Central Coast Evan

A Little Something From Beau and Ginger

2011-11-30T12:37:00.000-08:00

(The dogs next door.)

Earth, Grapes & Wood

2011-08-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

Sign of the Times

2011-06-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

From the side panel of a box of Tazo Awake Tea purchased at Albertsons grocery store.

Tazo Tea, as will surprise no one, is a division of Starbucks. They purchased the Portland, Oregon based company in 1999. If you enjoy the taste of the tea sold at Starbucks under the name Tazo Awake, you may be disappointed to learn that the tea sold in markets under the same name is a different product altogether. Of course they are both tea, and they are both Tazo, but there the similarity ends. It is a sign of the times that people, by and large, consider themselves to be urbane and sophisticated for frequenting Starbucks, but how sophisticated can the company itself be that knows not the difference between teapots (see above) and a teakettles? These instructions should carry the warning:

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

Pica Stick (1960)

2011-05-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

"Rina" — Jiseon Ryoo Jones

2011-03-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, with eight hundred seventy-five others, coming in all sizes, shapes and colors, Rina became a citizen of the United States of America. She is now officially Jiseon Ryoo Jones, the name of her choosing. Immigrants from more than ninety countries took the oath as babies cried, cameras flashed and tears mixed with smiles filled the crowd. We are all immigrants in one way or another. America, as is often said, is the Great Melting Pot. So, what better time to remember than this proud day that our strength is in unity, not uniformity. One nation under God, with people from everywhere.

We Are As Sound As Our Plumbing

2011-03-12T15:27:00.000-08:00

Another Miracle

2011-02-14T19:16:00.000-08:00

Rina, the most recent member of the family. We're hoping for some tiny Joneses before long. Five years this March, though it seems like yesterday. Inside we all have clocks that run at their own distinctive speed, or else the older we get the less we pay attention. Valentine's Day today. Pandemonium at the grocery store. Perhaps we should also have a day for celebrating The Apple of My Eye.

Approaching Oxnard

2011-02-14T15:18:00.000-08:00

From the window of the northbound Surfliner yesterday — a dreary trip punctuated by tiny miracles.

Number 9

2011-02-08T22:59:00.000-08:00

Same Way, Different Day

2011-02-04T20:48:00.001-08:00

The Grim Reader

2011-02-02T23:04:00.001-08:00

MLK Day

2011-01-22T16:13:00.000-08:00

The following should not cause any surprise.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a United States federal holiday marking the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King's birthday, January 15. The floating holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, though the act predated the establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by fifteen years.

The sign pictured above has appeared taped to the San Luis Obispo City Library main entrance every January for the last four or five years, possibly longer. Since discovering it, I've made a point of presenting myself to this door the first Tuesday following the third Monday of every January. I suppose it's possible, being a library and specializing in filing and shelving, that not only the sign itself, but this exact piece of paper has persisted throughout the years.

If you're wondering, as I did, how a library run by local government can observe a national holiday the day after its official date, the explanation is rather simple. As explained to me one year by the reference librarian, they can't observe holidays on Monday because the library is closed. The library's normal business days are Tuesday through Saturday with short days on Thursday in acknowledgment of Farmers Market, a big tradition here, and Saturday. They are forced, therefore, to observe holidays such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Tuesday, when they are open. Of course, they do so by closing.

I wanted to ask how they observe National Library Week but she was already helping the next person in line.

One, One

2011-01-01T00:47:00.000-08:00

I was jolted from sleep by the sound of firecrackers and the shouts and shrieks of small children. I had dozed off with a book in my hands. It seemed impossible that I had slept so long. But, my watch said only 9:00. The neighbors just down the hill, an extroverted bunch, were celebrating an early New Years for the children. More shrieks. More laughter. More pops and clatter. They were watching the ball in Times Square, I imagine. Midnight, by comparison, seemed more like an armed invasion. It boomed and echoed up and down the hillside. Double New Year. One for the children, one for the adults. And now one for the rest of us. Happy New Year.

Temple of Wisdom

2010-12-26T21:12:00.000-08:00

On a very uninteresting stretch between Paso Robles and Templeton are two side-by-side billboards. At freeway speeds even without traffic they are almost impossible to read. After several tries I just managed to make out Look, a big purple rectangle ! Today, thinking there might be something of interest in the small print, I took the next off-ramp and drove back. Why the lady on the right is smiling is anyone's guess, but I kept her in the picture because I liked her lovely red lips, her perfect white teeth and her sparkling blue eyes.

I noticed the arrow only after digging through my backpack for the camera. I imagined it had something to do with pointing out the mystical eye of CBS. Did you know CBS owned billboards? But, it must be more complicated than that. With my feet now on the gravel and my eyes no longer on the road, I deciphered its message. At first I thought it might be a straight pin, but no. It's a kind of hieroglyphic that translates, This is you pointing at the billboard.

Pointing at billboards is just such an everyday moment as the text refers to, but what learning it suggests is tricky. Binary color names and geometrical shapes? Obviously, whoever wrote this copy has not raised children. A child too young to recognize rectangles is obviously not one — at 65 MPH &mdash to attempt to engage in quick billboard discussions.

When Amie, about whom I have written many times earlier, was a senior at CalPoly she designed a public service announcement for this very billboard, so I find myself glancing in its direction as I pass. She dressed a girl we knew, a girl about to graduate from high school, in a prosthetic pregnancy stomach, though I suspect that's not the right name for it, tightly covered with a popular high-stretch blouse of the day. For a brief moment, and only at the request of the photographer, this bouncy, effervescent youth forced herself to look troubled and unhappy. In fact, she was bubbling with excitement brought about by all the attention she was receiving. In large print with no hieroglyphics the billboard asked, Friends with benefits? The subtext being, Friends with consequences?

Today's billboard reminds me of two things. First, those terrible ADD or ADHD jokes that have someone trying to say something important about Attention Deficit Disorder while the other says, "Look, is that a rabbit?" Second, though just as deeply psychological, I am reminded of those deceptively difficult memory tests, the ones like:

Also, it reminds me of the first book I read on web design. It warned against using colors to name page divisions. In other words, don't call a purple sidebar #purple or #purple_div, just call it #sidebar, because the moment you use a color as the name of something your client is bound to offer, "Wonderful. I love it. But, this purple rectangle thing on the side here… Can you make that blue?"

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-23T20:36:00.000-08:00

And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

And the saying pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. [Acts 6:1–7 KJV]

Friday Morning

2010-12-17T13:50:00.000-08:00

Wednesday morning I pressed snooze as usual. The coffee starts a few moments before the alarm goes off. It was burbling as I did so. I keep the alarm clock in the kitchen because somewhere along the line I developed the uncanny ability to hit snooze, even to turn the alarm completely off in the dead of sleep. When it rang again, the coffee was going strong. And again. And once more. Finally, I realized something was wrong. Maybe "realized" isn't the right word. Streams of coffee mixed with bladder signals invaded my dreams. Anyway, after the bathroom and a last annoying bleep, the pot was nearing the end of its half-hour cycle. Such puzzles are more easily reasoned after a good cup of coffee. The coffee in question, not surprisingly, tasted like lukewarm water had been poured over day old grounds.

Wednesday night I found a coffee maker near the end of a bank of coffee makers one step up from utterly basic for $19.99 + tax. I was amazed (and relieved) by the price, fearful I would have to pay many times more. I've never once gone window shopping for coffee makers, nor can I remember the last time I actually bought one. Knowing the pot will turn off an hour after I leave the house is worth untold amounts. Having a timer that starts perking just before the alarm goes off — as a boy, I watched my parents add coffee to boiling water and stir as the foam climbed wildly up the pot — is worth its weight in gold, though how much a timer weighs is anyone's guess. Those were my minimum requirements. Those and perkability, I suppose. Yes, there are more complicated machines, coffee makers with stainless steel carafes, things that grind beans and foam milk, impossibly difficult ones with levers and gauges, but I really don't need them.

Coffee is something I look forward to before I get dressed. If I lived, God forbid, next to a Starbucks, I'd consider having someone run next door for coffee first thing, but I would not consider getting dressed to do that myself. I use a Mexican espresso blend stepped on with something less intense. I like the old-fashioned coffee aroma that cheap coffee gives mixed with the darker flavor of espresso. My Mexican espresso doesn't cost much either. If there were cans of aerosol coffee smell… Anyway, my needs are not complicated. In the morning I want coffee. After I've had a cup, I might consider warming up an espresso machine or grinding beans. Until then, I just want coffee perking as the alarm goes off.

In some ways, the coffee maker I found Wednesday night on the way home is the apotheosis of the Manufacturing Age. It has a familiar American name stamped boldly on the front and a sticker on the underside saying Made in China. Of course, the jobs lost to emerging nations have been replaced with other jobs. I know this because my government has explained it to me. With that in mind, a good math question might be, How many Vente Caramel Mocha Frappuccinos can you buy if all you have is $19.99?

As a young man, I believed strongly that if Detroit built MGs using their vast industrial knowhow and capacity, then we could all zip around with the top down for almost nothing. MGs would become the $19.99 coffee maker of my post-pubescent youth. Only the slightest altruistic impulse would be required. My optimism, of course, was matched only by my ignorance. If Detroit built MGs — it seemed so reasonable at the time — they would end up costing whatever the market would bear and be replaced the moment anything more profitable came along. Also, and this took years of hard won maturity even to suspect, if everyone zipped around in convertible MGs, even they would become unbearably ordinary.

This morning (Friday morning) nothing called. I lounged around in bed for a time listening to the rain, smelling the loamy, autumnal smell of dead and decomposing leaves. There was no coffee gurgling because there had been no reason to set the alarm. I measured out six cups of water, three scoops of pre-blended Café La Llave, pushed the coffee maker back to the wall, and pressed start. Nothing happened. I checked the lights. I checked the outlet. I pressed all the unrelated buttons. I hit both sides, lifted and bounced it a few times. Cursed it. Nothing.

TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR COFFEEMAKER

Your MR. COFFEE® Coffeemaker has been carefully designed to give you many years of trouble-free service. In the unlikely event that your new coffeemaker does not operate satisfactorily, please review the following potential problems and try the steps recommended BEFORE you call an Authorized Sunbeam Service Center.

PROBLEM: THE ON LIGHT DOES NOT LIGHT UP
POSSIBLE CAUSE: The appliance is unplugged.
SOLUTION: PLUG UNIT IN.

I made one test pot Wednesday night and another automated one Thursday morning without a hitch. I was impressed by how quickly and how silently it raced through its cycle, and by how clean and uncalcified the pot was. Of course, if you have something to do and only have to do it twice, you can afford to put all you have into it.

Another math question might be, If you paid $19.99 for a coffee maker…

Springtime

2010-12-15T23:21:00.000-08:00

There is a misconception about springtime. In countries that have seasons, and in parts of this country, the first stirrings of new life follow the frigid snows and icy winds of winter. In the southwest, where the arrival of fall is oftentimes postponed for record high September temperatures, it is the heat that kills us, not the cold. Yes, the light recedes and the days become dismal. Winds, gentle winds, rip the final leaves from barren branches. But, let the clouds accumulate, allow the rains even for one blighted weekend to soak the earth and before the 21st of December has arrived, the world is green again.

This is my friend wading into it. Last year I knocked down these same weeds — at least an earlier version of them — while it was still an even fight. I filled a large wheelbarrow over and over again with this moist profusion. My friend stretched out in the bottom of each wheelbarrow as I heaped it full, a game of her own devising. She rode to the green waste container as a secret emissary, and once revealed, ran back for more. I'm not convinced she's a cat, but she is my friend.

A few steps away is this more perpetual world. A bucket nestled among evergreens under a canopy of live oak. My friend often drinks from this bucket. Now the water lasts longer and moss has begun to grow. In T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets he wrote, "Midwinter spring is its own season..." He wrote that while living in London where they have seasons and a definite sense of what comes when. What would he have said, I wonder, about the springtime leading us to winter?

Palindrome

2010-11-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

Morning, Noon & Night

2010-11-19T00:20:00.000-08:00

FREE (Hot Buy!)

2010-11-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Fed's generosity, I once again have a camera to play with. My old one, an earlier, slightly different model, looks like a relic of ancient times next to this glossy red one. It's electronics gave up the ghost. Like all things shiny and new, this one seems destined to last forever. It's more slender, far more advanced, though it comes with only a fraction of the features they were anxious to sell me. Before I post any photos, presuming that I do, I should say thank you. On my first uploaded "roll" was this apparent double exposure. It's an accidental picture of me demonstrating to my very attentive benefactor how the camera can be induced to focus on the background or on the reflection, or sometimes a combination of the two, depending on whether you give it time to focus. I have only the vaguest recollection of explaining this to him. Had I not found it staring back at me... So, I post it as a homage to generosity, to good intentions and to serendipity. At the market tonight one of the clerks was upset because her cellphone wasn't working. Her camera was broken, i.e. the camera that was also her cellphone. She wants a new one. "In the future," she said, "you'll only have to think of the picture you want and then drag it into the little frame." Said with absolute certainty. But for the moment, until the new model arrives, we'll just have to rely on good will and chance.

All I Want for Christmas Is A Waist (El Vez)

2010-08-22T17:16:00.003-07:00

The Chinese English news site Xinhuanews carried a roundup of 17 Sexy Action Stars this morning. I find the Xinhuanew fascinating because it's never quite clear if they find us interesting — by us I mean the Western world — or completely degenerate. Today, for example, they also covered the "rubber and fetish event" Latexpo 2010 in Hamburg with a number of rather explicit images. Hard to tell which chapter of the Little Red Book this would be covered in.

I trust there's some inscrutable reasons for it, but the landing page for "17 Sexy Action Stars" features only 15 women, one of them Sigourney Weaver as she appeared in Aliens. I've never once thought of Sigourney Weaver as being sexy. Of course, it may be that she's just not my type. If you attempt to discover the missing two by clicking the upper left hand image of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and then clicking next, you'll discover something even more inscrutable. It continues, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Alexis Liu, in Charlie's Angels, Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the already mentioned Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Halle Berry in Die Another Day, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns, Pam Grier in Foxy Brown — the missing #16, from 1974 no less — followed by "to be continued..."

To be continued?

Back click to the landing page, click on something you haven't seen and you'll find yourself in the midst of to be continued. Carrie Fisher in Star Wars, Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element, Anne Parillaud in La Femme Nikita. Steady yourself. The missing #17 turns out to be San in Princess Mononoke. Now, Princess Mononoke is a cartoon — you can call it an animated feature if you like — a greatly respected cartoon, but a cartoon nonetheless, and San a cartoon character. Franka Potente in Run Lola Run, Zoe Saldana, in Avatar, another (almost) cartoon — certainly, her part is animated — and that's the list. A bewildering list heading off in many directions. A list, it seems, based on a Chinese system that with patience we could learn from. Or, maybe not. Every caption ends with "(File Photo)". So, it could be that the list has nothing whatsoever to do with Chinese estimations of sexy, even in relation to degenerate Western behavior, but everything to do with what's available in the Xinhuanews file system. As with everything Chinese, it's wise to reserve final judgment.

What caught my eye, however, before these other things came to light was Charlie's Angels. Alex, played by Lucy Liu, introduces herself to Marshal Ray Carter in a Mongolian dungeon saying,

"I'm Alex Munday. I'll be your rescuer today."

"I didn't think you'd find me," he says. "How many men do you have?"

She half-smiles, "I've got two girlfriends in the bar."

"They have fifty armed men," he exclaims.

"I know," she says, finally freeing him. "It hardly seems fair."

Now, it could be the byproduct of living in an flawed society, but I knew at once that what Alex meant was, one waiting in the bar, rather than two, would have been more sportsmanlike. Also, I suspect that some cultural defect allows me to take lowbrow artifacts such as Charlie's Angels, or in this case Charlie's Angeles: Full Throttle seriously. That's undoubtedly the subtext of Xinhuanews. But, contextually degenerate or not, I loved every improbable moment of them. And the posters too.

I like the diagonal of the title in this one. There are several versions of it, but I like how they carried the flames over from the original to sustain a purposeful but somehow devious contradiction between the flames of hell, or perhaps only of passion or womanhood, and the three (far from) angelic figures in the foreground. But the thing I always admired, and from which I learned, was the illusion of a waist this poster created. The elbow of Cameron Diaz appears to coincide with the indentation of Drew Barrymore's waist. Drew Barrymore is someone I greatly admire, though she has obviously fostered a bad girl image through the years that may or may not be deserved. (Something only her very close friends would know.) But, she proved her salt, in my opinion, when she produced, directed and acted in Whip It, a wonderful comedy with realms of meaning beneath the surface. Drew Barrymore has many fine things to offer, but a waist is not one of them. Her figure tends toward the cylindrical. So, to costar with two curvaceous actresses and to seem herself but not physically different requires an innovative approach. Each director, cinematographer, graphic artist has handled this problem in his or her own way. It makes for an interesting study, but this is my favorite — aggressively simple, shamelessly direct and surprisingly effective. I doubt that one in a hundred movie goers has figured out her actual shape.

Of course, they dug a trench for Ingrid Bergman to walk in, if I remember correctly, to give Humphrey Bogart a lift, and the Queen of England's limo has independent rear seat controls so that even the King of Norway will seem slightly shorter than this miniscule queen. I don't believe that such things are examples of degenerative behavior, though their intention, perhaps innocent in itself, is to deceive. But, sometimes it's necessary to fudge things a bit. Sometimes you have all the ingredients but one, and sometimes you have all the ingredients plus one. And sometimes you just have a bunch of things and a deadline to meet. The clever chef always succeeds.

Seven Years Late

2010-08-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

According to the Guardian this morning,

The last American combat troops left Iraq today, seven-and-a-half years after the US-led invasion, and two weeks ahead of President Barack Obama's 31 August deadline for withdrawal from the country.

Seven years late, but two weeks early. And only fifty-six thousand left in country. It reminds me of Marilyn Monroe's missed appointment with Bert Stern, if I remember the photographer correctly. She appeared unannounced and unexpected the following morning. She was, in her wonderful logic, "a day late, but two hours early."

Speaking to an Empty Room

2010-04-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

A Pole in Paris

2010-04-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

Being a Jones was always a rather ordinary experience. Being a Jones in Paris, before the universal advent of television, was something else. The ordinary people, the clerks and receptionists, those with little or no linguistic preparation, the people who took orders and jotted down names — the lady at the laundry, for example — could neither spell nor pronounce my name once they saw it spelled. They looked at me suspiciously until they began to recognize my face, as if I might be pulling the wool over their eyes. It was almost like being Polish.

Besides serving next to a black Jones who insisted on calling me his brother, I also served alongside a young man from New Jersey who went mostly by his given name. His family name was an odd collection of consonants. Every so often we had formal roll calls. The company would be ordered to fall in. The sergeant in charge would march swiftly to the center of the formation, turn smartly and begin calling names in a military staccato. His pace was matched by a practiced and rhythmic "Here!" coming from different parts of the formation. Name — Here!, Name — Here!, Name — Here! My Polish comrade-in-arms was an unexpected land mine for a young NCO finally in charge. At first light one icy morning, summoning his most manly, most authoritarian voice, he called, Name — Here!, Name — Here!, Name — Here!… Until he tripped over the cadence. In that split second, based on a lifetime of complications and confusions surrounding his name, my friend yelled, Here! And the roll call continued. It continued after the laughter subsided.

The first unanticipated problem I had with my name in French was that J is G. That is, the letter J is called G and the letter G, after a fashion, is called J. Not an enormous problem, I suppose, just a simple substitution. A lot like Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. The real problem was the seemingly innocuous letters that follow. The French were baffled by the ones. The French either do or don't pronounce the ending letters of words. That's the closest I can come to a hard and fast rule. In deciding whether to pronounce or not to pronounce, being a native speaker of French puts one at a distinct advantage. My mother-in-law's method for helping me learn which was which was to have me pronounce everything with or without the ending several times out loud until I realized which was correct.

Of course, ones presents no problem for a native speaker of English. Either it's ones, as in ones and twos, with an understood w in front of the o, or it's ones, as in Jones, with an understood w squeezed in after the o. But, in French, it might be pronounced something like own (the s being silent) or oh nez (the s becoming z) even oh ness (giving it a sort of Spanish flair). But, combining those with the J or G of Jones presents an unexpected range of alternatives. It could start with the sound of ge in edge and produce Joan, which doesn't sound right. Or, Joe Nez, which for some reason seems only tentatively acceptable. Joe Ness. Wrong again. Hoe Ness might work, if I came from Madrid. Using the same ge from edge, but eliminating any vowels, adding only n and z, produces Jnz, the sound I learned to produce in that momentary pause where they wondered what to do with this jumble of letters they were presented with. And that made things easier. But the French aren't as easy as all that. When I came back for my laundry, and when after a few visits I was finally recognized as being that pleasant young man who smiled and nodded more than most, I was greeted with, "Ah, Monsieur Onaise." And so I became, and so I was, for the duration of my tenure as a Pole in Paris, that nice young man Évon Onaise.

Salvadorian Semantics

2010-04-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

The summer before last, I worked for a while with a young man from La Paz named Salvador. We were building a series of retaining walls. Neither of us knew what we were doing at first, but we figured it out as the walls grew longer and taller. I was eating oatmeal with raisins every morning. The fiber was supposed to lower my cholesterol and keep me healthy. As anyone who has tried this knows, regular cooked oatmeal is a time bomb waiting to happen, and until Monsanto bioengineers clean burning oats, it produces large quantities of sometimes unexpected gas.

I was easing a block into place, concentrating on center of gravity and lifting with my legs — I'm not young anymore, so I tend to be more careful than people in their twenties — and what I thought might be a tiny incident turned out to be a booming fart. "Dees gus ting," he said, making a face. "What," I demanded, "Mexicans don't fart?" "No," he replied, cutting an enormous fart of his own. "Dey do dees."