Cam the Man

Episode IX:

Exhausted from another epic recording session, Sphere and Benny are still too wound up to call it a night. Sphere skips around the studio with his sax, chanting nursery rhymes and prompting incoherent shouts of dismay from adult members of the Korean clan who live downstairs. Benny's Korean is admittedly rusty, but he's pretty sure he hasn't heard the words for "indie rock" or "turn it up." He throws his snifter of Johnnie blue against the wall and, as the glass shards firework onto the carpet, announces his intentions to paint the town red.

Neither Benny nor Sphere are entirely sure where the phrase "paint the town red" comes from, but best guesses are that the "red" refers either to the spilled blood on the wild frontier or to the color of lights in shady parts of Detroit. Alternatively, there may have been an 1880s American slang word "paint," meaning drink, as in, "I'm a-gonna paint me some of these here 40s." Likely this usage comes from the flushing of the face and nose (more noticeable among Koreans) that occurs with imbibing of drinks of an adult nature.

Ultimately the origins may have been irrelevant, since before you could read the last paragraph twice Sphere and Benny are chugging dark Mexican beer in a dark Michigan bar and meeting Iranians. One Iranian, specifically, named Cam ("as in camcorder") who opens, Kasparov-esque, by hailing Sphere as a fellow Iranian. Sphere vows that he is not, but rather half-Indian, half-Italian, which leads both he and Benny simultaneously to the same lame joke: perhaps they average out to somewhere near Iran. Cam thinks this hilarious and laughs high-pitched as if he is choking on helium.

Cam assures Benny and Sphere that, despite approaching them at a bar and laughing like a girl, he is not gay. To prove the point, he points out a nearby table of three girls and does the math. "Three of us and three of them- coincidence?" How could it be? Cam himself cannot approach these non-coincidental girls, however, because he says, he is not as attractive as Benny or Sphere. "You guys are the good-looking ones!" he fawns, before adding, "I'm not gay!"

When a female friend of Sphere's stops in to pick up a brush and help out with the painting, Cam is quick to offer the sage wisdom he has developed over his years in the statistics department. "Tell her you are 18 inches!" he proclaims, giggling and reaching out for Sphere's crotch. "You are so huge!" Then, recoiling, worried: "I'm not gay...." Later, after wandering off to have long, intimate conversations with the manliest woman in the room, Cam returns to ask if he can tell our heros something lewd. He does, and it is remarkably lewder than they expect. It is an amazingly misogynistic comment that does nothing to make Benny nor Sphere increase their estimation of Cam's desire to sleep with women.

Finally wound down, Benny and Sphere bid Cam farewell and begin the long hammering of lids onto the paint cans of frivolity, the washing of obstinate gin from the tattered brushes of another long evening. Tomorrow is another day, a day in which they will once again begin their treacherous ascent of Mt. Indie Rock armed only with their battered instruments, e-Bayed recording gear, and the advice of the mysterious Sherpa BK. Who knows what three-chord anthems lurk in the heart of men?

Fie Upon El Icicle

In its basic form, an icicle is a pendent, conical spike formed by the freezing of dripping water. Like with love or bitterness, each layer depends on the last one before it. Indeed, the process is a slow accrual that comes to a sharp point.

I see them everywhere, most commonly hanging off the sides of roofs, but also from trees, the bottoms of cars, utility poles and fences, on rocks near waterfalls or ground water seepage points. I even see them clinging to the bricks on walls.

Perhaps the reason I've noticed them this year is because the ones outside our new apartment are some of the biggest, heaviest, most jagged and ribbed icicles I'ver ever seen, or been close to. How satisfying it would be to reach out and knock them out single file at their thick bases! They'd be like a line of Dominos going down, falling down straight like divers and stabbing the snow, or else shattering into a hundred pieces. I've seen both happen. But I can't reach them from our porch. When I can, it's only one or two at a time.

It turns out they're much more complex than I or maybe you had known. There are pages and pages on them. They have roots, evenly-spaced ripples that form from the competition between gravity and surface tension. They have small bubbles inside them. As they grow, vertical ridges and horizontal rings form on their outer surface. They grow downward and outward at the same time, but at different rates. Some take their time.

Even after their phase of active growth has stopped, they continue to change shape and appearance, even at subfreezing temperatures. Some ice may sublime to the vapor state, thus smoothing out the surface.

How funny, I just overheard a conversation about the icicles outside this guy's window! Everyone's talking about them! Someone said, "Those are some pretty impressive icicles. They're turning into verifiable stalagtites." Like he was complimenting him on his shoes. "Hopefully I can get out of here pretty soon. Knock on an icicle." Hardy-har-har, da-da-ch.

Apparently they can reach yards in length. But most become unstable before then, usually during thaws, and crash to the ground below. As such, they are hazards. They can also pull down gutters and damage buildings.

If you're lucky to get through the winter without being impaled in the heart by an icicle, then off you go to spring, pretending like nothing's ever happened. Yeah, the sun shines again and the air warms. You may even dance. But do you forget about them? You don't. And you're not very much like them. You can't sublime. You may be able to change shapes, though most of the time it's not willfully. And can you really make it out there?

The truth is, they're beyond me. They've got me hooked, they've got me going away. Which is why I think I'm going to do them in once and for all. I'll just use a mop handle, and down they'll go. It'll be so easy! Sometimes all these things take is a little imagination.

Last Night

I'd like to point out that a new dance club / bar in Ann Arbor called LIVE (at PJs) is a pretty good place to party. It's where D'Amato's used to be, on the corner of First and Huron. Last night the crowd was clearly largely not from Ann Arbor, as people were break-dancing. Ghostly product Jacob does a good DJ set with his friend. There was this girl in pink boots and a pink shawl. Her hair was blond and up and she had on huge hoop earrings. In short, she looked great, and she danced with passion and grace. There was also a girl who was just about as pretty but danced wildly, as if she were coked out, which she most likely was. The girl in the pink actually gave me the "you, come over here" signal with her finger, but I did the wise thing and gave her a smile and raise of my glass and stayed on the placid margins. First, I knew she didn't really mean it. Second, I knew that even if she meant it, if I had actually gone over and danced with her she would very soon cease meaning it. Third, why spoil the umblemished image? Even if things had gone fine and I had gotten to know her, likely I would've found out that in more ways than one she would be less than stellar. There was also a girl who was very tall, and when someone pointed out to me that she was beautiful, it occurred to me that when girls are taller than me I do not stop to consider their beauty. Is that wrong? Also, the guy checking IDs at the door is a dick. He's Asian and buff and was wearing a gray tieless suit. He was checking IDs of a "good-looking and fashionable" couple in front of me --- the guy was about six foot five --- and he had to stop and have a chat with them! When I heard him say "what's your name?" to the tall guy and extend his hand, I had had just about enough, and, like a tailback splitting his offensive line, ducked in between the couple in the middle of their conversation and presented forcefully my ID. The Asian guy said "Thanks" to me while flashing me a cold straight glare. But I was in.

The Cold, Hard Facts (Brought to you by Coors Light)

Simply to articulate the phenomenon of difference, I'd like to point out that in Iraq there is a trauma surgeon seeing patients, kids and mothers and the old coming in with legs blown off and eyesight obliterated by shrapnel and the shock of a bomb, while I sit here currently in front of a computer screen, sipping a latte. I have no sentimental agenda. I simply want to point out that these two things are happening in the world at the same time.

Huffy Henry

During a time like this, Henry’s pose on the toilet was erect, comfortable, untroubled. If he had a softer seat he might have stayed for hours, and he often thought about purchasing one of those smooth thickly padded covers. He would choose a primary color, red or blue, maybe even yellow. Or he would choose something else, his only criteria that it be bright and warm.

During a time like this, when the anxiety had mellowed and he could be happily cognizant of his own uselessness, he held and read no book, nor hunched over in desperation, but rather looked with serenity at the wall in front of him, glancing every now and then at the mirror-wall to his left and giving himself a little wink.

The room in which Henry shat had three green walls and the mirror-wall, a spotless slippery white tiled floor, a gold rack for toilet paper, a white state-of-the-art, utterly uncloggable toilet, and a green rug situated in front of him so that his feet did not get too cold. On the walls without mirrors hung black-framed pictures. One was a Steiglitz photo of a very young girl with a dirty face and eyes wide and crazy from too much working, one a perfect photo Henry had taken in Mexico of a bare spiky tree silouhetted against the blue sky, and the other a drawing of the fattest and happiest-looking Buddha Henry had ever laid his eyes upon. It was during times like this, when he didn’t have to work, when he didn’t have to go against himself, that Henry felt most like the eternally cross-legged Buddha. Earlier in the day he had welcomed the unexpected urge to defecate as one might welcome a knock on the door from a good friend--something to do not productive professionally but rather in a more basic and human and generous way. To shit, to talk to a friend, to eat a hamburger.

But Henry’s ass was starting to hurt and he knew that if he stayed much longer, the urge now gone, the seat would redden his skin and even start to hurt the bone. He wiped. He sent his waste tumbling, wailing away.

From Tom Bissell's story "Death Defier"

There really were, Donk had often thought, and thought again now, two kinds of people in the world: Chaos People and Order People...It was not meant in a condescending way. No judgement; it was purely an empirical matter. Chaos People, Order People. Anyone who doubted this had never tried to wait in line, board a plane, or get off a bus among Chaos People. The next necessary division of the world's people took place along the lines of whether they actually knew what they were. The Japanese were Order People and knew it. Americans and English were Chaos People who thought they were Order People. The French were the worst thing to be: Order People who thought they were Chaos People. But Afghans, like Africans and Russians and the Irish, were Chaos People who knew they were Chaos People, and while this lent the people themselves a good amount of charm, it made their countries berserk, insane. Countries did indeed go insane. Sometimes they went insane and stayed insane. Chaos People's countries particularly tended to stay insane.

Hemingway on deadlines

From The Green Hills of Africa:

But it is not pleasant to have a time limit... It is not the way hunting should be. It is too much like those boys who used to be sent to Paris with two years in which to make good as writers or painters after which if they had not made good, they could go home and into their fathers' business. The way to hunt is for as long as you live against as long as there is such and such an animal; just as the way to paint is as long as there is you and colors and canvas, and to write as long as you can live and there is pencil and paper or ink or any machine to do it with, or anything you care to write about, and you feel a fool, and you are a fool, to do it any other way.

you've got a nagging suspicion

From an abstract in the Journal of Advanced Nursing 25(1) pp 38-44:

Notions of the 'postmodern' pervade various fields of study, but have rarely been applied to the practice and theory of nursing. This paper uses some conceptions of the 'postmodern' to remedy this.

Response to Jody Rosen's article on Billy Joel from slate.com

Fair enough, Jody, fair enough.

But I think defining his problem as hubris is harsh. Why not just say the guy tried a few things that didn't work, and a few that did? They're all still out there, and we can just skip "Pressure" and "We Didn't Start the Fire" for "Vienna" and "Italian Restaurant." To say that a guy's efforts to make a different type of song is evidence of his excessive pride is, to me, presumptuous.

Secondly, did you have to write this?

Reason I ask that is because, you know, look at Billy now. He's in and out of rehab, he crashes his motorcycle, he's famously sad, he's weeping in his corner. Part of this his surely his deal --- his lyrics are treacly and they expose him to lashings; he after all puts the alcohol in his own mouth; he's maybe too angry and might try too hard. But he's also been screwed over by record companies, and he's received probably numerous condemnations such as the one you delivered (indeed in this sense you are not saying a whole lot that is new). Could you maybe spare him? The quality of mercy, after all, is not strained.

All this reminds me of an article I read once by novelist Robert Stone comparing the work of Jack Kerouac and Herman Melville. Stone in the end appreciates Melville's work much more than Kerouac's. He then adds, "But let us, Kerouac's survivors, remember how much the work from which all this comes moved so many young people, and also remember how cruel, how brutal and heartless most of the mainstream media were to Jack Kerouac and his work during his lifetime. How in ridiculing his unarmored, vulnerable prose they broke his too tender heart and helped destroy him."

As uncool as it may make me, I'm asking you to be nice.