WARNING – POETRY ABOUT MY TELEVISION!

Now That I Have Surround Sound
By Kim

Now that I have Surround Sound I may have an opinion about the Academy Award for sound editing.

Now that I have Surround Sound the subtle innuendo of Hollywood is ever more apparent.

Now that I have Surround Sound I am distracted every time something unexpected happens in a suspenseful movie, thinking it happened in my front yard. Or on my bookshelf.

Now that I have Surround Sound I can listen to my olde timey bluegrass recordings, with extra booming bass all right up in my face, just like it was meant to be.

Now that I have Surround Sound I can incorporate the term “sub-woofer” into my vocabulary.

Now that I have Surround Sound I might have to learn the meaning of Dolby.

Now that I have Surround Sound I can’t get the refrain “And Stereophonic Sound!” as sung by Janis Paige and Fred Astaire, out of my head.

Now that I have Surround Sound I have jumped headlong into the technology of the 80’s.

Now that I have Surround Sound I can run the dishwasher while we are watching tv.

MANNERS POLICE MAKE FIRST ARREST. I have apparently reached my limit. This morning at the post office I snapped. After waiting in the usual pre-holiday line, I was taking care of extensive packaging, shipping and stamp buying business at the counter. Approximately five people deep in the growing line was a very anxious man who started throwing loud comments my way, very rude. He got louder and ruder, making everyone in the room extremely uncomfortable. So I did what I usually only think about in the car driving away from a situation like this – I turned around, pointed right at him and said, “You really need to work on your manners. You don’t know anything about me or what I’m doing up here, so you should really have more information before you start making comments like that. I’ve never seen such bad manners in a grown man.” (He was a forty-five year old, shaved head guy and looked like he quite possibly made custom motorcycles for a living.) Well, he told me to fuck off or maybe get a job application for the post office because that’s where I belonged (?). Ooooh. Good one. I kept my calm and again asked him to please not be so rude in public. He swore at me some more. The postal employees called security and tried to kick him out but he bitched and moaned and promised to be quiet. Other patrons were smirking at him and smiled at me when I walked out. (I made sure to get in my car before he could see what I drive – rage men kill.)

I can’t believe I actually did that. I know he’ll tell the story that some bitch-on-the-rag went screwy on him in the post office while he was just trying to pick up a package, but others who were there might be inspired by that sloppy dressed woman who had the nerve to call out the Jerry Springer reject and tell him, “That’s Not Okay.” It really is like talking to a three year old.

kim

WHEN MARX AND HIS ILK DREAMT OF A CLASSLESS SOCIETY I DON’T THINK THIS IS WHAT THEY HAD IN MIND…instead of a culture devoid of caste systems and fatted pigs living off the honest toil of the working poor, we have achieved a society devoid of…class.

I’m not uptight. I’m not a stuffed shirt. I don’t expect everyone to live by one grand set of Wells-ian theological rules. However, I really wish we, as a society, could maintain a little more class. What is class? Manners. Knowing what they are and when they should be applied. Manners let other people know you care. About yourself, them, and the fact that both of you are coincidentally inhabiting the same space at the same time for the moment. Manners do not care about alpha-males, bank rolls or booty calls. Manners are appropriate for all ages and span all socio-economic bridges.

But instead…

Movie theatres are populated with patrons taking cell phone calls (“I’m seeing that movie…the one with that guy, you know the one married to that girl…no the other one…it’s okay so far…where you guys at?”), ready to four-letter-defend his or her right to do so when shushed repeatedly.

Car horns are not relegated to warning other drivers of imminent danger or unexpected hello’s. They are a sonic “fuck you” for the most minor infraction, real or imagined, and one can only assume the next step in the anger progression is firearm display and discharge.

Somewhere along the line, the phrase “you’re not the boss of me,’ delusional yet age-appropriate during the primary school years, hit a developmental hiccup and became “nobody can mess with me” well into adulthood, still delusional, no longer age-appropriate and now contributing in a big bad way to Classless America. The sentiments it unfortunately enveloped in its wake include “thank you,” “I’m sorry,” “excuse me,” “can I help you?” (note – not the sarcastic “I’m going to slap you” version), and “damn, I screwed up.” Also notably missing from the lexicon of the “never messed with” is the honestly spoken phrase, “I don’t know.” Think about it.

Before anyone gets his/her panties in a knot thinking this is some pointed barb against any specific group of people, let me point out right now my that I stand agape at these seemingly un-classifiable classless. Old, young, rich, poor, educated and un, lots of colors and lifestyle choices. I’m flummoxed. I never thought that I, Kim, not-yet-middle-aged-but-no-spring-chicken former punk-rock semi-hipster musician, artist, mother-of-three, I never in my life thought I would be the one in the position of Manners Police. Has there been a lapse in teaching manners? I have a few theories:

I blame materialism and marketing, not necessarily in that order. The Me Generation became the Buy Me Generation. Instant gratification (for Me) is omnipresent. Ads for everything from sports drinks, diamond rings, yoga retreats and designer underpants claim “You deserve this.” Me me me me me me. How is the world treating Me. What does the world owe Me. How is society wronging Me? What’s in it for Me? How can I make this better for Me? (This probably what an advertising worksheet for a new product looks like.) Now everyone’s on his/her own hamster wheel running for…Me. No time for, you know, You.

I blame the breakdown of face-to-face human contact as a major contributor. Screens with no emotional feedback to read are what too many people use as a way of communicating on a daily basis. (Like, for instance, this blog.) Cell phones. Fax machines. AIM. Chat rooms. The death of manners. When there is no emotional nuance to read in someone’s face, there is nothing to lose – or gain in the way we are meant to interact – with hormones and all five or six senses.

Reality television has glamorized the most negative aspects of people’s relationships, characters and lifestyles, aspects that should be addressed privately and with concern by groups of close family and friends, and has turned these troubles times of troubled people into acceptable (if not imitable) situations. Is it really okay that “hoochie mama,” “baby-daddy,” and “paternity test” are part of our common vernacular? (or “skanky ho?”) I don’t advocate censorship of the airwaves. I just dream of a day when the shows would be cancelled for low ratings. Kinda like if all the New Country radio stations went under. I can dream, can’t I?

Here’s the last grandma moment I have the energy to write tonight. Why are parents of teenagers today afraid to tell their kids to turn their damned phones off? Or to stop text messaging? Or to quit playing on the computer and do something else for awhile? Is there a feeling that “this is how it is now and my kid is part of this new technology’?? I have a teenager. I can see that it’s rude to take a phone call on your cell phone when you’re in someone else’s car (like your aunt or grandma or other adult-type-person). I can see that when you’re visiting family, you don’t answer your phone. You don’t sit in ANY room with people and text message. Can you say “I’d talk to you people, but this person typing cryptically with his thumbs is more interesting”? Teenagers are taking other teens everywhere they go, a movable feast, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. All very nice for them, but when they look up from the screen and have to talk to someone else…in person…about something…else…real…um…I dunno…CUL8R.

Do you think that text messaging will lead to the painful arthritic death of this major human digit? Are modern teenagers taking a step down the slippery slope away from the primate’s opposable thumbs?! Horrors! Darwinism is at work. If so, I’m hoping my DNA strain might survive a little longer to pick up a raisin or two, for you see, I am teaching my children manners. And spelling full words, writing with a pen, and looking people in the eye when they speak to them. Also – DON’T TALK DURING THE DAMNED MOVIE.

Kim

CONFESSIONS OF A MEDIA TWEENIE. I’m having one of those days, you know, one of those bloaty, crabby, Lay’s Big Grab and Hershey’s King Size leave me alone days, and I see a window of opportunity for some private time later in the day, say maybe three or four hours of non-whining bliss (mine or anyone else’s). Planning ahead for this mini-retreat, I think this time will be different. I won’t catch up on laundry, phone calls, locating the pee smell in the bathroom, or sorting toys by age, theme or corporate sponsor. No, this time I think, to borrow a phrase from M. Python, “And now for something completely different!” I decide to buy a magazine! And read it!

I head to my favorite local bookstore, giddy at the thought of entering the expansive periodicals section, the section I always pass by on the way to the children’s department to buy yet another birthday present for yet another school friend. I think about all the glossy covers I’ve rubber-necked longingly as I’ve pushed various sized strollers over the past few years, imagining that someday I’ll have the time again to thumb through, nee read (!) a magazine again. You see, not only is it enjoyable if picked properly, but it is a statement: My life is so together (and therefore, I am, by association) that I can piss away this bit of my day on this trifle. See me being so cavalier?! Ha ha! Seeing a mother of three buying a magazine inspires awe in the educated onlooker. However, it is vital, and I wholeheartedly vow, to not buy anything to do with my daily drudgery. No cooking, cleaning, organizing, mothering, parenting, checkbook-balancing or anything with the words mom-wife-recipe-woman-diet-calorie in the title.

I am going to read music magazines. I am going to read up on friends who are still in bands and look at pictures of Lyle Lovett. I will figure out the difference between drum-and-bass and house, and even look at rags covering artists I don’t listen to, because I still think Snoop Dogg is cute.

I am going to read Italian Vogue, not even American Vogue. Maybe W. I am going to read those beautiful goth magazines and somehow, someway incorporate makeup tips into my daily life, if only for ME (and, of course, the PTA).

I’m going to read media arts and culture magazines and decide for myself whether Japan is the new Japan. I’ll read about independent cinema and performance art. I’ll pick up Bitch to atone for all my previous media sins.

It’ll be great, just like before I was a mom, when I felt like I was part of not only American culture, but of American sub-culture!

What happens next is more than disconcerting, it is downright off-pissing (I believe that’s how it’s stated in upper echelon circles). I pick up a copy of Goth Beauty and am immediately struck, not by the goth beauty, but by the goth youth. This is no doubt a reflection of my not-goth-anymore-aging, and since I’m afraid to simply face my own mortality (a popular goth topic, I think) I place it back on the shelf. Next I pick up Venus, a new-ish magazine featuring women in arts, music and diy culture. I can’t read it. Not morally, but literally. I can’t read the fonts. They are too small and faint. I squint, don my glasses and squint some more, all to no avail. Forget that. Who needs a young, hip, culturally upbeat magazine to tell me (I think, it looked blurrishly like it was telling me) that I’m too old to be reading it. Adbusters features a spread by a couple of brilliant artists choosing to use the medium of bloodied corpses and the guilty weapons of immediate destruction, which I find I can’t handle now that I have kids (is this just me?).

These failed attempts continue through the alternative culture section (too alternative/not alternative enough), gay and lesbian corner (too gay/not gay enough) and on into the crafting chasm (too crafty/too crafty). I realize that while I refuse to buy Family Circle today, I am frequently interested in ten meals in ten minutes, making the most of my storage space and explaining the death of a pet and/or loved one to a toddler. (To the gentleman standing beside me at Bookshop Santa Cruz at the exact moment when I made this realization, I apologize for the expletive shouted in your direction. I’m sure you are not a mother f*cker.) Now, with my new, perhaps healthier perspective, Dave Grohl and Frank Black stare back at me from the newsstand and they suddenly look like Goofus and Gallant, taking their place, I suppose, with other figures in my magazine past.

WARNING: CLOWN REFERENCE. I am about to paint the final picture of this outing, a pitiful portrait, but one of acceptance. Somehow I see the sad clown face of Emmett Kelley (with nose ring) atop my old-school-Chuck-clad feet, rolled up jeans and worn out comfy t-shirt covering my formerly-dancing-belly: I stand with my final purchase, “390 Crock Pot Slow Cooker Recipes,” knowing that this is truly the best read I will take home today, but I stand in front of Rolling Stone, saying a last goodbye. The rock star on the cover is the husband of a friend of mine. He tours and sings songs about drugs, she stays home with the kids, reading magazines and planning dinners. Maybe I’ll send her some recipes. (Maybe I’ll grab People magazine on the way out. Angelina is hot.)

Kim

I’M A WINNER!! Well, a little higher up on the loser list. Another of my plays has been included in a festival, and this one is in New York!! Um…state, not city. And it’s still a ten-minute play. I am not downplaying this success, for any writing success at this stage in my life, what with the three kids under the age of seven and the multiple personalities (okay, they call it bi-polar, but if you ask my husband he has a different diagnosis) I should be ecstatic, grateful or at least utterly shocked. And I am. And I have serious designs on full-length plays, just not serious time or energy, not necessarily in that order.

SUMMER LESSON #1. Have you ever re-filled a water gun four-hundred-fifty times while trying your damndest to carry on with other things like, oh, say, EVERYTHING ELSE?!?!?!?! (This is before you figure out to leave a bucket of water out for the “submerge and fill” method.) After the four-hundred-fifty-first time when your two year old says “It’s empty,” you explain that is because he insists on squirting the gun and using up his precious ammunition. You further explain that if he will take a lesson from our esteemed military spin doctors, he should simply fill his squirt gun up to the hilt, wave it around the front yard and point out to his siblings that he has the ultimate power to squirt them, if necessary, as a defensive move, and that he clearly has the superior water power to wipe them off the face of the grass. This will stop all incoming attacks as well as the undesireable side effect of “empty squirt gun.”

SUMMER LESSON #2. Don’t buy squirt guns (or “water squirters” as we so desperately referred to them until our kids entered the outside world). However…it is really, really satisfying to squirt your kids, and sometimes the hose is just too aggressive, especially if you have one of those gardening hose attachments with different choices of water sprays such as “soaker” (boring!), “center spray” (raining!) or “jet” (take that, you PBJ-on-my-barkcloth-curtains-shithead!!).

kim

SUMMERTIME, AND THE LIVIN’ IS…JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE YEAR. Yes, I’m still here. No, I haven’t jumped ship and fled to LJ or some other blogging universe. I’m just here in my 850 square feet of squalor, faced with three children (usually plus an extra niece, nephew and my step-daughter) in the throes of summer vacation and wondering how to make it fun for them and bearable for me (you know, trying to come out at the end of August with the same number of living family members we started with in June). In my dreamy-time-fantasy world, summer with my kids would be a relaxing lemonade and sunscreen picnic with swimming and bonfires and lazy days filled with whatever captured our butterfly fancies, maybe reading on lounge chairs in screened-in porches by a lake, perhaps road trips with stops to taste/converse with local oddities and specialties. Instead their boredom and frustration is amped up, my childcare and patience is dialed down, and my workload has remained unnervingly steady. In other words, we are all horrifically askew, with sunburns. (and strep throat, on a rotating basis.)

I LIKE GRILLS. (or I KISSED A GRILL.) We made the jump and bought an LP grill, the kind that can be turned on with the turn of a wrist. The kind with a burner on the side for what, maybe heating your sauces? (I’ll keep you posted on that one.) It has a cover. It has essentially taken grilling food out of Mike’s realm (fire! coals! tending!) and into mine. (on! off! done!) I knew this was an issue when he wanted to place it on the front porch (see my fire! burning fire!) and I wanted it outside the kitchen door (um…I’m coooking). He had fought the purchase for quite some time and I wasn’t sure why, but at dinner last night three husbands discussed the release of power that comes with buying a grill of this type. No more poking fires with sticks. I am sure this is why the grill manufacturers make them out of stainless steel and otherwise attempt to have them resemble tools or garage paraphenelia. Personally, I, like many women, would like it to match my tangerine Kitchenaid mixer, but that might cause many husbands’ testicles to fall clean off. Hehe. Men. Gotta love them, at least in theory, right? They’d make such great fictional characters and we get to watch them so close up.

oxoxoxox
Kim

OKAY, I GET IT! If one more person asks me if I’ve seen “Nanny 911″ while I am commenting on this, that or the other annoying habit employed by one of my children during dinner or naptime, I will scream. Worse yet was the inquiry that came right out of the blue from the casual acquaintance after a studied gaze as my monkeys tumbled down the street in their usual dustcloud of heaving, whining, crying and fighting. Yes, I do understand the implication, however subtle, that perhaps I ought to be watching, learning from or maybe even starring as the next victim/parent, however, three people this week have mentioned this to me, THREE, damnit, and I am tired of it. And one of them was my mother. Can I get a harumph?

Maybe my kids are all in a phase. At once. Perhaps my home is the convergence of three lunar/solar spots or the sibling equivalent of Jupiter aligning with Mars or some such thing. After all, they are in such difficult stages, right? With the breathing and the growing and the teeth coming in or falling out. Surely it couldn’t be me.

What channel is it on, anyway?

kim

EAST MEETS THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST. I had my first acupuncture experience yesterday, and let me tell you something, it was quite an experience. Not only because I believe it will be the first of many beneficial forward steps in my self-discovery and care, but because it was a huge step for me to get over a big fear I have about Eastern medicine. Notice I said fear, and not reservation. I have no doubts about the effectiveness of Eastern practices. On the contrary, I have quite vocal gripes and major conspiracy theories concerning what we loosely refer to as “western medicine.” Come closer and I will tell you what I have been afraid of for many many years. Closer…

(I am afraid that a practitioner of Eastern medicine will be able to peer into my soul, and upon seeing that I am a bad person, tell me, “your black heart is causing the death of all your vital organs.”)

Okay. Now you know.

That said, I’m happy to report that no such diagnosis was made (at least not verbally) during my initial assessment and first treatment. Maybe she was daunted by my “dramatically low chi” or perhaps I over-estimate my evil powers. (Please disregard any comments that my husband might leave on this subject. He is biased and overworked, and perhaps underfed.)

kim

LITTLE PIG , LITTLE PIG, LET ME IN. NOT BY THE…AAARRGHHH! While innocently giving my face and neck a loving once over in the bathroom mirror this afternoon while i washed my hands, I was horrified to find a hair growing out of the bottom of my chinny chin chin. This was not the first, nor will it be that last hair to grace my chin. After all, I am a forty-one year old woman. I have borne three children. I have Polish ancestry. So, it was not the hair itself, nor its length (somewhere in the 3/4 inch category) that shocked me, but the fact that not a single one of my friends notified me at any time BEFORE the 3/4 inch mark that this hair was becoming unwieldly. This hair, let’s call it The Stray Einstein Hair, could have been pointed out at, say, 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch, or really at any visibla inverval. How I missed this subversive growth spurt is beyond me, but let’s be reasonable – it’s under my chin. Most of the interesting parts of my day take place…not under my chin. How all of my friends (and my husband) conspired against me, nee, continually conspire in silence every time one of these crazy things pops up is just getting out of hand. Every few days I do a chin-check. Monday: clear. Thursday: clear. Sunday: 3/4 inch Einstein Hair!

FROM THIS DAY FORWARD I propose that we (who? I don’t know. whoever is reading this and whoever you tell) form a pact to discreetly point these little things out to each other before they are blowing in the wind, curling under our chin like Colonel Sanders, catching dandelion drifts. I’m not suggesting we sink to uttering things like, “Hey, Kim, time to shave!” in crowded rooms. But maybe we could have a few key phrases that the unsuspecting listener wouldn’t pick up on, yet would let us, the hairy, know that it’s time to GO PLUCK! Some suggestions:

“The successful gardner pulls the weed from the root.”

“In a hairy situation, remember: chin up!”

“Remember Daffy Duck’s ffriend Plucky Duck?”

Kim

AQUARIUM REDUX. I made a return trip to the aquarium with my freshly four-year old son for a special mom/son day. I felt like such an expert, having just been there. Unfortunately the aquarium had set their prize great white shark free since she had started eating her tank mates; fortunately at age four a hammer head shark is much more impressive, what with the crazy shaped head and all. At age forty-one, it’s all metaphor.

WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? I hear this question asked tearfully by mothers of youngsters all the time on birthdays. Yesterday, on the fourth anniversary of my son’s birth, I found myself instead asking, “Four?! That’s it?” Instead of mass-mailed greetings from Toys ‘R Us arriving in the mailbox, I expect to find tuition invoices from the nearest university, because surely they must be in college by now. I have aged at least two decades since their birth. Why is it that they are still toddling and preschooling? Call me unsentimental or worse, but the passage of time is different when one is having a hard time mothering.

BACK TO OUR BIG DAY. After the aquarium (which contains not a single iota of Spiderman paraphernalia, believe me, we searched every tank, store and snack bar), we stopped at a small games arcade nearby to lay down many hard-earned dollars to try to win a mini roll of Smarties candies and a plastic spider ring. Our first attraction was Whack-A-Mole, or more appropriately for the Cannery Row/Aquarium location, Whack-A-Shark! My son quickly lost interest and I was left to finish the games. I felt compelled to do so, a) to get my token’s worth, b) to win my son some Smarties, c) to show that friggin’ shark who’s boss. We don’t condone violent games, but it was his birthday and those sharks really had nasty looks on their pink, purple and sunshine yellow faces. Once my little one drifted away to gaze at the Titanic pinball game (fun! drowning! distaster! tilt!) I kept my shark-whacking motivation by re-naming the game with a 1970’s cinematic beach theme, Save Roy Scheider!

SOME ‘SPLAININ’ TO DO. As we were getting ready to leave, dearest son, who can find a “shooter” anywhere (he once found a perfect replica of a handgun made of driftwood on the beach) pulled me over to his latest discovery – a strange arcade game in a dark corner. There were five air or laser rifles set up on a counter, where five people could shoot at targets simultaneously, maybe for points. I’ve seen this sort of game before at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk where you can shoot at little red dots and make tin cans jump, a player piano start playing, etc. Now here is where I got that confused-golden-retriever look on my face: the diorama for shooting at was the back of a race car that was set up to be speeding away from the shooters. So…um…Jeff Gordon is lost in West Virginia after getting caught stealing a chicken? I don’t get it. Can someone explain this to me? (Apologies to West Virginians. It’s just that I met a guy there who was shot in the hand by his dog.)

Kim

p.s. I highly, highly recommend the cd above. I didn’t think I would approve of words being added to classical music, because I’m sort of a snob, and wish I had done it myself, but it is great. And the songs without the words are included afterward.