TOP TEN THINGS THAT I AM THANKFUL FOR THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, ’05 EDITION

10. The many wonderful people whom I have had the privilege of calling my friends.

9. Free turkey dinners, served to me in the homes of the many wonderful people whom I have had the privilege of calling my friends.

8. Leftovers from the free turkey dinners served in the homes of many wonderful people whom I have had the privilege of calling my friends, which I could not eat in-person due to previous engagements wherein I ate turkey dinners served in the homes of many wonderful people whom I have had the privilege of calling my friends.

7. Limeade.

6. That DC Comics’ “Infinite Crisis” is only five months away from being over. Seriously. So now the Silver Age Superman wants to destroy our universe. How refreshing, a superhero turned super-villain! DC hasn’t done that since, um, Hal Jordan, just a few years ago! Recently, the Avengers’ Scarlet Witch obliterated most of her colleagues. Now, evidently, it’s the Man of Steel’s turn to go nuts. Granted, the Silver Age Superman isn’t our universe’s Superman (He landed on Earth prior to World War II, meaning Cary Grant, not Christopher Reeve, played him in the movies). But this does not disguise the point that yet another long-existing hero is being made evil in order to add zest to a major comic book company ‘event.’ Has the idea well dried out to the extent that neither Marvel or DC can conceive of an interesting story which doesn’t fall back on the “heroes-gone-bad” trend? It was already getting old during the nineties!

5. Leftovers from the turkey dinner served by my family.

4. “The Free Press,” which consistently pushes me to be the best I can be, even when I would rather not.

3. My girlfriend K., who consistently pushes me to be the best I can be, even when I would rather not (K. actually falls under the category of “The many wonderful people whom I have had the privilege of calling my friends,” since she’s a best pal. She has also served me free turkey dinners, left over from when they had been served in the homes of the many wonderful people whom I have had the privilege of calling my friends. I’m mentioning her again, anyway).

2. Terrific movies like Ridley Scott’s "The Duellists," Tsai Ming-liang’s "Good bye, Dragon Inn," and Tsui Hark’s "The Chinese Feast." You can find reviews of all of them at my other blog.

1. Finally, did I mention the free turkey dinners?

WORKING HARD? HARDLY WORKING

My current job has its share of cons.

I work for a psychiatrist, an addiction specialist who manages a set of clinics. As a result, he is constantly in and out of the office (Fourteen clinics across the state of Massachusetts yields a lot of frequent driver miles). It's not surprising, in fact, if the doc stays out on the road for an entire day, leaving the management of his main office to yours truly.

But being in the drug treatment business, he has to constantly change the locks on the front door. That's where the cons I mentioned come in. You didn't think I was referring to negative aspects, did you...? No, I meant real criminals. Addicts off the street are always trying to break into the office, even though there are no drugs on the actual premises. Apparently, having a plate beside your door that reads "Drug Treatment and Counseling" misleads people into thinking that we take the addicts' drugs and store them in a cabinet or something. Sure, we do tend to prescribe drugs to get people off other drugs, stuff like Naltrexone and Albium. But I don't know if these substances can get you high. And anyway, the doc doesn't keep that stuff in the office. Maybe addicts are just stupid.

Back to my rant: Since I started this job about a month ago, there have been numerous occasions--at least once a week, in fact--when I have arrived at the front doorstep at nine o'clock in the morning and found myself locked out. This would be okay, if the doc eventually showed up to work. But many times, he has had conferences and appointments in places as far off as Waltham, locations that are an hour away by car. The first time it happened, I actually waited on the patio until 12 pm, when he finally showed up.

However, before you get too outraged, I've never had to squat on the porch 'til noon since that day. Why not? Turns out, after that initial episode, I mentioned what happened to another employee of the clinic, who had endured the same problems with the doc until she politely requested a transfer (which took several months to grant, incidentally). This person told me that if I ever found myself locked out again, to wait only an hour-and-a-half, and if the doc still didn't show up, leave a note, then find something more productive to do with the rest of my day. Also--and this was the really important part, I thought--I could bill the clinic for the entire day.

I accepted the advice with a grain of salt, not expecting such an incident to repeat itself. After all, what responsible clinic chain overseer would throw valuable money away by locking his employees out of the office? But fast-forward just a few days later, and I was enjoying a late-morning nap on my comfy bed, in my warm, toasty apartment. Naturally, both the nap and the toast were being paid for by the Addiction Prevention Clinical Partners of Boston.

So in hindsight, perhaps I have nothing to complain about when it comes to my job. After all, there are worse fates than having to leave work at half past ten, especially if you're being compensated for the entire day. Still, I have found myself locked out of the office so regularly (like I said, at least once a week) that I find myself lacking motivation to even show up on time. Why bother, when there's a good chance my boss won't even be there, and an equal likelihood the deadbolt will have been changed, and I'll be going home at 10:30, anyway?

Clearly, what I need to do in order to increase productivity is find a way to bill the clinic without having to show up to work at all. Then I'd be free to pursue early-morning naps on the weekdays, which I believe constitutes the American dream.

LIVE ‘FREE’ OR DIE TRYING!

I haven’t watched enough movies lately. I borrowed a DVD of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” from the library almost three weeks ago, but never did watch it. Guess I’ll have to check it out again, because it’s due back today. Ah, the weekends, where the fuck did they go?

On the bright side, instead of imbibing the groundbreaking cinematic cross-cutting of Griffith, that dandyish Southern idiot, I watched a few films by the late Tony Richardson. While he was never lauded for directing a silent film that glorified the Ku Klux Klan, Richardson has also been the subject of books written about his life and movies. The films I saw were Look Back In Anger and Tom Jones. Both are recommended, for different reasons.

My current job is no great shakes. I work for a psychiatrist, an addiction specialist who is out in meetings most of the day. Since he’s often not around, I spend a large part of my days surfing the net and answer his sporadically-ringing phone. However, I do get assignments from him, many of which involve creating colorful charts and spreadsheets, which is a lot of fun. Also, I only live about ten minutes away by bus. You’d think that, with less commuting time than in NYC, I’d always get to work on time. But on the contrary, I’m late about as often, and by about as many minutes, as when I lived over an hour away from work in Manhattan. Guess I’m the kind of competitor who barely raises his game to the level of his opponent.

Meanwhile, other events in my life have proven strangely satisfying. I have what I would deem an internship at the Free Press, an independent publication of Boston University. My official title is “Contributing Writer.” Now, I used to write for The Beacon, the official campus paper of Swampwater University. But it’s amazing how much you can forget in just five years about newspaper reporting.

My first assignment for the Free Press involved covering a lecture by revered historian and presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin at the Tsai Performance Center. I remembered the importance of getting lots of accurate quotes. But when I sat down afterward to write up the story, I was too self-conscious, too… intelligent. That was what some of the veteran reporters told me, anyway, as they helped me with some serious eleventh hour rewriting. "Dumb it down" was their mantra. I may have done the actual reporting for the piece, and gotten credit for it the next day, but if not for their helping hands, I probably wouldn’t have made deadline. Guess this means I’ll have to do the same for somebody else someday.

But back to Doris Kearns Goodwin: Her new book, Team of Rivals, explores Lincoln’s gift for making close friends and associates out of men who had been his bitterest enemies. He had uncanny “emotional intelligence,” as Goodwin put it. He forgave fellow Republicans who had thought him a long-legged hick when they were all vying for the party nomination. These men later became his cabinet members, and shed many tears after Lincoln’s assassination.

The picture Goodwin painted of the former President and his closest advisors was surprisingly warm. She spent years writing the book. Personally, I was surprised to learn that Lincoln, who used to regale his fellow Southerners with a wide variety of tales, told a great many bawdy ones. The best featured Ethan Allen, hero of the American Revolution.

When Allen visited England shortly after the war, some smart-ass Englishmen thought they’d play a prank on him. They put a picture of General Washington in his outhouse. After Nature made its inevitable summons, they huddled together, waiting to burst out laughing when Allen emerged from the shed, no doubt enraged. However, to their amazement, when Allen returned from the outhouse, he was the picture of calm.

“Why, Ethan,” one of the Britons said. “Didn’t you notice the picture of George Washington in the outhouse?”

“Yes, I did,” he said.

“And weren’t you offended?” the other said.

“No,” Allen said. He elaborated. “It made perfect sense to me. After all, nothing makes an Englishman shit faster than the sight of General Washington.”

That caused everyone to share a laugh. Then Allen macheted them.

ABOUT LAST WEEKEND III: THE SEARCH FOR SPORT, PART III: THE SEARCH FOR ABOUT LAST WEEKEND III: THE SEARCH FOR SPORT, PART II

As I sit here in Boston early Saturday morning, waiting for K. to arrive, I think back to her visit three weeks ago, and that episode at Twin Donut.

I had just come back from the bathroom, and we were perusing the breakfast menu. K. said something, which somehow, I didn’t catch. Perhaps I had been distracted by the tinkling of silverware at the next table. Or it might have been the sudden appearance of the South Asian-looking waitress, with her pencil and pad at the ready, that seemed to put me on the spot. All I know is, before I knew what happened, K. and I had ordered food. As the waitress slipped away to the kitchen, I looked past the storefront window over my girlfriend’s shoulder. I could see the Allston-Brighton Day Parade start its march from the tip of Brighton Avenue, in the distance.

Then I said something along the lines of, “Oh, maybe we shouldn’t have ordered our food so soon. Because now we can’t go watch the parade go by.” K. became visibly upset.

She replied along the lines of, “That’s what I asked you before. 'Do you want to go watch the parade first, then come back and order?'”

“You did?” I said.

“Yes. Apparently, you weren’t paying attention.” Now, I may not be quoting her remark verbatim, but it was probably close. Bottom line: I got the feeling she thought I had either ignored her on purpose, or was too preoccupied with taking care of my own needs, i.e., ordering food for my stomach, to address her needs. And the latter was probably true. I temporarily forgot that the reason we impulsively jumped out of bed that morning was to go watch the parade. How terrible of me. But, in my defense, I did feel easily jangled, which I attribute, in hindsight, to low blood sugar. That is why I needed to order food.

Of course, no amount of rationalization would have made K. happy. I lamely pointed out that we could still get up, go watch the parade (which was gradually becoming a larger blip outside the window), then come back and eat. K., however, would have none of it. She explained that, since we had already ordered, the staff might think we weren't planning to pay. Or worse, our food might be cold by the time we got back. Both legitimate reasons to stay where we were. But seeing K. upset, wearing a look that showed her morning had taken a sudden, precipitous decline (thanks to me), made me realize that the one thing we couldn’t afford to do was stay indoors while the parade passed us by. So I threw down my napkin-wrapped silverware, and sprang into action.

I went up to the person behind the cash register (also South Asian, and bearing a strong physical resemblance to the waitress—was this business family-run…?). “Excuse me,” I said. She looked up and smiled. My macho façade immediately crumbled beneath the anxiety of having an upset girlfriend. I can’t say for certain, but I think I actually fell to my knees and begged her to “please, please, please let us go outside for a second. We just want to watch the parade. I promise I’ll order dessert…”

A minute later, K. and I were standing outside, watching kids in matching uniforms strut their stuff. It was a nice parade, though it paled in comparison to Main Street on television every Thanksgiving. The Allston-Brighton Day Parade didn’t feature confetti being tossed out of skyscraper windows (Most of the buildings on the street were only two stories tall). There was no giant float of Woody Woodpecker. No crowds of onlookers, either. On the bright side, K. and I got a front row seat. Local politicos walked right up and handed us bumper stickers, bags of candy, urging us to vote them into City Council. I recognized Sam Yoon, who could very well become the first Asian Pacific American Councilman At-large. Currently, he is running third for one of four seats. He might have recognized that K. and I were brethren—or he might have just seen potential voters. Either way, he enthusiastically shook our hands.

Meanwhile, one of the other candidates, Patricia H. White, must have recognized that I have a penis, because she only shook K.’s hand. Even though I was standing right next to her.

By the time the parade was halfway finished, K. and I were clearly feeling better. Maybe it was the Dixieland-playing, old-style fire engine that was part of the parade. Or possibly the running joke we shared about the phrase “Councilman At-large.” It started with the politician at the head of the parade, who was currently “Councilman At-large.” As he pinballed back and forth, shaking hands with everyone alongside the street, he struck K. and I as an extremely apt example of the title. For one thing, he was a large man. Secondly, when we think of someone as being “at large,” we inevitably conjure up the image of a criminal who has somehow broken out of custody. This man exuded similar qualities in his excitable manner. He was like a bird released from its cage.

So for the rest of the parade, and pretty much the second half of the day, K. and I would inevitably turn to each other and say, “City Councilman. At Laaaarrrrge,” in effect making a larger word out of the word “large.” God, it cracked us up. You had to be there.

The parade was immediately followed by a pair of street-sweeping cabs. Now, when I say “immediately followed,” I mean they were practically part of the parade. Soon all the evidence was gone, and traffic resumed. Had you arrived five seconds after that street-sweeper, you’d have had no idea anything out of the ordinary happened on Brighton Avenue that morning. The swiftness with which normalcy returned is either a tribute to the well-oiled coordination of Allston-Brighton’s municipal resources, or an indicator of how dinky the parade was. Rather than dwell on either possibility, K. and I walked up Cambridge Road.

Afternoon

A Brazilian supermarket with lots of interesting cake mixes. Unfortunately, neither of us could read Portuguese, and I don’t own a cake pan. Pre-packaged “instant mashed batatas.” K.’s phrase, not mine. Don’t know why, but I fell on the floor laughing when she said it. Good thing nobody saw me.

Down Cambridge Road a little bit is a gourmet market, cleverly disguised. Kind of a plain, square box exterior. But inside, a wide selection of cheeses, plus Russian and Polish pickled goods and sweets. The market also features a veritable wall of kielbasas, and they get gourmet cakes delivered from, of all places, Kings Highway in Brooklyn, New York.

Evening

We made a roasted squash, and pears cooked in port wine sauce. I still have sauce in an airtight container, and it goes well with many kinds of ice cream.

Epilogue

K. went back to New York City on Monday morning. Her departure made me sad, but full of happy memories. I can honestly say it was the best weekend ever. It will likely endure as the best weekend of all time, at least until K. arrives and I get material for ABOUT LAST WEEKEND IV: THE ONE THAT TAKES PLACE IN SPACE.

Why, I believe I hear the doorbell ringing…