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I just finished reading an outstanding narrative called “Sea Change,” by Peter Nichols.  Mr. Nichols, recently divorced, broke, and wanting his “great adventure,” aimed to sail his 26-foot single-masted vessel (on which he had shared many an adventure with his wife) from England to Maine, where he would sell it/start over/find himself.  The book was extremely well written and Mr. Nichols clearly has a writer’s voice and a way with spinning a tale.  How the story ends, I shall not reveal, at least, not at this exact moment.

If I didn’t make this clear, Nichols sailed ALONE!  With only his radio and the great wide open sea to keep him company, he slept for only 15 minutes at a time for a month.  Why 15 minutes, you might ask?  A good watch captain must constantly sight his bearings out at sea to make sure that no other vessels might theoretically collide in the dark.  Because Nichols’ vessel was so small, it may not even appear on a larger vessel’s radar, especially in high seas.  And while the statistical probability of hitting another boat on the open sea is extremely small, nonetheless, without another sailor to keep watch, the captain must, of necessity, look out for himself.  It’s the ultimate adventure, and the ultimate responsibility.  Devoid of the superficial pressures of society, this voyage was (and I’m paraphrasing the author here) stripped down to a daily struggle to survive.  No pretense, no room for modesty, all of his effort, his will, and his reserve of knowledge and skill were put into getting his small boat across the Atlantic. 

With no help…NO HELP!

Which brought me to an interesting part of the book.  Because I am an amateur sailor myself, I found the subject matter of particular note.  However, I have never captained a boat on my own.  Somewhat out of respect of my own ineptitude and, more or less, I must admit, out of a fear or what might happen.  Nichols said that he had constant waking nightmares of falling overboard and watching Toad sail off without him, but this fear was, in his words, “his best weapon” against falling overboard.  “A healthy fear” kept Nichols aboard Toad. 

Anything…anything is possible at sea.  There’s little room for error and even less for correction.  I have sailed my friend Bob’s 26-foot vessel Assigned Risk twice to Catalina.  Both times, something has gone wrong.  Both times, we had problems with our engines.  Both times, the wind died.  One of the most tense moments occurred on the return trip from Cat Harbor on the second day of a voyage.  Our engine was dead and my shipmate Beau and I had only the wind to help us round the backside of the island and get us on a trajectory back towards Marina Del Rey.  However, because of the way the wind blows, there is little breeze on the backside of the island, and without our engine, Assigned Risk fought valiantly but futilely to make it around the west end of Catalina.  Our radio was broken and no cell phone reception was possible and the wind seemed to be blowing us in directly towards the rocks.  Beau freaked out and had to go below to calm himself and take a nap.  A decision was made…we simply could not make it around the west end on wind power alone AND THEN sail the 28 more miles back to MDR by sundown after rounding the west end (did I mention that we also had NO lights), so we came about and headed back towards Cat Harbor.  With Beau temporarily out of commission, I was on my own.  Fighting the instinctive urge to panic and the desire to scream or give up, I righted Assigned Risk and aimed her nose back towards the harbor we had left four hours earlier.  The wind was with us this time and through a combination of instinct and calm skill, Beau woke up to the sight of me deftly guiding Assigned Risk back into Cat Harbor.  Safe again.  Exhausted, frustrated, and with crew morale low and a boat that didn’t work properly, the next day we paid $1200 (no, that’s NOT a typo) for a tow back to the mainland.  But that’s another story. 

All things considered, Beau and I were lucky to have been close enough to civilization to avoid disaster.  And furthermore, the distance between Marina Del Rey and Santa Catalina Island is a scant 30 nautical miles.  To put this in perspective, what Peter Nichols was aiming to do was to travel a distance across open ocean roughly the equivalent of the ONE HUNDRED TIMES the distance between MDR and Catalina.  His VHF radio was only powerful enough to reach the horizon.  Thus, unless a boat was within one degree of earth (because of the earth’s curvature, a VHS signal can only reach so far), he was on his own, out of luck should something go terribly amiss. 

A healthy fear…

I am currently up for a job working at McGraw-Hill.  Truth be told, it’s a job similar to the very first job I had out of college.  More truth be told, it’s pretty much THE SAME job but with a major pay increase, health benefits, etc.  My previous experience working for the company was at the office in Monrovia for two years as a temp and I eventually quit (but that is, yet again, another story).  Flash forward to a week ago.  Since leave McG voluntarily four years ago, I’ve kept in touch with my former coworkers.  One of these, Bill, has been a confidant, friend, and all-around tech support for years now.  He’s given me more free computer parts, free lunches, and all-around help than I care to admit, and I am greatly in his debt for all time.  Last week, Bill and I went for lunch (on his dime) and somehow, the subject of 9/11 came up.  Bill told me that in the wake of the tragedy, McGraw-Hill, which is headquartered in New York City, spent MILLIONS of dollars on creating a plan for continuity of operation should another terrorist strike occur.  Millions of dollars!  Continuity of operation?  I mean, hello, we’re talking about the people who published our grade school textbooks, not the CIA! 

While I’m not one to tell other people or corporations how to spend their money, but this notion that they thought they were so incredibly important as to warrant a continuity of operation plan in case of terrorist attack struck me as being rather arrogant.  And let’s get real…unless we’re talking about government operations, health care, the military, energy, chemicals, or transportation…you really REALLY don’t need a terrorist strike plan.  The United States will get along just fine if Engineering News Record isn’t published for a few weeks if your offices get blown up. 

I think I remember now, the New York Times published an intercepted intelligence memo in October 2001.  I think it looked something like this:

Osama’s Secret Hit List

1)      World Trade Center

2)      The Pentagon

3)      McGraw-Hill

4)      The White House

5)      Paulie Shore’s house

I think this fearful arrogance is part of a widespread cultural disease we have in this country.  A little fear IS good for you for to live without fear is pretty much you asking to fall into an open manhole a la Wile E. Coyote.  But, c’mon, 95% of all businesses in this country, in ANY country throughout the world, we can live without for a few days or weeks if Al Qaeda comes a ‘knockin on Heaven’s door.  And honestly…they WON’T come knocking.  They don’t care about you.  They have bigger jihad fish to fry.

Drawing a parallel to “Sea Change,” Nichols talks about what would happen if he fell off Toad.  Would he pray and ask for help?  No, because earth, heaven, and the universe would simply be unconcerned.  As unconcerned, he said, as with a fly on the sidewalk.  That’s how small we are…and why, I think, we conflate our expectations of being a “target” in order to perhaps seem more important than we really are, at least in our own minds.  I.e., I wish we would play this terrorism game more smartly.  It’ll save time, energy, and, in the end, life if we diverted money away from protecting Jerry’s Bait Shop into smarter screening at the airports. 

Speaking of which, I just yesterday came back from visiting my family in Tucson (that’s a whole other blog entry).  At LAX on Monday morning, as I was passing through the security checkpoint, I did the usual: took off my shoes, pulled the gold fillings out of my teeth, etc.  My backpack goes through and the TSA screener looks at me and asks, “Are you in the military?”  Strange question.  “No, ma’am,” I reply.  She calls over one of her associates and together, they seem rather interested in the pretty X-ray picture my backpack is making on the screen.  After literally spending two minutes discussing over the picture (leading to some grumblings in the line behind me), the conveyor belt moves on and the rest of my personal effects go on through.  I go through, where I am met by a third TSA representative who asks if he can check through my bag.  Having nothing to hide, and feeling no sense of entitlement at having a European last name and complexion, I oblige. 

The screener takes my bag and places it on a nearby grey metal table while I put my shoes back on and put the gold fillings back in my mouth.  The screener compliments me on my shirt, which says, “Eric: The Man, the Myth, the Legend,” which my dear friend Gretchen gave me for Christmas.  I love that shirt…it forces people to compliment me without my having to do anything otherwise praiseworthy.

 

The screener’s gone through all the bag’s pockets by now, pulling out my digital camera and a few other innocuous personal effects.  I’m bored and now somewhat annoyed as he starts a second go round of the entire bag. 

Yawn…

Finally, he produces a miniature flashlight that I got as a freebie at one of Altadena’s free summertime concerts.  It says, “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department: A Tradition of Service” next to their logo.  Not exactly the kind of device I’d probably elect to smuggle a miniature explosive in, but whatever.  He tries the flashlight and sees that it’s actually a working flashlight.  Natch.  He then calls a fourth TSA person over, who looks over the flashlight as well.  Now I’m really annoyed. 

And then…Screener Number One digs back into my bag…and pulls out a small pack of razor blades.  Oh shit!  This is the same bag I use when I go hiking, and I carry razor blades with me for any number of reasons and situations that might necessitate a sharp edge alone in the wilderness.  He holds up the razor packet, and by now, the razors, having been stored in my bathroom for some time before being pressed into hiking service, are dirty and rusted, probably not even sharp enough anymore to even cut through butter.  “You can’t take these on the plane, sir,” he says.  I fumble, quickly offering up that I use this bag for hiking and forgot that they were in there. 

Sure…forgot!

He tells Screener Number Two that this was the other questionable item.  He tries my flashlight AGAIN and then takes my razor blades and throws them away.  I’m now free to go and was on my way to Tucson…where the REAL fun would begin. 

But now here’s the scary/interesting part.  This is the same backpack that I not only hike, but which I carry with me on any airplane I embark upon.  Those razors have, in fact, been in that bag for well over a year, which means that they’ve managed to get by at least SIX different TSA screenings.  And nevermind that the TSA failed to confiscate the not less than four matchbooks I had in my bag that I might have used to light my shoe on fire or something. Thank God I’m only me, a down-on-his-luck unemployed writer and not John Albert Queda, but it just left me to wonder…if this got in under the radar, as many times as it did…what else has gotten through on the millions and millions of other passengers who fly on a daily basis?

You may now shit your pants. 

 

For my first blog entry today, I decided to write about this crazy "Holy Week" into which I was unceremoniously dumped this AM. 

For starters, I agreed today to visit my relatives in Tucson next week for two days…OK, truth be told, my mother asked if I wanted to visit (translation, she’ll pay for my airfare), so I said sure.  But here - to quote my good friend Chris Kueberth - is the thing.  My aunt, under mysterious/murky/to this day non-fully disclosed details underwent surgery a few years ago to correct a problem with a nerve in her back.  She was told she’d be out of work for three days…and was on her back for three months.  She recovered, went back to work, and then her condition deteriorated again.  She’s been in and out of hospitals and doctors’ offices for years now and no doctor can tell her definitively what is wrong with her and no attorney in Arizona will touch it.  Meanwhile, she cannot work, cannot do anything for herself, and is understandably depressed and without much hope.  Fortunately, she and my Uncle Jack are fairly well-to-do, but still, it’s hard to watch a close relative (she’s my godmother, for heaven’s sake) undergo such a continous ordeal without a seeming end in sight.

Not lighthearted material, to be sure.  But family is family…crazy, impossible, and the cure for anyone seeking a respite from a stress-free existence.  Now the brief story of my Aunt Sharon’s son, Jackson, and his wife, Dianne.  In brief, Jackson has three children by a previous union with a woman we’ll call "Lorrie."  Two were his biological children and the other was Lorrie’s.  Later on, Jackson met and married his wife, Dianne, who had five children of her own already.  Quite a brood, and a buttload of new cousins.  To give you just an idea of how their relationship works…he owns a bar (used to own three) and they got married at the Excaliber in Las Vegas by a guy dressed up like Merlin.  I almost laughed when he said, "By the power of Greyskull vested in me by King Arthur and the State of Nevada…" (I’m paraphrasing here) but restrained myself because it’s just as legal a union as given by a priest, a rabbi, or the mayor down at City Hall.  I hear you can get married by Elvis too, but I’ve never seen it with my own eyes.  I’ve heard a lot in recent years, mostly from the religious right (being a centrist myself, pretty much anyone on the extremes of the left or the right usually has me reaching for the "lick my balls" button impusively) that marriage is "under attack" like it’s some kind of outpost on the fourth moon of Cylon 5 being invaded by aliens with two heads and ray guns.  This is mostly in response to those in Congress seeking to legalize gay marriage or those dipshit reality shows where people meet their new spouses on the air for the first time.  All this, many claim, is making a mockery out of the great, long treasured institution of marriage.  But let me tell you, after having seen Merlin confer wedding vows - let alone the statistics of 1 in 2 marriages ending in divorce (not to mention most of the other 50% who are miserable but still stay together), the fact that marriage was founded as a means of conferring propety legally down the generations, and that I’ve been involved in the middle of a marriage imbroglio myself (which is a story for another time) - I can assure you, the "sacrament" of marriage needs no help being made a mockery of.  It’s doing fine on its own without reality TV, gay marriage amendments, me, or Darva Conger, trust me.

For those of you who have never met my cousin Jackson…to give you an idea of what kind of person he is, I offer up an "episode" in the long run of the Jackson Show:

Episode 1 - The Funeral Menace

At my maternal grandfather’s funeral in October 2004, the wake was held at a funeral home in Wood Dale, Illinois, a mile away from where my grandparents had lived their entire lives.  To "celebrate" this occassion, Jackson and his buddies bought about three 24-packs of beer to drink at the wake.  Being young, unemployed, and a writer (translation, looking for a free beer), my brother and I partook in the beers in the parking lot.  The afternoon continued and after each bottle was emptied, it was tossed through the air and smashed to the concrete.  That’s a lot of broken glass…and I’m embarrassed to admit that I myself tossed a few of them into the pile, if for no other reason than the irrepressible urge of feeding my incredibly unreasonable but ever-strong desire, since childhood, to "belong" and be one of the "cool kids"  ever since being an outcast and  one who marched to the beat of a different drummer.  That drummer had no name, but I’ll call him Vincent.  No reason.  But there I was, then 26, still unable to shake off that fundamental desire to belong, to bend my own personal ideals and values in the name of being accepted by the group.  I guess you could say I never passed out of adolescence…as further evidence for that notion, I offer up the fact that at 27, I’m in my first "real" relationship that has lasted now for one full year.  My previous record was two months and before that, three weeks. 

Now here’s the funny part.  The good folks who ran the funeral home were none too happy that 12 healthy, adult males had essentially turned their parking lot into an impromptu recycling center.  In response, this funeral home, no joke, essentially "banned" my family from ever giving them business again.  Now, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that the business of death, which is always thriving, has to endure a good amount of ugliness in the course of preparing the deceased for their final places of rest and I’m guessing that your average undertaker has a pretty thick skin about him.  To effectively ban someone from ever paying them thousands of dollars to prepare a loved one for burial seems to  boggle the mind, but WE DID IT!  My family has been banned from the Geils Funeral Home in Wood Dale, IL.  That’s the kind of extended family I belong to. 

And I’ll make no bones about this…I come from a long line of alcoholics.  Almost everyone on my mother’s side is or was an alcoholic (a common cure for it being death).  My cousin owns a bar, my grandfather would often get drunk and go to sleep, and I can’ hardly ever remember a joyous occassion at my childhood home when my mom wasn’t putting back a drink or six.  That’s part of who I am, like it or not.  But I have to say that I’ve never purposely encouraged such antisocial activity that would effectively ban me from a funeral home.  A funeral home, for shit’s sake!

Anyways, so Dianne, Jackon’s wife, calls me on Sunday, wondering if I’m mad at her because I haven’t A) visited Tucson in two years and B) haven’t spoken with her on the phone recently.  I assure you, no, I still like her and we’re still buds, but what’s up?  Well, apparently, Jackson is effectively barring her from visiting with my aunt in the hospital, or at the house, or keeping in touch with his family.  Strange, yes, but for my cousin…almost par for the course.  So she was worried that my mother and I were effectively mad at her and were cutting her off.  Not true, and to address that point, I pointed out to her that my mother’s visits to Tucson of late have been busy with caring for my aunt, leaving little time for socializing.  On one of her last visits, Mom literally went directly from Tucson Airport to the hospital, slept there for two days, and flew out again.  By contrast, my life seems to leave little time for anything BUT socializing.  I guess I can hardly complain. I waste money I don’t have like it’s water, making some swarmy executives in some oak-panelled suites in a bank in Wilmington, Delaware very happy.  It’s the American way…buy now, NEVER pay.  God Bless America!

Now, what Dianne told me is that my cousin Jackson is on some diet pills that are basically making him lose his mind, which, for my cousin, is really saying something.  He’ll disappear for days on end, threaten her with divorce, and basically be more "Jackson-like."  So now, between an aunt who’s essentially on her back, an already crazy cousin now going even crazier on diet pills, and a cousin-in-law going crazy dealing with a mother-in-law whose on her back whom she can’t even visit and a husband who’s going crazy on diet pills…I think I have a fun visit ahead of me next week.

Some other random thoughts…

I got laid off from my job as a copy editor back in January.  Something about them preferring to keep the company afloat rather than pay my salary, but whatever.  So I’ve been on unemployment for a few weeks now, but the sad part is that I worked on a movie with Rachel Hunter (aka "Stacy’s Mom" from the video of the same name) enough days that I have, as of yet, not seen a cent from unemployment.  Of course, being the good citizen I am, I reported my earnings in order to keep my claim open.  But when my report came back last week, it listed my last FULL TIME employer, i.e. the publishing company, as my last employer.  So today, I had to call up to "correct" this information.  I’ve had some rather bad luck with the unemployment people in the past, but I was pleasantly surprised by the operator I spoke to, who was polite, friendly, and courteous.  But I found it incredibly ironic, almost funny even, that I was calling them up to correct them.  Here’s a snippet of how that conversation went:

Me: Hi, you listed my last employer as my last full-time employer, but I worked on a movie and have been laid off again, so my LAST employer was this payroll company.

EDD Employee: I’m sorry, sir.  Let’s see if we can change that for you. 

Me: Yes, please do.  I wouldn’t want to not be earning my 10 cents a day that I’ve paid into with my tax dollars. 

So, long story short, the government now has the correct info on my last employer as well as my LAST full-time employer.  It seems odd and weird for them not to be one and the same, but there you go.  Publishing and moviemaking and poverty, all rolled into one glorious package. 

I slept extremely poorly Saturday night, which was my girlfriend’s birthday (coincidence, I assure you).  For whatever reason, I seem to be perpetually cursed with some strange biological malady in which I’m either unable to sleep for any length or time or sleep for 12 hours at a time and still feel tired.  I joke with people by saying that it’s God and my mother’s secret conspiracy to get back at me for keeping her up all those nights when I was kid screaming in my crib or not eating my dinner.  Yet for someone who can’t sleep, I have to say that my natural impulse (AFTER I’ve awoken successfully), is to GO GO GO…I often tell people that my corpse will continue running for 10 minutes after I die. 

So let’s recap what we’ve learned and see if we can’t see into the magic crystal ball of the future to predict where I might end up in a few weeks/months/years of time.  Judging by the kind of relatives I have, the fact that I’ve spent more than a full YEAR’s worth of time unemployed since graduating college, and if there’s any truth to genetic predisposition, I’d say it’s likely that I’ll wind up addicted to diet pills, immobilized, out of work, broke, and a bonified alcoholic banned from every funeral home in Illinois before my inevitable date with the Reaper. 

Stay tuned.