Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

I know what the state of Florida should have done.

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I wonder how Casey Anthony will spend the rest of her summer. Will she go clubbing? Hit the beaches? Hang out by the backyard pool? Maybe she'll make a million dollars selling her story. If you haven't heard by now, the verdict came in this afternoon. "Not Guilty" on all counts except for lying to the police.

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Making my gimpy-ass way to work yesterday (I am recovering from three hernias, in case you missed it), I encountered a group of prison work release fellas cutting the tall grass on the embankment that separates Lincoln Street from Cambridge Street. It smelled fantastic! The grass had been easily over a foot high and getting more wild by the day, and so the whole street was awash in that glorious fresh-cut grass aroma. I had to stop and take a few gratifying sniffs, reveling in the bright morning and all that cut grass. Which reminded me of the time I found, to my absolute bliss, a perfume that smelled just like that. If memory serves, it was by Calvin Klein. This was ages ago, I was young, still with Hub and I seem to recall him tolerating this grass perfume with some amusement. Does that go into the "what was I thinking" bin or what? Yes, fine, I love the smell of fresh-cut grass. But that meant I saw fit to go around smelling like your front lawn? I also love the aroma of fresh sauteed onions, Crayola crayons, lemons...jeez, I love the smell of spare ribs, but it never occurred to me to dab barbecue sauce behind my ears.

Grass. Really, young me?

Look, I'm not trying to harsh on your royal ogling. But here's the thing, see. I don't see the big deal. Yeah, it's a nice gown, it's a nice ceremony, and well it should be at over $30 mil. All I'm saying is, the last couple I knew who were together for eight years before getting married *also* had a nice wedding, and then were separated in just over a year. Extreme pressure doesn't' always make a diamond. Sometimes it just makes dust.

This fine, sunny Saturday afternoon brings with it a topic I'm not usually vocal about; I'm in the exact right mood, as it were, to speak out. Also I am watching Marijuana: A Chronic History on the History Channel right now.

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One benefit of having our Internet bundled with phone and cable is that I get a lot of "true crime" shows on channels I never even knew existed. Oh yes, if you didn't know this about me already, I'm a major crimes junkie. I guess the term, as corny as it sounds, is crime buff. Had my education gone another way, I would be more than a mere buff; rather, you could have been reading the diary of a crackerjack criminal psychologist right now, man. Alas, it was not meant to be. Save for a few courses in criminology and psychology, the bulk of my "education" in the subject of crime and the criminal mind has been more a post-grad endeavor. Self-taught, you might say.

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Oh yeah, I left you people hanging, didn't I? I started a side story in one of my recent "holy fuck is this a lot of snow" essays. I believe I promised a follow-up called "Somerville Can Suck It"? Well, I aim to please.

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I'm just sharing a quick video my buddy Terence sent me in honor of my last photo essay of parking spot saving items. I laughed, so I hope that you do, too! Why Sammy's? Because fuck that guy!"

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Four storms into the 2010/2011 season and I'm still deciding who has a more difficult time during winter in Boston -- the pedestrians or the drivers?

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Well folks, it's official -- the winter of 2010/2011 is freakin' clobbering us. It's making us its bitch. It's pummeling our wimpy arses into whimpering submission. It's bending us over a bike rack, and landing a punishing donkeypunch to the kidneys. And I say "it's official" because, with today's snow fall, Boston made its debut on the Golden Snow Globe's top ten list of snowiest cities in the lower 48.

It's a dubious honor, to say the least. Am I right, Boston people? Right. Unless you have the memory of a goldfish or your subconscious has heroically blocked out the past four weeks in order to save your sweet sanity, then you should not be surprised that we made the list of top-ten-snowiest cities. We're tenth out of ten, but still. Think about it; that list is topped by soul-crushing places that look like the ice planet Hoth for three months out of the year, where every house keeps a skyscraper of firewood outside, snowshoeing is not so much a recreational sport as a means to get to the mailbox, mail is delivered by snowmobile, and school buses are fitted with plows.

So how did we win this honorable place amongst the great American snowbound? Cumulatively, of course. Boston had a nice, ladylike snowfall that gifted us with a pleasantly white Christmas. Then Mother Nature took off the gloves and became a total bitch, hurling a great big Nor'easter that hit hard overnight on December 26th. What a ballbuster of a storm! Brisk accumulation, thunder, lightning and the kind of strong wind that knocks out utilities, sweeps drifts back onto roads the plows just cleared and blasts away all recollection of why you still live here. Then, approximately ten minutes after that mess was mostly managed ('kay, it might have been days, not minutes), we got another wallop a lot like it, only wetter. No sooner had we dug out of that second storm, there came the next storm that, on the plus side, brought no snow but, quite on the minus side, dumped a torrent of sleety rain that turned the sidewalks into sideslips-and-falls, and transformed the metric shit-ton of plow drifts and snow banks into crystallized mounds of craggy Sno-cones. Our cries of "Mercy!" were muffled under another six inches of fresh snow today.

This most recent snow was fluffier and friendlier, and had the added benefit of refreshing last week's now-graying slushfest with a new layer of powder, kinda like nature's white-out, but being the fourth snow event in as many weeks, combined with temps plummeting to single digits...ahem. Yes, I'm not the only one who crawled whimpering to the sofa with a blanket, a stack of DVDs and a mug of something hot.

It's a challenge, living in a city that's getting socked in by a storm every week.

Oh, I know, it could be a lot worse. It could be Syracuse, Bismarck, Denver or, well, Hoth. But it's all relative, right? Freezing temps and three inches of snowfall in Atlanta shuts down that city quite effectively, while Boston would hardly blink under those conditions. By the same token I'm sure Syracuse citizens laugh at us with our measly 40 inches (season to date) as they work their lives around 98 backbreaking inches. Yes, winter weather is all relative, just as in summer, when it's Atlanta's turn to laugh at our heat and humidity, which by their standards is nothin'. (I predict my next "humidity" entry will come around August, so I've got that going for me. Seriously, WHY do I live here?)

One thing I do love about a wintry city is the camaraderie it fosters. In the beginning, before it gets to be a tiresome chorefest, the snow and cold sort of bring people together. Chances are it's before Christmas, and there is something so magical about the colorful lights against the falling snow. Decorations are still up around the city, people are being comparatively nice to each other, vacations are still ahead of you and everyone's bustling about getting things done. During the first snow or two, there's a certain sense of sharing a common experience wherever the city people gather -- in the Dunkin Donuts line, on the T platforms and bus stops. You're clutching your piping hot large Pumpkin Spice coffee whose warmth you can feel through your cute new mittens, all bundled up, wearing your kicky new Wellies with the happy little cherries on them. There's always some neighbor who is all excited to use his snow blower for the first time so he's out bright and early clearing his driveway, and, feeling manly and cheerful, he might even do the sidewalk for two houses on either side and the old lady across the street. Kids are giddy with the high of the first snow day, squealing with delight as they make snow angels and pull each other around on sleds made out of bungee cords and trash can lids. People are out clearing their cars, waving hello to the plow drivers and calling merrily back and forth to each other. In the beginning, it's pretty, especially when snow falls on those days around Christmas when we're snug inside with loved ones, cookies, cocoa and nothing to do but look out the window at the aftereffects of nature's bedazzler. Trees morph into glittering works of art, the air is dry and crisp, everything takes on a Narnia-esque look.

Winter is not so bad! It's pretty!

Until it gets ugly. Then comes the gray slush, the brown puddles, the yellow snow...even in the two "day after" photos that I took to capture the pretty sunlight on the icy streets and trees, you can already see the mucky beginnings of the not-so-picturesque slush piles. The bottom photo is our house, the blue one.

As fellow diarist Lisa would say, sure it's pretty, "for about five minutes." The sense of camaraderie lasts for maybe six, seven minutes. By mid-January that neighbor is damn sick of pushing his snow blower around, and damned if he's going to do more than the minimum of clearing. Your fingers are numb because you've lost your cute new mittens somewhere near the subway, maybe it happened when you fell on your ass because those Wellies turn out to have no tread for the icy sidewalks. The kids are refusing to go out anymore, even to use the new sleds they got for Christmas that seemed like such a good idea to replace those bungee/trash lid contraptions they were using, but no, so they're inside playing video games, driving their parents halfway to the edge, which those parents will cross over when they hear of yet another snow day. And some people have simply given up on trying to get the car out. They'll take cabs until spring, thank you.

OH, the cars. The cars! Everything about cars is really hard in a city during winter. I haven't had a car since 2003, but it took several years before I lost that instinct to wake up in a panic about the car.

But more about that in the next entry. Plus pictures!

"You know we're living in a society! We're supposed to act in a civilized way!"
(George Costanza)

Is it just me, or are we fast becoming a society of total dickheads? Everywhere I go and anywhere I look, it seems that people are becoming more and more rude, insensitive and thoughtless. One would think that as we advance technologically, making so many tasks and chores easier to do, we would also become better humans.

I guess I don't know why I think that; I guess I am assuming that the things that used to put people in a bad mood, say, waiting in lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles (also known as Satan's Asshole, thanks Dane Cook) are replaced with online transactions that take two minutes. Doing taxes. Changing your address at the post office. Applying for a loan, or a job or a credit card. Paying bills, making a household budget, checking bank balances, transferring money from savings to checking. Obtaining directions, finding out movie times. Getting tickets for a game or a show. Renting a car. Knowing if it's going to rain later.

In today's society, we don't even have to walk around with that niggling little memory tugger like we used to, you know, asking everyone we see "WHAT was that actor's name, you know, the guy with the thing? It's on the tip of my tongue. He was in that movie with one of the Baldwins and that other guy who was a vampire once. YOU know who I mean..." This kind of thing used to drive people crazy all day and nite. When is the last time you were unable to sleep because you couldn't think of "Kevin Spacey." Now it's instant gratification.

Yet people are still in bad moods. They don't have any sense of perspective on how bad things really COULD be. Just speaking in general terms, there's so much less to bitch about these days than our parents had, but all I hear is bitching, moaning, groaning. And thanks to Facebook I get to hear it constantly. "Really? You're having a 'crappy day' AGAIN? When do you ever have a GOOD day. Could it maybe, one wonders, be YOU that is bringing the crap along with you wherever you go?"

Why can't everyone just fucking relax? What's so bad about life? Angry people walking around with a scowl all day take every little thing as the universe attacking them. They got up that morning to find the outfit they were going to wear is in the laundry, the car low on gas, the coffee from the drive-thru turns out to be plain instead of hazelnut, there's traffic on the road...instead of taking all this in stride, looking on the bright side and getting past these little nuisances cheerfully, they stew and fume needlessly, working themselves into a lather. By the time they get to me, a fellow shopper in the grocery store, as we both approach the cashier with our purchases, they furiously shove ahead and cut in front of me even though they have fourteen items and I only have a pack of gum and a Diet Coke.

Probably the same person who didn't bother to scrape and brush the snow from their car hood and trunk, so that gigantic slabs of white death come hurdling off the car as they speed around, uncaring about cars, dogs and children in the path of their Apathy Torpedos of Destruction.

"Driving angry" is the cause of so many "accidents."

Parking in handicap spaces. Tossing wrappers and cans on the ground. Speaking rudely to service employees; one of my friends came back from the bank last week having witnessed some asshole being so rude they made the bank teller cry. Seriously? And it's necessary to be so angry WHY?

We should be nicer to each other. But that's not happening. Instead we seem to be becoming worse humans. Decency, consideration and kindness? There's no app for that.

Man, I drive myself batshit sometimes with my own bouts of utter flake-a-tude. For the most part I'm organized. But then I'll have this certain, I dunno, blind spot. Or, not blind. Retarded spot. For example, why can't I keep track of the charger that comes with the power screwdriver? So far in life I have been given one, then purchased another, then a third power screwdriver, having lost each prior charger, thereby rendering a formerly-handy hand tool nothing more than an ex-power screwdriver. You see, the operative word being POWER, which you only fucking get when you keep track of the goddamn charger. No charger, no power. Then it's just an extra bulky regular screwdriver.

All I wanted to do was hang a simple gingham curtain in my new kitchen.

And besides, these stupid little asswipey power screwdrivers never hold a charge long enough to finish a job. Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. Why don't I have a Makita yet? I'm getting myself one.

Next time I have money to buy anything.

Well, we're in! Almost all the way, too -- As I sit here and update you all, my dearest friends in the world ('cuz who else still reads me?) Joe is at the old place with Marco gathering up the very last of the stuff. The Stuff. Once it's out, we're out completely. I already took care of the cleaning and the nail-hole spackling, and let me tell you, that Comm Ave apartment is in better condition now than it has been in fifty years. I mean, way high up on top of the kitchen cabinet, I found fruit preserves in a Mason jar that someone probably put there fifty years ago. I'm probably the first person to clean up there in that long!

Overall, as moves go, this one was a breeze compared to some that I have endured in this sidewinder of a life I'm leading. If Hub is reading this, he will have just groaned in agreement, because the two worst moves EVER were with him. Cue flashback to 20-something me, feeling about the size and helplessness of a two-year old as I stared in horror at the enormous, daunting pile of stuff packed in our Acton apartment. We had not arranged any help, until the night before when I burst into tears under the crushing impossible-ness of it, then in a panic called in some last-minute muscle to help us get it all to Somerville. We had already rented a giant truck, Hub was going to drive; turns out if you rent the truck yourself and do all the driving, you can get just a couple of guys to help with the hauling. It's cheaper because you're just paying the men, not the insurance and all. We got Kevin and Devon, and when I cast back over 15 years to that move, these two men are still two of my favorite low budget superheroes I have yet met. You shoulda seen them with the treadmill! LIKE it was nothin'.

I don't remember where Hub and I were moving from/to when the iced coffee spilled; I DO remember that it was about a thousand degrees, airless and humid, so of course Dumb and Dumber picked that day for non-stop physical labor. Hub got us enormous iced coffees, and while I had sucked mine down like a...well, I sucked it hard...he had yet to take even a single sip. I think we got the coffees at one of those combo Dunkin Donuts/gas stations and he'd stashed his coffee in the cup holder until he was finished putting gas into the van or something. Somehow, before he could even get the first desperately-needed quenching sip, he spilled the whole thing. The plastic cup fell. Cap popped off. Coffee EVERYWHERE. Aside from the fact that no man needed an iced coffee more than Hub at that moment, the mess it made was astonishing. You know those moving vans whose floor is kind of corrugated? Just a series of channels for the coffee to settle into, that's all. That van was worse than a crime scene.

Mulling it over, I declare any move "up" is easier than lateral or the unfortunate "down." I've done them all, and you don't need me to tell you that moving "up" usually means you're in a position to do it more comfortably. You can purchase boxes, I mean good, sound boxes that do not reek of old food or beverage and are uniform in size, instead of making eleventy-six desperate runs to liquor stores and pawing through recycle dumpsters out behind the Office Max. You can hire movers, professionals who don't think twice about your exercise bike or how many books you've collected, instead of cajoling your poor friends into wasting a day sweating and grunting on your behalf, for the privilege of having beer and pizza that they could've gotten for themselves without all the hard work. You can hire cleaners to hit your old place so hard that getting your deposit back is a no-brainer. You all have been through it, you all know what I mean: there is an easy way, and there is a hard way.

This time, being a lateral move, and a sudden one at that, Joey and I did it half "the easy way" and half "the hard way."

The movers were decent, I got a good quote from Boston Flat Rate. Three guys at $84 an hour. They didn't take everything, however, and we had a language issue. But they moved the bulk of it, and we only had left some of the shit we had "stored" in the bedroom closet, and every bit of Joe's studio.

After the "big move" on Sunday, November 28th, with the movers, we had a Saturday morning with our buddy Bill, four trips in his Element for most of Joe's studio. Today, Joe and Marco are getting the very last tail-end of it.

In a way, it wasn't so bad doing the follow-up trips with friends; the first week we were here I was sick, having gotten the terrible cold that had been going around (Joe had it the prior week, which included Thanksgiving day when I was doing most of the packing) and on top of that I got my period, which had me cramping and wretched the whole week on top of the sneezing, coughing and body aches. So little unpacking got done until the next weekend, but enough to make room for the next round of incoming boxes, and then THOSE got unpacked enough to make room for whatever Joe and Marco are going to bring in here at any moment. No more than two trips, I would think, and then...

...WE'RE IN!

"Trillian, is this sort of thing going to happen every time we use the Infinite Improbability drive?" (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams)

One of the earliest entries in my online diary told all about "the vortex." In fact, the essay is probably called "The Vortex" but I don't feel like checking the April 2000 archives right now. More important is what the vortex is, and what it is may sound like pure fiction to the newly aware among you, my readers. Put simply, I seem to be at the center of the most improbable coincidences. I mean all the time. I'm 40 now, and I like to say I'm no longer surprised, but I lie. I am still surprised. Sometimes this shit is so weird!

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"I want to go to Disneyland," I said to Joe, two seconds after seeing a TV commercial featuring flying Dumbo transporting the happiest family ever from their home to the park.

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I just wrote Mother Nature a note on Facebook. No, there's no real reason. I'm just awake and cranky about it. I have good reason to be cranky. I'm cranky because it's still hot and humid. It's almost October, for fuck's sake.

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Holy mother of colossal time-suckery. I can't stop playing Plants vs. Zombies.

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I may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Facebook, man. Facebook, maaaan! OH but allow me to explain. It's been a couple of years on the Facebook thing, and my brain is now fully rewired, creatively speaking.

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Do you ever hear about something that a person did that was so stupid, I mean so incredibly brainless, that your reaction is something like "Wha...why...ARE...PEOPLE...!?" It's like the act of stupidity was so powerful that just by hearing about it, a dam of dumb burst and sent a wave of stupid all the way from its origin to your brain where it took away your verbs. All your mouth can summon is "Why are people."

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Easter Sunday, April 4th. Joe had gone to his sister's place for dinner, and I was packing for my flight to Las Vegas later that day. Not an easy pack -- a multi-purpose trip, not to mention really long -- so it would take a good while to figure out exactly what to bring. I flipped around cable until I found a movie that could play in the background while I sorted through every article of clothing I own. I didn't even think about it until the scene where Cameron Poe makes Swamp Thing crash the hijacked plane into the Hard Rock Hotel, but there I was, watching Con Air, while getting ready to go stay in the Hard Rock Hotel for two weeks.

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The problem with Facebook, if you're a person with your in-laws and your work mates on there watching all your posts, is that you can't always blurt what you're thinking. Just now, for example, Joe was watching a Radiohead documentary on IFC and I wanted to post, "Is it just me or does anyone else sometimes feel like punching Thom Yorke in the cock?" Not all the time. Just when he gets to keening like a medieval Irish nun. Shut the fuck up, ya douchebag, you sound like five days of relentless rain.

Or it could just be five days of relentless rain talking.

Two movies started about an hour ago, at midnight. I was supposed to be working on an essay, but as I glumly sat, freshly showered and staring down a blinking cursor that was all but mocking inspiration, I couldn't stand the deafening silence. Treading empty pages makes for a lonely night, dudes. So I reached over and mashed some buttons on the remote. And here I am, an hour later.

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Hey, guess what? It's time for a re-telling of this story. It's been eight years since I've told it and seventeen years since it happened. This is for Adam.

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(continued from Part 1)

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During one of its incarnations since it began a whirlwind decade ago, this unevenly-penned, self-indulgent, occasionally-entertaining online wordfest of mine briefly featured a section devoted to my neighborhood. Anyone 'memba that? It's gone now, obviously. Unless you're reading this in the future and I've put it back...I might have done...soooo, if something says "Rock City" in the menu anywhere, such is the dynamic of blogs. Things change.

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"Why do you do this?"

A simple enough question. Why it made me tearful? That part isn't so simple. This is a bout between me and my own whiny self pity, so if you're not in the mood or are sick of people griping about the economy, move along, nothin' to see here.

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I see you over there in the menu bar, Weight Watcher's tab, don't get all lonely because I haven't touched you since summer. I got stuff for you too, I just haven't felt like writing. And you know those Facebook statuses? They've been taking the place of Low Budget Superhero. Almost a decade of writing, and it's coming undone because I can now post my thoughts in 220 character micro-blogs throughout the day and night, getting immediate and satisfying comments from every other obsessive Live Feed button-pusher. You know who you are! I have no legitimate claims to outrage, having been the cheerleader whose rallying whoops enticed at least five people to join. If you're tweeting because of me, I'm sorry.

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I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. (Oscar Wilde)

There's nothing special about autumn that would necessarily lead to my total abandonment of all writing. No all-consuming life events, no tragic finger injury, no kind of projects or extreme busyness to account for the past six weeks of Low Budget Superhero complete and total silence. Not even a lack of ideas. I've even had IDEAS, lots of 'em, fraught with Sarah Palin, Project Runway, guns, babies, quirky coworkers, School House Rock, cops, "As Seen On TV" products -- y'know, the kind of perfectly inane fodder that could garner a couple hundred words a day, easy.

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I'm working on a write-up of the reunion weekend. Until then, notice that my hair is still crazy after all these years.