Misogi

Well, I'm gearing up for my move to Santa Monica on Friday. I'm pretty excited! Besides the apartment itself and the location, it will just be nice to not feel like a transient for a little while.

Last Saturday was a full weekend in itself. I woke up before the sun to go meet a couple guys for my first attempt at surfing. Since I'm not much of a morning person, that was an accomplishment in itself. I have to say it was well worth it, though. With the sun just barely coming up, I was wearing black neoprene, lying on top of a fiberglass plank, and paddling out into the Pacific Ocean.

The first few times people told me that surfing was incredibly hard, I dismissed it. It looks so easy on TV, right? I thought maybe those people just weren't very coordinated or athletic. After a few more people (whose athleticism and coordination I did not question) told me the same story, I started to believe it. There was still a part of me that didn't quite understand what exactly was so hard about it, though. I'm in pretty good shape, and I skateboarded for about 4 years in my early teens. Isn't that preparation enough? The only thing I was really afraid of was the cold water (which, as it turns out, wasn't cold at all with the wetsuit).

A website I just read had a great analogy. Imagine skateboarding or snowboarding during an earthquake. It's not enough to just be able to balance on a moving board...the surface beneath you is actually moving, too! I also discovered that I may be in good shape, but that doesn't help if your movements are inefficient. In the first 20 or 30 minutes, I was utterly exhausted from paddling and fighting the waves. Meanwhile, guys with gray beards were whizzing by me like dolphins. I tend to think in analogies and relationships between different activities, and I see a lot of aikido in this. In particular, Saotome Sensei mentions in one of his books the process of learning to use a sword correctly. At first, you push the sword around with your muscles and get tired quickly. Over time and with many, many repititions, you learn to use the weight of the sword in the most efficient manner possible. In Japanese, the term is "misogi," which I've mostly seen translated as "ritual purification." By performing the ritual over and over, the sword itself teaches your body by purifying your movements.

I expended so much effort just trying to stay balanced on the surfboard while paddling and sitting that I exhausted myself, not to mention my horrible paddle-stroke. Over the course of a couple hours, I only really attempted to catch 4 waves. The process went something like this:

Wave #1: Complete disaster. I'm not really sure what happened, but I ended up swallowing a lot of salt water and the fin broke off of the board. I was borrowing this board from someone I just met that morning, so I felt awful. The screw holding the fin on may just have been loose, but I still feel like it was probably somehow my fault. I couldn't really surf with that board anymore, so I just paddled around for a while until my two friends caught a few waves and offered to switch boards with me. The cool part was that I got to sit and rest on the board for a while and watch dolphins swim around me.

Wave #2: My timing was way off, but I did manage to get a knee up on the board. Unfortunately, I wasn't paddling fast enough and the wave passed me by.

Wave #3: Pretty much the same as last time, but I managed to get both feet on the board (while still clinging to it with my hands). I'm not sure if I could have stood up or not, but by the time I even thought about it the wave was already gone because I again wasn't moving fast enough.

Wave #4: Not only was I so exhausted that I couldn't paddle fast enough, but when I went to lift myself into a standing position my arms just wouldn't do it.

So, misogi, misogi, misogi. I'll get it eventually.

After the surfing, I tried to nap but couldn't. Probably thinking too much about surfing. I took Venus for a walk and then went shopping for snowboarding pants (going in a couple weeks).

I met up with some friends for dinner and then we went to a concert sponsored by the local public radio station KCRW. Check out the lineup: Goldspot, Feist, Sia (of Zero 7), Gomez, Britt Daniel (of Spoon), Ben Harper (with a guest appearance by Ziggy Marley), Franz Ferdinand, and Death Cab for Cutie. I may have even forgotten someone because it was a HUGE show. Everyone pretty much rocked. Any 2 or 3 of them would have made for an amazing show. Unfortunately, I was so sleep deprived and exhausted from surfing that morning that I couldn't really appreciate the last couple of bands. I was nodding off.

On Sunday, I decided that the Christians are on to something with the whole "rest on Sunday" thing.

The Gory Details

At first, I thought it might be best to leave some things to the imagination in my last post, but this is some good shit.

The scene is Masters on Cheshire Bridge Road, the day after St. Patrick's Day. It doesn't really matter how we got there, but we were there. Curious, let's say. I head directly to the restroom and don't immediately see what's going on in the place.

As I'm leaving the restroom and looking for my friends (no names, but there's a picture below), I don't immediately see them. I only see the upstanding clientele one would normally associate with a low-end strip club. So, I walk around the entire place before I see my friends. As I'm passing the main stage to get to where they are, I turn my head to the right. About ten feet away, a midget stipper is completely nude and doing a handstand. How freakish. I feel like I'm at a circus where Rob Zombie is the ringleader. Of course, I'm so stricken by wonderment that I can't look away as I walk by. My curiosity was then rewarded/punished when, while still doing a handstand, the midget stripper does the splits. Keep in mind she's COMPLETELY naked. And yes, they are small.

As a follow-up to this disturbing exercise in short-limbed balance, "Pixie" gets on all fours and starts shaking her tiny little ass. Wow. Didn't expect that. I'm still just curious how many people in that room were turned on by that and how many shared my WTF? reaction. Because, seriously, WTF?

Fate and midget strippers

A strange twist of fate brought me back to Atlanta on a business trip only six weeks after starting my new job. I’m utterly objective and scientific-minded most of the time, but sometimes things are just too uncanny for me to not dwell on them a bit. I mean, how many major cities are there in the US that could have potentially hosted the course I attended?

Some insights have been building over the course of my last few visits back to Atlanta:

1. I have realized who the people are that I did not spend nearly enough time with when I lived in Atlanta. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re one of them. Along the lines of “hindsight is 20:20,” I would say that a little bit of distance often provides the perspective you need to really see things clearly. It’s just a shame you can’t see things that way when they’re right in front of your face.

2. Beer and sleep deprivation have a way of allowing the subconscious to emerge.

3. Planning is good, but flexibility is the ultimate virtue. Nothing will ever work out exactly the way you want it to, but if you’re fluid and open to the possibilities in front of you, the potential for happiness and growth are ever-present. Or, as Mick Jagger likes to say, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”

4. Midget strippers are more bizarre than they are erotic (and they make Wendy look really tall).

5. The original “Rocky” was a great movie in its day, but it’s pretty lame by today’s standards because screenwriters had not yet mastered the fine art of milking emotions by alternating poignancy with humor repeatedly for the last half-hour of a movie. I mean, the ending felt anti-climactic without the drawn-out dance of “I can’t help but empathize with the protagonist in his/her moment of triumph”/ “That was funnier than it would have been otherwise because I was just crying”/ “I am overcome with emotion because my own life lacks the emotional depth of these characters”/ “That makes me laugh and cry at the same time because it was funny in a touching way,” etc. “ADRIAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” while heart wrenching, doesn’t quite capture the drama of the ending in, say, Shrek 2. (For the record, I laughed my ass off at “I’m a real boooooooooooooooy!”)

OK, so the last realization didn’t come in Atlanta. For presentation’s sake, I threw in an earlier realization to create the Hollywood ending that blends insight and humor. Anyone who caught that in real-time gets a bonus point. (Anyone from Atlanta who is reading this and also caught that in real-time is now up by 2 and can just consider themselves the winner—-barring an intentional foul, two missed free throws, and a buzzer-beating three-pointer.) For those of you who prefer raw reality without the salesmanship, you can just end at “Midget strippers are more bizarre than they are erotic.”

Katrina success story

Well, for all of the horror stories and mudslinging surrounding hurricane Katrina, my brother's story seems to have gone in the opposite direction.

Don't get me wrong, he had a few very rough months at the start of it. Having lived through numerous hurricanes typically hyped as much more than they turned out to be, he initially decided to stay in New Orleans and stick it out. The first turn of fortune in his story came right before the hurricane hit. The week before, he had randomly met up with a girl we went to high school with. She, of all people, managed to convince him to leave. So, he grabbed his dog and a suitcase and drove with her to Nashville, where my parents live.

Suddenly, he lost his home and his source of livelihood. His friends were scattered all over the entire country. After a few weeks of waiting around and wondering what was going to happen, he made up his mind to stay in Nashville, but he still had to go back to New Orleans at some point and find out if anything was left of his possessions. He heard horror stories from his friends who had returned already. He had a quick bit of relief when he returned to find out that his apartment hadn't flooded and no one had stolen anything. A looter had broken the window of his car, but that was it. Things were looking up a bit...until his dog died.

After all of the loss he had recently endured, his dog, Lula, died rather suddenly and mysteriously. Besides being incredibly cute, Lula was the sweetest dog I've ever met. She had been abused and was extremely skittish but would warm up to you and lean against you while you petted her. She got extremely sick one weekend, was vomiting and urinating uncontrollably, and couldn't eat anything. He called the vet before he went to bed, but the vet said to take her in the next day if she was still sick. In the middle of the night, she died. I will never forget the phone call in which he described in detail taking her limp body out of the house. I've handled so many dead rats, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I could hardly imagine how it must have felt for that to be Lula.

He didn't know it at the time, but the worst of it was over. After that, he spent a few months living at my parents' house and starting over in Nashville. Now, I'm sure most of you can imagine how living with your parents for several months could be. Not good. While in the middle of trying to meet people and make contacts to further his musical career, he had to contend with the folks at home. Finally, things blew up and he moved out. Let the healing begin.

Randomly, a friend of his from high school had been living in Nashville for a while and is involved in the music scene there. He gradually started meeting people there and playing a few gigs. At one of those gigs, a guy named Bobby Bare, Jr. happened to catch my brother play. His father, a well-known country singer from an earlier generation (think Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Sr.), needed a bass player for a gig at South by Southwest, the giant music conference in Austin, TX. Not only that, but the guitar player for the band is Carl from My Morning Jacket--one of my favorite bands. The piano player also plays with a couple of the guys from Wilco on occasion. Needless to say, these are some good connections.

As a struggling musician, my brother has become increasingly obsessed with owning some equity in the form of a house. Not too long ago, he found out that he had been approved for a grant intended for musicians displaced by Katrina. So, now he had the down-payment for a house. So, hurricane Katrina forced my brother out of a situation in which he was struggling to get by, not too happy with his life, and not too encouraged about his future prospects and led him into a situation that seems to be getting better all the time.

He called me from the tour bus last night on his way to Austin. Rehearsal went well. He closed on a house in Nashville the other day. It's been a while since I've heard him so relaxed and content.

Did you hear the one about...

OK, no need to tell me how horrible I am. I already know. It's absolutely wretched of me, but part of me had to chuckle when I read this:

Beauty Queen Death

On a lighter note, Dayna has a great story to share. It also fits with the title of this blog, so go read this next and don't feel so bad about laughing at the last one:

The Greenwood Pooper

Hail, Hail, Bungalow

Well, for those of you who have been jealous of the California weather, I thought I'd let you know that it hailed here two days in a row. I'm not talking about wimpy, hit-the-ground-and-melt hail, either. It was legitimate, I'm-stuck-in-my-car-and-I-hope-the-damn-windshield-doesn't-shatter hail.

Whilst braving the hail, I also nailed down an apartment on Saturday. I'd post a pic, but they've already removed the online ads. A couple other apartments I wanted got snatched up before I could open my mouth to say "Can I have an application?" It all worked out for the best, though, because I'm much happier with the place I actually got. It's also, oddly enough, a bit cheaper than the other places. My new place is in Santa Monica and is a remodeled old bungalow. So, it's basically a free-standing, tiny one-bedroom house with some character. Venus is going to love it.

Speaking of Venus, I'll be heading to Atlanta this weekend and will be leaving her in doggie day care for the first time ever. Seeing as how she loves absolutely everyone and everything, I'm sure she'll be fine. That doesn't stop me from feeling a bit weird about leaving my dog for five days with complete strangers. Puppies and parents both need a vacation sometimes, though, I suppose. (Venus pic and the earlier Malibu pic courtesy of Lisa Stanek, photographer extraordinair)

For those of you in the ATL, see you this weekend!

The Dude Abides

Went to Lebowskifest this past weekend. Had a beer with The Dude. Bowled (admire my left-handed form).

This weekend pretty much defined why I was happy to move to LA. Friday night, we had a mini High School reunion with three of us from MS. A friend of mine named Michael Starita who I hadn't seen in 10 years came down from San Francisco because his friend's band was playing. This guy has been a succesful DJ in SF for the last 10 years and is still just as crazy as he was in high school. It was a great time. First, I went to dinner at Mel's Diner in Hollywood (in the movie American Graffiti) with another girl named Melissa who went to our high school. On the way to the club, they were setting up for the Oscars on Hollywood Blvd., so all of the little convenience stores had fake Oscar statues that said things like "Best Dad" and "Best Boss." Of course, I got one for Starita that said "Best Niece." We met him at The Lava Lounge, a dim, chill little place decorated with lava rock walls and bamboo.

I got up early Saturday and went apartment hunting in Santa Monica with a hangover. The place I really wanted went to someone else, but I may have found another place. It's crazy how fast rentals go out here. Saturday night was Lebowskifest. Sunday I slept in, took the dog for a walk, then went to Ventura. We stopped at this tiny little place called, appropriately, "Tacos and Beer." Amazing fish tacos. I then went to a couple of surf shops and purchased a wetsuit (sorry, no pictures). Surfboards are a little expensive, so I'll have to wait on that, though.

Anyway, it was a fantastic weekend. Hope everyone else's was the same.

Here I am

Despite my better judgment, I've finally started a blog.

I've relocated to California (at least two time zones away from everyone I knew before I came here) and ventured out of academia into industry. So far, I absolutely love it and couldn't be happier with my decision or my situation. The LA area is definitely more my speed than anywhere in North Cackalacka. The weather is amazing. The natural scenery here is gorgeous. There's anything and everything you could ever want to do here. When I email my senators and representatives, I don't get an email back that basically says, "Thanks for the email, but this automated response will thoroughly disregard the importance of any issues you may have addressed by appealing instead to the ideals of the gun-toting, bible-thumping cretins who have allowed this state to remain ass-backwards for so long." I still get automated responses, but at least I feel like I'm preaching to the choir rather than shouting in a barrel by myself.

I'm still trying to remember to call highways "freeways" and put "the" in front of any numbered freeway (the 101, the 405, the 10, etc.). I've also learned that Californians have absolutely no idea how to drive in the rain and are the biggest weather wusses imaginable (50 degree is "cold"). Apart from the occasional person who refuses to acknowledge your existence despite a warm smile and a "hello," people seem generally friendly here. It's hard to imagine being an asshole when it's 70 degrees and sunny almost every day.

I may revisit some of my earlier experiences here later if I'm bored, but, for now, I'm still settling in at work and hunting for apartments in Santa Monica. I've decided that the ~45 minute commute will be worth it. I love Santa Monica--beaches, restaurants, bars, etc. The area where I am now is really beautiful, but much more sleepy and family-oriented. April 1 should be the move date.

After about a week and a half of boring training at work, I was really beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Fortunately, It's been much better since then. I was SOOO excited to read some actual science again instead of just business-related protocols (probably a future blog entry on that). However, I haven't had much to do for the last couple of weeks. I have a meeting on Monday that should give me some actual work to get started on, though. In the meantime, blogging kills the time. It's amazing what free time at work can get you into.

My last thought for the day is that I just saw the "Inside the Actors Studio" with Dave Chappelle last night. I love that guy.