Old Things in an Old Light

Anyone who reads "Basementing" (Anyone? Anyone?) knows the decor is pre-contemporary. A feverish night stumble to the bathroom could easily result in a Serlingesque breakdown: I'm in Don Draper's apartment via The Twilight Zone. Picture if you can a trembling man flipping through a May 1953 issue of Woman's Home Companion in dire need of a home remedy for possible malaria. Deep breaths, Mike. How about a round of Winner Spinner to take your mind off your musty-triggered psychotic episode?

With the lights on (and a good night's sleep), the mid-fifties mirage is betrayed by... well, sonofagun, not much. Oh, wait! The microwave. And the TV, which, true, is the same size as Ozzy & Harriet's, except it's all screen. The decor is pretty seamless. But through the filters of Instagram (a name that recalls that era), the authenticity of the basement's design (life's work of Adam) could fool Mrs. Cleaver (did she ever leave that goddamn house?).

I present you with "The Instagram Basement" (one of the few examples of the camera app free from inappropriate expanses of flesh).

Thanks to Adam and Josh, I think our next residence will have to be a Googie structure, or Luna Schlosser's pad. (Erin glares at me from 2012.)

I feel dizzy. I hear breaking glass. I see a giant unrealistic floating eye! Open that door, Rod, I'm coming through!

No Bother: A Basementing Birthday

This is an open letter to my wife, meaning devoid of my true feelings, which, frankly, are none of your g.d. business:

So, now you're IN your thirties. That's fine. I'm like, what, 50? You'll always be referred to as "his young wife."

So, you live in a basement. So did Laverne & Shirley. That's fine. They were like, what, 50?

People will take you seriously now. When you're in your twenties, everyone smiles a lot and says, 'Hey, that's good initiative," and then, behind your back, they gather with their thirty-and-up associates and chuckle over what idiots twenty-somethings are. And teenagers? Good god, are they still around?

You are thirty-something today and should begin getting my Timothy Busfield references. Oh, and Peter Berg (he made a few appearances on "Entourage").

Look who else is 31! Bitsie Tulloch, the girlfriend with the weird face on "Grimm"; Rapper Pitbull (he don't play football, but he's touched down everywhere. Everywhere? Everywhere!); Bryce Howard ("Two Slice Hilly"); and Megan Hilty, aka "Marilyn Nomore."

You're in good company. I don't mean with them. I mean with me.

All right, the rest of you, back to your Facebooks!

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on Portland

I used to say, "No, it doesn't really rain that much, but let the bozos in the rest of the country think so, to keep them away." Of course, I used to be one of them bozos and I'm here. And I'm soaking wet, because it really does rain that much.

I think the rain's a necessity for the people of the Pacific Northwest. The mind of a Portlander, affected as it is by copious amounts of coffee, tofu, sushi, Thai dishes I can't pronounce, and quinoa, functions clearest in the rain (or at least the near-rain). I reach this notion based on my observations of the opposite. When the sun peeks its white-hot head out of a deep-gray cloud (our state mascot), people lose their minds.

Friend and author Sarah Royal remarked on the propensity for all sun-lit conversations to turn to the sun, no matter the current topic nor the gravitas of the moment. For example:

Skinny Jeans: I was kayaking yesterday in the Willamette and, long story short, my thumb is infected.

Skirt w/Leggings: I know! God, the sun feels so good!

Me: The Shins? Meh.

That sort of thing. In Portland, the Cloud is the Warden and the Sun is the ACLU nudging him, saying, "C'mon, how 'bout a little yard time?"

It's "Blade Runner" all the time here, and then...a few frames of "Blame it on Rio."

I love the rain. I moved here daydreaming of the dark wet woods, poncho'd on the waterfall trails. And I've loved it. But when my emotional poncho springs a leak, I'm as peppy as Thornton Wilder's Stage Manager.

Yes, it really does rain that much, but we've got the biggest used book store in the country, a blessing of independent record stores, and the Reggie Deluxe, for starters.

You want the sun? Move to California.

The Two Billy Joel Eras and How I Met His Mother in the Second Era

"Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item." - Benny (Rumble Fish, 1983) 


So I'm in the basement, alone but for the animals, listening to Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volumes I & II. For me, there are two Billy Joel eras: Before I could buy his albums and after. Meaning, I didn't have any money or nothin' when his first few albums came out. I was just a dumb kid. I wasn't buying ANY albums. Just listening to my parents' collection (something I still do today: John Denver, Clancy Brothers...) But once I hit 5th Grade and found myself surrounded by music fans (most with older brothers & sisters), I began to buy my own albums (I had a small cassette collection that started with a birthday gift of a tape recorder in probably 3rd or 4th grade -- Donny & Marie, Kenny Rogers, the "Grease" soundtrack). Funny that I was buying cassettes before records (meaning vinyl), but cassette was king at that time (late 70s, Hicksville Sears).


Speaking of the Hicksville Sears, that's where I purchased my first Billy Joel lp, "Innocent Man." That was the first purchase of second-era Billy Joel (we had "The Stranger" on 8-track). So "Innocent Man" has always figured in my musical timeline as "late-era" Billy Joel, which it wasn't (I guess it's mid-era).


Listening to it tonight, I was struck (as I often am), by its release date - the release date of this perceived "late-era" Billy Joel music. 1983. Nice. Here I am still following the advice he offers in "Tell Her About It" and applying it to my wife. Who was two years old. In 1983. As I purchased the record with, I don't know, lawn-mowing money, from some shlep on Rte. 107, while my mother buys me slim Toughskins in the Boy's department.


None of this would matter, except everything matters.


Coda: So I'm at Sears thumbing through the Billy Joel's looking for his new album and an older woman asks me, "So you like Billy Joel?" "Yeah," I croak, terrified (I'm certain). "I'm his mother," she offers. I'm not sure what or if I replied.


Was that Mrs. Joel? I've always assumed so. She did live in Hicksville at some point. Unless she was a real nut. What's the angle pretending to be Billy Joel's mother to a 13-year old? No angle. So yeah, I met Billy Joel's mom at the Hicksville Sears.


(For all you non-Long Islanders, Hicksville is a town in Nassau County, home to malls and strip malls and a small movie theater where I tried to sneak into "Day of the Dead" after watching "Troll" but got caught and had to pay, but also felt so guilty I bought a "Day of the Dead" t-shirt from the concession stand.)

From His Phone, He's Blogging

The keyboard's tiny, but I only type with two fingers anyway. Usually not my thumbs, though.

So, the boys are back from the gym, Erin's done jazzercising, and I long-abandoned recording my bass track on the Pink Lights songs my brothers and I recorded today (we're kind of a big thing: www.sleepingbrothers.com). So I'm listening to some Vince Guaraldi before dinner. I prefer the record player to CDs, which works out nice since I don't even have a CD player anymore (except in the car). I'm not anti-digital music -- in fact, I'm enamored with the accessibility of it (I'm slowly uploading 20,000 songs to Google Music). Don't know when I'm gonna listen to it, but I like that I can. The vinyl's best, though. You're kinda forced to be attentive: it can skip at any moment and you have to flip sides. And all those liner notes! The great confluence of music and words!

Well, time for tofu and then to cast my wind to the mate!

Hair! (Sing 7x)

Nature abhors a vacuum. So does this basement. A dandrous coat blankets the couch, rug, coffee table, chachkas (the list, like the hair, covers everything down here). In a day's time, the basement can become dustier and more hirsute than any number of hipsters milling about outside a bike shop.

The vacuum had seemed hesitant lately, picking up dirt with the reluctance of a four-year old ordered to clear his plate of peas (worst thing ever...when I was 4). But, you know, if you move the vacuum over the rug enough, the combing of fibers will give the impression of a cleaner rug. Satisfied, the dirt, if not vanquished, at least dispersed, I turned the kitchen lights low and returned the machine to its closet. Out of sight, out of mind. But out of sight does not mean out of lungs. Nope, it was still filthy down here.

Now, most of the dust and hair down here are of canine/feline origin. In direct sunlight, in slow-motion, I'm certain the human eye would see a blizzard of fur pummeling the metaphorical Mid-West of our lives. On each clump of orange fur, each blanched bristle of hound dog hair, under electron microscope, a serene portrait of a family of mites reveals one of the many disgusting layers of life in harmony with we all must live.

Serendipitously, before our insides looked like the outside of a chalk eraser, the vacuum stopped working, then started working, the stopped again. A curious tinkerer, I scratched my itch to dismantle, and took it apart. What I found I have since referred to as a "ferret of hair" clogging a tube. Fishing it out with a screwdriver, I couldn't help thinking of how, when you're throwing up, you're like, "Where is this all coming from?". The vacuum, thus exorcised, regained its original suction and I set off to bust dust with extreme prejudice.

Hey, look at that! The rug is a deep cocoa brown, not a mottled mess that looked closer to stained press board!

Ahh. I sat down to a cup of tea. Even took my slippers off without fear of them developing a hobbit-like sole.

I closed my eyes for just a moment Two cats ran past me. Two dogs barreled down the stairs. Oh, well, I thought, and closed my mouth as well.

Jumping (Off) Someone Else's Train

There aren't enough songs about trains.

Sure, I bet there's hundreds or thousands of songs about trains, but still, I don't think there are enough. The metaphor of the train as it pertains to music is at once too compelling, too fitting, too satisfying. Toot.

A train takes us from one place to another, the way a song carries us from one emotion to another, or circumnavigates the brim of a feeling.

Garibaldi, on the Oregon coast, is home, or graveyard, to a great-looking train. With a nice caboose (though it wasn't the only one).

Erin and I love westerns, especially one with trains and folks jumping on or off them. Like this:

Train songs are often sad. Folks leave on the train. Take "Train Song" by Tom Waits:

It was a train that took me away from here
but a train can't bring me home

Yet there's the cheery train song as well. Crosby, Stills & Nash are having a helluva time on the "Marrakesh Express," and Sheena Easton can hardly wait for her's to arrive:

My baby takes the morning train / He works from nine till five and then
He takes another home again / To find me waitin' for him

Apparently, John Peel was a big fan of that one.

My favorite train song might be "Dixie Flyer" by Randy Newman. A most evocative outro.

Erin and I don't only jump on and off trains -- we also delicately alight. Erin, in Tinkerbell fashion...

and I, sort of, like Magneto.

Choo, choo, baby!

For more songs about trains, visit here or here.

Here Comes the Flood!

It's raining cats and dogs out there, and worse -- it's raining ON cats and dogs out there. Ugh, wet dog stinks like wet dog. Wet cats, I don't know about. Our cats are indoor cats. They live in an oasis. They might bitch and moan to each other about the gulag in which they're confined, but those two morons would last about five seconds in the wilds of suburbia. I can see Nala stuck in a drainpipe, and Simba involved in a check-cashing scheme. Nah, we'll keep these bozos inside. Where it's dry. Except for the bathroom where... (cue Peter Gabriel):

LORD, HERE COMES THE FLOOD!

I think I'll always prefer the bombastic version from his 1977 debut solo album Peter Gabriel (the one with the car) over his collaboration with Roger Fripp on the latter's 1979 collection Exposure, a quieter take (Gabriel's original intention). The music we absorb in our youth overlays at points on our nostalgia like a double exposure.

What was I saying? Oh, the flood, a puddle, really. The vertical river has overwhelmed the gutters, and the water sought its own level, which in our case, is the bathtub. I just threw a towel on it. Problem temporarily solved!

Why didn't Noah think of that?

"Deep, deep..."

...as we used to say at our Dominic Savio Club meetings back in '81/'82. Extracurricular (but during school hours) Catholic school stuff. Not quite in the hippie Antioch vein, but none too distant either. This has nothing to do with that. Or maybe it does... Maybe at the end of this essay (this is too fractured for an essay) it'll come back around and we'll all be like, "Deep, deep..."

The deep I'm talking about here is the constant reference to living in the basement (this is a blog about the basement). But it turns out (my lethargy aside) there's not all that much to write about living in a basement. I exhausted all the metaphors and puns many posts ago (that's what this is, a post, not an essay). Here, though, for you, is a punny gem from Erin.

We were driving through Beaverton last Friday (maybe it wasn't quite yet the Beav but still SW PDX) when we passed a coffee kiosk called "Coffee Cartel." I remarked that you don't often see the word "cartel" without another word, "drug", preceding it. I decided Colombia's most, let's say, popular exports are drugs and coffee (I'd look up other fine Colombian products but Wikipedia's blacked out today for the SOPA protest), so the name kind of works.

"They should have a place called 'Underground Coffee.'" As my mind took quantum strides searching for a follow-up joke, Erin returned with their tagline, "It's Chokey."

What have I done to her? On one hand, I may have ruined her with puns (once you start, it's hard to stop). On the other hand, as Team Punsters, the pressure's off me.

At this point, I would begin the journey back to the post's beginning, delving a bit into who Dominic Savio was and why we were in a club inspired by him. But, as I said, Wikipedia's down, so...

That's it, I guess. Puns are shallow humor, I suppose, a step above sarcasm. So obvious when uttered, but often deep, deep upon reflection. Is what I tell myself.

Slow Approach to the Soft Ball Line

Caramel jargon. Temperature gradient. Mercury assist. Chemistry = candy. Turns out the Oompa-Loompas were the Linus Paulings of the Chocolate Factory. Me? I just eats 'em. Candies, that is. Caramels and I have a precarious relationship. I want to steal their flavor and they want to steal my fillings, which would not be a difficult feat for the caramels (I once broke  tooth on a Snickerdoodle).

This is Erin's first attempt at candy-making. She's got cookies down to a t (or tea biscuit). When the melting sugar hits the "soft ball" temperature, the caramels are ready to cool. You spoon a sample out of the pot and drop it into a bowl of cold water. Then you fish it out with a finger and if it retains a ball-like shape, it's done cooking. Like this:

How did I help? I got the bowl. And I put the water in it. Sometimes just being there is what's important. Right? Who else is here? Not Adam & Josh -- they were out shopping. But the dogs are here. You remember the dogs. Let's go look for them.

There's Emma, looking like she was shot (as if there was a bullet sharp enough to pierce the protective layers of blubber under her mottled coat). The heat pulsing off (and out of) her body helps keep the thermostat down. This is her contribution. Thanks, Emma. No, don't get up...

Hey, call Ripley's, it's the Loch Ness Monster. More like "Lacks Sense" Monster. Or "Looks Nuts" Monster. Or "Licks Notch" Monster. And it looks like Sluggo killed Mr. Bill again. Oh, nooo!

Looks like Christmas. Smells like Christmas. And it's starting to really feel like Christmas. Imagine still getting that Christmas feeling at the ripe age of 42! Watching Christmas specials helps. I had on "Simple Gifts" earlier. My old pal (yeah, old like me) sent me a DVD of nostalgic TV rarities from the 60s and 70s. Moss Hart's recollections warmed my heart. Do the kids know who Moss Hart is? Do they even know what a DVD is anymore?

Erin's gonna dip those caramels in chocolate once they cool. A couple of you will probably get to sample them (how quaint to have a small audience). And now she's melting white chocolate for some other confectionery delight. More desserts means more coffee. I'm always wired during the holidays.

Hope you get your share of Christmas cookies and candies (or milk chocolate gelt and dreidels). Or both, if you've got a non-discriminatory sweet tooth like me.

The Saint of a Thousand Slightly Different Faces

There he is! Kris Kringle. Pere Noel. Sinterklaas. Santa Claus. Thomas Nast's illustration of Santa has become the stand-bearer of the modern representation. Nast's image was largely based on Clement Clark Moore's description in his poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" even though Moore imagined Santa as an "elf" with eight "tiny reindeer" pulling his "miniature sled." When exactly he grew to his popular Wellesian proportions, I nae can say.

Artists embrace variations on a theme. As such, with snowflakes and fruit cakes, no two Santas are alike. This became apparent to me when Adam unleashed a tide of Yule, nay a tsunami of Yule, in the house, saturating the basement in the process. Oh, foy! (festive joy)! Holiday LPs, vintage greeting cards, plastic Noel candles, old super-hot Christmas bulbs...and everywhere, on everything -- Santa Clauses! No twins here. Few siblings. Mostly chubby guys with beards and even (God forbid) beards sans mustaches (the worst). Come on, have a look!

No mustache, really? You put all that effort into a four-foot beard and you don't top it off with a 'stache?

I had no idea Mrs. Clause was so beautiful! She isn't. Santa is having an affair with Betty Draper.

This one brings toys to the boy and girl 'squatches all over the world!

Santa? Mrs. Claus? The football coach from "Glee"? The real question is: Hot dogs and beans
for Christmas?

What do you think his breath smells like? Candy canes? I'm thinking sardines.
He's got walrus breath. I'm certain.

That branch couldn't hold up a plaster ornament, never mind a 400-pound toymaker.

Santa after his third 5-Hour Power of the evening. It's beginning to look a lot like an addiction.

He thinks he's trapped in a box, but I keep telling him there's not even any cellophane. Happi, my ass!

Der Jingle.

Santa's forearm is as black as a coal miner's lungs. Must've been a lot of naughty kids that year.
Yeah, I see that kid. Do I even need to say anything?

That's just a sampling of all the St. Nick-nacks festooning our little winter wonderland. So many Santas! And reindeer. And so many snowmen and weird little elves! And so many Baby Jesuses!

Nope. No Baby Jesus. Or Snowbaby Jesus. Which might be worse than no Baby Jesus. You know what I mean? Oh, boy, I gotta go -- there goes Linus dragging that filthy blanket into the spotlight...

Christmas in the Basement 1.0: Plastic? Fantastic!

Wait! Don't eat it -- it's fake! You shouldn't be eating holly berries anyway, knucklehead. Unless you're a dog. A dog named Jack. He's already slobbered on a vintage decoration or two. He's so dumb, he's adorable, as my pal Harry Carbohydrate used to say.

Of course, when I say fake, I don't mean fake decorations. They're real decorations. They're real old decorations. Even the dust on them is old. That's an old smell, too. There are smells down here that died out fifty years ago. The basement's a museum of extinct Christmas aromas. And this is not a complaint.

This is a complaint: Entenmann's crumb cakes are getting smaller!

No, it smells terrifically festive down here (that's what she said) and it's not even Thanksgiving yet! Take a look around -- and it's still in a state of disarray:

Ah, On-A-Lite Christmas light strings! Do they even make things in Peoria anymore? (I'm sure they do. Sorry, Peoria!)

Gene Autry sings everyone's favorite Christmas carol, "The Three Little Dwarfs." Hardrock, Coco and Joe annoy the crap out of Santa's reindeer. I believe in the second verse, a felony is committed.

Guess who? Yep, you got it. It's quite uncanny, really, the resemblance. They're so friggin' excited for Christmas. "Eeeeeeee!"

Wait until Adam brings out the other ninety percent of the Eisenhower-era decorations! Someone's plastic Christmas Past is our Christmas Yet-to-Come!

Christmas in the Basement Prelude: Have You Ever Seen a Partridge?

I'm listening to Christmas music. Specifically: The Longines Symphonette Living Music Program Proudly Presents Music for Christmas at Home (An exclusive new Treasury from The Living Music Program...the world's most beautiful and familiar music). And it's only November 13!

Why so early with the Christmas music? (What are you, the Holiday Police? Do you have a warrant? That's not a warrant -- it's a lyric sheet for "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".)

Speaking of Christmas music (isn't that what I'm talking about?), my least favorite carol is "The Twelve Days of Christmas." I get so bored with cumulative songs. By the time we get to the seventh day of Christmas, I want to roast the French hens, throw my shoes at the turtle doves and hose down the...wait a minute -- what is a partridge anyway?

It's a bird.

Yeah, I know it's a bird, a fat pheasant full of pear juice. But do they live around here? I've never seen one. I think I saw a pheasant once, but it might've been a quail. Or a grouse. But maybe it was a partridge.

Come to think of it, have I ever seen a pear tree?

Regardless, that song is long and boring. It's like sitting through an episode of "Desperate Housewives" (except no one's a-milking those maids -- ho, ho ho!).

And, AND, by the last two days, the lyricist stopped trying. Drummers drumming? Pipers piping?

It's a stinker. The only version I can listen to without turning into a complete Scrooge is this'n:

Enough with the Dogs, Right? But, No, You Don't Get It...

We're dogsitting. Us. Erin and I. Caretakers of the hounds -- the (wolfs)bane of our existence! We're actually walking the dogs. In the morning. Can you imagine? You know us -- hopelessly selfish, helplessly lazy. But maybe not. Maybe we've been wrong about ourselves. Because there I was, six in the morning, standing on the sidewalk with a hot blue bag of concentrated stink, jerked forward by a four-footed beanbag full of gas, hair and anything that might've crawled into her gaping maw as she mouth-breathed her way through a muddy meadow of doggie dreams.

Emma. That's her on the left (and a little bit on the right). Brother Jack, his Kardashian-like wall-stare contrasting his passionate obsession with licking cabinets and sniffing kitties, sits impatiently beside her, his trembling posterior betraying his weak obedience.

Adam and Josh are on vacation for the first time in, like, forever. So, noble friends and frenters that we are, Erin and I stepped up to offer our seemingly bottomless capacity for charity. We'll walk the dogs, feed the dogs, not kick the dogs (real sonsabitches sometimes) and even, God save us, sleep with the dogs. In the same room ("Gee-dee it, Jackie! Off the bed!). They've got two cats, too. (Did I feed them yet? I'm sure I did. I'm sure they're fine.)

This is the kind of reality show that should be on TV. It would have to be on a cable station, after prime time, because of all the cursing...

TO BE CONTINUED!

Fall Leaves

The leaves whisper to the ground
but it's the
loud whisper
of kids up too late,
brothers and sisters
careless with time
conspiring in the deep woods
of their bedrooms
waiting for slumber
in no pursuit of sleep.

The leaves breeze into town
for the October Convention.
What will they wear?
Why, nothing
but the ghosts
of greens,
those blushing oranges
of dying,
that yellow promise
of spring.

The leaves are addressing you,
stamped by heels and toes,
posted by frolic,
delivered by
predictable mystery
to our lush
already
yesterdays.

Another Busy Day for the Cut-Out Witch*

There she is, the cut-out witch! Cute as a pun'kin! With a ragged cat named Licorice, maybe. Or Lucifer, probably. It's Halloween time! The weather autumnal, orange flotsam skittering up the streets. The breeze carries hints of cinnamon, pumpkin spice and wet leaves. Obviously, we have the windows closed in the basement where there's more than a hint of non-cinnamon scented cat breath. So we're upstairs. And Erin's making soup! (Hey, 'member the Sellwood Kitchen?)

Josh is working and Adam's out, so Erin and I are utilizing the upstairs kitchen and living room. But, no, we're not alone. Look...dogs! It's Jack, not listening, and Emma, doing her best impression of a sawmill. And there's cats here, too. Like this musical kitty, strumming Roy Clark's "Spooky Movie" (with a nod to Lucy Starcrest)...

 And this shark-eyed creeper plastered on the fridge. Yikes!

While the house isn't as enveloped in Halloween swag as it will be in Christmas props in a month, Adam nevertheless has decorated with sufficient spirit. As usual, all decorations are vintage (which around here means just slightly older than me).

I think I might go as that scarecrow for Halloween. All I'll need to do is grow out my hair. Ok, I might have to wait till next year...

Have you ever seen such a pleasant grin on a witch? She looks like she watching someone enjoy a piece of her pumpkin cheesecake, the pride of her recipe box! She's not too bad-looking of a broad. And her hair looks not so much green as streaked with copper highlights. I bet all the warlocks elbow up to the cauldron when she's mixing the brew.

 

The title of this illustration is "Witch Way to Willamette Street?" Does the owl know? Maybe, but he's too busy trying to act like a pine cone. He's high-pitch mumbling to himself, "Keep going, you creepy broad, I'm lousy with directions."

He's afraid she will put him in a pouch with a newt and a bat. That's no way to spend Halloween. No way to spend Halloween, at all.

*from one of my favorite Guided by Voices songs, "Cut Out Witch"

The Color of Autumn Will Always Be Orange

Listening to Duke Ellington perform "Jack the Bear" on Comcast's Music Choice channel (Singers & Swing, specifically). Hey, isn't "Jack the Bear" the name of that Danny DeVito movie? Remember that? I do. Didn't see it, but I remember. Also, didn't really hear the song, had it on mute while Erin was on the phone.

What I'm trying to say is it's Autumn! Not the first day of Autumn, but it's the first day of October, Autumn's favorite month. Is it always capitalized? Autumn, that is. Probably not. So, it's October and autumn. Or fall. Autumn's a touch pretentious, but so am I. It's our first autumn in the basement. And we've got the pumpkin spice oil wafting through the underground. Glorious! Jazz and pumpkins and fall. Is it Halloween yet? (No, you idiot, I just said it's the first day of October not the last.)

I've been busy slogging through Facebook, Google +, Twitter and Six Minute Story lately and have once again neglected Basementing, which was supposed to be my main focus, writing-wise, when we moved down here. Alas...

But here we are, thanks (in no small measure) to the prodding of Sherry C., the voice of our fan base (and possibly the only member of said fan base). ("Base" implies something large enough to land a helicopter on, or at least a large pigeon.)

It's Saturday night. Just Erin and me. The boys are out. The dogs are here. Say hello, Jack. No, go away, ugh, what do you want? How will licking my face help you? Get down!

8:40. Hey, Erin, let's stay up to watch SNL (this will not happen).

We're thinking of starting a vlog (how are we supposed to pronounce this?), a video blog. Might be fun. Sort of a Kardashian-like view of life here in the basement. We'll see. No, the Kardashians are stupid, but as a mocking springboard (let's say "mockingboard"), it might be fun. If you somehow don't know what a Kardashian is, I applaud you.

Next: Mike drinks a pumpkin spice latte and tell you how his tummy feels.

Basement Blather 1.0: I Always Like to Begin with a Picture

I write a lot of stuff after looking at pictures. The image is a trigger for the word. Indeed the image articulates the sentiment more clearly than the word. The word obscures and manipulates. But I'm hooked on words. If the "Word" is a virus, as Burroughs writes (wait a minute...), then I am infected. Logosexual, you could say (but I wouldn't recommend it; first of all, they'll look at you funny, and secondly, I just coined the phrase* and don't even know what it means).

(*Sonofagun! Beaten to the punch!)

Anyway, that's the thing about words -- no one really knows what you're talking about. Here's a photo of a rose. Hey, it's a rose! But if I say "rose", I could mean a buncha things.

Is this the "City of Roses"...

...or this?

That's the joke. Anyway, what was I getting at? Nothing I suppose since I use words for the most part and I think it's been scientifically established here, today, that nothing can be said with words.

Henceforth, future "Basementing" posts will be in the form of rebuses.

Out of the Basement, Endlessly Rockaway

"Get out of town, think I'll get out of town." - Neil Young, "On the Beach"

Born in the Borough of Queens, New York, I found myself 42 years later (to the very day!) on the coast of Oregon. Lord of the Sand Fleas. King Inept-une (that's a good one, huh?). A child of Apollo 11, I frolic in my own Sea of Tranquility.

All right, enough with the poetry. The ceilings are low in the Basement. Only when we emerge into the broad expanse of the out-of-doors do we realize what a stretching our limbs need. And we stretched them!

Erin and I, with family in tow (we didn't literally tow them -- cripes, we'd packed enough food to stuff one of them giant crabs from "Mysterious Island"), settled into the beach house and immediately set out for the sand-whipped stretches of Rockaway Beach.

The beach house had a basement. You know, just in case the light grew too bright for our bathypelagic conditioning.

Before dawn, we met the low tide and cleaned the beach of sand dollars. A rival gang of seagulls glided at a distance. We accepted the sunrise-blindness in favor of the warmth. I wore my sneakers to the beach, delicately trodding the sand so as not to scuff or soak them. And forget about my dungaree cuffs! So, as tide encroached, I found myself trapped between the ocean and a thin stream. Luckily, Erin was beside me, smartly shod in her flip-flops. She gave me a piggy-back ride to the other side. It was then I reflected on that poem, "Footprints."

Onward and outward to other nearby beaches with tide pools full of starfish and anemones. Here we see a starfish tapping an anemone on the jaw. They're best friends!

We spelunked at Hug Point! That's the filthiest thing I've ever written. No, really, we explored a cave there. Not so much a cave but a crevice. Or crevasse. Or big crack in a cliff. Whatever. Who am I, Loren Eiseley?

Anyway, a good time was had by all! Brilliant weather (well, it was a bit cold and windy at times, so brilliant is a flat-out lie), great food (no denying it) and terrific company (Erin's parents, brother, fiancee, niece, and my mom).

Now back to the pleasant depths of the Basement. Away from the sea creatures and back to the crotch-sniffers and couch-scratchers.

BONUS PHOTO: Here I am jumping over a salt water stream that was not too wide for me to cross! "Ain't no river wide enough..." (except for, you know, that one I mentioned earlier).