I Rented Rocky Balboa
Shame and his little brother, embarrassment, will kill you. You have to outwit shame and his little brother embarrassment.
I'm eating some fat, fancy Medjool dates to get my strength up to go on with this. I don't want to go out for food. I went out for breakfast. I have a number of items in the cupboard and the fridge that can be classified as food even though if you came over right now and were looking for something like a meal you would be disappointed. I have a half of a shad roe pair and I might cook that up later if I can get over being disgusted to look at it. Being disgusted is not a good start to a meal. I have a jar of anchovies that if my head were a little smaller I could say is bigger than my head. I could put a couple of anchovies on a cracker later and that would be like a snack. There is a nice jar of garlic stuffed olives in the fridge and that is making me think of having a martini. I don't however have any gin. Fortunately, in various bottles in a couple of different freezers I do have almost a gallon of vodka, so woe is me settling for a vodka martini.
Bernadette can visit me in VA from NY for extended visits because she can work from here, may God bless the Internet.
She recently left out from one of those visits and the day before the exit, due to my general nature, the fineness of Bernadette, and an occasional over sensitivity to a waning moon, I became noticeably depressed. Then, I got over it, more or less. I did not the next day wail to Bernadette before the Dulles backdrop, Please Don't Leave Me, I Can't Be Trusted Alone, I May....
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. The mere suggestion of self-destructive behaviour, that's something to be ashamed of.
Mr. BC sent me an email the other day with a link for a dumb game site and in his brief subject line message he said something like, waste a few hours. I have over time, not exactly begrudgingly, but certainly hesitantly, come to realize that Mr. BC is right a fair amount of the time. I have therefore made it part of an ongoing concerted-effort-program to do whatever Mr. BC tells me to do. Except when I really don't feel like it and then I just say to hell with that idea. I might go on to mumble--that's the dumbest idea I have heard in some time.
So Sunday, and Bernadette is gone a day already, the college basketball semi-final games of Saturday night, watched alone, were a disappointment and a bore, and I am considering work versus something else I am actually quite good at, not working. Yeah, I know, the suspense is killing you. I went back to the game site, which I had looked at perfunctorily when Mr. BC had sent it. That day I had become quickly bored throwing 2-D darts at 2-D balloons.
But Sunday I found new dart throwing purpose and I made it through 20 of the fifty balloon levels before deciding to take a break. I spent my break time looking at some of the other choices and found a dueling tanks game that occupied me for the next three hours. What? Yeah it was a beautiful spring day outside. I could see it out the windows. I was very close to it, separated only by some sheetrock and rough cedar siding. I had the windows open. I could hear the wind through the pines and the chirping birds while I decimated the enemy computer tank. Whenever I felt guilty for wasting time I just reminded myself that Mr. BC is almost always right.
I could waste the whole day playing computer games but I chose not to. At 6 p.m. I left the house for the first time. Wow. It was pleasant yet alienating. Like I had never been outside before and it would take some getting used to. I was happy with the outside but also put out by it. The nerve of this outside I said to myself because there was no one else to say it to. I had a brainstorm while outside. I got in the Jeep and drove all of one block to the art gallery/video rental establishment. There was something going on. Oh God, not an art opening I cried, to myself, but even if I had cried it out loud and every living resident of this town was listening it would not amount to a group large enough to fill a medium-sized movie theatre. I looked in my mind to my other email inbox that might have warned me of such a thing, an art opening when I just want to rent movies. I circled the block and stopped short of a new family with beau coup kids swarming the yard of a previously uninhabited dwelling. I didn't actually circle the block, I had just turned right past the gallery and movie rental place and was facing a dead end. I stopped short of a kid on a big wheel, feeling the motherly concern of one nearby. I made a deft backwards two point turn and just like that, in this matter of seconds, whatever was going on was done going on. I parked and entered the movie rental part of the gallery. An amiable man was talking to June. Hey June, I said. Hello Jim, she said.
June was munching on colorful peanut M&Ms from a white bowl on the desk behind which she sits. I try when forcing myself outside, to be sociable. You going to eat all of those? I said to June. The amiable man, who had been talking about some business with June, and who clearly had some proprietary relationship with the M&Ms, offered me some. He picked up the white bowl from the imitation wood grained desk and held it out to me. I was chewing gum but I took some anyway. I did not know what to do with my gum so I experimented with chewing gum on one side of my mouth and M&Ms on the other. I was disappointed with the results.
Let's get back to the shame theme.
I picked, from the few shelves reserved for fairly recent films, Rocky Balboa, Invincible, and Jesus Camp.
The man left and I checked out. I asked June if she could not record that I had rented Rocky Balboa. We joked about it some and I left.
I came home but Rocky Balboa would not cue up on my laptop. I took it up to the bighouse and stretched out on the leather couch and watched it on the fifty inch plasma. I have a perverse interest in mediocrity. My critics would say that is just narcissism. I had very low expectations for the film and that is a good way to find yourself pleasantly surprised. It did not however, surprise me in that way. I then watched another uplifting sports related flick, Invincible, with Mark Wahlberg, and there is at least one scene that Disney should delete from all their inspirational sports flicks, but doesn't, yet other than that one scene and a few other minor transgressions, Invincible is pretty good. And Wahlberg is very good.
I was sleepy so I came back down here to the caretaker's residence, and cued up Jesus Camp, in bed, on the laptop. I have watched every major horror movie ever made and a fair amount of minor ones and Jesus Camp is by far the scariest movie I have ever seen, and it is a documentary. The documentary I think should not be seen as a reflection of Christianity as a whole but for that very select and perhaps frighteningly large group of extremist evangelicals, it paints a very disturbing picture.
Bernadette today was concerned for my mental welfare as reflected in my lack of email to her (combined with some first hand experience concerning my mental potential) and when I did get back to her and said that I had last night watched Rocky Balboa she became very disturbed indeed and made me promise not to tell anyone else. So, let's keep this one on the down low.
...more recent posts
Crash Goes The Breaking Glass
Was I excited about getting a colorful new Rappahannock county tag for the Jeep windshield? You bet I was. With the Badgers long knocked out the NCAA tournament, what else did I have to be excited about? Naw really, I was over the Badger thing. Only to have the Longhorns knocked out, then the Aggies. I'm going to root for the Hoyas this evening, which clearly, may not be to their advantage. Go Tarheels.
I scraped off last year's tag, a woefully sad looking misprint of a county sticker, and applied the cheerful multi-colored 07 logo, carefully lining it up just so with the complimentary-colored inspection sticker to its left. If I would just wash the Jeep, still slimed over with white filmy road gunk from the recent but not that recent 8 hour drive through highway hell froze over, I would have a vehicle envied by many. Especially that great majority driving around with bland state required stickers.
I was on my way to the dump. As you may or may not know, as spring approaches and the temperatures rise, you cannot use your garage as a refrigerated way station for storing garbage for weeks at a time. You have to get rid of that garbage, take it on down the road. Which is a bummer sometimes but look on the bright side regarding the spring thaw. Those paint brushes you forgot to clean in early winter, left in buckets of water which froze solid for two months? You can now clean those up and get some use from them.
So, like a soccer mom with a Jeep full of smelly kids, off I went to the dump, proudly displaying my new sticker, which is also required for legal dumping. I have been corrected for improper dumping protocol on more than one occasion. I am not a rebel. I try not to defy authority. I do not like to make mistakes and then have them pointed out to me like I'm some mis-fitted, ill-bred, smelly offspring of a negligent soccer mom. That there is what I call a little metaphor inversion. Given the choice between being a soccer mom or a smelly bag of trash, I choose not to choose. I can be both.
That guy at the dump is just doing his job. I am not faulting him for that. Still, he makes me nervous. You think I don't go to the dump as often as I should because I'm lazy? Ok, fair enough. But also the reason I don't go is because I'm intimidated. What else can I do wrong at the dump that I haven't yet done wrong? If that guy is on duty he's going to find something. Here's an example of what goes through my mind. Besides the trash, I am loading up recyclables--a few beer, wine and liquor bottles, about forty or fifty pounds worth, all neatly sorted by color, and I'm worried is this guy gonna think I'm a booze hound. I work through that by describing myself to myself, and the situation, in such a way that I come out not looking like a complete drunken loser. Sounds good to me, and I am feeling strong and confident and full of hope. The stack of newspapers has amongst it several plastic wrapped sections from the Sunday papers. Should plastic really go into the big rail car dedicated to newsprint? Should I unwrap these sections? Is the guy going to see me throwing this questionable contraband into the rail car? My armpits itch and I get flush in the face just thinking about it.
I don't want you think I spend all day thinking about this stuff, no, no, no, just part of it. I'm at the dump now, slinging the little thirteen gallon white with red drawstring trash bags into the sectioned off pits like I'm some kind of jazzy big city garbage man with style coming out my ears instead of what I actually have which is just those little bristly hairs, and I am doing nothing wrong, but still feel like I'm being watched. And this is because I am being watched. The guy is over there in his booth with the tinted windows, but he can't touch me because I'm golden. I am the master of trash hauling protocol, except for that plastic around some of the newsprint, and, did I remember to take off the caps from my liquor bottles? I think I did. I think I did take the caps, and that one cork, from my liquor bottles.
Oh shit, here he comes. He's making an inspection run. I feel myself straightening my posture, sticking out my chest, sucking in the gut. Sir, yes sir. He can't touch me, I already told you this, I'm golden. I move over to the bottle dumpsters and risk herniating a disc by lifting the large plastic totes of bottles over my head and dumping them, crash, crash goes the breaking glass.
On the way home the stench of spilt beer residue in the bottom of the totes makes me think of spring.
Was I excited about getting a colorful new Rappahannock county tag for the Jeep windshield? You bet I was. With the Badgers long knocked out the NCAA tournament, what else did I have to be excited about? Naw really, I was over the Badger thing. Only to have the Longhorns knocked out, then the Aggies. I'm going to root for the Hoyas this evening, which clearly, may not be to their advantage. Go Tarheels.
I scraped off last year's tag, a woefully sad looking misprint of a county sticker, and applied the cheerful multi-colored 07 logo, carefully lining it up just so with the complimentary-colored inspection sticker to its left. If I would just wash the Jeep, still slimed over with white filmy road gunk from the recent but not that recent 8 hour drive through highway hell froze over, I would have a vehicle envied by many. Especially that great majority driving around with bland state required stickers.
I was on my way to the dump. As you may or may not know, as spring approaches and the temperatures rise, you cannot use your garage as a refrigerated way station for storing garbage for weeks at a time. You have to get rid of that garbage, take it on down the road. Which is a bummer sometimes but look on the bright side regarding the spring thaw. Those paint brushes you forgot to clean in early winter, left in buckets of water which froze solid for two months? You can now clean those up and get some use from them.
So, like a soccer mom with a Jeep full of smelly kids, off I went to the dump, proudly displaying my new sticker, which is also required for legal dumping. I have been corrected for improper dumping protocol on more than one occasion. I am not a rebel. I try not to defy authority. I do not like to make mistakes and then have them pointed out to me like I'm some mis-fitted, ill-bred, smelly offspring of a negligent soccer mom. That there is what I call a little metaphor inversion. Given the choice between being a soccer mom or a smelly bag of trash, I choose not to choose. I can be both.
That guy at the dump is just doing his job. I am not faulting him for that. Still, he makes me nervous. You think I don't go to the dump as often as I should because I'm lazy? Ok, fair enough. But also the reason I don't go is because I'm intimidated. What else can I do wrong at the dump that I haven't yet done wrong? If that guy is on duty he's going to find something. Here's an example of what goes through my mind. Besides the trash, I am loading up recyclables--a few beer, wine and liquor bottles, about forty or fifty pounds worth, all neatly sorted by color, and I'm worried is this guy gonna think I'm a booze hound. I work through that by describing myself to myself, and the situation, in such a way that I come out not looking like a complete drunken loser. Sounds good to me, and I am feeling strong and confident and full of hope. The stack of newspapers has amongst it several plastic wrapped sections from the Sunday papers. Should plastic really go into the big rail car dedicated to newsprint? Should I unwrap these sections? Is the guy going to see me throwing this questionable contraband into the rail car? My armpits itch and I get flush in the face just thinking about it.
I don't want you think I spend all day thinking about this stuff, no, no, no, just part of it. I'm at the dump now, slinging the little thirteen gallon white with red drawstring trash bags into the sectioned off pits like I'm some kind of jazzy big city garbage man with style coming out my ears instead of what I actually have which is just those little bristly hairs, and I am doing nothing wrong, but still feel like I'm being watched. And this is because I am being watched. The guy is over there in his booth with the tinted windows, but he can't touch me because I'm golden. I am the master of trash hauling protocol, except for that plastic around some of the newsprint, and, did I remember to take off the caps from my liquor bottles? I think I did. I think I did take the caps, and that one cork, from my liquor bottles.
Oh shit, here he comes. He's making an inspection run. I feel myself straightening my posture, sticking out my chest, sucking in the gut. Sir, yes sir. He can't touch me, I already told you this, I'm golden. I move over to the bottle dumpsters and risk herniating a disc by lifting the large plastic totes of bottles over my head and dumping them, crash, crash goes the breaking glass.
On the way home the stench of spilt beer residue in the bottom of the totes makes me think of spring.
The Reticent Caretaker
In this rural area in which I reside are slackers (ask me how I know this?), and farmers and ranchers and artists of various stripe and retired newsmen and politicians, a magazine publisher, members of the working class, visiting statesmen and presidents, and felons (and by mentioning felons here I intend no conjunctional reference to statesmen and presidents) and there are tourists who come to hike the Shenandoah trails or eat at the one famous restaurant. In the fall they spend hours stuck in traffic to come out here and look at leaves.
I live on a somewhat exclusive property amidst all this, as caretaker, and perform various chores, when I am not neglecting them by doing this. The chore I am neglecting now is the removal of the kitchen wallpaper in the caretaker's cottage and repainting of the walls, which, we might assume, is not of terribly high priority to the owners, Mr. and Mrs. BC, who when they visit out here, reside in the bighouse, up the hill, and have no doubt various chores they would be pleased to have me perform up there. Have I run out of chores at the bighouse you wonder? Oh, I daresay not.
I don't get out much or talk a lot, except when Bernadette visits. I was up visiting her in NY last week and then I drove her down here in an ice storm. It was insane. Don't ever do it. You are a moron if you do. To the dozen or more people who skated off the highway into ditches I am sure my advice will seem redundant. This morning Bernadette and I talked about a very important case before the Supreme Court--the right to make 14 foot banners in Alaska that say, Bong Hits 4 Jesus.
On those rare occasions when I do get out I might sometimes fall victim to that motor mouth syndrome that reticent people are known to suffer. Babbling on and on and on to someone as if I were a person who really liked to talk and actually believed myself to be quite good at it.
I had to leave the property recently for a six pack of beer. I could have walked to the store but I drove. I even drive from here to the bighouse on most occasions. I like to drive. Getting in and getting out of the vehicle are my favorite parts, which makes the 300 yard drive to the bighouse a natural choice for me.
At the store the cashier greets me warmly, as is befitting the cashier of a small country convenience store. I do not get greeted warmly at the store up on the highway. I am just another person off the highway. The cashier is talking to two local farmer gentlemen about snake handlers in the Pentecostal church. This snake handling thing is an unfortunate association for the Pentecostals. I used to pretend or actually feel an adversarial relationship with the Pentecostal church in New Orleans, near my home there. They were not, to my knowledge, snake handlers. Over time though I put aside my petty differences with the church and even came to feel a meager kinship with my Pentecostal brothers as I watched them rebuild their church, sometimes running the generators 24 hours a day, after Katrina.
Routinely, there is not the drama or stimulating subject matter going on out here in rural Virginia that I may have experienced in New Orleans. So this chance to talk to the friendly cashier and the two farmers about religion and snakes got my juices flowing and I thought about a way to insert myself into the conversation, experiencing that rush of excitement that often proceeds the onset of motor mouth syndrome. As I worked this out inside my head the cashier said to one of the farmers, somewhat defensively, that the church she had gone to definitely did not handle snakes, and I was happy for my reticence.
In this rural area in which I reside are slackers (ask me how I know this?), and farmers and ranchers and artists of various stripe and retired newsmen and politicians, a magazine publisher, members of the working class, visiting statesmen and presidents, and felons (and by mentioning felons here I intend no conjunctional reference to statesmen and presidents) and there are tourists who come to hike the Shenandoah trails or eat at the one famous restaurant. In the fall they spend hours stuck in traffic to come out here and look at leaves.
I live on a somewhat exclusive property amidst all this, as caretaker, and perform various chores, when I am not neglecting them by doing this. The chore I am neglecting now is the removal of the kitchen wallpaper in the caretaker's cottage and repainting of the walls, which, we might assume, is not of terribly high priority to the owners, Mr. and Mrs. BC, who when they visit out here, reside in the bighouse, up the hill, and have no doubt various chores they would be pleased to have me perform up there. Have I run out of chores at the bighouse you wonder? Oh, I daresay not.
I don't get out much or talk a lot, except when Bernadette visits. I was up visiting her in NY last week and then I drove her down here in an ice storm. It was insane. Don't ever do it. You are a moron if you do. To the dozen or more people who skated off the highway into ditches I am sure my advice will seem redundant. This morning Bernadette and I talked about a very important case before the Supreme Court--the right to make 14 foot banners in Alaska that say, Bong Hits 4 Jesus.
On those rare occasions when I do get out I might sometimes fall victim to that motor mouth syndrome that reticent people are known to suffer. Babbling on and on and on to someone as if I were a person who really liked to talk and actually believed myself to be quite good at it.
I had to leave the property recently for a six pack of beer. I could have walked to the store but I drove. I even drive from here to the bighouse on most occasions. I like to drive. Getting in and getting out of the vehicle are my favorite parts, which makes the 300 yard drive to the bighouse a natural choice for me.
At the store the cashier greets me warmly, as is befitting the cashier of a small country convenience store. I do not get greeted warmly at the store up on the highway. I am just another person off the highway. The cashier is talking to two local farmer gentlemen about snake handlers in the Pentecostal church. This snake handling thing is an unfortunate association for the Pentecostals. I used to pretend or actually feel an adversarial relationship with the Pentecostal church in New Orleans, near my home there. They were not, to my knowledge, snake handlers. Over time though I put aside my petty differences with the church and even came to feel a meager kinship with my Pentecostal brothers as I watched them rebuild their church, sometimes running the generators 24 hours a day, after Katrina.
Routinely, there is not the drama or stimulating subject matter going on out here in rural Virginia that I may have experienced in New Orleans. So this chance to talk to the friendly cashier and the two farmers about religion and snakes got my juices flowing and I thought about a way to insert myself into the conversation, experiencing that rush of excitement that often proceeds the onset of motor mouth syndrome. As I worked this out inside my head the cashier said to one of the farmers, somewhat defensively, that the church she had gone to definitely did not handle snakes, and I was happy for my reticence.
A Man On Rivington
In NYC today a man, in passing, of arguably deranged comportment, offered to me on the sidewalk along Rivington St. a complete history of the Devil. It was a glossy hardback of a size you might associate with one of those books from the Time/Life series and seemed to lack the girth to contain the complete history of any subject, much less that of the Devil. The man was a moving display containing only the one volume and we passed each other before I really had the time to consider the benefit or risk of engaging him. Still, I found myself thinking how nice of this man to sacrifice, even for profit, something that I can only guess was of great value to him. He held the book lovingly, his fingernails packed with black sludge, but for my part I could only give to him a heartfelt, although even to me seemingly insincere, thanks, before moving on to my destination, which was nearby.
In NYC today a man, in passing, of arguably deranged comportment, offered to me on the sidewalk along Rivington St. a complete history of the Devil. It was a glossy hardback of a size you might associate with one of those books from the Time/Life series and seemed to lack the girth to contain the complete history of any subject, much less that of the Devil. The man was a moving display containing only the one volume and we passed each other before I really had the time to consider the benefit or risk of engaging him. Still, I found myself thinking how nice of this man to sacrifice, even for profit, something that I can only guess was of great value to him. He held the book lovingly, his fingernails packed with black sludge, but for my part I could only give to him a heartfelt, although even to me seemingly insincere, thanks, before moving on to my destination, which was nearby.
Caulking In NY
