Category: Words

When I clicked on the link to badspock.blogspot.com (via Tom), I had the fully formed image of a blog about current events written from the point of view of the parallel universe Spock from the episode Mirror, Mirror — the one who had a goatee and who wasn’t bad himself, so much as he was from a bad universe.

The site is instead a collection of bad drawings of Spock, an infinitely better idea than mine.

Somewhere in a box at my parents house (or possibly in a landfill) there’s a bad drawing of Spock’s father, Sarek, along with the characters known only as Romulan Commander from Balance of Terror and Klingon Commander from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, drawn by me twenty years ago and signed by Mark Leonard, the actor who played all three characters. (Oh, my long suffering parents! They put hundreds of miles on their cars taking me to Star Trek conventions. Benjamin, spare me.)

Benjamin and I spent the afternoon walking around Berkeley while Tricia went to interviews. Our stroll stretched longer than expected as Tricia’s interviews ran late. I was armed with enough diapers and formula to keep Benjamin dry and fed. He had a bottle and flirted with girls at the Peet’s by the BART station, and he napped in the Baby Bjorn while I browsed bookstores. We had a good time. Tricia finally found us after six, finishing our dinners at a cafe on Telegraph Avenue. We were happy to see her, Benjamin to the point of bliss. We shared a brief reunion. Then, business-like, Tricia and I loaded Benjamin into his back-facing car seat, strapped it into the rental car, and headed back across the Bay. Tricia took the wheel: “I’ll drive. I’m already sort of in that mode.”

Benjie reached the end of his patience in the car. He started to fuss. I pulled faces and made funny noises, cheap laughs that got us through the toll booth and onto the Bridge. Tricia sang to him from the drivers seat. But by the time we’d crossed Treasure Island, Benjie had broken down, crying and babbling, “Ba-ba-bababa”, inconsolable. The “baba”-babbling has been a familiar sound in the last three weeks. Today it was more insistent than we’d heard it before; and somewhere over the Bay, we realized that Benjamin’s “Bababba” was starting to sound a lot like “Mamama.” Benjamin taught us his first word today.

Benjamin has started to favor his thumb over his foot. Progress.

I notice the parrots around the neighborhood all the time now. I can recognize their chatter. They fly far enough overhead that they appear in silhouette, indistinguishable as anything remarkable until the sunlight hits them just right and their feathers flash green for a moment. They usually flock in small groups of four-to-eight, always in an even number of birds. The largest flock I was able to count had 22 birds.

It rained a little the other day. It was nice. The television at the laundromat was tuned to the local news which was reporting on the slick roads and the potential for mudslides. An actual quote from the broadcast, “It’s rained as much as half an inch in some places.”

Oedipal onesies:

All people of a certain nationality are endowed with a good sense of direction. This was implied by an off the cuff comment made in my presence last week. The person who said it saw right away that I was struggling to parse his words. So he explained his intent using the bigot’s defense. “It’s a joke!”

To be honest, I didn’t know that awareness of the nationality in question was strong enough here that a stereotype, beyond those associated with foreigners in general, would have surfaced. Bigots were easier to understand when their biases were dumb, rather than stupid.

There’s a chattering of bird warbles high up ahead. We come out from under a canopy of trees and I slow down to look into the tall palms across the street. It’s a flock of parrots. I cross the street for a closer look. Tricia points at an approaching car, “Jeff.” I’m carrying the baby, “I see it.” The flock thins out. A group of four fly west to Sunset. The others stay behind, lower their voices.

Spotted on the Los Angeles Metro blue line:

• A young man inspecting a stack of brand new counterfeit iPods.
• Another man agreeing to buy one for the special price of $40.
• A girl returning home after visiting her boyfriend in prison. “He only has two months left.”
• A man screaming with rage at me, possibly for looking at my girlfriend for too long.
• A tourist fainting from the heat, collapsing into the aisle, and choking on her own vomit.

Ha Ha. Life is rich.

A huge walled-in estate at the top of our hill.

The woman we’re subletting from has several motivational quotes and focus words posted around the apartment. It sounds cheesy, but actually comes off as charming and encouraging. Then there’s the billion dollar bill taped to the ceiling over the bed: the last thing seen before going to sleep, the first after waking up.

We’re going to be in Los Angeles for a few months.