves a sharpened curling broom handle levied in the vicinity of the opponent's thrower, just as he's bent over about to deliver the rock).  You'll laugh, you'll cry - it'll be better than Cats.   Of course, we'll need a new title.  I like Stacking The Brooms.

Mary-Louise + Costello = Healing

Elvis Costello turning the table on his Sundance Spectacle show: he's the one being interviewed this time and by no other than Mary-Louise Parker.   Mary-Louise is a Costello fan?  I didn't think I could be more infatuated with her but apparently I can.  I do believe that I'll head to NYC right now and start my new career as her personal stalker (I hope the position is open).  I didn't know Mary-Louise was a music journalist in addition to her award winning stage and screen talents.  She writes a semi-regular column for Esquire.  I'll be checking out her work at once!  And we share the same favorite Elvis album (Imperial Bedroom).  The close up of her swaying to Elvis singing Town Cryer is almost enough to make me ... well, I'm only human (and I think I'm Turning Japanese, I really think so ...)

I needed this shot in the arm.  Because apparently other shots in the arm I've received were a bit less than effective.  Specifically, I refer to the flu shots I got in August and again in November, both received while in the depths of the flu.  The end of February and I've been knocked out with influenza once again, just now climbing out of the shit tank.  Perhaps I should have gotten an anti-flu shot instead or at least one that lasts more than a few days. Thanks, Dr. Nick!  I can't wait for spring to get here.  As one who hates the sunshine and flowers, I never thought I'd hear myself saying that but there it is.  Say goodbye to sickness and snow.   He says with another half foot of snow on the way tomorrow ...

In the meantime, I'll throw Imperial Bedroom on the stereo and a re-run of Weeds on the screen and veg myself to sleep in my recliner ...

Digging Skeleton and Graves

I'm OD'ing on Raspberry Diet Snapple and watching the Olympics.  My favorite sport, Skeleton, is now over (Luge is for chicken-shit wimps).  Skeleton riders go head first and the sleds are not allowed to have steering or brakes.  But there's still freestyle aerial skiing and more alpine action to be had.  And, always, curling on the lesser NBC channels.  Almost Famous is on the tube so I find myself switching back and forth between the Olympics and that.  I always gravitate to Almost Famous: any movie that includes Lester Bangs as a character is okay in my book.

Speaking of Lester Bangs, and other dead people, I stumbled across a fine online service today that helps you get the low down on the disposition of a dearly departed's remains.  It's called, appropriately enough, Find A Grave.  I can't believe I haven't found a need for their services up to this point.  Finally, a site with a useful purpose.  I dig it.

No Hyperbole About It

I've never posted simply to point people to someone else's blog, but I really think Allie of Hyperbole and a Half could be famous one day.  She's got a huge talent for comedic story telling and mad skills for lunatic illustrations.  She's got a Ralph Steadman thing going with the drawings.  And that's high praise indeed, in my book.

Sweepers, Sweepers: Man Your Brooms

ActivStyle is the latest service sprung up to satisfy the incontinence craze sweeping our nation.  According to the commercial, your "personal incontinence consultant" will guide you through the maze of bowel and bladder control products on the market today, ensuring your needs are met.  Tell me, sir, do you shit your drawers, piss your pants, or both?  Or are you just a dribbler?  I want to be sure I formulate a plan custom made just for you! When I'm finished, we'll plug those leaky holes of yours so tight that there'll be no need for you to carry that mop and bucket around where ever you go anymore ...

Speaking of mopping up, I'm quite fascinated by the sport of curling and have been since I was a little kid.  I grew up about 75 miles south of Vancouver, B.C. back when there was no cable television, so you got whatever channels your rabbit ears could pick up.  In addition to the Seattle network affiliates, we got several Canadian stations and it seemed like curling was on one or the other practically 24/7.  I've lived in Philadelphia almost 25 years and so don't get the chance to see curling much these days, but the arrival of the Winter Olympics brings a bit of my childhood back home to me once again. 

I guess it's curling's strange shuffleboard meets mopping the floor that feeds my interest.  Perhaps it's no accident that the sport has become somewhat of a metaphor for my life at sea: I did lots of mopping and sweeping the decks in the Navy and later ventured out on a couple of short pleasure cruises where you could play shuffleboard, if you were so inclined.  Curling brings those two disparate experiences together for me, tying them together along with the experience of my younger self so taken with the sport from the great white north as a child.

As much as I "enjoy" curling, I'm even more fascinated by cricket, having been glued to the TV for hours watching it from the hotel whenever I'm in Europe.  I think the attraction there is that though I've watched extensively, I'm to this day completely confused by what's going on.  I do know they break for tea several times in the ten years it feels like it takes to complete a match.  They have bowlers and batsmen, and it's vaguely like baseball mixed with croquet.  I'm aware that there's a lot of talk about "overs" and such.  Simply magnificent.

But cricket's for another time.  It's the Winter Olymics now. Sure, it's great to see Lindsey Vonn come through with the Gold, even with a bum shin.  Gold too for mogul chick extraordinaire Hanna Kearney earlier in the week. And Shaun White will do his thing tonight and likely grab the top prize.  But me?  I recorded CNBC's coverage of curling this afternoon and plan to hunker down this later this evening and transport myself back to those childhood days of yore in front of the tube, digging on this sport of kings (well, sport of kings' housekeepers anyway). 

Sweepers, sweepers: man your brooms ... Fellow travelers who are familiar with that siren song understand.

My Life So Far (Based on the Novel By ...)

This one is harder - I tend not to read books in the same year they're published (with a few exceptions).  So tying a book to a particular year is tough. Syd Hoff was my literary hero when I was first introduced to the joys of reading by my mother at the age of three. From three to six, it was all about Syd. It turns out that Syd and I share a birthday (September 4th), though I didn't know it until about five minutes ago when I looked him up on Wikipedia. It turns out that you can sort of classify my love of reading into eras:

• The Syd Hoff Era.
• Mid-60's
• Danny and the Dinosaur, Sammy the Seal, Chester The Horse
• The Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle Era
• Late 60's
• The Donald Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown Era
• Late 60's
• The S.E. Hinton Era
• Early / mid-70's
• The Hunter S. Thompson Era
• Late 70's, all of the 80's, much of the 90's
• The Jay McInerney/Bret Easton Ellis Era
• Late 80's through the mid-90's
• Everything Else (1975 to present)

I strayed a little, of course. During the prepubescent eras, The Phantom Tollbooth was the most significant of the "one hit wonders" I loved. And Where The Wild Things Are around the same time as Syd. Later came the Everything Else era which meant literally that: any single author/genre/whatever was now beside the point.

Everything Else started around 1975 when I made it out from the downstairs backroom of the Everett Public Library upstairs to the land of big people's books. Manchild in the Promised Land was the first "adult" strength read, a tale of growing up that was grown up with a vengeance. And wholly foreign from my way of life. In other words, brilliant.

The late 70's found me devouring Creem and Rolling Stone, the former handing me Lester Bangs and the latter the works of Hunter S. Thompson. That was all she wrote. Lester and Hunter were gods to me, especially Hunter. For me, there's Hunter and then there's everybody else. Even his later work, when he got lazy and repetitive. Didn't matter, it was all fantastic. It taught me what the truth really means.

Of the fictional variety, I loved/love Bret Easton Ellis (especially American Psycho), Jay McInerney (especially Story of My Life), Joseph Heller (especially Something Happened), John Irving (especially A Prayer for Owen Meany), F. Scott Fitzgerald (especially Gatsby and The Beautiful and Damned), William Burroughs (especially Junky), Charlies Bukowski (especially Ham on Rye), James Frey (I love his style, and especially A Million Little Pieces, even more now that I know portions were made up), Leon Uris (especially Trinity and The Haj).

My favorite book of all, hands down, no-contest, is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I first read it in the early 1980's and have since re-read it a number of times. It never gets old.

The only book of any heft that I've read in one sitting on a single day is Christine by Stephen King. I'm not a huge King fan but have read more than a few of his tomes, many of them simply wonderful. I happened to start Christine early morning hunkered down in the laundry room on board CVN 69 while floating around the Mediterranean Sea during the summer of 1983. I was new to the ship, working in the Intelligence Center, but temporarily assigned to clean my division's enlisted sleeping area. Most lowly straight-outta-school enlisted types take a turn at this and the duties included doing the entire division's dirty clothes and towels. There was only one laundry room available and it was particularly backed up on this day, so I spent thirteen hours head resting on the large sacks of clothes, waiting for and then doing the shitload of uniforms, towels and other at-sea personal items I was stuck with. I spent that time with Christine.

Lately I've been going through random stuff, whatever I find on Amazon or in Borders. I love the Japanese novelist Natsuo Kirino, especially Out. Even translated, her books are bitter, cynical, funny, just great.

In the last dozen or so years, I would have to say that my favorite single book has been Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis, published in the late 90's. God I hope she publishes again one day.

As evidenced by my King affection, I'm not immune to the charms of McNovels. I've enjoyed those by the likes of Tom Clancy, John Grisham and Michael Crichton, especially the latter. If I'm stuck at an airport and find myself without a book, these guys are nothing if not consistent. Crichton was a Harvard M.D. whose first book was a non-fiction account of modern medicine circa 1970, entitled Five Patients. It's one of my favorites. As is The Andromeda Strain. These guys tend to have good story structure but mostly fall short on character development and prose/imagery. Characters and imagery are the most important qualities of a good read for my money, but I can and do take story structure alone in a pinch. Sometimes you're surprised by these guys and get a good chunk of all three.

So that's the "list" as best I can put it. It's out of phase, out of time, not particularly linear. I've read a helluva lot more books than I've seen movies, more even than I've listened to songs (I'm not talking casually listening here, which I do many times a day, but really focused listening). Still, I can't bring myself to associate any one to a given year.

For those that suffered through this self indulgent literary life crawl, you can take comfort in the fact that I'm done with this particular obsession. No more lists for a while.

Now I need to go out to the porch and chip the rest of the ice off my front strairs (wouldn't want the postman to slip, fall and sue me). Then it's time to prepare for Chinese New Year coming our way tomorrow. The Year of the Tiger, my Chinese astrological sign. Of course, in China it's already tomorrow and Chinese Dick Clark has long since hosted the ball drop from Tiananmen Square. Back here in Philly, I need to get my last ditch New Year's Resolutions in order before our time about eight hours hence.

Oh, it's also Valentine's Day tomorrow. I don't know why Billy Ray Valentine gets to have his own day, but apparently he does. I'll drink some frozen orange juice in his honor.