GRABBINGSAND

well, i’m going to keep this brief, because my mind is spinning in about fourteen different directions and i keep repeating the directions from the information booth to the registration area like a mantra, but here i am again. dragoncon. yes, i am having a lovely time. yes, it is quite tiring. yes, i am taking as many pictures as i see fit. but for right now, i am just going to leave this as that and save my essaying and pondering and studies of the human condition for another day. like tomorrow. maybe.

marta. the metro atlanta rapid transit authority. perhaps the most ineffective execution of public transportation i’ve ever known. i am not speaking of the buses, because they do tend to roam far and wide (when they are not threatening my life with random changes of lane and spur of the moment brakings), but of the train. for the $1.75 you spend, you’ve only just so far you can go. rather than criss-crossing the metro area in a logical pattern, the marta lines make a simple cross through the city, each going to one of the four points of the compass. if you wanted to go anywhere within those 90 degree angles, you’re just out of luck. for most of us, the marta train really only holds one purpose: getting you to the airport.

but while googling for information about a completely unrelated topic, i stumbled upon a writeup about the original plans for the marta train lines. now, this still fails to reach so much of the area, but it shows that at one time the line could have reached (via a spur) over into the emory and north druid hills area, or (via another spur) all the way over to northside drive. want to know more? go here.

you have your day work, then you have the work you do after the work is done. the day work pays your way to do the work you do when you’re not working. my work after-work is usually involvement in some kind of theatre. and now my after-work work is going to increase ever so slightly as i have been promoted from assistant director to actual director of the next noble production. but this work is rewarding. it almost always is, or else we wouldn’t even bother.

so in the diminished hour between actual work and the later work, i stole some time to indulge my curiosities. somewhere north of the river and just south of the krispy kreme (of roswell), there is a small cemetery. it is distinguished by it’s terraced survival in light of the four lane highway running right up against it. cars are always running somewhere and nowhere, up and down alpharetta highway (or roswell road or atlanta street, take your geographically particular pick), but this place just seems to remain in its own carved away square block of frozen time. the name is not evident from any signage, but a little research reveals that it is called simply the presbyterian church cemetery.

and so i captured a few images in the midst of the late roswell rush hour. take a look.

we’ll get to the subject soon enough. i went home this weekend. it had been awhile, maybe about two months or so, so a trip up the interstate was due. some people might not get back as often as i, due to distance either physical or emotional, but i never mind the couple of hours it takes to see where i came from.

nothing fancy this time. no side trips to interesting roadside attractions. just time spent well with the parents, talking and visiting, eating far too much and catching up on local matters. when i visit, when it is just me and my brother’s brood is not around, i sleep in the room i left about ten years ago. the furniture is different, mainly because so much of my bedroom followed me to atlanta, but the space is the same. the ceiling fan remains, the closet is still there, though the doors are new and don’t rattle anymore when opened. but i sleep more soundly there than almost anywhere. the bed seems softer, the sheets cooler. perhaps it is all a part of the psychic architecture of home.

i woke this morning to good breakfast, remaining true to the improvisational discipline i started on friday. you see… today, monday morning early, marks my fourth day without caffeine. and no, it’s not permanent, but i just felt my brain and body could use a break before the taxing to come next weekend. it really started with friday morning, arriving at work too late to have fetched a decent cup o’ joe from the coffee shop across the street and deciding that i would be much better off with water than the toxic evil that drips from the company coffee urns. and so i have remained, just do see if it could be done.

church was attended. i’ve great concerns about the church that helped to raise me. the members are the same as when i was twelve and very few new faces fill the pews. when i was small, the church won awards for growth and promise, but now it seems that promise has not been kept. i owe a great deal of my presentation, of my manner of projecting an idea, to the dynamic speakers that stood behind that podium. and as it is the tradition of the united methodist church to rotate ministers from appointment to appointment, they have all gone in turn to other podiums.

after lunch, i indulged in one of those rarest of delicacies. a nap. a really great nap. you see, i love a good nap. i would be all in favor of a workplace that allowed an hour for lunch, followed by an hour’s nap. i would stay an additional hour later just to have that daily privilege. just give me one of those cot’s like we had in kindergarten or pre-school. i will keep it under my desk. so i had this nap, getting up once at 3pm and realizing i really didn’t need to go. so i got up at 4pm and quickly gathered up my belongings. some shoes, belt, toothbrush… and then i look outside the bathroom window, right to the roof of my father’s garage, and there is this little thing, taking a snooze in the sun. at least i hope it’s just taking a snooze. it doesn’t appear to be moving at all. hmm. so i tapped the glass of the window, just a bit. ah, that got his attention.

the little cat stared at me, and i’m not sure if he could see me actually, or just some moving thing behind the glass. then he popped up, started to dart from the roof to the deck, then stopped to look back at me again. and with that, he leaped across to the deck and was out of sight.

and now i’m back home, rested and fed and amused. ready for another week. what will happen?

it’s not that i make an active effort to avoid trendiness. i just don’t care much for the general tastes of the american public. FM pop radio is an abyss that sends me radio-dialling over into the scratchy audio of AM talk radio for nothing else than to get something spontaneous and real. i did a quiet little dance of joy when oprah winfrey stopped rubber-stamping the latest booksellers, like some queen of culture’s official seal of blessing. reality-based programming was tired and dead even before it began and is only getting more and more inane, like a carnival freak show without any charm or mystery. but i have to admit something.

i get a kick out of american idol.

i think it is because i was in london at the very end of the original british run of the show. it was big time entertainment over there, the talk of all the pop music stations. the airwaves were rife with rumour and commentary about the viability of a fellow named will over some other guy named gareth. there were editorial cartoons about the winners in the daily mirror. it was fascinating and fun, something i couldn’t help but be aware of, though i never saw a single episode during my stay.

so when i heard it was coming here, i was very interested. knowing that american runs of british television shows can be hit or miss, my expectations weren’t too high, just fueled by a healthy curiosity. and have i been rewarded for my curiosity? i have seen about five episodes, usually when i manage somehow to escape tuesday night rehearsal (and can distract my roommate from his hideous addiction to law & order). i’ve watched the numbers dwindle down through the last couple of months from a double-handful to just three, and i have been impressed with some and terribly disappointed with others. if you’ve never seen the show, here is the rundown: two hosts, idiots both, introduce and shepherd the contestants who step out on stage and sing about a minute and a half of a given pop song before three judges (randy the record producer, paula abdul the used-to-be and simon the a & r guy) who then give their opinions on their performance. randy starts off every comment with either “man, I’ll tell you what…” (regardless of the performer’s gender) or a woody-like repeating of the contestant’s names (”kelly, kelly, kelly, kelly…”), followed by a rather simple liked-it or disliked-it comment. paula abdul has nothing bad to say about anyone. ever. and she cries at random moments, suffers hit-ons from one of the two hosting tools, makes threats about stealing contestants legs-voice-hair-etc and otherwise just sits there drinking from her big red coca-cola cup like a good little corporate shill. and then there is simon. people hate simon. they think he is brash and insultant, mean and hateful, tactless and vile. me? i love simon. simon is the voice in the back of each performer’s head that checks their ego. simon is the one that will actually tell someone who cannot sing that, hey, they just cannot sing. he likes to remind everyone there that the purpose of the show is to find a new pop star - not to find someone who is plucky with a can-do attitude - and half-ass just will not do. now, do they decide who stays or goes? no. the american public makes that choice through phone calls. these phone calls, in this age of survivor-made vocabulary, “vote off” one person per week.

and now we are down to the last three. the last one to fall, tamyra, is from norcross. in fact, three or four of the contestants were from right around the atlanta area. i liked tamyra, finding her voice consistent and her reads of established material were skillful and memorable. the others are justin, nikki and kelly. justin annoys the hell out of me, yet he remains a proclaimed favorite with almost any woman versed in the subject. its the hair, this kind of a white-boy ‘fro that orbits his head like a reddish dust cloud. can he sing? well, it is hard to tell if he is really singing, or just doing a well-practiced impression of maxwell. nikki is every teenage girl that wants to grow up and be gwen stefani or pink or avril lavigne, and sounds like it too. no, she doesn’t sound like those idols, she just sounds like she’s the kind of girl that drags her mall-going friends out to karaoke just so she can get up and sing “don’t speak” or “get this party started” one more freakin’ time. and then there is kelly. you want my endorsement for this charade? kelly is the real article. she is not perfect, still has some stage presence to develop, but her voice is solid as can be and she knows exactly how to use it. and she carries herself on stage with an ease that is going to continue to improve as her confidence grows. will winning this contest make her a pop star? probably not. she will probably put out one album, it will sell like syruppy flapjacks for a month or two, then she will fade into a temporary obscurity. and then it will be up to her to decide what to do with her life, whether to establish her own, post-American Idol persona, or to just let herself remain “that girl who won that show.”

because if you don’t firmly place yourself on a successful pedestal of your own making, you’re going to fall when they take your pedestal away and give it to the next big thing. the tastes of this country have always been fickle and they will remain so. ask any one-hit wonder.

most of you know the mighty zip, regular commentator to this blog and occasional contributor. the calhoun native is celebrating his 78th 4000th next year of existence this weekend, so i think you should all visit his brand sparkin’ new weblog and bless him with some tasty birthday commentary. go! gaze upon him in wonder!

the hounds have been unleashed. you never thought it would happen. we never figured they would target the individual user. but guess what? never just happen’d.

something new for you to play with. or with for you to play. no, that’s not right. let’s start again.

provided for your amusement, something new. well, that might be grammatically correct, but it still sounds terribly stuffy. regardless, i have added a new feature, component, gadget, thingy to grabbingsand. look over to your right, somewhere between the desktops and the wishlists. grabbingsand hearnow (name subject to change at a whim) will be a spot for me to put a weekly (if i remember) mp3 of some kind or another. genres be damned, it could be new or old, pop or obscure, but hopefully entertaining either way. this week’s hearnow is an track that i found completely by accident last year, somewhere in the middle of a rat pack fascination probably spurred by movies i had seen. sammy davis, jr. my generation knows him as the guy that sang “the candyman can” and who showed up occasionally on “all in the family” and “the jeffersons” — remember when weezy left sammy out on the patio in the rain? (insert laugh track here) but the man could swing like nobody’s business, coming into songs like this one with a smoothness that telegraphs nothing of the absolute crack-of-the-bat vocal homeruns to come.

but enough of my yappin’ — go listen for yourself.

three weeks of much ado about nothing amounts to quite a lot of hard work and lost sleep. yet i have still managed to make a better than good impression on my new workplace, surprising one of my clients this morning with just my personality alone. “where’d they find you? an IT guy with a sense of humor?” maybe she was just lucky that i had hit the lowtide mark on my grande cup of coffee. prior to those first few ounces, i have to wonder just how jovial i could be. there is an equation in here somewhere, something that correllates the amount of caffeine consumed with a resultant mass of surplus good morning cheer, but i majored in the humanities so i won’t even try.

and you know what else, english majors? if you have a bachelor of arts like me, you are entitled to do many things not permitted to others. for example, are you ever faced with a situation that requires a word not yet existing or accepted in the modern dictionary? well, just make one up! you’re allowed! lewis carroll did, and look what happen’d with him. i’m sure the guy that created these was an english major, or at least he had an english major write his papers for him in college. other things? well, you can dangle participles at any given moment. or rather… anytime you want to. see? i did it right there!

ah, the power and glory of a liberal arts education…

a hotel conference room. a couple of tables laden with bagels, muffins, cut fruit and coffee. a floor covered with round ten-top tables, each place marked with a small sheaf of xeroxed paper. a pitcher of water at the center of each one, orbited by ten glasses each. this can mean only one thing.

corporate meeting time!

this one was better than most i’ve attended, if for no other reason than the coffee was fresh and i arrived actually in time to get a seat. oh, and i stayed awake for this one as well, which is no mean feat. i remember times not-so-glorious when i would have to sit through corporate training sessions, one arm propping up my nodding head while the other arm was steadfastly attached to a large solo cup full of mr pibb and ice. now, i don’t care for the pibb, but somehow the pibb fulfills that necessary caffeine requirement when you desperately need it. and you have to wonder why company training rooms are always placed in the area of the building closest to the hvac unit. this means you have to sit in these long sessions, usually in the dark with an instructor’s screen projected on the far wall, and there is this constant lullaby of a steady hum coming from the next room over. how is anyone supposed to stay awake, much less learn?

so one of the speakers today was a representative from a local bank, a visitor, someone from outside the company to introduce a new benefit and to hand out free items of enticement. today’s items? a plastic clippy thing and a long distance card worth 15 minutes. but the memorably odd thing about her speech was a phrase she employed to describe something as being available to everyone. she said it was “just like a chinese menu” …

just like a chinese menu? this is one of those phrases that will hurt your brain if you consider it too long. this reminds me. comedian lewis black said something in a standup routine a few years ago. he said he was at a diner, just eating lunch, when he overheard a conversation behind him. he didn’t really pick up on anything except the one blaring phrase that threatened his sanity. one girl says to the other: “if it wasn’t for my horse, i would’ve never made it through that year in college.” and this plagued him for days, weeks, months afterwards. how did a horse…? just one year…? did she ride the horse to class…?

so the next time you’re out somewhere, maybe even at a company function, and someone asks you if the seat next to you is taken, just look up at them, smile and say, “it’s just like a chinese menu!”