on French Travel

This is a story I've told countless times; so often that I now have it down pat, so I decided to share it here.

Nearly 20 years ago I decided to travel to Italy with a friend.  At the last minute, the friend backed out but I decided to continue.  The first leg of the trip, due to the cost and flight plans, landed me in Paris where I was to explore for a couple of days and then take another flight to Italy.  This was the first time United Airlines was offering a direct flight to Paris at a good discount rate.  I went through international customs at O'hare Airport.  I gave the gate-man all my tickets and he picked through them to find the parts he needed, pushing them down into his wooden podium, and then I boarded my first international flight.

I landed in the beautiful city at the height of tourism season, not speaking any French; not the best time to visit.  The locals lived up to their rude legends, but honestly they just didn't have the time for me to fumble through the strange monetary system.  I didn't understand the difference between "sayz" and "seyzzzz" which was about ten francs.  This language barrier was to play an integral part of the story.

I roamed around the city for the first couple of days, taking in the regular sites such as La Sacra Couer, the Louvre, the Arch d'Triumph and of course the Tour d'Eiffel.  Of course I called them the Sacred Heart Church, the Louver, the Arch of Triumph and the Eiffel Tower.  On the third day I decided to get my stuff in order and make sure I had everything for the next flight.  To my dismay I discovered I only had the receipt portions of my tickets.  I looked back in my memory and recalled how the man at the gate at O'hare had stuck the other parts into his podium.  He had taken my actual tickets, including my return home ticket!  I was beside myself.

Then a terrible wind storm came through Paris. The wind whipped through the central columnar courtyard of the hotel and caused such suction it blew several windows out of the rooms, including mine.  They quickly and efficiently relocated me.  I figured out, with some help, how to call the United Airlines office.  They said they would have to investigate, but that I needed to come to their offices the next morning.  They were not located in the airport, however, they were located downtown by the Opera.  I got out my map and figured out a route.  I left first thing in the morning.

I went to the Metro station and approached the window.  The man behind the glass looked at me tiredly.  I pointed to the map destination, a stop called "Voissey" and pushed some coins to him.  He shook his head and pushed the coins back, saying something I couldn't comprehend.  This occurred several times and I was getting more than frustrated.  He kept saying something about a library, but I kept saying "no, Opera".  Finally an English speaking man behind me shouted, "it's free!", I shook my head, so he clarified, "before 8am in the morning the Metro is free.  He won't take your money."  The man behind the glass shouted, "Oui, Libre!" Again with the Library?

I rode the Metro through many stops, keeping track of the one I needed.  Turns out I would have to get off and change trains at this "Voissey" station.  Finally arriving, I jumped off the train and approached the gate.  It wouldn't open.  Now that it was after 8am, the train was no longer free and I needed a ticket to actually enter this portion of the station.

There were no glass windows with grumpy people behind them here.  This was an automated station with a giant machine you put money into, select your destination and it gave you a ticket.  Each destination was printed on a tiny strip of white paper, about the size of the paper from a fortune cookie, stuck inside a little clear plastic square button.  Unfortunately they were not in alphabetical order, they were in order by distance, all in French and there were about 100 destinations.  I searched and searched but couldn't find the "Voissey" button.  I was getting desperate.  At this time of day, no one seemed to be riding the train.  Every time it stopped, no one got on or off.  I was helpless.  Whenever someone would finally come by I'd say, "Pardon", point at the machine and say, "Vwah-see?" and they would nod and answer "Oui".  I'd return to scanning the darn buttons over and over.

Finally a kind person used their ticket to open the gate and then blocked it so I could squeeze through.  Out on the street I hailed a taxi and had the driver drop me off at the corner of the street I had been told the office was located.  The streets in Paris radiate outward from central points like stars, hence they are called "etoile". I wandered up and down the blocks, taking different legs of the star each time but I couldn't find the office, nor did anyone seem to know where it was.  I finally went into an American Express store and they were able to direct me to the brand new United Airlines office down the street.
As I approached the office a middle-aged woman was rolling down a metal grill over the face of the office.  She saw me and said, "Fair me cat!".  I didn't understand her so she said in English, "We close at four".  I looked at my watch and was astonished.  I had left before 8am that morning and was arriving after 4pm that afternoon.  I was crushed and completely exhausted.  I returned to the hotel and cried.

I was eventually able to get my return home ticket, but unable and unwilling to go on to Italy.  I had such a terrible time I really just wanted to get home.  I also had just met Robert and really didn't like being away from him.

When I got home I told Robert the whole story.  He know his French very well (even some Frenchmen we've met have wondered where he grew up in France!) so he was able to quickly point out the error of my ways.  The entire time I spent pointing at the machine in the train terminal and asking passersby "Vwah see?", I was really just saying "Here it is?", for which their answer of "yes" made more sense.  The actual destination I was looking for was pronounced "Vwah Say".  No wonder they had all looked at me like a crazy person!

on Classic Literature

We have been recently watching a BBC (KA) produced series called "Camelot", of course about King Arthur.  As the story has unfolded, they've done a pretty good job trying to match some of the original storylines from the original La Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, which I read (a translation of) in High School.  It wasn't required reading, but the subject matter appealed to me, and I have always had a voracious appetite for books.  This new series has lead me to some thoughts about some classic literature I've read and especially about how most Hollywood/BBC/etc. writers have gotten it all wrong.

I've never understood, for instance, why they made a movie called "Bram Stoker's: Dracula" and then added an entire cliche about a doppleganger (Wynona Ryder) that Dracula once loved.  It's not in any way part of the original story.  Of course Anne Rice betrayed her own novel by creating a non-existent past love interest in the movie version of "Interview with the Vampire".  The most amazing thing I learned when I first read the novel Dracula was that the creature nearly wins in the end!  It is my second-most favorite novel and I have read it at least six times.  The science verges on predilection and the use of media at the time to help sell the fantasy as reality (and scare the readers) was sheer genius!  In the story, as Dracula begins to deal with humans more and more, he slowly learns that the limitations placed on him by religion and superstition no longer have real merit which makes him stronger by leaps and bounds.  If the crew didn't just happen to catch him at the right second, they would never have been able to stop him.  I have never seen this part of the story illustrated appropriately in any movie, anywhere.

There's a strange occurrence in the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.  The monster seems to travel easily and kill indiscriminately to the dismay of the good Doctor.  For instance, in one scene the Doctor goes to visit his family only to find the monster has beaten him there without even knowing anything about where the Doctor lives or who the Doctor is related to.  The monster dispatches with members of the Doctor's family, and of course the Doctor is beside himself with anguish.  There are many instances which seems to allude to the concept that the monster may not really exist at all, that the good Doctor is responsible for the terrible deaths.  He so much as claims responsibility in a number of passages.

Speaking of whether or not a monster exists, reread the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and then tell me that the monstrous visage of the Doctor is actually transformed.  Characters in the book describe Mr. Hyde, but always in ways that could really just describe an extremely deranged Dr. Jekyll (eyewitnesses are always a bit shady when it comes to accurate descriptions).  The story unfolds in such a way that the blame and responsibility for the actions of Mr. Hyde lay squarely on the shoulders of the Doctor, in spite of the "concoction" he drinks, not because of it.

I have seen many productions and stories based on La Morte D'Arthur (and Tennyson's Idylls) but none of them have ever captured the real spirit of Merlin.  According to Malory, Merlin the Magician was actually the son of Satan himself.  Although in many parts of the story it seems as if Merlin is rooting for the young Arthur to be king of all Britain, little parts belie Merlin's real motives as selfish and evil.  No matter what battle or quest the heroes engage in, Merlin is not only behind the original setup of events, he is always behind their eventual demise.  Again, I have never seen this aspect of the sorcerer portrayed.

I will admit in some of these cases, it may just be my own personal ideas forming from the works, but in the case of Dracula and of Merlin, true-to-the-book on-screen portrayals are simply non-existent.  It makes me wonder why writers think so little of the original authors' ability to captivate audiences that they have to change the stories.  Anne Rice admits she changed her own story because it was just too difficult to go into the entire background of why Louis was so guilt-ridden he wanted to die (his ultra-religious brother commits suicide and Louis blames himself for the death), so instead she invented a love interest who died.  By adding a female love object for Louis to mourn instead of a brother, she neutered the homoerotically charged story, and dumbed down the script.  By the end of the experience Rice nearly disowned the film, claiming her chief gripe was the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat, but later recanting by saying he was good in the role.

One of my favorite books was Robinson Crusoe.  You know the tale: boy goes to sea, gets shipwrecked alone on an island and has to build a bunch of stuff; ends up befriending a native he calls "Friday".  But the novel has so much more.  First off, poor Crusoe, despite his father's wishes, ends up getting shipwrecked a number of times.  One time he even manages to grow a crop of tobacco which makes him wealthy.  One part of the book I especially liked was when the young man makes friends with a pirate captain.  The pirate crew hates the attention the captain pays the young Crusoe; the captain even lets the lad share his own bed!  He becomes so trusted by the captain that he's able to sneak out and steal the dinghy and make his escape.  One wonders just what was going on in the captain's cabin?  When Crusoe befriends Friday, racism is on the menu (but par for the course in the era it was written), but the friendship seems to get very friendly.  For the time I'm sure Crusoe was thought to be a perfect gentleman, but using a modern-day filter, the character...well...I'll just say he seems to enjoy the company of other men and leave it at that.

Perhaps writers don't give audiences the credit they deserve, or perhaps they're spot-on.  Sometimes it may just be that the story we've all come to know is not the accurate one from the original, but a muddled retelling, so writers simply jump on the bandwagon and feed us the same old story over and over without ever returning to the source.  Is it any wonder no one ever seems to know how many of each animal Noah took on the ark?  The common story we've all been told is that Noah took two of each animal, but the Bible actually tells two slightly different versions, or clarifies itself with a second description.  Noah took two of each beast, male and female, but he took seven of other animals.  Yet, I've never seen that in any kid's book I've ever come across.

on Brothers

When I was fourteen my father came home and began discussing something important with my mother while sitting on the living room couch.  I think I was building something with Legos on the floor, or maybe watching television.  The parts I overhead were both interesting and puzzling to me.  My parents came to a conclusion, my father would go and pay a visit.  He then turned and asked if I wanted to come along.  I had no idea what he was talking about.

Nonchalantly my father told me he was going to visit my older half-brother, who lived in a nearby town.  Again, I was puzzled.  What was he talking about?  Then he shrugged and said, "you know, because I was married before and had a son".  It was said completely matter-of-factly, as if this was common information I knew all about.  This was typical of my family; they expected you to know earth-shattering information regardless of the fact they'd never told you any of it before.

My cousin Michael learned over dinner one night that his parents had actually divorced and then remarried while he was a baby.  As he sat open-mouthed, his family went on eating their meal.  The grenade had been detonated, but no one cared to throw it out of the foxhole.

Likewise, one day my mother informed my father that his mother (Grandma Perry, as she known to me) needed to change her bank account because it still read "Grace Alexander" since that was her legal name.  When I questioned about this, my parents (again nonchalantly) informed me that my grandmother had been remarried after the death of my Grandpa Perry, but that the new husband committed suicide so she simply reverted to using her old name, but needed to change her bank accounts, etc. to reflect the change.  Wh-wh-what?

Anyway, back to me suddenly having a brother I didn't know about:

I accompanied my father to his ex-wife's house.  She explained that her son, Randy, was out at a friend's house but would return shortly.  It seems Randy had been looking through some boxes and ran across the adoption papers with my father's signature.  When his mother had remarried after my father, she and her new husband adopted Randy fully, and my father (who was about 23 or 24 at the time) signed away his parental rights.  Randy had expressed a desire to meet his biological father.

When Randy, now 16, returned home, he was puzzled as to whom this person was.  His mother announced that this man was his actual father.  Randy was pleased, but still somewhat puzzled.  They chatted for a little while, and made plans to meet up again in the near future.

Randy took me on a tour of his bedroom.  To my astonishment he had just finished building a model of the Enterprise bridge, from Star Trek.  I had just purchased that model, but hadn't started building it yet.  He warned me that a lot of the parts don't fit together correctly.  He was also reading, or had finished reading Larry Niven's Ringworld, a book I had just begun reading.  I guess these things were pretty common with teenage boys, but I think it speaks a bit more about genetics vs. environment.

That summer Randy joined us on a camping trip to Little Cultis Lake where we were all eaten by mosquitoes. I remember that my uncles and aunts fawned over him as the "lost child" newly found, or the prodigal son returned.  However, I really don't know if they succeeded in making him feel welcomed as a part of the family.  Looking back I'm pretty sure my mother didn't succeed.  She had always been fairly stand-offish with that part of the family.  Just the year prior to this, my aunt was on diet pills and suddenly broke down and screamed that my mother wanted her dead.  It was a very tense camping trip.  This year I'm sure there was still a lot of tension going around.

I also remember that my father went off with the men-folk to fish, leaving the women-folk behind to tend the camp, and of course that included the children.  Randy and I were left to "hang out".  I'm sure he'd have rather went fishing with his father, than to stay back at camp.  He took the little inflatable boat out on the lake even though he had been told not to.  I don't know if that was a bit of rebellion, or he just really wanted to be in the boat.  There were a lot of rules around camp.  We were never allowed to help with the fire, although we were expected to collect wood.  I remember being told "no" or "don't" about a billion times each trip, so I was used to it.  This would have been a new experience for Randy, bar far the oldest "child" in camp.

All Randy wanted for the holidays was a bicycle.  Dad made sure we bought him one.  For some reason after this particular holiday, we didn't see much of Randy.  I don't know what happened, perhaps my father simply didn't make a connection.  Maybe my mother interfered.  Maybe Randy's mother exerted undue pressure.  I do know my father had a lot of trouble connecting with people, even though he was always a very social creature.  I really don't know what occurred but I didn't see Randy again until my father's funeral.  Not the best time to meet someone.  A lot of terrible things happened around that funeral; definitely not the right time to meet someone.

I'll close this post with a little story which seems perfect for my last post regarding the "Way We Never Were".  It seems my father had watched an episode of the Andy Griffith Show.  Andy had taken Opie fishing with him and as they talked, they both discovered insights into the other's world.  It warmed the heart.  So, one extremely early morning, before the sun came up, my father's brother, my uncle Virgil came over and the three of us piled into my father's truck, aluminum boat in tow.  We went out on Fern Ridge Lake just as the sun came up and the fog was still thick on the water.  As we sat, my father and his brother argued constantly. I was about six or seven years old, and I got very bored.  I would dangle my hand in the water or make up songs.  Each time I was told "stop, you'll scare the fish", "don't move around so much", "be quiet".  My uncle made some kind of wise statement and suddenly my father's anger flared.  My father put away his gear and started rowing for shore.  When we got to the truck I asked what was wrong.  He replied, "we won't catch any fish with the way you're acting".  Even as a little kid I knew the real problem had to do with my uncle and my father's relationship, but I took the blame.  Here is where reality and a television sitcom simply did not jive.  Unfortunately for my own half-brother, my father never really understood why life wasn't like that sitcom.

on Spiders

My grandparents had a bay window overlooking the Columbia River.  On the outside the window was flanked by two tall Italian Cedars, the columnar type.  This made a perfect place for garden spiders to spin their webs and a perfect place for me to sit at the dining room table and watch them without fear.  I've always had a love/hate relationship with spiders.  Well, let me take that back, I've always had a hate relationship with them.

This particular bay window would, at any given time except the winter months, have at least four garden spider webs, one for each corner.  For one week straight I monitored the spiders' behavior.  At the beginning of the week they could catch an insect and hurriedly encase it in silk.  For the rest of the week they would dine on this feast while hundreds of other insects landed, became entangled, extracted themselves and flew off.  At the end of the week the spiders would cut their drained meal loose and begin repairs on their now ragged web.

I use this very scientific observation on the behavior of garden spiders to point out to my esteemed friends that spiders do not actually provide the valuable service of reducing the insect population by any vast degree.  In the same week I was observing the spiders, I also watch birds swoop down and consume hundreds of insects, sometimes directly from the spider webs.  On a couple of occasions I saw the birds pluck a spider from a web as well.  You see?  Science proves that birds are better than spiders and spiders are nearly useless.  Although I do admit to being biased against the arachnids, but my observations still stand.

When I was a teen, our front door had a screen door mounted outside.  This left just enough room, about six inches for two garden spiders to build webs in the upper corners.  When I was about to kill them (sorry to my Buddhist friends) my father stopped me.  He claimed that he wanted the spiders left alone because they would  "stop insects from getting into the house".  Presumably this was what the screen door's function was.  My father also had a mean streak in him.  He loved to poke people; to provoke them mercilessly for his own amusement.  He knew I hated spiders, thus it was fun for him to make me leave these ones alone.  I started using the back door of the house since there was no way I was going to use the front door with two spiders within a foot of my head.  No way.

One evening my parents took my sister into town and I was left on my own.  I didn't waste too much time going to the garage, looking for some kind of insecticide.  All I found was some Ortho (TM) Wasp Spray.  I know that spiders aren't insects, but I figured it was pure poison so it should work.  I stealthily opened the front door.  There were the spiders, sitting snuggly in the center of their quite beautiful webs.  I think I heard them mocking me, but that could have been my imagination.

I held up the can and pressed the button.  A stream of white launched forward, directly on target.  I hit one, then the other, coating them with the poison.  They dropped from their webs, without a single scream.  The skin-crawling and "heebee-jeebees" finally caught up to me and I went and collapsed on the couch, exhausted from my battle.

A few minutes later I heard a strange pop sound.  It was loud and slightly echoed in the entryway.  It sounded like a small champagne cork had been let loose.  I decided to investigate.  As I rounded the corner I could see a pile of white foam on the tile floor.  This was evidently all that was left of one of the spiders.  Then I saw the other spider.  His or her abdomen or opisthosoma has grown to three or four times its normal size and was bright white.  The spider was shaking violently, somehow still able to stand on its eight wobbly legs.  Then it exploded with a very loud popping sound and the an area about twelve inches in diameter was coated with white foam.

I grew sick and nearly vomited.  I was trembling all over and so returned to the couch.  I sat there in a nauseated daze for a very long time.

I finally got up the nerve to get a sponge-mop and clean up of the scene of my crime.  When my father came home and inquired about the spiders, I simply shrugged.  No more questions were asked.

on The Nuclear Family

My family was made up of a mother, a father, myself and my younger sister.  The "perfect" Nuclear family.  We lived in a rural little town where there was only one Black family and one or two Hispanic families.  People would regularly wear cowboy hats and boots without getting any strange looks, and nearly every male past the age of fifteen chewed Skoal or Copenhagen (not me luckily).

When I was born, my father worked at a plywood manufacturer as a glue-spreader.  It was back-breaking work, and the glue put off horrible, and I'm sure toxic, fumes.  After 15 years in the outrageously noisy plant my father had lost a good portion of his hearing and suffered from terrible tinnitus (ringing in his ears) for the rest of his life.  He had high blood pressure, partially from the stress of always having to watch out for the giant press coming down with the next layer of veneer, partially from the constant beratement from his supervisor who did his job like a Marine Sergeant constantly utilizing put-downs like "maggot", "faggot", and "girl", and partially because of his diet which consisted of over-salted meats and potatoes, loads of butter and boiled-down canned vegetables.

When my sister came along, my father's salary simply couldn't pay the bills.  This marked my family's first break with the Nuclear tradition.  My mother had to get a job with the local bank as a teller; a position she kept for 15 years.  My father's mill closed down and he transitioned to a job with the Eugene Water and Electric Board doing residential, then commercial energy audits.

Our next door neighbors, the Finnemans were also a typical Nuclear family.  The father, Dale, worked for the same mill as my father and had to find other work when the mill closed.  Kevin was one year older than me, and Susan was two years younger.  Their mother, Sharon had to find work at the local community newspaper.  During my entire time growing up, I never met anyone from the "perfect" Nuclear family, where only the father worked.  I met lots of people who tried, but could never reach this vision of supposed perfection.  The Finnemans really, really tried though.  They painted Kevin's room blue and he played baseball.  They painted Susan's room pink, gave her a canopy bed and piano lessons.  The kids went to Lutheran Sunday school, and Dale liked good old-fashioned country music and the Lawrence Welk Show.

My sister took tap dancing, guitar lessons, French, and played with Barbies.  I adored Star Wars, built with Legos, Read the Lord of the Rings and...... played with Barbies.  Perhaps this was an indicator that our Nuclear family was not exactly fitting the bill.

In her book "The Way We Never Were" , Stephanie Coontz takes a look at the non-existent Nuclear family.  Although sitcoms of the fifties, sixties and seventies showed these nice, white-bread and aprons families, they rarely reflected upon the real American family realities.  People rarely fit into simple square holes despite what some people's vision of the past.  Coontz feels these people are being disingenuous to their own memories.

My father's family was mostly made up of very large, powerful women and meek, genteel men.  The men earned the wages because women simply couldn't get employment, but the women took the checks and handled all of the family's business.  They "ruled the roost" as the saying goes.  My mother's family was also filled with powerful women who controlled the checkbooks.  Neither of these lineages provokes the model Nuclear family image.

Flash forward a few years and I finally came out of the closet and found my true love (together nearly 20 years now).  My mother developed breast cancer and passed away and my father developed diabetes and also passed.  I don't remember seeing these types of situations in any of those family comedies, but then it is difficult to make cancer and diabetes humorous.

The Finnemans didn't really fare much better.  I'm still in contact with Susan, whom after marrying and leaving our little rural hometown, suffered through tornadoes, illnesses with her children, and constant moves.  She and her brother Kevin became estranged, her father suddenly died of a heart attack (shortly after attending my father's funeral in fact), and her mother had a horrific car accident and could barely move for many, many months.

So much for our perfect Nuclear families.

on My Favorite Movies

Here's a list and some notes about my favorite movies.  Perhaps one of them is a favorite of yours too?  I won't list movies that have affected me greatly like Cherry Blossoms or Somewhere In Time, because they are not movies I'd ever want to see again.  They were exceptional and great, but are not something I'd want to own.


1.  The Satyricon: because I have multiple copies of the ancient book and find it still fascinating.  Fellini did a wonderful, if artful job in his composition.  You can see a (nearly) scene by scene breakdown in an earlier post.


2.  A Place in the Sun:  The look on Montgomery Clift's face when he sees Liz Taylor for the first time is priceless and made me fall in love with him.  Clift's character actually saw her, but didn't know it in the first scene of the movie when she whizzed past him in her convertible as he looked at the billboard.  Shelley Winter's whiny character is superb.


3.  The Last of Sheila:  I love mysteries, especially ones a person can actually figure out, as James Coburn's character says: "if you're smart enough".  Written by Anthony Perkins (of Psycho) and Stephen Sondheim (the composer), it's a crafty and intriguing mystery within a mystery.  You have to get past the extremely 1970's style, fashion and acting by the likes of Raquel Welch, Richard Benjamin and Dyan Cannon, but the wonderful voice of James Mason makes up for it.


4.  The Price of Milk: an Australian surrealist comedy - that's right, you read that correctly, it's a surrealist comedy.  It's funny and strange and endearing at the same time.  The strangeness is mild and easily overlooked because the comedy and love story take top billing.  My favorite scene is when the female lead is dressed in a red Indian wedding gown that unfurls behind her as she runs down a green hill.


5.  Dark City:  Alex Proyas (the Crow) delivers a special effects laden sci-fi drama about aliens who can manipulate reality in a city that never sees the sun.  Some of the denouement is a bit cheesy, but Rufus Sewell (who I loved in Cold Comfort Farm) and Richard O'brien (from Rocky Horror) really make the film something great.  Even Keifer Sutherland's halting stammer grows on you.


6.  Casablanca:  I know this is a classic, but I really have a deep appreciation of this film.  I listened to an audio tape of a then-famous cinema class which broke the film down scene by scene.  There are techniques used in this movie that are ingenious, for instance, when the police come for Peter Lorre's character, multiple shadows fall over him and are cast against a wall where none were there before, simply to add a more intriguing shot.  The entire entrance to the film is completely false, yet believable.  I also love that the main characters are introduced methodically and not right at the very beginning.  The subtext in the script could fill another entire script.


7.  Brazil:  Another surrealist comedy, this one is also a science-fiction. I think this is the penultimate film by Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam.  You have to view the entire thing as if all the technology we enjoy today, computers, etc. were actually invented and in use back in the 30's.  Therefore there's a strange blend of modern tech with old world charm such as old typewriters with magnification screens.  It's dark and bleak but yet very interesting.  I love the main character's mother who wears shoes on her head like hats.


8.  Dune:  Even though the DeLaurentas and the studio kept interfering so much that David Lynch took his name off the film, I still love the look and feel and think it fits the best with my vision of the book.  My favorite scene is when the Atreides family first steps foot on the desert planet Arakis, with the Lady Jessica in her finery and Paul and his father Leto in their finest dress suits.  The extended "director's" cut is the best since a huge amount of footage had been cut out by the studio and replaced with a kind of stupid narration.  I'm amazed at how nearly every sentence uttered by a character was truncated in the theatrical version.


9.  Memento:  I couldn't believe this film when I first saw it.  I didn't catch it in the theaters, but had to wait until it came out on DVD. I think I immediately watched it a second time just to make sure I understood what happened.  My father refused to watch it once I told him the entire film is told in reverse chronological order.  His loss, because this is an incredible film.  Christopher Nolan became a household name after this film (although he had quite a lot of buzz from his earlier wonderful work "Following").  I became a big fan of his and he hasn't let me down yet (ie: Inception).


10.  Lord of the Rings Trilogy:  I absolutely adored the books as a child.  Peter Jackson and his crew did an absolutely amazing job recreating the worlds and characters I knew and loved.  So now maybe someone can tell me why Gandalf didn't have his giant Eagle friends simply carry Frodo and Sam to the volcano instead of just retrieving them after the arduous journey?


11.  Drowning by Numbers:  I know this movie is pretty quirky, dark and off the wall, but it really struck me and stuck with me.  It was one of the first times I realized a story can be told in a complex way with a sideline such as putting numbers into the films as a counter.  I still think the acting in this film was superb.


12.  My Dinner with Andre:  Here's a movie that I wouldn't probably see again for a decade or so, but I think I'm finally ready to watch it again.  I never thought that little squeaky bald guy from the Princess Bride could be interesting, but the script is so engaging he just pulls you right in.


13.  On a Clear Day You Can See Forever:  This is one of the only musicals I've watched more than once.  I'm really not a musical fan, and really I think this film would have been better without the singing.   Barbra Streisand is at her best here, playing the befuddled but lovable Daisy who has ESP and can make plants grow but is otherwise plain and simple.  Once the psychiatrist played by Yves Montand starts probing into her mind he discovers she has lived multiple, exciting and complex past lives.  He falls in love with one of the past lives named Melinda.  Yves' strong accent renders the song "Melinda, are you real?" laughable as "Mewinda, awr you weel?", but otherwise it's an outstanding script based on the play.


14.  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:  Not the updated nightmare made by Tim Burton, but the delightful musical starring Gene Wilder.  The award winning songs by Anthony Newly are still brilliant today.  I don't think a morning shower goes by without the Oompa Loompa song going through my head.


15.  The Wizard of Oz:  Something about the change from black and white to technicolor still makes my heart leap.  This is one of only a few musicals I like, and I even actually like the songs.  I'm not an old queen who worships Judy Garland, but you have to admit she was quite something in this film!


16.  The City of Lost Children:  I pretty much like everything  Jean-Pierre Jeunet has done including the incredible Amelie, Delicatessen and MicMacs, but not so much Alien Resurrection.  City has outlandish sets, intricately interwoven tales, and a terrific and purposeful pace.


17.  North by Northwest:  I have always liked Alfred Hitchcock movies but quite a few of them are not what I would call masterpieces, contrary to what critics and filmbuffs claim.  However, this one film is by far the exception.  My favorite scene is when James Mason says he'll have the bodies taken up in the plane and "dropped from a great height", Hitchcock has the camera rise up to the ceiling, looking down on Mason.  Many scenes in this film are ingeniously put together and delightful to watch.  Of course the suspense is thrilling, but that should go without saying.


18.  Citizen Kane:  This is an incredible classic with outlandishly beautiful sets and terrific acting.  It has been named "the best movie ever made" by many, many critics and associations.  I mostly love this film for its unique cinematography.  My favorite scene is when the camera looks in through a doorway at Dorothy Comingore, Kane's mistress and future wife.  The camera then pans up the facade of the building, over the roof and then down through a skylight to see Dorothy again instead of simply going in through the original doorway.  It's scenes like this that really make my heart leap.


19. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  I didn't actually like most of this movie at first.  It's one of those films that's difficult to watch.  The technique, camera angles, lighting, sets, etc. are not all that well done.  This is a film that whose merits lie in the script and acting which are brilliant.  I didn't fall in love with the film until after I'd finished watching it.  


20.  Murder by Death:  Okay, this is an extremely silly movie written by Neil Simon, but I've always liked it and have actually been inspired professionally by it.  It's about a collection of the world's most famous sleuths (like Sam Spade and Hercule Poirot, but thinly disguised as Sam Diamond and Milo Perrier, for instance) who come to a mansion for dinner and a murder.  The house is nearly one of the characters as it is a marvelous English style mansion full of ingenious mechanical devices.  Peter Sellers does a stand out job as Inspector Sydney Wang, an obvious allusion to Charlie Chan.

on How We Met

The neighbors in the apartment next door to me were a lovely Latino couple, quite and unassuming.  I said good luck to them when they moved to their new house.  Within a few days a new couple was moving into the empty apartment.  I watched from my sliding glass patio doors as two athletic looking men carried white furniture and framed dance posters up the stairs.  Gaydar from three counties went off that day.

David and Tim were good neighbors, inviting me over for wine and cheese parties regularly.  I'd stop in and chat frequently.  Eventually they began to introduce me to some of their other friends.  Then they took me to one of the many gay bars in downtown Portland.  I had no idea there were such things in Oregon; I naively thought they only existed in San Francisco or Provincetown.  I was a very naive gay boy back then.  Completely amazed by the hot bodies around me and entranced by the outrageously strong dance beat, I stood along the wall of the club.  I hadn't really known what to expect.  I thought the bar would be seedy, full of overweight, balding men with large handlebar mustaches and bottomless chaps.  Of course I discovered much later where one could actually find such men, but at this time I marveled at the young, fit and beautiful.  However, I could never muster enough courage to ask anyone to dance.  I disappeared along the periphery, sipping my coca cola, wishing the bartender hadn't put so much ice in it.  Later I had a few exciting encounters, some short flings, and some erstwhile trysts, but nothing dramatic, nothing heart stopping or starting.

On Saturday, February 29th, 1992 I was looking forward to the evening's television line-up.  It was going to be a special cross-over event for the leap-year.  There was a hurricane hitting Florida in TV-land so poor Rose from the Golden Girls was going to get blown over to Empty Nest, while one of the Nurses got sent over to another show and so on.  I cleaned house and waited for the evening, wasting time until the television hours.  I watched the first show in the line-up and realized how incredibly bored I was.  I could hear the dance beat calling me.  I decided to put my jacket on and make the half-hour drive from Wilsonville to downtown.  I told my brain I was simply going to visit the largest bookstore in the world, Powell's, one of my favorite haunts.  They would be open late on Saturday nights, and was coincidentally located in the midst of several gay venues.

I parked and went into the bookstore, browsing but not really interested in what I was seeing.  I finally worked up the nerve to leave, walk down the street and enter one of the most popular bars.  I told myself that if I didn't see David or Tim, or one of their friends within ten minutes, I would leave.  I stepped into the music and strobing lights and began my half-hearted search.  They were nowhere to be found.  I was about to leave when someone tapped my shoulder.  It was a beautiful young man with unbelievably blue eyes.  He asked my name and then laughed when I told him.  He said he and his friends were playing a game; guessing what people's names were as they entered the bar.  He had decided my name was "Brad" and was laughing because my name was so close to the mark.

I joined his table where I met his roommate Sofia and another man I can't remember.  We talked (loudly of course due to the music) and laughed a lot.  He ordered me a drink, a gin and tonic, and I pretended to drink it, having never really drunk an alcoholic beverage before.  I sipped a little and hated the bitterness.  Robert walked me to my car and we exchanged phone numbers.  I drove back to Wilsonville with a very strange feeling in my stomach.

I spent Sunday cleaning my already spotless apartment.  I rearranged things that didn't really need rearranging.  The entire time I fought against the urge to call Robert.  Calling him the very next day after meeting him would seem desperate, I told myself.  Just when I couldn't take it anymore and had pulled the tiny scrap of paper with his number from my pocket, the phone rang.  It was Robert calling to make sure I'd gotten home alright.  He said he'd been worried since I had told him I didn't drink, yet had evidently drank the entire gin and tonic. That would explain some of the strange feelings in my stomach I'd had the night before.  He asked if I'd like to see him again and I eagerly said yes.  In fact, I wanted to take him to this wonderful Italian restaurant this very night.  He hesitantly agreed and gave me his address.

There were a few hours before I really had to get ready and drive to Portland, and I was beside myself with angst and anticipation.  I almost psyched myself out a dozen times.  I decided to leave it up to God, even though I've never been very religious.  I left myself a good 40 minutes to get there and so hopped in my car and tried not to speed.  The center of Wilsonville has an ill-planned railroad crossing.  Just as I approached, a very long train decided to come through (at 6:40 pm on a Sunday night?) and then it stopped and had to back up, then lurched forward, backward, and then stopped.  I waited and waited.  Maybe God was sending me a sign?  Finally it pulled across the road and the barriers lifted.  I sped a little in order to make up for lost time.

I pulled into the unfamiliar NorthEastern quadrant of Portland and began looking for the address.  When I found the number I was sitting in front of an empty, vacant lot.  I checked and double-checked the address.  For some reason Robert had misled me.  Perhaps he really didn't want to go out and so played a cruel joke on me.  It didn't seem right.  Also, I had left his number back at the apartment and this was before the days of cell phones.  I had to drive all the way back to Wilsonville in order to call him.

When he picked up the phone he told me that his friends were trying to convince him I wasn't going to show up.  He was unfamiliar with Portland, so he didn't know each quadrant had the same addresses, so you had to add NE, NW, SE & SW for the address to make sense.  He promised he'd wait for me while his friends all went out.  I drove like crazy and picked him up.

The Italian restaurant was closed for some reason so I quickly thought of some other options.  We ended up going to La Casa Real in Lake Oswego and had a wonderful meal.  We talked and talked until the cleaning crew had finished vacuuming and were wanting to put our chairs on the table and shut off the lights.  That night  we sat in my car and held each other.  There was no making out, nothing "naughty".

I had another feeling in my stomach, painful but terrific.  This time I recognized the feeling even though I'd never felt it so intensely before.  This was the night I fell in love.

on Antibiotics

When I was four years old, I had a heck of a time!

My family vacationed a lot in an area of Southern Oregon called the Oxbow, specifically near Sister's Creek.  There were many miles of logging roads perfect for riding dirtbikes (motorcycles that are not necessarily street-legal).  My parents had Yamaha 250s and I usually rode as a passenger on the back of my father's bike.  This one particular vacation, my cousin Lori decided to hijack her mother Lola's Yamaha 1000 (a very powerful cycle) for which she didn't really know how to ride.  In addition she brought along her friend who was camping with us.  I was riding with my cousin Debbie who was very experienced even though she was only 6 years old at the time.

As our small convoy rounded a corner along a steep mountain-side, we heard a loud engine approaching from the rear.  It was Lori and her friend quickly threatening to overtake us.  The road wasn't very wide despite being made for log trucks.  Lori wouldn't move aside or slow down, or she was unable to due to her lack of ability, so she careened straight toward us.  My cousin Debbie had to make a snap decision; either leap off the cliff, or ram into the rock wall.  She chose the latter as my Lori spun out and lost control of her mother's bike.

We hit the large boulders and the motorcycle fell on top of me.  Oregon had a mandatory helmet law, but they didn't make helmets small enough to truly fit my small cranium, so when I hit the helmet slid down my face, opening up the cheek.  The motorcycle pinned my foot and caused it to turn backward.  I can remember my face being very warm, but it didn't hurt, whereas my foot was in agony.  Thank goodness I was wearing some kind of head protection or the accident would have been much worse.

They somehow carried me to my uncle's camper which was mounted on top of the bed of his truck.  I remember laying in there, with some people (not sure if it was my mother, cousin, or whom) around me.  It took a couple of hours to reach the nearest hospital where they taped up my face temporarily and then set to figuring out my ankle.  My foot had been turned around, but no bones were broken.  It seems that my young four-year-old tendons simply stretched to allow the turning, so it was easily set right.  I was on crutches for a few weeks while the tendons shrunk back to shape.  I had my face stitched up in the same hospital I was born in, by my family pediatrician Dr. Berryhill, but he removed the stitches too early and I ended up with a pretty good scar under my right eye.  It's started to disappear now as the elastin in my skin diminishes.

During this horrible time, they put me on antibiotics in order to stave off any infections.

Later that same year I started having a severely sore throat and couldn't eat anything.  The inside of my mouth, especially the roof started dying, turning white and flaking away.  The same thing was happening in my throat, esophagus and stomach.  At first I had my own room with my own color television, something I'd not had before.  I was there for a couple of days, then the doctors put me into a special quarantine ward at the hospital with other sufferers from a similar disease.  They labeled it Stephens-Johnson's Syndrome, the leading cause of blindness in the United States.  The little girl in the bed next to mine lost her eyes to the tissue-necrophying illness.

Near Holiday time in December, my parents pleaded with the doctors to let me come home.  The doctors were loathe to do this as I needed constant IVs for food and hydration.  Dr. Berryhill told my parents to brace themselves for my impending death as my white blood cells were beginning to take over my body.  For some insane reason the doctors allowed my parents to take me home for a couple of days.  They pumped me full of antibiotics and cortisone and then released me to my parents.  Being the irresponsible parents they could sometimes be (sorry, but true) my father and mother decided to bundle me up and drive to Tacoma to visit my aunt.  This was a five hour drive.  The cortisone had an interesting affect on me; it increased my hunger immensely.  I had an oral mouthwash antiseptic and anesthetic so I could eat some soft foods.

My aunt and uncle raised goats and although I had never drunk goat's milk prior to this, I couldn't get enough of it during this short visit.  I drank and drank and drank the creamy mixture.  When we got back to the hospital, Dr. Berryhill was shocked to see I had actually gained weight.  As he tested me he discovered my throat, esophagus and stomach were nearly back to normal with no signs of the terrible Syndrome.  His conclusion was that I didn't actually suffer from the true Syndrome, but had some kind of bug that the antibiotics killed off.  Of course the intense amount of nutrition present in the goat's milk helped immensely too.

Years later, as an adult, I was contacted by a support group for the Stephens-Johnson's Syndrome.  Doctors had now discovered the cause of the Syndrome: an allergic reaction to antibiotics.

So, after having the motorcycle accident and receiving antibiotics, my body had a severe allergic reaction which put me in the hospital again.  While there, I had received even more antibiotics and began to spiral towards doom.  By being temporarily released from the constant barrage of antibiotics, and consuming large quantities of nutrition, my body recovered.

Cautionary tale!


My aunt

on Young Love

In first grade I had a crush on Ramona, the only girl in the class who consistently wore frilly blouses, lace, and flowered prints.  To tell the absolute truth, I actually only called her my girlfriend because Matt Mitchel liked her and he and I had a little rivalry going.  Matt ended up being Tina's boyfriend, who was Ramona's best friend, so by default I ended up with Ramona.  Having a girlfriend in first grade meant I had to play with her at recess and do everything she said.  Most recesses I pretended to be a giant vulture and she was Witchy-poo (both are characters from the Sid & Marty Kroft series H.R. PuffinStuff).

By third grade I had made friends with Doug Lane and Steven Fulk.  Doug and Steven grew up next door to one another and were both boy scouts, so I was a bit jealous of their closeness.  There was something rather meek and submissive about Steven and something strong and dominant about Doug.  I didn't really care too much about being Steven's friend, but I really wanted to be Doug's friend.  I wanted to be his best friend.  I grew jealous of anyone who got his attention.  I allowed myself to become Steven's friend, mostly so Doug would hang around me more.  I had no idea why I wanted to be Doug's friend, but I really, really did.

In fourth grade I made friends with Kenneth Hadley.  We pretended to be apes from the Planet of the Apes series.  I was Cornelius (Roddy McDowall from the movies) and he was Galen (also Roddy, but from the TV series).  I don't remember what religion he was, but it was something foreign to my fourth grade brain.  He and his family moved away that following summer.  I liked Kenneth as a friend, but I still wanted desperately to be Doug Lane's friend.  Something in my juvenile mind made a separation.  Kenneth was just a "friend" but Doug was someone to be desired.  It wasn't overtly sexual, although it was probably subconsciously sexual.  My brain hadn't made that distinction yet; it had simply began dividing friends into different categories.

In fifth grade a new family moved in, just up the hill from our house.  These were the Peknecs, cousins to my friend Darrel Schumaker.  Davey Peknec was my age, and was fun to hang around.  We would walk home together sometimes after school, to the consternation of my mother who wondered where I was.  Davey's older brother Randy was in the same grade as us.  He had gotten held back a year.  He was the first guy close to my age who had a prominent Adam's apple.  I liked him very much.  He was a bit rough during recess, which I didn't appreciate; he liked to wrestle, punch, throw things, etc., but always in a playful way.  Occasionally I'd go on hikes in the woods with both Davey and Randy.  Again, my brain divided the two brothers into "friend" and "desired friend".

Years later, after I had returned home from Phoenix, Arizona and was working as a drafter for Morse Bros. Pre-stress Concrete Plant, my friend Darrel Schumaker dropped by my parent's house (where I was living at the time).  We talked for a while, but realized we had become two completely different people.  Darrel had discovered alcohol and had quite a good time with it.  I never touched a drop at that time.  I asked him about Dave and Randy Peknec and was surprised to discover Randy still lived nearby, albeit in a neighboring town.  I looked up his address and left a message at his house, scrawled on a piece of notebook paper stuck in the screen door.

A week or so later Randy pulled into my driveway in a shiny metallic-flaked-red flawless classic GTO.  It was a beauty and so was he.  Randy had a small waist, broad chest, immense muscled arms, a toothy grin with smiling eyes and that same incredibly protruding Adam's apple.  Over the next few weeks I would help him work on his car or trade shots with his pistol at target practice.  His beautiful wife Samantha looked vaguely like Elizabeth Montgomery, so they named their dog Endora.  I joked if they had a baby girl they'd have to name her Tabatha.  Randy was a dead-eye aim with his gun.  He didn't have a concealed carry permit, but he still kept the pistol in the glove compartment of his fabulous car.

Later I heard that Randy had been driving down the gravel road to his house when a couple teenagers threw some big rocks and hit the cherry car.  Randy pulled over and aimed the gun at them to scare them.  He had then been arrested and thrown in jail.  That was the last time I ever saw him again.

Randy was terminally straight.  I concluded he was one of those guys that you could get incredibly drunk and he'd still never show you his junk.  He was fun to look at, but gawd was he simple!  For a while I could stand to hang out with him, but honestly I've never been able to put up with someone that incredibly boring.  He was a nice guy, don't get me wrong, but he lived a life full of sports, beer, cars, Penthouse Forums, and guns.  That may be a fantasy for some, but I've always needed more.