The Post-Pessimist Association

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Departure Lounge
2008-12-06 20:52:00
I actually had an epiphany during this trip: driving through eastern Colorado, looking out at vast, flat, snowy fields, I could actually understand why some people might find the non-mountain portion of Colorado's landscape desolate and dull.Not me, though. It just looks like home, beautiful if unforgiving. Wallace Stegner would understand how I feel (and presumably state it far better). As time goes on, itt feels more and more pressing to return here on a permanent basis. I'm happier here, and while some of that is simply because I am freed from a lot of the concerns and worries of day-to-day life, some is also because I'm more at home here, more in my element, more comfortable.Most of the trip was family and friends, so not a lotta photos, and I forgot the camera's USB cord anyhow. Also in the "sometimes I suck" category: I brought five books to read on the trip. I'm halfway through one.
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Found
2008-12-01 16:34:00
Inside a used copy of "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse," by Peter Matthiesen:On the back is a guy's name and a phone number with a Modesto area code. Probably best not to call and ask for details, though -- this will remain one of life's little mysteries.
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Let it Snow
2008-11-30 20:15:00
One cold night in the '90s, the Boulder air was redolent of cow droppings. A co-worker said "you can smell the cows of Greeley -- it's about to snow." I thought he was, you will pardon the impression, full of shit. He wasn't. It was snowing within hours. And in the years to come, I noticed that it held true -- when you smelled every cow on the farms north of Boulder, it was likely going to snow.I went for a nice stroll around my folks' neighborhood this morning, and smelled the cows -- and now the snow's coming down. (I'm ensconced safely inside, drinking Colorado beer and eating the family chili cheese dip recipe. Life is very pleasant.)Why is this? Why does imminent shows make cows get the Metamucil off the shelf? I've never known much about cow biology.
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Colorado Über Alles
2008-11-29 23:13:00
I'm back in the homeland all week -- stayed up late to have an Albanian Independence Day celebration last night (and what did you do for Albanian Independence Day?), up at dawn to fly out here on what was apparently the "Kids With Psychiatric Disorders Who Had Two Cups of Sugar for Breakfast" flight. Got a big grin on my face as soon as we landed and I saw the snow along the runway. I think I've worked out all my complex feelings about Colorado in the past, so now I'm comfortable in simply saying it's the greatest state in the union, and damn I'm happy to be back.

Ham Beer
2008-11-26 06:00:00
I was really happy to see Hedonist Beer Jive give some love to Schlenkerla a couple months back. It's a beer that seems made for this time of year -- while I can't imagine drinking a beer that tastes like smoked sausage in July, when the temperatures dip into the 20s and 30s, it works. It's 34 degrees Fahrenheit outside now, and I'm having one, and I can vouch for its credentials.I first had one during a deep freeze a few years back, and it just felt right -- this is the kind of beer that you should be drinking as you sit by the fireplace in a remote mountain lodge, snow coming down like mad outside. I quickly found out that it was best suited as an occasional indulgence, though. If I had one of these every night it'd probably put me off beer, and then where would we be?About a year after I first tasted it, I went to a friend's Christmas party, and brought along 20 Schlenkerlas -- I figured it'd put everyone into the holiday mood. Wrong. The first person to open one took a si...

Old Favorites
2008-11-24 02:44:00
#50 -- "Ball Four" by Jim BoutonNot long ago I saw a little bit on "Do you own multiple copies of any books?" I don't think I do -- the only one I can think of, ever, was owning two copies of "The Shining" because I found one with a 1970s reflective cover. But I have owned multiple copies at different times, including one that the linked post mentions -- "Ball Four."I don't think of "Ball Four" when I think of all-time favorites -- I'm not sure why. It deserves a place. I've read it more than "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," almost as much as "Salem's Lot." Bouton's book, perhaps more than anything else, enhanced my enjoyment of baseball. I read it again over the weekend, probably the first time since college -- my earlier copy started shedding pages at some point and was last seen residing forlornly in my parents' basement. Just a fantastic book. There aren't many athletes as observant and analytical as Bouton -- only Ken Dryden comes to mind -- and Bouton has the added...
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Three Sketches of Failure
2008-11-22 17:42:00
I meant to enter the Creative Loafing Fiction Contest, I really did. I entered last year, with a nice but flawed story -- if you're limited to 3,000 words, don't spend half the story establishing the personalities of about eight different characters -- and I started off this year like a house on fire, then ended like ... a house not on fire. I got halfway through one story before realizing that I had no idea where it was going, started a second, then started a second, realized I had even less plan for it, went back for the first. And as yesterday's deadline approached, I finally accepted that it wasn't going to happen, and packed it in and had a beer.I don't usually post any of my fictional efforts here, and I'm not going to make it a habit -- I'm rather reserved about it -- but it might be interesting to post three lead paragraphs. There's also a chance it won't be interesting. The first two are different takes on the first story, the third is the second story. It w...
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Overheard
2008-11-21 19:21:00
while getting my hair cut:"We're cool as long as he doesn't start sleeping with my friends."* * *#49 -- "In Patagonia" by Bruce ChatwinA travel classic that I knew I'd love, but put off reading for a long time. Don't ask me why. It's the first book by Chatwin that I've read, which is probably a serious oversight ("Utz" has languished on my shelf even longer). It's most entertaining when he's tracking down legends, rumors and tales -- his on-and-off following of Butch Cassidy is pretty enjoyable. The residents of Patagonia come across as iconoclasts and oddballs. There's been talk of a trip down to South America sometime in the not-to-distant future, so this was pretty cool to read -- I probably know less about South America than any other place on earth.I guess, maybe, from reading some notes on Amazon, that this isn't entirely fact -- more a blend of fact and fiction, a la Lloyd Jones' "Biografi," which I really should read again. That doesn't bug me as much as it shoul...
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All the Cool Kids Are Doing It
2008-11-21 06:46:00
Been sick all week. Doing nothing of interest. In lieu of material, I followed the lead of 95% of people with blogs and plugged my blog into Typealyzer.com, which came up with this assessment of my personality:ESFP - The PerformersThe entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.It also brings up a picture of a girl in a short skirt and knee-high boots, holding either a pint of beer or a malfunctioning lava lamp. I guess that's supposed to represent me.Mixed bag. Friendly (mostly), entertaining (when drunk), rarely initiate confrontati...
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In Their Ruin
2008-11-17 03:40:00
#48 -- "The Boys of Summer" by Roger KahnGeez, I seem to have read a lot about baseball this year -- more than I've read about any sport I actually, you know, watch here in 2008. I'm relatively sure I read this one as a kid, but I probably wasn't too interested -- the Brooklyn Dodgers weren't even around any more, I wanted to read about teams like the Astros and Blue Jays! My loss (if I did indeed read it and dismiss it) -- one of the finer baseball books I've read. I was really, really impressed by this, beautifully written, honest and unsparing. Makes me wonder what else I missed out on when I was young.* * *Staying with baseball: there's a new blog set up devoted to the 1978 Topps baseball card set, which were my favorite cards as a kid -- though I didn't start buying cards until two seasons later. In about sixth grade, I bought a shoebox full of these cards at a garage sale, and I loved those cards like no others -- I'll eternally remember them as having perfect photogra...
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Desert Center
2008-11-15 15:10:00
It was summer of 1992, I believe, when I tagged along with Groundwork on one of their first trips out of state -- Fourth of July weekend shows in San Diego and somewhere in Orange County. The trip was pretty star-crossed from the start. At the Che Cafe show that started it off, I blew pretty much all my disposable cash on Man Is The Bastard and Ebullition records, ensuring that by the end of the trip I'd be sneaking food out of garbage cans. Cops showed up at show's end because people were setting off fireworks. We'd been led to believe -- either through youthful naïvete or false promises -- that we'd have a place to stay in San Diego, but that didn't happen and we ended up sneaking all six of us (the four Groundwork guys, me, and fellow roadie Jerid -- who would end up becoming their bassist and then second guitarist later) into a motel room. At the Orange County show, no one knew Groundwork's songs at all -- they only had the split 7" and an Italian-released ep out at the ti...
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Two Weeks, Summarized
2008-11-09 03:18:00
When you have two weeks off work, one feels, you should have something to show at the end: perhaps a trip to someplace majestic? Perhaps great accomplishments? A tattoo, at least?I have none of that. The most exotic location I visited in the past two weeks was Comcast corporate headquarters on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard -- I didn't even escape the confines of the 285 perimeter. Great accomplishments ... I got some things done in preparation for surgery, but that's not real pleasant to contemplate. I walked two and a half miles at two in the morning dressed as a penguin. I drank beer.I am relaxed as hell, which if you were to see me two weeks and three nights ago, would qualify as quite an accomplishment. I did write a bunch, though you won't see evidence of it until the great American novel comes out. One sad fact is that when I wrote a lot in coffee shops and bars, you don't see it. When I write a lot in the blog, my fiction aspirations suffer proportionally.I've listened ...
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Shorts Weather
2008-11-07 00:01:00
The first year that I lived in Arizona, I wore shorts every single day. It took me a while to acclimate from Colorado and it just always seemed warm. I'd go to school and my classmates would be bundled up in sweaters and jackets, and I'd be wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Given the age I was at, it's not inconceivable that part of it was a sad attempt to establish myself as a "character," but I also just never felt cold.I remembered that today as I went through another November day wearing a t-shirt and shorts. I won't match my Arizona record -- we've had some cold days, and I have a job that sort of requires some dignity in dress, even if it's just jeans.It's too bad I already used the "Indian Summer" title because we're on our second or third one now. Yeah, it's warmer than most places here, but I don't recall it usually hitting the upper 70s in November.The trees are pretty bloody amazing -- I'll have to get out and take photos. I certainly had time today, but I didn't ...
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Election Night
2008-11-05 22:47:00
Peachtree Street, 11:26 p.m., November 4, 2008I watched the returns come in with some friends in Atlanta's Midtown last night -- tense at first, relaxing a bit as Pennsylvania came in, more as Ohio did. When Virginia came in and the networks (by and large) called the race for Obama, we went out on the balcony.On other balconies throughout the building, people were doing the same -- down below, people were starting to spill onto the sidewalks along Peachtree. After watching for a bit, and seeing the crowd swell, we did the same.I've never seen so many people so happy. Laughing, dancing, hugging, cheering. I'm a cynical old jerk but it warmed the blackened husk of my heart. As the crowd spilled into the street itself -- slapping hands with passing drivers -- cops eventually showed up, but even many of them were visibly caught up in the spirit of things, grinning and giving high-fives.It probably won't be this good again, except perhaps at the inauguration. It's impossible for Oba...
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Election Day
2008-11-04 16:24:00
I was gonna post a mp3 of the Anti-Heros' "Election Day," which is a pretty great song, but I'm lazy and you can probably find it on iTunes or whatever anyway.Got up responsibly early, was at my polling place when it opened, and it still took 90 minutes -- and that's with a very efficient, well-run operation in place. Amazing turnout. In 2004, same location, slightly later hours, it took me less than half that. Later I took a book over to the Ski Bum, suffering in another line -- hers was considerably longer than mine had been.I've bitched considerably about this never-ending election season, but I'm also thoroughly addicted -- and I've never been much of a political junkie, taking more interest in European politics than American. For whatever reason -- the chaos of the past eight years, the candidates this time around, something I haven't thought of -- I've been rapt. The past two weeks, as I've been off work, I've been glued to the news. Not just watching, but checking W...

It's Hard To Be A Penguin In the City
2008-11-02 15:56:00
Halloween night, I dressed up for the first time in years (first time since I moved to Atlanta, at least ... I'm struggling to remember if I ever did anything beyond throwing on a jersey and saying I was a hockey player on injured reserve since college) and went to a work party a bit north of here. I didn't drive (for no reason, as it turned out -- I was shockingly responsible) and about 2 a.m., decided to head home. Checker Cab's line was on eternal hold and no one with a car was leaving, so I decided to start walking and hail a cab along the way.Turns out there's one ugly fact about Atlanta: the cabs don't stop for a lone six-foot-one penguin, flipper sadly raised under the streetlights of Monroe Avenue. I ended up walking the whole two and a half miles (occasionally running into fellow revelers, who helpfully pointed out "you're a penguin!"), which was at least good for me, though my feet are still sore 36 hours later.* * *Back when I lived in Boulder, and for that matter T...
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Stupid Commercials
2008-10-29 20:32:00
Anyone remember this one, mid-'80s or so:(kids playing baseball, one of them breaks a window - guy comes out of house, dismayed. Window-breaking kid runs up. Cue operatic/musical number:)Kid: Mr. Robertson! Mr. Robertson!Guy: Oh, what a horrible mess.Kid: I broke your window! With my ball!Guy: You?Kid: And I've come to confess!Few lines I don't remember, but basic plot is guy is berating kid ... but then...Guy: But I'm proud of you child, for you have displayed... honor! (crescendo) The stuff from which heroes are made!Kid: I told the truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuth!It was a commercial for Latter-Day Saints, though what any of that had to do with anything, I'm not sure. I sorta thought it was a local Denver/Boulder thing, but quick searches indicate people around the country remember it.And it's been stuck in my head all day, after I probably went a good 18, 19 years without thinking of it. First Sheriff, now this.Update: doesn't appear to be on YouTube, but a complete transcription is ...
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Watching Over
2008-10-27 15:03:00
This appeared fairly recently along Ponce De Leon, by the old railroad bridge and looking down upon the street. I'm guessing (not much of a stretch) that it's from Paris on Ponce, the sort of funky/oddball antique shop just a little ways up -- it's behind PoP and probably on its property, and it has the same folk art feel as some of the other pieces (see ape on Eiffel Tower, here) on the store's grounds.I'm not sure what it's supposed to represent -- there's a vaguely religious feel to it and my first thought was that it's a representation of Mary, but I think that's wrong -- the figure is protecting two children, and neither of them seem very Jesus-ish, though I'm not sure how you'd tell. In any case, it's pretty striking and a cool addition to the area.This is what the figure's watching over -- a small stretch of the street that's forgotten and rather trashed, despite being between two heavily-trafficked areas (the Borders/Whole Foods/Home Depot complex on the ground...
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Vacation Continues
2008-10-26 14:59:00
Technically, since the last two days were my normal weekend, this is the first true day of vacation. Great things will be accomplished, in the form of drinking beer and watching the Bucs, and then going to a friend's barbeque. I think there's only about five Sundays this football season where I'll actually get to drink beer while watching the games, so this is a great day.#45 -- "Coyote V. Acme" by Ian FrazierI'm guilty of a little lapse in double-checking here -- I knew Frazier had written a few books about the American West, and so I figured all his books were about the West (much as you can conclude from "Summer of '49" that David Halberstam wrote solely about baseball), and so when I decided to read something of his, I picked this because I liked the cover.It's actually a collection of short pieces that I'm guessing originally ran in the "Shouts and Murmurs" section of my favorite liberal elitist magazine, The New Yorker. Much like the regular S&M section, it was pretty i...
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Status Update
2008-10-25 04:38:00
A hell of a week here, busy busy busy at work and exhausted at all other times. Now, though, I've got vacation, two weeks off and no real plans or responsibilities to fill them. Not planning to go anywhere, and I don't know if I've ever had two weeks off just here in Atlanta. Maybe surrounding a birthday once or twice, but those were generally filled with birthday-style events, and Fidel was still in town, rendering Atlanta a non-stop party. Now, Fidel's gone, the Ski Bum is out of town for a few days, and the PPA proprietor is rather lazy.I'd intended to get up and go wander around decrepit parts of Atlanta for the first time in ages, but it's been 50 and rainy all day so the camera got put away. So I did virtually nothing all day -- grocery shopping, cooking, writing (10% of Friday) and drinking wine/playing BurgerTime (90% of Friday). It's too bloody cold to go out without reason, so it's a Friday night inside. No bad thing in these economic times, and a $5.99 bottle of s...
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Oh, Sweden
2008-10-22 17:07:00
Slightly NSFW -- words can't do this justice. Thanks to Jes for sending it along. Jan Huokko gets honorary membership (Swedish division) in the Czech defenseman list for this.
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Jackie R
2008-10-20 15:42:00
#44 -- "Jackie Robinson: A Biography" by Arnold RampersadIf I had the foresight for these kinds of things, I would have made this #42. This is the second biography of Jackie Robinson that I've read -- the first was back in elementary school, and all I remember is that in it he had a cartoon talking baseball floating over his shoulder, giving him advice throughout his life. I always thought that would come in handy. There have been times when I could have used that talking baseball. ("No, Greg, don't do shots tonight!")Rampersad's book inexplicably leaves out the talking baseball, but is pretty comprehensive in all other ways, giving a lot more insight into one of the most-analyzed sporting lives of the 20th century. He gives as much weight, if not more, to Robinson's non-sport life as his baseball career, which is pretty interesting. I sort of vaguely knew about his civil rights work post-playing, but let's face it, generally when I think of Jackie Robinson I think about baseba...

Eagles Song for Jay Farrar to Sing
2008-10-18 23:39:00
First of an ongoing series -- cheese songs that Farrar can make respectable:1. "Take it Easy" by the Eagles
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Indian Summer
2008-10-18 19:38:00
Summer stormed back briefly this week, getting up to 90 and reminding me that people aren't really meant to live here, but all-day rain yesterday cooled it off about 30 degrees and now I'm comfortable bringing the flannel shirts out of mothballs. It's been said 3,600 times since I started this blog, but autumn in Atlanta is pretty damned beautiful, and I wish it were a longer interregnum between between hell-on-earth summer and pissy/drizzly/damp winter. But it isn't, and I'll just appreciate it while it lasts. I have two weeks off from work starting next Friday, coming at the right time (I'm at that point where I'm thinking "only five days 'til my weekend" when the work week starts). I probably won't end up going anywhere because I have enough to keep me busy here, and any time off is good, wherever I may be.* * *After I made Miroslav's Meatloaf last week, the Ski Bum expressed surprise that I'm a firm fan of Czech defensemen besides Tomas Kloucek. Because I rarely have ...
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Misfiring Synapses
2008-10-15 23:37:00
For about three days now, off-and-on, the 1980s hit "When I'm With You" by Sheriff has been creeping into my head and refusing to leave. If you don't remember it and want to hear it, you can find it on Last.fm -- I went ahead and listened, and it's pretty awful, but that didn't purge it from my poor brain. I loved that song at one point, which I find difficult to credit now -- most songs that I liked as a kid, I can at least remember what struck me (I can still tolerate Night Ranger, for chrissakes), but this is just grating. Weirder still, the period when I loved this song coincided with getting into Black Flag and Husker Du. I'm trying to remember what it must have been like, going back and forth between, say, this or Alphaville's "Forever Young" ... and "Slip It In." Being a teenager is a tough time, I guess.

Miroslav's Meatloaf
2008-10-14 17:47:00
It's been a while since I've done any cooking that didn't involve "punch holes in film, microwave for six minutes," but Saturday I finally broke my recent habit of eating all my weekend meals in bars and whipped something up. Czech-style, natch.Miroslav Dvorak was a pretty good defenseman for the Flyers back in the 1980s. A few years back, I wrote to him to get the above photo signed (yes, yes, I'm a nerd), and he responded very graciously -- wrote a letter talking about what he was doing, encouraging me to visit the Czech Republic and drop by his business (a hotel/restaurant/sports complex, I think). When he passed away this past summer, I was pretty sad. So in his honor, and in the tradition of Bubla Vodka -- let's cook up some Czech meatloaf -- in Miro's memory.This recipe is more-or-less taken from "The Czechoslovak Cookbook" by Joza Brizova, with some alterations based on personal preference and how much meat I'd bought.Mix one pound ground beef and one pound ground pork...
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Nobel Winners I've Read
2008-10-12 02:23:00
Regarding the last post, more for my own edification than anything else, here's a list of the Nobel Literature winners I've read:1907 - Rudyard Kipling (as a kid, granted)1938 - Pearl S. Buck -- uh, good question which one. Again, it was as a youngster -- one of her books seemed to get assigned in every literature class I took. But I can't remember which. Not "The Good Earth."1947 - Andre Gide ("Amyntas")1954 - Ernest Hemingway (most of his novels/collections)1955 - Halldor Laxness ("Independent People")1957 - Albert Camus ("The Stranger," "The Plague")1962 - John Steinbeck (various and sundry)1969 - Samuel Beckett ("Waiting for Godot")1982 - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ("Love in the Time of Cholera")1983 - William Golding ("Lord of the Flies")1993 - Toni Morrison ("Beloved")1999 - Gunter Grass ("The Tin Drum")2001 - V.S. Naipaul ("A Turn in the South")2006 - Orhan Pamuk ("Snow")Geez, not a real hot record, huh? Now there's a few disclaimers -- of course I've read T.S. Eliot and Eug...
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Autumn Reading
2008-10-11 19:56:00
I think we're safe to say that it's fall here, as I haven't muttered "goddammit, it's hot" lately and it's really actually quite pleasant, a term I don't often apply to Atlanta. Today it's been going back and forth (often within a minute) between overcast/threatening and blindingly bright, which is a bit unsettling, but at least I'm not pouring sweat.It's this time of year that I really wish I had a balcony or patio, and that's my excuse for spending a lot of time in bars. Of course, my favorite bar doesn't have a patio, and I live across the street from two bars that do have large patios and I never visit either, so I guess we go back to the original excuse, which is that I spend a lot of time in bars because I like to drink beer.* * *#43 -- "Amyntas" by Andre GideWhen some fellow I'd never heard of won the Nobel Prize for Literature earlier this week, I felt kinda bad that I haven't read more Nobel winners' work. Then I grabbed this off the shelf (part of the aforeme...
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Atlanta Culture Watch
2008-10-09 17:34:00
I always loved reading the restroom walls as a kid, to the chagrin of my parents, and apparently some vestige of that remains.* * *#42 -- "Fury: Inside the Life of Theoren Fleury" by Andrew MalcolmI'm trying to clear off my bookshelves a bit, so I finally read this -- I was sent a review copy back in the late 1990s, about the time Theo was traded to the Avalanche.The narrative's pretty familiar to anyone who was watching hockey in the 1990s -- Fleury the small guy who overcame all sorts of obstacles to make good. This suffers a bit thanks to something that's not at all the author's fault -- Fleury's rather public self-destruction later on revealed demons that really aren't apparent here.It's decent. I don't really read a lot of sports books any more, and this is in the camp of "not bad, but I wouldn't seek it out if it hadn't been languishing on my bookshelf for a decade." Some of it's kind of entertainingly dated, especially references to the NHL being a sport on the ris...
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Helpful Hints
2008-10-04 21:14:00
If you need to turn off the water to unhook a dodgy appliance -- if you're one of those people who says "calling a professional is for suckers" -- remember it's all the way to the RIGHT to turn it off. Not left.If you turn it all the way to the left, you will wind up drenched from head to toe, shrieking "shit!" and "fuck!" in a not-at-all-impressive falsetto, as your neighbor from downstairs bangs on the door, wondering with justifiable agitation why there's water dripping from his ceiling.Hope this is useful.
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