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Well That’s Unfortunate


I took Anderson into the MINI dealer yesterday to have some recall work done (the passenger seat air bag sensor that’s been wonky for the last six years). While the recall repair didn’t cost me a dime, I got the car back with a multi-page list of recommended repairs. Thankfully, none of them were critical, and all the major mechanical systems were in good shape. But still, the total (should I win the lottery and decide to have the work done) for all the recommended repairs came to a whopping $3400. Even if I were working, this would still have given me pause.

Curiosity drove me over to the Edmunds Blue Book site to see what the car was actually worth at this point, and I came away severely disillusioned; it came in at $164 less than the cost of repairs.

Before I left the dealer, I asked the Service Manager about two cosmetic items that didn’t appear on the estimate: the passenger headlight lens and the driver’s side seat cover.  The passenger headlight lens has gotten severely oxidized over the last two years. I tried buffing it out myself with one of those $25 kits a little over a year ago, but the results were…disappointing. But yes, the dealer had some voodoo magic capable of bringing it back to like new for a meager $40-60. The other item was the rapidly disintegrating edge of the driver’s side seat cover. Because of the way I get into and out of the vehicle, this has been an issue with every car I’ve owned; the difference being the damage is much more extensive this time because of the mileage I’ve racked up on Anderson. I paid a premium for leather seats in the last couple cars I’ve owned, erroneously believing that the leather would handle the abuse a bit better. (Hint: it doesn’t.)

The Service Manager suggested getting the seat cover done through a local upholstery shop, since because of the age of the car MINI probably wouldn’t have any more in stock and would have to custom fabricate one anyway, making it hella expensive (well over $1000 just for the cover itself, not including installation).

I’m not averse to getting a new MINI as an alternative to shelling out that chunk of change (plus an additional $1600 down the line for a new clutch in about 20K miles) once I’m gainfully employed again—but I’ve enjoyed not having car payments these past couple years, and frankly it’s not going to be easy to say goodbye to lil’ Anderson in any case. We’ve had some grand adventures, and I’ve can honestly say I’ve never bonded with a car the way I have with this one.

So yeah.

All this has done is contribute to what I can only describe as a sense of melancholy that has overtaken me of late. Between this, my recent aborted employment adventure that I had so hoped would be “the one,” some ongoing problems Ben is having with one of his students, the general level of stupidity screeching from a certain portion of the population, and the fact I’m pretty much sleeping like crap every. single.night, I’m feeling drained.

I think Ben and I are both also feeling a little disappointed that our return to Phoenix hasn’t been full of sparkle unicorns shooting rainbows out their asses as we’d hoped. When I start feeling that way however, I have to remind myself that it usually takes a year or so for me to get into the groove of a new place after a move. While Phoenix isn’t “new” to me per se, relocation is still considered a major life change and stress producer.

At least it’s finally cooled down and we can turn off the air conditioning for the year.

How’s that for a non-sequiteur?

 

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Adults Are Assholes

Kids are not stupid. They know that finding the kind of person who leaves out candy for you to take without monitoring what you take is a rare deal. Most kids will try not to mess up a sweet gig like that, unless of course they’ve been taught by their parents that it’s OK to ruin a perfect world for everyone if some sugar is at stake. That’s what YouTuber InternetLasers learned when a trip out of town on Halloween meant they wouldn’t be able to hand out candy. Not wanting to disappoint the local children, InternetLasers put out full-sized candy bars on a table outside their home with the note “Help yourself, but be considerate!” A hidden camera captured who actually followed this instruction:

First of all, there is a bright side to this video: the kids are alright. Literally dozens of kids pass the test before the violator shows up. Even the Edward Scissorhands kid who jokes about making off with an armful of candy bars puts them back. Then the worst fairy princess ever shows up, and it even looks like she argues with that same Scissorhands kid before teaching her own son an important lesson: when you’re faced with something as pure and innocent as a table of free candy, you better ruin it before someone else does.

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Ghosts

A curious and unexpected effect of being back in Phoenix has been the appearance of ghosts. Not the horror movie variety, but rather memories of persons, places and things long gone. I’m not talking about memories of my life in Phoenix post San Francisco and pre Denver, but stuff from my 20s!

I had to run out to my new employer’s occupational health office to get screened and vaccinated prior to starting work several times over the past couple weeks, and the route takes me past the locations of three of my favorite gay bars from the late 70s and early 80s: Bullwinkle, The Forum, and Hotbods. Of course, none of those places are still in business, but the mere act of driving past conjures up so many good memories of the evenings I spent in them. Driving past The Forum, I am reminded of meeting friends Mike and Michael (and running into an acquaintance from high school whom I previously hadn’t a clue that we played on the same team), and the DJ George, who I often bumped into at lunch at the McDonalds (that used to be on the northeast corner of 16th Street and Camelback vs. its current location on the southeast) where we’d discuss the week’s latest disco releases over our fries and Big Macs. The Forum was where—to the strains of St. Tropez’s Violation,  I first slow-danced with another man.

Bullwinkle, and later Hotbods were where my friend Steve worked. I remember many evenings spent at the latter venue in the DJ booth with him (at least until the pharmaceuticals he’s taken started flowing). It was the place where Dennis (my first partner) and I would drive two hours from Tucson to spend a Saturday night dancing—and then turn around and drive two hours back home after they turned the lights up.

Ah, youth.

Then there are the two audio equipment stores where I used to hang out: Jerry’s and Bruce’s—neither of which are still open, and in fact haven’t been in years—but nonetheless elicit memories of my first major purchase on credit and where I went every six months to get my stylus examined under a microscope for signs of wear. (No, not that stylus, you bitches!)

There are plenty of other examples of these 30 year old memories being dredged up, but I won’t bore you. The question I have to ask however is why? Why here, why now? I don’t remember this happening when I moved back from San Francisco in ’02…

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A Curious Phenomenon

From my old blog, courtesy The Wayback Machine:

I have been blogging for close to two years now. What I’ve noticed during that time is while I’ve made new friends through the endeavor, several of my long-time fellow travelers in life’s journey have drifted away. One of whom in particular—a guy I’ve known nearly a quarter century—has all but vanished, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s because of something I’ve written along the way. Blogging’s semi-anonymity has allowed me to voice thoughts that even my closest confidants may not have known I was mulling.

This raises a fundamental question. Isn’t it better to have people love you for who you really are, other than for who they think you are?

While not nearly as political as I am, I know my buddy has no love for George Bush, so I doubt that’s the source of his withdrawl. The only other thing that may have caused this apparent chilling of our friendship are the writings about my increasing agnosticism. He’s not a religious guy, but a very spiritually oriented one; something that initially drew us together and that we’d shared these many years. I still respect his New Age beliefs, but at this point in my life I’m just finding it impossible to ascribe to a philosophy that’s become as rigid and entrenched as any other faith-based doctrine and offers no more proof of its validity than the fairy tales of traditional organized religion.

Before I started blogging, we’d chat or email each other several times a week, and I always felt welcome visiting. But over the last year or so (along with my posts examining my crumbling faith in New Age thought), all my emails seem to vanish into a black hole, never to be answered. (His excuse is that he gets so much spam he doesn’t even bother opening his email, despite my attempts to show him how to filter it out at his ISP before it ever reaches Outlook). So I’ve just given up emailing him altogether. At some point you just reach the point where you think, “Why bother?”

I no longer feel like I can just call and come down for the weekend like I’d been doing for years. It seems he always has houseguests, or previous plans, or the planets aren’t in proper alignment. The last time I was in the neighborhood, the ex and I just dropped in on him (we did call first), and neither of us exactly got the warm fuzzies while we were there. And don’t get me started on him coming here. It’s been over a year and a half since he’s been up to Phoenix. His excuse is that his back bothers him. It’s not like going to San Francisco, for Chrissake.

So I’m kind of at a loss. I have a feeling he’s dealing with some demons of his own, but he hasn’t shared any of it with me, and when I’ve asked if everything was okay he said it was. I’m not losing sleep over it, but it concerns me that a friendship I thought I would take to the grave with me may be coming to an end after having survived and flourished nearly twenty-five years.

Amazingly, nothing has changed with this particular friend since I wrote this eight years ago. During the years Ben and I were in Denver, my friend and I spoke once on the phone—and I was the one who initiated the call.

Still, I’ve kept him up to date via a change of address card regarding our return to Phoenix, and have thought many times about calling him, but as I wrote initially, I’m really starting to wonder, “Why bother?”

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Not Yet Feeling It

I mean, look at that. Already there’s fan-inspired art from a film that hasn’t even been released yet.

Seeing those AT-AT walkers looming on the horizon should send my heart fluttering the way they did on that Cinemascope screen in 1980. But they just aren’t. And it’s all George Lucas’s fault.

I turned 19 shortly after Star Wars originally hit the theaters in May 1977. (You do the math. I’m old.) So while I wasn’t a child per se, it nonetheless fired my imagination in a way that was to carry well into my adulthood. Surprisingly, initially I had no real desire to see the film, but a friend from high school dragged me to it one hot summer afternoon a couple weeks after its release, telling me it might just change my life. And it did.

As I’m sure I’ve written before, I came out of the theater that afternoon high, and it wasn’t from any pharmaceuticals. Star Wars set me on what I refer to now as nothing less than a spiritual quest. While I know this isn’t even close to being a record for total number of screenings, during the next year that it was parked at the old Cine Capri in Phoenix, I saw the film 30 more times. (I remember being outraged when they raised the price of a ticket from $2.75 to $3.00!)

When The Empire Strikes Back opened (again, at the Cine Capri) three years later, I wasn’t about to be caught with my pants down as I had been with its predecessor. I was in line opening night, rushing over immediately after work to join the crowd of other fans in line wanting to get their first glimpse at that galaxy far, far away.

I didn’t see Empire nearly as many times as Star Wars. Thinking back, it was probably only a dozen or so, but it wasn’t because I didn’t like the film. Quite the contrary, I loved how the story was progressing.

Three years later, I was now living in Tucson so I didn’t get to see Return of the Jedi at my preferred venue in Phoenix, but I was still there opening day. Anticipating more huge lines, I called out sick that morning and dragged my friend Lee along (who, by the way, found it appalling that I would play hookie for a movie). As it turned out, there was a line, but nowhere near as long as what I’d been expecting, and we were actually able to get into the first showing without any difficulty.

My reaction? Meh. Jedi was okay, but I overall I came away from it disappointed. Even then I thought it was the weakest of the three films. And the Ewoks were abominable. I should’ve seen the writing on the wall that Lucas had become more concerned with merchandising than actually telling a good story. Yes, it wrapped up the Skywalker-Vader saga and the rebels scored a significant victory against the Empire, but what next?

What came next—at least for me personally—was a relocation to San Francisco. When the tenth anniversary of the first film came around in 1987, one of the theaters in the North Bay threw a party and showed all three films at one sitting. I went because there were rumors that stars from the films would be in attendance, and even ten years later I still had a tremendous crush on Mark Hamill. Sadly, those rumors proved false, but it was still interesting to see all three films at one time, and while I didn’t leave with a Hamill autograph, I did walk away from the experience with a cool Tenth Anniversary sweatshirt.

Sidebar: I actually did run into Mr. Hamill—and his wife and son—on the F-Line in San Francisco many years later. We locked eyes, and I nodded as if to say, “I know who you are but I will respect your privacy and leave you alone,” and exchanged smiles. It was kind of an anti-climactic encounter considering I’d known since he first appeared on that screen in 1977 that eventually our paths would cross.

Flash forward to May 1999 and what I now refer to as “George Lucas’s ass-raping of my young adulthood” or as the rest of the world calls it, “The arrival of the Star Wars prequels.”

I’m not going to say much about these three films (or Lucas’s tinkering and reissue of the original trilogy) since so many words have been spilled over the last decade regarding the casting, acting, directing, make-your-eyes-bleed use of CGI, and all that midichlorian nonsense, but I will say they soured me to the idea of ever seeing another new Star Wars film lest the few remaining vestiges of my wide-eyed youth get ground into a bloody pulp.

That being said, I am curious about Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Curious. Not champing-at-the-bit I-can’t-wait-to-see it level of excitement as might’ve been the case if Episodes 1-3 had never happened, but curious. I haven’t kept up with any of the Star Wars spin-off stories, books, or animated series; I have no idea who any of these new characters are, but with only minimal Lucas involvement and J.J. Abrams at the helm—and the use of practical effects vs. CGI—I’m at least a little hopeful that it won’t be the giant steaming pile of Banta poodoo that the Prequels were.

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Reshaping Phoenix

I’ve often remarked—half jokingly—how my dad’s tenure at Hallcraft Homes in the 1970s reshaped the look of  mass-produced residential architecture in Phoenix. Driving around town this afternoon, I realize I’m probably not far off the mark for saying that. You can’t go fifteen minutes in any direction without running into a house, townhouse or fourplex that my dad designed. But while driving around, I’m also reminded of the other builders who left their own unique mark on the Valley: John F. Long and Cavalier Homes are two that come to mind.

In my memory, it always seemed to be a bit of an arms race between the big builders at that time. Every year there’d be a slew of new floor plans (or at least new exteriors), with everyone “borrowing” design clues from everyone else; some more successfully than others.

I recall how as a family we used to tour the competition under the pretense of simply being potential homebuyers, and even then I remember remarking (sometimes to the point where I had to be shushed by my folks (because the model homes often did conceal hidden microphones) about how so-and-so blatantly ripped off one of Hallcraft’s design ideas from the previous year.

I wasn’t totally biased however. When dad’s designs stumbled I wasn’t afraid to say so. His response? “They put food on your table.” While he was the lead and chief architect, there were other designers in the mix, and I could tell without asking whether something was dad’s design or one of the juniors’.  Perhaps not surprisingly, while they weren’t as good as what my dad did, I didn’t find their designs nearly as terrible as he did.

At one point I had a 3-ring binder that contained floor plans of everything Hallcraft built in the 1970s. (I seem to remember giving it to my dad for safekeeping in the 80s when we both lived in California and it was only many years later when I asked for its return that I learned he’d thrown it out before moving back to Arizona, thinking I no longer wanted it.) I now have only a few sheets remaining that were duplicates of what was in the notebooks, but they don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what was lost and after scanning and posting to a website would’ve made an excellent online resource for the new generations buying these homes now.

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Autumn Finally Arrives

I am cautiously optimistic that we are finally done with the triple-digit temperatures for the year. Just as I remember the change of seasons in Phoenix from all my past years here, it was as if someone flipped a switch the other day and it was suddenly autumn. There’s a change in the air; a change in the light. While we’re not out of air conditioning season completely yet (another few weeks, if memory serves), it’s positively chilly in the mornings when I take the dogs out, and as I sit at the coffee house writing this tonight, they have the big rolling door up, letting in the glorious cool evening breeze.

And the mosquitos also seem to have departed. Even better, because I’ve grown very weary of being a walking buffet table.

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El Capitan

My review, if anyone cares…

I got smart this time around. While I still had access to Apple’s Beta program, I didn’t actually install El Capitan as my main OS until the Gold Master had been released and all of the major bugs had been squashed. I’d jumped the gun a year ago with Yosemite and lived to regret it. (Yeah, yeah, I know…never install a beta OS on your main system, but not all of us have multiple pieces of hardware to play with.)

In addition, I didn’t feel the need to rush to El Capitan. There were no new features or design refinements that I felt were worth the hassle of upgrading.

That being said, there were still a few small issues when I did upgrade. Four applications I use weren’t fully compatible. Thankfully, those four (Fantastical 2, CleanMyMac 3, iStat, and cDock) had betas of their own while El Cap was in the testing phase, and for the most part they all worked without a problem. When the final release was available, so were the final upgrades for these apps.

Even after the upgrade to the final release, cDock (a great little app that lets you completely alter the appearance of the dock including returning the look to previous OS versions as well as making it completely transparent) was still a bit of a stickler to get working. It involved disabling the new SIP feature in El Cap, running the app, and then re-enabling SIP. Just this morning it auto-updated to Version 2.0 and it’s a huge improvement over Version 1.0, adding several new options and themes. (I don’t know if it still requires disabling SIP to get it running or not since it was an upgrade.)

Much like with iOS 9, I don’t actually use most of the new features in El Capitan. I came to the realization recently that despite my delusions to the contrary, I’m really not a “power user.” As long as basic functions work, I’m happy. At work, in the Windows world, I require dual screens. On my Mac at home, not so much. I’ve never even used Spaces, so Split Screen (having two applications running full screen on one display simultaneously—one of the bigger features of El Capitan) isn’t something I ever foresee myself needing.

The new incarnation of Spotlight is much more useful to me than it had been previously; I actually find myself using it now. But being able to move it around on screen? Again, not a big deal.

The improvements to Mail, like swipe-to-delete, are welcome, but again—not earth shattering. With Mail, I’m just glad nothing was broken.

Notes is now a content catch-all, allowing almost any type of data to be saved. You can save documents, web links, photos, map locations, PDFs, and videos with a simple drag and drop. I’ve already found this incredibly useful.

I don’t use Photos.

I love San Francisco, the new system font.

But more than all this, the most noticeable change in OS X has been the increase in speed and that alone is definitely be worth the upgrade if you’re a Mac user and haven’t taken the plunge yet.

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