Shadows and Fog

Living in San Francisco for substantial portions of the last three months, I have spent more time in fog in that time than in the last three years combined. The hilltop home that I have called home thanks to the incredible generosity of my sister- and brother-in-law manages is either in fog or above it more than just about any other part of San Francisco. It is the fun, thick kind, too. On one occasion I missed a turn because an opposing car's headlights turned my view into an opaque white wall.

This week, it turned out that getting out of The City didn't get me away from the fog. Burbank experienced an unusual spate of ground fog this past weekend. As it turns out, my Friday night flight was lucky to land. We could see the fog hugging the ground, but it lifted sufficiently above the deck to allow the airplane to touch down. Sunday night was a different story; the fog shut the airport down. Unfortunately, that meant that there were no airplanes staged to take Monday morning's departing passengers, including me. So when the fog remained, closing the airport until the fog dissipated around 9 am, nobody went anywhere because there were no airplanes there to do the work. Worse, the aircraft were not released from their points of departure to get to Burbank until the fog was gone, so we had to wait at least an hour for any of the airplanes to show up. The first Southwest airplane in came empty from Las Vegas, and then planes started arriving in bunches, stacking up on the small airfield.

My 7 am flight was cancelled, but I rebooked on a 9 am flight while I stood in line with 200 other bewildered passengers at the Southwest checkin desk. After rebooking, I jumped out of line and picked up my new boarding pass at the electronic kiosk. I love living in this era.

Of course, my new flight was delayed, too. We finally boarded our airplane at 11:20, but it did not take off until noon. I finally got to the office by 1:45, after having arisen at 5:30 that morning, expecting to be in the office at 9 as usual on Mondays.

I was impressed that just about everyone kept their cool. The problem was as obvious as looking out the window: the fog was impenetrable, except to confirm that there were no airplanes to take us anywhere anyway. Everybody accepted their lot that day, and dutifully boarded their adjusted flights whenever the planes could jockey into position. There is hope for humanity yet.

Lost in the Sunset

Former Justice of the Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the Court two years ago, in part to care for her ailing husband of more than 50 years. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1990, and is now living in an assisted living center for Alzheimer's patients.

The O'Connor family disclosed this week that John O'Connor had struck up a romance with another patient in the facility. According to the O'Connors' son, Mr. O'Connor was nearly suicidal at the thought of entering the home, knowing that his end was near, but then rebounded like "a teenager in love" shortly after moving to a new part of the facility. Justice O'Connor is reportedly "thrilled" that her husband is finally relaxed and happy.

Considering Mr. O'Connor's state of altered reality, the story cannot be anything but bittersweet. Having seen dementia up close, I know that it is terribly hard on the family. Although it must be crushing to be the spouse innocently left behind, however, I can also understand the sense of relief that comes from seeing someone who had previously been depressed and confused transition back into happiness. It is a gracious person indeed who can watch the transfer of affections happen and still find some comfort in it.

Remembering the Last Veteran

There now remains but one American veteran who saw time in Europe in World War I.

Consumer Goods of the Masses

There was a time, a couple of decades ago, when the mysterious retail center known locally as "The Price Club" worked its way into the edges of the collective consciousness. Odd tales of relish jars as big as toddlers and packs of toilet paper large enough to swaddle the White House worked their way into society like modern folklore. Only a privileged few were permitted to pass the gates of this fantastic place, however, the right to enter apparently based on come arcane formula of vocation, location and, possibly, ritual sacrifice.

The Price Club eventually merged with Costco and bacame a much less mysterious, and much more prominent, force in the American retail world. As with any purveyor of commodities in bulk, Costco has had to fight, accept or otherwise deal with an image issue that assumes that anything sold in such vast quantities must be of low-rent quality. Value, of course, has never been the guiding light of the shopping rich (also known as the idle rich, when they rouse themselves to wear out the AmEx). Scarcity, and its attendant high price, often seems to be the impulse behind the purchase. Why buy a Camry, to top selling car in the U.S. and a fine, competent machine, when you can have a Maserati Quattroporte, an exceedingly fine, and exceedingly rare Italian import? Costco, buy selling everything in staggeringly large quantities and, it must be said, at favorable prices, appears to appeal to the lowest common consumer denominator.

It must be said, however, that Costco is not quite the lowbrow affair its huge warehouses would indicate. Costco has developed a well-deserved reputation of offering high-quality baked goods and meats. Costco sells well known brand names, of course, which carry their own indicia of quality. But Costco also brands its own merchandise, everything from shredded cheese to slacks. Far from the dubious quality of "store brand" labels that we all know and avoid if we can help it, the ubiquitous Kirkland brand is not an identifying mark of cheap, marginal goods. While it is all well and good to wear Armani suits and Gucci loafers, sometimes you just need something that gets you through the week without looking like you are still buying out of the 1985 J.C. Penney's catalog, and without the risk that you will regret your newly-threadbare purchase before the season is out.

America, I'm here to report that you can trust the Kirkland brand T-shirts. Folding my laundry this morning (one of the hidden consequences of being half a state away from Cheryl), I found that the well-known and presumably trusted Jockey brand T-shirts demonstrated all the staying power of the typical overpriced concert shirt, whereas the Kirkland models had retained their size and heft. Economy and quality; whoda thunk it?

That was a long way to go just to find out that one brand of T-shirts is better than another, wasn't it? Man, I love blogs.

House Sellin' Blues, Verse 2

We're finally running up against some dates that will require action. If we cannot get our house sold within the next couple of weeks, we will not be able to get into a house in the Bay Area in time for the kids to start school in January. Plus, the real estate market typically goes into hibernation from just before Thanksgiving until the spring (or February in California).

We have had what appear to be some serious viewers (would you spend 90 minutes at an open house if you did not intend to buy the house?), but still no offers. We have asked our realtor to lean on a few of these folks as much as he can. We're now into the "if you call now, you will also get these fabulous gifts absolutely FREE!" phase. If we can't induce someone to jump on it within the next 10 days or so, though, we will have missed our window of opportunity for the fall.

Fortunately, we're not trying to fund two mortgages, so we can still afford to be patient. We figure were are within about 5% of the final selling price, but nobody is willing to take the final plunge. The house we like up here is still available, but will it be there in March? Will conditions be better in the spring?

I thought it was my birthright as a Californian to have buyers clamor for the opportunity to outbid each other for my home. Turns out that the old maxim, "location, location, location" has a seldom-quoted codicil: "timing."

Them Ol' House-Sellin' Blues

A quick update on the houseselling front. We have had several open houses now, with varying degrees of interest. The first were attended mostly by neighbors. The most recent was hardly attended at all, but has generated the most serious interest. We ended up with a personal showing this afternoon and two tomorrow. We have been whipsawed so many directions emotionally during this time that we do not know whether to be cautiously optimistic or hopefully cautious anymore.

Ironically, an article about our community's real estate market came out in our local newspaper this week. The recent rate reductions by the Fed are some positive news, but mostly the news is bleak. It is my belief that this has helped contribute to an artificial standoff between buyers and sellers, in that buyers seem to be stuck on the notion that all news is equally bad everywhere, and that therefore all real estate is overpriced everywhere. Without making offers to prove the point, however, that is nothing more than empty rhetoric designed to make the seller bid against himself, not an open market in which the true value of the property can be ascertained.

Okay, so I'm a little tired of people coming to our 95-year-old house and saying in surprise, "ooh, it's old." Well, of course it is. When you saw the ad for the "1912 Craftsman," what exactly did you think those funny little numbers at the beginning meant? Age seems to be an excuse to automatically deduct sums from the perceived value of the home. Again, that's not a free exchange market, that's huffing and puffing. We just want someone to make a real offer. Then we'll see what the house is worth.

Today's Brainless Entertainment, Take 2

Just when you thought you had killed off all the bloons, they're back! I haven't had time to play this one yet, but rumor has it that the "hard" game is pretty tough. Go monkeys!

This Is Depressing

And I'm not even suffering this loss.

Here is a list of addresses of homes lost in Rancho Bernardo so far -- ten pages of them. It looks like some entire neighborhoods are gone.

Thick Skies Over SoCal

Here is a recent satellite radar image of southern California:


Despite what the legend says on the map, I assure you that this is not a record of rainfall. The smoke and ash is so thick that the radar interprets what it sees as rain.

The 250,000513,000+ people evacuated from their homes should be so lucky.

Sherman Could Only Dream Of This

I've experienced a number of disasters in the years I have lived in Southern California: a huge earthquake, record-setting rains, catastrophic landlides, and fires. Lots of fires. We have had a couple in our local hills, but the big ones have usually been some distance away from the house, although close enough for the smoke to obscure the sun.

The fires seem to come in groups, and the gathering storm in Southern California today is scary in its breadth. What began yesterday as a fire in Malibu and a couple of fires in San Diego County has become a set of fires that threatens to jeopardize most of California south of Oxnard and stretch firefighting resources to the breaking point.

The fire in northern San Diego county has overtaken the more glamorously-sited Malibu fire as the true concern. Following a path similar to that of the Cedar Fire from a few years ago, a quarter of million people are under evacuation orders. This is a staggering number of people, many of whom already have no home to return to this evening. Many acquaintences of ours are among those who have been forced out of their homes today, with guarded hopes of being able to return a few days from now.

It now seems like fires are popping up all over the place. Fires have erupted in Lake Arrowhead, Irvine, and now Valencia, which is the first to directly threaten the San Fernando Valley.

So far, we are okay, as the Verdugo Hills have not caught fire. Yet. Like four years ago, our timeshare outside of Ramona is once again in the path of a big San Diego county fire. As of three months ago, the burn scars from the last fire were still clearly visible less than a mile from where we enjoy swimming, tennis and golf every once in while.

It is disconcerting being so far away from these events that are understandably dominating the news in SoCal. Here in the Bay Area, under spectacularly clear skies and mild temperatures, the fire story could be occurring anywhere else in the world for all of its lack of immediacy in the media (also understandable, I suppose). While I wish I were at home to keep a close eye on things, I'm glad I don't have to breath the smokey air.

If it were my home threatened, though, I would trade a few days of labored breathing for a nice big helicopter drop of water on my house.

Maestro, A Touch More Strings, Please

The musical score has been an important implement in the moviemaker’s toolbelt since before “movies” were “talkies.” In the hands of an unimaginative director who can only muster slavish adherence to convention, a score can give away the game, clumsily seeking to manipulate the viewer with too-overt foreshadowing. Talented filmmakers, however, such as Mr. Hitchcock to name one, can turn the score into a character all its own, bringing depth and meaning to the production wholly apart from, but in close coordination with, the visual images.

Francis Ford Coppola is one of those cineastes who has turned a score into its own, compelling character. The theme for The Godfather, composed by his father, is a theme that manages to contain within it all that is great and fascinating about those films. One need not have seen the movies (but if you haven’t, what wrong with you?) to hear in the melody the languid sunbaked hills of Sicily, the mourning what was left behind in the Old World coupled with the hope thought to exist in the New, and under it all, menace in the not-quite-major, not-quite-minor sequence. It is a beautiful little piece of music, used by Coppola to brilliant effect in the Godfather movies as the central conceit, the Maypole around which the story revolves.

Real life does not come with a musical score. Unlike the popcorn-noshing viewer in a darkened theater, we never receive advance warning from dour cellos that life is about to take a turn for the worse, nor does a crescendo of lush violins herald a romantic encounter.

As someone who believes and thinks about such things, then, I was not sure how to react when at lunch today the faint strains of the Godfather theme wafted through my local diner. Songs on a sound system I can understand. We hear songs everywhere. A score, though, can actually be experienced as an enhancing backdrop even to a scene in real life, since that is how it is used on screen. I allowed myself the brief, unsettling sensation of imagining that I had dropped into the movieworld of the Corleones, that in a moment Vito Corleone would shuffle in to buy some oranges. An amusing moment in the middle of an ordinary day. There is nothing quite like music that carries the potential to lift you out of your present and dispatch you to a world far away.

Of course, if the Darth Vader theme had come on, I would have scurried out the back door as fast as I could.

The End (of Social Security) Has Begun

The first Baby Boomer has applied for Social Security.

That sound you just heard was Gen-Xers running their annual Social Security statements through paper shredders, thereby dramatically increasing the value of their investment.

It's Time For Some October Baseball

This is why I love baseball. Without the “enlightened,” highly regulated salary cap approach of other major sports leagues (and the NHL, too), major league baseball has managed to put together a post-season dominated by solid, deserving teams that are nevertheless considered underdogs because of their finances.

The Cleveland Indians (23rd highest payroll out of 30 teams), Colorado Rockies (25th) and Arizona Diamondbacks (26th) have proven, yet again, that a team of highly motivated, talented young players can succeed against the teams that spend lavishly for established stars. This speaks well of the team nature of the sport of baseball, as well as for the intangible factor of team chemistry. It is often the case, as it is with each of these three teams, that the low-priced youngsters have played together for many years within the organization prior to getting to The Show. It may be anecdotal evidence, but the results are compelling. The happy result for fans is that we get to see young players who still love the game for what it is, not necessarily for what it can do for them. I defy to to not crack a smile when grown men, playing a boy's game, cheer for each other and their team's accomplishments as if they were still the boys that, in their hearts, they still are.

It is worth noting that so far in the playoffs, these teams have taken down the teams with the highest payroll (New York Yankees), the 8th highest (Chicago Cubs) and the 13th highest (Philadelphia Phillies).

Of course, each of these teams is likely to be crushed by the other team remaining in the playoffs, the Boston Red Sox (2nd highest payroll, who defeated the team with the 4th highest payroll, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, United States of America).

[Incidentally, one of the other major leagues of world sport that operates without a salary cap, the English Premier League, has come to a completely contrary result. English football is known by its “Big Four”: Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. Spending money in quantities that make George Steinbrenner look like a penurious miser, those four clubs have rarely finished anywhere but the top four places since the Premier League came into existence in 1992. Oddly, English football fans seem to like it that way. If ManU ever goes into a rebuilding cycle, it is certain that scores of supporters will be found blundering about the stoops of pubs the world over, babbling incoherently about how the end is nigh, and that ol’ Sir Alex would nevah’d alloowed this ta ‘appen on ‘is watch.]

Missed It By That Much

I was just reflecting this morning, as I walked through the concourse of the Southwest terminal of the Oakland Airport for the fourth Monday morning in a row, that I have probably made more flights into and out of that airport than any other except Burbank. So my newfound familiarity with the place added to my surprise when I heard that the Oakland Airport was evacuated a couple of hours ago due to a bomb threat.

The Oakland Airport is an unspectacular facility, but it handles a tremendous volume of Southwest flights every day. This event will probably ruin Southwest's day across its entire schedule. I'm just glad I got through this morning before the place shut down.

I trust (hope) that, as with most disruptions of this nature, this ends up only being a scare and not a real threat.

Requiem For A Talent Wasted

Former U.S. Olympic sprint champion Marion Jones has confessed to using steroids prior to the 2000 Olympic Games. She raked in five medals, three of them gold, in dominating her competition in Sydney. Since then, however, her career has been dogged with suspicion that she was a steroid user. She was connected to BALCO, the organization at the center of the Barry Bonds story. Her ex-husband, a shotputter, was run out of the sport for doping. The father of her child, a sprinter, has been connected with BALCO and has been stripped of a world record as a result.

Through it all, Jones adamantly proclaimed her innocence. She even sued the founder of BALCO for defamation stemming from his identification of her as one athlete who was supplied with his company’s products. Today, she has confessed to lying to federal investigators in connection with a steroids investigation. In one stroke, she has confirmed the spread of BALCO’s influence, irreparably tarnished her legacy, and ended her career. Ironically, for someone raised in a town known primarily for its prison, Jones may now spend some time behind bars.

This story makes me sad, but not because of the admission of steroid use, which comes as no surprise, and not because the vehement denials turned out to be utter lies. The time has long since come to stop trusting what comes out of the mouths of star athletes who stand to lose millions of dollars in an instant if they do anything other than declare their innocence.

What saddens me in particular about this story is that I remember Marion Jones from long ago. I remember when she was a brilliant, gifted talent on the rise. She spent her high school years in Lompoc, just up the road from Santa Barbara during my time there. The local papers were full of her exploits as a prep-school track star. It was impossible to deny that her future was bright. She regularly dominated her competition; it is rare that Olympic greatness can be forecast with as much certainty as it was for Jones. She was a superior athlete, she was pretty, she had personality … great things were inevitable, and it was fun to have been there from the beginning.

And yet she had the misfortune to be an insecure star in an era when doping became the way to ensure greatness. Jones is much like her BALCO stablemate Bonds: she was undeniably talented, perhaps the greatest of her generation, yet suffered from a peculiar crisis of self-confidence that led her to surround herself with people of questionable character, among those people who led her to use substances that would assure her of the greatness that already lay within her grasp. She cannot be excused for the choices she made, but it is no less frustrating and sobering that another transcendent talent has been relegated to shameful recollection as a result.

She had the potential to be great, but risk losing; she chose to guarantee that she would win. In the gap between the two is the divide between sport as competition and sport as commerce.

But The People In There Walk Funny

Maybe it is because of our recent activities (see Michael's 6th birthday post), but every time I look at the Oakland federal building, I see the product of an architect who played with Legos as a kid:



With a couple of Saturday afternoons, I'm sure Michael could build a nice scale version on our dining room table.

Happy 6th Birthday, Michael!

A week ago Friday, Michael turned six. This was the year, as it was with Kelly before him, when the birthday party became a more intimate gathering of good friends rather than a swarming mass of all children known to Michael or us. After two years of Thomas the Train Engine, followed by two years of Star Wars, this year's theme was Legos. Cheryl managed to pull off a very effective Lego party, all the way down to Lego-shaped mini-cakes and Lego-shaped ice cubes (in appropriate colors, even).


Lego kits comprised a significant portion of Michael's birthday gifts.



As much as I wished for but never received Legos when I was a kid, those blocky houses had nothing on the elaborate, specialized kits available these days. Michael spent the rest of the weekend, as well as this past weekend, working on his kits, which included Star Wars ships, a medieval carriage, a gas station and carwash, and two airplanes and an airport. A large apartment building waits in the wings as next weekend's project.






He needs very little assistance assembling these several-hundred-part kits, which can only mean good things for the development of his spatial awareness, hand-eye coordination and organizational skills.

Hey, we have to justify the cost of those kits somehow.

Mr. DeMille? We're Ready

It's official: the house is on the market. Not only that, it is on the cover of the local insert to the LA Times Real Estate section for this weekend.


Step right up, step right this way.

Soon, please.

[Incidentally, I agonized over whether to post any details about this, other than the fact that the house is on the market. In my family, you see, money was nearly the taboo of all taboos, or at least it felt that way to me. As a result, I am irrationally cagey when it comes to discussing anything of a personal financial nature. Thus, it wounds me a little bit to bring attention to the ad that necessarily has the asking price on it. However, anyone who wanted to could easily look up the MLS listing for the house and find out all about it (including more pictures -- the house has never been this clean!). Plus, nobody (except the real estate agents) is getting rich off of this deal; it's just as expensive where we're going. Owning California real estate is a bit like being a floaty toy in a filling bathtub. Once you get in (which, admittedly, can present a considerable challenge), you just rise up with the water level. That doesn't make you a bigger or better toy, you simply find yourself at a higher level than you started, through no effort or merit of your own, with a whole bunch of other equally bewildered bathtoys.

So, for my family and friends who are horrified at the disclosure of the selling price, get over it, even if I have trouble doing so. And forget about the final selling price; I'll never tell!]

New-Kid Syndrome

I have a theory about human social interaction that, I fear, may only apply to me. It was true in childhood, and has remained irritating faithful into adulthood. It seems that if there is ever a time when I am going to trip over a threshold and scatter several hundred pages of carefully collated documents over an office floor, or have a waiter dump soup in my lap, or be the recipient of a seagull’s potty break, it is when I am a recent arrival among the people who are the unfortunate witnesses to such disasters. As an established member of a social group, I can remain neat, tidy and embarrassment-free, but as a newbie, I feel that I am doomed to suffer some kind of inexplicable humiliation.

I had my moment earlier this week. While at lunch at a local lunch grill, I was in the process of dressing my cheeseburger when I dimly sensed that I had stepped on something with my heel, which was coupled with a rather loud “pop.” Looking down, I saw that I had stepped on a ketchup packet. Irritating, but no big deal.

A moment later, after locating pickles for my burger, I looked down again. Usually when you cause a ketchup packet to explode (and who hasn’t done that on the schoolyard at least once), there is a satisfying fan of ketchup arrayed outward across the floor. At first glance, I did not recall seeing any ketchup. Looking again, I confirmed that there was not the spray of ketchup that I would expect to see. I returned to applying condiments to my burger when the awful truth hit me.

Look down yet again, but not as far as the floor this time, I saw that the ketchup had somehow slipped the surly bonds of earth and leaped up, depositing many generous globs of ketchup up the inside and back of my left pant leg. It then dawned on me that I was in full view of a dozen or so people. If random spots of ketchup blotting the walls in my immediate vicinity were any indication, it was possible that some of them not only watched me soil my light beige slacks, but also suffered the indignity of being sprayed as well.

I did what any normal person would do. I scurried as swiftly as I could to a table in the corner to disassociate myself from the scene and survey the damage. In my haste, of course, I neglected to pick up napkins. Thus, I found myself at a raised table in the corner of a busy lunch grill examining my inseam for blobs of ketchup (which is not a dignified process under the best of conditions), one hundred yards across a busy city square from my office and privacy, armed with nothing but a magazine and a single Kleenex.

I dabbed at the ketchup as best I could and ate my lunch calmly. I then scurried back to my office while holding my magazine in unnatural positions in a futile effort to hide the evidence of my mishap, hoping to spend the rest of the day seated in my office until everybody went home for the evening so that I and my shame could slink away for home in peace.

This could only happen to the new guy.

End of an Era

It is Barry Bonds' last home game as a member of the San Francisco Giants tonight. The weather is beautiful here in the Bay Area today; it is tempting to drop by Pac Bell Park SBC Park AT&T Park to watch the most accomplished hitter in the history of the game say goodbye to the team and city where he spent the bulk of his career.

Bonds is obviously a controversial figure, as he is Exhibit A of the Steroid Era. I feel oddly detached from that debate, however. I moved away from the Bay Area the year before Bonds joined my beloved but frequently inept Giants. He became an immediate force on one of the best teams I’ve ever seen, which was involved in one of the best season-long pennant chases in baseball history.

(ESPN has a good summary of the 1993 season in which the Giants won 103 games but did not make the playoffs because the Atlanta Braves fleeced the blankety-blank San Diego Padres, giving up a sack of potatoes and some pocket lint for slugger Fred McGriff. The Braves went 51-17 the rest of the season, finishing one game ahead of perhaps the best Giants team ever.)

Now that I’ve moved back to the Bay Area, Bonds is leaving. I appreciate that Bonds always managed to keep my favorite team from being horrible, so I have never hated him the way most of the rest of the sporting world does. However, because I was not in town during his entire tenure, I also did not soak up the irrational local loyalty that leads otherwise sane people to say that he’s a good guy who never did anything wrong. I am left ambivalent about Bonds’ departure, and concerned that the Giants to come will closely resemble the Giants I knew and loved from years ago, perennially mired in the lower half of their division.

This area will be sad to see Bonds go. It is time, however. Although his bat is nearly as dangerous as it always has been, he is 43 and a liability as outfielder. The franchise will also probably benefit from the absence of his clubhouse ego and the media sideshow that followed him everywhere.

So I pick right back up where I left off, looking for the next Will Clark.