Author: Jeff

“Hey! How are you?”

“Good. Wow, I haven’t seen you in a couple of years.”

“Yeah, it’s been awhile. I heard you’re living at Ron’s house.”

“Heh. Yeah, I was there for a few months, . . . unfortunately.”

“You and Ron didn’t get along?”

“No, we didn’t. Ron’s a total prick.”

“Oh, sorry. So he’s having trouble with the house now?”

“Yeah. He’s losing a lot of money on it, so he’s really happy about that.”

“Uh, . . . I was going to ask you for his phone number, but . . .”

“I’d be happy to give it to you, but if you talk to him make sure you tell him that I called him a prick.”

“Uh, okay.”

Thumbing through a pocket-size address book: “The last number I have for him is 323 . . . ”

“That’s an L.A. number?”

“Yeah. 323-_____.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“He really is an asshole, just ask his brother. He’s never going to sell that place.”

A disclaimer comes up on the screen before the Swingers DVD will play the director’s commentary, “The following audio commentary is for entertainment purposes only,” because non-entertainment uses would be dangerous, I guess; and because, when it’s played without the commentary, the movie is for serious business only.

A woman talking to her kids in line at Dick’s Drive-In –
Woman: “Do you want Chinese or Dick’s?”
First kid: “Chinese.”
Second kid: “Dick’s! Dick’s!”
Woman: “There’s also Russian burgers.” (looking across the street at the little piroshky bakery.)
First kid: “Russian burgers! Russian burgers!”

I finished my lunch and walked out of Pagliacci’s. There was a pair of dogs tied up to the rail outside. I said, “Hey, dogs,” and walked over to gave them both a couple of pats on the head. Behind me I heard Chris’ voice, “Hey, Jeff,” and I looked back and said hello as he walked away.

The thing is, while my “Hey, dogs,” was mostly meant as something along the lines of, “Hey look. Dogs!”, there was also more than a little bit of “Hello, dogs. How are you today?” in the way it was delivered.

So I was caught talking to dogs – and not just dogs, strange dogs. I guess I’m just glad that I wasn’t caught barking at dogs.

Another day where I woke up, turned on the radio, and heard what weren’t the usual voices talking about something that hadn’t been on the news yesterday. I sat down and listened, making no special effort to absorb what had happened, just piecing it together as the NPR anchors got around to repeating the key points.

When I was getting up to leave Vivace, I noticed a quiet table where a woman and her two kids were sitting, reading silently. The woman was flipping through a magazine, the kids – a boy and a girl – had old mass market paperbacks. I didn’t see the covers, but the books seemed to be relatively advanced for the kids; neither of them could have been older than eight. I watched for a second, expecting something to happen – one of the kids getting bored and kicking the other, or just one of them squirming in his seat. (Somebody yawn!) But they just sat there contentedly, engrossed in their books. The boy just turned a page without throwing a crayon across the room, exactly the way you or I would have. I’m not exactly sure why I thought the scene was such an anomaly.

“What I like about the historical – or I might better say, the evolving – view of vital phenomena, is that it does not lead to self-satisfaction, but to a bracing discontent. On the purely humanistic score, it leaves us no sneaking hope that because we are next in rank to the angels we are predestined as a race to salvation. Rather it reminds us how new we are. It gives us, if not certainly free will, the opportunity to impose our will upon the future – the opportunity, and the fateful responsibility for so doing. On the biologic side, instead of closing the subject it opens up questions. This, the aim of all science, is the bane of all dictatorships, whether hierarchical, political, or pedantic.”

-Donald Culross Peattie, An Almanac for Moderns

My across the hall neighbor Tom is up ahead, walking up from Broadway past Jack In the Box. He sprinkles a handful of bread crumbs onto the sidewalk and a crow hops over to investigate. I greet him from a few paces away. He shifts his cigar to the corner of his mouth and says hello, the stubby cigar holder clicking against his teeth. He tosses a Cheez-It cracker into the street and there’s another pair of birds fly in to fight over that morsel. I walk by, into his wake. There’s a trail of birds flurrying around for the half a block behind him.

Gary Locke, Washington State’s Governor, will be reading the Democrats’ response to Bush’s State of the Union speech tomorrow. Earlier, the least newsy of the local news shows opened their show with a rundown of the day’s big headlines. For the State of the Union, they showed a graphic that involved a photo of George W. Bush on the right side of the screen and a photo of Locke on the left side of the screen. The newsreader’s twenty second blurb climaxed with the phrase face-off and the photos of Bush and Locke suddenly jolted together and there was a THUMP, the sound of a boxing glove hitting its target. It made me laugh out loud.

I’m doomed. The thought I had right before the infographic thumped was, “When did Gary Locke start wearing glasses?”

Returning to my seat at the coffee shop after using the restroom, I had to squeeze in behind a pair who were finishing up a personal conversation about rough times, lost love, and holiday depression. The word “suicidal” was used casually. This was happening just a few feet away. And I was sitting there trying to write a paragraph about the stray sesame seed stuck to the side of my scone – what do I know about anything?