Happy Memorial Day!
No me today, just our president's Memorial Day speech.
So I'm not here, I'm blogging all this week at Annabelle's Circle!
~
Thursday, May 22, 2008
This is the day the Lord hath made.
This is also the day that hath made a mess of my schedule! So no big blog today. Sorry. We're still in mourning over the demise of the Crown City Brewery, anyway. And, wow, look at those winds outside! The Forces of Darkness, ever hard at work, always get up before the sun, don't you know.
~
This is also the day that hath made a mess of my schedule! So no big blog today. Sorry. We're still in mourning over the demise of the Crown City Brewery, anyway. And, wow, look at those winds outside! The Forces of Darkness, ever hard at work, always get up before the sun, don't you know.
~
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
"Blessing of your heart, ye brew good ale!"
Two Gentlemen of Verona Act III, Scene 1
Even when I didn't have a family, a business, a niche carved out of the suburbs, I had a routine. I'm not sure I would have recognized it as such, however. I always considered myself something of a free spirit, ready to leap up out of the seat in the coffee shop and jump into life, but I pretty regularly found myself in the coffee shop. After work I would pretty regularly find myself in the brewery, too, even though sitting there with a draft night after night I would wait for the opportunity to leave town. Leave it all. Something you only do once, and takes years to rouse the courage.
Specifically, the Crown City Brewery in Pasadena. When I was nineteen or so a friend of mine (older, of age) came around one night raving about a bar that served beer from a tap that was connected directly to the conditioning/storage tanks -they brewed it right there! I didn't start getting into beer until years later, but I was fascinated by the concept. It was the first I'd heard of it. Ten years later there would be a microbrewery at cat-swinging distance from every street corner in Southern California.
As the serendipity of life played out, I ended up living a block from the Old Town, brick-studded Crown City Brewery for a few years. I would go because the beer was good, and because they all recognized me when I came in. None of them knew my name, as the song goes, which was fine with me. If the bartender knows your name you most likely have a drinking problem (and if everyone else in the bar knows your name you excel at it.) At the coffee shop I would write, but at the brewery I would talk. And drink. It was a fun place. Friends would exchange stories until closing, all the while sampling exotic brews. You were rewarded for drinking an extensive selection of beer at the place -they would ring the bell, announce your name, and put it on a plaque. Waiters and waitresses there met and were married. When flat screen TVs were invented, they hung ten of them around the place. "Beers from around the world!" boasted the menu, which listed a finely greased pub grub that no bachelor could ever be ungrateful for.
I was there on September 14th, 2001. It was the Friday after 9/11 and the impact of those events were sinking in around the country. On my way down to the brewery I saw people holding candles and waving flags on every street corner. The TVs in the place were tuned to the news and it was a loud, bustling, packed house, like any ordinary Friday night. I remember a guy walking in with a set of bagpipes. I saw him lean over to the bartender, who nodded and rang the bell. The place went quiet and listened intently as the guy huffed and squeezed out The Star Spangled Banner. No one spoke. Some people put their right hands over their hearts. Some people cried. It was that kind of place.
I moved away after that and kept some distance. Though I love good beer to this day, (you can take the man out of the microbrewery, but not the microbrews out of the man) I think everyone in the place was becoming much too familiar and the routine was becoming insistently pathetic, I mean, can't we all just move on? Do we have to? A year later I told my buddies to meet me at the place and I announced my engagement to Mrs. Ditchman. She showed up. I showed everyone the ring I bought her, worth nearly as much as the amount of cash I dropped on hearty brews there over the years. (A lot!) I told the guys they would be in the wedding, and then I never went back.
Okay, I went back. Last summer I was in Pasadena and convinced some friends to go there for dinner for old time's sake. It was like returning to your old high school: everything seemed smaller, and without the energy of your youth. Filled with strangers who treated me as one, the place had fallen on hard times. The brewing vats and fermenting tanks were gone, as they had succumbed to disrepair and were consigned to kingdom come in some far off Raiders of the Lost Ark-type warehouse, I imagined. They were moved to make more room for patrons, but the patrons didn't come, I guess, and the placed now looked rather threadbare. The menus were the same old menus that had been there when I had last seen the place, but they were now a cracked laminate on old ketchup stains and with the grimy patina from the fingers of a thousand beer swillers. The brass had gone unpolished. The smell of recently cooked hops had been replaced with the ugly stench of spilled lager on concrete, dried and perpetually stood on. The food had taken on a similar miasma, and it may have just been me who changed, with my newly refined taste for a home-cooked meal from my wife. It was a sad scene. Mrs. Ditchman said the place was always like that, and she may be right, I did change, but if so, why then has it come to this?
I believe that when they gave up brewing beer at the place they got out the nails to hammer the coffin shut. For all the BJs and Karl Strausses and Yardhouses and Gordon Bierschs in the world, it's those down-home, unfranchised breweries that make the good beer and have a nifty label that are charmed for a lifetime. An obituary for an alehouse begins with "the brewing equipment broke down, and because it was too expensive to replace..."
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well... a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
Hamlet Act V, Scene 1
~
Two Gentlemen of Verona Act III, Scene 1
Even when I didn't have a family, a business, a niche carved out of the suburbs, I had a routine. I'm not sure I would have recognized it as such, however. I always considered myself something of a free spirit, ready to leap up out of the seat in the coffee shop and jump into life, but I pretty regularly found myself in the coffee shop. After work I would pretty regularly find myself in the brewery, too, even though sitting there with a draft night after night I would wait for the opportunity to leave town. Leave it all. Something you only do once, and takes years to rouse the courage.
Specifically, the Crown City Brewery in Pasadena. When I was nineteen or so a friend of mine (older, of age) came around one night raving about a bar that served beer from a tap that was connected directly to the conditioning/storage tanks -they brewed it right there! I didn't start getting into beer until years later, but I was fascinated by the concept. It was the first I'd heard of it. Ten years later there would be a microbrewery at cat-swinging distance from every street corner in Southern California.
As the serendipity of life played out, I ended up living a block from the Old Town, brick-studded Crown City Brewery for a few years. I would go because the beer was good, and because they all recognized me when I came in. None of them knew my name, as the song goes, which was fine with me. If the bartender knows your name you most likely have a drinking problem (and if everyone else in the bar knows your name you excel at it.) At the coffee shop I would write, but at the brewery I would talk. And drink. It was a fun place. Friends would exchange stories until closing, all the while sampling exotic brews. You were rewarded for drinking an extensive selection of beer at the place -they would ring the bell, announce your name, and put it on a plaque. Waiters and waitresses there met and were married. When flat screen TVs were invented, they hung ten of them around the place. "Beers from around the world!" boasted the menu, which listed a finely greased pub grub that no bachelor could ever be ungrateful for.
I was there on September 14th, 2001. It was the Friday after 9/11 and the impact of those events were sinking in around the country. On my way down to the brewery I saw people holding candles and waving flags on every street corner. The TVs in the place were tuned to the news and it was a loud, bustling, packed house, like any ordinary Friday night. I remember a guy walking in with a set of bagpipes. I saw him lean over to the bartender, who nodded and rang the bell. The place went quiet and listened intently as the guy huffed and squeezed out The Star Spangled Banner. No one spoke. Some people put their right hands over their hearts. Some people cried. It was that kind of place.
I moved away after that and kept some distance. Though I love good beer to this day, (you can take the man out of the microbrewery, but not the microbrews out of the man) I think everyone in the place was becoming much too familiar and the routine was becoming insistently pathetic, I mean, can't we all just move on? Do we have to? A year later I told my buddies to meet me at the place and I announced my engagement to Mrs. Ditchman. She showed up. I showed everyone the ring I bought her, worth nearly as much as the amount of cash I dropped on hearty brews there over the years. (A lot!) I told the guys they would be in the wedding, and then I never went back.
Okay, I went back. Last summer I was in Pasadena and convinced some friends to go there for dinner for old time's sake. It was like returning to your old high school: everything seemed smaller, and without the energy of your youth. Filled with strangers who treated me as one, the place had fallen on hard times. The brewing vats and fermenting tanks were gone, as they had succumbed to disrepair and were consigned to kingdom come in some far off Raiders of the Lost Ark-type warehouse, I imagined. They were moved to make more room for patrons, but the patrons didn't come, I guess, and the placed now looked rather threadbare. The menus were the same old menus that had been there when I had last seen the place, but they were now a cracked laminate on old ketchup stains and with the grimy patina from the fingers of a thousand beer swillers. The brass had gone unpolished. The smell of recently cooked hops had been replaced with the ugly stench of spilled lager on concrete, dried and perpetually stood on. The food had taken on a similar miasma, and it may have just been me who changed, with my newly refined taste for a home-cooked meal from my wife. It was a sad scene. Mrs. Ditchman said the place was always like that, and she may be right, I did change, but if so, why then has it come to this?
I believe that when they gave up brewing beer at the place they got out the nails to hammer the coffin shut. For all the BJs and Karl Strausses and Yardhouses and Gordon Bierschs in the world, it's those down-home, unfranchised breweries that make the good beer and have a nifty label that are charmed for a lifetime. An obituary for an alehouse begins with "the brewing equipment broke down, and because it was too expensive to replace..."
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well... a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
Hamlet Act V, Scene 1
~
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Do we all have distant, nagging migraine symptoms, or is it just me? Do I have a headache from all of the stuff piled around the house, or is all this stuff piled about because I couldn't take the headache from where it was stowed before? Try not to trip. Stuff piled on other stuff! You could hit your head, and start all over.
The Little Ditchman has a new phrase. She will walk into the room and approach you, look you in the eye and say, "Once upon a time..." whereupon you hang there -waiting. She doesn't know where to go from there. Sometimes, with prodding, we get a "There was a booootiful princess..." but it still hangs there. You can't blame her. For eons those have been challenging words to follow, especially if you're trying to keep someone's attention. Anyway, God bless her for giving it a shot. I think she's really just trying to gently tell me to get off the computer and read her a story, dammit! You can see the demands on her face: I'm trying to be nice about it here! Lately, if you mention the word "work" her lip starts to quiver and she reminds you of the other word she recently learned: "sad".
Which is awful. Then I rush off to work and try not to think about it, remind myself that we had a quality few days together, just me and her, last weekend. It's when mommy has to work that it gets really tough. You think maybe that if you work harder it will help, but that's not really a solution. Children don't want you to work harder. They don't want anything you're working for. They want you.
"Once upon a time" it made perfect sense to have one working parent and one nurturing one. How'd it all end up this way? Because of the stuff, that's why. But we don't need all the stuff. What we need is each other.
~
The Little Ditchman has a new phrase. She will walk into the room and approach you, look you in the eye and say, "Once upon a time..." whereupon you hang there -waiting. She doesn't know where to go from there. Sometimes, with prodding, we get a "There was a booootiful princess..." but it still hangs there. You can't blame her. For eons those have been challenging words to follow, especially if you're trying to keep someone's attention. Anyway, God bless her for giving it a shot. I think she's really just trying to gently tell me to get off the computer and read her a story, dammit! You can see the demands on her face: I'm trying to be nice about it here! Lately, if you mention the word "work" her lip starts to quiver and she reminds you of the other word she recently learned: "sad".
Which is awful. Then I rush off to work and try not to think about it, remind myself that we had a quality few days together, just me and her, last weekend. It's when mommy has to work that it gets really tough. You think maybe that if you work harder it will help, but that's not really a solution. Children don't want you to work harder. They don't want anything you're working for. They want you.
"Once upon a time" it made perfect sense to have one working parent and one nurturing one. How'd it all end up this way? Because of the stuff, that's why. But we don't need all the stuff. What we need is each other.
~
Monday, May 19, 2008
Ahhh, the unexpected houseguest! I had just sat down at the computer yesterday afternoon when I caught the Email: "I'm in your neighborhood! I don't have your phone number! I may just stop by!" And then, moments later, a reunion of sorts. She left after a few minutes, wanted to go to the Catholic church down the street, and then returned a couple hours after that, grocery bags in hand, cooked us dinner and ended up staying the night. Some houseguest!
Personally, I like an unexpected houseguest. If your life is in balance, you can handle dropping everything for a night to enjoy some surprise company. I never really thought my life was in balance, actually, so I must be doing better than I thought.
She's been living in Japan. Her husband flies F16s and is coming up on his second deployment. She's an artist, and will be doing the chalk drawings at the I Madonnari Street Painting Festival at the Santa Barbara Mission this weekend. We fired up the barbeque, uncorked some wine, threw some shrimp on some skewers and let all those hanging obligations just fall off for the night. What a pleasure, on a warm summery night, to hear stories from a long lost friend. And of those, stories of art and faith, war and peace.
This morning the beck and call of ignored responsibilities has reached into the higher decibels. I must be on my way.
~
Personally, I like an unexpected houseguest. If your life is in balance, you can handle dropping everything for a night to enjoy some surprise company. I never really thought my life was in balance, actually, so I must be doing better than I thought.
She's been living in Japan. Her husband flies F16s and is coming up on his second deployment. She's an artist, and will be doing the chalk drawings at the I Madonnari Street Painting Festival at the Santa Barbara Mission this weekend. We fired up the barbeque, uncorked some wine, threw some shrimp on some skewers and let all those hanging obligations just fall off for the night. What a pleasure, on a warm summery night, to hear stories from a long lost friend. And of those, stories of art and faith, war and peace.
This morning the beck and call of ignored responsibilities has reached into the higher decibels. I must be on my way.
~
Friday, May 16, 2008
So much for this week. It wasn't what I had originally planned! No, really! Sunday night I caught myself flipping through the channels with nothing to watch and I stopped on Back the the Future and got sucked right in to the space-time continuum. What can I say? I like movies about the space-time continuum! It's a near-perfect film. I resolved to blog some about it the next day. I didn't.
I could give a lecture on BTTF! I won't. (It's Friday.) But I am a huge fan. The screenplay is an exemplary one. Nothing is wasted in it and nothing is superfluous. If you took out a single line of dialogue, the film's tight, well-honed structure would just fall apart. It is a perfectly paced, perfectly balanced family film -which are few and far between nowadays. Disney originally turned down the script, incidentally, because they thought the mother-son relationship was too risque, which is funny when you consider what they put out now. Robert Zemeckis directed it and co-wrote it, going on to become one of the most successful directors in Hollywood. (Forrest Gump was his biggie.) The score by Alan Silvestri is truly great (largest orchestra ever assembled on the Universal lot) and the photography is colorful, nostalgic, and energetic without over-reaching (Dean Cundey, the Director of Photography, was my host for Career Day in high school. I got to hang with him for a day on the set of that Patrick Sawyze classic, Roadhouse.) And, of course, Michael J. Fox nails the part.
Did you know that the movie was half-finished with Eric Stoltz in the lead, but Spielberg (the executive producer) fired him because he was playing Marty McFly too seriously? It's true. Everyone had to start over, but they used some of the footage with the other actors, who were actually acting with Stoltz in the scenes, in the final cut. But I know what you're really wondering: why was Claudia Wells, who played Marty's girlfriend in the first one, replaced with Elizabeth Shue in the sequels?
The story is her mother got sick with cancer and she wanted to be at her side, so she ditched the opportunity. BTTF was a huge hit and that was quite a sacrifice, and one of those untold good-guy stories from Tinseltown. Elizabeth Shue went on to superstardom after the two sequels. Claudia Wells left acting and opened her own men's apparel store in Studio City. So it goes.
I'd like to say I made similar sacrifices, leaving the glory of a Hollywood career by the wayside, but, ahh, no. The closest I ever came to the greatness of Back to the Future is this:
And that's the real time machine, there, not the mock-up from the Universal Studios Amusement Park. You can see the dust on the hood from when they rolled it out of the studio backlot retired prop warehouse. Also, that's my real hair. I was about 21.
A friend of mine was working on a commercial for the "Back to the Future Ride" that was at Universal Studios for years (it closed last summer.) They had the original cars for the shoot, and he invited me down to the set -which was awesome! There were three DeLoreans: one for long shots that they could drive at high speeds, one that didn't move but had all the blinking lights and interior details for close-ups, and one that was a bit of both for medium shots. I believe that's me in the middle one, and I remember it being really cool to sit in it. After the shoot, when no one was looking, my friend ripped off a little panel piece from the dashboard of the detail vehicle and gave it to me for my birthday -at which point I think I soiled my armor. I put it on the dash of my old Honda Civic where it got all dusty and scratched up after years of traveling the continent. I always pointed it out to my passengers, and no one ever believed me that it was really from the actual Back to the Future DeLorean. I was always telling stories, you see.
Incidentally, [NAME EXCISED BY TMST LEGAL] was going to steal the flux capacitor for me but he didn't think he could get away with it. He needed a screwdriver and his backpack wasn't big enough.
Watching the film the other night I realized that the movie is over twenty years old now, and takes place thirty years after 1955, which in 1985 seemed so distant and other-worldly. I wonder if teenagers nowadays look at 1985 like that. (It was a kick to see Marty pop a cassette tape into his Walkman!) I suppose we'll have to wait another ten years for the full effect of time passing. If it means getting flying cars, I'll wait, but if you want your very own flux capacitor, you can buy it here for $250.
[Note: See how the PM and HOUR stickers overlap? That's how I was able to determine that it was actually the same piece that was used in the films -I paused the videotape! Unfortunately it was only used in the BTTF 2 and 3 but not 1. Suck!]
P.S. What happens to aged film geeks who don't make it in Hollywood and end up in the suburbs? Check it out. This dad is way more cool than I am:
~
I could give a lecture on BTTF! I won't. (It's Friday.) But I am a huge fan. The screenplay is an exemplary one. Nothing is wasted in it and nothing is superfluous. If you took out a single line of dialogue, the film's tight, well-honed structure would just fall apart. It is a perfectly paced, perfectly balanced family film -which are few and far between nowadays. Disney originally turned down the script, incidentally, because they thought the mother-son relationship was too risque, which is funny when you consider what they put out now. Robert Zemeckis directed it and co-wrote it, going on to become one of the most successful directors in Hollywood. (Forrest Gump was his biggie.) The score by Alan Silvestri is truly great (largest orchestra ever assembled on the Universal lot) and the photography is colorful, nostalgic, and energetic without over-reaching (Dean Cundey, the Director of Photography, was my host for Career Day in high school. I got to hang with him for a day on the set of that Patrick Sawyze classic, Roadhouse.) And, of course, Michael J. Fox nails the part.
Did you know that the movie was half-finished with Eric Stoltz in the lead, but Spielberg (the executive producer) fired him because he was playing Marty McFly too seriously? It's true. Everyone had to start over, but they used some of the footage with the other actors, who were actually acting with Stoltz in the scenes, in the final cut. But I know what you're really wondering: why was Claudia Wells, who played Marty's girlfriend in the first one, replaced with Elizabeth Shue in the sequels?
The story is her mother got sick with cancer and she wanted to be at her side, so she ditched the opportunity. BTTF was a huge hit and that was quite a sacrifice, and one of those untold good-guy stories from Tinseltown. Elizabeth Shue went on to superstardom after the two sequels. Claudia Wells left acting and opened her own men's apparel store in Studio City. So it goes.
I'd like to say I made similar sacrifices, leaving the glory of a Hollywood career by the wayside, but, ahh, no. The closest I ever came to the greatness of Back to the Future is this:
And that's the real time machine, there, not the mock-up from the Universal Studios Amusement Park. You can see the dust on the hood from when they rolled it out of the studio backlot retired prop warehouse. Also, that's my real hair. I was about 21.
A friend of mine was working on a commercial for the "Back to the Future Ride" that was at Universal Studios for years (it closed last summer.) They had the original cars for the shoot, and he invited me down to the set -which was awesome! There were three DeLoreans: one for long shots that they could drive at high speeds, one that didn't move but had all the blinking lights and interior details for close-ups, and one that was a bit of both for medium shots. I believe that's me in the middle one, and I remember it being really cool to sit in it. After the shoot, when no one was looking, my friend ripped off a little panel piece from the dashboard of the detail vehicle and gave it to me for my birthday -at which point I think I soiled my armor. I put it on the dash of my old Honda Civic where it got all dusty and scratched up after years of traveling the continent. I always pointed it out to my passengers, and no one ever believed me that it was really from the actual Back to the Future DeLorean. I was always telling stories, you see.
Incidentally, [NAME EXCISED BY TMST LEGAL] was going to steal the flux capacitor for me but he didn't think he could get away with it. He needed a screwdriver and his backpack wasn't big enough.
Watching the film the other night I realized that the movie is over twenty years old now, and takes place thirty years after 1955, which in 1985 seemed so distant and other-worldly. I wonder if teenagers nowadays look at 1985 like that. (It was a kick to see Marty pop a cassette tape into his Walkman!) I suppose we'll have to wait another ten years for the full effect of time passing. If it means getting flying cars, I'll wait, but if you want your very own flux capacitor, you can buy it here for $250.
[Note: See how the PM and HOUR stickers overlap? That's how I was able to determine that it was actually the same piece that was used in the films -I paused the videotape! Unfortunately it was only used in the BTTF 2 and 3 but not 1. Suck!]
P.S. What happens to aged film geeks who don't make it in Hollywood and end up in the suburbs? Check it out. This dad is way more cool than I am:
~
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