Jim's birthday

I forgot to bring the camera to the Shogun Japanese restaurant last night at Jim's birthday dinner, but Janet took some pictures when we went home for cake. At the restaurant Jarod got a "samurai" paper hat.

I told Jarod that we weren't going to smile in that first picture, but he was in a mood and didn't quite cooperate. It looks like I just bought him from the black market. What are those graceful, effete gang signs I'm throwing with my hands?

Jim goes into hysterics over his birthday cake in picture 2.

Other pictures of guys eating cake and ice cream.

freedom to rock

Both of my Russian finals are over, most of the wedding prep is done, and the weather is fine.

When I got home from my finals I started work on the Rasputin story again. I wrote three sentences, but that's three more than I wrote during this past semester. I'm hoping to write the final 250 pages before June 24, we'll see what kind of success I have. It's easier to read it than to write it - I was reading this page the other night:

"those voices, those cats, or maybe they’re birds. People don’t like me to talk about it, but good heavens, if you were hearing voices wouldn’t you talk about it?"

“What do the voices want?” whispered Felix.

“Oh, one thing and another,” said Arkady, “Sometimes their suggestions are ridiculous and sometimes they’re stabs of genius. Sometimes the most ridiculous things they say have got a dash of cleverness in them. They’ll say, ‘Put some grass into the samovar instead of tea,’ ordinary lawn cuttings, you see? I’ve never dared, but maybe it would be good. Has anyone ever tried it? Maybe the cavemen. Once a voice told me to poison the ducks, and what do you think, I almost did it! I don’t like the way the ducks clean themselves, it makes me uncomfortable, if you want to know the truth, and I try not to watch. Can a duck have fleas? Who knows. It’s one of those mysteries that we’ll never understand, not in our lifetimes anyway. Why are the ducks driven to behave the way they do, and why do human beings hear voices? These are two mysteries. God created His world and ours, with mysteries built into both, perhaps to tease us or something, hey? Maybe our modern world with its horrors deserves some teasing and poking just to keep us wondering if there really is a God, to keep us listening for God’s voice in our nightmares.”

“I never have nightmares,” Felix said, prevaricating, "On the contrary, I-"

“You are a nightmare yourself, to others,” said Arkady."

Tonight is brother Jim's birthday dinner and I can't schedule myself a trip to the gym today, I'm going to eat Japanese food instead. However, without classes my schedule is much liberated. I'll have to resume bringing a book to the gym for occasions when I stay so long I wear myself out and need to take a break, soggy with perspiration.

And soon I'll have my summer Netflix program scheduled. It'll be so nice to have someone to watch movies with.

If you can believe it, the bride has never seen "Blood Simple" before, and I would certainly enjoy watching it again. Then Nicole will know who I'm imitating when I scream like M. Emmet Walsh after Frances McDormand stabs him in the hand.

As for me, I've never seen "The Lost Weekend". N. tells me that there's a scene in which alcoholic Ray Milland catches the delirium tremens and he dreams that a bat attacks a mouse and blood dribbles down the wall. I'm ready!

"G.S."

Nicole and I spent almost the whole weekend sitting on her livingroom floor addressing and stuffing envelopes. Now we're all done and boy am I tired.

After we finished we went to Tombstone and bought a western style "Tombstone, AZ" thermometer for my apartment balcony so we can see what temperature it is outside. We ate lunch at a little place on a Tombstone side street and I drank a sasparilla. All the men inside were packing heat.

At some point during the weekend we watched "Munich" and it was very good. Shoulda seen it on the big screen when it came out, but we tried.

Monday we stopped by Nicole's classroom and I met her class of first graders. We gave them cookies and San Diego postcards (dolphins, killer whales).

The next time I go to Arizona I'm showing up in a plane and leaving in a U-Haul.

Nicole said that last night she dreamt that she went to a doctor's appointment. He told her that she was pregnant. "But that's impossible," she said, "And besides, I've started taking birth control." The doctor told her that sometimes birth control pills cause pregnancy all by themselves.

She looked at the doctor's chart and her report had "G.S." noted on it.

"What does G.S. mean?" she asked the doctor. He said that it meant, "Get some Sweatpants." Because pregnant people gain tons of weight and they have to wear sweatpants.

"Some people gain 100 pounds when they get pregnant," said the doctor. Get some sweatpants.

Last Social Call

Wyatt Earp: "Sure is rough-looking country. Ain't no cow country. Mighty different where I come from. What do they call this place?"
Old Man Clanton: "Just over the rise there. Big town... called Tombstone."

I'm headin' out tonight for Arizon'. Plane lifts off around 7:50 p.m. This'll be my last purely social call, the next time I show up it'll be to pack up my bride and haul her out to California.

I still gotta study for my Russian conversation final exam and work on my final presentation for Russian 3 class. Both are on Tuesday. For my presentation I mean to show Russian movie clips to the class and discuss them in Russian and then take questions.

Yet we'll have to make time for another trip to Tombstone this weekend. Pretty soon joyrides to Tombstone won't be part of our regular routine anymore. I still haven't visited Boot Hill or the O.K. Corral.

Jewelry Thieves/Get on the Bus

I had another strange dream.
I dreamt that Brad had incited/encouraged some folks to join him in robbing a jewelry store in South Pasadena. I took part.

I think we broke a window to get inside the store. The jewels were kept in a wooden box near the door. I used a crowbar to pry open the box. Afterwards we all went to a movie theater to cool down.

Inside I realized, "Dang it, we didn't wear gloves! They've got our fingerprints all over the store!" I became very depressed, guilt-racked, convinced I was going to prison. The others didn't seem to bothered at all. They were still coming down from the thrill and the rush while I sulked in the lobby.

Silver People

The original plan was that I was to go to the opening of the Boat Show exhibit that Brad curated at High Energy Constructs gallery (in Chinatown, in Los Angeles), but then I became in need of antibiotics, and you know the rest.

Saturday I finally made it to the gallery and I had a good time looking at the pictures and talking to Brad. In the photo there, Brad is standing in front of his contribution to the exhibit, "Sexy Nurse". I think it's oil on canvas, and I believe it sold for several hundreds of dollars, congratulations Brad!

That night I had an odd, potent dream. I seemed to be in a tiny, one-room apartment in L.A., brightly lit by white fluorescent light. I don't think there was any furniture in the room. It was nighttime and I was just arriving home from dinner or a movie with some very familiar friends, but I couldn't see who exactly. Each wall had an open window.

We were just taking off our coats when a young woman outside the apartment began scratching on the window screens. She reminded me of Edie Sedgwick. She was wearing a tan raincoat and her hair was painted metallic silver. She was a complete stranger and might have had a foreign accent. She was trying to be friendly and eager and wanted us to let her inside the apartment, I don't know why.

My companions and I ignored her the way one would a homeless person asking for a handout, and we locked the door. As she went scratching as each successive screen, entreating us to let her inside, we would close the windows and maybe shut the curtains.

Is it important to mention that Brad wrote a song called "Silver People"? What does it all mean.

Wha Guru Chew

When I got home from bible study last night I decided to go to bed early. As I was going to sleep, singing as usual, the song I was performing happened to be the '80s favorite "Anything, Anything" by Dramarama:

"I got wasted, she got mad,
Called me names then she called her dad,
He got crazy and I did too,
Made me eat Wha Guru Chew..."

I made up the last line, of course, but it made me think: did I still possess a specimin of the sesame-almond chew toy? I leapt up, went into the kitchen, and seconds later I had fished a sticky, decades-old package of Wha Guru Chew out of the "junk" drawer (see photo above; my camera is incapable of close-ups).

This specimen of Wha Guru Che is at least as old as my first car, Wheezy (circa 1990). Some may remember when the Wha Guru Chew was kept in the trunk along with other unaccountable things.

My brother Jim and I first ran across Wha Guru Chew in about 1981. We were at a sporting goods store with Dad buying camping stuff. We found Wha Guru Chew in the check-out line among the "impulse buy" items like hiking mints and those tablets that purify poison water.

These are the ingredients:

roasted almonds, malted cereal syrup, honey, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, unrefined expeller-pressed safflower oil, wheat germ, salt, pure vanilla, lecithin.

We weren't allowed to buy a Wha Guru Chew at that time, but the gooey, speckled, resinous blob definitely made an impression on our adolescent selves. The picture of the temple on the front! The ridiculous name! Its aspirations towards being a health food offering Hindu piety! The fact that it looked like shit! ("expeller pressed"!)

It seems that Wha Guru Chew is still around, although the packaging has been foolishly updated. The old design was really all this product ever had going for it. I bought one once and tried to eat it. 100% natural and 100% disgusting.

no better way

I just added this item to the Amazon wedding registry. Since Nicole and I only get to see each other about every other weekend, sitting down and listening to music together is rarely a priority on our agenda. Yet, every time I imagine sitting with her and listening to music, there is a disco ball with us casting party lights all over the walls.

There was only one Amazon product review available for the Rotating Disco Ball Lamp:

"I made my romm a disco room.I have disco music.My friends loved it.I think it's the best way to make your room a disco party.I love it...."

That's good enough for me; neither can I can think of any better way.

Serenade

The common denominator of the books I've been reading lately is that they are small paperbacks -handy and preferably floppy like soft-shelled crab.

These are the books that I don't mind carrying the two blocks to the shuttle every morning to read on the ride to work. Those are long blocks and I can't tolerate excess baggage.

The last paperback I finished was Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman and Other Stories and it was lousy. We can blame the translator. I thoroughly enjoyed Gogol's novel Dead Souls but those short stories were a tough haul to get through.

I am flying through my current paperback, a book of three short novels by James Cain. He is famous for writing The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. I liked the first two but I've never managed to pick up Mildred Pierce because I think it's just gonna be about Joan Crawford and her crazy daughter.

The first of the three novels in the book I'm reading is called Serenade. I'm about halfway through it and I'm enjoying it as much as the other James Cain stories I've read. It's about a washed-up singer who takes up with a Mexican prostitute in Mexico where they have lurid episodes. With the help of an Irish sea captain, they must escape to Los Angeles. There the washed-up singer finds success because his voice returns to him due to his adventures with the prostitute. So far so good.

Most Charming and Attractive

In Russian conversation class on Tuesday night we continued watching the comedy "Most Charming and Attractive" ("Самая обаятельная и привлекательная", 1985) and I continued to enjoy it. Unlike "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" (1979) this one didn't win no Academy award for best foreign film. However, as I said before, it does feature one of the supporting actresses from the Oscar winner in the lead role, Irina Muravyova. Most importantly, it's not zany.

Irina Muravyova plays Nadya, a single working woman who is convinced by her friend Susanna that she ought to start looking for a husband. As I also mentioned before, Susanna (Tatyana Vasilyeva, blonde lady) is my favorite character. Susanna is some kind of sociologist who analyzes Nadya to determine what kind of man she should hook up with. She also takes Nadya to a black marketer who sells fashionable women's clothing and encourages her to recite a mantra about being "the most charming and attractive."

I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of guy Nadya ends up with - the Russians favor quirky types. If you're not a fan of Russian culture you might not be crazy about this film, but the DVD is virtually unavailable anyway, so this whole post can be placed in the "hypothetical" category, right beside "The Torpedo".