Other Stuff

That's Not a Glass Pipe. It was "Hump" Fest, Not "Hemp."

Last Saturday I sat with four lesbians and a drunken OSU doctoral student to watch porn...along with almost 500 other people. This diverse group of friends and I met in Portland to see stuff on the big screen we wouldn’t watch on our laptops. So, this is an essay about watching a porn film festival. This is the only warning you’re getting. Stop reading now if you don’t want to see what I do to an essay about watching a porn film festival.

Every year dozens of Northwesterners of all persuasions get their creative juices boiling and produce short, homemade, x-rated motion pictures. Those with an exibitionist's bent contibute their works to the string of pornographic pearls known as Hump Fest. This collection of amateur explicit shorts plays one weekend every November to sold out shows at the 500 seat Cinema 21 in Portland (and at theaters in Seattle and Olympia, too). The event is a tightly run program with the popular sex advice columnist Dan Savage giving the intro and making sure the audience knows the two very important rules of Hump Fest. The first rule is that recording of the program is absolutely prohibited. He is adamant that the people staring in these movies want to be porn stars for the weekend, not all eternity.  Savage announces, and makes the audience repeat back, that anyone seen even holding a cell phone will have it taken away and never returned. It doesn’t matter if you are a heart surgeon on call, you will lose your phone forever if it is even in your hand during the show. The second big rule is "no assholes". No disparaging comments because many of the people in the movies are in the audience. You can yell, clap, sigh, and whistle; but no asshole comments. As if this is all quite normal, when the welcome and preamble was over, the lights go down and previews of mainstream arthouse coming attractions roll as the curtains open. Very soon the slick studio preview is followed by the first short, which is grainy iPhone recorded porn. (iPorn? Seems almost redundant...)

With the prevalence of pornography on the internet, why would anyone go to festival like this? I mean, in this age of rampant isolating technologies watching intimate relations between consenting adults in a room full of hundreds of strangers seems pretty unnecessary (unless you're into this kind of thing). One draw could be that all the shorts in this program will never been seen anywhere else. Ever. Once the program is over, all the movies are destroyed. There are no DVD sales in the lobby, no RedTube links (stop pretending you don’t know what RedTube is); nothing. So this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see amateur movie making at its kinkiest. Another draw might be Cinema 21 has good beer and fresh theater popcorn.

As culturally insensitive as this might seem to the people of Corvallis, I don’t care about beer. Porn in any form is not too high up on my list of things that make me swoon, either. However, what  does draw me to Hump Fest is it is cinema in its oldest and, arguably, purest form. This is the sense of community one feels when drawn into the cultural epicenter of an event that cannot be replicated online. People from all demographics are experiencing film in real time as a group--not as individuals stuck in their lives that consist of commuting, work, and Netflix. This is the cinema experience remembered in movies like CINEMA PARADISO or MATINEE. No, really. The major difference is that Hump Fest happens to be pornography, but coming together at the cinema is not new. We used to populate cinemas to see newsreels before TV made news something on in the background while most Americans eat dinner. At the Darkside Cinema a singular experience might be a local film that deals with health. Such events bring people out of their caves and into the flickering light of a cinema to experience life at 24 frames per second. (I guess now it’s 30 scans per second.) We as a species still can be drawn out and brought together by such happenings. Be it live music, a play, or even good beer--many of us will show up for the show...and the beer. It is a cultural bonfire around which we gather for not only warmth and safety, but to share stories. Granted, at Hump Fest many of those stories you may not want to share with the whole tribe.

The stories that comprise Hump Fest run the whole gamut of sexual experience. The blessing is the five-minute cap on the length of the short films so if you are being hit in the face with a gusher of experience that isn't something you care to have anything to do with, it ends soon enough. Through more than a couple of the films I found myself looking at my feet rather than at the screen. Every year it seems they have to have something so edgy no one really wants to see it--and if you were at the festival, you know what one I meant. The audience is asked not to make comments on the specific qualities of the actors (technically, they weren't really acting...), but certain acts elicited rather loud exclamations. Fortunately, most of those responses were laughter. Almost all of the shorts used humor. It was humor of all stripes--from sophisticated political satire to, quite literally, a pie in the face, and other places. Production quality ranged from cellphone video to professionally lit and edited pieces. Though some of the actors were, how do you say, well equipped for their role as a pron star, most were quite normal people. Some were a little heavy, out of shape, unshaven, and had asymmetrical boobs. Many of the women were like that, too. Everything shown is what would be MPAA classified as X rated, due to the fact the sex is not simulated. Obviously, this is not for everyone, no matter how open minded.

I'm not sure if our minds have gotten more open or if we have just become desensitized to pornography. Though the unspoken Bro Code compels us to convince our friends’ partners that porn can be "accidentally" downloaded onto one's computer against our will by some unscrupulous Internet spammer, most of us stumble on it all the damn time no matter how careful we are to not click an unknown link. So it seems almost silly to pay to see it. But, we are not there for the product on the screen as much as we are for the event. No, really. We are there to gather with others who are sex-positive (Remember, Dan Savage is the host) and the fact it is a porn film festival is just the icing on the cake. Though at this film festival, it's not always icing.... No small part of this experience is the venue. There's something just right about watching low-budget porn in a theater built in 1926.

Cinema 21 is an old single-screen theater in one of the coolest neighborhoods of Portland. Hundreds of people surge in and out from one sold out show to the next for this event. Those exiting are making their marks on the ballots collected at the doors. Yes, we vote on the sexiest, kinkiest, and funniest videos in the show. We stuff our ballots into ballot boxes topped with plywood orifices fashioned shockingly similarly to orifices we just saw on the screen. I had a private chuckle while “voting” when I realized this theater saw the same crowds when it ran SOUND OF MUSIC in 1965.

Once on the street my group decided on a destination for food where the other 494 attendees might not be going. As if right from central casting, a loosely-wrapped individual was yelling from the street; warning the gathered crowd of God's displeasure with the movies being shown and the price we will all surely pay. The rain started as we ducked down the sidewalk in pairs with those who smoke lagging to the rear. The red neon of the old theater disappeared behind us, which I probably will not see for another year. But I will be back for Hump Fest 2013...unless the nut-job is right about God's ire. In that case we'll just sit around a fire in the midst of the rubble that used to be the theater and I'll tell stories about what I saw when I worked at a drive in movie theater. Now that I think of it, some of those stories would make a great short film...

Past and Present Elk

“Well pistols, Paul.”

Swearing was uncommon for my friend, even after being around my foul mouth for most of our lives. When I looked over, he was holding his necktie like it was a long, droopy snake.

“What?”

“I pulled it apart.”

“Well, then you have to retie it.”

He looked at it like it was some unsolvable Rubik's Cube. “I don’t know how.”

“You wear a tie every night you work. What do you mean you don’t know how?”

“I had someone tie it for me, and I’ve just been slipping it off and on over my head.”

“How long have you been doing that?”

“About a year-and-a-half now.”

I took the swath of silk, draped it over my neck, lined up the ends (allowing that he was a few inches shorter than me), and then produced a full Windsor. I popped it off the top of my head and handed it to him.

He looked at it like it was some sort of minor miracle. “You never even wear a shirt with a collar. Where did you learn that?”

“You’re welcome.”

I think of this every time I tie a necktie—which isn’t too often, but I still remember this exchange like it happened over this morning’s coffee. Today, 25 years later, I’m dressing for a funeral, and I’m tying a full Windsor. I don’t really care for ties, but for some reason the muscle memory of how to make a perfect knot stuck the first time I did it—like typing without looking at the keyboard or lighting a cigarette in the wind.

The funeral was in remembrance of Gene, my step-kids’ grandfather. He was someone I knew and liked, but hadn’t seen in a long time. It seemed appropriate to bid him a formal adieu; so I scraped off a few days of whiskers, brushed my one good tooth, and dug up a shirt with a collar. His wife would appreciate the tie. Their daughter, my ex-wife and good friend, even complimented me on it. I’m pretty sure she meant the nice knot, not the tie.

Back when we were all one happy family, we used to go camping together every summer. My three stepdaughters didn’t seem too impressed with outdoorsy stuff but still went willingly every year, occasionally even bringing a friend. Still, it was some of our best times together. Gene was a good ol’ boy and didn’t care who knew it. With the family comfortably ensconced at the camp, we would load his boat with more beer than food and fishing bait and head out for what would be most of the day on the water. Though an outstanding boats-man, as mechanic he lacked luster. I believe this was one of the reasons he liked having me along. Often my mechanical skills saved him from having to hail his brother for a tow back to shore. Even if the tow became necessary, Gene never lost his sense of humor about it and seemed to revel in our annoyance. Spark plugs are not that expensive. His son told the story at the funeral about being out fishing with his dad and uncle when a swarm of moths flew over them. The son asked what was going on. His uncle, Gene’s brother, observed dryly “Gene must have opened his wallet.”

When one takes the family camping, the trials of rearing children do not stay back in civilization. One year, when the youngest was about ten-years-old, she and her mom had been at each other the whole trip. Sensing the need for these two to be out of each other’s orbit, I told the kid to put on her swim suit and we’d go to the hot springs, just her and me. Being 10-years-old, she had to brag to her sisters that she was going to the hot springs and they weren’t. Anyone who has ever experienced kids knows what that led to. There was no way I was going to try to keep track of three kids in the woods, so I told the other two that their sister was being such a pain that I was actually taking her out in the woods to feed her to a bear. They were all remarkably comfortable with the idea and elected to stay behind.

The hot springs nestle right up to the edge of the lake. You could actually open a small, crude dam and allow cool lake water to flow into the spring to modulate the temp of the pool. The sun was not so far from the horizon when we set out, so we brought a flashlight. Once we slipped into the water, the sun slid down. The kid started shining the flashlight around. I suggested that wasn’t such a good idea. She was just about to ask why when she lit up several pairs of eyes looking at us from the surrounding brush. “Yep, that’s why,” I muttered as she shrieked. But I explained that many of the animals wait for the sun to go down before heading out to the water to drink and that they wanted nothing to do with us, so she should just stay still. I took the flashlight from her.

The warm water was softening the hardness of her mood and washing some of the familial tension away. She soon forgot about our voyeurs and held up rock after rock, wanting me to identify them in the waning twilight. I wonder if she ever figured out I was making up names based on Star Trek characters, being that I was as good a geologist as Gene was a mechanic. I still have a chunk of Kirkite on my dresser from that day.

When the sun had completely set, a herd of elk emerged from the brush with a strange, timid regality. The kid was a little spooked. Elk are big--even bigger when you are at ground level in a pool. I got her calmed down and told her to be very still. The elk undertook a staccato promenade right past us and came to the lake shore to drink. As much as I hate it when people say something is magical, there is very little else to describe what it looks like when a kid moves from fear to fascination with something so huge and wild.

After the herd moved down the shoreline away from us, we hiked the mile back to camp amidst the yipping coyotes and the chilling  mountain air. Upon our return the kid regaled everyone with her elk tale. (Especially her sisters, who seemed annoyed that the same number of people who had set out, returned.) When Grandpa Gene cleared his throat, I had a moment of apprehension. Gene was an avid hunter and having such close proximity to game might make him go on about elk being good eatin’. He did not. What I saw instead was Gene’s true affection for the wildlife as he told his granddaughter a thing or two about elk we hadn’t known. He had made his living in the woods, and the forest was where he was most at home. That didn’t mean every animal was game all the time. (I was once out at a shooting range, and a deer wandered onto the shooting area. Immediately all shooting ceased until the unmolested deer wandered off. Even though most of the people out there were sighting in their rifles for hunting, shooting a deer there was as inappropriate as drag racing down Main Street just because you have a fast car. It’s disrespectful to the sport, Gene explained when I told him about it.)

When the funeral came to an end, I gathered with the kids at a local dive and had a drink in memory of Gene. The girls are just bigger versions of the children they were; proof people don’t really change much. Drinking a toast with your parent: As much a rite of passage as burying a grandparent. I watched them eat out of each other’s plates, talk, laugh, and drink. We remembered how much we loved each other and promised to hang out more often, with or without a dead body in the area.

When I got back to Corvallis, I was in no mood for people. I untied my tie and kicked off the dress shoes. In five minutes I was on a motorcycle. When I stopped, it was on a rise in a wildlife viewing area I know to be scarcely used—by humans. I walked down the hillside a bit, tossed down my helmet, and lay my head against it to watch the sun set. The air was graced with that type of summer warmth, the memory of which gives one hope when the rains are in full swing. The orange sunbeams rippled through the dusty air and across the grassy-sloped hills into the wetlands below me. The grass hissed and the bugs jumped. In this natural chaos, my mind finally settled.

The sign said no one allowed there after dark. Not prone to minding signs I had no intention of going until work texted, and I was called in. I grudgingly made my way to my feet and brushed the grass from my legs. When I reached down for my helmet, I noticed some trash a ways down the hill. As I walked down to retrieve it, I heard what I thought was a wounded dog in the distance. I listened, trying to get a fix on where the sound was coming from. I realized it wasn’t a dog when the first elk emerged from the brush. I slowly sank back down into the pool of grass.  In the next few minutes I counted about 70 elk as they materialized from the brush to wander into the balmy, buzzing, grassy plain. Work would wait. Being very still seemed like the thing to do, and they made their way toward me. Stupidly, I assumed they knew I was there.

I found out they did not when my phone rang. This might cost me more than $31.50.

They froze and looked at me. Granted, they were half a football field away, but there was no way I’d make it to my bike and get it started before they stampeded me, if that’s the way they wanted to play this out. And they were the ones who would choose how this would play out. After all, there were calves. Instead, they slowly meandered into a closer cluster and watched me watching them. I sat there for half an hour as the light went from warm to cool and the stars came out. Eventually, their hulking forms slowly moved away to cross the grass plain, calves bleating and adults snorting.

The perfection of the scene washed over my hard cynicism and found that part of me that already missed Gene.

I plucked myself from the grass; turned my back on the herd, now a good mile away; and made my way to the motorcycle.

‘See ya on the other side, Gene. Tonight you’re running with the elk.’

From a Rumbling Rolling La-Z-Boy to a Motorized Pogo Stick

She held up a yellow leaf. Although we were sitting outside in the sun and warmth of the brief yet satisfying Oregon summer, she felt the need to herald the coming of winter with a visual aid. I snatched it from her hand, crumpled it up, and tossed it away. Had I perpetrated this rudeness with most people, I’d be in trouble. But my friend knew that it was symbolic and perhaps a little therapeutic, pretending to be preventing the changing of the seasons--not unlike a four-year-old using the power of a nightlight to ward off evil. Motorcycle season had tipped past the halfway point, and I didn’t need to see a greenless leaf to remind me of it.

A strange motorcycling summer this has been. It is the first time in decades I have not spent these warmer months on a Harley Davidson. Monty, my long time riding comrade and general instigator of much of trouble I get into, announced that he and I were going to ride from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide using the off-road trails. It would take a couple months and we needed to ride, gasp, non-Harleys. So, in an unprecedented spasm of practicality, we both acquired dual-sport motorcycles. He lives in Arizona so it was more than a little strange when we had this phone call:

Monty: “Okay, I got an off-road bike.”

Me: “When?”

“A few days ago.”

“That’s funny since I also just got one today.”

“Really? What did you get?”

“An ’04 Kawasaki KLR.

Silence. Then, “Yeah, me too. Exactly the same bike.”

Now, we had looked at Beemers and KTMs and Hondas. But we both independently settled for the cheaper Japanese 650cc single cylinder dual sport—a bike designed to run on and off road; doing neither as impressively as bikes designed for a specific purpose but doing both adequately enough for our purposes. I mean, we are a couple of 50+ year-old Neanderthals with mileage well over six-figures on our American motorcycle icons. Now we’re dispensing with caution, and a little dignity, and climbing onto these skinny, lightweight, brightly coloured, buzzing, metric motorcycles. My Harley looks at me from the corner of the garage, pouting and unimpressed since it has spent most of this summer lingering in the garage while I have been reacquainting myself with a type of motorcycle I hadn’t ridden since a peanut farmer from Georgia occupied the White House. 

My Harley weighs in at about 900 pounds. My KLR weighs in at just over 300 pounds if I don’t kick the mud out from under the fenders. One sits in a Harley. One sits atop a KLR. This little Kawasaki has one of the highest centers of gravity of any bike I’ve ever ridden. With the springy, long, off-road suspension it was a bit like some schizophrenic engineer shoehorned a motor into a pogo stick. 

The thing is, the KLR is just damn fun to ride. Being light, it is easy to park and nimble in traffic. The single cylinder engine is somewhat comical in it’s ability to move the bike and my rather American heft, but when it gets its groove on, it can scoot. Perhaps that’s a little generous. But the KLR is a monument to compromise. That light weight comes at a price: a small, somewhat wheezy engine. Frankly, the bike is built much differently than my overbuilt, under-engineered Harleys. The KLR has been on the market for years, but Kawasaki is loath to make some very necessary improvements. (If Harley still built bikes the way they did in 1988, they would have gone where Indian Motorcycles went in 1953: into oblivion.) The KLR has a cult following that makes the Apple computer fanatics look as underwhelmed as a credit card customer service rep. The KLR riders don’t care how they do it in Japan, ‘cause here in ‘merica we take what were given and get ‘er done. Ever since the KLR came out in the late ‘80s, the balance chain tensioner has been prone to failure-the type of failure that sends chunks of metal throughout the engine, rendering it into something wholly suitable for little more than a 100 pound projectile. The Faithful have engineered a “doohicky” replacement worthy of the Curiosity Mars rover. The carburetor has been leaned out to the point it might have trouble giving a Briggs & Stratton two-horsepower mower enough power to knock down a blade of dead grass. Again, this somewhat psycho cycle sect has come up with a modification that cost less than a newspaper (remember those?) that bypasses EPA settings (Shuuuuush. It’s for off road use only. They would never do it for a bike ridden on the street.) and gets the bike some freaky juice. Frankly, the list goes on: The petcock chokes with half a tank of gas left; the brakes feel like they make the bike go faster; starting the bike on hot days takes a degree in thermodynamics and a mystical amulet acquired from the nearest voodoo priestess. Such idiosyncrasies keep the tourists away in droves; yet still, many are called to ride the KLR, but few are chosen.

In the past several decades I have chosen to see the West from the saddle of my Harley. From my bike I have seen lightening strike the ground 360 degrees around me on Highway 90 through Montana, I have ridden in heat so bad my seat burned “the boys” more than McDonald’s coffee spilled in my lap, I have seen snow come so suddenly I had to follow the tire tracks of semis to get over a mountain pass, I have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate…etc. (Apologies to Philip K. Dick) The first time I saw the marvel that is Yosemite National Park, I was astride my black, American-made, iron steed; and that experience combined with everything listed above has defined me as a motorcyclist. However, the first time I saw Mono Lake I was also astride my Harley. When I rode to meet up with some friends camping along the lake I damn near killed myself flogging that overloaded iron beast along a couple miles of gravel and sand. Fun on a Harley ends when the pavement ends.

The first time I took the KLR off-road I quickly dropped it on its side. Got my weight shifted wrong and next thing I knew, I couldn’t keep the bike under me. After a quick check for witnesses I might have to eliminate, I righted the bike with little more effort than picking up my Schwinn. It fired right up and found its way to the pavement. After a quick inspection, I was back in the dirt. It became obvious that this was what this bike was built for. It is a “what’s over there?” bike, because it will get you over there to see. Suddenly, every gravel road that I had blinded myself to on the Harley was now a ticket to adventure. Rather than surfing Reddit or searching eBay for velvet paintings of Chihuahuas in tutus, I am now on Google Earth looking to see what road ends where and how much gravel I can find. The faster this KLR goes in the dirt, the more stable it becomes. The KLR will slide around a corner and rocket up to fifth gear without a complaint. I have feared water-cooled motorcycles since they came out—yeah, I’m that old—but the KLR has kept the temp gauge at a reasonable point even when running it up to redline in 95 degree heat. After punishing the beast on the crappiest of roads, it vaults up to 70 mph on the highway and wrings out about 65 miles per gallon. After I pulled off the aftermarket racing exhaust designed to produce more deafness per gallon than any other device ever made, I found the stock exhaust is quiet enough that I can go through Finley Wildlife Refuge and not have the birders hurling all nine volumes of The Birds of the Western Palearctic at me.

Monty has also reported that he has been flogging his KLR across the open desert of Arizona with great success. One of the things we both learned independently is the need for a proper full-face helmet. One does not just do 50 mph down a gravel road and not expect facial scarring. My epiphany came when a stinging creature of indeterminate species slipped past my small windscreen and stabbed me in the face. Twice. Judging by the pain, I was sure it was a flying scorpion black widow cobra. It was probably a dandelion spore. 

Aside from being able to take you places where safety gear is a must, these bikes are loved for the uncarved block of motorcycle functionality they are. Newsgroups and websites are rife with DIY modifications that range from ingenious to “hold my beer and watch this.” I personally am adding surplus ammo cans as saddlebags. Rugged, cheap, and all testosterone.

Being a lifelong macho Harley rider is not something one simply walks away from. My heartbeat will always sync up with the rumble of a V-twin, and my neck will instinctively turn my head in the direction of that rumble when it comes down the street. But the fact is my tolerance of other Harley riders has been…strained. When I am parked at a rest stop on my Harley, I am starting to dread the inevitable congregation of other Harleys that assemble when they see a lone member of their pack. When I’m out on my bike, thousands of miles from home, I’m not too chatty. Frankly, I’d rather be left the hell alone. But, the Harley subculture has dictated that one must converse with every other Harley rider one encounters and pretend to share some bond that unites us by blood until we die. There are times during the subtle and not so subtle penis-size contest that inevitably comes when two bikers share a rest stop (male riders do this, too) that I want to just say, “I think Romney is an asshole, gays should be allowed to marry, and corporate welfare has done more to mess up this economy than any Mexican waiting for work by a Home Depot. Are we done now?” Back not so long ago Harley’s reliability was so bad we all needed each other just to get home. The spare parts I carried belonged to any other rider who needed them. When you saw a Harley—actually, any rider—on the side of the road you made sure they were okay. There was a pre-cell phone ethic that required that you asked. That ethic is essentially gone. I watch Harley rider after Harley rider ride past someone stranded on the side of the road. These people who wouldn’t slow down to make sure I have water when I’m in the desert between Reno and Vegas want to pretend to be my friends when they see me at a rest stop? We used to need and care about each other. Now it seems to be all about the chrome.

The dual sport riders seem to be a much less organized and more diverse group of souls. I’ve rarely been able to predict how a conversation with a dual-sport rider is going to go. They might ignore me. They might wanna ride with me for a couple states. Either way they don’t look down their noses at my trunk made from an old cooler, mounted with bungee cords on the back of my KLR.

Monty and I are a year or so away from loading up our coolers and ammo cans for about four fortnights of fun cutting a line south to north across this land. Life keeps happening when we try to lay down plans. But we see it as a chance to get to know our new steeds a little better before hurling ourselves hundreds of miles away from civilization, only to find ourselves wondering how to change out a head gasket on the side of the trail with a Leatherman tool, a condom,  and a zip tie. Not to mention polishing up riding skills left behind with our adolescence. As I segue into the last half of my life, I don’t bounce as much as I used to. Honing the skill-set that keeps the bike rubber side down is as important as my daily dose of ibuprofen and sarcasm.

For now I spend my spare time inhaling the dust kicked up by my KLR’s knobby tires on roads suited for jeeps and goats. The waning warm of summer is not to be wasted on something with more than two wheels—even if it isn’t a Harley. I’m looking forward to seeing the trees explode almost audibly with oranges and reds this fall—even if it is a harbinger of the coming graying of the Oregon skies. However, this winter I have a motorcycle in my garage adapted not only for when the pavement ends, but also for when the rain begins.

Pear Juice and Hungry Trees

Sometimes I see the annual Oregon Country Fair in Veneta, Oregon the same way I see Facebook:  The product we are being sold is us. No one pays the people at the OCF to dress up, or down, and parade around the country fair, but we pay to go to see these unpaid masses. We gawk, chuckle, pretend we are not looking at the nude women, move out of the way of the various parades, wax sarcastic, rinse, repeat.

In my case I parade around as a slightly overweight, middle-aged white guy hiding behind a pair of Wayfarers and under a nondescript baseball cap.

“The Oregon Country Fair creates events and experiences that nourish the spirit, explore living artfully and authentically on earth, and transform culture in magical, joyous and healthy ways.” So it is described on their website. When I was a couple decades younger, this deciphered into a hedonistic free-for-all for me—and perhaps a few thousand other people. In 1998, the District Attorney sent a letter stating the open drug use was just too open and they were going to inject the fair with undercover cops. If open drug use continued, then there were laws that would allow seizure of the property. In no time the fair became kid-friendly. Necessity is a mutha.

But still I attend, every year. I am not prone to playing extensively with my brain chemistry any more (except by watching esoteric Asian and East German cinema). It takes too long to remember to stop playing with my brain chemistry, so it is better to just not start—though being altered sure makes the larger crowds easier to handle.

Different people accompany me every year, it seems. This year I had to go a couple of days to accommodate variety of fair experience desired by those in my various parties. I feel a bit like some sort of proton with all these electrons whizzing maniacally around me; some stick close while others fly off to orbit other protons. It is an organic sequence that I don’t monitor too closely. Somehow by the end of the day, I seem to be able to find my car in the big hay field and to have all the people I came with. Such is the nature of the beast.

And the fair is a beast. Thousands of people, unencumbered by their usual propriety, wander and preen about in various costumes—and less. The fair is a couple of wooded dirt road loops spiked with cul-de-sacs containing stages and presentations of an earthy, artsy vibe. The air is ripe with music, noise, catcalls, and laughter. It is usually hot, so volunteers are walking about with misters cooling the masses with fine water droplets, whether they want them or not. And . . . there are stilts. So many of the costumes seem to involve stilts. Three people were dressed as (not with) giant noses, perched five feet in the air upon stilts. They would stop and sneeze and from the giant nostrils would drop giant green socks—emulating snot. Then they would sniff and suck the socks back up. I personally see this as the very definition of kid friendly.

In the course of losing and gaining electrons, I found myself alone, wandering aimlessly among the bare breasts and fairy wings. I’ve been in this part of Oregon for most of my life, so I always run into someone I know. As I was chatting it up with a rather scantily dressed forest nymph, she offered me a cookie. Even though I know this person in the real world to be a responsible adult, I still declined. “I’m sorry.  I can’t eat sugar.”

“No worries.  It’s sweetened with pear juice. Here, just take half,” she insisted.

As I munched it, she beamed, proudly stating, “It’s organic and gluten free!”

“Splendid,” I mumbled with my mouth full, wiping the crumbs from my hands, and reaching for the other half.

“Oh, by the way, there is another ingredient I may have forgotten to mention…” I retracted my hand like the cookie had just bared its fangs. With that, she smiled, patted my hand, and wished me a happy fair.  While fleeing into the crowd, she reassuringly called out, “But it really is gluten free….”

My colon thanks you. My mind, however, might not be as grateful. 

Eating a loaded cookie isn’t such a big deal in and of itself, but it felt like I was violating some sort of unspoken rule. I’m big on unspoken rules. Coming to a movie theater is rife with unspoken rules: you’re in a cinema to spend a couple hours having an emotional reaction to a movie with strangers and you don’t talk, text, phone, touch yourself or others in an impure manner, etc. You watch the damn movie and are considerate of the other guests. Since the DA threatened the country fair, there is an unspoken rule that we keep it clean for the civilians. Leave the bong at home and drink beer with your lunch in the hay field (Which ain’t legal but no one loses sleep over it). Yes, the fair has changed. A lot. But it is still the fair. Yes, more people. Yes, more restrained and commercial. Yes, it is not the old fair. But it is still the fair and those of us who know better shouldn’t be wandering around glassy-eyed grabbing people by the lapels and asking them if they have seen God. (I wasn’t the one doing the asking.) Not completely my fault I was in violation of the unspoken rule, granted, but anyone who’s attended the fair in the ‘80s knows not to trust any cookies offered by someone—no matter how motherly—in a fairy costume.

That being said, I’m no stranger to “other ingredients”, but we’re talking decades since they had altered my brain chemistry. So, here I was, away from my party, dosed with god-knows-what, and surrounded by enough people to get my paranoia frisky. Time to find a quiet place to wait this out, thinks me. In about five minutes I was under a tree in the quietest part of the fair.

Waiting.

            Waiting.

                        Waiting.

Maybe there was nothing in the cookie, after all. Ha, ha. Very funny. Got me. Good on you…OH SWEET SALTED MONKEY BALLS! THE TREES ARE EATING THE SKY!

Okay, not that bad but it hit hard and fast and I congratulated myself for getting some place where I could stare into space and not be conspicuous. However, as luck would have it one of my customers spotted me and decided to come over to chat. Awkward…. He was nice and having a good day, but all I could put together was, “I’m tripping balls right now and need to go.” He was still talking when I stood and did what might be loosely referred to as walking. At least that’s how I remember it. So maybe I said nothing and just thought I did. But I was adrift and hours to go before I would collide with my errant electrons.

The phrase “sea of humanity” applies well to the Oregon Country Fair. With the state of mind that was thrust upon me I was swimming with the dolphins in this ocean of people and it seemed, frankly, not the worst way to blow an afternoon. I flowed with the currents of bodies, occasionally eddying out to chat to someone strumming a guitar or hawking beads. I avoided people I knew since I didn’t want to explain why my eyes looked like something from a cartoon. Yet I had wonderful, meaningful conversations with strangers—or so it seemed.

Eventually one of my electrons reattached to me. “Oh, hello. You’re back.”

“Yeah, that’s the fourth time you’ve said that.”

“Oh, hello. You’re back.”

“And that would be the fifth. What is wrong with you?” Then she looked into my eyes. “Oh, man. You’re stoned!”

“I am not—on purpose, anyway.”

Food and coffee seemed to be what was necessary now. When we got to the front of the line and I ordered, I seemed to find it necessary to repeatedly inform the young woman taking my order that she had the most beautiful smile I’d seen that day. My electron elbowed me, telling me I was getting creepy and to leave the poor girl alone. I was undeterred but was eventually distracted by the ravenous hunger I didn’t realize I was harboring until the food was in my hands. It wasn’t in my hands very long. Pro tip: Be creepy for fast food service.

The sun was making for the hills, thus it was time to head for the car. The drum brigade and stilted dancers by the exit added another hour for the “cookie” to wear off so by the time we got to the car, I was back to my old self. Damnit. The damnit comes from embarrassment more than anything. As the years creep by we remember some things with more fondness than accuracy. Being high was fun as a kid; but as an adult, I felt a little silly. The day before I went to the fair with a friend who does no drugs. Ever. We watched the Flamenco dancing and belly dancing and looked at the costumes and ate the food. I watched a group of teenaged kids pass around a pint of Seagram’s and realized that was me at that age and was glad I was no longer that publically douche-y. Alas, on this day I was just as obviously altered. And it was more like food poisoning (too easy, I know…) in that the effects of the cookie would come in waves. I would feel fine then a giant carrot with a sombrero would step in front of me and start reciting Herman Melville in a fake Mexican accent. Move your stalk, Ishmael, and a whale is not a damn fish! (Actually, that wasn’t a hallucination. That really happened. Never mind…) Then the mental spasm would pass and I would live in hope another wasn’t coming.

I also hoped the Vegas-ian Ethic of What Happens at the Fair, Stays at the Fair applies—even if this essay may be in violation of it.

Next year’s fair will be upon us once we have dispensed with another Oregon winter and the spring flowers have broken through the earth. I will once again be a willing and complicit accomplice to the disconnection from the real world, albeit for just a couple afternoons. Unlikely as it is that I will be eating anything hallucinogenically augmented—I intend to ask—it is even less likely I will be in anything but my nondescript uniform of anonymity. I will buy my ticket for the show, supporting the efforts of those more outlandish and less reserved. It is, after all, really their fair. I’m just a spectator.

Oh, and the Oregon Country Fair does have a Facebook page.

 

 

The Straight Story on the Gay Pride Parade

Since Monty moved to a state with more sun leaving me in the damp PNW, we try to talk on the phone every week or so.

“Hey, I was just thinking about you. I rode with Dykes on Bikes in the Gay Pride Parade in Portland yesterday. Bet ya don’t get a lot of that in Arizona.”

Silence.

Then, “Okay, Breezy showed me the photos of flowers you’ve been taking and posting on Facebook. I know your roommate is a lesbian, and I know your kid is on that team. But, Bro, Gay Pride? Do I have to come back to Oregon and kick your ass!??”

The day before Cassie had wrung me from my slumber at about 5:30am. We wanted to be on the road by 6:00am for Portland. When I stumbled into the kitchen for coffee, meticulously arranged on the table were a box of tampons, a couple of cigars, and a motorcycle helmet sitting on a pair of lace-up leather chaps. If there was ever a still-life iconic of a lesbian biker, this was it. Two cups of coffee later and I was behind the handlebars of my Harley watching the headlight on Cassie’s hopped-up Yamaha bob in my rearview mirror. Sundays were made for trips to Portland with a scarcity of cars leaving an abundance of lanes to choose from. The weather threatened with teeming clouds, but the mountain ranges were able to rein them in for the day—the valley between was dry all the way into West Portland. 

It took a little finessing to find the meeting place for the motorcycle group in this spectacle, which was complicated by the cops closing down street after street for the parade. Finally I dispensed with worrying about traffic laws and led us into the camp after a brief trek down the wrong side of Burnside and slaloming between several barricades.  As luck would have it, I had to ride past a police officer on his motorcycle as I pulled into the gathering area. He seemed unimpressed with my unorthodox entrance. After all, this was just the tip of the most colour and fabulousness I’ve seen in one place in my life. My bending of traffic laws was hardly noticeable.

The thing about any event that involves motorcycles is that for bikers, it becomes all about the motorcycles. In a matter of minutes I was chatting with a nice young woman about the performance mods she had made to her Honda Shadow 1800. No discussion of politics or even about the event. We were all about the bikes. Any time something a little unusual rode by; we snapped our necks in its direction.

I have long associated with and enjoyed the lesbian community. I cringe when I hear stories of unveiled anger and the iron dogs of feminist rhetoric unleashed without warning on a member of the penis-packing half of the population at the utterance of one broad comment. Some say I’m just lucky, but my Blurt Filter (tm) is usually maxed out at only ten-percent, and I have never had any such negative experiences—though have arguably deserved it. This event perpetuated my opinion that there ain’t a damn thing wrong with this community. Though I easily could have been the only straight person there, I got nothing but appreciation—and latitude. I hadn’t washed and waxed my mighty steed before the event and was a little self-conscious about the glitter factor of the other bikes present—Cassie’s included. When one of the event organizers walked up to me, her first words were, “Well, here’s a bike that gets ridden.” I liked her immediately.

We were the first attraction of the parade! Had I known…. We were told that getting the parade going was moving a little slower than it should be; so they wanted us to stop and wave and honk and make a lot of noise—and stall for time. We were there to rev up the crowd! The event coordinator said that those of us who had skills were to ride in circles and figure eights. The rest were to just look pretty, hold up traffic, and wave. We had time to kill. Since I was easily the oldest one there, I figured I had the skills. Cassie looked a little worried since this was her first parade and we wouldn’t be riding together. As we started heading out a couple of the women dispensed with their tops and beat their chests like Amazons, which I found to be a perfectly acceptable/appropriate way of livening up a party. Any party. Anywhere. Any time.

These women knew how to ride. Many were on bikes as big as mine and were slamming those huge Harleys around like they were Schwinns. Their skill level in this kind of riding far exceeded my own, and it was a pleasure to behold. In the space it took me to do an oval, they would do a figure eight, all the while yelling and high-fiving the crowds. The crowds lining the streets loved us and the noise…and probably the boobs.

There was an inclusive tone this year that was reflected in the name of the group I rode with: Dykes and Allies on Bikes. Yes, the churches showed up for gay pride, god love ‘em, but the signage I saw was supportive, espousing love rather than condemnation. After our frantic and proud procession, we parked and made our way through the crowds to the Saturday Market for food. As we sat by the fountain eating, we watched the children dancing and frolicking in the water jets. Their parents stood just out of the mists watching their kids. Same-sex parents and people of faith (not necessarily mutually exclusive) stood side-by-side watching their children play together in the water. Music played and the sun tried to make it through the thin cloud cover. Maybe there is hope for our species after all. I was alive when blacks and whites were still not allowed to drink from the same water fountain in some parts of the United States; and when I was in high school, the thought of a Gay Pride Parade happening in Portland was inconceivable. Yet, here I sat on a concrete curb, eating French fries, listening to SRV being belted out by a decent musician, watching it all happen.

After food we watched more of the loud, multi-coloured spectacle funnel down First Street. But even with all the visual stimulation, fatigue threatened; and we fled the crowds for a cup of coffee, heading up the hill away from the waterfront. An older man was at a table by the Scientology building. He offered to give us a stress test and tell us about Dianetics. I declined with thanks; and he told me that if Ron Paul embraced Scientology, he would be rid of all the aggression caused by his war experiences. ‘Fascinatingly irrelevant,’ I thought until I noted Cassie was laughing. She pointed to my shirt. On it was a picture of Paul Giamatti and Ron Jeremy looking very presidential over the copy:  “Ron, Paul 2012.” When we walked by the table on our way back down the hill I puffed my chest out at the Scientologist. He wouldn’t make eye contact.

Cassie had a great time riding in her first motorcycle parade. Monty was with me the first time I rode in a motorcycle parade to bring toys to kids during the holidays—long ago before we got fat and bald. No matter how many miles we’ve shared since then, I still respectfully and reflexively let him lead. The chances of Monty riding in a gay pride parade are pretty slim, no matter how topless the female riders are. Still, I wished he was there, chomping on the end of a cigar while revving his motor festively, grinning maniacally at the crowd just like he was the first time I rode in a parade with him. I hope Cassie’s memory of me is as kind.

 

Brother Sun Upstaged by Sister Moon

The white clouds swirled like comical mustaches finger painted by children onto sky blue construction paper. They reigned over the Nevada desert, curling off the tops of the hills that flowed into the floor of the topographical bowl we sped along. Me on two wheels, Brad on eight. We were on our way to witness the Annular Eclipse of 2012 from the comfort and solitude of Great Basin National Park, which hugs the Utah border in eastern Nevada and is really on the way to nowhere. Brad’s RV was loaded with telescopes, filters, food, and his two dogs. My Harley was loaded with not enough sunblock and me. We formed an unholy duet, bounding across eastern Oregon and into the state that offers access to more vices than the Internet. But the show we were coming for had to do with the veiling of the sun behind the moon—and it was happening in the sky, not in a casino.

Brad is a Kansas-born geologist who found his way into IT work. He claims his profession created his risk-adverse attitude,which is why his RV is loaded with just about everything you could need if the world collapsed tomorrow. I, on the other hand, managed to fumble my only tube of sunscreen onto the highway because I was applying it while doing about 60 mph on a motorcycle. Despite our contrasting levels of preparedness, Brad and I share an intrinsic affection for national parks and the beauty they protect. We are also both Alpha males, which means we take no shit from each other though rarely a moment goes by where we are not dishing it out. But we were raised properly so it’s a very comfortable and oft comical traveling situation. We were an unlikely pair of people and machines riding the black stripe that is a blue line on the road map through some beautiful country. This part of the American West is not for everybody. Some say it’s a monotonous landscape. But, if you can see past the scrub and dirt and take in the big picture of the volcanic violence that created the craggy hills and grassy valleys, it becomes magical.

We came upon a convergence of three highways that could be a perfect backdrop in any American film where the hero drives a souped-up American car. Suddenly Brad’s Big Ford Truck was leading his travel trailer down a little used splinter road into what turned out to be an abandoned RV park. We were quite literally in the middle of nowhere. There was an old diner and several outbuildings that seemed just fine left unsecured in this anonymous crossroads on the way to Sin City. Brad vanished into the brush with the dogs, and I wandered about burning up pixels in my cell phone camera. I feel the need to send up a quiet apology to Ansel Adams every time I do this. There was a time I dragged a 4x5 large format view camera around on the back of the old Norton motorcycle—burning up plates of Tri-X film that I processed and printed myself. Adam’s book, The Negative, was my bible. Now I shoot with a five mega-pixel Android cell phone and let it do all the work. But I still do it, habitually recording the details of American ephemera: picnic tables made of cable spools and painted a shade of blue that never existed in nature; electric panels left to rust; hoards of rabbits that now replace the traveling diners and campers; and the broken skeletons of things once useful now returning to the earth. Night came quickly and cooled the air. I was grateful for the convenience of a travel trailer with a kitchen and bathroom. We have both done our time sleeping on picnic tables and peeing in the woods, and we felt no shame in this version of roughing it.

The sun rose quickly the next morning and painted a warm swath over our quarters. We rose and gathered up camp quickly—seeking out a restaurant with real coffee. Instead what we found was gas station coffee. This was now our version of roughing it: bad coffee.

The wind has always made sense to me. It uses no words yet it tells me all is well and all is as it should be. The world from a motorcycle is a world caressed by moving air parting the seas of complexity with a simple promise: as long as the air is moving, so am I. Things are not stagnant, and in that dynamic are hope and possibilities I have not yet considered. In the wind I can think and believe and dream and know that the things that upset me and destabilize my delicate reality are much less real than the mountains rising above me and the state of mind that allows 400 miles of desert road to pass beneath me with little notice. But, there is such a thing as too much wind.

Great Basin as described by those who run it: “In the shadow of 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak, 5,000 year old bristlecone pine trees grow on rocky glacial moraines. Come to Great Basin National Park to experience the solitude of the desert, the smell of sagebrush after a thunderstorm, the darkest of night skies, and the beauty of Lehman Caves. Far from a wasteland, the Great Basin is a diverse region that awaits your discovery.” We were tucked away in a quiet RV park with tent campers on bicycles on one side and motor-homes the size of semis on the other. The office was the bar, and the bartender was the manager.

The eclipse started at 5:20pm Sunday, and we wanted to be set up well before that. When we went to the park’s Visitor’s Center at 3:30pm to join the party of other sky gazers, the police were there handling the unexpected number of people wanting in on the fun. When we pulled in they told us where and how we had to park and who we needed to check in with before setting up our telescope. We declined, thinking this was way too much regulation for an event that belonged to everybody, and went back to the bar. Brad asked the manager/tender if we could set up in front of his place. Knowing this would draw customers, he consented. This not being Brad’s first day at the rodeo, he set up a pair of binoculars on a tripod with the appropriate filters for the general public to use while he kept his telescope tracking the progress of the eclipse. My job was to keep the public entertained and the binoculars on target while Brad took over 700 images of the progression of the event. I handed out eclipse glasses that looked like old-school 3D movie glasses to those who were ignorant or drunk enough to think a good pair of sunglasses was enough for peering directly at the sun. Brad brought them along knowing most folks wouldn’t think to get them. That’s the way Brad is. The whole thing devolved into a party. When the big cloud crossed between the eclipse and us at exactly the wrong moment, we were all still having a good time. Beer still flowed, and the dogs and kids still ran about. Brad swore a little, but it didn’t darken his mood. Both sides of the Great Basin were still in sunlight while the swath we occupied was so dark cars were turning on their headlights when the sun was mostly covered. This is what I came for—experiencing the novelty of night during the day—igniting childish awe at how small I really am in relation to this rock I inhabit. This is as analogue as it gets. No digital distractions. Just me, and space. Just me, and space, and about a dozen people in various stages of inebriation…

The next morning Brad and I did a quick repair to the truck, which was actually more of an elaborate goodbye than a necessity. As soon at the door could be opened from the driver’s seat of the Ford again, I saddled up and was on my way back to Oregon. Brad had a little more time off so he and the dogs were off to see a couple more western national parks before coming back to the Willamette Valley. The lone ride home for me was a chance to put a little energy into exploring why the hell I dropped everything at a less than perfect time to head to the desert and witness the moon passing in front of the sun. I concluded it had to do with acknowledging that we must take time out for the novel events that pass into our orbits. It is not every day one gets to witness an annular eclipse—let alone in the middle of the desert for the cost of gas and a little food. I had convinced myself it had nothing to do with avoiding taxes and the other realities of the Darkside in the midst of the dead season. Instead of dealing with those immediate problems, my lone tube of sunscreen and I had headed south for the show. It is like a prayer, an act of faith, a testing that the world will still be turning if I am not scraping the carbon off the popcorn popper or trying to find a few bucks to pay past film rent.

I had a coupon for a night at the casino in Winnemucca, NV—which happened to be about half way between where I had been and where I was going. It was nice to have a full sized bed and shower, and I got to watch the series’ finale of House M.D. on a real TV instead of enduring it on Hulu squirting into my laptop. A cheap casino motel room can be quite enchanting after a day on the road behind the handlebars. I try not to take for granted that I have access to one of the most iconic areas of American motorcycling. EASY RIDERS galvanized the imagery of the American West onto the metal of the biker subculture. When I interact with European bikers, they want to know if I’ve ridden Highway 66 or cruised Las Vegas on my Harley Davidson. They seem unimpressed that I would love to ride the Alps from Munich to Bern on a BMW 1200rt.

The wind angrily kicked up over the coolish Nevada night. Once on the road it amazed me that no matter what direction the front tire pointed, it was heading into a headwind. My gas mileage went from almost 55 to 35 mpg. When I rumbled out of yet another small Nevada town onto yet another lonely road, I noticed a dust storm fretted to the left and about a mile ahead. Soon the boiling brown cloud crossed the road. Then I was in it. I hadn’t counted on zero visibility. I also hadn’t counted on the white minivan suddenly appearing—coming at me in my lane. I cut to the right, guessing where the road ended and managing to stay on the pavement while the van skated by me. A couple of hour-long seconds later I was out the other side of the dust—shaken but still upright. As if the Gods of the Road didn’t think that that was enough fun, a hundred miles later I was running along a small lake when I noticed a trench of whitecaps moving toward shore on an intercept course with me. I was stupidly unimpressed. When we met it had enough force to push a 900-pound motorcycle and its 230-pound rider sideways. Then the real wind hit. I forced the front of the bike into the wind (think boating), and the back weathervaned behind me. My Harley went from 60 to zero in a second. It was the inertia of that speed that kept the bike from sliding back. As if this was a perfect time to get funny, my helmet’s chin-strap slipped and wandered down my neck as my lid was trying to lift itself off of my head. This helmet that was supposed to protect me was now trying to strangle me as I was fighting this demonic wind gust for the soul of my bike. I concluded this was unfun. Just as quickly as it came on, the wind died. I had ridden off the road into a parking lot that, by the grace of those same Gods of the Road, just happened to be there. My helmet settled back onto my head. Under the direction of some buried instinct, during the siege I had killed the engine. Before bringing it back to life, I taped that helmet strap and mumbled my thanks to the Harley Davidson R&D team that came up with the motorcycle that kept upright in that beast of moving air. As if this day needed a crowning “bite me” cherry, I could see rain clouds boiling in the direction I was heading. In a very meteorologically telling coincidence, miles later when it became necessary to don my rain gear, it was in front of the Welcome to Oregon sign. This was my second to last day of a 1700-mile trip and the first time I saw rain, just as I’m entering my home state.

On this trip I had braved dust, wind, freezing rain, and road food that turned my intestinal track into a warzone. I’m grateful to be writing this from the chair in the Darkside lobby and that the only casualties are that the skin on my nose is redder than it should be and that my appetite for spicy food is gone for a spell. I think the trip was a good idea since I’m actually glad to be back here—somehow divining that the gratitude to return justifies the discomforts endured while gone. Perhaps almost having my ass handed to me by Mother Nature more than once might have a little to do with that. The skies here are grey, and it’s wet. But there are no harsh winds pitting nature’s ire against the aerodynamics of a stately motorcycle.

Brad and I are already making plans for the next eclipse in 2017. Who knows what modern camera he will have insinuated into the process. Undoubtedly, I’ll be on my old Harley again, glad to be getting more than 50 mpg on what will likely be $10 a gallon ethanol and getting into Brad’s stash of sunblock.

 

Yeah, About Those Jokes....

I tried something that proved to be harder than expected. No, not thinking before I speak. I’ve yet to try that. Instead, I decided to write an original joke every morning and post it on Facebook, thus exposing myself to the ridicule of those silly enough to “friend” me.

Watching a white guy hit on a black barista is especially painful before my coffee. When he said, “I like my coffee like my women, black and strong,” I threw up a little inside my mouth. When it was my turn, the barista looked at me with daggers and asked how I liked my coffee. I said, “White, with no self-esteem.”I now have to find a new coffee shop.

People have said for years they think I’m funny. (I mean funny, ha ha.) I should think about writing jokes for a living, they’d say. Like just about everything else in the world, stuff is a lot easier when you don’t have to do it every day. Coming up with something new every day, especially when I’m tired, in a shitty mood, looking for a fight, etc. just plain sucks!

I’ve been buying too much alcohol lately. It’s really out of control. So much so I decided to start going to meetings. The people at Shopaholics Anonymous said I needed to find a new meeting.

 Add to that the fact that most of my friends are ethnic, gay, or mentally ill—or all three—which eliminates about 99.9% of the jokes that come to my mind. I really had to reign in the humor that is fine when I am working on the motorcycles or when I’m with family. Though I am not graced with anything bordering on circumspection, I do try not to engage in offensive behavior with those I care about or make my living from—which, if were represented by a Venn diagram, would be one big circle. This means that coming up with something somewhat amusing within a rather limited corral is hard work.

We need a new coffee machine so I put in a Swear Jar. I also changed the popcorn sizes from Small, Medium, and Large to Cheap Ass Tiny, S****y Middle of the Road, and M***** F***king Huge. Between the surge in popcorn sales to middle school kids and tripling the size of the Swear Jar, we’ll be ordering the new eight-head, gold-plated, espresso machine by the end of the week. 

 An interesting side effect from this experiment is that my mind started spending even more time turning everything into a spoonerism or a pun.

How do you turn a Tuesday chicken potpie dinner into a Saturday night party? Add commas:  chicken, pot, and pie.

 And as luck would have it, many a time I would come up with something incredibly funny and have no way to record it. I do not condone texting while driving, but I could see why there are those who feel compelled to do such a thing. Inspiration is a finite resource for some of us.

I was riding along about 70 mph and got nailed in the face with a dove. I don’t care what the ad says, that damn thing was not ¾ moisturizing cream.

 There are other things I could do if I wasn’t pimping independent film to this town. I happen to be one hell of motorcycle mechanic (which is a broad indicator of how useful my six years of college English would be for getting gainful employment).

Looking for investors for a great business idea. Buy a 3D printer. Then print more 3D printers to sell.

 Fixing stuff is all a matter of systems. Once you grock how a mechanical system works, you can apply that to cars, motorcycles, biological organisms, political parties, religion, getting laid, and so on. But there is a psychology to motorcycles that emanates from how the brains behind them were thinking when they were designed. BMW does things one way and Honda does them another. Harley Davidson has their own planet from which their designers hail. Moto Guzzi makes Harley look like solid earthly logic. I love this stuff and am usually successful at making various machines road worthy. However there is a big however, and that however is that I only like working on them if they are mine or owned by someone I like. So, should I decide to work on motorcycles for a living and have to work on a bike of someone I didn’t like, my day would go south fast: “Gee, my 1973 Harley still vibrates even after you installed highway pegs.”

    “Harley’s are very intuitive. If they think you are an idiot, they shake more. It’s been scientifically proven. Take a night class. It’ll help.”

The front forks on my motorcycle were leaking so I went to the motorcycle shop and bought some fork oil. The guy behind the counter looks at me and says, "Ah, blew a seal?" I said, "Does EVERYBODY know why I got fired from Sea World?" I now have to find a new motorcycle shop.

A question that sometimes comes up when I’m interviewed about the Darkside: What is the hardest part about running a theater?

I sat at the counter in a diner and ordered a chicken sandwich. The guy next to me ordered an egg sandwich. You’ll never know which one came first.

 Usually I joke that it is pure hell trying to find a way to spend all the money I’m making. Frankly, the answer is the converse of that. For several months of the year it doesn’t matter what films are playing, almost no one shows up. And this happens every year. I might spend six hours and $500 rebuilding a power supply to make a lamp work, only to have three people show up for the show. And they will complain that it was too loud/quiet or tell me they can get Red Vines a lot cheaper at the store. I may not be able to write prolifically like Stephen King but I can hold a 70 year-old 35mm projector together with a stale Jr. Mint, a paperclip, and the love of Jesus in my heart—until people start showing up for movies again and I can afford to install a fresh Jr. Mint.

New policy: If I see someone texting in an auditorium during the movie, I’ll turn off the movie, open the door slightly, then toss in a noose. What happens next depends on the other people trying to watch the movie….

 Trying to be funny every morning as the coffee starts to make my brain cells speak to each other (in the same language) is not an easy job. It gives me understanding and perhaps a little patience for those who do seeming simple tasks professionally.

I borrowed my friend’s new smart phone to call tech support. What he didn’t tell me is he had dropped it in his curry bowl at lunch. As I was talking to the tech person in what was likely Mumbai, India, I was overwhelmed by the smell of Indian food. My friend told me it was a new app that detects the accent of the person on the phone and produces a smell from that person’s region. The next day we were sitting in the pub and I used his phone to call my sister in Canada. I could smell beer! It smelled just like the Labatt’s I was drinking! I was astounded! I went to the cell phone store and tried to by a phone that would support that app! Such depths of humiliation had been unseen since middle school. I could hear the guys in the cell phone place laughing the whole way back to my car. I called my friend, “Hey, I just got that Geographical Smell-O-App on my phone.”

“Really? What are you smelling now?”

“I can smell the creek you’re up without a paddle the next time I see you!”

Yes, I can intimidate that aggressive panhandler into never coming to the snack bar counter again, but it pisses me off for the rest of the day and God help the next person who even slightly annoys me. Meanwhile that cop I just called an “idiot” because he was hassling some skateboarder deals with guys like this everyday—and doesn’t slap them into the next county. Who’s the idiot?

Having come from Canadian parents, I can assure you that adulterers in our friend’s country to the north are indeed forced to wear scarlet “Eh”s, dontyaknow?

 The real humor is that these lessons are fleeting at best and I will be asking myself how hard is it really to ring up a few pounds of Fuji apples without spilling them all over the damn scale? What keeps me from asking that very question is another question: Do I thread up the correct film every show, every day of the year?

That would be a no.

These are some of the lesser jokes I wrote:

Did you ever see the Happy Days trading cards? When my friend told me to give him the one with the guy in the leather jacket, he’d invest it and give me back TWO cards, I suspected a Fonzy Scheme. 

 

I’m running in a 5K race with a buddy of mine. I’m in lousy shape and I know it. About half way through the race I realized I had it. I push it as far as I can and decide to give it up. I tell my buddy I’m through, and he freaks. “Dude, you can’t stop here?”

“Why?”

“This is the 3K mark and the black guy behind you will think you’re a racist.”

 

When I think of irony, I think of PETA beating a dead horse.

 

 

 

 

 

Hate the bigotry, love the bigot

It would be easy to blame the media for the ugly misuse of sayings and phrases these days. With the oracle Google as close as most of our cell phones, we assume that if we hear something from our favorite info feed it must be true—freeing us from taking responsibility for thinking before we repeat. Since it is so easy to check the veracity and etymology of almost everything, we presume our favorite talking-head surely has. Thus the mindless regurgitation of clusters of words out of context and out of sync with reality seems to be all the rage. This leads me to believe that I have (d)evolved into an “Annoyed at Stupid Sayings Time Bomb” set to explode at 51 years old. That is to say, I’m likely to go off next time I hear my most hated aphorism, “Hate the sin, love the sinner.”

The context in which I’m hearing “Hate the sin, love the sinner” today is mostly around homosexuality—and perhaps this is ramping up due to it being an election year when hot-button topics are being fellated for the crescendo of a sound bite. The obvious interpretation of this maxim is that homosexuality is a sin and sin is to be hated. The phrase, not the context, comes from St. Augustine’s letter 211 (a.c.e. 424) in which he wrote, “Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum,” which translates roughly as "With love for mankind and hatred of sins." In this letter Augustine rebukes the Nuns of the Monastery, of which his sister had been prioress, for certain turbulent manifestations of dissatisfaction with her successor and lays down general rules for their guidance. The quote has also been attributed to Gandhi, where it is found in his biography. I did not come across any ready scholarly biblical reference for the phrase.

My sensitivity to this phrase comes in no small part from raising a lesbian stepdaughter. When she was in her early teens I noticed she was not developing emotionally like her two sisters. She wasn’t ahead or behind—more like she was developing in parallel to them. She was not delighted with the feminine aspects of herself and was more comfortable running around with me in outfits that emulated my blue-collar ethic than in ones that mirrored her mom’s womanlier affect. She was curious about how people were attracted to each other and about alternative ways of thinking and being. By the time she was in high school, she had read every book on my philosophy bookshelf, was more comfortable with her hair short, and chose to hide her body behind looser clothing. Conspicuously, she didn’t have crushes on guys like her sisters did.

What became obvious to me was that my step-kid was not “choosing” to be different. She desperately wanted to know why she was somewhat off off-center compared to the other kids in her adolescent experiences. Most gay people with whom I’ve spoken about their sexuality have said that they, too, had wondered why they were so different—until they discovered others who were different like they were. This child who I raised, who used to cry when the other kids made fun of her for something she couldn’t help, has nothing wrong with her. This is how she is. She is also one of the kindest people I have ever known, is often funnier than is prudent, has an esthetic sense that would make anyone smile, and happens to be a lesbian. So to “hate the sin” that is the homosexuality with which my stepdaughter identifies, is to hate my stepdaughter. My child, who has done nothing in this life to be hated for and has grown into a fine young woman, is targeted by this phrase.

“Hate the sin, love the sinner” is passive-aggressive camouflage, providing a cozy, thought-free place to hide rather than coming right out and saying your belief system chooses to hate people like my kid. I write “chooses” because the references used to back up hating my daughter’s “sin” are surgically excised from scripture—conveniently ignoring the surrounding “sins” that are inconvenient to avoid in everyday life. Thus, the argument that homosexuality is sin usually comes with a scriptural reference. I am one of many who do not share faith with people who subscribe to a religious canon. To judge other people’s sin by what is considered a holy scripture carries no weight with me. I do not have the emotional or cultural attachment to scripture that allows me to use it as a barometer to measure anything.

But all religious and interpretive issues aside, there is an emotional reaction to that saying that is as real to me as the faith is to others. It feels like condemnation and an admission of hatred for someone I hold dear—for many of the people in my life I hold dear. The transparent bubble wrap of scriptural reference doesn’t soften the offensive blow to my psyche every time I hear “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” It is piercing dissonance because most people who spout “Hate the sin, love the sinner” are unaware of what they are doing to the people around them who know what they really mean, even if the purveyors of the saying do not. Everybody is surrounded by shades of grey of homosexuality. Whether it is the guy who delivers the water or the woman who fits your kids with braces—you do not know. Most of those who have risen above the self-loathing that “Hate the sin, love the sinner” perpetuates will not let on that you are doing the equivalent of getting right up in their face and telling them to die in a fire. Most will show you the grace and courtesy you are not affording them—because they know you do not understand that homosexuals are your sons and daughters, and fathers and mothers—that some of those who preach intolerance the loudest are suppressing their own homosexuality.

And as I move farther into life I’ve shared with people who choose partners of their own gender, I see them as being grateful for the progress made in their lifetimes. Many of them have lost the need to hate those who hate them. I find their presence centering because they have lived through everything from attempts on their lives to the constant soft-core pornography, of which “Hate the sin, love the sinner” is no small part. And they have done it without needing to tell those who hate them to die in a fire.

I anxiously await my evolution to the enlightened place that many who have suffered this insult directly have reached.

 

 

Review of TAKE SHELTER

TAKE SHELTER opens with Curtis (played vividly and thoughtfully by Mike Shannon) standing in his driveway. He is in his mid-thirties, works digging in the earth, and is looking at an Ohio sky that is dumping a type of rain that he’s never seen before. It’s a big scene of big sky and big sounds. The scene then cuts to him in the shower. It is the kind of edit that lets the viewer know there is a deliberate mind behind this film. This is a cinematic cue that you should be paying attention.

TAKE SHELTER is about many things. It seems each viewer leaving the movie has a different take on it. I’m inclined to see the film as an intriguing study on the tendency of gender roles to blur and blend in times of crisis.

Curtis is a man in the Midwestern sense of the word—simple, hardworking, not too chatty, and also not too far from being a little boy. His wife Samantha, played exquisitely by Jessica Chastain, takes care of him and their hearing-impaired daughter Hannah.  In one pivotal scene, Curtis arrives to a parent-teacher conference covered from head to toe in mud.  He had been running late and didn’t have enough time to shower after working outside all day. During the meeting we see Curtis behaving like a mischievous child who’s been out playing in the mud.  He prefers to conspire with Hannah as if he were her sibling rather than her parent.

His preadolescent tendencies are played out with his best friend and workmate Dewart (Shea Whigham).  This is highlighted by the only reference to sex in the movie, which is made when Dewart tosses out a sexual fantasy which is beautifully crushed when we see his wife, who appears less than cordial.

As TAKE SHELTER progresses it becomes evident that Samantha is the strong stuff that binds family together. It is a role thrust upon her, but she embraces it and does it with sensible affection. Sewing and cooking are just as second nature to Samantha as playing in the dirt and removing junk piles are to Curtis.  Everyone seems at ease with his or her place.

Then things gets weird.

Curtis is separating from the people around him. He is seeing things others are not. Is he nuts? Well, his mom was about his age when she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His sleep is disturbed by dreams that are becoming more and more palpable and that are merging with his waking life. He seeks help but in that Midwestern, blue-collar, big-toe-in-the-sand way that butts up against the ridiculousness of asking a paranoid person to trust others enough to talk to them about his paranoia.

As he goes further inward, he pours this frenetic energy into renovating the storm shelter. He stops coming to bed at night and makes very poor choices around his job. As financial realities mount, Samantha becomes aware that her version of providing for the family is about getting a surgery for their daughter, not about funneling all their resources into a shelter from a storm that no one else seems to think is coming.

In a critical scene, Curtis pulls the straps off his stoic, masculine reserve and lets his community know, uncharacteristically multi-syllabically, that he knows something they do not. (If you are lucky enough to have seen Michael Shannon take his character in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire over the edge of insanity, you will realize this scene in TAKING SHELTER goes further down that road to what better be an Oscar nomination.) However, it is the character Samantha who takes the scene home by doing what is best for the family, to hell with what people think. We should all be so lucky.

Tension mounts within the family and within the community as Curtis’ dreams come faster and more furiously from the darker recesses of his mind. The judicious employment of CG in this film is riveting, , creating an Ohio skyline rife with unearthly clouds and swarms of birds coming together and diverting into patterns that look like schools of fish in the presence of a shark.  These images are unsettling on many levels but not bludgeoning. They are necessary for the flow of the movie and are balanced nicely with the calm of Samantha’s steadfast resolve to keep the family together.

The first hour of the movie seems to be taking off toward a heart stopping crescendo. However, the last hour of the movie brings us into the hearts of good people getting through their day in a time when jobs are scarce and sickness—of body or mind—is frightening.

TAKE SHELTER follows a rational story arc, so it is no surprise that in the last act of the movie the storm sirens blow, which is not out of the ordinary for Ohio where tornados drop from the skies. Curtis and his family head to the shelter, for he is sure it is THE storm, not just a storm. It is in this box that Samantha makes Curtis prove that his love for his family is stronger than his allegiance to his hallucinations. It is here where many understand what the film is really about.

But, TAKE SHELTER is not over. When Hannah sees something that her father is sure only he can see, the viewer can assume what comes next. Assume nothing, for this is a well-written film that respects the viewer’s intelligence enough to dispense with an epilog. The story isn’t over until seconds before end credits roll.

 

Getting the Bird

It was thanksgiving long ago and my wife didn’t feel like cooking and me cooking was and continues to be a bad idea. So we went out. The three girls were too young to know that the novelty of going out for a holiday meal weighs lightly against the high quality of the food mom normally prepared. Hoping to mitigate that, I selected a rather nice restaurant.

Feeling the need to wander a little out of the box, we ordered their special, which was a game hen rather than the usual turkey. They were…cute. The girls rarely had to tackle food that maintained the shape of the animal it came from. Sure, they had shrimp—under protest. (And animal crackers, which don’t really count.) I even told them that hotdogs were made from a single part of the pig and when they were older and married, they would know what part that was. Oddly, they were barely out of elementary school, and unmarried, before they made sure I wished I had never made that joke.

When they were presented with what they coined as the “Barbie” version of turkey by the server, eating did not ensue. Oh, a couple of them tried and managed a few pieces of protein that they announced as tasty. But, it did not go well. The other diners in the restaurant found us rather gauche as they nimbly dissected and nibbled on the little bird  carcasses. It became obvious that the ridiculousness of the situation outweighed propriety—so we added wine.

The girls’ mom had a pinot-propelled departure from decorum and with two forks made her small Cornish game hen into a puppet, ala Charley Chaplin and the dinner rolls. Soon her small bird was dancing on the plate, kicking into the mashed potatoes. The girls, being children, had to have puppets too. Soon they were squabbling about who would get what piece of cutlery to animate their dinners.  Mom was out of control. When people from other tables looked at her, she would have her “puppet” voice a falsetto greeting and a wish for a happy thanksgiving. They would turn around quickly—daring to cast their gaze no longer upon the crazy lady—which was like chasing away ants with honey. It only escalated the show. Soon the girls had small birds dancing on their plates, too. Being siblings, whole dramatic plots were orchestrated.

I sat back, drank my wine, and watched the show. The server approached our table with a combination of like-I-need-this-shit-when-stuck-working-a-holiday, and thank- God-for-a-break-in-the-boredom attitude. She asked if they could bring us something else to eat. The kids looked a little concerned they were about to lose their (arguably) edible toys. I suggest we leave the puppets alone and just bring the desert. Lowering my tone, I conspired that when they were distracted with the pie and ice cream, she could snatch their plates safely. She could feel her tip growing and decided to play along. Mom, speaking through her fowl puppet, said that was a great idea.

The bait and switch worked and soon the kids were elbow-deep in pumpkin pie and ice cream. As they ate the waitress practiced her ninja skills and relieved them of their plates like a pickpocket working a subway platform.

When the desert plates were bare and the wine bottle was empty, we left through a gauntlet of other diners. They speared us with disapproving looks. The kids didn’t notice. Mom reveled in it. The help just smirked.