The Last Two Words On LeBron: Feng Shui

After all the blather (and my God, it's worse than I thought--how can people actually think they're owed something by a professional athlete or that they are in any kind of a position to be betrayed by him?) including my own (see below), the only sensible thing I've heard about the whole LeBron James thing came from a German truck driver who, still reeling from his nation's defeat to Spain in the World Cup, offered this to me concerning Cleveland's loss of LeBron: "Cleveland needs better Feng Shui. You all should start planting some plants." Amen, over and out. Anybody got some seeds and some hoes?

The Kinks-This Is Where I Belong

Remembrance of Zzzzz's Past

A good nap is God's way of saying, "Stay out of My hair for a while."
                                                                    --Mark Fenster

I realize it's several weeks late to be compiling and publishing a "decade's top ten" list, but this is no ordinary list that can be compiled hastily or before the decade is actually over and done with. This is my list of the top ten naps I took from 2000-2009. I take my napping quite seriously, to the point that for more than two decades now I have assiduously kept a meticulous nap-log. Be-splattered with drool and stray eye-crumbs though it may be, it is the official record of my precious "me" time. For the past several weeks, as laundry has piled up, I have pored over the log, re-visiting naps great and lousy, making tentative lists, and finally paring down the list from well over 200 possibilities to this, the definitive, annotated list of The Best Naps of the 2000s (in chronological order).

1. January 12, 2000: Even so early in the decade, I had starred this nap as a potential "best of." So soon after Christmas break, I was in need of another free day, so I took a late afternoon nap with my pj's turned inside out, the universal good luck charm of hopeful students (and teachers) everywhere. Sure enough, upon waking the wind was howling and the snow was adrift. At 5:26 a.m. the next morning, I received a phone call: no school, snow day. I owed it all to the nap.
2. November 28, 2000: A nap well-remembered for its dream: for seemingly hours I kept jumping over a restless sheep, as he bahhed in what seemed to me like an ordered sequence. I woke up and drove straight to Best Steak and Gyro and chowwed down.
3. July 19, 2001: Perfect estivation. I didn't break 80 on the golf course that day, but aided by a Guinness at the 19th hole, and a smooth-running fan, I broke several sleep warps. And not a bead of sweat dampened the pillow.
4. February 5, 2003: Breaking a long spell of uneven, unsatisfying naps that in hindsight I either chalk up to 9/11 or the ensuing high opinion polls of George W., this nap, culminated by a waking moan of "Oh my Lord, now that's what I call dozing off!" rejuvenated my faith in siestas.
5. April 9, 2004: What just happened? What time is it? Where am I? Who am I?
6. April 11, 2004: In what is undoubtedly the greatest napping week of my life (4/8, 4/12, and 4/14 all made Top 50), this one, despite the puddle of drool on the pillow, was memorable for providing me, upon waking, with the name of the Little League teammate I had been trying--to the point of madness--to remember for six months.
7. December 2, 2005: I woke up at 5:45 p.m. My arm woke up at 8:03 p.m. Sawing logs? The Gobi was a forest when I fell asleep.
8. May 1, 2007: The Annual Hilda K. Memorial Nap, which I take every year in honor of my childhood babysitter who could never get me to nap, this year was a triumph. I heard spring birds throughout my slumber and woke up so refreshed I did all my spring cleaning in a three-hour burst of energized frenzy.
9. August 8, 2008: Amid mid-90 degree heat and a driveway outside my window being jackhammered apart, I slept like a baby.
10. January 11, 2009: Sometimes in a Cleveland winter, the only motivating force to get you out of bed in the morning is the thought of the nap you'll be taking later that day. This one did not disappoint. Then again, any dream involving bacon, Cheryl Tiegs, and an intimate performance by Sly and the Family Stone would never disappoint.

The Kinks-I Go To Sleep (demo)

Touch, Part 2

So anyway, what brought on yesterday's reminiscence about my one-armed smoking professor was a sidebar article in the British music magazine The Word titled "You Still Here?" about things that, according to the author, should be obsolete but are still hanging around in the 21st century. Among the items listed that I still find various degrees of use for (let alone fondness for) are stamps, newspapers, umbrellas, spectacles (hell, I just got my first pair a couple months ago), cigarette lighters in cars, and razors. But the one that piqued me the most was this one, "Wind-up Watches: As anachronistic as walking around in a tweed suit." Aside from the non sequitur of the whole thing (how can a watch be anachronistic?), I felt the sting of this jab most acutely. Recently an old (as in, was my grandfather's) watch of mine was repaired after years of being out of commission. The repairman was almost apologetic when he explained that the watch had to be wound, manually, thirty "winds" every day or so.

Now there's certainly a sentimental reason for me to love having a functional watch on my wrist again. But is there any other reason? I had gone watchless for several years, and it really was no problem. With all of the mechanical/computerized devices around these days, the time of day is never far from our apprehension. I was late to cellphones, but now I carry one everywhere, and it has become my de facto "go to" time-telling device. I've also become pretty adept at spying people's watches and telling even upside down time from them across tables and counters. And in a pinch, ala my color blind "the world is light or dark," I can always tell if it's day or night.

But I have to exclaim, I love winding my newly repaired watch! It's such a pensive, wholly task to be done, task completed few seconds of my day. The feel of the tiny ridges on my fingers, the repetitive motion of tiny winds, the I am not an animal, I am a human being celebration of my opposable thumb--it's all such a small pleasure, let alone a nostalgic one. I'm always transported to being a little boy again, feeling important with my first watch. I suppose I could also get quasi-poetic and sling the verbiage about having control over time, but such metaphysical joy pales in comparison to the physical, tactile thrill of it all.

It ain't news, but we live in an increasingly push-button world, and contemplating the joys of winding my watch makes me think about the all of the quotidian, tactile pleasures that we have lost or are losing. I love the challenge and feel of opening a cardboard milk or juice carton, but when was the last time we got to experience that wonder? I love still having to open my car door by inserting and turning the key, and I'm sure eventually I'll upgrade to a car whose ignition I won't have to start by inserting and turning. With the recent purchase of some nifty Velcro sneakers, I can go weeks, even months without having to tie a shoe. Remember when writing used to mean having to actually write something? And don't get me started on phones. Beyond the tactile, remember how many phone numbers you used to know by heart? Or even with the arrival of push button phones, when you could remember a person's number only by fake-"dialing" it by stabbing your fingers all around the keypad? Now how many numbers do you know? Once programmed (even remember when that word had such fascist/totalitarian connotations?), all you need to do is push one button. Oh, but remember the physical excitement of actually dialing a phone number on a rotary dial phone. The quick jab of the one's and two's. The resistance/force thrill of a nine and that great feeling of release and the sight of the dial spinning all the way back. And of course that sweet spiral sound of the dial rewinding. They always say smell is the most nostalgic of the senses, but revisiting any of these once-ordinary tactile experiences sets the mind reeling to equal the effect of any effete French cookie.

I know, I've got old fart Luddite fumes spewing out of me at the moment. The man who in college (oh, those days!), after a debate about American League vs. National League, wrote on his graffiti-covered dorm room wall, "If tradition were adhered to, we'd all still be crapping in outhouses; succumb to the modern age and bow to the DH," is now sounding like the old man he's becoming as somebody much greater than he continues to wind the ultimate watch. But pleasure is pleasure, folks, and winding a watch, tying shoes, writing a letter, getting that cardboard spout to jut origamically correct out at you, feeling the heavy click of the door's lock turning--all of it is becoming extinct. Hell, even the good-deed-accomplished rush of a good toilet flush is replaced by buttons to merely push and automatic sensors. Think of it, we have acquiesced our human powers of touch to the point that we have welcomed, with nary a hue and hardly a cry, automatic sensors in our bathrooms! We are the generation that likes to push and to be sensored.

In a million years, will evolution bring us to the point where our sense of touch is obsolete, vestigial at best, like nipples on men? Take a stand. Reach out and touch and work and manipulate something today, before it's gone.

The Replacements-20th Century Boy

The Kinks-The Village Green Preservation Society

Only In Cleveland (Heights)?

Just now I was taking the garbage out at dusk when lo and behold, across my sleepy suburban street, four big deer were lazily eating grass on my neighbor's back lawn. One of them looked at me, sussed I'm not an NRA guy with a taste for venison, and continued munching and slowly sauntering with his or her mates (I ain't no zoologist either). Now twenty or even ten years ago, such a sight would have been unheard of in this inner ring suburb. Now, unless you hit one, it's no big deal.

Yesterday afternoon I witnessed an even more incongruous, and certainly odder sight: I saw a young guy, maybe twenty-two, tops, who looked like he could have played linebacker on a mediocre high school football team, wearing sweats, a sweatshirt, and a yarmulke, walking a very well-coiffed rather tall poodle, who had one of those doggie jackets on (it was sunny and sixty, though breezy) and a large yellow spiky rubber ball, about the size of a volleyball, in its mouth. Man and dog walked across the mall parking lot, the dog never losing its grip on the ball, the breeze never stirring the guy's yarmulke, got into a late model navy blue Volkswagen (dog riding shotgun) and drove off. I watched the whole minute-long parade and nearly swallowed the cigarette I was smoking. I sat there hmmmphing for minutes after they had driven away.

Now separately, each of the elements in the tableau is not too unique, but together I'm telling you the picture just oozed "only in Cleveland Heights, Ohio." Of course, to explain what that means to outsiders would take a helluva lot more bandwidth than old blogspot could muster, I'm sure, and the parentheses keys on my keyboard would give out in no time. Deer are beautiful, that goes without saying, but these days you can see them just about anywhere. But if you really want to see some Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom mind-bending sights, park your car in Cleveland Heights (just don't forget to bring plenty of quarters for the parking meters).

In fact, the whole experience was so bizarre to me, that the natural way of things seems to have been reversed. The cliche is that music can bring you back to a particular time and place like nothing but smell. As I was musing on the poodle parade, though, the image brought me back to a song that I thought my memory had long ago, thankfully, buried deep in my subconscious. It's a snappy little ditty from the early 1980s by a Cleveland group who scored a regional hit with it (back when regional hits were still somewhat possible). Now I know some of you readers of a certain age and with Cleveland roots are now howling, saying, no, we know where you're headed, and we don't want to go there. Not that song, please, we'll Fed Ex you tons of Skittles, anything. Yes, yesterday's odd poodle parade managed, after twenty-four hours or so of hard labor, to excavate from the very depths of my being, memories of "Funky Poodle" by the erstwhile Northcoast bar band Wild Horses. I can't get the damned song out of my head, and if I could I'd rig this blog to blast it at you while reading this, but the best I can do is offer it, hoping the sharing will diminish its pull on me. I recommend, though, watching the following video after listening to the song: it's even crazier than all of this, and should act as a good palate cleanser for your brain.

Wild Horses-Funky Poodle

Rufus Thomas-Walking the Dog

The Kinks-This Is Where I Belong