Dance Party U.S.A.

It's Friday. I have no content for you, but here are some cool songs.

1. Holy shit!



2. Centro-Matic is one of the best bands in the world that you're probably not listening to.



3. Speaking of great bands that you're probably not listening to, here's Pugwash.

With apologies to Tom Waits

Jerry the security guard worked hard. Well, Jerry the security guard worked, at least. Cornerback for the high school football team, blew his knee out his first year at junior college before he had a chance to transfer to the university. The job paid decent enough and mostly all he had to do was stand around in the lobby a couple of hours in the morning and then make his rounds.

Jerry waved to all the office rats as they came in every day before they shuffled off to the elevators to go upstairs and do God knows what. Jerry ate his lunch back by the loading docks with the cleaning guys before going back to do his afternoon rounds. Jerry would go home to his wife that had been a cheerleader at the junior college and now worked down at the nail salon and watched Dancing with the Stars every week. Jerry sipped at a glass of George Dickel before he went to sleep every night.

Last night, Jerry waited until that one prick from the accounting firm on 12 was in the revolving door and then jammed his baton in the groove so the little bastard was stuck. Jerry made sure the guy could see when he walked up to his car and pissed on it. Jerry gave him a wave, then took off in his own car, headed south and moving fast.

Jerry hated Dancing with the Stars.

Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. IV

Part the Final

(Note: Cary did another write up of what it feels like to be in that shark cage. I highly suggest you click here and read it.

I wake up after possibly the most sound night's sleep ever. Takes me a minute to adjust to where I am or even who I am. Then it hits me that I slept in a bed that folds out of from the wall, the kind that Jack Tripper would have gotten a full half hour out of. I shower and everybody else starts to get up. We have breakfast at the condo and get ready to go.

We’re taking a tour of wine country today, having a limo cart us around. I’ve only been in a limo once before, for a strange, brief ride across my hometown last Christmas. We all pile in and start the drive. The driver, Robert, is a cool guy who knows a lot about the area and the wines made here. I keep an eye on the countryside since I’ve never been in this part of California, but it’s all a bit of a blur.

Here’s the thing about me and wine: I know dick-all about it. I know I like red ones, but not the white ones so much. We hit six or seven wineries over the course of the day. I tried several I liked, but there’s no way I could distinguish them from each other if you put them in front of me. This is the third time I’ve spent a day touring wineries, and I’m none the smarter for it. The fact that I’m usually pretty buzzed at the end of these tours negates any educational benefit that I may get from them. C’est la vie.

The day is a lot of fun though, and it’s cool to check out the architecture of the wineries. The first one we visit is meant to simulate the inside of a wine bottle in form and structure. Fortunately, everybody else in the group knows a little about wine and is able to ask some intelligent questions while I stumble around behind them like Otis, the town drunk from the Andy Griffith Show. I think even Cary’s five-year old daughter was able to ask about ripening schedules by the end of the day while I was grunting about “pour more of that last one. No, not that piece of shit, the other one.”

It’s a pretty great, low-key way to spend the last full day here. We spend several hours touring the wineries, getting back to the condo mid-afternoon. We all crash for a little while, then take a side-trip to the casino just down the road. I hit the penny slots and actually manage to come out slightly ahead by the time we leave. It makes me want to go back to Vegas soon. Honestly, who doesn’t have a bunch of extra money lying around these days to chuck out the window?

Back to the house afterwards, where we stay in and cook for the last night. It’s the perfect way to wind things down. We have a long drive in the morning to get me to the airport before Cary and crew make their long drive home, so we all call it a night fairly early.

Up before dawn the next morning. We’re on our way pretty quickly, since it’s going to be about three hours to the airport. As we pass through San Francisco, I ride over the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time, though it is shrouded in a thick fog. The time goes pretty quickly, and before I know it, we’re at the airport. It sucks to have to say goodbye to everybody when it feels like we just started this vacation. The airport is eerily deserted, t the point that I wonder if there’s been some kind of national disaster that I missed. It turns out just be a sleepy Saturday the San Francisco airport. I breeze through security and grab breakfast, getting a bloody Mary to ease into the day.

My flight to Salt Lake City is over in a blink, mostly because I’m out cold for most of it. We land and I’ve got a three hour layover. I end up hanging out at the Wasatch brewpub that Cary told me about, where I discover the wonders of their Polygamy Porter. I talk to an Army drill sergeant for most of the time, and I’m please to find out that management bureaucracy is just as thick and screwed up in the military as it is in the private sector. A sandwich and a couple more beers later and I’m on my way.

On my flights back, I read Sputnik Sweetheart, by Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite writers. It’s the story of a woman who vanishes, and the man who had an unrequited love for her who joins the search. Towards the end of the book, when she still hasn’t turned up, I read a passage that hits me so hard I literally have to get up and go splash water on my face in the bathroom. Here it is:

“I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her more than anything in the world. And I couldn’t just shelve those feelings, for there was nothing to take their place.”

Goddammit.

I think Murakami knew he was onto something here, because he set those two sentences apart as their own paragraph. I finish the book and sit there thinking for the rest of the flight. Where I’ve been. What I’ve done. What I haven’t done. I’m back in Atlanta before I know it, and safely back home. I let a couple of people know that I had not become shark bait, and the adventure is over. I turn out the light and go to sleep.

Requiescat in pace.

Miss Manners never covered this

This just happened:

I'm walking through a liquor store parking lot to my car. Some guy, a little rough around the edges, walks up and asks if I can give him and his girlfriend a ride. I tell him sorry, but no. He asks if I have a $1.75 for bus fare. Sorry, no.* Then in a Hail Mary play for the ages, he tells me he'll let me fuck his girlfriend.

I don't exactly know what the polite way to decline such an offer is. I just told him "that's okay" and went on my way. Quickly.

Maybe I should have gotten a look at her.

No, no, that's not right.


*I don't think I'm being a dick in this situation, but I'm not 100 percent.

Hey Now Wonder

I fumbled around with a tune for this on the guitar earlier, but my guitar playing is, how do you say, really fucking awful. So, rather than subject you any MP3 horrors, I'll just post the lyrics*.

Hey now, walk around your room again
Hey now, wonder what's your darkest sin
Hey now, send another drink down
Hey now, wonder why you wear a frown

Hey now, this could be your greatest day

Hey now, wonder if it goes astray

Hey now, see if you can get it back

Hey now, wonder what it is you lack

Hey now, your favorite card’s already played

Hey now, wonder why you’re so afraid

Hey now, scrub it from your mind so clean

Hey now, wonder why you feel so mean

Hey now, write another life away

Hey now, wonder if you’ll be okay

Hey now, break it down a little more

Hey now, wonder what was there before

*These are lyrics, goddammit, not a poem. Lyrics!

Here's hoping.

Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. III

Part the Third

(Pre-story note: Cary already did a great write up of the shark day here. Consider mine supplemental.)

I wake up about 10 minutes ahead of the alarm, about 4:15. Jump in the shower to get myself moving, hitting myself with a blast of cold water at the end to make sure I’m awake. I get my bags and meet Cary and Kelly in the hotel lobby. We check out and head to the marina, which only about 10 minutes from the hotel. In the car I reflect on that last words that most of my friends said to me before I left, most of which were variations on “you are so going to die.” I also think about my sister, who I’ve listed as my emergency contact. My parents have no idea about this trip, and if things go badly, it’s up to her to tell them how I went out.

There are a group of guys standing down by the docks who point us towards our boat, the Superfish. I’m mildly disappointed that the boat doesn’t have a big cape, but I get over it pretty quickly. The cage that will act as our observatory/watery tomb is hooked to the back of the boat. James, the lead guide for the day, is already on board and tells us to come on up. We’re the first to arrive, the first to line up to be a hot lunch as Hooper put it. The other divers and observers arrive, and we get under way just after six. It’s an interesting mix of people, some in their 20’s, some in their 30’s, and a few really old, decrepit people, like Cary. Along with Captain Mick and Sean the Deckhand, we’ve got a pretty full boat.

It’s a three-hour ride out to the Farallones and we head out as the sun is starting to come up. It’s a pretty great way to take in a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. This will easily be the longest amount of time I’ve spent on a boat in one day. I’ve never been prone to motion sickness, so I’m hopeful that holds true today.

The three hours flies by. I spend a good amount of time just holding onto a rail and taking in the sight of the endless ocean. Along the way, nature puts on a little show for us as porpoises and whales burst forth from the waves. The only time I got a little freaked out about the trip was about a week earlier. I was drifting off to sleep at home when it occurred to me that the creatures we’d be seeing were out there RIGHT NOW. Whatever I would see underwater was already out there, living its life simultaneously to mine.

It was just a weird feeling. These weren’t creatures contained in aquariums. They had total freedom to go anywhere, and on that day, nothing but random chance would bring them into contact with me. I’d be throwing myself into an environment totally alien not just to me, but to my entire damned species. I had strange dreams that night.

Everybody aboard is cool, so we have a good ride out to the islands. Before I know it, Cary tells me they’re starting to come into view. The Devil’s Teeth, as they’re known, are becoming clear in the distance. No more than nine members of the forestry service ever live here at a time, and it’s been declared a wildlife sanctuary for the sea lions and birds that call it home. For three months every year, great whites congregate here. Then people like us pay to get in the middle of all that. I tell myself it’s cheaper than a cocaine habit.

We arrive a little after nine, and the first group suits up to go in the cage. Because the sharks that make this their home base are mature sharks, there’s no point in chumming. They’re attracted to mammal blood. Instead, the team uses sea lion decoys. I think about asking if they ever consider stopping by a butcher shop and getting cow blood. Then I can’t decide if this is a stupid question or not, so I just keep my mouth shut.

The first group goes into the water. After they’re in, the crew asks who wants to go next. We step up, and go get our wetsuits on. This takes something like 50 hours. I finally get set in my wetsuit, and the first group comes back up. We get fitted with our ankle weights, then the chest weights just before we slide into the cage from the back of the boat. Cary goes first, then I’m up, with Kelly to follow.

Whew. This is it. James tells me to take a few breaths to get used to breathing through the regulator, since I’ve never been diving before. I slide to the cage, turn around, and begin to slide down. There’s an initial moment of panic when I think I can’t breathe. I realize I can, and calm down. It’s incredibly disorienting to be underwater at first, but I make my way to my side of the cage. I stand there for a minute, and Cary gets my attention and motions for me to crouch the way he is.

I finally start to orient myself to the cage. The sensation of the tide is amazing. Even with the cage just hanging from the back of the boat, if you lean forward it feels like you’re flying. Kelly makes her way into the cage, and the three of us start to look around. We spot a giant jellyfish, an incredible thing to see at first. By the end of the day, we’ve seen 60 of the bastards and they’re old hat. Visibility changes by the moment, sometimes as much as 30 feet, other times it’s nearly impossible to see your hand in front of your face. You’re also taking in plankton by the faceful, which is unsettling.

Did I mention the water was goddamned freezing? Well, it was. The dive company recommended a 7m suit for all divers. Mine was 3, but I also had a vest with my hood attached, so my core was protected with 6mm. That would usually take care of the temperature problem, but normally you’d be swimming and generating heat. We were locked into the cage and not moving much, so I spent much of the day freezing my ass off.

We ended up going into the cage three times total over the course of the day. Seasickness kept knocking out different divers, so there was more opportunity for us to spend a lot of time in the cage. I flew across the country for this, I wasn’t going to miss out on anything. The Superfish was equipped with a hot tub filled with seawater, so between dives you’d jump in there and reheat your body. Reheating your soul is up to you.

It’s weird what goes through your mind in such a foreign situation. Here I am, as far away from my everyday life as possible, literally thousands of miles away from almost everyone I know and submerged in the ocean. Speech communication with any other human being is impossible, so it’s pretty much just you and your thoughts. My thoughts and I aren’t always on speaking terms, so it can be kind of tough to be stuck with no one but your inner monologue to talk to. My mind drifts around from a laser focus for sharks to wondering what I could have/should have done differently in life and back about a thousand times every time I’m in the cage. It was kind of therapeutic and certainly more helpful than going to an actual therapist was. I may still be a disaster as a human being, but at least now I have an insane story to tell.

Cary and I made our final trip into the cage. We’ve been down about 10 minutes when he taps me on the shoulder, pointing below. About 15 feet down, the definite outline of a shark swimming past. It looks to be maybe 12 to 15 feet. We lose site of it, then it circles back around to my side of the cage and continues back under the boat. Cary surfaced to tell the crew we’d seen a shark (the first of the day). We catch one more glimpse of her, but that’s it. Even with our brief encounter, you get a sense of the sheer power of these things.

I came back up for the last time and jumped back into the hot tub. Cary, who shall be known as Namor from here on out, stayed in the water for nearly half the time we were out there as more and more divers were felled by the water temperature and seasickness. The ride back into San Francisco gave us another show from the whales and plentiful beer for us to tell our stories over. Cary and I already started making plans for either another shark trip or something a little more…crypto zoological.

We got back to the docks and said our goodbyes. I called my sister and told her I had indeed survived. We stopped at an In-N-Out Burger, where all three of us inhaled burgers and shakes. I was out like a light as soon as I climbed back in the car, and Cary drove us to the condo his hid parents had rented so we could meet back up with his family. We still had another full day ahead of us, though.