Tom Petty

AO and I watched half of Peter Bogdanovich's documentary on Tom Petty last night. Truth be told, Damn the Torpedoes (1979) was one the first albums I ever owned (the jazz saxophonist, Eddie Harris, was the other). The back story on Torpedoes is even more interesting than I thought. After his first two albums, he fought his record label (following its purchase by a larger conglomerate) to gain control of his publishing rights. He was a defiant dude. Torpedoes was the subsequent album. You can really tell that this third album was a mature one. "Here Comes My Girl," "Even the Losers" and "Refugee" are great songs. Of course to my early adolescent sensibilities they were even better. But I'm impressed with my taste after all these years. Tom Petty is sort of the southern version of songwriters like Patti Smith and Elvis Costello, even though he was a bit of a pretty boy. His biography is interesting as well. He grew up lower middle class in Gainseville, a bit of a sissy, with an authoritarian father. You can hear these themes in Refugee.

The most annoying kid ever

BB and I went to the supermarket yesterday. Unlike the little health food coop, the aisles in the supermarket are big enough to skip, run, and jump around in. Which is what BB does. He fell once and I must have said slow down at least 10 times. But mostly it's harmless. He did use the opportunity of a passing cart to scoot by me, barely missing the old woman pushing the cart. That garnered a sterner warning from me. I was pleased, though, when he became the most annoying kid ever. We got stuck behind a costumer and her daughter having some problem about a price or scanning their credit card. I became more and more impatient as a supervisor was called over. I was delighted, then, when BB took one of the usual objects in his hand and began banging it repeatedly on the metal portion of the conveyor belt. Bang, bang, bang, while the costumer ahead kept looking over with increasing annoyance. I could have stopped him immediately. But I let him keep doing it for a full minute or so. Bang, bang, bang. It was what I wanted to be doing. Finally, I pulled him away and he quit without a peep. Vengeance was mine! It occurs to me that all parents must use their kids as passive aggressive mechanisms from time to time.

Dolls

I looked down the other day as BB and I did errands and focused on the two figurines he was carrying in his hand. He carries these things all the time (a little Darth Vader and a surprisingly butch-looking Princess Leia), to bed, to school, in the car. Before that, it was little plastic dinosaurs and even before that various favorite Thomas trains. But with the latest figurines, it's just so clear that they are his dolls. They've collapsed his prior attachments to objects and his now mostly gone imaginary friends into little humanoid creatures. They go everywhere with him and are incorporated into all of his play. They climb couch cushions, walk vast expanses of floor, eat with him at dinner, help him choose clothes in the morning. And they play out his fantasies, which at this point mostly include light-saber fu of various sorts. Right now they are fighting a big homemade snake in the family room, with crayons standing in for sabers (which were quickly lost). I assume they'll be slaying this dragon by the time we're ready to sit down to breakfast.

Dress up

It's Halloween season. A popular time with kids, parents, and, apparently, college students. There is a costume store nearby that has been crawling with college students all weekend. (Fight for your right . . . to . . . PARRRTTTTY!) Back in San Francisco I used to hit the Castro on Halloween, which was a big parade of outrageousness. I seem to recall a skinny artist friend cross-dressed as a mafia moll waving a little gun in the air . . . those were the days.

In any case, Halloween is big around our house. Usually, AO makes BB's costume, but this year we bought him the Darth Vader costume. LB is Yoda and, unlike BB, his costume IS homemade. His mom made big green ears and put him in a baby, martial-arts-looking bathrobe. We went out today for a Parks & Recs "fairy tale trail," where the three little pigs and the big bad wolf hand out candy to touring costumed children. We saw Captain Hook and Peter Pan; Bud Light Year; little jaded rock stars; dinosaur toddlers; and lots of pirates. Everyone was cute, cute, cute, including mom, who had on a black retro dress with a Halloween print theme and a velvet cape. Me? I was a proud daddy.

Superstition

Aahh, surveys of Americans always turn up these irrational beliefs:

"According to a new Associated Press/Ispos poll of 1,013 adults in the US, approximately one out of three people believe in ghosts, 19 percent in spells or witchcraft, 48 percent in ESP, and 34 percent in UFOs. Meanwhile, 23 percent claim to have 'seen or believed (they) were in the presence of a ghost,' 14 percent say they have sighted a UFO, and only five percent have 'seen a monster in the closet of (their) bedroom.'" source: boingboing


Truth be told, I saw UFOs when I was a kid while traveling long distance with my parents one night. And I saw some kind of devil creature on a sleep over when I was 11. I mean, I remember these things clearly. The former I think I can explain as Northern Lights - we were traveling between Idaho and Seattle, after all - and I was half asleep. The latter I can't explain with such ease. A dream? Anxiety? The devil creature ran around the bed like some kind of heat signature. It's still mysterious to me.

I also saw lots of weirdness later, when I began experimenting . . . but that is another story. While I differ from those in the survey who believe, I do think that the brain is a beautiful and fickle organ capable of creating all kinds of transient phenomena. Sometimes, though, I'm almost convinced that my partner reads my mind. But she can't, can she?

Nights

10:30 p.m. Asleep
11:30 p.m. LB fussy, wants to nurse, in bed with us
12:30 p.m. LB fussing more, tosses against me, then to his mother, back again
1:30 a.m. LB to crib, starts to cry, back to big bed
2:00 a.m. BB in room to let us know he needs to pee
2:05 a.m. BB claims his room is too dark, hall light turned on
2:15 a.m. Cat let out, I groan about high maintenance cats
6:00 a.m. Light in hall shining in my eyes, but apparently I slept through it
6:01 a.m. Marvel at how we sleep through LB's loud snorty breathing
6:02 a.m. Start obsessing about job search, maybe need new suit, luggage.

Friday robot blogging

Glory box

I need an in-house editor.  20 or so application letters into the job search process and I keep finding little niggling errors in everything I send out. Information breaks down, flooding my abilities to keep up. Given my ambivalence about the whole endeavor, maybe I should go to a fortune teller, or, even better, get a Tarot card reading.  I'm as likely to get some better understanding of what I'm up against from them as from anything else.

In a pinch, digital music will always satisfy. I'd been meaning to put up some of my favorite shoegaze, but the youtube videos are all too muddy. Instead, here is some psych funk by Massive Attack and Portishead.  The song is Glory Box, which seems to be very popular in places like Spain and Brazil. The video is long, but, wow, does it hit my sweet spot. As a comment on youtube puts it, "excelente extremo en el infinito."

Old hippie

I used to think that I would grow old to become a hippie who didn't give a damn.  I'd be off the grid, making my own music and love, and living a self-fulfilled life.  As I get older, I realize how unrealistic this little fantasy was.  I'd like to be off the grid and self-fulfilled, but now that I have kids and feel the pressure to have a middle-class income I just don't see it happening anymore.

Really, though, I think there's a shallower reason for giving up the dream.  It's simple shame.  For example. Looking around my campus, I'm embarrassed by the (mostly male) professors that let themselves go. They wear ugly tennis-shoe hybrids, lackluster khaki pants, and 10 year-old shirts.  They don't cut their ear hair.  I SHOULD be able to do the same, but I'll always anxiously want to stay current, wearing the latest style of shoes.  I'm not proud of this fact, especially when I dream of my inner hippie.

Time-saving device

I wish there were a silicon-based device that did more to help me get work done than my simple computer. In addition to writing the majority of a chapter by the end of the year, in the next six weeks I have two conference papers to write and a revision for a forthcoming article to complete. Plus, there are 20 some odd application letters to do. It was really wonderful having the boys' grandparents in town, but I'm glad to finally have the space to get some work done. First, to the job stuff. I have a dissertation abstract to revise and letters to personalize.

In other news, I dreamt I was in an earthquake last night. I managed to escape from a crumbling building, but couldn't get across the city to join my family before waking up. I went through the 1989 quake pictured below.