When KGAY TV does something, it may be half-assed but trust it’ll never be done by half-measures. Despite my best efforts.
To wit: I spent two full weekends on the couch.
Watching movies.
Psychotically.
In my defense, this was all to avoid watching the Twilight movies, but maybe I should have just taken a walk.
By Sunday on the first weekend, I felt bad about wasting the weekend on the couch, so I watched a pick me up movie: 13 Going on 30. That made me feel better, so I made myself a nice dinner and watched Peppermint while I ate. Disgusted by my accidental Jennifer Garner-palooza, I went to bed before I ended up watching Elektra.
The next weekend, determined to not repeat the sins of the prior weekend, I started out with a nice ride on the Peloton.
…and that’s the end of my accomplishments.
Somehow I ended up on the couch again. Wary of the prior weekend’s psycho binge-ing, I put Notting Hill on the TV while I cooled down and ate breakfast. The rationale was that I’ve seen this movie enough that I can turn it off halfway through without feeling deprived.
Once I finished the movie, I showered and sat down to write.
Nope. TV on again and equally accidentally I ended up watching Runaway Bride. It wasn’t until I caught myself thinking that I should watch the original Gere/Roberts pairing (Pretty Woman) midway through that I realized my mistake was already made: Julia Roberts double-header.
Dejected, I did some chores and then sat down with leftovers for dinner, determined to break the mold. My solution was to watch something more substantial. Not in the headspace for true crime or a documentary, I compromised and settled into the then-newly released Netflix biopic, Nyad.
I remembered Nyad being in the news when I was young. Most notably, her swim of the English Channel. I didn’t remember much about her Cuba swim other than it was an attempt. I remembered her Cuba: redux only inasmuch as it was a success.
Suffice to say, I was in for a deep dive (pun very much intended) on Diana Nyad.
Worst things first: the Nyad ‘do.
Dear sweet Jesus…get this woman a homosexual.
Next scene: Oh, she is a homosexual. Now it’s almost understandable.
We find out early in the show that Nyad and her best friend, Bonnie Stoll (played by Jodie Foster) were briefly lovers before their relationship segued into its lifelong friendship. This was handled in an interesting way, in my opinion. My experience has been the assumption of homosexuals having a close same-sex friend automatically being a relationship is usually a heterosexual presumption.
It’s a trope, don’t yell at me about it.
But here, they handle it as the same assumption, but by another lesbian…that Stoll steers Nyad toward. It’s the potential love interest that makes the assumption. Respectfully, so as not to end up the other woman or in a thruple situation – which is why this movie could never be about gay men. But let’s not get me started on those idiots.
Speaking of Jodie Foster, I was inordinately distracted by the thought, “What is up with her character’s wraparound glasses?!?” They (pictured above) are on in dang near every scene. And just what does that sartorial choice remind me of?
Turns out, though, that this is a very real representation of the actual person.
Stoll, not Bono. However, it turns out the glasses have a real purpose. For both. Bono has glaucoma, which makes his eyes sensitive to light, hence the ever present tinted lenses. Stoll, on the other hand, had been a professional racquetball player and her large specs likely started out as eye protection. I assume they morphed into prescription lenses by the end of her career and then just stuck. It’s not mentioned in the movie and I found nothing to explain it on a cursory search of the web, so I’m just assuming.
Not that I wasn’t enjoying the movie, but this was my mindset – distracted, perhaps desperately trying to feel productive after the past two weekends – as I watched. Which is how we ended up back at Nyad’s haircut. Just like Stoll’s glasses, its horror reminded me of something. Then it hit me:
Fucking Spike from Notting Hill the day before! I love that I got a pic of him in a wetsuit – even though it doesn’t show off the hair as best it could.
Next scene:
Well, I’ll be a motherfucker…the actor that played Spike in Notting Hill played a fairly large part in this movie, too. So much for free will. Guess I was meant to spend the past two weekends in movie rabbit holes. It was preordained…I’m just a victim.
Mental misfires aside, I truly learned a lot about this feat and the person and the team behind the effort. I don’t want to give away too much, but about 45 minutes in, the swim is underway and I didn’t really see how they stretched a ~70 hour endeavor into another ~75 theatrical minutes…and that’s where my learning began.
At the end, I’m not gonna lie: I was crying. Triumph of the human spirit and all.
But the experience of seeing the movie elevated Nyad to a new level for me. Instead of some obscure sports figure, she became an example of determination.
A pioneer. A survivor. An unsung hero.
Good for her.
If you haven’t watched it, maybe do. Because I’m not telling you any more – except they all die at the end.
Oh, alright…they don’t all die at the end! And as I sit here writing this, I have a heightened awareness that I have crossed the mid-point of my 50s. This movie picks up Nyad at her 60th birthday. She comes to it with a determination to finish something she’d left undone in her past.
And that’s maybe my real lesson here. Not the history lesson into something I was only tangentially aware of, no. Rather that things that I didn’t accomplish when I was younger don’t have to stay that way. That’s something for me to chew on as I careen toward the inevitable.
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!
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.
But, really. The DMV has jumped the shark yet again.
First it was a fairly specific and isolated behavior I took issue with, not that I didn’t appreciate the logic behind it. States like Florida and Arizona began lengthening the timeframes of their driver licenses. In most cases it was a move from somewhere in the ‘hood of 3 or 4 year terms and they extended it to 7 years.
I get it. A lot of those drivers would die.
Good strategy for the long lines at the DMV. Not sure the practice itself doesn’t simply indict licensing people past a certain age.
Then I turned fifty-thrive.
Well, that dubious accomplishment of my persistent survival had nothing to do with it. It’s more a matter of the practice of driver licenses expiring on birthdays, regardless of the age the driver in question may be.
However, the great state of Oregon had adopted the whole extended validity practice. I knew this when I moved back in 2016 and got my license reissued. Well, learned it during that process. So it wasn’t a surprise that my license expired on my birthday last month.
Knowing this was coming down the pike, I spent some downtime in traffic researching how to go about renewing my license shortly after the first of the year – I know, such a planner, me…two weeks before it expired. Let’s not talk about me justifying using my phone while I’m the driver’s seat but not actively driving. Regardless, I went into the renewal situation fully expecting my proChristination would result in me having no license for several weeks, if not months.
Imagine my surprise when I finished – yes, still in traffic – filling out the online form and was told my license would be mailed to me within two weeks.
I was fully expecting to be required to rub some unwashed elbows as part of the renewal process. Gourd knows, my eyes haven’t gotten any better over the past 7 years. Might be worth pulling me into the office just to keep a night-blind menace off the streets, right?
Not that I didn’t appreciate being able to dodge my age-induced camera shyness. Seriously, though…I no longer – regrettably – look like this strapping young fella:
Not that I don’t admit to looking like my own soap opera evil twin in that pic. I also appreciate that my looks – evil twin or not – held into my late 40s.
But now I look more like The Dude after a long week of getting by, man.
Best part? My new license expires in 2031…8 years from now.
Is the Oregon DMV expecting me to die before my new license expires? Gourd willing. I’ll keep you posted on that…
I have to admit that this could be it: the best I’ll feel for the rest of my life.
That might sound dramatic, but compared to the thought I had the other day about houseless people and warmth…maybe less so?
What prompted my musing on this age of slow decay?
Well, my toothache last weekend, for sure. Then, the other night I was sitting on my couch watching Mythic Quest (highly recommend!) and casually rubbing my face. Unsurprisingly, I found the usual psychotic puberty-era throwback oily skin. Along with that, though, were these oddly placed patches of dry skin. Not the usual T-zone dry patches…these were weird.
This, mind you, is on top of the still randomly rampant maskne. Why that needs to be hanging in a year after mask mandates dropped, I’m not sure. Probably karma.
Anyway, this new facial geography kinda felt like it would just flick off with a little lift.
So I did.
I don’t know why it made me feel better to accomplish something as small as removing dead skin cells, but there I was. And because the universe is a sonofabitch, there it was.
I’d explored the area under and around my eyes – and then was just kind of tracing the outline of a nostril with my fingernail and found something I’d never have seen. It was right there where the nostril meets the cheek, so the curve of even my unflared nostril would totally obscure it – if it were even visible to my aged eyes.
All thoughts of the randomness of these flaky, dry skin cells completely and instantly disappeared as blood started cascading out of my face.
And that’s only borderline hyperbole.
So, y’know, I get up and go get some tissue, dab it, drop it in the toilet and make my way for the couch.
Oh, no…that’s pure hubris. That fucker bled and bled and bled.
Nothing like these little shaving accidents that throw out a perfect orb of blood and then clot or are satisfied being staunched by a scrap of one-ply TP. No, this was more like – well, have you ever had your ear (the pinna, not the lone) accidentally nicked during a haircut? Yeah, it was like that.
I didn’t entirely rule out bleeding to death.
It took a return trip to the bathroom – I waited this time – applying pressure until the tissue was saturated. I waited during the second application of direct pressure instead of returning to the couch because it wasn’t slowing.
Finally, I opted for a double wad of TP to staunch my not-life-threatening wound and went back to the couch. I finished my episode of Mythic Quest before tentatively removing the pressure.
Finally.
I mean, sheesh. That was a lot of blood wasted. And wine! Well, not wasted wine, but wine drinking time wasted. Still, I wasn’t going to risk spilling or spoiling my wine, so I waited.
Seriously, though. Should it take 20 minutes for blood to clot? And that’s when it hit me, that this was probably the best I’d ever feel for the rest of my life. I’m sure the best age related physical shenanigannery (Chrisism, boom!)I can expect is massive bruising when I casually bump something.
You know how when you meet a lapsed Catholic and religion comes up in conversation? Eventually it comes up as, “Oh, you’re Catholic, what are your thoughts?!?”
The response? Well, obviously, it’s varied. They’ve left the cult and can now exercise free thought and expression. But it usually starts with a clarifying variant of “Non-practicing Catholic” before any deeper response is given.
It’s like “Let me be perfectly clear, here…”
Well, that’s me and my sexuality.
People usually want to know if I know their gay friend when they are introduced to me by a mutual acquaintance. “Oh, Chris-Chris?”, they ask. our mutual friend like my eyes and ears aren’t connected to my brain.
Mentally I add, “Non-practicing” before they even finish their sentence. But I have managed to perfect the mental eye-roll. A few of those made it awkwardly out into the wild. I wasn’t the first to realize it, either. Not even always the second. I had to ask myself a few times whether the person-I’d-been-introduced-to’s eyes widened before or after my friend’s overly dramatic coughing fit began to figure out the appropriate level of chagrin or combativeness to display.
I say all this by way of introducing my topic tonight: I deleted the sole dating app on my phone a couple weeks back.
Sidebar: This is dating not mating app I’m talking about. I rarely act on the opportunities that prostrate present themselves on the mating app, but I enjoy opening it to “see who’s around”. It used to be fun to surreptitiously open up Grindr while shopping or at a show with plenty guy candy present just to see if there were other gays around. Now, though, it’s so much easier to profile gays in a crowd. Well, queers in a crowd. What with the rise in visibility of gender fluidity over the past 5-10 years, I’m no longer wondering if that hot guy is gay so much as I’m curious if that guy wearing nail polish isn’t gay. This is what I lived through the AIDS crisis for? Seems like a lot of trouble in retrospect.
So, yeah. I deleted OKStupid a few weeks back.
Not like I was actively using it. But at least I could tell myself I had a line in the water, right?
Sports analogy!
Don’t get me wrong, I was completely fine letting them app linger, tucked away in the social media folder on my Home Screen. But a while back, they sent me this bullshit:
Yeah, GoPuff knows a lot more about marketing than the folks at OKStoopid. If I wanted manipulative behaviors like that, I’d date. So I ignore it thinking, “Save me the trouble, will ya?” But, just like dating, they kept coming back like they hadn’t thrown down a failed ultimatum.
“No, they don’t.” It’s just the same Lost Boys I encounter in the bars or on the truly asocial media apps trying to assuage their shame by having an actual dating app on their phone. Poor stupid, stupid dears.
Or, channeling my inner Groucho Marx, riffing on not wanting to meet anyone who would want to meet me. In case you missed this the last 100-ish times I’ve used it…
The thing I didn’t like about this app experience wasn’t the caliber of the offerings – I’m sure it would surprise no one to hear that my expectations were set appropriately low and we’re still unmet. It was that the app was just a gaslighting shit show.
I’d keep seeing the same guys. My mental conversations would be something like, “I know I’ve swiped left on that train wreck before.”
Being <ahem> situationally charitable, I’d assume the best. About the app, not the person. When it came to the people, my thoughts would range somewhere near the “Who is this hard luck case (from me) trying to fool with a new profile?”
Turns out, it wasn’t the people trying to juice interest with a fresh profile, it was the app recycling people I had no interest in by presenting them as potential matches again. Like “It’s been 3 months and you haven’t met anyone, are you sure you can afford to be so choosy…at this point?”
Yes, I can. 1000%.
I finally gave them a hand and deleted the app myself after getting another “Your Profile Will Be Deactivated” email from them.
Yes, please.
I’m not kidding, the next day I got two emails from them. The first was another “Your Profile Will Be Deactivated” email that briefly made Gilbert Godfried my dominant personality.
The second email almost earned Apple a repeat sale on my phone. Check it out…
Two hours after a “WTF, I deleted my profile, why are you still sending me emails?!?” email, they’re trying to lure me back with my epically useless Super Like.
Hey, OKStoopid, I kinda super like myself – at least compared to any of the people you actively call Users. I think I’ll be ok.
That’s not a declaration I make capriciously, as I admit I am wont to do. Nono, this comes years after the 50th-birthday-party-turned-dating-intervention. That led to a year of focused dating effort – also where the loathsome OKStoopid app earned its place on my Home Screen.
That led to this –
Still active on Amazon…<hint, hint>
And it’s all been diminishing returns since then. Turns out, if I want oddly unsatisfying entertainment, I can binge watch a quirky series on one of my many streaming services. Cheaper than dating, less frustrating and much less potential for follow-up therapy! Plus, unless the internet goes out, binge watching always shows up.
No, this is not a nostalgia post about my Columbia House membership.
Whilst working from home yesterday, I was planning out my weekend. The focus was getting my weekend blogging goal back on track as well as my exercise regimen – which has been off track since my vacation. Add into that the Silver Fox’s return to town. And this is still on top of wanting to maintain my regular weekend misadventures.
But it was also Flashback Friday on my local radio station. Back when I was living that #LyftLife that meant I listened to the weekly Party Out of Bounds radio show from 8-midnight while driving Friday nights.
All 80s and 90s music for four hours? Yes, please.
Now that I’m living the WFH life, I listen to the morning show until 10 Monday-Friday and maybe switch to a pandora station later in the day. But on Flashback Friday I might put in a little longer on the show because they give away tickets to upcoming live shows from 80s and 90s bands every hour.
I’ve set my limit at 5 calls per hour, if I’m able to call when they throw it out. Sometimes I’m on a Teams or Zoom call and can’t.
It’s fine. I’ve already won seats at their free in studio performances twice this year, so if I miss out, I’m still having a pretty good live music year. Some of the shows though…Jane’s Addiction, Garbage, Crowded House. There’s about five shows to choose from each week at a variety of venues: The Moda Center (where the Blazers play), Edgefield (one of our larger outdoor venues), Crystal Ballroom (if you wanna experience a concert on the third floor of a hundred+ year old building, this is your place – and let’s hear it for feeling the floor move beneath your unmoving feet!), or Pioneer Courthouse Square (aka: Portland’s Living Room).
Moda CenterInside the Moda during concert modeEdgefield – looking back from the 4th row. More on that in a minuteCrystal Ballroom – home of the “Floating Dancefloor”.Pioneer Courthouse Square from the air…or an office tower across the street
I’ve been to shows at all of these venues over the years, but my attendance was stagnant recently – pandemic closures notwithstanding. I’ve been to Moda many times, including Fleetwood Mac on three separate tours. I saw Everclear back in the late 90s or early aughts at the Crystal and was “recently” (aka: five-ish years ago!) invited to Echo and the Bunnymen there. Pioneer Courthouse has a couple different summer music events each year. The first is just a “Portland is awesome” type of thing…a free Lunchtime Concert Series every Thursday at noon. Back when our downtown had businesses operating in it, people would throw open their windows in the neighboring non-skyscraper buildings to lean out an watch. People on the streets would be drawn to this packed city block brick plaza. I’ve seen several shows there, too. Notably, the Indigo Girls back in the 90s and I was sad to miss their return to this venue this year. There have also been a couple of community concerts featuring our local Pink Martini to mark holiday tree lightings or punctuate a local event – like a protest concert or to honor the life of a colorful former Mayor.
This is our former Mayor, Bud Clark. I missed his memorial at Pioneer Square, but if it was half as entertaining as he was…
Which leaves us with Edgefield out of the venues listed above. It’s a 7000 “seat” outdoor venue at the edge of town, owned by the same family that owns the Crystal Ballroom, so the music gene is strong. The official name of their music program is Edgefield Concerts on the Lawn…hence the apostrophes around the word seat earlier. I’d been decades ago when it first opened. It was fun to go and cop a squat on a patch of grass with a date or maybe as a foursome with another couple.
But that was decades ago, and my lawn squatting days are behind me.
Enter my drink buddy neighbor. He’s kind of my spirit animal for having a life as a single old man. I don’t know why this eludes me so. I think it might partially be a willful ignorance on my part. It was only a few – ok, closer to ten than five – years ago that I regularly wrote under the blog theme I called the Yes Game. Now I’ve got Jessla fresh off her divorce and recently moved back to the city from the coast talking about her Year of Yes as well as my drinking buddy reminding me that life is meant for living, not waiting for the end.
Anyway, my drinking buddy has adult children with a couple of grands that keep him busy, which is a resource I don’t share. Outside of that, which is plenty for most people, he also has this great life of solo adventures that have inspired me recently to do more than just carouse my way to the grave.
He’s the one that invited me to the Loverboy/REO Speedwagon/Styx show a couple months ago. That, in turn, motivated me to not be resigned to the sidelines of life. I remembered when doing things alone was a source of empowerment for me when I was younger. As I’ve aged, I’ve avoided that source of power while eschewing the source of one of my biggest frustrations: people.
It was good to be reminded that I can do both by planning strategically. While it will take a lot to get me back to the Moda Center for a show, post-pandemic. It was the show that I lucked into last week at Edgefield that highlighted the reality I’d been missing out on.
My drinking buddy ended up triple-booked on a Friday night: a family thing, a Timbers match (he’s a season ticket holder) and a show at Edgefield that he’d been raving about for weeks. It was the last-minute realization that he had a match that Friday and the laster-minute family thing that ended up with me being gifted his tickets to the Edgefield show.
To Bonnie-freakin’-Raitt, no less.
I couldn’t possibly say no! Even though I’d already said yes to walking the Silver Fox’s pooch while he was at the same show. And yes to walking Jessla’s dogs while she was out of town for the weekend.
On top of having a lunchtime doctor appointment…this was going to be quite the Friday. So at lunchtime I put my Out of Office on and hood it over to my doctor. That runs late, so I go right from there to Jessla’s pups afternoon walk. I’m back in my chair just before 130. At 430, I set my status to offline and head up to Jessla’s for a quick pee walk and dinner for her pups. Then I hop in the car and head east to Edgefield.
Did I mention that this free seat is in the 4th row of Reserved Seating?!? But I still have to wait in line with all the picnickers before the show starts at 630, thanks to this post-9/11 mass shooter gun violence world in which we live.
Getting 7000 people through metal detectors takes a minute. Factor in Bonnie pulls a Boomer crowd and you’ve got a real shitshow of a line scenario.
The venue is up there in that stand of trees, this grass will soon be covered in cars
The Fox had been insisting my seats were good, but the seats he had in the Sponsors Section – courtesy of his nephew, owner of Wyld, a cannabis edibles manufacturer – were better. Well, they came with reserved parking and free tacos and drinks, so he was partially correct. Otherwise, we both learned that they had moved the Sponsor Se ruin sometime in the past couple of decades. Here’s a view from my not-worse-than-his seat.
He’s under that white tent…
But that reserved parking was legit. After standing in a line for 45 minutes, what was I finally greeted by when I was able to branch off the mainline to the two measly metal detectors dedicated to Reserved Seating ticket holders?
I’d know that snow cap anywhere. He hadn’t responded to my bored-in-line inquiries about his whereabouts. Probably because he was driving out so he could walk right up to the Reserved Ticket Holder’s entrance. But it amused me – while I was ignoring my darker inner thoughts that he’s seen me and was ignoring me – that he was so focused on the venue that he didn’t notice me until moments after I sent this…
Remember the basement scene in Silence of the Lambs where Bill is reaching out in the dark behind an unsuspecting Clarice?
Anyway, we were both entertained by his level of surprise. A phenomenon I would repeat as I beat a hasty retreat during the encore to get back to Jessla’s pups for their evening walk and ran into the Fox’s former partner’s parents – with whom he’s still friends. The dad was wearing his Timbers jersey, showing support for his team as a season ticket holder since he’d made a different decision than my beneficiary. So we got to chat a bit until we made for our separate grassy parking spaces – turns out, they left early to get home to their dog, too. Since it’s an outdoor venue, I put down the windows and opened the moonroof to listen to the encore as I queued up to exit the lot.
I’m not the guy who runs into someone I know everywhere I go. I’m always the guy with the person who runs into someone everywhere there go. Seriously, it happened at the top of the Eiffel Tower. But in between this happening to me twice in one night, I saw an incredible show. A week later, I’m still in awe.
Mavis Staples was the opener. Let me tell you, at 83 this woman is absolutely killing it. She’s not tall enough to have ever ridden a roller coaster in her life, but onstage? Well, let’s just say that you can’t miss her – even though it was a good minute or two before I saw her head because it was behind a mic-mounted iPad.
What? I didn’t see her take the stage because I was getting a beer! The McMenamin’s brothers started out as beer makers, not concert promoters.
I watched Mavis in awe. Her band and back up were amazing on their own, but in no way making up for any diminished capacity in Mavis’ talent or skill. She might have had to sit down a couple of times during the set – 83 years old! – and the band didn’t lose a beat, but when she was ready to come back, she let ‘em know that the stage was hers again.
I will never not think of this performance when I hear a cement mixer’s engine idling while its tumble turns. That a voice that big comes out of such a small human. Epic.
If that was all there was to this show…it was still a bargain at twice the price. But wait…there’s more!
Bonnie-freakin’-Raitt!
In my concert-going career I’ve been to myriad shows. Folks touring to promote a recent album, storytellers on tour, spectacles of a show that hid lipsyncing artists, intimate venues, stadium tours, has-beens on the State Fair circuit, perennial favorites, career touring acts…and much, much more!
And it’s not like those options are mutually exclusive. It’s more of a Venn diagram.
I’d always thought of Bonnie as a storyteller on tour given my knowledge of her history touring with the likes of Lyle Lovett and John Prine. In this instance she was that storyteller on tour, touring to promote a new album and perennial favorite. I wasn’t super-excited to learn about the new album since that usually draws focus from the library I’m familiar with. For someone whose first album came out 50+ years ago, though? She is still creating amazing content.
Case in point, after talking about touring with Prine and reminiscing about them performing Angel From Montgomery together and how she can’t imagine performing it without him since his death, she tells how that history and loss inspired her to write a song with a similar story behind it. She’d heard a story about a man who showed up on a woman’s doorstep years after she lost her son in an accident…to thank her for the gift of life her son’s heart gave him.
Being an emotional sap is another good reason to go to these types of shows alone.
A few songs later, she performed Angel From Montgomery, and I think everyone was crying when she hugged her guitar to her like it was her lost, dear friend.
Starting the encore
Like I said, I beat feet at the encore, but didn’t miss anything but a 45 minute wait to exit the lot in doing so. Hearing her voice through the trees in the night air of a perfect PNW summer evening while idling in a grass field? It gave me time to think about what I take for granted: the future. Not for granted, so much, more something I look forward to with a sense of dread or contempt.
But this coming-up-on-73 year old and her 83 year old touring companion showed me that people can continue to give to the world around them well into the years of life when others have left their careers. And my Generation Jones aged drinking buddy is giving me an example on how to live life as a single-person without waiting for someone to live it with to enable it – and without caring what others think of my solo-status.
I am kind of happy about my reluctance to return to larger venues for this reason, too. Fringe benefit of going solo to smaller venues alone? I stand out as alone easier in a smaller setting. Hey, if I’m going it alone, I want credit for the finger I’m giving my failure at achieving an enduring relationship. Can’t get that in a crowd!
All of this is by way of telling you that on my fifth attempt at winning tickets in the Flashback Friday offerings yesterday, I succeeded!
Jessla would point out the time was a triple number as an indicator of this luck
You’ll notice it took 22 attempts – versus the weeks of effort that came before yesterday – but someone finally answered the phone! A few minutes later, I was the proud owner of a pair of tickets to the upcoming Shins show at Pioneer Courthouse Square and could not have been happier. Until a few minutes later when the texts started rolling in…
I think I mentioned a while back that my grandfather passed away. He was just weeks shy of his 100th, so I like to say that he pulled a Betty White. I also like to say he might have liked older women, so was sure to leave a cushion between them. I think she died 3 weeks shy of her century and grandpa had closer to 6.
Of course, as he handed off the patriarch title to my father, I also like to think he was teaching us one last life lesson: don’t get your hopes up. You see, I’d bet the family was a bit more excited about having a centurian in our midst than he was about being said centurian.
Why doesn’t spellcheck like that word – centurian? It wants to make it “centurion”, but grandpa wasn’t a gladiator. The spelling paradigm for other decades of age grouping is “ian”, so why not here, too?
Septuagenarian.
Octogenarian.
Nonagenarian.
Centurian.
Maybe there’s just not a word for it in the English language since it’s such a rare thing in Western culture. Maybe there’s another word for it. Look, I don’t have time to Google it…I’m making sauce!
Also, my place smells fantastic right now.
Anyway…he decided to die without a Will. My uncle had helped him draw one up while he was visiting years ago – along with a power of attorney – and all he needed to do was get them notarized. He managed to get the PoA completed, but just didn’t find the time to get the Will done.
I come by my procrastination honestly.
So my dad and uncle have been slogging through settling grandpa’s estate.
It wasn’t – or hasn’t – been too challenging, aside from dad being local and my uncle being in Texas. My dad’s goal had been to have the house sold by the time that he and mom went to my cousin’s wedding in early April. Then it was just a matter of waiting out probate.
My uncle’s goal was a little less defined. Actually, it may have not even existed. Honestly, I think he has separation issues. If I’m not mistaken, someone still has some of grandma’s stuff in their garage that he couldn’t part with. She’s been dead close to 20 years now.
But my uncle did manage to go through a lot of stuff when he was here for the service. Including a quarter of a closet worth of stuff he wanted to keep.
I get it, this was the house he grew up in. That’s a rare occurrence anymore.
That said, he was reluctant to commit to anything more than what was ok to donate. At the same time, he actively poo-pooed the notion of an estate sale.
But once he was on a plane, my sister and I got right to work doing just that. To hear my parents talk about it, we were amazing. Honestly, though, my sister was an absolute force. I don’t have her drive or determination. Plus, her round trip commute every day with mom and dad was close to 3 hours!
Hats off, sis. All the props.
Since mom and dad credited us equally, it was their pleasure to encourage us to liberate anything we wanted from the estate. In the interest of heirlooms and legacies, y’know.
Since grandpa’s house closed a couple weeks back – the didn’t quite make dad’s timeline, but they were signing papers at the wedding – and there’s about a month left on probate, I figured now was a good time to highlight some of the things of his I’ve brought into my home.
Also, I’ve done the work on my relationship with grandpa and feel like I can look at these reminders and think of the man he was without being reminded only of the good or bad.
Oh, quick sidebar: one of the things that my uncle found was the original advertisement for his house – which was new construction in the mid-60s. Let me just say that I think the reality of owning a house for 40+ years os a thing of the past. Americans can’t commit like that. At the same time, selling a house for 30+ times the original purchase price is also a thing of the past. At least on my coast.
Now that the sidebar is out of the way, you can probably think of some of the amazing things that gathered dust at grandpa’s during the last half of his life. Not to mention all of mine.
I swear, I don’t covet. Really, the one thing I wanted once it was pulled out from the back of a bottom cabinet was the cookie jar from my childhood.
I knew it was valuable – estimates put it at around $300 – so I was reluctant to accede to mom and dad’s encouragement. Dutifully, I posted it online. But when takers failed to materialize, well…it wasn’t going to Goodwill!
It’s so cool. And aside from grandpa bringing out his 5 lb coffee cans full of change for us to sort through during our visits, stuffing my hand into this cookie jar was very looked forward to part of visiting grandpa.
And that was kind of how I approached my heirlooting heirlooming. Make it available for sale, but if no one took it, it was up for grabs.
I say “kind of” because there was a slatted bench I wanted – despite having nowhere to put it. Grandpa had it at the foot of his bed forever, however, my bedroom isn’t as spacious as his. Still, you know how The Gays are with the mid-century aesthetic.
So, for me – for now – it’ll be a plant stand. Also, like the cactuses on the other window sill, this keeps Myrtle out of the windows, which means I can put the screens back up for the summer. Who knew that Myrtle would hate slats?
Don’t worry, she’s upped her pooping out of the box game to let me know she objects to the placement.
You can’t really see it well in that pic, but there’s also one of a pair of nifty ashtrays that I pinched. I don’t smoke, so really these were just nostalgic discoveries when we found them. However, when I turned them over to find my grandmother’s signature of them, they became a remote tray and place to drop my keys and wallet.
I’m not a smoker. That’s not to say they aren’t well used…luckily, grandma’s glazing game was right on, otherwise I’m sure the smell that went along with those nicotine stains would have been a nostalgia dealbreaker.
Yes, yes…dusty. I know.
Unbeknownst to us, grandpa had a thing for old bottles and insulators. Like an “entire kitchen cabinet full” thing. That being the case, I didn’t mind adding a couple of his to my own collection of glass whatnots.
That bottle is an old Old Bushmills bottle. The glass – in raised letters – says that “Federal law forbids the reuse of this bottle”. My limited pre-post-Googling on this topic hasn’t brought and federal prohibitions – see what I did there? – to light. I’m sure someone <cough, cough> Phil! <cough> will have a notion on the topic, so let me know in the comments.
The last instance of heirlooting I’m gonna share was both a last minute discovery and an “I’m grabbing that before the house goes on the market” type of thing.
No one in my family agrees with me that this had been in great-grandma’s kitchen when she died in the mid-70s. So I’m likely wrong, but that’s what I remember. Still, when we cleared away the project remnants from it and pulled the protective cardboard off of it, I think everyone was surprised by its presence in grandpa’s garage. Clever man had the wear-withal to protect its surface, despite its relegation to his garage…
I’m just stunned that no one snatched it up at the estate sale! So, that being the reality, once dad told me the date the house was going live on MLS, I did a midnight run and picked this baby up. If no one else wanted it, Myrtle can use it as a feeding station. Saves my old knees and back squatting done multiple times a day to feed the not-as-old-as-me bitch gal.
I mean, look at it. It’s amazing! And in better shape for its age than I – but I’m working on it! Since entertaining isn’t really a thing these days – at least in my life – I’m in no hurry to add chairs. But I will, I’m sure.
Someday.
Until then, I’m glad I have these mementos of grandpa’s. For as difficult as our relationship was after I came out as gay, these remind me of the amazing grandfather he was, even if he wasn’t always the best human. And on that last point, he didn’t change so much as he changed his behaviors. That says something. I knew in certain moments of silence that he was editing his responses, if not abandoning them altogether. An impressive feat for someone whose anachronistic behaviors had been written off by most as “That’s just how he was raised” things we would have to endure.
Well, I was watching, and I think he proved them all wrong. That’s both a memory and an example that I can embrace.
Especially as my family faces it’s next obstacle: bringing Black Sheep Bro back into the fold.
atleastihaveafrigginglass 