We took advantage of a quintessential New England summer day by hiking in the Blue Hills Reservation — less arduous terrain than last week’s White Mountains hike, but still rigorous. Here is Mr. P at the Eliot Tower. I asked him to pose and just couldn’t get a good shot, and I kept taking photos until he flashed this wonderful French sneer. No one can sneer quite like the French. It is the best picture of the day.
Posted in Massachusetts.
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– June 21, 2008
Red Line, 6pm, yesterday. The Celtics’ celebratory rolling rally had taken place at 11am, but thousands of attendees remained in the city after the parade to bask in the sunshine and the last vestiges of communal basketball triumph.
I pass a cluster of teenagers who idle outside of the Federal Reserve. “Did I tell you that I got jumbo-troned at Game 2?” a guy in a green “Beat LA” shirt brags to a girl in a white “Gino” shirt. She snaps her gum. “Yeah.”
I walk through the Boston Common and head to Charles Street to run an errand. It’s easy to spot the groups of teenagers and families who have made a rare trip to the city from the suburbs, even if they’re not wearing a telltale green Celtics shirt. They look alternately unsure or simply frazzled. “Do you know where the Park Street station?” asked an exasperated mother as her bevy of sugar-jacked charges snapped at her ankles. We were literally outside of the station, in full view of a big sign that said Park Street.
But no one can top the rubes on the Red Line car that I boarded at Charles Street. The doors open and a handful of us shuffle onto the somewhat crowded car. As I step on, an early-20s guy wearing a sweat-soaked Celtics jersey that shows off his hodgepodge of tattoos and flabby white arms yells “Welcome to the Celtics car!” to the great mirth of his friends of similar attire and physique.
As the train moves, the young men resume a conversation about Boston’s sports supremacy. Yes, it’s exactly the sort of smug gloating that the rest of the county imagines Boston doing. Then, one of the young men notices that the subway advertisements for a power sports drink feature action shots of Paul Pierce.
“Hey, look! A free Paul Pierce poster!” The advertisement is hanging directly over the head of a steely thin blond wearing a black suit and thumbing her Blackberry. The dude leans above her head and begins to disengage the advertisement from its frame.
“Hello?” she says with a touch of Valley Girl annoyance, ducking her head.
“Hey, how you doing,” he says as he continues to struggle with the poster. “You look like a Lakers fan, you know that?”
Posted in Massachusetts.
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– June 20, 2008
Last night the Boston Celtics defeated the lackluster LA Lakers to win their 17th NBA championship and their first in 22 years . Okay, I’m not the most loyal Celtics fan ever. I watched and supported them during a relatively uncelebrated stretch of their existence in the early 2000s, but I bailed soon after General Manager Danny Aigne come on board and dumped my favorite players in the name of his ambiguous plans to “rebuild.” Obviously, last night his plan came to terrific fruition, and I’m woman enough to give him credit where its due. But I’ll still never forgive him for trading Antoine Walker. Twice.
I resumed watching Celtics games this year because they were winning, but bandwagon fans bother me enough that I refuse to consider myself a fan. People who I assumed were fanatical Red Sox fans are suddenly all about the Celtics. And when I say “suddenly,” I mean, like, only in the past month, ever since a trip to the Finals seemed probable. These people aren’t baseball fans or basketball fans or football fans, they’re fans of whoever gives them that adrenalin buzz that goes with vicarious victory.
Five years ago, I tried to counter the rabid MLB talk with NBA talk, and was met with rolled eyes and dismissive comments about poor Paul Pierce, stuck on a team of losers. Now the same people are reliving the glory of last night’s decisive Fourth Quarter. They are so used to talking with each other about baseball that they naturally fall into the rhythm of basketball banter, with a practiced ability to turn information gleaned from newscasters into their own keen observations.
“I didn’t know you were a Celtics fan,” people say when I speak up knowledgably about the Celtics. I didn’t know you were either, I resist the urge to snipe.
“Oh yeah, I was out in the streets of Boston last night, overturning flower pots and setting trashcan fires,” I say jokingly, because as I said, I’m not a Celtics fan. “Huge fan. Huge.”
Posted in Massachusetts.
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– June 18, 2008
It’s mid-June, and I concede that my New Year’s Resolution to “write more poetry” has been broken. The net result has been two complete poems and about ten pages of scribbled verse and rhyme in my notebook, lost amid bits of prose and diatribe, French vocabulary, interesting facts and quotes, and long repetitive lists of wedding-related tasks.
I read once that most New Years Resolutions are not successful, but the ones that are involve trying to do something (exercise, learn a new skill, volunteer, spend more time with loved ones) rather than trying not to do something (smoking, eating, drinking, engage in jerky behavior). But poem composition is a unique case. I think I would have written more poems had I made a resolution not to write poems.
In the past, a poem will come to me suddenly, divinely, as if it had been stewed in the nether regions of my brain and now wished to emerge like a fully-clad Athena. But the Resolution drove me to scoop out premature dribs and drabs, to force profoundity and squeeze out stanzas to result in appallingly bad poetry. I would sit down with a pen and paper and wrack my brain for nuggets of recondrite wisdom, only to end up clipping my toenails, exfoliating my hands, tweezing my brows, or trimming my split ends. What was it about poetry that makes me want to seek refuge in personal hygiene regimens? Is it that poetry is ultimately the intellect’s vainest pursuit?
So, I’m officially withdrawing my New Year’s Resolution, and I’m taking a lesson from my poetry god Wallace Stevens, the American Modernist who worked most of his life as an insurance executive in Hartford and once wrote that “The Poem must resist intelligence.” When I first read “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” in college, I thought it was woefully esoteric. What is the importance of the colors? Who does the sailor represent? Is the tiger a metaphor? But Stevens is not a poet who deals with symbolism, but rather he finds imaginative ways to perceive reality. In a very beautiful way, Stevens is saying exactly what he says: In their private lives, most people are normal and boring, but there are exceptions.
“Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock”
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
Wallace Stevens
Posted in Culture.
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– June 17, 2008
We’re all getting older.
Middle age is youth without its levity, and age without decay. – Daniel Defoe
Indiana Jones is getting older. I feared that a 64-year old Harrison Ford engaging in superhuman stunts, pummeling fist fights, and all-around death defiance would be unbelievable, but to Ford’s credit, I didn’t smirk once during the action sequences. Maybe his occasional self-deprecating acknowledgment of his advanced age made me willing to accept a senior citizen action hero.
But something else has changed about Indy. His formerly suave wit has crusted into staid mundaneness. The one-line zingers that once flew as fast as the punches have been dulled by triteness, self-reflection, and excessive plot-related jibber-jabber. I laughed exactly once, during a bit involving snakes, because I had a flashback of River Phoenix as the young Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, falling into a train car filled with snakes. Crystal Skull’s most tragic fault is the total loss of Indiana Jones’ comic esprit.
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered. – Graham Greene
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are getting older. Obviously the plot for Crystal Skull is coming from imaginations that have matured since Temple of Doom. Perhaps they felt obligated to endow the long-awaited fourth installment with more significance. And that’s not a good thing. Crystal Skull’s second-most tragic fault is the highly-involved plot that commands the audience’s full attention.
Here comes the spoilers: Indiana Jones, his long-lost son, his long-lost son’s mother Marion (from Raiders of the Lost Ark), and some random insane English academic are in a race against Soviet agents bent on using a highly-magnetic elongated crystal skull to dominate the world. It involves the ancient Mayans, riddles and symbols, psychic warfare, Area 54, aliens, a very snappy Cate Blanchette as a KGB agent, a portal to an alternate dimension, a massive flying saucer, and about 20 minutes of insipid family bickering.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. – H.L. Mencken
And the audience that delighted over his adventures in the first three Indiana Jones movies is getting older. I have fond memories of watching Indiana Jones as a youngster. It freaked me out a bit, and I didn’t understand half of what was going on, but it didn’t matter. The stunts, scenery, characters (even Short Round), and music hooked me. That said, it is hard to tell if my distaste for Crystal Skull was because I’m older and usually bored by special effects bonanzas that aim for universal appeal. Had I seen Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time as a 31 year old, would I be similarly unimpressed?
Instead of blocking out the voices of the dozens of children surrounding us in the move theatre, I listened to them. And what I heard was confusion: “What are they doing? Where are they? Who’s that?” When I was younger, I didn’t ask questions in the middle of movies, not only because I was polite, but because I knew instinctively that it didn’t matter. Crystal Skull’s third-most tragic fault is that half the time, it tries to evoke feelings other than awe and delight beyond what a child can perceive, and the other half of the time, there’s CGI prairie dogs and monkeys.
Posted in Review.
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– June 16, 2008
This post is for my father, who recently told me that he liked when I wrote about my childhood. So here you go Dad. Happy Father’s Day — no necktie this year.
My family lived less than a quarter of a mile away from the local baseball field where all three of us kids played in the Little League. Dad’s dedication to our baseball careers was saintly. Not only did he practice with us at home, he was a constant presence at our games, bringing us gum balls and M&Ms from the snack shack and yelling encouragement from the sidelines.
My older brother was a baseball phenomenon. Ever since I can remember, he was the batter that every pitcher feared, with his long muscled arms and broad shoulders that could whack balls out of the field and into the parking lot. (Parents feared him, too). Years later, when I waitressed at a nearby Dennys over college break one summer, two men came and sat in my section. One of them stared at me and asked “Are you Brian Green’s sister?” When I nodded, he turned to his friend and said, “I coached her brother. He was the most natural hitter I have ever coached.” I stood there smiling with pride, and then he looked at me and said the most evil thing ever: “You look just like your brother.”
The “natural” hitting talent was also evident in my older sister, who was one of the most sought-after players when the coaches selected teams at the start of the season. A league rule required siblings to be on the same team, so I was the kid-sister baggage that came with her formidable swing and her bullet arm. The genetic talent for hitting completely bypassed me. I could neither hit nor throw, but I could catch, unless the ball was thrown hard, and then I would drop it.
When I was about eight or nine, my sister and I were on a team that just couldn’t win a game. Our coach was a woman named Linda, who I suspect was too nice to whip us into shape. My sister’s batting prowess was our only saving grace. We lost game after game.
One day, my Dad, sister, and I showed up to a softball game against a formidable team of little girls coached by the father of a classmate of mine named Lauren. The umpire cancelled at the last minute, and it looked as though the game wouldn’t happen unless they found a replacement. The coaches enlisted my Dad to be the umpire.
Now, I should say here that my Dad is the rare type of man who values kindness above all other human qualities. He would rather be nice than be fair. He saw his two daughters on a softball team that had not won a single game, and naturally it clouded his judgment. I don’t remember a lot about the game, but I remember batting and hearing his voice call out “Ball?” from behind me as pitches flew by me unchallenged. But what father could declare his youngest daughter striked out?
We won that game. It was our first and one of our few wins that season. The fact that my father was the umpire didn’t tarnish the win any, not even when my classmate Lauren made a biting remark to me about my father’s biased judgment. Looking back, the fact that my Dad was the umpire makes the win that much more special, because it proves his devotion to his children, and it was something that we did together.
Posted in Nostalgia.
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– June 15, 2008
Posted in 4000 Footers.
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– June 14, 2008
A few weeks ago at work, I completed a major upgrade of Author-IT, the software tool that I use to write and manage my vast documentation library. Upgrades are nerve-wracking for technical writers because it involves an external entity touching our precious content in mysterious ways. What if all my square bullets turn into round bullets? What if my German-language content is migrated without umlauts? What if all my screenshots turn from color to grayscale?
I tortured myself with these nightmare scenarios as the upgrader churned through the content library, but overall, it seemed successful. The improved user interface upped my productivity a notch, which is fortunate because the decreased application performance is slowing me down, so it evens out.
Then, I discovered that the Spell Checker wasn’t working. I could type “pehrjekhjppp,” run the Spell Checker, and it would find zero errors. Emails to customer support and the user forums did not yield any insight as to why this would happen, and I was forced to export everything to Microsoft Word to do spell checking before I could publish.
Then, one day earlier this week, for no apparent reason the Spell Checker started working. I opened a German-language topic and found red-squiggly lines under every word except “die,” “den,” and “name.” I switched to my English content and ran a library-wide Spell Check, and found that not only did it forget all my previously-learned words, it seemed to be ignorant to many perfectly legitimate words, such as “lifespan,” “lifecycle,” “workflow,” “panning,” “screenshot,” “forklift,” “footage,” and “Unicode,” and would suggest ludicrous archaic words like “liefly,” “breadfruits,” “pourpoint,” and “tirewoman.” Yes, I didn’t mean to type “timeframe,” I totally meant “tirewoman.” Silly me.
Even “email.” Email! A truly ubiquitous word, and my Spell Checker is like, “Did you mean embalm?” I wanted to grab my Spell Checker by his snotty little lapels, demand to know who he thinks uses content management systems in 2008, and then do a two-finger eye poke.
Posted in The 9 to 5.
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– June 12, 2008
The front page of New York Times Business section customarily features pictures of staid industry titans, disgraced white collar criminals, or dumpy Americans shopping at Wal-Mart, pumping gas, and standing in front of their foreclosed homes. So today, it was refreshing to see Strawberry Shortcake in all her pink and strawberry cheery glory. I mean, who can get bent out of shape about inflation, food prices, and other dire economic woes… in a world with Strawberry Shortcake?
The accompanying article, “Beloved Characters as Reimagined for the 21st Century” explained that an “unusually large number of classic characters for children” are being reinvigorated, reimagined, and reintroduced to appeal to the younger generation and their nostalgia-ridden parents. This is why there are in fact two pictures of Strawberry Shortcake: The Strawberry Shortcake who I remember from my girlhood, and the Strawberry Shortcake who has been retooled to resemble a Disney movie cartoon heroine, with long sleek magenta hair (instead of the yarn-like red mess peeking out from bonnet), wispy bare limbs (instead of undefined body mass hidden by a frumpy dress and bloomers), and luminous green eyes (instead of dull black mites).
In additional to her makeover, Strawberry “now prefers fresh fruit to gumdrops, appears to wear just a dab of lipstick (but no rouge), and spends her time chatting on a cellphone instead of brushing her calico cat, Custard.” Now I mean no disrespect to the marketing team at American Greetings or the focus groups whom they spent hours spent drilling about exactly which shade of purple-pink to make Strawberry’s hair, but on what planet does frigging Strawberry Shortcake need a cellphone? Because I don’t think she needs a cell phone in Strawberryland to call up Raspberry Tart, Huckleberry Pie, Apple Dumplin’, and her foes Purple Pie Man and Sour Grapes.
When I played with Strawberry Shortcake dolls, I was pushing 5 years old. I can’t even say why I found Strawberry Shortcake appealing; like most girls that age, I wasn’t too hard to please. Give me some pretty pink dolls with removable clothes and fruit-scented hair, and I was all set. I am depressed to consider Strawberry Shortcake with a cell phone. It reeks of adults and reality infringing on fantasy world of baked goods and happiness.
Posted in Nostalgia.
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– June 11, 2008
