Winnah, winnah, tofu dinnah!

So,  as part of our California desert-to-ocean vacation trip, Coco and and I had time to visit with pal Wendy for some beach touring of the Santa Monica, Venice, Manhattan, Hermosa, and Redondo types. At the last of these, we walked the amusement pier and enjoyed the offerings of an old school "penny arcade" - the kind that gives you tickets for winning the games.

Coco and Wendy look so gleeful here because Coco actually "won" something!

When we walked in, Coco spotted a life-sized stuffed husky dog hanging from the ceiling and playfully suggested that I win it for her. It was redeemable for 400 tokens, and I demurred. After I had a go at an electronic version of the carnival hammer game (that offered no rewards), Coco spotted one of these:

Coco had never encountered one before, and I explained to her how she needed to slide a quarter down the slot and position it to shove other quarters off the shelf when the flat shovel-thing made its move. Wendy read the fine print and saw that the game did not pay out in actual quarters, but in tokens redeemable for prizes (such as the husky dog).

Coco played one quarter into a perfect spot to no good result; it was just shoved on top of the pile. Undaunted, she played another; the shovel came forward and a clutch of quarters fell off the edge and into the bin with some satisfying clinking and clanging! The machine began spitting out a ticker tape marked with divisions, like a ruler. We tried to count them as we gathered up the ever-growing strip; it wound up being over twenty feet long with hundreds of units. After some confusion, we found another machine to feed the tape into; it counted the units up and printed off a more manageable receipt.

It read 250! More than halfway to a husky dog with just one play! How awesome is that? But wait a second... what's that fine, fine print?

Coco had won 250 stamps. At the described exchange rate, that was the equivalent of only 10 tokens, hardly a dent in the total toward a husky. (We never actually saw any tokens, either; apparently they only exist as a mathematical construct.)

We soon discovered that ten tokens barely kept one from vagrancy in a place like this. Being unable to choose between a water bottle with no lid and a couple of batteries with dubious provenance, Coco decided to double down and go for broke. She picked a Surprise Box from this enticing display:

The contents? Well, for that, let's go to the videotape. Enjoy. Or be warned.

This post created and uploaded at the dreadful Delta terminal at LAX.

Up and Atom

So, anyone who's known me very long (or has read the title of this blog) knows that I have more than a passing interest in Epicureanism - not sensual hedonism, in the modern (and incorrect) usage of the word, but the philosophy, related to Stoicism, named for Epicurus of Samos. In this school of thought, the avoidance of pain and the search for pleasure are related directly to the question of good and evil, and the ultimate goal is ataraxia, that state of clear-headed tranquility that comes from, among other things, releasing all fear of gods and the afterlife.

In addition to developing his ethical philosophy, Epicurus (pronounced eh-PIH-kur-us, btw) was a proponent of the atomist theory of matter - that everything material was comprised of combinations of tiny particles in different arrangements. Not a bad guess for someone in the fourth century BCE, eh?

The most definitive text on Epicureanism is De Rerum Natura - On the Nature of Things - by Titus Lucretius Carus, a Roman writing 200 years after the Greek philosopher's death. This poem by Lucretius, comprehensive in its elucidation and by all accounts beautiful in its language, could be considered the manual for modern, humanistic thinking. Yet it was lost for many years during the Middle Ages, the few extant copies mouldering in monasteries tucked into forsaken corners of Europe.

In The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt tells the story of one Poggio Braccioloni, a Vatican secretary and avid book-hunter who found and circulated Lucretius's classic work and in so doing became (according to Greenblatt) the spark of the renaissance and the catalyst for the modern world.

(airplane photo, complete with superhero bookmark)

Greenblatt weaves a tight story, equal parts history lesson, travelogue, political thriller, and comedy of manners. Throughout it all run two threads. One is the tension that Poggio embodied - a secular staffer in the Hoy See, a man obsessed with classical literature working in a culture that renounced all things pagan,  a person of intellectual curiosity living in a time of Inquisition. The other ever-present thread is the notion of just how close western civilization came to losing some of the pearls of its past - and how many gems were never found again. The swerve of the book's title refers the small deviation in the movement of one atom that causes a collision and begins the building of things, just as one small find by one lowly scholar began a whole new era.

The book is worth a read just for the sweep and scope of the adventure that brought that De Rerum Natura back to us. In addition, after the climax of the historical story, Greenblatt gives an excellent summary of the principles of Epicureanism as explained by Lucretius. I resonated so strongly with them, I reproduce the list here, minus the explanatory notes:

• Everything is made of invisible particles
• The elementary particles of matter are eternal
• The elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size
• All particles are in motion in an infinite void
• The universe has no creator or designer
• Everything comes into being as result of a swerve
• The swerve is the source of free will
• Nature ceaselessly experiments
• The universe was not created for or about humans
• Humans are not unique
• Human society began not in a Golden Age of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival
• The soul dies
• There is no afterlife
• Death is nothing to us
• All organized religions are superstitious delusions
• Religions are invariably cruel
• There are no angels, demons, or ghosts
• The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain
• The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion
• Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder

I have to say, looking this over, that this is a pretty good summary of how I believe as I move through life. I have been reading and re-reading Epicurus and Lucretius for maybe forty years now; I guess some of it must have sunk in.

Read Lucretius, or at least read Greenblatt. You'll be glad you did either.

O.G. Blogging

So, while Coco enjoys her birthday luxuriating at what is colloquially called The Naked Lady Spa, I am out blogging in Starbucks, just like old times. I've got an outlet and a hot coco, and they're playing some nice tunes, but the view isn't much to write home about. Ah, Suburban Nation.

(If I were really ambitions, I would have done some time-lapse photography.)

Since I'm feeling old school, I thought I would just dump some bloggy stuff in here, like I used to, when people actually had blogs and read each other's. See, here's an old joke about it:

(Now our cat has his own Facebook page)

Ah, those heady days. We'd meet each other and someone would ask "what's up?" and the response would be a resentful acknowledgment that maybe not everybody was waiting for your latest post, to devour it and know exactly what was up. I guess the practice lives on in memory, at least - I mean, this is from a fairly recent television show, isn't it?

(Although that short looks like it's made out of Qiana - that's not coming back, is it?)

Before hanging out at Starbucks waiting for Coco to finish her spa visit, I hung out on campus waiting for her to finish teaching. (Yeah, she had to work today, more's the bummer.) I graded and prepped and visited some folks and sent some email and had lunch, a tofurkey sandwich. Not leftovers from Thanksgiving: we didn't have any of those, since we went out for dinner to Bamboo Garden, although we did have some faux-leftovers because Coco made stuffing anyway and I bought a can of jellied cranberry sauce, just like mom used to buy, except that the can isn't ribbed anymore and they don't emboss the sell-by code into the metal but use ink instead, so the quivering purple cylinder has less architectural detail now, but I digress. My sandwich included cheddar cheese and cucumbers, and was on sliced "artisanal" bread.

Now that's an old-school blog post.

Excelsior!

How'd I miss this?

So, did you know that Amelia Earhart flew around the world this year?

Not Amelia Mary Earhart...

... but Amelia Rose Earhart.

The younger Amelia (no relation) left a career as a TV and radio reporter in Denver and L.A. to front the Fly With Amelia Foundation, a non-profit that provides flight-training scholarships to young women and supports aviation-based educational curricula. It looks legit; she's on the Board of Directors of the Wings over the Rockies Air & Space Museum, which partners with her efforts.

Anyway, from June 25 to July 12 of this year, Earhart (with the support of dozens of corporate sponsors) circled the globe in a Pilatus PC-12, a Swiss turboprop airplane, on a flight plan pretty close to this:

Along the way, she gave out some scholarships and generated publicity for her foundation, as well as setting a record by being the youngest woman to fly solo around the world. (The first woman to fly solo around the world was Jerrie Mock in 1964 - after the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, had gone to space!)

Well, I'm sorry I missed it when it happened, and I say good for her. I would like to have followed the Twitter feed in real time (o tempora o mores) and celebrated some good old-fashioned adventuring and self-promotion, especially if it is in support of a decent cause. Barely thirty years old, Earhart has plenty of opportunity ahead for more challenges, and I'd be surprised if we didn't hear from her again. Remember, Diana Nyad first swam around Manhattan and into the public consciousness forty years ago, and she made the Cuba-Florida swim just last year - and then went on Dancing with the Stars. Amerlia Earhart will be back, I'm sure of it.


Oh -- in related news, The World Air League still hasn't held its World Sky Race.

Temp Check 13/13: What I did on my Summer Vacation

So, have you ever watched the Olympics, or any gymnastics competition actually, and noticed the poise of the participants? No matter how poor the performance, no matter how many missed moves, no matter that the dismount was more of a fall-and-collapse, the gymnast springs up beaming and salutes the audience and the judges.

Here's my version:

This happy affect belies the reality; the truth is in the tally sheet to the right [edit: it has been moved to below in this post]: WARMER was pretty much a crash-and-burn, at least statistically. I had set a goal of 91% engagement with each element of this year's Summer Self-Improvement Scheme™, and the numbers just don't pencil out:

Writing: was gonna do the hour-a-day-for-nothing-but scheme - 72% 

(only because I included blogging)

Art: was gonna make a sketch or drawing a day - 30% 

(yeesh)

Reading: was gonna make sure I set aside time to read every night - 94% 

(well, that's a bright spot!)

Music: was gonna practice the uke every day - 47% 

(was actually doing pretty well until mid-term)

Exercise: was gonna keep up with my daily workout - 75% 

(again, better earlier, worse later)

Road work: was gonna walk, run, or longboard daily - 81% 

(that's okay, actually)

Live by the spreadsheet, die by the spreadsheet, I guess. What's more important than these arbitrary goals is keeping this focus on productive play as we move forward through the rainy season. I am teaching a full load and taking a class, so time management is gong to be very important: I can't let things just slip-slide away. But I remain confident.

And look at that last day - at least I nailed the dismount!

Excellent book by community college instructor

So, one part of WARMER that has been going well despite overall trends is the summer reading program, and the latest book in the series was The Deepest Human Life, a philosophy primer by Scott Samuelson, a community college philosophy instructor in Iowa City. Here's the TLDR: if you want an overarching understanding of what it means to do philosophy and are only going to read one book, this might well be the one to read.



I don't know if I have ever told the true story of how I got my first job teaching in a community college. The philosophy chair of local school had posted on Craig's List looking for a last-minute replacement instructor for an evening section of Philosophy 101 and had specified that the course text would be Samuel Enoch Stumpf's Philosophy: History and Problems. With no teaching experience and a master's degree in English, not philosophy, I responded with a note that began by describing how I had three grab-in-a-fire books in a rack on my bookshelf: a complete Shakespeare, Aristotle's Rhetoric, and a second-edition Stumpf that I had owned since the late seventies. I went on to explain how the book had been my go-to philosophy reference for twenty years and how I dipped into it on a regular basis just to keep myself somewhat immersed in philosophical thought. None of that was a lie, and it got me the job, or at least the interview that led to the job.

This book is a strong contender to replace that one, or at least to supplement it.

Stumpf, as the title indicates, comprised two sections: History, a chronological overview and summary (Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary) and Problems, a selection of primary sources from all periods addressing the topics of Ethics, Religion, Politics, and Epistemology & Metaphysics.

Samuelson collapses this model. After a lyrical prelude, he investigates four questions: What is Philosophy, What is Happiness, Is Knowledge of God Possible, and What is the Nature of Good and Evil? Each section has an interlude, a vignette usually drawn from Samuelson's experiences at Kirkwood Community College, and the book closes with an overarching conclusion.

This structure allows Samuelson to move somewhat chronologically through the history of philosophy -- we do begin with Socrates and end with Hans Jonas -- but because our inquiry is based from the beginning around topics, the flow of the discourse is much more like a conversation than a lecture and the tone much more like a memoir than a textbook. Samuelson successfully blends precise, specific philosophical discussion with everyday language, analogies, and examples in precisely the way San Kean did less deftly with his explanations of DNA in The Violinist's Thumb. The Deepest Human Life is a joy to read on every page.

The difference in structure and the difference in timbre speak to a difference in intent: while Stumpf is clearly and unapologetically a reference work about philosophy, Samuelson has given us a personal perspective on doing philosophy. While a close reading of The Deepest Human Life will let you come away with a broad contextual understanding of the development of western thought, the book is really about inspiring the reader to think - and act, and live - more philosophically.

I think in some ways the book might be an attempt to replicate the experiences that Samuelson and some of his students have had in his community college classes: he describes how the introductory study of philosophy occasionally leads some students - or Samuelson himself - to profound insights, critical understanding, or new ways of dealing with life-and-death situations, important decisions, or just daily living.

While reading sections like "The Exquisite Materialism of Epicurus" and "The Mysterious Freedom of the Stoics" was like visiting old friends, of especial interest to me was the extended consideration of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. "The Ecstasy without a Name," Samuelson's discussion of the 11th century Iranian philosopher's journey from skeptic to Sufi, was a fascinating inquiry into the nature of the spiritual and mystic experiences, topics that are less in my daily ken than others. This section is perhaps paradigmatic of Samuelson's approach: while Stumpf presents religion as a topic for consideration, Samuelson addresses the question from a very quotidian standpoint: every day, each of us chooses to believe in god or not; how can we do that with any confidence at all?

If you wish you could have a conversation with a friendly, supportive, smart friend about all the Big Questions you want to consider, you should consider reading The Deepest Human Life. It will be worth it.

Did I mention that Samuelson is a community college instructor?

Temp check 12/13: almost over (thank goodness)

So, a check of the tally sheet over on the right shows a little bit of pre-fall free-fall going on. It would have been a pretty disappointing week if hadn't been for my discovering Babymetal.

(check 'em out) 

Anyway, as might be said in politics, WARMER has not been an unqualified success. The lofty goals embedded in the concept and the strong performance early in the season have given way to a perhaps less-ambitious regimen. I have been honest throughout; I'm not like this guy:

(check his stuff out - it's good)

but that is, of course, cold comfort when it comes to assessing my own performance. However, we will save the post-mortem until the patient is actually dead.

This week included two RPG game nights, one civilian game night, one working lunch, one playing lunch, a couple of catch-up sojourns, and a beer-drinking, carpet-buying afternoon adventure that almost but not quite resulted in a car being impounded. And long afternoon at the tattoo place where I got married, getting this:

(yeah, I posted about it already, but it's really cool)

Two point seven five for number four

So, I got a new tattoo today up at Two Birds. Since Coco was there for the process, we have voluminous photojournalistic coverage, which I have edited down to a manageable amount, to wit:

Art Design

Stencil on

The great Tarah Pennington wields the machine

Black lines

Karmin watching; Coco shooting

Colors

Coffee break (sort of)

Almost finished

Yup

Done

Voila

Love and rockets, everybody.

Temp check 11/13: Uncorked

So, there's a passage in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff that has always stayed with me. He is describing an instance of early rocket plane testing in which Chuck Yeager's plane experienced what the boffins called inertia coupling and what the pilots referred to as becoming uncorked: the plane "lost all semblance of aerodynamics and fell out of the sky like a bottle or a length of pipe." Yeager fell seven miles unconscious before awakening at 25,000 feet and getting the plane into a spin. A spin is bad, but it is a better kind of bad than being uncorked, and Yeager managed to pull the plane and himself out of danger.

I feel like the WARMER program has become uncorked. I hope that in the next two weeks I can at least put it into a spin and pull out before augering in.

And that's all I'll say about that.

The week held one marathon day of some for-sale craziness, two D&D games, a catchup with Diane in a blessedly air-conditioned Panera, an oil change with some liquid sandwiches, a long luxurious dinner out with Coco and Sissy, and two full days at PAX, as well as other goodness. Still a good summer.

Feliĉa Tago de la Laboro

So, it seems Labor Day is the day we all get together and pretend to celebrate the working class, while ignoring both the sacrifices made by early labor organizers and trade unionists to obtain the benefits we all enjoy today and the growing inequity in the distribution of wealth and income in our country.

Enjoy the holiday from your labors, whatever they may be, but let's keep our eyes open. Here's a sample of (hopefully) thought-provoking items from around the web:

• Even the government recognizes that Labor Day was intended to celebrate "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations."

• Here's an overview of the reversal of economic trends since the heyday of unions.

• An editorial from North Carolina that recounts the narrative of labor history that many people today have forgotten or never knew.

• Another editorial from Massachusetts talking about the importance of a living wage.

So, as the presidential proclamation exhorts us: observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that honor the contributions and resilience of working Americans.

And just so you don't think I'm too much of wet blanket, have fun, too!

Temp Check 10/13: This is ridiculous.

So, if I weren't so scrupulously honest I'd consider giving up on the tally sheet off to the right there. It has not stopped being too busy and too warm and I have been off my pace for too many weeks. I was so busy today that I didn't even have time to write this post in advance, and i don;t even have time to finish it properly!

Well, we have three weeks left to try to make a comeback. part of my busy-ness today was getting my grading completed, so summer quarter is officially over, and that will help. Of course, the three new preps for September won't do me any good... but neither will bellyaching.

I have a half-a-book report to share. I was reading The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean, a wonderful explication of DNA that careens from Deep Science to Wacky Anecdote. Kean is a good explainer and has a great way with the vernacular; some of his turns of phrase are delightfully jarring, like neon signs in chapel. Before I had to turn the book back to library half-read, I learned the following:

• DNA and genes are way more complicated than most things we read make them sound
• Retroviruses are totally scary
• There was a guy who was at both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic blasts - and survived

This week also held campus time, pub trivia (my team came in second!), two RPG nights, a morning spent wandering downtown while the car was being serviced that was extremely pleasant until it went on too long, an evening of circus arts, and some angel duty. See what I mean? Busy!

Artsy picture of a crane reflected in a building.

(The one on the right is the reflection.)

Temp check 9/13: Verily, we stumbleth onward

So, it is beginning to look like this prediction is going to be only as accurate as the stereotypical weather forecast - which is to say hardly at all. I haven't run the numbers yet, but just eyeballing it, it's a pretty good bet that we're not hitting 91% green on that chart off the right.

As I sit here in the still exceptionally warm summer air, after having spent all morning on campus and all afternoon online with my students' work, I'm not going to sweat it - well, maybe literally, but not metaphorically. I'm not sure what's different from last summer to this summer, but my lack of participation in my self-designated activity areas has had little to do with doing little: it seems I am as busy as I ever am. It's just hard to figure out with what, exactly. I have spent more time on campus this summer than I intended, but not too much; we've had to pull some angel duty more often than we expected, but not a whole lot; I have been gaming a fair bit, but not that much more than normal; we've been socializing, but no more than we have in past summers.

It seem that things like re-arranging the living room furniture so the coaxial cable could reach the TV, or arranging for and then sitting for Coco's new tattoo, or tripping over a home inside the Seattle city limits that we could actually afford and dropping in on an open house - these all just seem to take up more time than they should. So be it.

This summer is going great. And based on my meeting this morning with my new dean, I expect fall to be awesome. And that is some fantastic art that Coco got:

Temp check 8/13: Heavens to Betsy

So, the latest WARMER tally sheet is up to the right. It looks much the same as it has done, except for that great red slice across Friday and Saturday. That bloody gash represents a trip to The Lilac City: Spokane, Washington. I went to grad school in Cheney, just outside Spokaloo, and I still have lots of pals there. At least once a summer, we head out early on the 4 hour and 35 minute drive, have lunch, catch an Indians ball game, stay up too late talking, have brunch, and head back home to the cat. It's a great trip every time - and was especially good this time - but it means 36 hours of hard chargin', starting this year on Thursday morning and ending on Friday night.

Coco during our snack break in Vantage, overlooking the Columbia River

As a result, the WARMER plan took a hit. It has taken a lot of hits this summer. I started out strong early in the season, but it seems there's been too much cool stuff - as opposed to WARMER stuff - distracting me this year. When I look at last year, I seemed so on task and consistent. But maybe I was just a lying liar last year. Or maybe I am actually busier.

***

I know one thing I did this week that I didn't do last summer: I officiated a wedding.

My gaming buddy Alex married his girlfriend Sage and I got to do the honors. It was a pretty cool ceremony; one of the "readings" was a quotation from Dr. Who!

The Loo Legacy

So, way back in 1993-1994, I was the Coordinating Library Associate for the Green Lake Branch of the Seattle Public Library, working for the Managing Librarian, the incomparable Toni Meyers. My primary job was borrower service and supervision of the clerks, but I seemed to spend an awful lot of time on those other duties as assigned, such as going up into the cupola and laying down a black tarp over the skylight to block the summer sun and climbing onto the room dividers to secure (and subsequently dress for each season) a six-foot Curious George doll.

I can recall that at one point during a shelf-read, Toni and I decided that some additional signage would be nice - little things, like Car Repair Manuals over the 629s and other small touches that would help with frequently-sought categories. We had no extra budget for signage, of course, and the library did not yet have a color printer (although we were installing our first public-use PCs), so I made the signs at home on my household color printer, a clunky $600 HP that my girlfriend's father had given her as a present. I don't know how many ink cartridges I went through to make all those green-on-yellow signs - or why I didn't use colored paper! - but I duly printed them all, cut them out, and glued them to stiff backing.

In addition to the signs over the collection areas, I wanted one more. The branch had a single-occupancy public restroom. It was kept unlocked, and users could lock the door for privacy when inside. Confusion would arise when someone tried to use the restroom when it was occupied: they would find it locked and come to the desk to get the key, presuming it was kept locked. Then someone would have to explain that there was no key, that someone was in the restroom, and that they had to wait. Sometimes, when the explainer was me, I would see over their shoulder that the person using the restroom had come out, which meant that they didn't have to wait, but made the explanation even more confusing. (No, that just meant that someone was in there, but they're gone now, so go back and it will be open.)

Ever interested in efficiency and service, I made up this little sign and affixed it to the restroom door. It seemed to do the trick and cut down on patron confusion quite a bit.

I left the library - and Seattle - in November of 1994. SPL underwent a massive capital improvement project beginning in 1998 with the Libraries for All campaign, and the Green Lake Branch was shut down in 2004 for several months of extensive remodeling. The checkout counter was completely redesigned and the building was modernized a bit while keeping the classic style of a 1910 Carnegie library.

Somehow, in all that hoorar, the restroom door was restored intact, and with it, my sign. Even though the door has been retrofitted with one of those VACANT / OCCUPIED signs that switches when you throw the lock, my helpful hint remains on the door over two decades after installation.

That's not much of a legacy, I suppose, but it is something.

Temp check 7/13: Indolence and Industry

So, if I ever write a self-help book, it'll be called Be the Game Master of Your Life. I just checked and it's not taken yet. There is a Tumblr called The Game Master of Your Life, but it's about how to DM. My book would contain tips for living a rich, self-actualized life, presented in the idiom of tapletop RPGs. Once I figure out some content, I'm ready to go...

Tabletop view of what gaming looks like when John DMs.

Innyway, this is supposed to be a WARMER check-in.  The new tally sheet is off to the right. Yesterday was the first all-green day in a while. Art is still the reddest column, and reading is the greenest. Overall, its a bit shabbier than I had expected it to be.

When I made up the WARMER acronym (with Coco's help!), I didn't expect it to get confused with the weather forecast, but it easily could. Here's the last week:

As I have mentioned before, us mossbacks get pretty indolent in this truly summery weather. Coco and I can spend an hour just eating some watermelon and looking out the window. That has been one source of the red paint on the tally sheet.

On the other hand, this was a hella busy week for stuff that doesn't show up in the stats: my online classes, of course; meeting a pal and his gal to introduce her to the world of D&D; a dentist appointment; meeting a pal from California for drinks; meeting some pals for dinner; doing some assessment work for a research grant; meeting some pals from Massachusetts for an evening; running a D&D session; playing in a D&D session; and the rest of life, liberty, and the pursuit of housekeeping.

Oh, and one other item: a long, leisurely dinner at Canlis. This restaurant has long been on the bucket list: it is ranked as one of the top 20 restaurants in America by Gourmet Magazine and called "Seattle's fanciest, finest restaurant"by the New York Times and "a dressy, fine dining restaurant" on its own website. Sissy, NatDog, and I splurged on this extravagance to celebrate two things: our joint advancement to Senior Tenured Faculty at our institution and Sissy's birthday.

It was extraordinary. I am not a foodie and I come from a working-class background, but this place was beyond excellent. From the view, the ambience, and the service to the food and wine, everything was top-drawer. Valet parking with no ticket stub. A hostess who addresses you by name. Hat check. Teams of servers, all kind and courteous and not the least bit unctuous or pretentious. Small artsy hors d'oeuvre that melt in your mouth. Champagne that tickles the palate. A sweet beet salad that as tasty as it is colorful. The Platonic Ideal of grilled salmon. Dessert that practically floats. Real brewed coffee. Your car magically appearing when you walk out after the meal. In fact, it was all so good that my Catholic Worker reflex kicked in and I began to feel a little guilty, as if I was mixing with, if not the 1%, then at least the 5%.

But only a little guilty. It was that good.

I believe we were at the table on the right.

Ferrante & Teicher it ain't...

So, as part of the several celebrations of Sissy's birthday, a group of pals went to Keys on Main in Lower Queen Anne for an evening of Dueling Pianos. I had seen shows of this type before: pianists at twin keyboards, playing music, singing, engaging in repartee, telling jokes, taking requests, collecting tips. Having just come from a dinner at Canlis, the paradigm of a swanky joint, I was hoping to continue a great evening with some entertainment and the company of friends.

To put it mildly, it did not turn out as I had expected. Perhaps it was just the jarring transition from the rarefied air of "Seattle's fanciest, finest restaurant" to what was essentially a dude-bro bar, but the tone and timbre of Keys on Main was a real let-down. Here's a catalog of disappointing qualities.

Loud: I'll be the first to admit I am not a connoisseur of music, but it seemed to me that the most prominent component of the skill sets of the pianists was volume.  They did play some of those really-fast-banging-the-keyboard bits like Jerry Lee Lewis, but the rest of the time the music seemed pedestrian. And it was always extremely loud. I don't think this is just age talking; it was literally impossible to converse with Coco, who was sitting right next to me, much less have any kind of celebratory interaction with the table and the guest of honor.

Crass: It became evident quite quickly that if you wanted to get a particular song played, you would have to pony up some serious cash: even early in the evening, people were dropping twenties on the piano along with their request slips. So, if you had a request, you needed to be rich enough to toss off a big tip, or drunk enough to overspend. That system didn't serve to generate a sense of good-time community.

Intemperate: The attitude and remarks of the pianists made it clear that a goal of the evening was to consume a lot of alcohol. Comments like an encouraging "Oh, you're louder than before I took my break - that means you're drinking!" and a chiding "This table is too quiet - you're not drinking enough" established that consumption - indeed, overconsumption - was the point of the exercise. Not just having a good time per se, but getting drunk and having a good time. To me, this seemed like a deliberate strategy to feed both the bar and the tip jar (see Crass, above), but I think it is also an authentic part of the culture of which this club is a part. I'm no teetotaler, but I've also responded to enough bar disturbances to prefer to keep a healthy distance between me and a roomful of drunks.

Heteronormative: The tenor of the evening was all boyz will be boyz and wimmen are the sexay! The only attempt to establish hip, progressive Seattle credentials was when the pianists went out of their way to denigrate country music ("This isn't Tacoma!"). From an early request exhorting male patrons to come to the stage by saying "All the real men stand up!" to one performer pointing out a sailor on leave and relating how he "was in last night and left with like seven women," the evening could have been a scene out of Mad Men as far as gender roles and relations went.

Sophomoric: This heteronormativity was expressed in the most juvenile of ways: Get a woman to come on stage to sit on the piano and say that you're sure "it's not the first time she's sat on some hard wood." Get a woman to come on stage and invite her to sit on your "big, black instrument." Get a woman on stage and sing about how many men she has sex with for money. Get a woman on stage and make her shake her boobs doing the hokey-pokey. Get a woman on stage and make her bob her head so it looks like she is giving oral sex. Snigger, rinse, and repeat. If this stuff was ever amusing, it must have been in the junior high cafeteria.

Not funny: That "big, black instrument joke"? He made it twice in the space of ten minutes. Not only was the material deficient, but the performers were, too. Trying a little too hard to be clever, they did not engage me or make me want to spend any more time in the room with them.

Now, I am well aware that taking this attitude is going to make me the skunk at the picnic and I'll certainly be hit with accusations of being a wet blanket or a stick-in-the-mud. And that's exactly what would have happened to any woman who was called on stage and did not play along with the puerile, sexist shenanigans that passed for entertainment last night.  Fine.  "Anyone has the privilege of offending who is willing to bear the odium," as Rex Stout wrote, and I am perfectly willing.

I'd planned on ending with some inclusive things, like YMMV, or to each her own, or it was just not my tribe, but really, I think this was just a nasty, poisonous place and it's hard for me to say anything remotely positive about it. Which is why I left early, if anyone who was there was wondering.

Happy birthday anyway, Sissy.

Temp Check 6/13: Rulez

So, the tally sheet still bleeds quite a bit... but man, it was heckuva week.

I wonder how I ever get anything done when I am working, since I am now more-or-less on vacation/working part-time and I still seem to run out of day before I run out of ideas or things to do. See, besides WARMER, I also have this spur to action:

This Wall of Do-Me! is supposed to remind me (and Coco) of projects we wanted to get done this summer. Well, we're approaching the halfway mark and I think we may have removed two cards from the door. So, in addition to the red boxes on the tally sheet, these cards mock our lack of industry and enterprise on a daily basis.

Meh, it's summer. I can mea that culpa.

The latest WARMER book was all the rage last year: all the cool kids were reading Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple. I borrowed an autographed copy from Sissy (that shows you how much she trusts me!) and read it over a day. I get why it was such a hit in Seattle: all the shout-outs to our locales (hotels and restaurants and streets and neighborhoods) along with all the gentle and well-informed skewering of local conventions and fascinations (Microsoft culture and TED Talks and soccer moms and REI wardrobes) make it an in-joke for self-aware Seattleites to enjoy (much the same way I imagine Portlanders must watch Portlandia.)

The epistolary style of the book was quite well-crafted, and Semple does a good job of giving consistent voices to a wide variety of narrators; the characters are for the most part engaging and built beyond stereotype. The narrative arc of the book does break a couple of fundamental rules, however, and for that reason Bernadette fails to make it onto my personal hit parade.

First of all, it violates one of Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats's Twenty-Two Rules of Storytelling. (If you haven't seen this compilation of aphorisms, you should check it out.) Rule 19 says Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating. This rule is not just Coats's; Lester Dent gave the same advice in his classic Pulp Fiction Master Plot Formula, albeit in a more muscular idiom: Element #3 of the Fourth Act is The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn. I am afraid Semple does not live up to this standard, and for me, it makes the conclusion a bit hollow - it does feel like cheating.

If animators and pulp writers aren't enough of an authority, Semple also ignores the admonition of Chekhov's Gun: Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there. Semple introduces at least two plot elements that are the equivalent of loaded guns, and nether one amounts to anything, leading to a bad let-down, a little confusion, and a loss of engagement. I would be will to wager a small amount of American money that when this story gets to the movie screen (where it appears to be headed) both these elements will disappear.

Nonetheless, it was an amusing read, and whiled away a few hours if a WARMER afternoon.

When I could have been doing something else.

Temp Check 5/13

So, the WARMER tally sheet grows and grows, and looks pretty good, except for that bloody red streak down the A column. Occasional misses in any column can be blamed on the weather, or distractions, or lack of tool, or whatever, but that consistency can only mean one thing: a Gap problem.

In the beginning of the summer, it seemed I was able to overcome the Gap with some regularity. But then something happened; probably, I once again started looking at my work critically instead of enthusiastically, and what had been joy at having produced something became dissatisfaction with what I had made. As Coco would say, my inner critic has been getting the upper hand. I'll listen to her a bit more and try to get back into the swing.

By and large, however, WARMER is a go. The biggest joy has been to just read books for pleasure. The latest in the series has been Nate Silver's The Signal and The Noise, all about predictions and forecasting and probabilistic thinking from that guy who gets elections right. It was a great read: just enough math to make me feel smarter and lots of examples to help understand the concepts. For a statistician-wannabe (no kidding, right?) it was as much of a romp as an action novel, at least partly because Silver seems to get as much of a kick from it as I do. The Big Idea: Bayesian Thinking leads to better decision-making.

A added bonus to all this reading: I have been giving the bookmark that buddy Karmin gave me a real legitimate workout!

This week has also held additional duties work, some angel shifts, a dentist appointment, finding a lost dog, and a significant amount of socializing of the extemporaneous, impromptu, and pre-planned varieties. Sounds good to me!

Temp Check 4/13

So, just remember that for Seattle and Seattleites, the "heat" of summer works a lot like the "snows" of winter: even though our extremes may not be as intense as other parts of the country, we are woefully underprepared for any excesses at all, so the effects are magnified.

Just as a dusting of snow can immobilize the city because our weather response resources comprise three bags of salt and one John Deere riding mower with a snowplow, mildly hot weather makes us cranky and lethargic because very few spaces are air conditioned. If it's 105º in Phoenix, residents won't notice unless they leave their air-conditioned offices, air-conditioned homes, or air-conditioned restaurants and actually go outside. Here, we're hot everywhere except the frozen food aisle of Whole Foods.

All of that goes to explain the numerous red squares on the chart: it's been too warm to be WARMER, especially on Saturday, when it hit 90º. Those four catch-up-with-old-pals lunches, the two RPG sessions, the one night at the theatre, and some angel duty might have contributed to it as well...

Times of the Times

So, over on He is a Thark, I posted about a story in an old Seattle newspaper announcing the start of the Superman comic-strip in their pages. Since I paid for the archive of the page, I thought I would get my money's worth and share it with y'all. So here we go: the Tuesday, March, 5, 1940 edition of the Seattle Daily Times. Click it open and follow along!

¶ I am always flabbergasted by the sheer volume of text crammed into old newspaper pages. This page has no editorial graphics or photos, just headlines and body text. A far cry from the chart-junk and images in today's papers.

¶ We're looking at page two, and the first news story is about perjury charges being dropped in a year-and-a-half old property case. I don't know if the principal was a local celebrity or what, but that doesn't seem like a lead story to me.

¶ The Proceedings of the Northwest Conference on Distribution (that was indeed held on March 6, 1940) run to 104 pages and are available in the National Agricultural Library (a division of the US Dept. of Agriculture).

¶ In the article on "Tommy the Cork," it is telling that the writer did not feel the need to explain that the R.F.C. was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a New Deal agency. I guess we don't always explain CIA today, do we?

¶ The contested parking zone is a mile or so south on the main street in my neighborhood. It's all metered now, from here to there.

¶ Three stories related to the census - big news! And in one, President Franklin Roosevelt is referred to as F.R. instead of FDR. I wonder when the styling changed.

¶ I counted four fillers. Can you find them all?

¶ Only fifteen shopping days till easter - good thing the men's style guide comes out in two days! We want those pre-war metrosexuals to look their best!

¶ When I worked on a newspaper in the seventies, we still called legislators solons - does anyone still do that?

¶ And my favorite item (after the Superman story):

Oh, to have a pen so well-made and fine that it was worth not just refilling, but repairing.

Temp check 3/13: Flotsam and jetsam

So, a discerning look at the tally sheet will reveal three colors: Green (Mission accomplished!), Red (You lazy dog!), and Light Green. That last marks those days that I kinda sorta made progress in the category, but not really, if I want to be totally, technically, officially, accurate. So: things like writing, but not writing fiction; playing with the art stuff but not making progress on page;  noodling on the uke but not practicing chord progressions or a song; like that.

It's been going pretty well, considering (a) it's the nicest summer in a long time, with some really hot days, leading us to indolence; (b) I have had some exigencies, such as driving a pal all the way to Tacoma after we couldn't make it through Seattle traffic to the train station; and (c) I am working more than I expected to this summer, not just on my classes, but other school stuff. Not to mention the terrible corrupting influence of Amanda F. Palmer.

The long red streak this week in A is for Art reflects the challenge of panel borders and dialog balloons. In addition to a distinct lack of talent influencing my growth as a draughtsman, a distinct lack of skill also obtains, and the pedestrian tasks of laying out panels on a page and placing balloons surely vex me. I keep waffling between by-hand and by-computer approaches. The saying is that a poor workman blames his tools, but I'm a pretty poor workman, so I am indeed looking for some new tools to aid with those details.

Overall? No complaints from me. Summer is moving along just as it should. Coco even has the pool up!