Long-Term Memory

I'm reading this article by Nell Scovell.

One frequent excuse you hear from late-night-TV executives is that “women just don’t apply for these jobs.” And they certainly don’t in the same numbers as men. But that’s partly because the shows often rely on current (white male) writers to recommend their funny (white male) friends to be future (white male) writers. Targeted outreach to talented bloggers, improv performers, and stand-ups would help widen the field of applicants.

I've never worked in TV writing nor comedy.  So why am I nodding in cynical agreement?

Ah!  It needs some mild rewriting:

One frequent excuse you hear from technology company executives is that “women just don’t apply for these jobs.” And they certainly don’t in the same numbers as men. But that’s partly because the projects often rely on current (white male) programmers to recommend their funny (white male) friends to be future (white male) programmers. Targeted outreach to talented bloggers, tech conference attendees, and niche discussion groups would help widen the field of applicants.

Spent the weekend in Southern California.  I'll be happy to not be in a car for a while; what a tedious lifestyle that must be, driving everywhere.   I wondered how the fad for "green" plays down there, then had my question answered, unexpectedly, at a carwash in Studio City.

Inside the faded 1970s building was a set of gumball machines to keep children preoccupied during the surprisingly lengthy polishing session that follows a car's encounter with the rotating brushes and soap nozzles.  There were the usual brightly colored, most likely stale, candies, the sheets of temporary tattoos, little plastic toys encased in clear bubbles--these offerings really haven't changed for the last fifty years.   Some of the items showed the influence of more recent culture--there were glitter stickers with all that "princess" imagery and pink coloration which seem mandatory for little girls to obtain nowadays.  And then there were others extolling "Green!" in puffy letters, accompanied by a bug-eyed, blobby cartoon character smiling and cajoling:

"Go green!"
"Green is good"
"Stop polluting!"

"Green" gumball machine stickers

But there were no further calls to action, nothing about convincing Mom to walk you to school, or Dad to take the carpool. 

Still, it's intriguing that kids would want to be "green," or that sticker manufacturers think that's what kids want.  It's a lot like those items with peace signs or "Love" slogans which seemed ubiquitous in the late Sixties-early Seventies.  I remember those things vaguely--they were usually inexpensive, plastic trinkets, expressing this seemingly profound sentiment for the brief period of the product's lifespan.  And these same gumball machines at the frayed carwash in Studio City, California, probably sold them just as cynically, to just as little permanent effect.

Plus ça change.

A late night this last one--went to see a double feature at PFA.  It was crowded in Berkeley; first home football game of the season.  A teeming crowd of fans walking up the hill to the stadium, and every parking lot charging $30.  We somehow, magically, weirdly, discovered our own parking spot on Milvia, next to a section of road in front of Berkeley High School. 

The street was blocked off for the convenience of a dozen or more tow trucks, the drivers waiting in RVs or watching DVDs on their laptops.  Well, not all the drivers:  there was one SUV already snagged, waiting to be hauled off.  The scene was surprisingly festive.  The drivers visited with each other; they seemed to be having more fun than the mob at the game, really. 

I still don't understand the appeal of college football, so I was amazed at how many people, of all different types and ages, were trudging up that hill to the game.  Maybe it's so popular because, unlike professional football, the players have some real commonality with the people watching.  I'm thinking that the passion fans express for their favorite teams and players is a lot like my teenage crushes on musicians, but, unlike that, an acceptable emotion for adult, heterosexual men. 

Yeah, that must be it:  with sports fandom adult men get to indulge a focused, obsessive concern for rosters, injuries, personnel changes, and statistics the same way I used to seek back issues of fanzines for those snarky one-page interviews with Blixa Bargeld and the like--and nobody else but other fans will understand the fascination.

Now concluded with this year's silent film festival; now must bring myself to the slick, nonsensual aspects of the twenty-first century.  So much in the backgrounds of silent films are worth looking at--what did that world sound like?  Smell like? How many streets were unpaved, cigars smoked indoors, typewriter keys struck, teeth unbrushed? 

What did it feel like to the hand?  How many mohair-upholstered chairs, how many fine woolen suit jackets and crepe de chine dresses?  How much charmeuse, art silk, starched linen, celluloid?

The sound of a slammed door from solid oak--not particle board; the foyer smells of oil soap.  The sounds of creaking wooden stairs, the ice man's or greengrocer's or ragman's horse, a backfiring automobile, the chickens in the yard next door.  Twenty-watt incandescent bulbs or even gaslights overhead.

How it felt to be in their shoes:  walk from the trolley, straight to the subway-tiled bathroom for a corn plaster.  Walk downtown, to its sidewalks, its busy little shops, banks where men still affect spats and tails for daytime business dress, its ashcans, its crossroads moderated by policemen, and, everywhere, Fords, all of them the same. 

A day in the country easily obtained with a train ticket and wicker picnic basket.  Women know how to prepare picnic shoulders, yeast biscuits.  The feel of wax paper, the crinkle sound of it.

A landscape without plastic, Styrofoam, Neoprene.  Few things molded; more things, wrought.  Handiwork in abundance:  your can of hand-packed sardines, your hand-knit scarf, your  mail hand-delivered, its contents hand-written. 

The modern in such obvious juxtaposition--the mystery of radio, of anything powered without wires.  The mystery of pneumatic tubes, escalators.  A world of hidden entries, ways to cheat the doorman:  dumbwaiters, back stairs, cellars, garbage chutes. 

Hot summers with just the metal blades of a fan to relieve the heat, or the joy of a creekside swimming place.  The liberty to nap in a hammock.  The freedom from office worries when off the premises.  Loosen the tie, expose the darned socks, ease.  Wake to the closing credits.

Silent film festival today.  This will be a test of stamina.  The weather is foggy now but will be brilliant later, just when we get out of Bardelys the Magnificent.  And there will be the usual game with the Castro Theatre--whether the balcony is open, though of course the showings sell out and you'll need it.  Dammit, just open the balcony.  

And there will be the usual smell of popcorn, a faint aroma of cleaning solvent, the sound of the toilet stall doors slamming, the glimpses of the story slides and the sound of the background music before the show, the undying anxiety that somebody tall or wearing a huge hat will sit in front of me and that somebody talky will sit behind me, the watching the crowd arrive:  the newbies astounded that the only seats are down in front.  The festival geeks wearing their t-shirts from Cinecon, the loudmouths soliloquizing to would-be dates.  

Down front, stage right, the big cheeses in the little world of silent film.  The Hillsborough-looking people who may sit in the enviable reserved seating for generous donors and schmooze with the guests of honor--these, ambassadors from think tanks, the French consul, the Japanese consul, sometimes a deputy, never a starlet or industrialist or pop singer.  The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, something of a zoo of specimens from obscure bureaucracies, and scions of families related to the films we're about to see.  Stories about having Harold Lloyd as your grandpa or John Gilbert as your dad.

These wretchedly uncomfortable seats at the Castro.  All these crowds.  That line for the bathroom.  All those people who talk through the movies.  The tedium of lining up out front.  What if one of these elements were missing?  I think I'd wax nostalgic for it.  Sometimes comfort is the removal of the noticeable. 

So today was my first visit to the track workout.  I was charmed, though keeping to the set pace for miles of rubberized laps was challenging.  I expect my arms will be floppy and sore tomorrow

There was something so ingratiating about running on a track again.  Until now I hadn't realized how much time in my adolescence I spent either on tracks or in gymnastics rooms--the smells of Ben-Gay or bar chalks are my madeleines.  Would I have as much subconscious memory if handed a clarinet?  I glanced at a Russian textbook the other day:  I can still sound out the words, still can understand some (but oh!  The instrumental case!  The verbs of motion!  And the difference between klast' and polozhit'!  Dim memories if any; it will require CIA interrogation to recall more).

Winning the 60-yard dash, 1978

But the track--the track held muscle memory for me.  I liked the sound of the track, of the other runners, the coach's whistles.  I even liked the late afternoon sun blinding us.  I could be ten, fourteen, or seventeen years old, and these things would be the same things, and all the things I've disliked about the passing years would be reversed--there is no linear time, but rounded, only this oval I run, turning into itself, the ourobouros.

So today's when analog broadcasting ends in the United States.   We've heard this before; the event has been postponed, like, what, three times?  Wasn't this dread occasion supposed to happen a year ago or something?  Anyway, what happens is that if you don't have cable TV, a newish television which can receive digital broadcasts, or an add-on converter for your oldish television, you cannot watch broadcast television anymore.  To which my household has responded, "So what?"

This is our television.  It is from about 1988.  It works fine when we use it, which is about three times a month, to watch DVDs.

Our television, pre-transition

Our television, post-transition

See the immense change this momentous transition has brought to our lives?  Probably not, because it's not there.  Despite the obvious sop the transition is to the cable companies and electronics manufacturers, they haven't acquired new customers in us.   We're too satisfied with our vintage TV to change, and too dissatisfied with most television programming to change.  Meanwhile, we keep the idiot box unplugged when we're not using it, which is most of the time.  So much for its potential to "transform [our] television viewing experience."

I've been thinking of this more and more. There are many things I enjoy about living here, but the weather isn't among them--today I couldn't stand the fog for yet another unchanging expanse of twenty-four gray hours. So I jumped on BART to go east, over the hills where the fog usually doesn't reach.

You know you've hit your limit when the bland but sunny sprawl of Walnut Creek, Calif. becomes your summer vacation getaway.

But on the way there were nice reminders of what I do like about living here. In the BART station was this McDonald's ad endeavoring to teach me Tagalog (I think) one high-calorie, sugary drink at a time. Nearby a Rasta-looking man exploited the resonance of the station to sing a medieval-sounding chant in--what? Hebrew? Amharic?--to his son, a rapt four-year-old.

The train arrived, we boarded. In half an hour I will be in sunlight.

Leaving Oakland

Three signs for Soda Hall, UCB. I sense a design flaw.

This isn't the help desk