The Blog

Snowbound: Day 9

Friday, 26 December 2008 14:10

The situation is bleak.

Food is running low. No bread. No rice. No potatoes. All the staples are gone. If not for paper clips we'd have no way to keep pages together.

Three days ago there was an unfortunate ownership dispute over the last chicken pot pie. The tines of her well-thrust fork left a line of four bloody dots on the back of my hand, visible scabby now as I type.

I'm not proud about my behavior regarding the end of the half & half. What can I say, I don't like my coffee black. It is perhaps unfortunate that we buy our beans in bulk. Trapped in the snow with two kids is bad; trapped jacked up on caffeine worse. (All that sans half & half was too much for me to bear).

Christmas is the time of year when adults look on as children play gleefully; wee ones delighted as they are showered in largess and affection. The sight of their smiling faces evokes warm parental feelings. So, it seemed normal when the wife described our little one as "delicious" - until I saw the look in her eyes.

The larder is bare, the freezer empty.

Yesterday I found myself gazing lustfully at my wife. I was thinking she has a great pair of legs, but I didn't mean it the way I meant it before we got married.

The forecast calls for more snow, then rain.

The rain might melt us out of here in one piece.

Bortrets

Tuesday, 23 December 2008 13:30

Googly boogly schmoogly smoogles and all the toogles inbetween.
buying bortrets and comportments blissful wishful brightly green
securing scurvles sight unseen
Hottentotts fat robots mapless as a laser beam
pinched and plump the tinmen scream
toothy smiles gleam for miles
the white-est whiteness ever seen
blady shady lenses guard against grim vicious sheen
stopping smoogles and tiny toogles
from fickle fates obscene

We've now been snowbound since Thursday with more white stuff on the way. The wife's car is still stuck in a ditch and there's no way mine's getting up the driveway any time soon. We didn't have power for most of yesterday.

If you don't hear from me by Saturday, send St. Bernards with casks of brandy on their collars.

In the meanwhile, I'm resorting to absurdist poetry.

It's like a scene from Doctor Zhivago

Sunday, 21 December 2008 12:06

We've had snow before. Nothing like this, though.

A picture would be worth a thousand words, but that would rob me of four pages of typing. 

We're not blanketed, we're duvet-ed. I can't wait for the sun to come up so I can get out there and finish putting the roof on our igloo. We have plenty of building material now. I might even have the strength to lay down a bobsled run. Or a ski jump.

I'll post a picture when I'm done.

We have a visitor at The Compound, kooky cousin Karen, so I'm thinking another pair of hands will improve progress.

We have nothing else to do.

Yesterday the wife drove our wagon into a ditch in a futile attempt to pick up Karen from the airport. No one was hurt, but that car ain't goin' nowhere for awhile. Our driveway is impassable. The street we live on is, as well.

A friend picked up Karen from the ferry and dropped her at the gas station on (what we'll call) the main road. So, the family trekked the mile or so up and down hill and vale through treacherous ice and freezing conditions to meet cousin Karen. And pick up some half & half, and a bottle of wine, and some bacon...you know, a few essentials while we were out.

Within an hour of making the return trek up that icy road past the ditched car back home, the snow started falling again. Good timing, really.

The power went out briefly last night. Were we to lose electricity this would really be an adventure.

We'd be like Omar Sharif and Julie Christie trapped for the winter in some mansion on the frozen steppes of Russia. Except we have Internet access. And half & half for our coffee. And DirecTV.

Otherwise, we're exactly like Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. 

When I was 14, my mother took a sister and me to see "Reds" - Warren Beatty's 194-minute attempt to make John Reed's "10 Days that Shook the World" gripping cinematic entertainment. I dug it.

It just so happened, around the same time, Pater Wenker had made the decision to go cable and install HBO. This was a very big deal.

Does anyone remember ONTV or the Z Channel, first forays (at least in LA) into cable? We had friends who had the aforementioned, but HBO was better. I'd go so far as to say it was a transformative moment in my life. The movies. Countless movies (shown without commercials) that I could watch over and over again. I must have watched "Heaven Can Wait" fourteen times.

Jame Bond marathons.

There was an homage to David Lean, HBO showed: "The Bridge on the River Kwai, ""Lawrence of Arabia" and, yes, "Doctor Zhivago."

I left the theater after "Reds," went home and immediately watched Lean's portrayal of Pasternak's classic. I wasn't your average 14-year-old dork. I was something of a super-dork.

But I was hooked. The idea of Russia, the sheer size, the vast snow-strewn expanse, the Siberian Railway, and...Revolution. This was fascinating stuff to a kid in Southern California suburbia. We had to drive for hours to see snow. And Revolution...well, there was the Reagan Revolution, but somehow that didn't seem the same as what went down in Moscow circa 1917.

So, I went to Berkeley and studied Russian History, wrote my thesis, "How Western Travelers Effected 19th Century Russian Peasant Reform," and then drifted into the world of underemployment. The idea of Russia, though, has never died. I've never been. In fact, am very wary to go. I have such a romanticized vision of the place, I know I'd be sorely disappointed.

I'd rather look out my window at a snow-covered yard, imagine it reproduced a billion times over, and recall lustfully the image of Julie Christie's divine face framed in fur.

Honestly, has any woman in the history of film ever looked so stunning.

The Year Mom Went into Rehab on Christmas Eve

Friday, 19 December 2008 20:04

This is NOT autobiographical. It was just a thought I had that I thought was funny and I thought it would be amusing to post it now.

I flew into Bob Hope International
and stood in the loading zone
under the sun with my bags
for an hour.
I called again.
No one was home.
I took a cab.
The house was empty.
In the living room
a fat Scotch pine
tilted awkwardly in the corner
ornaments still in boxes stacked before it.
I went back outside, sat on the front steps
and lit a cigarette.
Neighbors passed by
on bikes
jogging
walking dogs
conspicuously not looking at me.
I lit another cigarette.
My dad rolled up
to a plaintive squeak
as his front tire rubbed against the curb.
He walked towards me across the dry patch of lawn
Where’s Mom?
She’s, uh, gone.
She left?
No. I took her somewhere.
Oh.
It was bad timing
Sometimes it was really bad timing
Are you hungry?
We walked into the kitchen.
A half-frozen turkey sat stabbed in the sink.
A wine glass lay broken on the linoleum.
Potato peelings stuck like band-aids to the walls and countertops.
Let’s go out.
At the Denny’s on Sepulveda
I ordered the Grand Slam Breakfast
(because they serve it at any time)
and said “Merry Christmas.”