I hate to wear mine out. Preferably, I’m self-aware enough to know when I’m no longer welcome.
TBH, though, c’mon…I’m an absolute gem. Who would want my roundness around?
Nonetheless, this past six weeks, I’ve been both on a bar(tender) embargo of my local and actually trying to be a better, less fluffy version of my own Xtopher-ness.
Think less “How long was this body lost at sea?” goals than actually aspiring to sort of physique.
But my local surprised me today by being open in a holiday – so I had to stop in.
I’d been to a rooftop gathering at the Silver Fox’s building. He was not there, because: life. But my drinking buddy was there as well as a couple of other neighbors I occasionally run into at the local bellying up place.
The occasion? My drinking buddy had driven to a family reunion in Boise and timed his Portland departure to arrive when my favorite brewery opens at 2 PM. Credit due: it’s also located in the hometown of the SF, so…it’s kind of my adopted favorite brewery. If that’s even a thing.
Rest assured, I’ve have figured it out on my own eventually.
So, there I was, bellied up. But just for one. I had planned to stop at the neighborhood Brodega for a lil snacky-snack and some backup beers after Barley Brown-on-the-roof with (most of) the gang., but since they were open…belly up, I will.
Three beers later – ok, I’m my defense after my first, the chef joined me and the the damn owner sat down, which clearly mandated a third…I mean, not as clearly as a comped drink would have, but this just is not that kind of place – there I was: leaving.
Of all the head-scratchingest things, the chef and owner both seemed surprised I was leaving. Luckily, this song just happened to be on, which made my departure an obvious and non-negotiable requirement. No one would doubt for a moment that my grumpy old ass had been directed any number of times to leave immediately for the netherworld.
I went to breakfast with MomDonna today, because: Mother’s Day, you buncha idiots.
I mentioned when she asked what I’ve been up to – after the initial flashback panic to when she’d ask me that as a kid, knowing full well that I’d been up to being a little shit – that I’d been mostly staying home, since it was a Dry Week. Which basically means I’d watched a lot of movies, including A Man Called Otto.
Me: I was actually kind of surprised that I liked it. It didn’t seem to get good word of mouth during its release.
Mom: You know, we watched that, too. But it was so sad, with all the suicides –
Me: Gotta love a movie with a warning label!
Mom: – that we had to watch another movie right afterward. Something fluffy. What was it honey? Something about taking a gigolo to a wedding.
Me: <blinks>
Mom: Who was the girl in that?
Me: Debra Messing.
Mom: I think that’s the only movie I remember her doing. Of course, your father thought it was Amy Adams, but I knew that wasn’t right. And who was that boy?
Me: Dermot Mulroney. Also, you’re kidding. Wedding Date? I watched it right afterward, too!
Which just led to an entire side conversation about why dad would watch that movie – or care that they did. Short answer: young Amy Adams. When mom heard that, something snapped into place with her and I could see the realization that she’d been outfoxed by dad’s inner Bill Clinton, which he usually keeps well hidden.
Of course, I knew the next maternally owned synapse that fired started a list of ways in which dad would slowly pay for low key tricking my mother and enjoying a movie he normally wouldn’t for reasons she would think he totally shouldn’t.
Marriage, amirite?
All of this was a welcome distraction from the potential conversation that I am Otto.
And I admit it.
Not because people are idiots – which, they totally are. Here’s how I know people are idiots: they don’t know it.
But, rather, because I never read the source material for the movie. That would be a book called A Man Called Öve.
Maybe a bunch of my gentle readers already knew that. Probably so, since I don’t just give away the honor of being excluded from the population I commonly refer to as Stupid Americans. That has to be earned by demonstrating intelligence or good taste or critical thinking skills. All things that following my blog would certainly indicate.
However, the reason I’m sure many people did not know what the source material is is because the movie originally took the book’s title, but it didn’t test well, so they changed it. Likely, said testing likely occurred with the aforementioned Stupid Americans.
We’re fighting a culture battle in this country that is not at all figuratively a battle of wits. Remember: never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So, that’s how we end up with the movie’s name.
But that’s not the point. Or the full point, anyway.
The point is that I never read the book.
I had thought it looked like one I’d appreciate, but never deigned to find out. You see, I was working at the airport at the time. My business was running five news/gift shops, so I definitely saw the book. Not just daily when I made rounds to my stores, but dozens of times on the concourses being carried conspicuously by the unwashed masses that also looked like they hadn’t a clue what they were doing or where they were going. Or how that book ended up in their hand.
There they were, just careening – or more likely, moseying – down the concourses while I moved about with a determined gait and obvious focus as I navigated around them. More often than not, a close call would cause me to mutter some iteration of Otto’s frequent pejorative: idiots.
That is what struck me about Otto: his and my own righteous grumpopatomus tendencies.
Certainly, his were kinder, having limited himself to the sole label of “idiot”. Also certain, in real life those labels were likely cleaned up to allow book and ticket buyers the deniability of being included as targets of Öve/Otto’s ire.
Can’t bite the hand of the idiots that feed you, after all.
As an example of that phenomenon, here’s a few examples of how this manifests in my day to day. Most of the time, it’s fairly gentle – unless you’re the target.
If the perceived offense is particularly WTF, they’ll earn something closer to this.
But I try to reserve that for my friends and closer acquaintances. They get me enough to not be offended. Or when I’m alone in my car, which happens often. The expletive, not the alone in my car part – which should be assumed. Nowadays when I’m in my car it’s usually to take some lazy idiot his chicken nuggies.
For the rest of those fucking idiots, I keep it in my head. I know them well enough to know they’d rather go to the trouble of retaliating for my correct assessment versus accepting the feedback and working toward a better version of themselves. It’s easier to just be a problem for everyone else.
It still surprises me that none of my friends made the connection. To me, at any rate. Who knows, it’s entirely possible they saw my personality in that character but just didn’t mention it. I mean, the day after this Portlandia sketch aired I woke up to several texts and emails calling me out…but I’d missed it because the show was on too late and I was already in bed!
I went to breakfast with MomDonna today, because: Mother’s Day, you buncha idiots.
I mentioned when she asked what I’ve been up to – after the initial flashback panic to when she’d ask me that as a kid, knowing full well that I’d been up to being a little shit – that I’d been mostly staying home, since it was a Dry Week. Which basically means I’d watched a lot of movies, including A Man Called Otto.
Me: I was actually kind of surprised that I liked it. It didn’t seem to get good word of mouth during its release.
Mom: You know, we watched that, too. But it was so sad, with all the suicides –
Me: Gotta love a movie with a warning label!
Mom: – that we had to watch another movie right afterward. Something fluffy. What was it honey? Something about taking a gigolo to a wedding.
Me: <blinks>
Mom: Who was the girl in that?
Me: Debra Messing.
Mom: I think that’s the only movie I remember her doing. Of course, your father thought it was Amy Adams, but I knew that wasn’t right. And who was that boy?
Me: Dermot Mulroney. Also, you’re kidding. Wedding Date? I watched it right afterward, too!
Which just led to an entire side conversation about why dad would watch that movie – or care that they did. Short answer: young Amy Adams. When mom heard that, something snapped into place with her and I could see the realization that she’d been outfoxed by dad’s inner Bill Clinton, which he usually keeps well hidden.
Of course, I knew the next maternally owned synapse that fired started a list of ways in which dad would slowly pay for low key tricking my mother and enjoying a movie he normally wouldn’t for reasons she would think he totally shouldn’t.
Marriage, amirite?
All of this was a welcome distraction from the potential conversation that I am Otto.
And I admit it.
Not because people are idiots – which, they totally are. Here’s how I know people are idiots: they don’t know it.
But, rather, because I never read the source material for the movie. That would be a book called A Man Called Öve.
Maybe a bunch of my gentle readers already knew that. Probably so, since I don’t just give away the honor of being excluded from the population I commonly refer to as Stupid Americans. That has to be earned by demonstrating intelligence or good taste or critical thinking skills. All things that following my blog would certainly indicate.
However, the reason I’m sure many people did not know what the source material is is because the movie originally took the book’s title, but it didn’t test well, so they changed it. Likely, said testing likely occurred with the aforementioned Stupid Americans.
We’re fighting a culture battle in this country that is not at all figuratively a battle of wits. Remember: never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So, that’s how we end up with the movie’s name.
But that’s not the point. Or the full point, anyway.
The point is that I never read the book.
I had thought it looked like one I’d appreciate, but never deigned to find out. You see, I was working at the airport at the time. My business was running five news/gift shops, so I definitely saw the book. Not just daily when I made rounds to my stores, but dozens of times on the concourses being carried conspicuously by the unwashed masses that also looked like they hadn’t a clue what they were doing or where they were going. Or how that book ended up in their hand.
There they were, just careening – or more likely, moseying – down the concourses while I moved about with a determined gait and obvious focus as I navigated around them. More often than not, a close call would cause me to mutter some iteration of Otto’s frequent pejorative: idiots.
That is what struck me about Otto: his and my own righteous grumpopatomus tendencies.
Certainly, his were kinder, having limited himself to the sole label of “idiot”. Also certain, in real life those labels were likely cleaned up to allow book and ticket buyers the deniability of being included as targets of Öve/Otto’s ire.
Can’t bite the hand of the idiots that feed you, after all.
As an example of that phenomenon, here’s a few examples of how this manifests in my day to day. Most of the time, it’s fairly gentle – unless you’re the target.
If the perceived offense is particularly WTF, they’ll earn something closer to this.
But I try to reserve that for my friends and closer acquaintances. They get me enough to not be offended. Or when I’m alone in my car, which happens often. The expletive, not the alone in my car part – which should be assumed. Nowadays when I’m in my car it’s usually to take some lazy idiot his chicken nuggies.
For the rest of those fucking idiots, I keep it in my head. I know them well enough to know they’d rather go to the trouble of retaliating for my correct assessment versus accepting the feedback and working toward a better version of themselves. It’s easier to just be a problem for everyone else.
It still surprises me that none of my friends made the connection. To me, at any rate. Who knows, it’s entirely possible they saw my personality in that character but just didn’t mention it. I mean, the day after this Portlandia sketch aired I woke up to several texts and emails calling me out…but I’d missed it because the show was on too late and I was already in bed!
Don’t get me wrong, even as a singleton, I enjoy a nice, leisurely any Sunday morning waking up. Laying in bed, catching up on news, emails, social media, all the whatnots of life in 21st century America with the secure feeling one’s cozy nest provides.
Now, if only I could train this lil monster to get coffee refills.
Alas.
At least I have the environmental comfort of KINK’s Sunday morning programming – a program called Sunday Brunch – to deliver audible gems like Johnny Cash covering Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus – to offset the assault on intelligence our weekly rag delivered in its daily news brief this morning.
The aforementioned assault on our collective intelligence is linked at the top of this post. To recap for those of you savvy enough to not click on embedded links of a possibly insane distant blogger’s posts, Willamette Week does a video feature called Hot Mic where they send a local film student out to ask people on the streets a question to get a pulse on civic engagement. It can be anything from the Valentine’s Day question about Oregon’s birthday – which I bet my readers could guess using the meager context cues in this very sentence – to who is Oregon’s Governor, which yielded slightly terrifying results.
In an even worse demonstration of the illiteracy of our voting populace, our intrepid student on the streets took off to find out if Portlanders knew who the Oregon Secretary of State was is.
Ok, was.
You see, Willamette Week has a history of taking down politicians with its investigative reporting. Not just state level, either. City, county…school board. Doesn’t matter, it’s the story – and it’s what voters need to know. Not just about the candidates and politicians, either. It’s what they need to understand about the system itself.
In this case, last month, maybe late February, WW began reporting on a local weed company’s unpaid debts. The stakes were <ahem> high in this revelation, too, since they weren’t just stiffing plumbers or electricians, in an impressive display of Trumpian privilege. They were, of course. But they were also stiffing their vendors.
The most egregious offenses – and what initiated the reporting – was the taxes they weren’t paying: state business and weed taxes, federal income taxes, payroll taxes. The owners of the business had accumulated an impressive ~30 liens against them totaling around $7 million in debt.
All while also donating around $200k to political races and candidates during our last election cycle. Including holding two fundraisers for our newly elected and even more recently resigned Secretary of State.
As SOS, the job is to audit state and local agencies, including the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission – which was another, less terrifying Hot Mic demonstration of the general population’s ignorance, failing to define the agency’s acronym. However, ours had recused herself in February from the audit of the OLCC – there’s that acronym – because of the impropriety of a SOS who’d taken donations from the owners of the second largest weed business in the state overseeing that audit.
Seems legit, right? Like, the audit needs to be done, but farm it out to ensure it’s impartial.
Here’s the rub, though, she recused herself a week after the audit was completed. It was a year-long audit. We only found out about the recusal a month later when it was released.
Then we found out – thanks to WW – that the SOS had put the donors in touch with the auditors and had helped define the scope of the audit.
A hot minute later, we found out that WW had received an anonymous tip – gotta love those! – that the SOS had also taken a freelance job for one of this company’s affiliate businesses for a base of $10k/month. That’s more than the monthly SOS salary…not to mention the $30k bonus for additional licenses this business received thanks to the efforts of the SOS.
72 hours after that disclosure, our Secretary of State had orphaned us by resigning.
Crazy shit.
I imagine the story likely earned national coverage – and will probably earn the paper another Pulitzer for investigative journalism – to the point where even someone in Appalachia country could name our Secretary of State. Even if that person might also call one of their cousins “pa”.
She’s Shemia Fagan.
Ok, I overstated their mission earlier. They just sent this film student out to see if people could pronounce her damn name. Surprised, they were, to find out people couldn’t name her at all.
Like I said at the top…idiots.
And they vote.
At least I can take comfort in my assumption that all Stupid Americans are created equal when it comes to elections. At least our ignorant liberal voters are casting their ballots with a sense of social responsibility closer to what Jesus would counsel than their (at best) equally ignorant conservative counterparts in the party of the Religious Right, Christian Nationalists, Proud Boys, Promise Keepers, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
And…with that, I should probably complete my unrelated special election ballot now.
And the anticipation is killing me. Figuratively, of course. I can’t wait to see how the shoes drop, though.
Here’s the deal, you know me and my winning free concert tickets, right? Well, if you don’t – trust me, it’s a thing. My thing. Just take a peek at my “Live Music” hashtag.
So, anyway, the local station I listen to – KINK – is having a ticket giveaway that they’ve dubbed KINKapalooza. Every week for three weeks, they’re giving away a pair of tickets to 10 different shows this summer. And there’s ~40 to choose from, so you can really tailor it to your (my, dammit…just putting that out there) schedule and taste.
The first winner (me, obviously) will be announced this morning. And yesterday afternoon I was going to their website to enter my keyword and saw this
I’ve been watching this show for months. And by watching I mean entering to win tickets – trust me, I’ve entered my ass off for tickets. Crowded House was a band that came into popularity my first year of college, so it was cool to discover a new band as a newly minted independent adult. Mind you, I was familiar with the brothers Finn’s first band, Split Enz, but only tangentially. When I heard Crowded House on the radio, they were both familiar and at the same time new and interesting. I bebopped my ass right down the the record store and bought their album on cassette.
Later, I bought it again on CD.
So, there I was…wondering if I should just wait out my original entries and the Monday or Tuesday email telling me I’d won Crowded House tickets or enter this Last Chance contest to possibly boost my chances of getting there.
Or as a third option, just wait to find out that I’d won the KINKapalooza tickets and make them one of my options. Right? Options, I had.
And then…it all came crashing down.
The realization of it all.
Thursday is May 4th, which, as a geek I celebrate as Star Wars Day. If it needs to be said, I’m not kidding.
Here’s where it gets messy in case you didn’t pay close attention to the Crowded House pic above, the show is Thursday, May 4th.
Because I come by my nerdiness honestly, though, I’d also accepted a sibling invite to go on a May the Fourth Be With You pub crawl with my good brother, my sister and her hubster.
In Bend.
Now, obviously, I’m going to that fucking pub crawl, right?!? My sibs trump free concert tix. Even for such a formative – you thought I’d say seminal, dincha? – band for my nascent (at the time) musical tastes.
But just watch me win direct tickets. It’ll be a real Sofie’s Choice, but I’ve already thought it out and decided the sibs are the no-brainer choice.
But since the pub crawl ends at 8 and concerts always start late, I’ve got to go look up plane tickets from Bend to Portland on the 4th. Maybe I can get one with a Luke Skywalker flight attendant.
I know I should just call this Shrinkflation: Part 2 – because you just know this ain’t the end of nothing – but I have too many numbered series on this blog, so I didn’t wanna. However, who knows when I’ll get around to being pissed enough about this phenomenon – or some random and mildly annoying aspect of it that probably only I notice – to add a third installment to the Shrinkflation saga?
Even in starting this post, two other things I should probably post about instead have caused me to almost abandon this entry. And you can rest assured I’ll probably forget what they were by the time I finish this.
Here’s the deal, though, it’s getting worse! And if you’re recreationally conspiracy theory minded, as I am, it’s simply out of control.
Now, I should note that this is undoubtedly enhanced by my Saturday night of doing nothing. I’m incensed over a potentially imagined recent offense at my local watering hole, so haven’t been there at all this weekend. Making matters worse is that the Silver Fox was in town, but had other plans for his Saturday night. Assignations, if you will.
Ergo: I was in my own.
Since I wasn’t going to Tanner Creek Tavern, and wasn’t going to risk going to any other of my haunts since they invariably lead to an expensive trip to the Reverse ATM, I decided to have a Dry Weekend.
And this brings us back to the cost of bubble water in Portland.
Before, I was mainly pointing out the difference in price a brand name can cost a consumer – cost of advertising be damned, since even the less glamorous brands I mentioned in that post advertise. The thought behind that post was enough to make me pony up for a Soda Stream and just make my own.
Sadly, just when I needed a refill, my nearest Bed, Bath & Beyond closed. A week later, I decided to order a new tank of CO2 on their website. They were out of stock on the singles and I didn’t want to order a two-pack, since I already had one empty and three seemed…fraught. I need to keep my tank rotation at two.
So I’ve had none. And truthfully, my bubble water consumption is down. I haven’t pivoted back to soda – at least not completely. I’d say the non-alcoholic beverage split is 50% soda, 35% still water (in a victory my liver and kidneys gave up on ever seeing last century) and 15% bubble water.
I’ll check that math a half dozen times before I publish this post and still get it wrong.
Why was I suddenly so resistant to buying bubble water? They committed an egregious – to only me, I’m sure – offense. The industry seemed to pivot in unison from 12-pack cans to 8-pack cans. Without lowering the price!
That’s very not ok.
A) an 8-pack is an insufficient quantity. That’s like a two day supply. Does not compute.
B) compounding that minimal supply is my retroactive offense at paying too much in the past simply by not taking advantage of the three 12-packs/$10 (or $11, once inflation started ticking up) deals because I didn’t want to make multiple trips to my car for groceries. Now I’d be making multiple trips for two 8-packs simply to have a reasonable supply on hand versus the oversupply situation of the past deals I’d eschewed in support of my inherent laziness.
Obviously, I was completely powerless in this situation that was clearly quite beyond my control. Just look at what happened last time I tried to do something: an entire Bed, Bath & Beyond closed! Obviously, challenging the system has a high price.
Nevertheless, last night I realized that the situation had deteriorated even further.
Now these loathsome 8-packs are going for $4.49. That’s $.50 more than I was paying for 12-packs a year ago!
This is not ok.
Is there some sort of cabal of bubble water producing companies I’m not aware of? An OPEC for enhanced drinking waters? The Organization of Bubble Water Producing Companies…OBWPC? An organization powerful enough to take retaliatory steps to close a big box retail location?
I do not know. But as a consumer, I will dare to speak for us all when I say that I am not down for this sort of corporate rogering.
Making this situation even more rewarding to my recreational conspiracy theorist is the timing of my realization: the very week that BB&B announced the closing of its remaining stores.
Going hmmmm at things that make you, am I.
The latest price increase is poorly-timed for an innocent industry. Although, I’ve clearly made the case for conviction in the court of public (me) opinion.
It’s enough to make me consider my options. Namely: trekking out to suburbia to a remaining – for now – BB&B for a refill cartridge or even trying a Walmart – since the Triple-B Ranch has proven its proficiency at being out of stock on these in the past, when things were only bad for them and not in their current state of cataclysm.
The Silver Fox suggested Amazon this morning during our coffee walk. And, yes, obviously. But also, no, because of all the bad. Also, I checked and shipping on CO2 cartridges is a full week, so…
Although, they do offset their corporate awfulness by offering a $15 gift card with their canister exchange program. Mind you, you got a $15 credit with the in-store canister exchanges at brick and mortar retailers, so it’s kind of same shit, different marketing. Plus, Walmart offers the same program, not that they aren’t just as bad – or worse – on a corporate level.
I just know I’m going to end up driving all over kingdom come to rectify this – and then still end up ordering future replacements through either Amazon or Walmart.
It’ll be Walmart, strictly for this reason. Fifteen bucks buys a lot of cheap Mac & Cheese. But I’m just as likely to say fuck it and go back to soda. Stay tuned.
Until then, just know my neurotic ass will be tying itself into absolute pretzels.
Also, I just had a premonition that Shrinkflation 3: The Unmitigated Gall will be about me discovering that Walmart’s $.47 Mac & Cheese – $.34 on sale! – has become $.60/box, reducing the buying power of my $15 exchange program gift card by one-third.
Goddamn, I am craving Mac & Cheese something awful now….
I feel like my most recent posts could have seemed complain-y. I think folks who know me or at least get me understand I’m a verbal processor, to which this exercise contributes.
Not to mention it spares my friends a lot of one-sided ranting about nothing.
People who know me will also understand that I notice patterns. Not in a full Rain Man card counting type of way. it’s more of an I did well on those standardized tests in school we used to have to take when graduating and going to a good school was a parent’s dream for their kid. Now, I think parents are happy if their kids finish their school career with a pulse, but that’s another blog.
So, anyway, when I notice things, I like to talk them out. Especially when it’s something inherently annoying I notice someone doing. And then someone else. And someone else.
Nonetheless, I felt it was time to show a little less attitude in a post and a little more gratitude.
Or…maybe I could do both!
If you’ve read this blog over the past year, you’ll be happy to know that the 2022 streak of free live music has carried over into 2023. It’s actually expanded slightly.
2022 actually ended with a show I was excited to see – Modest Mouse – ending up being really awful. It’s so much of a disappointing memory, I was ready to go back to not bothering with live shows.
Then I remembered that I’d won tickets last November for a show in March of this year and felt really conflicted about not using them. On the one hand, it was someone I’d never heard of, Unknown Mortal Orchestra. On the other, I’d seen some free shows for bands and acts last year I’d never heard of that turned out to be great experiences: Tigirlily Gold and Noah Kahan to name two who have gone on to have quite a year.
Between Modest Mouse and UMO, there was a lot of gratis ground to cover! From kicking off the year with a free Literary Arts lecture as a stand in for a traveling friend, to The Lone Bellow (amazing), Daniel Seavey (left because he was an hour late), Vance Joy (insanely good, really wished he’d played more than 3 songs!), Inhaler (I was offered ear plugs, these guys absolutely ripped it up) and then bookending my free live music with a private screening of the new Matt/Ben movie Air, which was just a lot of fun for the hometown connection.
But my favorite show of the year – I’m going to say “so far” – was The Dandy Warhols.
A) Because they are also a local Portland success story. B) They were doing something unique, playing with the Oregon Symphony. I’d seen other acts I love do this, but never an alt/punk act. It doesn’t lend itself to orchestra accompaniment as well as some of the adult contemporary or singer/songwriter acts I’ve seen do this, but the more die hard fans didn’t seem to mind some of the more dissonant moments of the show that I didn’t care for. C) Zia McCabe had a Chris-near-miss a while back.
And when they performed what is arguably their biggest hit, they absolutely killed it. Old people were dancing in the aisles – and it was particularly dangerous because these are sloped theater aisles!
Sidebar: a song by one of the last acts I saw at the KINK Live Performance Lounge just came on the radio – Inhaler.
If he looks familiar, it’s because his dad is kind of famous, too…
If you closed your eyes, you’d have sworn Bono was right there in the room. I’m sure he doesn’t love that comparison, but it thrilled me. I hadn’t seen U2 perform in decades and never in an intimate setting like this, obviously.
But back to the story. My favorite thing a bout seeing The Dandy Warhols was my arrival.
I actually won the tix – don’t worry, I went alone even though I won a pair – while I was driving around one night and one of the DJs, Gustav, did a call in interview with Zia about the show. Afterward, he pulled the whole, “If you want to see the show, gimme a call” thing, so I did. And the son of a gun picked up!
So my tickets were at Will Call. I go up, they’ll the guy my name and he hands me my envelope – and then says, “Hold on a second, there’s another one!”
I thought it weird that they would put the tickets in separate envelopes, but whatever. I’m opening my envelope as I head to the GA stairs – because a friend of mine told me free tickets are always in the nosebleeds and I believed it – and there’s two tickets in the envelope. And they aren’t nosebleeds…they are Orchestra! Score!
I open the second envelope once I get to my seat, curious about why there were two envelopes with my name at Will Call. My guess is that it was just a duplicate. But the tickets are different seats. Also Orchestra, but a few rows closer to the stage. I’m sitting in U and I think the other pair was on the other side of the venue in row R. I muse that I could move at intermission and get an offset stereo experience.
Then my neurotic ass chooses to feel guilty that Gustav had put my name on someone else’s tickets and they were gonna be left high and dry at the door. This is also when the orchestra starts walking out into the stage.
I’m conflicted. I’m also wondering if someone else would arrive later than I to an event like this – most of the shows I win tickets to are at General Admission venues with no seats, so I just go at showtime and miss the standing around alone part of the show. Then I notice something different about this pattern of tickets for me:
Do you see it?
My tickets for the seat I was in said $0 – truly comp tickets. The second set cost $49 apiece. My neurotic ass kicks into high gear, worrying that I derailed someone’s date night. Surely someone wouldn’t arrive later than I do to an event on a date!
That all comes to a screeching halt when I realize that maybe there’s more than one me in Portland.
It can’t be, I think. Last time I checked, there was only three men in the entire country. Me, Chicago me and Tennessee Me. Or was it Kentucky? Doesn’t make much of a difference at that particular point…it’s splitting a fine hair.
Mind you, this was back in the days of MySpace that I was looking up myselfs.
Clearly, it was time to look into this further.
LinkedIn found another me right here in Portland –
That’s weird.
Also, this guy in Oregon City, courtesy of The Knot –
So in a moment (and 20 years, give or take) I’d gone from being one third of the mes in the country to being one third of the mes in my hometown!
I felt about as unique as a Pitt in Neosho, MO. And since one of these guys sounded pretty well compensated from his LinkedIn profile and the other I learned about from a wedding registry site, I felt a lot like the lesser Pitts in Missouri – less successful at life.
Well, shit.
Suddenly I was less concerned about possibly disrupting someone else’s date night. I kid. I was still worrying about that. At intermission I tried to see if those other seats were occupied, because I know people get email receipts and theaters can reprint tickets – and they weren’t. Maybe they’d gone to the bar.
I’ll keep on keeping my eye out, too. I’d hate to be the last of Me to find out this was a Highlander situation…
Crotch Goblins. This is how a friend of mine referred to the children of one of her friends. Now that I think about it, I think she told me that’s what her friend calls her very own kids.
Regardless, I can’t unhear it or unthink it now.
Crotch Goblins. How delightfully graphic. It’s also malleable enough to be mistaken for an affectionate nickname. Entirely unlike the nick that I’ve used for kids for decades: STDs.
Whatever you call them, I’d just like to share what is apparently uncommon knowledge with parents everywhere: leave them in the suburbs, will you? I live in the city so I generally only have to deal with people’s progeny once they’ve at least reached a legal drinking age. I still have no use for them at that point, but at least I can drink around them (to make them more tolerable) without feeling like I’m ginfluencing them.
I’m tired of coming across these entire families where none should be. I accept the fact that because of our current houseless problems in Portland, I have to engage in the mental exercise of judging whether the sidewalk excrement I encounter is the result of a lazy human or a homeless human. That’s really all the concession I care to make regarding my urban life extras.
When people bring their children into this environment, it’s unnecessarily taxing to grumpy old Xtopher. First, I have to weigh whether the parents are selfishly dragging their kids along on an urban adventure they wanted to indulge in but we’re too cheap to pay a sitter for or if they are simply bad parents all-around. Bright side: I would never know or even think about it if they’d just left the kids in the subs. Y’know? This is hard to have a “one rule fits all” point of view on since the Oregon Zoo is walkable from my home downtown, same with OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry), which is a frequent field trip destination for the area schools.
Fun Fact, if you’ve ever seen this film:
Then you’ve seen one of OMSI’s main attractions:
But I’ve drifted slightly off topic, I’m just showing you that I know that the People’s Republic of Portland has some built in “fun for the whole family” allure.
However, that does not extend to my breakfasts with the parents. I am the appropriate age child for parents to bring to town. When my mother shushed my cursing at breakfast this morning and reminded me of the destination for the plate of waffles – a child accompanied by three adults at the table behind me – that prompted me to say “That meal is an open invitation for fucking diabetes!”, well…that was too much.
With the exact amount of contrition the situation warranted, I pivoted to “Fine, ducking diabetes! But if they are so concerned for the well being of their Crotch Goblin, maybe don’t bring them to a dive restaurant that is literally alongside the railroad tracks down by the river.”
Am I being unreasonable here? I mean, the guy at the other table behind me finished a beer as I was walking in, ordered another as I sat down and a couple sips later, executed an admirable three-point turn on his scooter so he could go out and smoke a couple ciggies before his breakfast came. This is where top-tier parents choose to bring their precious child?
Then, when they left, the foursome completely blocked off the aisle between tables while they failed at putting their jackets on, completely trapping a server who had gone to drop off food at the next table over. What should have been a 20-second task turned into something like trapping an opossum in a cat carrier. The look of panic and deceleration in this poor server’s eyes. The mother was completely unaware of how her “nurturing” was negatively affecting those around her or how it would likely impact people for years and decades to come because she’d just taught her kid that the world can wait for her to get her shit together. I’ve never hoped that someone end up in a “put your own air mask on first” scenario, but now I can check that off my never have I ever list. But you know this family would fail that simple set of instructions.
Sorry, I might care more about the well-being of your offspring than you do, but I will only demonstrate it at the ballot box. If you bring them within my verbal splash zone, don’t expect the water to be filtered.
Likewise, if you bring your family of four into town, you need to manage that situation. People walking their dogs in an urban environment have to leash their fur babies. I’m not suggesting you leash children, but in the last week I’ve had to navigate a sidewalk with one too many family hazards – the correct amount is zero – twice and I’m kind of done with it.
The aforementioned dog owners? Fine – and they usually have their dogs trained to walk beside them, or at least are present enough to their dog’s behaviors to be able to follow their fur baby to whichever side of the sidewalk their nose drags them. I rarely see a dog sniffing out the latest pupdates on a tree or light post on one side of a sidewalk while their owner stands oblivious on the other side of the sidewalk waiting with the leash cordoning off the throughway.
Honestly, with dogs on s sidewalk, the biggest hazard are the people who have to stop and pet them and ask them “who’s a good boy?”. Why? Because their hit of unconditional love costs everyone around them free access to a sidewalk. Can you be needy elsewhere, please?
Speaking of a group usually referred to as “needy”, then there’s “the least among us”. Those poor – usually drug addled – folks who reside on the city streets. The Urban Campers. They’re a blight and a reason to exercise gratitude simultaneously because it could happen to any of us. For them, I will tolerate the oblivion that makes their existence tolerable to them. They don’t literally bother me – aside from the mental game I mentioned earlier – so I forgive their disruptive presence.
But these fucking families navigating sidewalks and crosswalks? Pass.
At their best they can manage an organized excursion, albeit at a glacial pace. I’ve seen it, but it’s truly rare. Usually, the best I can hope for is a chaotic form of forward progress. The entire family scattered across the sidewalk traveling at different velocities and, to the casual observer, completely unaware of one another.
This would never have flown in my family. My mother did not just develop an interest in how her child’s behavior affected those around her this morning. No, I was raised with that same consideration. My parents kept me on one side of the sidewalk so we weren’t in the way of other pedestrians. There was certainly none of this laissez-faire parenting that results in enough distance between family members on a sidewalk to mistake them for strangers.
Mind you, now I’m an adult, so I can decide on my own whether some Stupid American warrants my consideration or not. A not-shocking amount of those people do not. That’s a fair middle ground, too, when dealing with me: overt disregard. When it comes to managing my own behaviors, if I’m changing them for a setting, the last thing you likely want is me sharing my opinion on your presence. Maybe you brought your Crotch Goblins into town to learn about life, get some culture. You probably aren’t expecting or open to my hot take about your parenting style or whether you are fit for the job in my estimation.
I told you that my overt disregard of your family was a good result. But, seriously, do everyone a favor and leave the kids at home if they can’t behave as well as a dog on a city sidewalk. Easy-peasy.
I’m sure I’m dying. Seriously, this has got to be it.
You know how it is when your body starts behaving differently?
Some people can feel a migraine coming on. Allegedly.
Others can tell when it’s going to rain because a knee or elbow starts aching.
People can sense seasonal allergies approaching – although, I think that one is more psychosomatic. Obviously.
I’ve got an itchy digit that tells me – with alarmingly weak accuracy – when I’m about to win. Maybe it’s just telling me I need a video lottery dopamine hit. Hmm.
That one kid can see dead people.
Of which I am convinced I soon will surely one be.
Hear me out.
Now that I’m getting around to making my point, I’m thinking I blew that “itchy digit” wad too early. <gasp!> Foreshadowing.
Let’s file this under the 21st digit, shall we? 10 fingers, 10 toes and for ~51% of the population, end of list. But that other 49% will understand where I’m going.
And I mean really understand.
But for the last couple of weeks- three, maybe – I’ve been coming to waking up…more alert than usual. That’s a scenario I hadn’t faced with any regularity since my mid-30s. Certainly not one I ever expected to return.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my mornings at DEFCON 5. I wake up and casually read the news before starting my day.
Back in my 20s I felt like I woke up on the wrong side of DEFCON 2 most days. There was no casual reading those days. It was take care of it or hunker down and endure it.
Walking around the house, I’d feel like a submarine stood on end with a periscope stuck in its up position. Thank gawd the Internet was not then what it is now, otherwise you’d be able to Google my suffering.
But don’t let that diminish your schadenfreude. Just remember: I’m obviously about to die, ok?
I was never a prisoner of my libido. Not really. Situationally, I’ll experience a-ha moments when I have to admit that “it’s been a while”. Nothing like female friends of mine, mind you, who talk about their sex lives in a manner that prompts a mental Star Wars beginning credits scroll.
Those poor dears. But since most of my female friends lack my level of nerdiness, I feel like this is more apt…
Conversely, my male friends, well, I’m one of the younger fellas in that group. I have it on good authority that they probably think of me like I think of my female friends. Interesting how things like that balance themselves out, innit?
Anyway, with this sudden re-emergence of whatever faux virility this is also comes an urgency. Not the useful urgency of a bladder suffering from a good night of uninterrupted sleep. Useful because that morning walk to the bathroom might have been awkward when I lived with others, but a good whiz relieved two morning issues back then.
At least for me.
Now, though…my body is not having any two-fers. At least not for that situation.
Which has me thinking. Reminiscing, really, as my body mentally pokes me and whispers “Hey. Hey!” annoyingly. I’m recalling instances where I’d be sick in bed for a few days and was so miserable I just wanted to die. My body on the other hand was suddenly joined at DEFCON 2 by a useless ally: my libido.
I chalked it up to being bored.
Now I’m reconsidering that phenomenon as my body making its biological Hail Mary play to survive by, well…y’know. If I was mentally praying for death to end the suffering of my flu or cold or, let’s be realistic here, hangover, maybe my body was making sure my biological line would not end with me?
Boy, was it barking up the wrong tree if that were the reality! I mean, talk about a fool’s errand.
The last few weeks, though? I’ve definitely come to understand how there are so many stories or tropes about old men dying on top of young women. Not to make this a heterosexual male phenomenon, but I really can’t think of a time where I’ve heard of an older gay man dying on top of a younger partner.
I mean, Elton John, Stephen Fry and Dustin Lance Black are apparently lining up in the battle for equality there with their younger partners and spouses, so stand by?
But maybe it will be me, caving to the biological imperative only to find out – not to go back to the Star Wars well, but
Not that I have any options or candidates since kicking PanMan back toward the rock he crawled out from under. Maybe I’ll survive simply because the Reaper lacked an appropriate vessel Lost Boy to act through. Trust me, I know how he’d feel.
But that’s my story. I don’t see how anyone could possibly see it any other way. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get my <ahem> affairs in order.
I’ve had false hope with my unwell neighbor before. His family threatened him with eviction. His family evicted him. But he always made it back.
Under threat of eviction, he did just enough and knew who in the family to appeal to in order to avoid it. Once evicted, he caught a night patrol that the HOA hired and convinced him he was locked out. Checking the homeowner roster against his ID, the guy let him into the building, where CrazyTown broke into his own unit and stayed for a few days before getting hauled away again.
It was this skill that scared me. His breaking and entering skills. I’d had poor nights of sleep several times during his residency. The kind where you wake up and there’s an immediate sense of disease. Then you chalk it up to the preternatural quiet “waking you up” and try to calm yourself back to sleep, ignoring the fact that the silence feels like a living presence in your room.
The day he was finally evicted, my downstairs neighbor locked himself out of his unit. Being a renter, his landlord has a realtor lockbox in one of our fire exits. Only he’d forgotten the code, so he came up to ask my neighbor – the HOA President – if he knew it. Code secured, he was off to get his spare key and get into his unit before the food on his stove burned the place down.
He returned a few minutes later after the empty lockbox reminded him he’d failed to return the spare last time he locked himself out. They were discussing the urgency of the situation when CrazyTown emerged from his unit, insisting he could help.
Armed only with his Oregon Trail card – our version of Food Stamps, and remember this guy has a Trust Fund – he was off to save the day…despite the objections that I could hear in my unit. By the time the resident and the Board President caught up with him, he was moments away from having the door open. The more they insisted he stop, the more urgently he worked.
Seconds later, the door was open. Sure, the frame was cracked halfway up the side, but nothing was on fire.
In his haste to stop the burgling savior, my neighbor had locked his own self out of his unit. Irony! He was in in a jiffy, this time with no damage, too. Apparently, an audience of one is all CrazyTown’s fragile nerves can take before his helpfulness manifests as a destructive force.
That night, the day he was evicted, I dreamt I came home and found Myrtle’s litter box filled into a mound. I would never do that because she prefers a firm foundation for her business doings…otherwise it goes on the floor. Not thinking about how or why, I turn to the utility room to get the bag and return the excess litter to it. The empty bag was right by the utility room door. Of course, I had just walked by this door after I entered, but you know how your mind haphazardly throws these details out in your dreams. I scoop the excess litter back into the bag and return it to the utility room.
There’s a candle lit on the dryer. I blow out the fire hazard I am sure I didn’t light and close the laundry room up again. There’s a decorative ladder bookcase leaning against the wall between the utility room door and my front entry. Like the cat litter bag, it hadn’t been there before.
Turning away from it, I see a bunch of dark shadows lying on the floor of my bedroom and cross my dark living room to investigate. My darkened room is lined all around the bed with suitcases, including a ski utility bag. Then I notice the linens have been changed from my earth tone linens to a grey color scheme. I turn on the light and CrazyTown sits up in my bed.
I wake myself up. No more sleep for old Xtopher that night.
A few weeks pass with random stories around the neighborhood of sightings or updates from his siblings. One night, I’m walking to the bar around the corner in the hotel on my block. There’s a smashed but not broken out window on the vacant business on my side of the hotel. Instinctively, I know it’s CrazyTown.
During my second beer, while I’m chatting with the owner, CrazyTown walks into the bar with an open container and a mania you can feel. He takes the order to leave as an invitation to approach the bar and spew yeah-buts at the bartender until every eye in the place is on him. He’s standing between me and the owner and hasn’t seemed to notice me. I’m looking down and away, mentally offering up something approaching prayer.
Giving up, CrazyTown turns away from me to leave. By the time he’s halfway to the door, he’s come fully around and declares, “This guy here, though. He’s the best roommate I ever had!”, coming at me with his fist out for a broment I reject as every eye swivels to me.
Joisus feckin’ Chroist.
I order another drink and spend it explaining I never shared a home with CrazyTown – not that one, anyway – and telling the owner and bartender that was the crazy neighbor I’ve been drinking talking about for the last couple years.
When I get off the elevator later that night, I see our common area has been redecorated.
This leaves little doubt he’s back in the building.
A few days later he’s out and my neighbor has hired the locksmith that rekeyed both the building’s exterior locks and CrazyTown’s unit a few weeks earlier to come back and put a deadbolt on the once again empty unit.
The next day, I notice what I assume is one of Myrtle’s toys in the corner between my desk and hall closet. Do not judge the cleanliness of this space in the photo below!
I wonder how long it’s been there and hope it’s not new. I’m fooling myself into vaguely remembering it being there for a long while, but I know that’s just to distract me from the bowl of dum-dums CrazyTown kept on his kitchen counter.
I was never more sure that I needed to move than in that moment. I’m also not sure what’s worse, the sucker being a new arrival or one I’ve actively overlooked for months.
Sometime in all this my wallet also went missing. Luckily I had my “earthquake money” – a hundred bucks cash and a credit card – to get me by. I tore my place apart looking for it, more than once under the couch cushions, in the laundry room, bathroom, closet, dresser drawers…everywhere.
Nothing.
It finally turned up a few days later while I was cooking. I opened my knife drawer and there it was. I put it there when I entertain people I don’t know well enough to trust, if you get my drift. It’s a grim reminder that if shit goes south, I won’t be easily rolled and if shit only goes sideways, I have knives.
I counted the knives several times to ensure none were missing. Also wondering if my wallet being there indicated I’d had a specifically unmemorable fuck the night before I realized my wallet was missing or if someone was fucking with me.
Pretty sure I know which scenario was the reality. And. I. Don’t. Like. It.
So, color me optimistically relieved that this chapter is finally closed. 🙏🏽
atleastihaveafrigginglass 