Good Things

1) Good beer

2) The return of Good SNL

3) Good band to see on New Years if you happen to be in Portland

4) Good band to see on New Years if you happen to be in NYC (sigh)

5) Good new direction

6) Good bourbon. Really, really fucking good bourbon.

7) Good wine

Goodnight.

On discovering two slightly amazing things simultaneously:

1) Though I attempt, in general, to abstain from the giving and receiving of frivolous gifts this time of year, were anyone to inquire as to what I may desire this holiday seasons, I can now say I have the answer.

2) Just so we are clear, this is not me. Thanks.

Thank you, Seattle Weekly...

... for finally publicly recognizing our union.

city of roses, city of chaos

I am looking out my window right now, (which has a pretty sweet view of PDX, I should say), and watching the chaos resulting from some kind of massive motorcycle parade, more police than I've seen since Halloween in Eugene at U of O, and SantaCon 2008 in full effect. Guard your daughters!

Final Edit: Flowers vs. Trees

I knew my dad had really gone crazy when he let the whole nursery die. He said it made him too sad to go down there and see all those trees, all those things depending on him to survive - said he just couldn’t handle the pressure. I told him, “Dad, they’re just trees, you’ve been doing this for 20 years. I know the liver transplant fucked with your head and the therapist says you’re experiencing some ‘survivor guilt,’ but please - don’t throw away your sole option for employment and then in the middle of it all have an affair with the slutty lady from the hardware store and make mom divorce you.” But low and behold, that’s exactly what he did and that’s exactly what happened. So he moved in to a house on Bridge Street with Terry from Diamond Building Supplies and stopped going to the nursery. My brother would take him his mail and Dad would give my brother little assignments in return, like to make sure the sprinklers were set low so the water would hit the rootballs of the Japanese Maples and not their leaves, or to bring him the DVD player because he paid for it and mom never watched movies anyways. The weeds at the nursery grew fast. Within two months you couldn’t see a divide between where Queen Ann’s lace ended and the crowns of the potted oaks began. The only time I would even set foot on the property was late at night with friends, drunkenly trying to climb over the bending chain link fence that had never been properly installed. When I was with them it wasn’t my father’s land or my summer job, but just another abandoned-looking parcel in southern Oregon with too many rusted tractors and vehicles scattered across it, wood pallets stacked in swaying piles next to spilling towers of potting buckets. We would steal the pallets for bonfires, the potting buckets for pot, and the second-to-last Ornamental Plum to see if I could nurse it back to health with some pruning and African Violet food. My Dad was a real penny-pincher before the transplant, so I thought surely he’d at least react to belligerent youth stealing from his business if not to my mother’s late night sobbing phone calls or my complete silence. But he just stayed crazy, just kept letting all the weeds choke out the shrubs and the 15-gallon willows while I kept stealing and my mom kept breaking down. The funny thing, though, is that he planted a beautiful garden at the Bridge Street house. I would drive by late at night, staying on the side of the road where the streetlights had burnt out, and marvel angrily at the Wandering Jews that spilled out of hanging baskets or the pink lemonade-hued Rhododendron shrubs that bordered the foreign garage. My brother asked my Dad why it was he could water and keep up a few fancy-looking flowers at his new house, but not even turn on the pump to water the trees that paid his bills at the nursery. And when he told me, my brother said Dad just looked at him like he was crazy and sighed. “Son,” he said as if it were achingly simple, “flowers don’t need you the same way trees do. It’s completely different.”