Poetry 365: The Coalition Against Demons

We're resolved to drive them out
of the throats of sparrows,
the desks of Mrs. Haupmann's third grade class,
the empty nighttime offices
and the rotundas full of echoes.

My Evil Twin

I've always known that I'm somebody's evil twin. My friend Adrienne has found him. His name is Jake Shimabukuro, and he's a ukulele virtuoso. Seriously.

I'm a fan of the term "evil twin". Adrienne likes "stunt double". I'm probably his stunt double, as a uke player probably doesn't do a lot of wu shu/kung fu. But then again, I'd watch a movie about a ukulele player who has to avenge his master in some exotic martial arts tournement. Wouldn't you?

Hell, looking at this picture I'm thinking I should buy that shirt.

Poetry 365: Set You So Free

They'll close the walls of Manhattan tonight,
build an iron gate across the Brooklyn Bridge.
The hell if you can.
The hell if you can.

They'll dig a moat around the Empire State,
fill it full of ammonia.
The hell if you can.
We won't take it.

I'm going to set you so free
that you might just fly.

The Olympics from Mars

There are people in this country who have opinions of foreign countries based entirely on what they've seen on the Olympics. Does the guy on the street know anything about Kenya except that they seem to really good a long distance running?

Imagine the crazy things you could learn about America from watching the Olympics if you were an anthropologist from Mars watching on tape delay:

There are two Americas (John Edwards is right!): White America where people swim, do gymnastics and play volleyball. And there's Black America where they run track and play basketball. Except that white guy who won the 400. I think he's an exchange student. There's rumored to be a Hispanic America and an Asian America, but they must be studying or working or something.

It is a traditional beach volleyball form of congratulation to touch your partner on her bikini clad butt.

Americans have awful fashion sense. The beret is still in style here. Tell me, doesn't the outfit look like it was designed by Donald Duck?

No running around the pool!

Jen and I were down in New York today for the Central Park Triathlon to support our friend Xine in her first tri. She did great, finishing a 1/4 mile swim, 12 mile bike and a 5 mile run in under 2 hours. As you can see, the finish line for the run is on the pool deck, blatantly disregarding rule #2 of Mom's pool ettiquette: No running on the pool deck. I think some of the athletes ate 30 minutes prior to swimming too. It's like the "Break all of mom's rules triathlon." I wonder if anyone was annoying their sister in the warmups...

Trampoline?!

Olympic trampoline? MF trampoline? This is the dumbest sport ever. I'll bet this is where they send gymnasts who couldn't cut it. Worst of all, somebody at NBC thought that we'd really dig this and put it on in prime time on a Friday night.

Sick Day

I'm running a fever of 101.3. This is my first sick day as a married man. Jen is so great. She ran down to the market and made my favorite sick day comfort meal: tomato soup and grilled cheese.

How big a geek am I? I blogged my last sick day over three years ago.

Poetry 365: The Panic Boys

Are huddled in the corner
hiding from something bigger
than invisible.
Bigger than the neon lights
and the humming
that sounds like it will break
the tubes into one hundred
thousand pieces.

The Power of Positive Thinking

I've been dreaming about kung fu training for the past 5 days. I've been daydreaming about making my jump kicks better, and suddenly they ARE better. How does that work? I had better height and a better landing than I've ever had. If I have a year's worth of training like tonight, I'm gonna be a happy camper.

Kung Fu Road Trip

We're back from the US National Chinese Martial Arts Championships in Pittsburgh. Our friends at the Boston Kung Fu Tai Chi Institute did very well:

Randy Brown:
Gold - Traditional Long Weapon: Spear
Gold - Traditional Bare Hand: Eagle Claw
Silver - Internal: Xing Yi Chuan
Bronze - Open Other Weapon: Monkey Staff

Will Preap:
Silver - Contemporary Straight Sword
4th Place - Open Barehand: Mantis

I'm very proud to train with these guys. Will's an enthusiastic guy and I think he's talked me into trying to compete in this tournament next year. It will be a lot of work, but I know how it works for me. I'll train so much harder with a goal in front of me. After training for a marathon, nothing seems particularly daunting anymore.

After seeing so many great competitors, I'm ready to train like a madman. The group of us were practically doing jump kicks in the parking lot outside the venue.

Lots of pictures and video to come when I get some time blocked off to transfer all the files.

Driving all night

We arrived in Pittsburgh at 7AM today, after leaving Boston at 8PM last night. I got to drive the 10:30 to 2:30 shift mostly through towns I never heard of in New Jersey. It was raining very hard in spots, but we're here safe and sound.

I pulled over at a Stuckey's somewhere in Pennsylvania to switch drivers. As a child travelling with my family, I'd always beg and plead for someone to buy me a pecan log at the Stuckey's. They still have pecan logs there: likely the exact same ones from 1978. Will pointed out to me that they looked like antique food. Antique, probably; food, hardly. It felt like we had travelled through time back to 1988 anyhow, as they still sold Steve Guttenberg movies on VHS there.

Anyhow, it's about time to wake up and get some lunch and get Will registered for tomorrow's competition.

Wu Shu Nationals Countdown

This weekend, Jen and I are headed to Pittsburgh with some friends from the kung fu school to see the US National Chinese Martial Arts Championships. Two of our friends from the school are competing. I'd drive that far to see my favorite baseball team or football team in a big game, so why shouldn't I go see two guys I train with go for the gold?

As much as I love the Olympic sports, I can't bring myself to watch them on tv. The human interest stories are just too annoying for me. Just show me the sport will you? So instead of hearing about how so and so's mom drove her 45 minutes every morning a 5AM to train in a pool in a distant town before school, I'll be cheering on my friends, live. (And trying to steal a few moves for myself...)

Why am I talking like I'm talking to an answering machine?

Audioblogger is a handy tool that allows me to post audio to this blog from any phone. This will be useful for hearing poems instead of just reading them. And it'll allow me post when I'm away from the Internet entirely.

As much as I love the sound of my own voice, I hate the sound of it on a recording, so I suspect you'll only see this feature used sporadically.

The Patron Saint of Nervda

I missed the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pablo Neruda last month. Pablo is one of my primary inspirations as a writer. I can remember reading his work in a Spanish III class when I was 17 and being amazed by the power of his words even as I was reading them in a language I had no real mastery of.

This blog is sort of named after him. Years ago, back in the stone ages of the Internet, I went to sign up for an account on the University of Florida's VAX system. I couldn't get my first initial and last name as my user name, so I submitted "neruda" instead. But this being the stone ages, I had to submit my request on a slip of paper and my crappy handwriting was interpreted as "nervda" and I have been Nervda ever since.

Poetry 365: Gesture Sketch

Send me more drawings,
and I'll write you a sonnet,
or maybe a pantoum
if that's what you wanted.

Poetry 365: Untitled

Dead of night,
in an old Volvo 850
the color of a twenty
that's been through the wash

and between talk radio stations
from Toledo and Scranton
we find an old Kinks tune
that I've forgotten the title of

but the guitars
sound like they're picked with razor blades
and the notes sting
me awake long enough

to see that we are still six hours
from our warm bed.

Glens Falls Arcade

Channel Surfing

Jen and I are feeling a bit like lazy slugs tonight. We were gonna watch some DVDs, but I don't really have the attention span right now to watch anything long term, so we've been flipping through cable instead.

We just came across Miss Teen USA. It's really Miss Underage America, isn't it? The swimsuit competition is on now, the girls are in bikinis at the waterpark, splashing, frolicking, and otherwise creeping me out. How do the networks sell ads for this thing? "Guys LOVE jail bait girls! It's that perfect male demo that you've been shooting for Chas! Underage cleavage sells deodorant like HOTCAKES!"

They're talking to the the judges now. How can you be a judge on this show and not come off as a dirty old man? Oh, I see how they solve that problem, they've assigned a flaming stereotype gay man as a judge. The shirt is shiny like a new dime, and the lisp is FABULOUS!

Poetry 365: Lullaby

Two hours and twenty six minutes
of sleep.
Waking: it comes on
like a disease.

The floorboards are dreaming,
softly breathing and sighing.
Dim lamplight shadows
pollute the white/blue bedclothes.

Count. Count. Count. Sheep. Sheep. Sheep.
Leaping over split rail fences.
Count. Count. Count.
I must conduct this census.

Count. Count. Count.
Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

Mystery of Life

One of the things I learned from watching my dad around the house when I was a kid, is that if something is broken, simply disassemble it, look around the inside of the thing the close it all back up and it will miraclously work again. I've seen him do this will radios, lawn mowers, carberators... Yet when I try to do this, it's just as broken as it was when I started. Is there some sort of special "Dad School" where you learn this stuff? It's not just my dad, right?

Poetry 365: Questions

Who chants your name on the Casbah?
Who carries you home and bites your shoulder,
and somehow forgets which street to turn down?
Who sings just the chorus of "Desperado"?
Who stole your kitchen table
and put it out on the street
among the trash day treasures?
Is it Hortense Howell?
Mr. Mustafa?
Tony Pentangeli?
Vaclav Havel?
That girl in your first grade class
who pushed you down and laughed
until you threatened
to have your big brother beat her up
after school let out?

Will Ferrell as GWB

OK, so Anchorman wasn't as a great as I'd expected. There, I said it. But Ferrell is still the man. Check out this faux campaign ad as GWB. I wonder if they'll get in trouble for saying "I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome!" I'll bet Ashcroft is looking up the owners of whitehousewest.com as we speak, looking for a way to bring legal action.

Trade Deadline

On Saturday night, my favorite baseball team the Boston Red Sox, traded Nomar Garciaparra to the Chicago Cubs. I didn't realized this happened until I was sitting at dinner with Jen and caught a glimpse of some very unfamiliar faces playing for the Sox on the muted TV's above the bar.

Walking home after dinner, I saw some Garciaparra jerseys in shop windows and noted that they'd be going on clearance very soon. Note to all sports fans, don't buy replica jerseys of your favorite players while they're still active. You could be made to look like an idiot at the trading deadline. Stick to retired players, they can't change teams on you anymore.

Poetry 365: When You Were Born

How were you to know
that some Sunday morning,
you'd be sitting across from me
in a shiny red vinyl booth
in a hipster dinner, laughing
so hard that you'd have to lay your head
down on the table, dangerously
close to some spilled maple syrup,
and that this would be love?