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| Caught Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino the other night on DVD. Gotta hand it to Clint for that one, on a few levels. Has there ever been a tougher-looking senior citizen? The guy's pushing 80, and you still believe he could kick some tail up and down the street, as that tubby gangster found out. But was Dirty Harry satisfied with merely portraying the ominous octogenarian? I don't think so, punk. No, he goes and directs the whole heartbreaking, heartwarming shebang to boot. One bit of the film that really swished in for me was the way Korean war vet Walt Kowalski (Clint) teaches his young Hmong neighbor to maintain a house and make repairs himself. Everyone I know over fifty does exactly the same thing around their own houses. They've got loads of tools, and they handle anything short of serious electrical or plumbing work themselves. My father is a chief among these; he can fix almost anything around the house. On the other hand, most of the younger generation I know largely lack this DIY mentality, opting instead to hire out all but the most trivial tasks. This is not exclusively true, but I'd guess maybe seventy percent of the younger crowd lack most basic fix-it and home improvement skills. In part, this stems from the general rise in economic well-being in this country over the past couple generations. Middle-class Americans over that time have generally enjoyed the means to hire out a lot of jobs, and the better off someone's family is, the less likely they seem to have the inclination to handle projects themselves. What concerns me is the possibility that the lack of practical household skill is symptomatic of (1) the insta-grat fever that permeates our culture, and (2) the rather snobbish view that we professional types are above getting our hands dirty. The former means that many of us refuse to endure the learning curve and plod through the first several jobs while we learn how to use tools properly. The latter characteristic tells us we have more important things to do, and that there are other people to do the dirty work, people that we (perhaps unconsciously) hold in condescension. Unfortunately, I suffered from a form of that in my wayward youth. However, a prolonged unwillingness to tackle a variety of projects eventually leads to dependence on others for even basic needs. I'm not saying I enjoy all the time I've spent maintaining or fixing stuff, and I'd probably fling some projects to hired help if I had some more cash flow. As I've developed some more skills, though, I've found an unexpected pride in a degree of self-reliance. I earn a living out there in abstraction, but finishing a visible project, fashioned from wood or paint or fixtures, provides solid satisfaction. In the film, Walt Kowalski shows his young neighbor how to be a man, in part by instilling the honor of wielding a hammer or pair of vise grips to improve your own home. In so doing, Walt begins to find his own redemption. I've not given up hope for the younger generation, but we may need Clint to make a few more movies before his generation's lessons are lost to us. | | |
| About a week ago, my hometown of Big Bear Lake lost one of its finest alums in Danny Sakai, one of the four Oakland police officers who gave their lives while trying to bring a violent criminal to justice. Danny leaves behind a wife, a four-year-old daughter, and countless friends and others grateful for his life and service. Danny was a year older than me growing up in Big Bear. We played on the same soccer teams in the city league there, and though we weren’t in one another’s group of close friends, his crowd and my crowd all knew each other and hung out here and there. Big Bear’s a pretty small place, with only one middle school and high school, so we went to school together. He and his pals would give us the lowdown on their classes that we’d be taking the following year. A guy who combined intellect with friendliness and good humor, Danny was always getting elected to student government, and he was either salutatorian in his class or a spot right behind that. We were interested in many of the same colleges, and, from one memory that stands out, at least one of the same girls. I asked this girl I had a crush on to go to Homecoming with me our junior year, but she turned me down. Being way too serious about such things, I was rather bummed about this. It turned out that Danny had asked the same girl to go out with him, and, demonstrating consistently poor judgment, she turned him down as well. I found this out when he told me how he’d later teased her, in a friendly sort of way, about rejecting a couple of nice guys like the two of us. We had a good laugh about it, which made me feel better about the whole situation. Clearly, Danny had a lot better perspective, and he was a cool enough guy that he didn’t mind volunteering the fact that he’d been turned down as well. A class act even then. I didn’t keep in touch with Danny after high school, but I knew he’d gone to UC Berkeley and I always figured I’d someday hear tales of his success at whatever he chose to pursue. Hearing that he taught English for a year in Japan did not surprise me. That he chose to join the police force and SWAT, particularly in a city with Oakland’s crime, did surprise me, and it speaks volumes of his depth and courage, for certainly he could have sought out more lucrative or at least safer pursuits of the lawyer/engineer/doctor/teacher variety. His choice allows the rest of us, including many with less courage, to follow those other paths. And now we’re left with the reality that a great man was cut down in his prime through a completely needless, senseless act. There’s no shortage of tragedies in the world, but among the saddest are a little girl whose daddy can’t come home to play with her, and a wife who can’t feel her husband’s embrace again. Most of us can’t even imagine those scenarios, but Danny could, and he made his choice anyway. So hug your friends and family more often, play with your kids longer, and be thankful for guys like Danny who help make that possible. And if I ever see that girl again, I’ll remind her that she turned down one of the best in Danny Sakai.   | | |
| There are moments in life that clobber you over the head with the fact that Time has not granted you an exemption. You realize that kids born in the 90s are now old enough to drive. Or you're watching a popular TV show, and the ads' target demographic is obviously not you. Driving innocently in your car, you turn on the "classic" rock station only to discover they're playing music you listened to when it first came out your freshman year.* Those moments, though, passed me by with little concern. However, today slapped me around a little bit because I bought life insurance. Ouch. Life insurance sort of wraps up a lot of other guess-what-you're-not-a-kid-anymore moments. A) Somebody is probably depending on you for cashflow of some sort, implying marriage and probably a child. B) You and that somebody collectively have financial obligations you can't easily duck out of, implying a mortgage. C) You have developed enough of a sense of responsibility that you are actually planning for your future and attendant contingencies. D) You no longer believe you're invincible, clearly abandoning one of the chief advantages/pitfalls of youth. Of course, this list on its own implies at least some sort of accomplishment, I guess, if only in a quantity-not-quality sort of way. But I'm way too pessimistic to hold that view. * I propose that no music released after 1978 ago be allowed on classic rock stations. Ever. That gives me plenty of cushion. In future years, they'll have to think of a new genre title for music from the 1980s on. I mean, seriously, should U2 ever be on classic radio? No way. They're still releasing new albums. Classic rock means you've long ago ceased any worthwhile creative output and are now trading solely on playing your best five songs or so a bazillion times for the oldsters who got high as teenagers at your first tour. Like say, the Rolling Stones. They gotta be so sick of playing Satisfaction for what now, 40 years? Unbelievable. | | |
| Poor slobs. Sitting there in their cars, creating traffic, polluting, and promoting obesity while they subsidize mullahs and oppressive regimes. These dark thoughts hit most frequently when I'm cycling across the bridge, 120 pounds per square inch of road bike tires chattering across cracked asphalt, suspended by green steel beams over the river. It's then that I can actually see them on the freeway a few hundred yards away. I'm saving the planet, gas money, and my arse, not to mention promoting international civil rights, all at the same time. Or so I congratulate myself those one or two days a week, some weeks, when I bike to work instead of drive. Yes, on those days I find myself vulnerable to smug little weasels of self-righteousness. It's odious, really. I don't know anyone else's situation; for all I know, that's the one day a week those people drive. So I spoil the otherwise commendable bike commute with my own exaggerated sense of accomplishment. Not that I'm a super-polluter the rest of the time. I bought a house seven miles from work so I wouldn't have to commute. OK, so that was because I just hate the time eaten up by commuting rather than any desire to avoid spending my hard-earned bread on exports from whackjobs like Hugo Chavez or Ahmadinejad who wouldn't be within a sniff of world prominence except that they're sitting on gigabushels per day of the black blood that fuels our energy system. Apart from that, all those sheiks would basically be living in Las Vegas sans casinos. Not too cool. But still. If anyone driving a 35-MPG rolling Spam tin is living 20 miles from work, they're sucking more petrol than I am on a round trip. It ain't just the vehicle, boys; it's also the location (darn weasels again). The bike commute is a great change from the truck, though. I cover the 6.5 miles usually in about 28 minutes, slowed by several stoplights along the way. My drive to the parking structure takes about 15 minutes, so I'm adding about 30 minutes of travel time in a day. Not enough to be a great inconvenience, and I'm combining commute with cardio. Part of my route is along a bike path tracing an old riverbed, grown thick with wildland grass, a little ecosystem within a subdivision. The bike path also passes by a glorious old Craftsman bungalow seated next to a small windmill, rumored to be the area's original farmhouse, which undoubtedly used to sit a few miles from its neighbor until the city came along and planted a subdivision all around it. Most days, I see at least one yellow-billed magpie in there, or elsewhere along the river, always dressed to the nines in coat and tails and acting like he owns the place, the dapper little fellow. 
Now if I could just avoid the weasels. | | |
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We just got back from Costa Rica, where we enjoyed the splendor of rain forests and wildlife (note the "blue-jeans frog" above). I’m generally a big fan of road trips, and not such a fan of having to be somewhere at a specific time--say, a bus stop--so we decided to rent a car to get around. We ended up with a four-wheel drive Daihatsu Terios, which is basically looks like a cross between your average American SUV and the Hot Wheels cars I played with as a kid. We forked over the extra colones for the 4WD on the advice of the guide book, whose descriptions of the driving experience left us somewhat wary. I am happy to report that we returned unscathed in body and Daihatsu, though not for lack of trying. Costa Rica is a beautiful country, with some 15 percent of the country set aside for forested national parks and preserves. However, the other 85 percent is set aside for potholes. As a service to my fellow travelers, if you’re planning on driving in Costa Rica, keep the following pointers in mind.
Right of way. When driving in cities, you just have to understand the locals’ driving philosophy. My wife labeled this the “Bust It” theory of driving. Namely, if there’s enough space in front of you, just bust it on ahead, regardless of details like lanes of traffic or pedestrians. If there isn’t enough space ahead for your vehicle, bust it anyway. Assume that others cars and people will know where you’re going and get out of the way.
Parking. A corollary to the Bust It concept is the Park It theory. If you need to stop your car, say, to chat with a friend on the street, just go ahead and stop right there in the road. Assume other people will go around you. This theory is actually a model of government efficiency—the street system doubles as a parking lot, which cuts down on construction costs. If you do pluck up the courtesy to pull over, just be aware of the knee-deep gutters on the sides of the town streets. Dropping a wheel into one of those is a guaranteed bad day. Trust me, we saw an Accord go in up to the axle.
Passing. There’s no such thing as passing over the double yellow in Costa Rica, mainly because there isn’t usually any yellow. Pass as many cars as you like at a time, whenever the heck you feel like it. Since lane lines exist only in theory, a double-wide highway can easily handle three cars across for a few seconds if you need to pass against oncoming traffic.
It’s also essential to understand the various signs you’ll see along the highway. A few examples, translated for those of you who don’t speak Spanish:
Puente angosto. Literal translation: Narrow bridge. Practical translation: You’ll be lucky to walk across this thing single-file. Unless your car converts to a motorcycle, move all luggage and passengers over to the driver’s side of the vehicle all at once. The sudden shift of weight should tip the vehicle sideways up on two wheels. Maintain balance at about 45 degrees and proceed safely over the bridge.
Carretera en estado mal. Literal translation: Road in bad state. Practical translation: If you thought the road sucked before, get a load of this. I had to laugh at the exquisite understatement of these signs, which never appeared until after a few good miles of driving over what looked like a scale model of the Grand Canyon. A gas station attendant actually referred to one 23-mile stretch of road as a “river without the water.” They should just throw down one of these estado mal signs at customs and be done with it. But on those rare occasions when they actually posted one, they really meant it. The alleged road from those points on begged that great existential question of highway maintenance: At what point does a road with potholes become merely a pothole with roadspots?
Reductor de velocidad. Literal translation: Speed reducer. Practical translation: Short wall across road. I’ve never seen a speed bump before that required four-wheel drive. They pretty much dispensed with the whole “bump” idea and just threw a block of concrete across the road. Again, government efficiency. No need to waste time smoothing it out a little just so cars could drive over without ripping off the muffler.
To sum it all up, don’t run into stuff, and pray that stuff doesn’t run into you. Keep that in mind, rent a 4WD drive, and you’ll do all right. | | |
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