american home life

2006-02-06T18:42:00.000-08:00

Rosie Barringer, 10 weeks old. Father was a lab/collie mix. Mother was a chow/australian shepherd mix. Her first night at her new home. Already peed once, pooped five times.

2006-02-03T05:22:00.000-08:00

The Gross-Out Game has rules. We sit at the kitchen table. Dinner's done. Mommy's on the phone, the kids pick at what's left on their plates, dreaming of dessert. I spin the stem of my wine glass and decide to make up a game and so I start to speak before I know what the game is and what comes out of my mouth is: "Okay, let's play the, uh, the Gross-Out Game." Then I make up the rules. First rule is you have to use one food word and one gross word to make up the grossest thing you can think of. Second rule is each person gets a turn and then we see who wins. Whoever wins goes first for the next round. I'm judge and player. My daughter goes first. "Jelly worms." My son thinks a while. "Banana butt." I say, "Fart pickle. Okay, it's a tie, nothing's all that gross. I go first. Corn poo." "Corn poo is real." "It doesn't matter." "Potato crickets." "Like crickets sprinkled on mashed potatoes or potatoes squirted inside crickets?" "Ooh, mashed-potato crickets!" "Spinach caterpillar. Like squeezing the caterpillar and spinach comes out." "Uh, I don't know who wins. Go." "Head cheese." "Head cheese is real," I say. "Oh. Then, uh, orange pee." I seek clarification: "You mean pee juice?" "Yeah, yeah, pee juice!" "I had orange pee, after we took those vitamins." "You're up." "Okay. Um. Weiner hamburgers." "You mean like penis loaf?" "Oh, I want penis loaf." "You can't take someone else's." "Oh." "Okay, I say booger nuggets." "Like chicken nuggets?" "Okay, pee juice wins. Or whatever. Next." "Liver jelly." "Chunky testicle pudding." Laughter. We develop advertising for the product. "Chunky Testicle Pudding. Brought to you by Campbell's." "By Cannibals!" "By Can O' Balls!" "Okay, buddy, you're turn." My son says, "Salted boobs." Mt. Giggle erupts. Partly it's because we're primed by laughing at Chunky Testicle Pudding, but partly it's because his delivery is so flat and serious. He didn't think it was going to be funny at all, but we crack up. I think the visual of salted boobs on a plate in the middle of the table is so disturbingly wrongly gross that we have to laugh to keep the ickies at bay. I say something like when you salt them, the nipples shrivel up. This leads us into developing advertising for this product, too. Our favorite slogan we sing to the tune of the Lucky Charms jingle, the one with magically delicious. Except we sing--well, my wife hangs up the phone and comes back to the table and my daughter says, "Wait, all together. One, two, three." And we all sing, "Salted Boobs! They're nippley delicious!"

2006-02-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

There is another working life I could have had, one in which I showered every morning and wore long pants. Instead, I rely on baseball hats and deodorant and shorts. In the winter, it's jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. I bought a new suit last year, for the first time in about a decade. In this other working life I could've had, I'd be wearing a gray suit on Monday, an olive one on Wednesday, and a blue one on Friday. I'd slide bowls of cereal at the kids instead of making them waffles, scrambled eggs, and cut-up mangoes (yes, that was this morning's breakfast). I'd drive myself to work instead of the kids to school. I'd be gone all day. Someone else would have to watch the kids after school. My wife and I would see who could get home that day before six-thirty. I couldn't be baking beet crisps in the oven (see photo above) and shrimp stir-fries and steaks on the grill; I'd be sitting down to eat what someone else had made, what I'd brought home from take-out, or maybe I would have already eaten at some meeting. By the time I'd get home, the kids would've already done their homework, maybe even had their piano lesson, their soccer practice, their dance class. The kids, in short, would have this movie in their heads about their lives, and in this movie of their lives, they would see their parents during morning previews, live the action/adventure/drama of their daily lives on their own, and then see us again during the evening rolling of the credits. They would see us in the morning, waking up, and at night, going to sleep. The rest of their days would be known most clearly only to them, and me, in this other working life I could've had, I would come home now and then and interrogate them about their days, tilting the glare of my inquisition at their pale mugs and, looming in the shadows, I would ask, "Where were you at nine a.m. this morning? Who did you sit next to in class? Did you talk to your friends at lunch? What did you do at recess? Did anyone accost you on the bus ride home? Have you done your homework? Yes or no, it's a simple question. Have you done your homework?" This other working life would have completely changed my home life. It is startling to consider how much my life would have been different, would continue to be different, if all that were changed were my job. That alone is enough to alter everything else. I would surrender nearly everything about my present life that I consider so natural, so valuable, so necessary. I would surrender the work I love, the relationships I love, the time I can't live without. I know exactly how other people do it, how families work two jobs or more, hire out all sorts of services, still go into debt, and I know for sure I'm totally fine with baseball hats and khakis, tshirts and a minivan, a little cellphone on my hip (in case the kids call from school because they're puking or I forgot to send in the permission slip) and an internet connection in the study. I'm alone most of the day, talking to the walls in my head and staring at the screen on my desk, but a touch of madness is a small price to pay for my kind of movie.

2006-02-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

"Time to play Need for Speed: Late for School edition." We drop into bucket seats and back out of the driveway. I accelerate into a dip: the wheels drop out from under us and the chassis plummets onto its soft suspension, nearly scraping bottom. I accelerate into a rise: the wheels rise up to meet us, knocking the chassis into the air. We float. Then we feel the drop in our stomachs as the chassis falls and clanks back onto the axles. Butterflies in their stomachs, the kids whoop. "Whoo-hoo!" "Wow!" "How fast are we going?" This is a new minivan, but it remains a minivan, rolling like one of those old metal playground ducks or unicorns bolted to an ancient rusted spring. If I stop at an intersection and then accelerate into a right turn, the weight of the minivan rolls too far centrifugally left, resulting in an overturn that threatens to spin us into a ditch unless I fight the wheel and release the gas, straighten us out and then floor it, which is when exactly nothing happens. Time stops. Gas floods, the fuel line clogs or whatever, the whole cramped-up apparatus groaning like a big man pushing himself up off the couch. And so I have plenty of time, there in the middle of the morning's commuter traffic, to ask the kids if they have all their homework in their bags, their lunches and books and papers, the money for the field trip, the form for the class photo, and they say yes yes yes yes yes already yes. I ask them what CD do they want. They sing a few bars. Dunh. Duh duh dunh dunh. Wahn wahn. Dunh. Duh duh--yeah, yeah, White Stripes, I say. Where did they come from? Detroit, I say. How old are they? Oh, I don't know, six, eight years. Something like that. They're kids? No, the band is that old. They're, I don't know, my age. I don't know. Maybe younger. It's the new album, Get Behind Me, Satan, which is appropriate since I believe Satan is behind us honking like crazy, but anyway the kids like three or four songs from the album, and the music is something we can all listen to and be not yet sick of, unlike Smashmouth, unlike Fatboy Slim, unlike, well, anything on the radio. Can't listen to rap or hiphop without rumps dropping and shaking that bleep for me, girl, and so on to classical or jazz, safe and soothing and it puts me to sleep until I feel a movement, like someone gently pushed in a chair for me and I sway back a little and then move forward with it. Trees walk toward us, waving their branches. Fenceposts click by, one, two, three. Is the cow walking toward us or isn't he moving just a tad too fast? A chubby brown cow, briskly walking. Wait, no, we're walking. I mean, moving. We're moving. The van is finally accelerating, and we're moving again. White stripes on the asphalt blur softly under the wheels. Velocity. Forward motion. Straining against whatever was holding us back, now we get the past behind us. The kids cheer. On to school, the river of time, the debatable need for relative speed. We're rocking back and forth, rolling with the turns, suspended so softly we barely feel the days go by.

2006-01-31T06:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight Bush scraps State of Union Address to appear on Oprah. Fresh from a public shaming of author James Frey for his memoir of lies, Oprah agreed to interview President George W. Bush about his feelings on the State of his Union.

Oprah is expected to Frey him where he sits, in a big comfortable beige chair/sofa thing on the Oprah set. If all goes as planned, Oprah will publicly shame the President for his lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about the beneficiaries of his tax cuts, about the disasters of the recent year, and about his past alcoholism.

In front of a news media stunned by this development, White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan assured them that "the President is fully on board with this. He never liked big-government elitist stunts like Union addresses anyway. He's a Texan. He's the people. And Oprah knows the people. And he's going to talk to the people through Oprah. Bush to Oprah to People. It's gonna work."

Sources claim Bush had the idea for the change of venue after a phone conversation with former President Bill Clinton. Thanks to new federal rules on unlimited wiretapping, endorsed by the President, the following transcript reveals the conversation between Bush and Clinton.

"George, look at it this way. Oprah gave it to that dumb kid. Hoo, boy, she gave it to him!"

"Yeah, heh, that was cool."

"But then what happens? What happens is a free pass. Redemption, George."

"I don't want to go to jail, Bill."

"No, redemption, George, redemption. That means forgiveness. Freedom."

"America is about the freedom I give to itself when I'm free to do so on my behalf."

"At the end of the show, the show with that dumb curly-haired kid, Oprah says that the boy learned something from his experience. Learned something! Can you believe it?"

"No kid left behind, especially at the Jackson Ranch. Heh heh."

"This kid lied. To her. To America. Oprah believed in him. And so America believed in him. But he let her down. He let America down. He embarrassed her, and he embarrassed them. But you know what?"

"Gitmo!"

"No, George. Oprah does her Oprah thing. She reframes the narrative by punishing him like God but forgiving him like Christ. I do love this woman, George. She puts this kid through an ordeal, but, by golly, she bestows her grace upon him. George! Can you see it? Do you believe? Redemption in the eyes of Oprah and in the eyes of America! He learns from his past, Oprah says, "Good enough," and America feels purified, clean as new sheets on Monday morning. Come on, George. What do you say?"

"About what?"

"Ditch the address tonight. Go on Oprah. She'll make it all better. She's America, George. Go talk to America. America, George."

"I hate these dumb speeches."

"I tell you, George, if I'd gone on Oprah when I shoulda gone on Oprah, oh, boy, my life'd be different. It'd all be different now. So different. So very different. . . ."

"You got chicken, Bill! Chickie Chicken Bill! Buk Buk Bill!"

"Don't be a chicken, George. Two words: O. Prah. Go!"

"Oh, all right."

The President appears on Oprah this evening following an Oprah special celebrating the life of Coretta Scott King, 78, who passed away this morning.

2006-01-30T06:41:00.000-08:00

Marble derby was the Saturday brainstorm. The kids yanked the tape measure to its full extension and snapped it back, over and over, until one of them had the idea to roll a marble in its 25-foot gutter. The bubbly effects of inspiration lingered until Sunday morning when they both launched a collective enterprise: their invention business, headquartered in the laundry room. A domestic testing facility was established, and prototype experiments were conducted throughout the day. I am instructed to knock on a door. I do so. The door swings into a room in the center of which sits my son, pulling the string tied to the doorknob. He then points a National Geographic walkie-talkie at me and says, "What the," then presses a button that makes a loud bleep sound, "do you want?" Giggling is the surest measure of the success of an invention. Later, in the laundry room, sitting on top of the machines, one of them drops a pen into a dusty canyon, which prompts the other to invent the means to retrieve the pen. The device involves string and a wire hanger. The day's work can be reviewed in the torn sheets of notebook paper curled into a plastic mug beside another plastic mug of multicolored pens, both precariously balanced on the washing machine. I am not allowed to inquire into the details of these inventions, as they are still under development and likely to lead to several patents. I consider issuing multiple marbles down opposite ends of a tape-measure chute and observing the collisions. The joy of experiment lies not in the discovery of useful things but in the misuse of boring things. The kids call for me again, and I walk up the stairs to the second-floor laboratory. Surprise is the only desired outcome, and giggling cannot be patented.

2006-01-27T05:51:00.000-08:00

So many targets, so little time. Or so little capacity to self-direct. Little projects tempt me into distraction. An article here, a little essay there. A photo book. A parody. A portfolio. The bliss of small achievements is fleeting but real. Rarely can you point to something concrete and say, "I made that," and then offer it for inspection and confirmation. And so sometimes a small object is necessary. An artist once explained to me that he painted a crushed pop can in the foreground to "hold down space." I think small achievements are like that, solid imperfections that hold down the space of our lives. They are functional, like good shoes. Take a breather. Rest easy. And then get up and keep moving because small achievements are never enough. . . . Yesterday, GM admitted it lost $8.6 billion in 2005, Hamas won elections in Palestine, Oprah confronted memoirist James Frey about his deceptive I-survived-addiction book A Million Little Pieces, and our gecko passed away from a bacterial infection that had spread throughout the gecko population at the pet store (unknown to us). Next week, Enron goes on trial, Bush delivers the State of the Union, and Alan Greenspan retires. Today is Mozart's birthday (27 January 1756). This weekend I will have my small achievements: the hunt for a new pet lizard, chores around the house, shuttling the kids to their events. A big project looms. I gotta start. Seriously. But first I have to sever my addiction to a million little pieces.

2006-01-25T06:06:00.000-08:00

Cattle in the field reminded me this morning, driving the kids to school, of Kurt Vonnegut's quip, "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different." The kids and I have lately been unable to get to sleep on time, get up on time, make the bus. It's not farting around, really, we've just slipped behind the beat, like a slow drummer. American auto companies have slipped behind the beat, like tuba players huffing behind the marching band as it parades up the street. "The Ford Motor Company said Monday that it would close as many as 14 factories and cut up to 30,000 jobs over the next six years," reads the NYT article. The news for the industry isn't good and suggests that while those at the top have been farting around for the last few years, those at the bottom will have plenty of time to fart around in the next few. This seems symptomatic of corporate management: the unwillingness to manage the health of the company results in the emergency amputation of limbs. Long-term strategies should be looking ahead decades, for the good of all, not quarters, for the good of the stock. Anyway, I hardly know what I'm talking about. American consumers have been buying foreign cars (Toyota, Honda) and dropping the American car company's market share by forty percent. Another excerpt from yesterday's NYT article: "The Big Three automakers have eliminated or announced plans to eliminate nearly 140,000 jobs since 2000, including salaried positions. That is about one-third of their North American payroll, a rollback to a work force size not seen since the end of World War II. 'This may not be the end, but it is certainly the beginning of the end of the automobile industry as we knew it,' said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass." In light of this devastating news from Detroit, I suspect the upcoming Superbowl at Ford Field will be a less than opportune occasion to announce, again, the economic rebirth of the city. Cattle don't really savor life by farting around. They stand and chew and sniff the air, unable to appreciate the little time they have left until they're beef.

2006-01-19T08:06:00.000-08:00

Bought DFW's latest and already almost sort of done, his (David Foster Wallace's) latest being Consider the Lobster, an essay collection, the title essay being from Gourmet and netting inclusion in Best American Essays 2005, which is the only reason I can fathom for why this book was released now, because most pieces were written in (in the order they appear in the book) 1998, 1999, 1999, 2001, 1994, 2000, 2004 ("Consider the Lobster"), 1996, and 2005 ("Host," which appeared in The Atlantic, which I read in that version and whose subject, honestly, didn't deserve the effort but which industry (shock jocks, talk radio, etc.) probably did), except for maybe DFW just doesn't write that many essays or much journalism and the publisher had to wait a long while for enough material to make a book (except two essays predate his first 1997 collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which means maybe they weren't good enough to make it in then but are fine now, ten years later?). Except it's always remarkable to me how entertaining his (even ten-year-old) writing is, and how he hasn't let up on his quirks of mixing precision and colloquialism, academic jargon and modern slang, gigantor paragraphs and wiseass footnotes that hang on like remoras to the white bellies of several sharks (I mean, pages, his footnotes go on sometimes for a page or two or three). I'd already read two of these pieces, in shorter form, when they appeared in Harper's and The Atlantic, but there were 8 others to enjoy, and especially notable is the piece on John McCain, written originally for Rolling Stone but here DFW was allowed to publish the full version (the original Word Doc named probably something like "McCain RS Story_Wallace.doc" instead of the eventual "McCain RS_edited v 8 reedited 8c approved w changes 8cii.doc") and thus surging up to 80 pages, etc. Anyway, meanwhile, the gecko's alive and digging baby food, my wife worked til 9 pm or so last night at the free clinic and is today exhausted but humbled to be in the graces of fortune, my daughter's home sick, I've already grocery-shopped for ice cream and jello and antibiotics, and when I sat at my desk, finally, I glimpsed the warning label on this glass bottle of club soda, empty, between the candle and the computer's speaker, and thought how absurdly ridiculous ("Cap may blow off"? like, any time? like, from Gatorade to Gren-Ade? "Gimme your money! I've got club soda!") and yet evocative of the oh-so-many lawsuits that gave it birth. "Point away from face and people." Uh. Okay. And suddenly Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Lewis and Jim Carrey are engaged in competition to see who can keep the bottle pointed away from their face and drink it at the same time.

2006-01-18T06:09:00.000-08:00

Tiger is a leopard gecko. Yes, we are new custodians of a baby leopard gecko, denizen of the desert, he who inhabits a 16-gallon terrarium, basks in the UVA of a $5 bulb, and must be force-fed beef baby food via syringe. Having lately been reading about neuroscience and having lately finished a novel (Requiem, by Curtis White: awesome) and having just yesterday opened Tiger's bendy jaws and squirted Gerber product into his little white mouth, I had this half-awake dream from the point of view of Tiger himself, as if I possessed no upgrades to the standard model reptilian brain and were therefore squirming to escape the thick warm walls (fingers) and wriggle free of the rising eclipse of some blunt bright thing (syringe) pressing and parting my jaws . . . and, well, it was freaky. Poor guy. I had a restless sleep, but at least Tiger, who is nocturnal, had food in his belly. His basking lamp goes on in the morning to simulate desert sun. Above is a photo of my brother cleaning our gutters on Christmas Day. His gift was one of barter: fixer-upper chores, including installing cabinet lights and assembling complicated toys. My son received a variety of radio-controlled flying machines, including a flying hover disc and a helicopter. He enjoys these but is this week far more possessed by the desire to issue urgent notices of Tiger's condition, including diagnoses and remedial actions. Tiger will be the center of domestic attention for a while, at least until the puppy arrives. No, no date set on that yet. I'm still having nightmares about baby food.

2006-01-16T10:50:00.000-08:00

This post continues the discussion designer Greg and I were having on the SpeakUp comment board. Our misunderstandings were telling. Each had something he wanted to say, regardless of what the other was saying. Rather than interpret each other, we rephrased our own ideas. In the end, I believe I wanted to say something grand about one's psychological and philosophical relationship to work while Greg wanted to air grievances against and remedies for designers presuming to be artists by promoting their own styles, irrespective of client demands. (My sense is that designers bend over backward to satisfy clients, not the other way around; perhaps this premise was responsible for our continuing misunderstanding; I saw the client/designer relationship as one in which the client has the power, whereas Greg thought (I'm ascribing thoughts to him; I shouldn't) that the designer wields the power).

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[An excerpt from Greg's response: “What if instead of creating your own style based on stuff you happen to like, you were to expand your knowledge of existing movements and try to use them as best is appropriate? Perhaps this reveals me as a classicist, but I don't think we've explored what we've got enough to go filling the heads of young kids with notions that they have to ‘discover’ their own style, plant their flag and wait for someone to need them. ‘Here's my work; love it or don't,’ is what an artist would say, and newsflash: we're not artists. I'm not saying there's no need to be creative, and I'm not saying appropriate, appropriate, appropriate. In fact I think it takes more creativity to use what we've built over the last hundred years and combine things in a new way, than it does to try and extend a style you've built for yourself to cover the needs of others.”

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I think we're talking past each other. I'm reacting to your original proposition that we can be everything to everyone, that there isn't much to be anyway, and that being everything isn't hard. Now I think I understand that you didn't actually mean that. After all, you have to admit that it would at least be kind of difficult for one person to design type, magazine layouts, cover art, websites, film credits, books, street signs, tshirts, catalogs, and packaging in any style in any combination. A client could exhaust your capacities in no time. "Do a little Sagmeister with a dash of Venezky. No, too much Carson. How about more Hans Schleger? A dash of Rian Hughes. More Pentagram. Too much Emigre." This is a parody of the process, but the process can feel like parody. What you're getting at, I think, is that certain kinds of stubbornly egotistical designers put too much stock in their own "distinctive" style, and that their refusal to bend is arrogance in action. In other words, no prima donnas. So you have certain real designers in mind who tick you off. That's fine, but I couldn't care less about them (although in the market guide, you should see how often editors/ad folks insist on freelancers showing portfolios with a consistent, discernible style: employers ask for style, probably to make their decisions into the easy binary thumbs up or thumbs down). You could, empirically, survey the aesthetic styles and project-development styles of designers and then prescribe a remedy to various identifiable "types." The problem is what's your model? What do you want them to be, and why? I think it's simply impractical, if not impossible, for everyone to be good at everything, and I don't desire this outcome. To get around this, you argue that being everything only means being facile with a few "looks." I'm guessing you'd ask a client whether they want clean/dirty, traditional/hip, slick/grungey, Baby Boomer/Gen X, Y, Z. I often do the same thing because obviously you're right that explaining the principles of one discipline to someone in another discipline requires some translation of concepts into different jargon (designspeak to businessspeak or legalspeak or litspeak or Hollywoodspeak, etc.). But this shouldn't be confused with the much grander proposition that we can be all things to all people. I can't even talk to everyone, let alone design for everyone. There are differences in language and priorities and emphasis and, at bottom, my own limitations (and my desire: I turn down work if I can't or don't want to do it). Okay, so let me wrap this up. You're focusing on designers loosening up and responding better to the needs of their clients rather than stubbornly pushing the infallibility of their own "style." Fine. I'm arguing, first, that personality is not style; second, that facility with all historical styles is empirically impossible and morally undesirable; and third, that through their own relationships to work, individuals create their own personalities (I'm talking philosophy/psychology here, not the style of a website or poster). Okay, gotta run. It's been fun.

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[Greg’s final sentence his response was: “What I'm saying boils down to this; don't focus on one thing or one style and only do that well. Do everything well. Or at least try.”]

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And I say, again: impossible and self-defeating to do or try to do everything well. On one extreme, you have the self-promoting purists who insist on the superiority of one (their) style. On the other extreme, you have your ideal designer who is a master of everything. My designer is somewhere else on this spectrum, maybe on a different spectrum measuring something other than facility with the shell game of style. I don't care about pushing envelopes or where designers fit from the perspective of Design (teachers may push you to take your place within Design's larger narrative, but that's a different topic). I'm saying after you survey what's out there, after you know a little and experience a little, after you wade ankle-deep through the shallow pools of market guides, you have to decide what kind of work you want to do (desire), how well you're going to do it (capacity/will), and how intensely you're going to focus on it (hobby/livelihood/calling). You can't live your life or pursue design by clicking on the drop-down menu of history. What I'm saying is doing this is harder than what the style snobs do (stand in the place where you get paid) and harder than what your jacks-of-all-styles do (jump around, jump, jump, jump around). Trying to do everything well is a rationalizing strategy that covers up the dilemma of not knowing what you want, where you want to go, who you are. Again, don't confuse style with personality. You can bite someone else's style, but you can't make a personality by mimickry.

It doesn't look like anyone else is listening to our little discussion, but I think it's been productive to work out what we're talking about, even if we're still working it out. Unpaid, I might add. And in our own styles. Because we're stubborn.

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2006-01-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

As the holiday hosting of visitors has finally drawn to a tapering close, I have yet to dismantle the ornaments, the tree, the garlands and lights. Today, today, yes, it must be today. I have as much relish for the packing of boxes as a democratic senator does for confirming Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, but it will be done, sooner or later. And in Mecca they have the hundreds of bodies of the trampled to attend to. Irony costs nothing for the viewer and everything for the participant. It rains. Our backyard is a delta of runoff. Mothers drove the minivans to the bus stop today to pick up the kids and drive the fifty yards back home. I got a late start, backing out of the driveway when my kids leapt out of the automatically opening side door of a neighbor's minivan, my daughter shouting, "How could you forget us again?" Too much to keep in mind. I finished a book recently, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, by V.S. Ramachandran, a smart neuroscientist with amazing news about how our brains work (and terribly bad jokes about George W. and academia, as if to relieve the intensity of having to decipher his jargon by making us wince). Meanwhile, I burned myself out with writing in the last month. I published something today on SpeakUp. And since the morning, I've posted comments about the business of design:

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There are the individual designers trying to make a living by seeking work; they have to sell themselves (timeliness, flexibility), their abilities (Java, Illustrator), and the work itself (whatever the "style"). The burden for finding paying work is placed on the individual. The employer/magazine, etc., hunts a little, too (sourcebooks, market guides, word of mouth). This is the day-to-day dynamic we're all familiar with. The narratives here meet in a kind of center: the employer seeks good people, tries to avoid bad workers while the designer seeks good employers, tries to avoid getting screwed over. There is signaling, the waving of hands and pay rates, and somehow the two come together in temporary economic relationships. The narratives here are personal: designers see from within their own life stories while the employers from theirs. Hence the conflict between what the designer wants for a good working life and what the employer wants for an efficient and profitable enterprise.

Long-winded. Sorry.

Okay so the next level is one that looks from the point of view of Design, that is, the story of design as its practice and aesthetics have evolved over time. Here you get style trends. You get the good and bad habits of individual designers collectively viewed from above to suggest in toto some kind of grand movement (made up of strands of little movements). All of Design's particles make up its wave (or at least individuals may attempt to imagine such a theoretical narrative and impart to one's own conception of it a structure or progression that can be expressed in shorthand, as in Modernism to Postmodernism, Garamond to Grunge, etc.). It may be that from this view it doesn't seem so hard for an individual to absorb discrete expressions of historical style, tongue them up into little paper balls, and spit them through the straw of one's working life at the screens and brochures of whomever's buying. It doesn't seem hard to do this, I agree. And your opinion that designers who refuse to do this are "navelgazers" (i.e. unreasonably inflexible) stems from the premise that designers today need to see themselves neither from Design's point of view nor from their own point of view but, instead, only from the employer's point of view: designers should ideally act like a cheap straw with a big box of stylistic spitballs. This is, in one way, what many freelancers (designers, writers, artists) do to survive, but while it's theoretically benign from the employer's point of view, it is, in practice and from the freelancer's point of view, rather back-breaking and mind-hollowing to pull off.

What I mean: I've written for magazines for over a decade. I write a while, then I quit. Then I come back and write awhile (money! credit! whee!), then I quit. Working for myself is what produces some good stuff, and then I decide, "Hey, I should make some money," and then I start trying to write TO magazines. I absorb. I adopt. I mimic. (It's a uniquely human capacity, mimickry having to do with certain neurons in the brain; sorry, been reading lately.) Anyway, I feel emptied out after a while and so need to quit. In other words, seeing one's own work from the points of view of others (employers, Design, Literature, History, etc.) is an outside-in perspective on one's own value. Adopting the incentives of others works only so long before the balloon of optimism inside you deflates. This is the point where people revert to quotations. This is where the psychological burden of juggling jobs and styles and external demands drains your economic life as well (and may result in poor work the employer might notice).

Shit, I'm long-winded today. Almost done.

So while it's theoretically possible to spitball your work according to the whims of employers, it's dangerously dehumanizing to the person in practice. There are other perspectives in which to value one's own work that do not depend on the ability to work god-like miracles on a quick turnaround for $10/hour. The obstacles, however, are great for the individual to surmount precisely because the economic dynamic today is rather hostile to the individual freelancer, which is why it's easy to accuse me of idealism in arguing for the individual perspective. But I think the economic perspective (seeing the dynamic from the employer's point of view) has all the support it needs. I don't think companies or the market needs any cheerleading from the little guy. It could really care less. Of course, the market would reward (barely) designers who could be all things, all the time. That's the given. The question, as you bring up, is why then shouldn't we try? The answer: because we don't want to.

......................................

[Greg then responded, nicely, and suggested he didn't see where we disagreed. I responded:]
......................................

But, Greg, your summing up of your opinion expresses exactly where we disagree. You are resigned to the status quo of reaction: client need dictates your response. A tap on the knee, and you kick up a website, a brochure, a logo. I don't doubt that this practice exists. As I say, many freelancers (writers, designers, illustrators) do this to survive (hell, I do it all the time; but then again I can burn this kind of work to ashes and feel nothing). Anyway, I don't see how accepting this is the means to "something new." You're making a virtue of a vice. I do admit, however, that my view depends on the skull of the designer actually containing the intractable throb of a yearning. The yearning has to do with a desire to do good work, both objectively and subjectively. It doesn't have to be satisfying. Good work can poke your finger and make you bleed and want to try again. Work isn't an ice-cream sundae for the soul. But I have met folks, not necessarily designers, who simply don't have the desire to do any specific thing. They just want money or honor or compliments or status. This kind of person is your kind of designer. It's not mine. And let's be clear: I'm talking about a kind of creative person I would like to be and that I would hold up within whatever creative field as a good model. This model may be at odds with what the employer is looking for. In fact, almost by definition it will be because employers don't want the messiness of personality at all; they want the efficiency of work product. So I still think you're looking at yourself from the employer's point of view, not from your own. You don't need a new idea. You need your own work. And I can't think of a more challenging project: creating your own personality through work.

2005-12-19T06:11:00.001-08:00

I work at home. So it’s up to me to throw the holiday office party. One of 7 million self-employed Americans who work at home, I know how hard it is to motivate myself to organize the festivities. Two years ago, I bailed on the whole idea, and I got complaints. Last year, to make up for past apathy, I went a little overboard, and the morning after the party, I accused myself of sexual harassment. I might have been a little drunk. Can I blame me? It was a tough year, economically. Maybe I groped myself by the color laser printer, and maybe I later confronted myself with the digital photos I’d taken. I can’t be sure; it was a crazy night. This year, I went traditional with tolerance, like eggnog without the nog. I did not do Secret Santas because I didn’t want to offend myself if I didn’t happen to celebrate Christmas, but I did do Secret Non-Denominational Gift-Givers. I blabbed to myself in the office, though, and spoiled the surprise. I know exactly who my Secret Non-Denominational Gift-Giver is. Duh. But the question is: do I know who my Secret Non-Denominational Gift-Giver is? The holidays are always good for a thrill. In moderation, of course. Which brings me to codes of conduct. This year I taped a set of rules to the back of my chair, and they seemed to have had effect. I didn’t force myself to put up Christmas decorations, which would have violated my human rights, and attendance was kept voluntary. I had the office party this past Saturday, and it was successful. I watched what I wore. I kept my pajamas on. I made sure to talk to myself so I did not monopolize conversations. I did not insult myself or overstay my welcome because I remembered that even though it was a party, it was still business. I did not let my guard down in front of myself. I didn’t jeopardize my reputation. Like always, I was the one who had to dress up as Santa, but I kept the routine clean. And despite the peer pressure, I begged off the karoake. I didn’t pig out, but I did nibble at everything out of respect for the host, since I went to the trouble of making it all. I didn’t let myself walk drunk from the office to the bedroom because I might have fallen and hurt myself. I crawled safely into the hallway and then I turned over on my back and pushed myself along the wood floor with my heels. On the way out, I thanked myself for all the trouble. I did indeed drink a bit much, and so I ended up spending the night with myself. But I plan to send a thank-you note and even to give myself a call before the end of the week. It’s common courtesy.

2005-12-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

If it's too late to click, then make a gift. If you're running into shipping deadlines for your online-shopping errands and the iPod is too expensive (don't even think about the iShuffle; you'll buy that, realize giving it to one person will only make others jealous; so you'll keep it for yourself, then quickly exchange it for the iPod anyway), then here are a few ideas.

The kids and I often make collages. We cut up magazines and catalogs, newspapers and old books we pick up at second-hand sales or library giveaways, and we arrange the clippings on notebook pages, on large sketchpad pages, or even on posterboard, which the kids then tack onto their walls or corkboards. Instant creative and personal gift that you can forever humiliate people for even thinking about throwing away. I like to collect collage material that has to do with the receiver's interests, from motorcycles to skydiving, Madonna to Tiffany jewelry (if you can't buy the real thing, you can at least sneak a photo into a collage; okay, that makes collages sound really cheap and sneaky, and they're not or at least they shouldn't be; okay, just buy the damn jewelry already).

You can forget the photo clippings altogether and cut up construction paper, cardboard, or other paper materials, and maybe clip out some choice text from a magazine, and arrange that into a more artistic collage, not so literal. My son and I just used kitchen utensils (cheese graters, colanders, spatulas, a cooling rack) as tracing and drawing tools (idea attributed to this guy's great design book). Hold the object on a sheet of paper, trace it, or fool around with it, and eventually you end up with odd, interesting geometric shapes, like spirographs but not so rationally reiterative. Cut 'em out, arrange, glue, and frame it. Find cheap black frames at Target.

Another recent idea I had (well, with my brother's inspiration) was to design not just any old collage or art but a film still, like a movie scene, starring the person you're giving the gift to. So you invent characters, a scenario, and, avoiding any South Park connotations, you arrange an action scene for an imaginary movie starring your brother, your nephew, your sister-in-law. You could also design the film poster promoting the movie and go totally over the top with the kind of "Sensational!"/"Hit of the Year!" graphics and triumphant text that go with this kind of thing. (Easy to cut out this kind of text from any magazine; just don't put your friend's head on the body of Kevin Federline; that's so state fair.)

If framed art might be too Extreme Makeover: Home Edition presumptuous, then make a book of this stuff. Buy one of those blank journals (any bookstore), and paste into its blank pages some of your collages, your art, some cut-out poems from literary journals your artsy cousin keeps giving you. You can also go online and collect tons of writing that might interest this person (attorney's note: always attribute copyright owner, and do not disseminate in public (editor's note: disseminating in public can get you thrown in jail for indecency)). You can also write a nice letter. If you're thinking enough in advance, you can jot notes for a month or more to this person, say, instead of emailing them or not talking to them at all. In fact, you can print out your old emails and preserve some of your choice exchanges with this person in the nostalgic permanence of your thoughtful journal. You can also drop in some actual photos of you two for good measure. Good gift for someone with a girlfriend/boyfriend/fiance/spouse (no stalkers, please).

Another good gift for a significant other, especially from the mute male to the worried woman, is to write on each page of a nice blank journal yet another reason why you love this person, why this person is great, etc. If this is getting too Oprah for you, then you know you're on the right track to your lady's heart.

If you still just want to buy some stuff, there is a new book about creative projects called 52 Projects (website here), and also here are some cool places (online) that I posted at clusterflock.org, a communal blog. For many of you, there's an ice storm out there. So play it safe and stay home gluing your fingers together at the kitchen table. Better than skidding into a ditch of credit-card debt.

2005-12-14T05:35:00.000-08:00

Sunrise looks like sunset if you dreamt of yesterday's news. To wake the kids this morning, I plugged in a thousand holiday lights in the great room and then considered the significance of the number 1,000: North Carolina recently executed the thousandth prisoner since 1976. It was by lethal injection, like California just did with Stanley Tookie Williams, and not the electric chair, electric shock being in my mind and at my fingertips as I pushed the burnished prongs into the wall socket. Happy thoughts. So I turned on a holiday compilation CD that opens with Stevie Wonder. Up the stairs I tilt my head, rolling it side to side, not in a shameless imitation of Stevie singing, "Everyone's a kid at Christmastime," but, rather, in a vain attempt to relieve the paralytic stress caused by hours of online shopping. Online was where, in the cleavage of a Victoria's Secret model, I glimpsed a clutch of California Representative Randy Cunningham's $2.7 million in bribes. Or, as I clicked to view a larger image of a moisturizing lotion, I acknowledged with a certain horror the slightly droopy expression of Parisian Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old woman who just became the first person to receive a face transplant. The longer I shopped, the more I clicked, and the more I clicked, the more news vaulted the barriers of my consciousness. Once I bought a little, I had to buy a little more, and, thus buying, I came to learn more about the events of the day and, perhaps, to become confused in the process. This holiday season, federal marshals shot and killed a mentally ill airline passenger who said he had a bomb in his backpack. If The Bipolar Express pulls up to your front door, don't get on. A six-year-old reportedly singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in a vehicle on the highway was crushed by a Boeing 737 that had skidded on snow and right off a Chicago Midway runway. I picked up socks and pajamas from bedroom floors, and then, my mind flashing with the online Confirm-Order screens of what I'd bought for them the night before, I nudged my kids awake, feeling a shock of disbelief in this season about believing.

2005-12-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

Decoration leads to art, if you're stubborn. We put lighted garlands on the mantle. Looked good but made our blank walls look blanker. We decided to hang pictures on our blank walls, but we were sick of the old stuff. So I searched for new stuff. I cut art from magazines and books. I cropped the art to fit the frame. I was unsatisfied. I cut into the art and snipped up bits of magazine stuff. I glued the bits into collages. I stared at what I'd made, and I had this thought: Art is what you stare at long enough to want to figure out why. This thought made me self-conscious. I regarded the thought itself as one only an artist would have. It's the thought of the artist looking at his own work and hoping a future audience will feel the way he does. Knowing they won't is also part of this feeling.

2005-12-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

Call him a sissy and he'll buy an SUV. Guys whose gender-identity surveys revealed them to be FEMININE avenged their humiliation by expressing, in follow-up hypotheticals, interest in buying SUVs, support for the Iraq war, and distaste for same-sex marriage. Yesterday I leased a minivan. I preferred the hybrid SUV thing (fit better, felt better) but bought the minivan (cost friendly, kid friendly). During the test drive for the SUV, I listened to radio news: President Bush spoke of the new and improved plan for training the Iraqi military and police force. I accelerated and cornered.

Like the White House (mighty columns, closed doors), the dealership showroom was designed to simultaneously tease (fast cars, fat tires) and threaten (big place, tiny print) one's masculinity. The salesman delivered news of the lease quote, and I hit the "Seek" button of my mind's radio, leaving WSUV (All Ego, All the Time) for WMVD (Humble Home of the Minivan Dad).

Negotiating with car salesmen is like asking questions at a White House press conference: truth is not what this is about. Somebody's getting away with something, everybody knows it, but there is a show that must go on. The script in front of you is a symbol of the director's favor, the dialogue and stage directions resistant to revision or improvisation. I can hear Rumsfeld's "known knowns and unknown unknowns" echoed in the salesman's "residual value" and "depreciation amounts," over which the salesman has as much control as any Secretary of Defense who must "go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want."

Speaking of unintelligent design, I sat reading about the Dover Area School Board in Seed magazine while computers peeked at my credit rating, which turned out to be excellent. Oddly, automotive credit companies consider me a good American for maintaining a budget surplus.

While the finance guy fingered forms from file drawers, I read about Robb Willer, the Cornell University researcher who surveyed 111 Cornell undergrads and called a few random guys feminine and a few random women masculine. Reeling from the psychic damage, the guys changed their opinions and consumer preferences. Talking tough and buying big, they insisted they were the kinds of survey respondents who checked the boxes for war, gay-bashing, and all-wheel drive. Calling a woman "masculine," however, did not make her change her mind about anything.

My wife called. I admitted I was about to become an MVD. I reminded her that the "V" stood for van and that it was not a good time to discuss the other "V" word, a surgical term that would do nothing to help a guy with a minivan reassert his masculinity. I also expressed relief that, being made to wait three hours for paper to be shuffled, I had brought magazines in my Jack Spade messenger bag, a hunter-green and safety-orange satchel which one might call a man-purse or "murse." Nine hours and one malfunctioning side-door later, I was back in the dealership removing The Atlantic from my murse. James Fallows described how the subject of training Iraqi soldiers bored Donald Rumsfeld to distraction. It would take years before the Iraqi military could operate on its own. I waited two hours for the service department to replace brand-new electrical wires with brand-new electrical wires. I read the entire issue. I shouldered the murse and looked around, vainly searching for a lat machine. I pressed a button and the minivan's side door finally opened and shut on its own.

I was as unimpressed and pissed off as any mighty man who needs to tell someone, anyone, that of course he doesn't need a goddamn wire to open and shut a car door for him. The rich tennis mom pushing a stroller would not have been a sympathetic audience. "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can be blown up," observed Rumsfeld last year. But, given the chance, what soldier wouldn't check the box for armor?

2005-11-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

Snow for the journey and thaw for the return. We drove 13 hours through the night to metro Detroit, arriving in a sudden whirling blizzard around 5 a.m. It was the first snow of winter. Kids went sledding on Thanksgiving morning. They had fun and got fevers. This cramped our planned frenzy to visit everyone we could in 48 hours. We drove home Sunday, another 13 hours of sick kids watching five DVDs. We stopped six times to wait in long holiday lines at travel-plaza Starbuckses. We idled in jams. We hit slush, fog and rain in the mountains. We passed trucks around curves and hit the brakes at sudden backups. In West Virginia, about twenty cars ahead, an SUV rolled in its own glass. We smelled the flambe of fire and the smoke of skidding tires. Five cops, a firetruck and an emergency vehicle zipped by on the shoulder. We cracked the window to let in sirens and the drizzle of rain. People got out to stretch in the dark of the wet and winding mountain road. Moving again, we veered around flares and crunched through spiralling mounds of safety glass. The SUV or minivan, lifted to the flatbed truck, was smashed on the passenger side. The ambulance made a slow quiet turn on the median. For better or worse, there was no rush. We passed and gave thanks and accelerated into the fog.

2005-11-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

TV is the great default entertainment. It doesn't matter what our intent is: to watch less, to read more. TV is what we "end up" watching. I might tell myself that I as a person and we as a family don't watch much TV, but according to our Nielsen diaries, we each watch an hour to an hour and a half a day. Compared to other dads who watch sports every day and families who leave the TV on the whole weekend, we might, indeed, not watch "much" TV. But we usually watch more than our Nielsen-recorded 36 hours of TV a week. That's my guess.

I don't let the kids watch TV after school. They might go a schoolweek without watching until Friday night. But if they're sick, if friends can't play, if homework is done, if I'm too busy to concoct games for them, then I allow them to watch. Before bed, they read a half-hour to an hour. After they're in bed, I end up watching late-night TV, and this doesn't mean news. This means I'm tired and "deserve to zone out" in front of the tube and watch Comedy Central, not CNN. (I get my news from the New York Times online and in magazines like Harper's, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.) So I watch junk at night, unless I'm reading a book. Often I read until I'm tired and then I watch TV until I'm tireder. I can ride the wave of near-sleep for hours in front of the TV. I never fall asleep in front of the TV. I summon the will and end it. I aim the remote. I shake like a sick Doc Holliday at his last gunfight. Then I stagger to bed.

My wife does not stay up late watching TV. In the mornings, my wife might watch news or a morning program. On Friday, we might watch a movie. On weekends, the kids watch cartoons in the mornings. We didn't watch much TV these past weekends because we've been out of the house, out of town, or have had company spending the weekend. Saturday mornings are no longer the great cartoon event of the week because SpongeBob and Kim Possible are on 24 hours a day. We rarely go out to movies, maybe once every two months. I can watch a whole movie while walking on the treadmill, however, and I rented six kid-movie DVDs for the holiday roadtrip.

My son was recently sick. If your kid is too sick to watch TV, you know he's sick. If he's too sick to go to school but well enough to watch TV, you know he's getting better. TV is the default entertainment for the sick and the tired. And at the end of any given day, we all feel tired, if not a little sick.

2005-11-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

Race was the first lie. Being parts English, Polish, Scottish, and Luxembourgian, I qualify as "White," but my wife is one-half of a non-European ethnicity, which makes our children one-quarter NEE. The demographic forms of the Nielsen TV diary, however, did not make allowances for fine gradations. So I checked "White" and moved on. Next, I had to give ages, genders, and hours worked per week for each household member. I also had to attach a list, printed out from the DirecTV website (we get the DirecTV basic package, no movie channels) of all the channels our TVs receive. Then came the filling out of the diary and the emergence of me, The Nielsen Nag.

Fast-forward to the end of the week. I scanned every page of our two diaries for reference and mailed in the booklets. In tallying up the results, I discovered a problem. In another instance of failing to allow for fine gradations, the Nielsen diary chops up time into fifteen-minute chunks. Reviewing our entries, I'm guessing that we often put our X's in the wrong spaces, like at the half-hour, showing that perhaps we watched fifteen minutes more TV than we actually did, because that half-hour block actually signifies the fifteen-minute chunk from, say, 9:30 to 9:44. In the future, when our TV watching is monitored digitally by devices installed in the TVs or an intermediate box of some kind, this won't be a problem. We will know for sure how many Law & Order reruns we watch and how much channel-flipping we do until 1:00 am, pausing at certain reality-TV shows and infomercials we'd never admit to watching when filling out a Nielsen diary. Anyway, let's move on. One thing to note is that each person's time counts separately so that three people watching for one hour counts as three hours.

Our family of four watched 36 hours of TV in seven days on two sets.

We watched 17.75 hours on the Living-room TV and 18.25 on the Playroom TV. We watched 7.25 hours of prerecorded movies (DVD and VHS) on the LR TV and 4.75 on the PR TV. One day, I watched the Batman Begins DVD while walking on the treadmill. There was no day in which we did not watch some TV. The longest we went without watching was 35 hours on the LR TV from Saturday to Sunday, mainly because three of us were out of the house for that period. The longest stretch not watching on the PR TV was 31 hours.

Did we tape any programs? No.

Did we leave the TV on when we walked out of the room or just for background noise? Never.

The longest continuous stretch of watching (three hours) was done by me; on the first night, I watched a DVD and then Comedy Central (Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report). The most hours watched during a day was 6.25 on Saturday on the PR TV (wife and daughter watched movies on VHS).

Over 7 days, I watched 10.5 hours of TV; my wife, 7; my daughter, 11.5; my son, 7.

We watched the following channels: Nickelodeon, Disney, Comedy Central, Animal Planet, AMC, USA, TBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, LIFE, and the Weather Channel.

The second lie was underreporting. By me. On the first night, when I flipped through channels late at night, I watched at least part of one Law & Order episode. Maybe three. There are often two on at any one time, and I will occasionally flip back and forth between the two, following two story lines. I did not correct my failure to report. I couldn't remember the stations or the channels. I just left it and moved on. I did not underreport again. I nagged, as if to appease my guilt. But why should I feel guilty?

Tomorrow: the brief analysis.

2005-11-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

I was a Nielsen Nag. I nagged every member of the family. "Are you watching TV? Don't forget to write it down. Did you write it down? Don't forget to write down the name of the show. Was your brother watching, too? He has to write it down. Everyone has to write it down. Write it down!" I'm not sure why I got this way. The Nielsen woman called, and I gave her my info, and I asked, "How do I know you're really Nielsen?" And the young woman gave me her name and extension and explained that we'd get five bucks, cash, in the envelope as a courtesy for filling out these two diaries, one per TV set, for one week. The diaries arrived. Inside the envelope were five nasty dollar bills, not crisp from the bank but warm from some cubicle rat's back pocket. I read the instructions. I filled in the forms. I set the diaries by our sets. Then the nagging began. If you're going to do a survey, do it right. Be honest. Be strict. Nag. My daughter noticed the tightening of my otherwise loose screw. "You're not usually like this," she said. And I'm not. I'd have expected less of myself. I'd have expected that I'd lie, subvert the system, rebel, poke fun. I'd have expected that I'd make up satiric shows for stations that didn't exist. "1:30am-2:00am ~ SLVE ~ Ch. 13,001 ~ Kids 4 Kash!" Or: "5:30am-6:00am ~ XRSIGHS ~ Ch. 69 ~ Kegel Crunches with Jenna Jameson." Or: "12:00pm-1:00pm ~ LIZE ~ Ch. 666 ~ Lunch with Libby." But I did not. I was honest and strict. Well. Close enough. Anyway, the week ended last Thursday. I just mailed the diaries in today. Tomorrow: the results.

2005-11-17T06:22:00.000-08:00

The fisherman baits his hook with a diamond, casts his brilliant line far out to sea. He knows his bait is good, though day after day he never feels a tug. He rests his pole in the sand. He lowers the brim of his hat. He sleeps. There is nothing he wants. Seawater drips onto the backs of his hands, folded over his chest. He wakes. A She-Devil Mermaid displays the diamond. "Yes," says the fisherman. The glare of the setting sun blinds him. Beauty shines fiercely. The She-Devil presses the fishing pole into his embrace and swallows him whole. She returns to the sea. She looks at the diamond often and touches her stomach at the seam where skin meets scales. She questions the fisherman but never hears a response. She swallows the diamond. The fisherman receives it. The fisherman baits his hook with a diamond, casts his brilliant line far out to sea.

2005-11-15T05:43:00.000-08:00

Rev was the name of the first magazine I can recall ever sketching out and wanting to make. I can still remember how "rev" was the first three letters in a litany of words: review, revolve, revoke, revamp, reverie, revote. The magazine never evolved past a string of words and a blank brooding enthusiasm. Get Into Me was the name of a magazine I helped a friend make as a gift. We wrote pieces and picked out relevant stories and photos online. I laid it out in PageMaker and printed it out on an Epson inket, which took forever. We paid Kinko's to spiral-bind it. We made three "issues." I once had only a name: Crash Effect. I liked how it sounded. It suggested an urban version of the art of juxtaposition, transforming accidents into intentions. It never made it past a sketchpad doodle. Shop Magazine was this year's idea, and I fleshed it out for pages. I sketched illustrated covers; I named departments in which consumer rights were pursued to absurd extremes; I envisioned feature stories in which the writers would accompany celebrities on shopping trips. That was the satiric point: to treat shopping as the expression of identity. Shopping would be the American drama. Entire feature stories would consist of documented consumer fantasies played out by selected celebrity pairings. Salma Hayek and Jet Li shop for lingerie in Beverly Hills. Chris Rock and The Rock shop for leather pants in L.A. Faith Hill and Morgan Freeman shop for hats in Nashville. Matt Damon and Eminem shop for wristwatches in Detroit. Christian Bale and Halle Berry shop for swimwear in Miami. Paris Hilton and Tony Hawk shop for mattresses in Las Vegas. I can already hear the awkward small talk as greetings are exchanged, the bitchy critiques as they warm to the task, the shared jokes as they clown for each other, the embarrassing giggles in the dressing rooms, the insulting asides whispered to the camera, the double entendres over flavored vodkas, the private confessions in the limos. Celebrities are as inexhaustible a resource as retail boutiques. The possibilities are endless. (Special Rescue Edition: The Bush Daughters Shop at Joe's Army/Navy Surplus for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina! Special Holiday Edition: Jessica Simpson and Hugh Grant Shop at JC Penney for Needy Families!) And, my god, the advertising! It's all advertising! Flamboyantly shallow, the magazine would be destined for cable television. Days ago I saw an ad for the women's magazine Shop, Etc. It was inevitable. But it doesn't mean I still can't have my mag. I'll just have to retitle it Crash Effect.

2005-11-14T11:53:00.000-08:00

"The desire to support oneself, and if possible one's family, is a civilized expression of that instinct of self-preservation which lies at the heart of all animal and vegetable life. And this desire is so fundamental, so strong, and so accustomed to bend all other passions, whims, caprices, energies and ideas, to its service, that when it is once aroused and functioning, nothing else in us can withstand it. A man is either living, or earning his living. He is never doing these two things, purely, at once." Wrote Max Eastman in his 1916 book, Journalism Versus Art. Above, a woman breaks, exhausted, from cleaning out her corner store, located a few doors down from where my brother lives in San Francisco. Sometimes it is when we can't do what we want to do that we most want to do it. Out of practice for when the opportunity presents itself, we fail to recognize it for what it is and, instead, scribble down more ideas for how to make money. I scribble down these ideas precisely to disillusion myself, to imagine myself out on the sidewalk exasperated by how much time their implementation steals from me, and then I pitch the notebook into a drawer. It's one way I can confirm that I am not trying to do two things, badly, at once.

2005-11-10T07:34:00.000-08:00

People get away with stuff because there is too much stuff and too many people getting away with it. Who can keep track? I drop my wife off at her office, and on the way to the grocery store, I learn, from news radio, that the trade deficit is $66 billion, executives from Big Oil defended their record profits to posturing senators, and General Motors overstated their 2001 earnings by $400 million. I pick up chips, baked beans, and cookies for the kids' weekend events, and now, on the way to the elementary school, I hear the Exxon guy boast how it's huge profit ($10 billion for Exxon in the third quarter) because "our industry is huge." I also learn that France has a new curfew and deportation policy to discourage North African rioters, Tony Blair's party voted against his recent whatever, a suicide bomber killed forty at a restaurant where Iraqi cops eat breakfast, a new strain of pox leaves lesions on cow udders in Brazil, and simultaneous explosions from Al Qaeda bombs in three Jordanian hotels killed over fifty people. My daughter won a plant for reading the most books, and I carry the potted plant with tight pink buds out of her classroom and into the front seat of the car. I hold my camera out through the window to photograph yellow autumn leaves in the cemetery. I turn the radio back on. Yesterday, my son wrote sentences for his spelling words. The sentences had to describe cause and effect. While Big Oil was dismissing Congressional accusations of price gouging and smirking at suggestions they donate a percentage of their $33 billion in profits, my son was writing, "I am going to speak to John so he knows I'm rich." All the Johns on Capitol Hill already know who is rich, but just the same, it was awfully nice of the guys from Exxon, Chevron and Shell to stop by and remind them about the cause and effect of money and politics. I'm home. I turn off the radio. I lug in the groceries. I set my daughter's plant in the living room. What story about ourselves do I keep in mind in order to understand all I hear? What landscape lends proportion to the mountains of profit, the carriages of tax collectors, the peasants setting fire to thatched roofs? "I've wrote infinity books," announced my daughter, yesterday, from the back seat of the car. "Guess where they are." Music played softly. My son read a reptile guide. My daughter had been thinking quietly for some time. "Where?" I asked. She answered, "In my mind."

2005-11-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

I finished an essay and grabbed a ladder. I'd already poured a celebratory beer, which, when working at heights, is a thing one might regret. I was on the top step. I kneed the rails to stabilize the ladder, sinking into soft carpeting. I stretched to untwist a bulb from the ceiling fan. Dusty. Buggy. Is dust made of decimated bug bodies? The fan blades moved. I swayed. Did the fan blades move? I strengthened my bowleg stance. I was a cowboy handyman about to tumble into the jaws of a ladder, Funniest Home Video-style, in a bedroom of pink and white. My daughter had asked me a month ago to change this bulb. Her ceiling is a two-story ceiling. I'd just changed my son's lightbulb, folded laundry, and bagged the giant Halloween spider which had been in the hallway sucking fluid from the giant rubber bat for a week. The flurry of evening chores was inspired by the high of a good day's work. I'd finished an essay, I'd worked all day, I'd sat at the desk working hard all day, and now was the time to crank up the neo-faux-grunge-rock of Audioslave, chug a couple overpriced ales, and climb high things with sharp tools in my hand. There's that body buzz when you lose your balance and catch yourself. It's partly the reflex of the nervous system and partly the reaction of not seeing any disability checks flash before your eyes. I'd had enough thrilling moments in which to appreciate the tenuous gift of life. Next father fix-it task was going to be low to the ground. I got down on my stomach and looked around for something to fix. Ah. My daughter had been asking me for six months to replace a lost screw in her metal stand of multicolored file drawers. One leg kicked out, making the metal stand look like a kid balancing himself on a scooter. I found a new screw, secured the leg, and it was ready to roll. I crawled to bed.

2005-11-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

I fold a shirt and feel the shape of a wasted life. Doom comes from nowhere. The ache of lost time burns in the chest, brightest at its initial point of origin. It fades. It cools in dying waves. Startled by a shot, you feel your panic slip away with each step you take toward the echo. Does everyone, at any moment, wish they were doing something else? It's hard to believe but possible, however immeasurable. A harsh word from a supposed ally. An emptiness between you and everyone else. Betrayed so soon, abandoned so abruptly. And what have you done with your time? And what are you doing now? Alliances disappear, taken from you like crutches you never knew you were using, and you fall back on yourself and your work and those closest to you. Brace yourself and get perspective and set upon your life a merciless eye. What is there worth seeing? I blame the season for these bursts of crisis. Flames of color in the palms of trees open and uncurl in the branches of my own mind. It's late fall, and the days are shorter. Everyone comes home in the dark.

2005-11-07T11:43:00.000-08:00

Of the symptoms of the chronic multitasker, unzipping my fly as I enter the laundry room is now one of mine. I had to move darks to the dryer, and I had to visit the bathroom. My brain decided that I could save time by combining the enterprises. I spend my days running between my home-office computer and the kitchen, school, soccer field, dance studio, and lately (down to one car) my wife's office. Write a paragraph, wash the oatmeal pot. Email an editor, bleach the whites. The split personality of my days consists of one-third creative and two-thirds domestic. I flip and type, scrub and scan, attach and accelerate, all the while affecting the sober swagger of the colonel in the kitchen and the short-order cook on the battlefield. To nuke cold coffee, I once set the mug in the cabinet. I nearly sprayed a waffle iron with the spritzer I use to wet my son's hair. I start several tasks at once, upstairs, downstairs, and on the computer, and my mind transforms these chores into children, kids who need to be monitored like distracted students. An accomodating schoolteacher, I follow a circuit from one child to the next, showing one how to fold shirts, another how to scan a negative, encouraging a young artist toward bold strokes, sliding a dictionary in front of a struggling editor, and tousling the hair of mischievous noodles that refuse to boil. My house is as populated with chores as my mind is with characters, each calling for attention until the entire cast is in an uproar. It's at this point that I lace up my shoes and escape, jogging down the street in pajama bottoms and a bicycle helmet, waving to neighbors with a wooden spoon.

2005-11-03T07:15:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Supreme Court released a gator into our backyard pond. The thing about ponds is they're pretty, but I can't look all day. The thing about gators is I never know where they are until I look away. This gator is small enough to hide in the reeds of a few sentences but large enough to rise up and swallow my house. The reeds grow on the banks of Kelo v. New London, and the gator's name is Eminent Domain, this gator being recently fed a steroid concoction of an expanded "public use" clause of the Fifth Amendment. The public-use clause limited the Dr. Jekylls of government to seizing property that was primarily for the building of roads, parks, hospitals, or other uses that would benefit the public good. In June of this year, five Justices unstoppered an Erlenmyer flask of "private economic development" and poured it into the definition of "public use." So now the Mr. Hydes of government and business (those whom dissenting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor called "those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms") can take my home and replace it with a Home Depot, Target, Costco, or Wal-Mart. These and other private companies have been for years demanding that local governments, in addition to providing tax breaks, also threaten neighborhoods and competitor businesses with eminent domain. The government of Ambridge, PA, seized land and leased it to a local developer to build a CVS drugstore. The city of Cypress, CA, took land from a church and gave it to Costco. The city council of Newark, NJ, okayed a plan to seize nine city blocks and 166 properties so developers could build luxury condos. The gator ate or threatened to eat over 10,000 properties between 1998 and 2002, and this was before the gator was fed its new dope. The city of New London, CT, seized homes to build a riverfront hotel, offices, and health club to feather the nest for Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company building a nearby research center. Joining with O'Connor's dissent were Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. Thomas wrote separately to emphasize that seizing homes for private development was, even with "just compensation," unconstitutional. The liberals and moderates on the Court failed to see past their own outdated governmental idealism and recognize that the new gator will not be tamely used to revitalize urban areas but will instead be unleashed to snatch up family values, spit out the bones, and lumber away with stolen profit in its belly. After the New London case, the new and improved gator can swallow neighborhoods and replace them not with public works but simply with ritzier neighborhoods. Private developers lash their chariots to the gator, but it remains a beast of government snapping at the rights of the individual. Conservative Justices hate this gator, Republicans hate this gator, and now I stand with them on the banks of my backyard pond. Like every American who has mortgaged his dreams, I search the ripples and bubbles for a reading of my future, startled by every rustling in the reeds.

2005-11-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

My daughter and I discussed religion driving home from dance class. On the drive home a couple weeks ago, we'd discussed Henry Ford. Henry Ford invented neither the automobile nor the assembly line. He was the guy who had the imagination and the will to put it all together and, after failing several times, make a decent car affordable for the average American. My daughter had thought the name Ford came from "affordable." Our discussion of religion began with talk about E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan, which my daughter was reading. Thinking of the children's books White had written about animals, I said that I should write a children's book. My daughter agreed. She thought I should write about a kid's daily experience and how he or she felt about school and friends and daydreaming and everything else. I thought maybe I should write, like E.B. White, a book about an animal in the city or the country or . . . hey, what about a snake in suburbia? "But snakes don't do anything," complained my daughter. "What's to write about?" I explained that I was making a reference to the snake in the garden of Eden. "What?" she asked. "Well," I said, amused at how long I'd neglected to talk to her about the Bible, "there are stories in the Bible, and one of them is about where people come from." And she interrupted and said, "Like a legend?" And, knowing how eager kids are to employ definitions they learn in school, I said, "Yes, exactly, like a legend." I said that in the Bible one of the first stories is about God making Adam and, from Adam's rib, Eve, and, after placing them in Eden to live, warning them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Eve was curious about the tree. There was a snake at the tree, and the snake persuaded her to indulge her curiosity and eat an apple. So she did. And then she gave some to Adam. God did not say exactly why they shouldn't eat this fruit, and God did not really warn them what would happen if they did. He was testing their obedience. But if they did eat an apple from the tree, then they would come to know good and evil. "But knowing the difference between good and evil is a good thing," observed my daughter. "And anyway if God didn't want them to eat from it, then why did God put the tree in there in the first place?" I suddenly realized why God created Adam and Eve as adults and not as children: so God wouldn't have to answer questions like the ones my daughter was asking me right now. My daughter is in elementary school, and I was hoping I'd kept my old college notes for help. In an instant, she'd gotten straight to the heart of what excites theologians and bores undergrads to this day. How could the garden of Eden be paradise if God had also installed within it prohibition and, thus, temptation? I told my daughter that God was angry and made Adam and Eve leave paradise. I told her that people often write these stories, these legends, to persuade others to have faith in their religion and be afraid of not following the rules. My daughter thought for a moment. "Religion is bad," she concluded, "because we all come from the same place anyway, and we shouldn't fight about it." My daughter sweats from ballet, but her heart pumps with the blood of Buddha. Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and a host of secular pacifists from Voltaire to Tom Paine would recognize this spirit of civil tolerance. I turn us down our street, and my daughter reveals that her class has been reading about Anne Frank. Did I know that people killed six-thousand Jews because of their religion? "Six million," I said. We walked up the steps of our house. She said, "Can you believe it?" And, holding the door for my daughter, I imagined dim-witted Adam shaking his head, "No." And sly experienced Eve nodding gravely before answering, "Yes." And then the snake appears and, grinning, asks, "Who let me into the garden? Who held the gate for me? No one. I was here from the beginning."

2005-11-01T05:33:00.000-08:00

I find it easy to recall how I felt as a boy, say, a third- or fourth- or fifth-grader, especially when confronted with the symptoms of youth in my own son. A boy sees the world through the narrow squint of his own interests, and an hour carefully arranging his predators atop the hills of pillows and his prey between the grasses of blankets passes for him like a moment. The increasing clutter of his room is as distant a sensory perception as the sound of his parent's shrill pleadings to get ready, it's time to blah blah blah. The world in which a clean room and a timely arrival are priorities is not his. That is the outer world that circles his own like a nebulous realm. Somehow that realm disgorges clothes, meals, haircuts and hugs, but who cares how? Populating his urgent horizon are personalities he can pretend to be (a fierce tiger, a powerful wizard, a vanishing spy), landscapes he can pretend to inhabit (the jungle, the castle, the city), and victories he can pretend to achieve (escape from the hunter, capture of the monster, acquisition of the secret plans). He experiences the social worlds of school and sports to a degree influenced by this narrow vision, though he is pushed and pulled by its demands (to score well in tests and on the field). These worlds often clash with the expectations of his own imagination, and he may awake now and then unrested, fatigued, unable to say what it is that has taken hold of him and brought him to tears. He will hear his parents ask, "Are you sick? Does your stomach hurt?" Suffering his parents' stupid questions pressing into his clouded and angry mind, he will instinctively hold his stomach but shake his head, aggrieved by not knowing why he doesn't feel right but also now by his parents who think he should know why he doesn't feel right. But how could he? He was looking forward to something because he thought he knew what would happen and how it would make him feel, but then that thing doesn't happen, and he doesn't feel anything close to what he wanted to. He tried hard but he lost. He searched for his friend up and down the street, but his friend abandoned him. He has waited and waited, and no one can tell him why he must wait some more. Someone is pulling him, by the ankles and by the hair, away from his heroes, his worlds, his victories. It is as if the hunter has caught him, the monster has slipped away, and the spy has learned that the secret of the secret plans is that there never were any. He thought that no matter how old he got, he would always feel this way in his mind, be this smart, think these thoughts, want these things, be afraid of this stuff. But it's not true. It's changing, while he's not even paying attention, and suddenly, in the mornings, something's cold or empty or not exactly where he put it last night, and this is too much to bear. Someone is making him get up and do some more of what he knows now isn't going to feel the way it should.

2005-10-31T05:15:00.000-08:00

Kids eviscerate a ghost pinata during a block party two days before Halloween. I like how suburban neighborhoods celebrate without knowing the provenance of the rituals, without knowing the history of it all, and they celebrate nothing so much as community itself, specifically their own. This is very good. Halloween now mixes up religion, paganism, community spirit, and, via the pinata and the bean dip, Americanized versions of Mexican culture. Or maybe it celebrates none of these but only appropriates what it likes of each (dressing up, trick or treat, block parties) to hang out with each other, meet the new neighbors, tap a keg, listen to music, and let the kids run a little wild: biking around card tables of burgers and chips, chalking the cul de sac with hopscotch grids and meandering blue snakes, and swinging a wiffle bat at a strung-up cardboard ghost with a bellyful of gummi worms. Before terrorists motivated by religion or politics or both bombed markets in New Delhi, India, neighbors in the U.S. gathered in the streets on the weekend before Halloween to dress up as witches and cowboys, heroes and devils, and, with hats on their heads and bubbles in their cups, remind each other of their good humor, their civil spirit, and their children's names.

2005-10-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

White Sox win, Miers withdraws, and I have a lot of cooking to do. Last night, the Chicago White Sox swept the Houston Astros to win their first World Series since 1917. This morning, Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination for U.S. Supreme Court Justice, likely due to the unflattering prospect of having to hand over White House counsel documents demanded by an increasingly hostile U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. In honor of visiting friends, we have prepped the guest room by moving luggage and toy boxes out of the closet and into the attic, hanging art on what have been for months empty walls, and arranging, just so, new pillows and blankets on the bed. My daughter dances in, a spring in her step (all that ballet), ready to do what she does best: organize. With authority, she rearranges what my wife has already arranged. A cozy jumble of pillows are realigned in order of size, like stages in the evolution of the throw pillow. Lotion bottles leaning fraternally in a basket now sit up straight like schoolkids against a wall. Towels layered lustily like flapjacks are sharply reset with straight edges: washcloths top a foundation of wide bath towels in an obsessive approximation of a Mayan temple. Wisely remaining in his room, my son, with one weekend left to confirm and design his Halloween costume, decides instead to get an early start on his Christmas list. He presses hard each letter of his wish, snapping pencil tips in his effort to make himself perfectly clear. While my wife ushers my daughter into bed, so tired from reorganizing that she sleeps in her clothes, I ball up my khakis, patterned with whorls of yellow insulation fibers from the attic, and open another beer. I can hear my wife undoing my daughter's doing and rerearranging the guest room back to its state of considered comfort. This morning, my wife instructs me severely: I am not to let our daughter come home after school and rereREarrange the guest room. I consider bringing all the luggage and toy boxes back down from the attic and stacking them against the guest-room door. I don't know what's more surprising: that the White Sox won, that a Bush nominee stepped aside, or that my wife still thinks I have any power to influence the women in this family.

2005-10-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Two-thousand American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. It is the highest death toll since Viet Nam. In October 1939, when he was forty, E.B. White wrote, "I keep forgetting soldiers are so young." This week, a woman told me a friend of hers was called up to report to Fort Bragg; he's thirty-five. If soldiers are young, their replacements are getting older. The U.S. Army raised the recruitment age for the Reserve and Guard to 39. I'm thirty-six, and yesterday I cooked dinner for my wife, drove my daughter to dance class, spent $99 on ramekins at Williams-Sonoma (don't ask), lifted weights at the YMCA (I was squatting 275 and leg-pressing 450, and my lower back today sends gentle reminders of my age as I unload the laundry), and fell asleep on the couch, at eleven, reading Alan Alda's new memoir. Today, I drive the kids to piano lessons. I drive defensively, always. People around here are from everywhere else (an effect of the new service economy in which folks follow the money from suburban headquarters to suburban headquarters), and the diversity of driving styles results in dangerous civility. Drivers with the right of way will politely, then impatiently, wave others through; shy on-rampers hesitate; and local truckers who refuse to adapt their habits to weather weave good-naturedly into the soft shoulders of red mud, kicking up rocks and rainwater as they jack-knife out of control. The 35-year-old soldier should take care driving to Fort Bragg: 42,636 Americans died in car wrecks last year. He should take his echinacea and avoid the golf course in the evening: 20,000 die from the flu every year, and 90 are killed by lightning. He should also avoid the company of other citizens. Americans murdered 16,137 of ourselves last year. The numbers of civilian Iraqi dead range between 26,690 to 30,051; and 2,150 Iraqi troops and cops have been killed. (See NYT.) President Bush said yesterday, "The best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission." Mommas, don't let your cowboys grow up to be babies.

2005-10-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Turns out Cheney told Libby about the CIA officer, Rosa Parks died, and I have lost my menu for the week. We have guests coming Thursday, and I did a new thing: I planned a menu. Went through my Fine Cooking magazines, planned every dinner (including separate kids' dinners) Monday through Sunday, bought it all, and got busy cooking. My wife asks the kids to appreciate what I'm doing while I'm appreciating what my mom used to do. I'm an at-home dad who today made scrambled eggs, sausage, toast, and pancakes for the kids, who are test-taking this week, walked them to the bus stop with the other moms and dads, and came back to make coffee in a French press and read the New York Times online, where the lead article reveals that Dick Cheney mentioned the CIA officer to Libby "weeks before her identity became public in 2003." Apparently, this whole thing started because the White House wanted to investigate a critic. The critic was this guy Mr. Wilson, hubby of the CIA officer and a past diplomat who had failed to find, in Africa, evidence that Iraq had bought nuclear material there, which cramped the White House plans for an excuse for invading Iraq. Thereafter, this guy Wilson made noise when the White House went ahead anyway and used flimsy excuses for invading Iraq. It's legal for the White House to investigate critics. Cheney knew Ms. Wilson was CIA and that she'd helped arrange her hubby's CIA-sponsored trip to Africa, but he may not have known she was an undercover agent. The whole thing is shaping up to be not about governmental malice but, like the Katrina response, incompetence and reckless arrogance. When I help my kids prepare for tests on Native Americans, Civil War, and government, I often find myself qualifying my answers with some version of the following: "The real world is more complicated than that, but, okay, yes, close enough." I am laying the groundwork to offset future disillusionment. Because of school, they know Rosa Parks and refer to her as "a civil-rights leader." They know she refused to sit in the back of the bus. What is much harder for them to understand is the society in which sitting in the back of the bus was a city ordinance enforced upon others and that, in those days, signs above water fountains said, "For Colored Only." We live in a cul de sac and walk a short distance to the bus stop, and every morning parents and children form a happy mob, biking and scootering here and there, the toddlers throwing tantrums when they can't follow their older siblings up the steps and into the big yellow schoolbus. Walking home, the moms discuss tennis, bunco night and kid stuff while the dads reflect on where they've come from (Australia, rural New York, India, a Chicago suburb) and how the economy is beyond reckoning (dying industries, multinationals, the miraculous promises of drug companies believed even in suburban paradise). An editor friend of mine wrote recently, "I think it's wonderful that you can work as an artist and be a dad. It's the new motherhood. Cherish it. Maybe you can also find other men who do the same thing and have little card parties during the day. That would be fruitful research for some kind of twisted novel." The ongoing story of the CIA leak will never make a twisted novel, but it might make for a twisted memoir or three, the most likely one being from NYT reporter Judith Miller who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify about her interviews with Libby. It's not exactly refusing to sit in the back of the bus to protest Jim Crow laws, but Judith, too, is a woman who stood up for civil rights and went to jail (and even talk shows) for it. Meanwhile, I'm an at-home dad who can't find the meal menu he printed out yesterday. I think tonight it's pan-fried trout and shitake mushroom soup while the kids will be eating sloppy joes and pears. This is the new American dream, yes? The real world is more complicated than that, but, okay, yes, close enough.

2005-10-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

A row of power lines towers over our subdivision's softball diamond and soccer fields. I happened to bike there one morning, and when I stopped, I heard sizzling up in the wires. It sounds exactly like Pop Rocks on your tongue. . . . I have already bought our household Halloween candy, no Pop Rocks among the Milky Ways and Three Muskateers, but no reject candy either, which is the lot of my cousin, Nick, a Marine in Iraq who describes his workplace as a "small room with 4 computers, some maps and a cupboard now filled only with the reject candy." He lives on coffee and DVDs of Family Guy and Lost, and he spends his down time sleeping, learning Arabic, and playing poker. I told him to give away the reject candy on Halloween, but he says they don't celebrate that there. We celebrate it here in one week, and the kids are excited but, for the first time in their young lives, existentially conflicted about their costumes. They are old enough to care what other people think. And we just moved to this neighborhood. So my daughter has decided to play it safe as a princess, which befits a girl who sings along to Jewel and plays "Spoonful of Sugar" every time she happens by the piano. Otherwise, she organizes her stuff, reads Harry Potter, or scribbles me a note alerting me to "get yourself another dauter" or assuring me that I'm "the best dad in the world." My son plays soccer three times a week and begs me nightly for a puppy. "Have you called the breeders yet?" I tell him I have again visited the websites. I know the dog will be my responsibility, and so I'm stalling. Meanwhile, my son has learned everything about dogs there is to know. He has a dozen dog books and lays them open to certain pages and then arranges all these opened books across the floor of his room. He gets impatient with me about many things, probably because he knows more than I do but also because of the first flare of hormones. He has considered being a werewolf this Halloween, but by middle school he will be one whether he likes it or not. One day he will pick up all his scattered dog books and replace them with copies of Maxim and FHM. I need to get the puppy soon before he loses all interest in dogs . . . and me. Otherwise (I email Nick) both kids are doing well in school and at home with friends. Like any kids their age, they cultivate attitudes that are infuriating but, I rationalize, probably healthy: meaning, they argue and talk back and stomp off and yet expect me to do everything for them. So then I argue and talk back and chase them and wrestle them to the ground. I think I might be raising them to be crosses between defense attorneys and Icelandic berserks . . . which, come to think of it, would make great Halloween costumes.

2005-10-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

Fog is beautiful to the eye but faithless to the lens. What appears so magically dense and moody when I'm standing on the front porch reveals itself, on digital capture, to be something I could almost call a bad picture, out of focus, almost blah. A hazy gray of "So what?" Fog is like snow: it conceals the familiar and restores its mystery. A grace from Nature, a trick of the atmosphere, or an effect influenced by rural pastures and urban heat sinks? Hurricane Wilma swoops towards the home of my aunt and uncle, who plan to stay put and stick it out, a strategy these transplanted Chicagoans have found successful for the dozens of other hurricanes that have, for the past handful of years, knocked on their door on the Western coast of Florida. In Texas yesterday, a prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Tom Delay, an arguably symbolic procedure but one that reminds me of a saying by Confucius: "You don't use an ox cleaver to kill a chicken," the corollary being, in the Delay case, that you better use an ox cleaver, or a multi-ox-cleaver assault vehicle, when you have to kill an ox. And I imagine Karl Rove (in re: the CIA-leak scandal) to be assuming the postures of my aunt and uncle: standing firm against possible disaster while peeking hourly through the curtains. And mustn't the prosecution of Saddam Hussein be a disappointment to media victims Delay, Rove and even Harriet Miers, who all must find high ground as they look to the skies of CNN for a public distraction to provide them relief? "Neither Wilma, nor Saddam, nor Iraq, nor gloom of Afghanistan will stay these news couriers of public interest from their appointed rounds." Pity not Harriet, for though she be the teacher's pet scorned by the student body, she will ever enjoy the favors of Fate: either she will be Supreme Court Justice or else she will go back to planning the senior prom. She will not in the least be affected by the October bankruptcy of Delphi, the recent healthcare concessions of the UAW, or yesterday's Congressional refusal to raise the minimum wage above $5.15/hour, where it has been since 1987. In 1987, I graduated high school, Harriet Miers was in private practice, Karl Rove had recently bugged his own office and blamed Texas democrats, Tom Delay had just become a born-again post-alcoholic Christian, and Hilary was a tropical storm, as was Knut, a name then retired. Which is too bad. It usually takes a few Knuts to clear the fog.

2005-10-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

Weedwhacking churns up the early morning dew into clouds of mist. Grass blades cling to wet boots. Bad golfers lose a lot of balls around here. Bad golfers slice. Golf balls bust windows and dent car hoods. Dads flipping burgers drop behind gas grills like sitcom actors behind sofas. Which reminds me: my high-school math teacher asked our class if we'd ever seen a cough drop. He coughed. Then fell, hard, to the floor. It took a second for us to realize he was joking and had not just had a stroke. I was sitting in the back, and when he disappeared behind the desks up front, it was as if he had stepped backward off a cliff. He dropped hard. He got up rubbing his shoulder, smiling meekly, searching for applause. A friend in high school could kick, unnoticed, the bottom of a door and, as if in reaction to that sharp crack of a sound, snap his neck back and grab his face, as if he'd walked into the door and broken his nose. He could also, walking, catch his right heel with his left toe and trip, stumbling, arms flailing. Then he'd regain his balance and scowl back at the ground, pissed at whatever had caused him to trip like that. He would vary the routine. A little mistep in a crowd of strangers, just to see if I were paying attention to his subtle slapstick. Or else an impossibly huge stumble afterwards, absolutely windmilling and falling forward for a block, the Jerry Lewis absurdity to the previous Charlie Chaplin subtlety. I have always been too tall to pull off stunts like that. Except now, for my kids, who don't know any better. They swing on the swings and I stand in front and, when they kick their legs at the upswing, I snap back, as if I'd been struck, kicked in the jaw. Doing it once, for grins, is the first mistake. Enjoying their laughs is the second. They demand, and I am compelled, to do this over and over and over again. Swing. Kick. Snap. Ow! Laugh. I fall backward, on my butt. I climb up, slowly, the old knee surgery, you know, and I scowl at them, searching for applause.

2005-10-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

I bought the magazine Drum! yesterday. Never read it before. It's about drums. I play drums. I chose the snare drum in fifth grade and pulled its big orange case, bungee-corded to a luggage cart, to school.

I was also a safety patrol. The orange case of the drum matched the orange belt of the safety patrol. I was supposed to wear the safety belt strapped around my waist and chest exactly the way you'd look wearing a seat belt and shoulder harness or, perhaps, the way you'd look when you were about to be helicopter-hoisted off of your rooftop. But the cool way to wear the safety belt was to wrap it up into a tight ball and run it over your belt so it hung down and slapped against your upper thigh like a holster. It might have looked cool on days that were not band days, but on band days, I had the big orange snare-drum case bungee-corded to a wheeled luggage cart which bucked (bock bock bock) over the seams in the sidewalk.

The orange snaredrum case was a plastic clamshell, its surface textured with raised pimples. To me it was as enormous as a truck tire, but I'm sure if I saw it today, I'd be shocked at how small it was, shocked with the same disbelief I had when I returned to that elementary school and hunched through its low halls like a basketball player in a submarine. I'd fit the hardware of the stand in first and then set the drum in on top. I'd fit the sticks and books in there as well. Then I'd extend the collapsible luggage cart, pull down the bottom holder thing, and wrap the bungee around the case and around the stems of the cart in such a carefully desperate way that if it were impossible to look cool, then at least I would not suffer the added indignities of an unsnapped bungee cord and a drumcase rolling into the street.

This was in Michigan, and so in winter I'd wear my down coat (red and blue, as I recall) and my backpack over that. Backpacks then were flat and simple and deflated and sad. They were like vintage canvas delivery bags one of the very first Boy Scouts probably received from his father after World War I. As a safety patrol, I would leave home early to stand at a designated intersection and, stopping traffic with a raised hand, guide the younger kids across. In winter, I'd drag the drumcase, its wheels uselessly iced up, through the snow to the intersection and stand it up or just let it fall. Safety patrol was released early at the end of the day to resume their posts at the crosswalks and guide kids across until a bell was heard. Then you'd wait a little while until no more kids arrived. Then I would trudge home.

Once, as I trudged home, middle-schoolers threw snowballs at me. I remember it being difficult to run through the snow in my snap-up slip-on boots. I was a safety patrol, the last one to head home, and here I had to run from middle-schoolers, the type who'd never been safety patrol but who might one day take up the drums because all their burnout friends were in a band and they couldn't do anything else except foresee life as a roadie. I remember being thankful I didn't have my orange drumcase slowing me down, but in memory, I actually see myself with that orange drumcase, twisting and skidding behind me.

I was good at snare drum and practiced in the evenings before episodes of M.A.S.H. came on. I continued to play in the band in middle school, where I was now a troublemaker, dropping sticks on purpose ("Drummers, hold your sticks!"), and even once orchestrating the entire drum section, at least twelve of us sullen boys and two or so gender-defying girls, to drop their sticks all at once, on the count of three. . . . I found the principal's office to be as pleasant as the basement of my grandparents' home and decorated in much the same Ratpack-influenced style: lime-yellow furniture, orange carpet, beige walls. My grandfather built a fancy bar in his basement for holiday parties where my uncles drank, smoked and told dirty jokes, and here, in the principal's office, though I knew I couldn't ask for a Shirley Temple, I did feel that, being the kind of harmless troublemaker who got straight A's, I was safe and would likely hear a joke or two that I wouldn't quite understand.

I also took drum lessons in snare and the drum set and attended competitions in which kids from all over the Midwest would arrive to (a) feel so out of place they would disappear into their own clothes or wish they'd chosen a larger instrument to hide behind; (b) suffer diarrhea, freeze up, panic, choke, and leave without placing; (c) strut and preen and blow everyone away with bluster or real talent and leave with first place. I did a little of all of that and even placed now and then. But I didn't stick with it long, the competition or the lessons. A few years.

I played at home, to the radio or cassettes of The Police, in my cork-walled room. My parents had bought me a drumset in the seventh grade. I have never bought another drumset. My youngest brother now uses that drumset. It's a Slingerland, and though I could never make it sound the way I wanted it to, it is unkillable. Its hardware is military, and the shells are bulletproof. I drove the neighbors crazy for a while, but luckily all the kids around us also played instruments: drums, sax, guitar, piano, flute. So everyone's kids wailed and screeched all evening long. Still, I believe my mother received the most calls in the neighborhood. My drums weren't in the basement. They were in my room, second floor, front of the house. Boom boom, chik, boom boom, chik, digga digga digga digga, crash.

Because of my antics in middle-school band, I was last chair. In freshman band in high school, I started last chair out of fourteen drummers. I didn't goof off much, except to get other people to laugh. Must've been the hormones, but I was into other sports and had other friends, and band ceased to be the theatre of stunts it used to be for me. It became time to actually know what the hell you were playing. By the end of the year, I was first chair. I only mention this because I promptly quit band, totally disappointing the band teacher, who up until then used to quiet the drummers with frantic waving and say, "Dave, please play the coda," and I would play smartly, with polish, and, most importantly, quietly. Being quiet was the most important thing a drummer could do when there were 13 other drummers. I quit because I didn't want to join marching band. The uniforms. Saturday practices. Football games. The shoes. My friends were playing football. (I think I only played freshman year, but I also got heatstroke and mono during summer double practices; so my memories are hazy.) I left marching band for basketball and swimming and track and all that.

The coda to this is that the band teacher, whom I so disappointed, played trumpet at my wedding. He was a friend of a friend of my wife's family.

I bought Drum!magazine to look for a new drumset. I have played in a few bands, a few talent shows in college and law school and even recently, for my kids' music recital (we played The Beatles' "Drive My Car"), and while I don't play regularly, I still like to play and need to play. So I need new cymbals, a new snare, a big bass drum. I think I'll buy each separately, put together a nice tight kit, one whose sound I'll really like. That's the key. I have to like the sound of my own drums. I don't want to buy a kit with everything all at once, like a meal deal at a fast-food place. I want to think about each part.

The dining room of our house is the music room. The kids play the new beautiful black upright piano we bought this year. They have no fifth-grade band or music in school, they lug no instrument case five blocks every morning (they ride the bus), but they have been taking lessons, eagerly, since the beginning of the year. They teach me songs. I play the piano like a drum. It is a percussion instrument, after all. Into that room of wainscoting and white walls, a crowned ceiling from which hangs a clunky chandelier, I will place my new drum kit, on some kind of nice rug arranged on the wood floor. We'll all play together. There will be no corkboard on the walls. As the neighbors know already, the room is in the front of the house.

2005-10-17T06:27:00.000-07:00

In our subdivision, two swans reside in a pond, which we have come to call Swan Lake. Recently, we drove past Swan Lake at night. My son directed us to glimpse, in the darkness, "a pinch of white". . . . His bedroom cleared of everything in it, prepped for painting, my son declared his room "bald". . . . The previous night we had watched Friends and Will & Grace. In the morning, my daughter inspected the cover of Oprah magazine. "Why is everything about sex?" she asked. "What is sex anyway?" And my wife said, "It's a long story. You have to go to school now. We'll talk about it later."

2005-10-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

I do not like these pants and cannot muster a smile to conceal my disappointment, but I am trying to say, "Thank you, Grandma," with my eyes.

If I do not know what to do with this blog, I should not begin it. And yet I should begin it if I am ever to find out what it's good for. It is probably good for lying. With daily practice, I can't help but become a quick, if not credible, liar.

And so, with my eyes, "Thank you, Google Blogger. Yes, I will try this on. Thank you."