Category: Weather

Halloween, if little hallowed

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

It’s positively pouring rain, cats, dogs, giraffes, and it is blustery, leaf-dislodging, noisy on multiple levels — water, wind, things blown over, gutters gushing — and it’s kind of great, though going outside seems like unnecessary peril. Thus: homebound. 

The day before Halloween — can you imagine the poor kids and parents braving this mayhem? — yet things look up for the big bloody day. The forecast is sunshine and 60 degrees. Boo-yah! as a ghost might cheer. 

Nowadays the most I do for Halloween is steal fun-size Reese’s from the brimming bowl meant for trick-or-treaters and the parents who steal Reese’s from their children. My Halloween dress-up heyday was when I was Paul Stanley from KISS one year and Gene Simmons from KISS the next. This was during the Reagan Administration, so slack must be cut. Like Marley’s Ghost, I wore metal chains as Simmons. Totally rock. 

Damn, it’s like a monsoon out there now. The skeletons on the lawn probably have hypothermia.

On my last blog post, I hinted that Cubby the dog would go well with some guac and salsa. Well, he’s since got a bath — no longer is his scent eau de tortilla chips — and a haircut. He now looks like Moe from the Three Stooges. He’s spiffy and perfumey and the groomer tied a natty bandanna round his freshly coiffed neck. It’s too late for a photo of the transformation; he’s growing out, the bandanna is gone, and already he’s starting to smell like a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme. 

Mexico City beckons. I leave in a week for seven days. As always before a trip, I’m angsty-excited, a nervous muddle of dread and joy. Like, what if I catch Montezuma’s revenge, or get mugged at the ATM? Flip side, what if the food  (tacos tacos tacos tacos) spirits me to rapture and the locals’ hospitality restores my faith in humanity? I’ll report later on this uncharted adventure. Bet you can’t wait. 

It’s been 20-plus years since I read two ecstatically received literary novels — Annie Proulx’s “The Shipping News,” which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and Ian McEwan’s massive seller “Atonement,” considered the prolific British writer’s crown achievement. (I’ve read seven of his novels. He’s spectacular.) 

Now. My response to both books, back then, was: meh. What a child I was. I just finished “The Shipping News,” and its deep-grained, lyrical, downright poetic and funny prose carried me along its often exotic world-scapes and among its colorful characters. It’s a trip, and one worth taking. There are a lot of fish.

With “Atonement,” a high-toned, very English story, I have only begun rereading it and already I’m snared by writing that seems crafted with a laser beam, so specific, rich and dazzling, you want to kill yourself, if you care about these things.

Unfortunately, I do. 

Good news, bad news. What’re you gonna do?

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

The dog smells like a bowl of stale Doritos. The nor’easter is splatting rain and blowing tree-tossing gusts. Our sociopathic “president” continues to appall on a daily basis (no, you’re not getting the Nobel, so shut up). And I have a zit on my forehead that’s festering like Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Otherwise things are just super, grand and dandy, unless you consider that Diane Keaton, one of the most charming and beautiful creatures ever to grace the big screen, has died. Crushing. Long live Annie Hall.

I go to Mexico City in precisely one month, though just days before that I have a dental appointment I’d rather not keep but will, because two of my teeth appear to be turning gray (this mad world!). I’m afraid I am becoming wizened.

If you squint really hard you can squeeze out some of the bad news and unfettered horrors — Gaza, Ukraine, the new Spike Lee movie — unfurling across the world. But it’s not easy, and almost certainly not possible.

But back to the one kernel of okay news, my vacation in Mexico City, a full week in November. I’ve been booking tours and making reservations with tentacular zeal. And I’ve also been uprooting prior plans. In an earlier post I mentioned that I registered for a tacos al pastor cooking class, a splurge and a mash note to my favorite taco. 

Well, I nixed the class (sorry, Anne R.!) for two expeditions: one a three-hour guided tour of the National Museum of Anthropology (sounds deadly, but I’m assured it’s essential) and the other a festive, three and a half-hour Tacos and Mezcal Tour, whose price tag I blush to share with you. Guess which tour I’m looking more forward to.

Other good news lurks. Fall has fallen, and despite the nor’easter, which is really quite mild in these parts, the weather is totally dreamy. Usually I’m abroad for Halloween — Europeans try very hard to get it down, though it’s still strictly amateur hour there — but I’ll be around this time and that’s a plus. 

I dig a good monster mash. I also like all the costumes that I can’t tell what the hell they’re supposed to be. Is that a ballerina werewolf? I hope some savvy kids deck out as Annie Hall: men’s tie, vest and khakis, and that wide-brimmed hat. Sartorial genius. They can flummox all their friends who still dress in Pokémon.

On a side note, what ever happened to the smashed pumpkins in the street? In my day, that was as mandatory as begging for goodies. Kids today. So thoughtful. Or clueless.

I guess in the end that’s also good news. Smashing Pumpkins is a great band — pay special attention to the superhuman drummer — but smashing pumpkins is just boneheaded vandalism. Thus I hesitantly cheer its extinction.

Good news and bad news will always share a table, so we’re kind of stuck. Israeli hostages are freed (yay). Diane Keaton dies (boo). Leaves are falling with the temperature (yay). Jeff Tweedy releases a solo triple album (boo). Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie, “One Battle After Another,” is an apparent masterpiece (yay). Oh, and the dog. Yes, the dog. He really needs a bath (self-explanatory).

Diane Keaton as Annie Hall

Block party, year 48

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

It’s 6:45 p.m. and they’re still slinging burgers and hot dogs during what is officially the neighborhood’s 48th annual block party on a cool pre-fall eve. 

Forty-eighth — how is that even possible? There’s no one alive who’s that old. That means the block parties started in, like, 6 B.C. 

My math is fuzzy. What do I know. I just know the food spread bestowed by the locals is stupendous: Asian noodles, chicken empanadas, homemade guac, spicy pulled pork, eggplant parmesan and, inevitably, simple bags of neon-colored Doritos (party size!), and so much more. (Wait, no deviled eggs?) It’s a smorgasbord and you’ll never see me type that word again.

I don’t know one person at this asphalt shindig. I’m barely — barely — acquainted with my next-door neighbors and the people across the street. And the next-door neighbors didn’t even show at the block bash.

I met one of the guys across the street at the keg, which was lamentably undernourished, and we shook hands, made introductions and proceeded to flaccid small talk before I split. He’s lived across the way for at least four years. We’ve never exchanged a wave. Now we’re chatting over Budweiser in red Solo cups. 

And now I’m gone. Pulled pork beckons.

These block parties are never huge; only three blocks are invited. But they gather a decent melange of folks, a hundred or more. It’s a good blend — florid artsy types to troglodyte Trumpsters — that could use a healthy dose of diversity. Alas, this isn’t Berkeley.

Children. Why does everyone have two or three clinging, clamoring rug rats, pesky tweens or teens, boisterous broods of brats? It’s a nightmare. While the tots whine and cry, the tweens peacock on electric scooters, slaloming perilously around standing diners with an aren’t-I-cute smirk, hair billowing. I need a large hockey stick.

Dogs. Dogs are good. And there are at least six or seven, all leashless, roaming about, panting, grubbing for cheeseburgers and wieners. Cubby the magic mutt joins the canine convention, but his indifference towards other dogs is like Marvel fans to real movies. He does a quick sniff then mutters, “Get me the hell out of here of here. I’m bored. I smell Doritos.”

By now I’m pickled in boredom, too. I hit the keg for a second time and of course it’s dry. A guy is pumping it like mad, desperate for a last drop. His reward is a fizzle of foam. We look at each other and loudly commiserate.

I may have just made a friend.

Playing with dolls, and fire

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

On hot days like this, of relentless and arrogant sunshine, when breezes are miserly and shade revels in its scarcity, I like to hole up and construct voodoo dolls of ole Mother Nature, pins at the ready. Even more, I like to do the same of climate deniers, using power drills instead of pins. Their heads are much thicker.

It’s a grim business, but so is the ever-changing weather, the cataclysmic climes of now. We’re all just one flood or wildfire from unthinkable calamity. To those who actually believe it’s an elaborate liberal hoax — for fucksake — I hope disaster strikes them first, because it will ineluctably strike, and soon. (Retribution?)

The heat is feral today, following a streak of enveloping fall-like weather occasioned by a mean Hurricane Erin pinwheeling up the Atlantic Coast, another portent of global warming. From the Times: “As the planet warms, scientists say that rapidly intensifying hurricanes are becoming ever more likely.” And: “Hurricane season could ramp up with storms supercharged by warmer ocean waters fueled by human-caused climate change.”

Awesome.

This isn’t a sermon or a call to action. By now we should know of the horrors ahead. Yet many don’t, willfully and aggressively, and their ignorance, flat-out stupidity, permeates the highest offices in the land. Planet-saving regulations are being excised with the slash of a pen, and a diabolical grin.

The brevity of this post is purposeful. Preaching to the choir is redundant. And name-calling is for presidents. It’s a squib of personal reportage, this, describing my fabulous arts and crafts.

Notice how I’m making a fat, scowling, orange voodoo doll. Pins not required. I’ll just light it on fire and flush the ashes down the toilet. There’s your wildfire and hurricane in one fell swoop.

Dog 1, me zero

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A clank — the neighbor dispensing with wine bottles in the recycling bin. A thick rain falls and wind blusters the trees, making the dog’s ears perk up and eyes go wide. He bristles at the sound of heavy winds, and often pleads to get on my lap if it’s all too much out there. Rustling leaves — Cubby’s nemesis.

Now a jet plane roars above and the local commuter train blows a curt toot, last call for the suit and briefcase brigade. The rain gutters rattle with liquid bloat. For a couple of days, the water extinguishes the August heat. I couldn’t be happier. 

Summer’s almost gone, finished marring, charring the days with high 80s and 90s, sometimes more. Who likes this rot? Most people do, but, as my opinion abides, most people are maniacs. Melanoma. Enjoy.

I detest sweat as well, and shorts are the devil’s attire. But whoosh, the gusts flurry again and now the dog is on my lap, plop, an impossible tableau: dog jostling the laptop computer, making this task either funny or furious. Since it’s the dog, I’ll take the former. 

So now, typing one-handed, I’ll wrap this reverie of sight and sound, a mini-experiment in writing live, as the world unfurls, realizing once again that the damn dog always wins.  

Wet hot American summer

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And suddenly, a violent cloudburst. It has doused the hot rays of a 90-degree day, literally out of the blue, and hammers rooftops and streets with angry, percussive cascades. It is gray. It is thunderous. It is beautiful.

Windows are being slashed and gutters rush. Steam-genies dance off the sidewalks. The dog is whining and restless, unsettled by the climatic lurch. I calm him and he looks at me with the anxious eyes of Toto when he’s about to be snatched from Dorothy. 

And then, like that, the rain stops and a vengeful fireball shines again and all the fun burns away. Another summer bummer, a Zeusian tease that will come again, probably when I’m walking across town in shorts and a t-shirt, umbrella tucked in my sock drawer.

Already the ice cream truck tools and tootles by and the dog yelps and grumbles. Either he’s being ornery or he really wants a Fudgesicle. The rain has passed, gone. Children chase the ice cream man, splashing puddles along the way.

Stuff, etc.

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

One of the cats died recently. He was kind of the rotten cat, the one that shreds up the carpet, craps where he feels like it and was extra aloof, like an Aviator-wearing rock star who hates giving autographs. Anyway, we’re saddened and miss the ornery fellow. I’m not sure what to do with his ashes: urn them nicely or chuck them over the fence at the squirrels. 

I don’t trust social media as far as I can spit. If I had a girlfriend, I’d ask her, quite nicely of course, to get off that shit.

Voyeurism is the opiate of the masses, not religion. Think about that for about four seconds.

Just guess who I think embodies all of these descriptives: racist, greedy, venal, petty, megalomaniacal, misogynistic, heartless, rankly sophomoric, vulgarian scum. Bingo.

I’ve planned a trip to Mexico City for November, but I’m so traveled-out right now, the whole thing sounds terrible. Five months is far off, so I should be refreshed by then. Thing is, the weather runs in the mid-70s to 80 in November and I’m barely any good over 70. I hate the heat; I’m a San Francisco wuss. I read that t-shirts and shorts are frowned upon in Mexico City, and I’m not a fan of them either. It sounds like when I was in sweltering India and everyone was swaddled in jeans and long sleeves. I wore jeans with t-shirts and I sweated like swine. Drenched. Two showers a day. I don’t want any of that crap. Maybe I’ll push the trip to December. Or January. Or never.

What I’m reading: “Demon Copperhead,” Barbara Kingsolver’s gritty, funny, unsparing ode to Dickens’ “David Copperfield.” The novel won a Pulitzer last year and rollicks with knockabout wit and wisdom and with more than a dash of social commentary about the sorry state of many of our states (opioids, poverty, detox). The damn thing’s a cinder block so it’s taking me forever to plow through, but it’s worth it. The title character, a teenage boy, both tart and talented, is one for the ages. He’s like a super smart Pig-Pen from “Peanuts”: brilliant but with a cloud of flies and dust buzzing around him. It’s his lot. But he’s one wily fighter, a scrappy, red-headed hero (hence “Copperhead”) in a bedraggled, Dickensian wasteland.

The cat died; the dog thrives. Cubby the wonder mutt needs a bath and a haircut and those crunchy, coagulated eye boogers extracted, but otherwise the aging fella is in fine fettle. OK, he’s been doing the occasional “revenge pee” in the dining room, meaning when he feels abandoned he’ll whizz on the rug when no one’s around. Stealth urine is as bad as any urine, but it’s worse, because you know the scruffy rascal’s doing it with a puckish glint in his eye.

I’m dreaming of a white … well, sort of

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Overnight, unexpectedly, snow fell, making for a delightful slush-fest this afternoon, one that I have to brave in order to walk the dog and neither one of us is gleeful about it, especially me, who can’t find his snow boots and must stroll in wee leather sneakers, ha ha, squish.

The snow, it’s not so bad, a solid inch and half or two, and the sun sliced through before I had to actually pull out the shovel and clear the sidewalk, the kind of toil that kills hundreds of hale men via heart attacks each year. (There’s no way I’m dying from shoveling snow. Manure maybe, snow, no.) Yet, as noted, it’s slushy out there, which beats crunchy. That stuff sticks for days and mocks you as you scrape windshields and, yes, shovel like a chain-gang prisoner.

Snow on Christmas Eve — how can you complain? While this powder is so slight that it won’t really make for the dreamy, coveted white Christmas — get ready for tomorrow’s brown Christmas — it’s still a tiny treat that shouts seasonal sentimentality. I’m getting misty already.

Friends are flung cross-country, from California to Florida, and the immediate family absconded to a Cancun resort for the holidays in order to swim and sweat. So I am, once again, a solo character in this festive narrative. It suits me well.

We opened presents on Sunday and a fine bounty was had, including a giant bottle of my beloved Monkey 47 gin, which goes down smooth if you ignore the price tag. My brother loves 19th century Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, so I got him a finger puppet of him as a stocking stuffer. It was that kind of Xmas exchange — practical and comical.  

So snow. I get it. I got it. The tree is lit. Tonight I’m going to either rewatch the classic ‘70s noir “Chinatown” (I’m reading a book about the making of it) or pop a gummy and watch “The Wizard of Oz,” which seems positively made for gummies. Cubby the dog will be my companion. And I will pour a Monkey 47 and truly have a Christmas on ice. Cheers to all.

Happy August

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

The summer heat wave, all solar blaze and dragon’s breath, sizzles on without a whisper that it will break soon. It was 95 degrees at noon today, and still I braved a quick walk that was as pleasant as licking dynamite. I was sopped afterwards, but AC and a brawny desk fan evaporated the wet in 45 minutes or so. Summer. Yum! 

The whole time walking all I could think was: August 1st — yes. Summer’s last lap. Though September is unduly warm, it rarely hits the 90s and I get giddy waiting for it. In fall, the air smells different, earthy. Breezes are brisk, just like the cliché. The sun softens, goes fuzzy like a peach. I get to wear jeans. I take a trip (Berlin in October). Of course, there’s Halloween. So great for kids, so embarrassing for participating grown-ups. Everyone’s infantilized. And there’s Thanksgiving … yeah, well. 

When I walk, it’s an obstacle course of flora. I duck below the low-hanging branches of curbside trees and hopscotch around front yards flush with foliage curling over the sidewalk. It’s all so lush, the greenery, that I hate to say I can’t wait for it to shrivel and die in the cold. It is pretty and life-affirming, but sporting a jacket beats it anytime. The heat is my kryptonite; the chill my vitalizing spinach. (Mixed metaphors — Superman and Popeye. Apologies.) 

Ironically, workers are installing a fancy heater in the dining room today, which, if it wasn’t such a happy prelude to the cold, would be insanely counterintuitive. 

I wonder when the heater will be needed? When will we drop to 50, 40 degrees? When will we stop sweating? When will it be dark by 6 p.m.? When will all those plants die?

Tomorrow, please.

Don’t sweat it. Yeah, right.

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

Not even summer and already I’m sweating like swine. It seemed nice out, about 80 degrees, a soothing breeze, sky marbled with clouds. And then I began my walk and promptly sensed something was off. The atmosphere was thick, dense. Then it was gooey, like clam chowder.

I love clam chowder, but this was just gross. I was getting damp. My hair curled into a Medusa ‘fro. Liquid beads lined my upper lip. For a moment, I felt like an Olympian.

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, goes the old saw, which I wish I never saw. I should have known swamp conditions were rife with a New Orleans exuberance: The day’s forecast showed a lightning bolt shooting out of dark clouds with a temperature of 84. Soup du jour.

I was mid-walk. No turning back, just forge ahead. An ample puddle formed in the small of my back. My brow bubbled with warm dew. My pits were the pits. The nightmare of swamp butt was becoming a wincing reality. 

By the time I got home, I was nearly sodden. And the sweat kept coming. I toweled off, though I wasn’t shower wet, just sticky and irrationally moist. About ten minutes later the body faucets petered out. I stood in front of the fan to finish the job. I’ll probably catch pneumonia.

That’s the trouble with sun, heat, humidity, sweat and all that other summery crap. It’s a prolonged hazard, from sunstroke and sunburn, to day boozing and clammy underwear.

But really — am I right? — it comes down to sweat. That’s the worst of it all, the bane of the season. Of course it’s a necessary evil, our own physiological AC, even if it feels like the opposite. The process of sweating is to help keep the body cool when the perspiration evaporates from the skin. Dogs, cats and birds pant. Humans, so beautifully evolved, perspire in buckets. We get antiperspirants and, if we’re John McEnroe, rocking headbands. 

Sweat isn’t all summer’s fault. Occasionally I’ll wake up in a panicky sweat, courtesy of nightmares about a particular recent felon. When I’m drumming I often break a healthy sweat the way meatheads at the gym do, by sheer physical exertion. That’s the good kind. Then there’s nervous sweat, aka flop sweat, like the time in high school when I gave an oral report about Mozart and a dribble of the wet stuff ran from my forehead down my nose, onto my 3×5 cards. You can tell I’m traumatized because I remember it 100 years later. 

By the way, my opening line was a lie. Swine, like dogs, do not actually sweat; they don’t have sweat glands. Lucky pigs.