After a full day at work and a refresher at the gym, George was exhausted. Dropping the mail onto the coffee table, she surveyed the apartment. Everything was as she had left it twelve hours ago. Dirty dishes in the sink, four half-empty coffee cups waiting to be thrown out, her house guest/pest splayed out on the couch. Sighing, she pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and started to do the dishes. The sound of running water and clinking glasses woke Jon up. He sleepily called out, "George?"
"Thanks for doing the dishes," she said.
"Leave'em, I'll do it later."
Whatever, she thought. "I'm almost done. Wake up so we can go eat. I got the mail. A Fast Company came and a check for you." On top of the mail was a partially opened envelope, a royalty check. Jon's blogging book was apparently still moving copies, a few units at a time.
"Okay, let me get ready." Jon dragged himself off the couch and changed from his sleep uniform into outside clothes. Unfashionably baggy jeans, plain gray sweatshirt, and a baseball cap to hide his bed head.
Before leaving the house, they split a leftover slice of pizza and a piece of multi-grain toast. This served as the pre-meal to their anticipated excitement for the night: side salads from Pluto's. Their orders turned out to be virtually identical. Steak, medium rare; balsamic dressing; six out of seven matching build-it-yourself items. The only difference was beets for her and oranges for him. At the cashier, Jon hastily added a large chocolate cupcake to their order. As they exited Pluto's, George revealed that she had been eyeing that exact item but was determined to avoid it. "I'll just have a bite," she said.
Dinner in hand, they walked five short blocks back to the apartment as Jon gave his unsolicited review of George's upcoming Netflix cue. "Frost/Nixon, forget it. Just read the Wikipedia entry, it'll be more informative. The Stranger, pass, it's terrible."
While waiting for the elevator to take them up a floor, George paused a moment before announcing, "This is what's wrong. You take the fun out of things." Jon asked for clarification. "You always have something negative to say about everything. Jason says I do the same thing."
"Wait so you do it too? Is that a bad or good thing then?" Jon asked.
"Well, it's probably good for us but bad for everyone else." This was true as both George and Jon's exes had often griped about how they weren't easily motivated out of the house. Their reluctance to leave the comforts of home (except for short excursions) contributed mightily to their failed relationships. Now they sat, both single, both content, both focused on Sandra Bullock's Golden Globe nominated turn in The Proposal.
Somewhere in Europe, a vacationing mother cried.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wipe Out
During the end of senior year in high school, we were told to dedicate our last few weeks engaged in an activity that would broaden our experience and give us an idea of what the real world would hold. Students were tasked with finding their own projects and creating a proposal for what they might do and what goals they hoped to achieve. It's the kind of thing rich or exclusive schools do, to prove that they are preparing their students above and beyond. Most of my classmates had interesting jobs and opportunities lined up. Somehow I ended up painting bathrooms at the Jewish Community Center.
Located across the street from our high school, the JCC often served as an auxiliary sporting venue for practices and their pool hosted our swim team. Having not been very proactive toward finding a senior project, I signed up for volunteer duty at the JCC without any idea of what my tasks would include. On the first day I was directed toward the maintenance shed, where my "bosses" were just as surprised as I was. After a few days of following them around fixing tennis court nets, resetting lighting fixtures, unplugging drains, and repairing lawn divots, they finally found a solid task to assign me. For two weeks I dipped my roller into buckets of white paint and slathered the bathroom walls with it, each stroke erasing unsightly teal underneath.
My only company was a boom box, which was tuned to the local sports station, and the occasional visit by Richard, who would compliment my work and say, "Good job, keep it up." It was during the tail end of my volunteer sentence that I found out I was just laying the base coat for a future painting. All those hours spent breathing in fumes and having specks of paint in my hair amounted to laying the foundation for bathroom art. The next time I touched a paint roller was to help a friend white over his bedroom. I never would have agreed to it except a girl I was interested in was scheduled to be there. That experience didn't turn out that well either.
The lesson here is: don't paint for ulterior motives.
Located across the street from our high school, the JCC often served as an auxiliary sporting venue for practices and their pool hosted our swim team. Having not been very proactive toward finding a senior project, I signed up for volunteer duty at the JCC without any idea of what my tasks would include. On the first day I was directed toward the maintenance shed, where my "bosses" were just as surprised as I was. After a few days of following them around fixing tennis court nets, resetting lighting fixtures, unplugging drains, and repairing lawn divots, they finally found a solid task to assign me. For two weeks I dipped my roller into buckets of white paint and slathered the bathroom walls with it, each stroke erasing unsightly teal underneath.
My only company was a boom box, which was tuned to the local sports station, and the occasional visit by Richard, who would compliment my work and say, "Good job, keep it up." It was during the tail end of my volunteer sentence that I found out I was just laying the base coat for a future painting. All those hours spent breathing in fumes and having specks of paint in my hair amounted to laying the foundation for bathroom art. The next time I touched a paint roller was to help a friend white over his bedroom. I never would have agreed to it except a girl I was interested in was scheduled to be there. That experience didn't turn out that well either.
The lesson here is: don't paint for ulterior motives.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Love in the Sunset
The films of Eric Rohmer haven't flown across my radar before. He's the last of the French New Wave directors and his recent death triggered eulogies and appreciations of his work. Wikipedia summed them up thusly: "Rohmer's films concentrate on intelligent, articulate protagonists who frequently fail to own up to their desires. The contrast between what they say and what they do fuels much of the drama in his films."
Many of Rohmer's movies are centered around male-female relationships and that was certainly true of the only movie of his I've managed to watch so far, "Boyfriends & Girlfriends." In this simple tale, two women befriend each other and then proceed to steal each other's men. Typical of his work, this movie features solidly middle class protagonists in their twenties, university educated and self-centered, seeking transitory satisfaction and an answer to their temporary problems. In short, Rohmer makes movies about us. Or movies about me and most of my friends at least.
Ninety percent of my friend circle consists of yuppies and most of our lives are focused on overcoming bourgeouis problems of career, shelter, romantic love, family, and looking for amusements in-between. Not having much perspective away from these mindsets, I can't safely say that these aren't problems everyone faces but taking the long view, they all seem to be incredibly shallow perspirations. A lot of effort is expended searching for an elusive happiness that rarely maintains. Often it seems like a cartoonish series of thumbs stuck in leaky holes while a different section of the good ship lollipop falls apart.
Then again, what else is there? That's what we're all trying to figure out I think. Will diving into the Rohmer oeuvre help? I hope so because I've Netflixed them all and would like some answers from someone, even a dead French guy.
Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" bears Rohmer's fingerprint indelibly and that 105 minute stroll through Paris with Ethan and Julie has influenced me for over a decade. It's made me seek a sudden thrill ride in friendships. The rush of not knowing someone on a Saturday night and then being best friends by Sunday morning, having covered too many topics to recount but still unable to answer simple questions such as "What's your last name?" and "Which one's your car?"
The world changes the morning after you part, having spent twelve hours engaged in conversation catapulting from getting to know you formalities toward secret fears and revealing idiosyncrasies. It's a rush that's hard to recreate, or sustain, and you can only have it once per friend. So where's the next hit coming from? And how high will it take me? Most importantly, does a rush like this set the foundation for the best type friendship or for a devolving slope of incremental highs and lows? I'm not sure these questions matter anymore because as these experiences come along increasingly rarely, I appreciate and treasure each one without wondering what may follow.
The other night I picked up such a new friend and we took a late night drive with windows down, music pumping, and coffee and cigarettes at the ready. With only forty five minutes until sunrise, we had to complete our nocturnal adventure and end up beach side at precisely the right time. We took local streets to Pacific Beach, past Garnet Avenue, where tattoo shops, sushi dives, and trendy clothing shops line both sides. On most nights, recently graduated frat douches and their nontourages prowl the abundant bars and clubs. After-hours Pacific Beach still has all the eye-catching storefronts but without the bother of the people; it's my favorite place for late night cruising.
I used to do this exact drive many years ago, with a friend that also loved late nights, loud music, djarum cloves, and craptastic coffee. As I steered the car through the winding roads toward La Jolla, we ended up at Windansea a little late, after the sun had already lit up the sky. Windansea is another treasured spot for me, where I used to go with my former best friend for conversations and catch up. She lived ten minutes away and I'd pick her up as she slipped out the front door in the middle of the night. From high school and on, that was our routine. For years and years and years.
Old places, new spaces.
Many of Rohmer's movies are centered around male-female relationships and that was certainly true of the only movie of his I've managed to watch so far, "Boyfriends & Girlfriends." In this simple tale, two women befriend each other and then proceed to steal each other's men. Typical of his work, this movie features solidly middle class protagonists in their twenties, university educated and self-centered, seeking transitory satisfaction and an answer to their temporary problems. In short, Rohmer makes movies about us. Or movies about me and most of my friends at least.
Ninety percent of my friend circle consists of yuppies and most of our lives are focused on overcoming bourgeouis problems of career, shelter, romantic love, family, and looking for amusements in-between. Not having much perspective away from these mindsets, I can't safely say that these aren't problems everyone faces but taking the long view, they all seem to be incredibly shallow perspirations. A lot of effort is expended searching for an elusive happiness that rarely maintains. Often it seems like a cartoonish series of thumbs stuck in leaky holes while a different section of the good ship lollipop falls apart.
Then again, what else is there? That's what we're all trying to figure out I think. Will diving into the Rohmer oeuvre help? I hope so because I've Netflixed them all and would like some answers from someone, even a dead French guy.
Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" bears Rohmer's fingerprint indelibly and that 105 minute stroll through Paris with Ethan and Julie has influenced me for over a decade. It's made me seek a sudden thrill ride in friendships. The rush of not knowing someone on a Saturday night and then being best friends by Sunday morning, having covered too many topics to recount but still unable to answer simple questions such as "What's your last name?" and "Which one's your car?"
The world changes the morning after you part, having spent twelve hours engaged in conversation catapulting from getting to know you formalities toward secret fears and revealing idiosyncrasies. It's a rush that's hard to recreate, or sustain, and you can only have it once per friend. So where's the next hit coming from? And how high will it take me? Most importantly, does a rush like this set the foundation for the best type friendship or for a devolving slope of incremental highs and lows? I'm not sure these questions matter anymore because as these experiences come along increasingly rarely, I appreciate and treasure each one without wondering what may follow.
The other night I picked up such a new friend and we took a late night drive with windows down, music pumping, and coffee and cigarettes at the ready. With only forty five minutes until sunrise, we had to complete our nocturnal adventure and end up beach side at precisely the right time. We took local streets to Pacific Beach, past Garnet Avenue, where tattoo shops, sushi dives, and trendy clothing shops line both sides. On most nights, recently graduated frat douches and their nontourages prowl the abundant bars and clubs. After-hours Pacific Beach still has all the eye-catching storefronts but without the bother of the people; it's my favorite place for late night cruising.
I used to do this exact drive many years ago, with a friend that also loved late nights, loud music, djarum cloves, and craptastic coffee. As I steered the car through the winding roads toward La Jolla, we ended up at Windansea a little late, after the sun had already lit up the sky. Windansea is another treasured spot for me, where I used to go with my former best friend for conversations and catch up. She lived ten minutes away and I'd pick her up as she slipped out the front door in the middle of the night. From high school and on, that was our routine. For years and years and years.
Old places, new spaces.
"Beautiful girls all over the world
I could be chasing but my time would be wasted
They got nothing on you baby
Nothing on you baby
They might say hi and I might say hey
But you shouldn't worry about what they say
Cos they got nothing on you baby
Nothing on you baby"
-B.o.B, "Nothin' On You"-
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