revision99

On this first day of the year 2010, there is a half-heartedness in the air.

The happy-new-years are spoken without any force. I don’t know anybody who really believes it will be a happy year. I don’t look anyone in the eye and say the words. I want to, but I can’t.

I’m afraid. Afraid that our wars have morphed into The War, one big, mindless, prideful morass of murder and greed, and that it will never end. Afraid that our planet will not much longer be able to defend herself against the thoughtless onslaught of her selfish children. Afraid that our leaders have all made deals with the devil.

I watched the revelers in Times Square on television. At nine o’clock my time it was midnight there, and the people, penned into little enclosures along the sidewalks, swayed as if to dance, kissed each other ferociously and sang along with the disembodied voice of Frank Sinatra. It was all about the glittery ball and the noise and the chaos. At twenty past twelve the ball was switched off, the people were gone, the cleanup crews were starting to collect the trash that was left.

On CNN’s “celebration” coverage, Kathy Griffin was working over the earnest dullard Anderson Cooper, jabbing him relentlessly with non sequiters. She was trying to be funny, and he was trying to be eloquent, and neither were succeeding. At one point she interrupted him with “Do you have a safe word? Because you’re going to need one.”

If 2009 has been any indication, this year I think we’re all going to need one.

Put on your thinking caps, katz’n'kittenz. Here comes a word problem!
[UPDATE: My solution appears in the comments below.]

Molly the Cat and Tigger live here in our house. They each came to live with us at different times, and of their own choosing. Those could be long stories, one of which I’ve already told here, so I’ll skip ahead to the math problem.

No sooner had they moved in than they started asking for food. Regular meals, and they were quite insistent about it. Being the good ex-hippies that we are, we took it upon ourselves to provide not just a tasty menu, but also excellent nutrition. It took a while, but we finally found a brand of canned food that they liked and that we thought was good for them, and no less than three brands of dry food (hereafter called “crunchies”).

Tigger is a boy, and a little bigger than Molly, and over time we figured out that he needed more food than Molly. No doubt he thought we were hopelessly stupid during the months it took us to come to this realization, but eventually we did, and here is how the daily diet eventually took shape: Breakfast is at 7:00 AM and dinner (”supper” to you Eastern seaboarders) is at 6:00 PM. At each seating, Molly gets one fifth of a can and Tigger gets one fourth of a can. Throughout the day and in the evenings both of them get all the crunchies they want. To make it easier to measure the fractions of cans, each critter eats only from his or her own can until it is empty, then moves on to the next can in the cupboard. So it takes four meals (or two days) for Tigger to empty his can, and five meals (or two and a half days) for Molly to do the same.

You wouldn’t think that both cans would be empty at the same time very often, would you? You’d be right. But for a long time I have had the feeling that that event (two cans empty at the same time — two fresh cans opened for the same meal) was happening a little too often. For about a year, I had that feeling. Somebody — either me or Mrs. Jones — was screwing up the measurements at feeding time. To be fair, it’s pretty hard to eyeball a fifth of a can, and both of us may have muffed it from time to time.

Last night we figured out exactly how often this should happen. I’m embarrassed to say that it took two college graduates a half hour to come up with the definitive answer, and even now we don’t understand it mathematically. How fast can you solve the problem?

Start with two full cans. Give Molly a fifth of her can at each meal, and Tigger a fourth of his can at each meal. Put plastic caps on them and refrigerate between meals. Whenever a can is empty, open a new one. How many days before you find yourself opening two new cans at the same time?

Go ahead and tell me the answer in the comments, if you can. We figured it out basically by running a model scenario all the way to the end, but there is also a mathematical formula that is much more elegant and sophisticated. Except I can’t figure it out and explain the “why” of it. So help me with that, too.

My answer will be posted soon.

I can’t believe I have all this stuff.

There was a time when owning all of it was just a dream. Now I am standing in my patio at three in the morning, and here it all is, staged between the garage and the house, waiting to be carried inside: A sweet all-tube Fender guitar amplifier, two fancy-assed electric guitars, a rack full of electronics, a couple of duffel bags full of electronic gizmos, miscellaneous adapters, microphones and cables. I lusted after most of this stuff the way some men pursue women, and now it’s just heavy equipment that I have to carry in the middle of the night, and put it somewhere secure, if such a place exists.

I had packed it up and loaded it earlier in the afternoon, hauled it to the bar where I was playing, unloaded it there, unpacked and set it up. Later, we broke it all down, packed it up again, loaded the cars, the truck and the van and brought it back, each of us, to our various homes, and now I was half way through the job of dragging it out of the car and into the house. That’s four times in one day. And did I mention there’s a whole PA system, too, with six speaker cabinets and heavy power amplifiers? Well, there is.

The band sounded kind of good this night. We have bumbled our way into a few gigs, and the extra playing time has sharpened our performance. I find myself turning to look in surprise and delight at the other guys when something, a transition or an ending or a complicated harmony happens just the way we’d rehearsed it.

The people are kind. They say “You guys are great!” They whistle and clap. Of course, they came to have a good time, they are all high in various ways, and they will enjoy themselves, no matter what we do.

But it’s not really a great band. No matter how hard we try, how long we practice, there is a frontier of “greatness” out there beyond the horizon, and really, we are just playing around the neighborhood, staying close to home, keeping our day jobs, our paychecks and medical insurance. Greatness demands a bigger commitment.

I complain privately about the flaws and the failings, but what we are doing is, we’re having great big rock’n'roll fun. At least I am. For those few hours when we’re on stage I’m as happy as I ever get. I stopped playing for money decades ago and only recently took it up again. But my attitude now is “I don’t need the money. I just want it to be offered.” Playing rock’n'roll with this band, any band, for real live people who are dancing and partying — I’d do that for free.

Moving all this equipment — that’s what I get paid for.

I know what it’s like to have something creative inside and not be able to get it out.

Something like a song, a play, a sculpture, a comedy routine, a story.

You know it’s in there, you think maybe it’s “good,” you don’t know how good, but you know you’ve got it. You nurture it inside and it becomes who you are, secretly. You show a little of it sometimes, and that leads to your family and all your friends saying things like “That’s as good as anything on Broadway/TV/the radio/CD’s. You should write/sing/perform more. Go for it!!”

You’re momentarily flattered, but after all it’s your family and friends and they are obviously (and rightly) biased and might not be telling you the truth and they might not be qualified to judge such things anyway, so of course you don’t go for it, because you have to clean the garage, take out the garbage, work for a living (or find a job), get some food, score some drugs, find someone who’ll do you, and so on. There’s no TIME.

But there is time, and time goes on, and one day you look around and half your friends are drifting away in one way or another, and among the other half, half don’t want to know you any more and the other half are dead or as good as, and how long do you think you have remaining to produce anything worthwhile? You don’t know, so you promise yourself you’re going to buckle down and do something, create something while you’ve still got a chance, and by now you don’t even care if anybody likes it or if it gets on Broadway/TV/the radio/CD’s, because it’s like you’ve been pregnant longer than an elephant and it’s about god damned time for the blessed event!

You know what I mean?

How many girl singers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: Just one, because the whole world revolves around them.

On the small-time cover band level that I’m on, girl singers are a mixed blessing. True, they allow you to perform Sheryl Crowe songs and lots of other material not easily adaptable to being sung by guys. You have to face it — when you’re doing covers, sooner or later you’re bound to run into an audience that wants to hear something by Alanis Morisette. Naturally, you’d say no to that request under pretty much any circumstances, but what about Tracy Chapman or Fleetwood Mac? No matter how much pride you have in your musicianship or the integrity of your song selection, eventually you’ll at least have to consider such requests.

I stopped working with girl singers 30 years ago, not on purpose, but it just worked out that way. When I worked with them, they always arrived late, left early, and carried nothing but their own microphone and maybe a tambourine. On the road they always got their own room, while the rest of us shared. On stage, they were always the complete center of attention, even though musically everyone else in the band had equally important parts. During performances they could never hear enough of their own voice in the monitors. In those days we were lucky even to have monitors, much less separate monitor mixes, so we all had to listen mainly to her.

To be fair, some of them had great voices, some of them had great looks, some of them worked hard to front the band and entertain the people. Self-centered whiner that I am, though, I grew resentful of them. I had to learn an instrument in order to be in the band. I had to buy an instrument to be in the band. And when I sang, I still had to keep playing the guitar. So it didn’t seem fair to me that the girl didn’t have to bring anything to the table but her voice, which she was born with and — in most cases — was completely untrained. Then during the breaks people would say to her something like “You’ve got a good band,” as if somehow the band — and I — belonged to her or were taught how to play by her. In my bitterness I turned to strong drink.

Childish, I know.

So to penalize me now, at this late hour of my life, the universe has thrown another girl singer at me. It’s temporary — just for one show — but things don’t seem to have changed much. We only had time to rehearse with her once, and she arrived almost an hour late for a three-hour rehearsal, and she didn’t even bring a microphone or a tambourine. Then it turned out that she hadn’t had time to listen to the CD I made for her or look over the lyric sheets I gave her. All true to form as I remember it.

It will be fine, of course. We invited her to sing with us because we think she has a following around town from her extensive work in karaoke bars, and frankly, we need to put some butts in the seats. This compromise of my principles is nothing compared to what I would do for a chance to play with Aretha or Tina Turner or Linda Ronstadt.

Our girl didn’t knock my socks off at the rehearsal, but I can see she has the pipes, and nothing focuses you like an impending gig in front of a live audience. The show is Wednesday this week, and she’ll have a microphone, a tambouine and her own separate monitor mix. I expect she will practice her parts like crazy until then, and come out rockin’.

And then the whole world will revolve around her.

During my blogging sabbatical, which seems to be coming to a close now, I have…

• written and recorded a new song (details in previous post)
• found a new bass player for my garage band
• saved Tigger the Cat yet again from certain death (third time, give or take)
• forced Tigger to wear the Cone of Humiliation for two weeks
• bought and assembled the pieces of a new PA system
• read a bunch of cheap detective stories.
• reconnected with some musician friends from long ago
• found out I must have two wisdom teeth pulled
• found out my dentist wants me to make the appointment with the oral surgeon myself. This is adding insult to injury.
• got absolutely nowhere trying to figure out Life and Death
• started bringing my own reusable bags to the Farmer’s Market every Sunday morning
• vowed to clean up thoroughly my spare bedroom/office/studio, and my garage (this will be an enormous project, and I haven’t started yet)
• blah, blah, blah. It’s all about me on my blog, folks.

Instead of your wonderful blogs, I’ve been reading the web sites of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times and Rolling Stone. The conclusion I have reached is that there is no way to find out what’s really happening in the world. I know more about Chris Brown smacking his girlfriend and John and Kate Gosselin’s impending divorce than I do about the situation on the streets of Tehran or the President’s proposals for healthcare reform and financial services reform.

A lot of people are getting divorced. That’s not news. And, if you went back and looked at the Los Angeles police blotter for that night before the Grammy’s (if there were a police blotter in LA), you’d find numerous serious domestic assaults and maybe a couple of homicides. Not to make light of it, but Chris and Rhianna’s problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. I haven’t figured out yet if we are being fed this crap because we demand it, or if we are being fed this crap in a concerted effort to distract us from what’s really going on.

I thought the internet was going to democratize the news, make it impossible for the power elite to hide the ball, give us all an unvarnished look at the real goings on in the halls of power, here and abroad. But what we seem to have instead is a Disney-ized version of that. Oh sure, there are cell-phone videos of every police beating in the world, and the internet sure looks like we are seeing stuff we’re “not supposed” to see, but guess who owns the internet? Verizon, AT&T, General Electric, Rupert Murdoch — you know: the same guys who own everything else. Do you really think they’d let us find out anything truly important?

I’m watching MSNBC right now, a bunch of millionaires nodding knowingly at the polls which report that Americans overwhelmingly want a public option in any new healthcare system, and casually announcing that people wouldn’t want that if they knew how much their taxes would go up. Maybe we’re that stupid. Maybe we really haven’t realized that a public option has to be paid for somehow. Or maybe the well-heeled reporters know which side their bread is buttered on, and are simply shooting down the populist proposals they know their bosses in the corner offices won’t like.

How do we find out the truth? Sorry — can’t tell you.

But I can tell you this: You can’t have “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” if you can’t go to the doctor when you’re sick. We are not “providing for the common welfare” if we are not making healthcare available to everybody. I for one don’t care if my taxes go up, although it’s not certain taht they will. I don’t care if someone else gets more benefit from a universal healthcare program than I do. I don’t want anyone in the richest nation the world has ever known to have to choose between food and medicine. Most of all, I don’t care if healthcare corporations are forced to start making healing their first priority, instead of profit-making. I believe it is unconscionable that we are a nation divided into people who have enough money to get help when they are sick, and people who don’t. Republicans, blue-dog Democrats and big-bucks lobbyists, ask yourselves: Is this what you want to be remembered for at your funerals? That you fought for the rights of corporations over sick people?

If so, may those funerals begin soon, so the rest of us can get on with life!

I flew and drove far away to attend a 60th birthday party.

On that trip I injured my back, doing basically nothing.

I went to a memorial for an old friend who died in January. Everybody was drunk, and one of his girlfriends threw another girlfriend into the pool, overturning the buffet table in the process.

On the same day I visited another dear old friend in the hospital, and told him as I was leaving that I’d see him soon. He died two days later.

At the request of his family I created a “memorial website” in his name. It logged 5,000 hits in a week. All I did for 10 days was manage the site, answer email, post pictures that people sent me and forward messages to his family.

When that was done I went to his funeral, a sprawling two-day affair with much laughter, many speeches, and many tears. Frightened, we all promised to be better friends, and stay in closer touch.

All of this felt like Death to me, closing in.

In the 80’s I might have been voted Most Likely to Suffocate in a Pool of My Own Vomit, but somehow I’ve outlived a bunch of the voters, and even though I’m not the last one standing, I see that there are a lot of dark vacant spaces around me.

I’m shell shocked. I haven’t written anything in this space while all this was going on, because nothing seemed important. I’m looking now at my life and wishing I had made more of it. I’m looking at the time I have left — I should say the time I might have left — and wondering what I can make of it.

Oh yeah — my back is better now.

I’m drinking cup after cup of strong coffee and watching Steely Dan videos on the internet.

My job has devolved into marking time and waiting for something to happen. I’m not the guy who makes things happen here. I just clean up the messes, the inevitable chaos that arises from doing business.

The fun-blocking software here at HugeCorp seems to be down. Normally I can’t access YouTube at my office, but today everything is working. I’ve been reading a book about Steely Dan. The book sucks, so I won’t mention the title or the author here, in case the guy googles himself and finds this. I don’t like his book, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

Anyway, as a long-time fan of their music, I was pretty sure that the surly, angry complainers depicted in the book were not the guys I’d been hearing on the radio for the past thirty years,  so I’ve been taking advantage of this little downturn/downtime in the world economy to research the real Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, and guess what? They are not surly, angry complainers. Oh, they’re not your typical rock stars. They are a bit withdrawn and they may have given some off-the-wall interviews, but the author seems to be a fan and wannabe member of their inner circle, and he has apparently made up personalities for his heroes, and is trying in his writing to emulate a Steely Dan world view that exists only in his imagination.

In the early 1970’s my beautiful teenage girlfriend went by herself to see Steely Dan in concert. I didn’t even know she had a ticket, but the next time I saw her she was still tingling from the experience and she transferred her excitement to me in a long hot afternoon. She gave herself sweetly and completely, and I decided that I was a Steely Dan fan, too.

Soon, though, I betrayed her by going on the road for a few months. I thought of her often, especially when I was singing “My Old School” and “Dirty Work,” and I even sent postcards with pictures of exotic places like the old territorial prison in the Arizona desert. She dumped me while I was gone, for a handsome forest ranger who took her away to Steamboat Springs.

I was shaken, but I got over it in time, and it’s only now that it occurs to me to weep when I think of her.

I don’t care if my neighbor gets government help in paying or renegotiating his mortgage.

I don’t mind if my neighbors are in “too much house,” or if they gambled that rising real estate values would make it possible for them to pay back a loan that was unrealistic for them. I don’t know if they were conniving bastards who put the whole economy at risk with their irresponsible borrowing, or if they were conned by a mortgage broker who was getting a fat commission and passing the risk on to clueless investors down the line.

There seems to be a lot of righteous indignation about the possibility that some people are going to get something for nothing here, and at taxpayer expense, but I’m not indignant. I’m pretty ticked off at the bankers and brokers and hedge fund managers who recklessly plunged us into this economic mess and have now walked away with comfortable fortunes while the rest of us scramble to survive, but individual homeowners? Not so much.

Personally, I don’t think it’s very important to own a house. There are plenty of ways to live that don’t involve marking off a piece of turf and saying it’s “yours,” but if some folks want to do that and feel happy in their lives because of it, I say fine. And because the real estate market and mortgage-backed securities have become such an integral part of the overall world economy, I think we — and by “we” I mean the federal government –  ought to do what we can to stabilize that market and those securities, and if some people “get away” with something, that’s a small price to pay if it helps get us out of this depression.

Think of it as collateral damage in reverse: When we bomb a neighborhood in Afghanistan, we often kill and maim innocent people who happen to live next door to the terrorist targets we’re trying to get, and we shrug and call it collateral damage, one of the costs of war. On the other hand, when we rescue a neighborhood over here, maybe we’ll accidentally help people who are not deserving, along with the targeted honest homeowners. Let it go, people. It’s just the cost of repairing the economy.

The important thing is getting the country back on its feet and helping the deserving and needy people who are in over their heads. If some opportunistic deadbeats get a break, who cares?

I’m sorting laundry in my bedroom.

Sitting on the end of the bed, a pile of dirty stuff on the floor between my feet. I’m picking up items and tossing them into one of three piles a few feet away — darks on the right, lights on the left, whites into the plastic laundry basket in the middle. I’ve done this thousands of times.

After my friend Rick died, when he was 20 and I was 19, and after the funeral and the cursing and the crying, I spent some time with Mel, his mother, whose heart was broken by the loss of her only son, her firstborn. We talked about Rick, the only thing we had in common. Mostly, I listened. She said that after he dropped out of school and returned to get a job and live at home, it took her months of careful sorting and bleaching to return his white washables to white again. Because he hadn’t separated his colors from his whites while he’d been away at school. I knew this was true, because during that first year at San Francisco State we had done our laundry together, stuffing everything we had into pillowcases and dragging the load a block or so down Haight Street to the laundromat, where we had simply and efficiently dumped it all into the minimum number of washing machines, his red sweatshirt commingled with my white socks.

The only sorting we did was when we separated his stuff from mine after we got back to the apartment. Using this technique, we gradually turned all of our clothes the same shade of dingy gray, the color of The City that fall and winter. We didn’t care at the time. We were liberated and studious, drunk on freedom and Red Mountain and there was no reason at all why we weren’t going to change the world, or why we should have really white T-shirts.

But there’s nothing like death to make you think of life, and after my talk with Mel I started to think about how important the little things are in life, and the more I thought about it the more crucial it seemed to do the things that wouldn’t break a mother’s heart, whether it was wearing safety belts on Highway 99, or properly sorting the laundry.

The safety belt thing was too late for Rick.

But I can still hear Mel telling me in a soft voice that it might take another couple of washings to finish her job of whitening Rick’s white clothes, things that he wouldn’t be needing. Since then, I sort, because I wouldn’t want Mel to be disappointed ever again, and because changing the world ain’t no big thing if your underwear is dingy gray.