Live Patio Update - Police on Scene

Interesting.

It's 4:30 AM. I came out on the patio about half an hour ago to wrap up the night and unwind (and smoke my last cigar), to be greeted by the usual sound of College Girl With Issues and her beau yelling at each other. Windows open. I'd get bits and pieces, though I was trying to ignore it. She yelled at him to do something or other about the barking dog, he, in turn, yelled a couple of blunt expletives at her. I heard something in there with her yelling about having cream cheese in her hair. Oh, her name is Kayla, I heard, by the way. I heard him say that when he yelled something cocky and patronizing at her. Things eventually progressed to the usual threats from her about doing something with the authorities, and him, quite confidently (and dumbly) telling her that it would all get blamed on her. Like I said...the usual.

And then the cops showed up.

I didn't even notice. I heard the car pull up, but that's normal this time of the morning - I think it's a paper delivery kid who normally gets dropped off here to start his rounds. So a cop walked right by me without me even knowing. It wasn't until I heard her door opening and her coming down the stairs and addressing someone that I knew something else was up. I didn't look, just listened. Though I did lean over and look at the parking spots in front of the office, and noticed the Sheriff's car.

I heard bits of the conversation. Obviously she'd called the cops on him. But it appeared it was just to have him removed. She sounded quite calm and apologetic about it. As they were talking, another car pulled up. As Sheriff #2 got out, my neighbor Dennis (next door) came out, as usual (he works really early) at this time. He walked by the officer, said hello, and said that he lives here, and wanted to know if there was anything he should worry about. "Nope!" the officer said, pleasant as you please. Okay, then.

They finally went upstairs, and I guess a conversation took place. I heard jackass boyfriend talking to them (also calm and polite). The gist I got was that since he doesn't have a car, he's called a friend to come pick up him up, and he's to take his things and leave. Interestingly, the police didn't hang around to make sure that happened. THAT sounds safe.

So they're gone now. I heard him place the cell call to his friend while the cops were still here, and the cops telling her that if for some reason he doesn't comply and leave to call them. Hmm.

And now I'm hearing them arguing up there again. I'm no cop, but this smells like a recipe for disaster. Man, that girl can SWEAR.

She's accusing him of things. He's using sarcastic, mocking, belittling tones, further explaining, I'm sure (an air conditioning unit running is keeping me from hearing for sure), that this is all her fault. So, she dipped her OWN hair in the cream cheese? Is that some kind of new age conditioning technique?

My other upstairs neighbor, from above Dennis, just headed for his car, too. He works early as well.

Anyone want to place a bet on how long it is before jackass boy is back here - assuming he actually leaves? I really hate to sound jaded, but I've seen this too many times before. Young women and their bad boys. Can't live with them, can't live without them. I wonder if he's going to take the barking puppy with him? No, that would give him some kind of responsibility to look after. I don't sense that desire in him. All I sense is the likelihood of more loud open-window sex sometime between now and Friday.

So much for a quiet night of writing. Oh, well. A little Jerry Springer drama instead.

I really do need to be getting to bed. I have somewhere to be in the early afternoon. I even shaved tonight, after not bothering to do so for a few days. I just want to see if he peacefully leaves. I just realized I left my cell phone inside, so any 911 call from me would be a little slow, if things turn nasty. Well, I'll listen anyway, make sure it all goes okay.

Someone walked by. I think it was the newspaper kid.

It's currently 57 degrees outside, by the way. After a few cooler days, we're going to be back to 95 or so for a high the next few days. Bad time to run out of cigars. The hot weather means that my upstairs neighbor leaves his windows closed until the evening, so that gives me a chance to smoke and write without offending him with my stink. Just means I have to put up with the heat, but that's rarely a problem for me. I dig heat.

I got into an interesting debate on a message board tonight. Some guy posted up a thread, some poor 23-year old sap whose girlfriend not only just left him but started sleeping with a friend of his less than a month later. As some posters were suggesting that an ex was open game, I posted up my opinions on the Guy Code, and how it is never, ever acceptable to date a friend's ex. No special circumstances (but I'm really attracted to her!), no gray area. You just don't. It's a simple Golden Rule concept - would you like it if your friend did that with YOUR ex a month after the split? One of the responses I got was a guy actually arguing, in all seriousness, that the one being a bad friend is the one who won't let his buddy hook up with his ex and gives him grief over it. The internet brain-set vexes me. You never really know, though, if people are serious with their opinions or just being contrary to feel potent.

Well, it's getting late (or early, depending on your world view) and I've yet to hear any friend with a car show up. Then again, I have noticed these two crazy kids tend to park in the lot of the strip-mall next to the complex and climb over the short brick wall to get home. Maybe he had his friend meet him out there and he's already gone. Or maybe it's going to be a long wait. Or maybe they'll make up before the sun rises. I don't know. Either way, I don't think I feel like losing anymore sleep worrying over a girl who's clearly addicted to this kind of drama, as she keeps coming back for more. I know...jaded, right? Shame.

So I'm off to bed. Here comes Tuesday.

Kids and Pools

My buddy A.T. called me today. Today being Memorial Day, he was looking to get his two kids, Parker and Harry, into some water, and he found out their local water park closed down. He wanted to know if they could drop by and use my pool at my complex. I said sure. That's what Memorial Day is all about when you're a kid - a pool!

He and I visited by the pool while his kids did their thing, and he was stressed out most of the time because of the volume of his children, not wanting them to bother all the neighbors. I didn't want to interfere with his fathering lessons, but, for his own peace of mind, I quietly let him know that he really had nothing to worry about - my pool ALWAYS sounds like that when kids are out there. His kids were nowhere near the ruckus I normally hear coming through my window.

There is a truism about kids and pools - something about water makes kids LOUD. They have to scream everything. And inevitably, their civic-minded parents try in desperate vain to curb this law of nature, but it's a fool's errand. They're going to scream. They're going to have drama. They're going to be having the time of their lives one moment, and then bawling and shouting accusations at each other the next, ratting out their siblings and friends to the grown-ups for such crimes as pushing, splashing, hogging the ball or pool toy or air mattress, whatever. As I'm sitting here typing this, with A.T.'s kids having been gone for over an hour, I'm hearing the latest shift of young'ns to my right, screaming bloody murder, getting threatened with the worst punishment imaginable (having to get out), and using glass-shattering, piercing yells to make every point or simply call out for someone to watch whatever amazing feat they're going to attempt (jumping off the side, holding their breath for a really long time, etc).

The swimming pool is the natural habitat of the young. The wild, for them, if you will. In their homes and schools, they're domesticated, forced to follow society's stringent rules. In a pool, they are primordial. They are in their element. And while parents are commendable for trying to make them into better citizens through the process, they'd probably do their own blood pressure good just by sitting back and surrendering. There is a pool - and your monkey children are loose, and the party is ON.

I have loads of childhood memories of pools. I never had one of my own until my last year of high school, but your parents always manage to hunt down some kind of aquatic habitat for you when the summer months come - a more affluent family friend's home, a public pool, a water park that has all the frenzied chaotic feel of Chuck E. Cheese with water wings. Large bodies of water filled with chlorine and inflatable, floating distractions are just plain heaven for kids. They're places where kids discover exciting new stunts to perform. I remember my pride in standing on my head in shallow water. Or at hooking my legs over the edge and hanging upside down underwater while holding my nose. I remember having a lot of difficulty with pool the summer that I saw "Jaws" for the first time, constantly feeling the need to spin around and check behind me, sure I'd see a giant rubber shark coming to devour me.

Important lessons are learned in the pool. You develop a lot of social skills there, as you rarely have the pool to yourself, and have to deal with the foreign ways of other children. Many an argument broke out over the rules of such pool games as "Marco Polo". You learn to work with those who have a different worldview than the one you're being raised with. You also learn confidence. You always remember that first time you swam in the deep end, away from the safe and comforting feel of slick concrete beneath your toes. Your first dive, perhaps the most accurate metaphor for moving forward in life and facing new and unknown fears. Opening my eyes underwater, not using goggles, was a big problem for me. I was sure it was going to hurt me eyes a lot with all the chlorine. I resisted it for a long time. But I clearly recall the day when my father stood at the edge of the pool and told me to go underwater and do it. I whined and resisted, and he suddenly used that father voice and ordered me, sharply, to just do it. It had so much force behind it that I couldn't even imagine going under and faking it. I knew that voice too well. I dropped, opened my eyes, and found that it was, after all, something I could do. It took a parent making me push myself to make that important step.

Oh, and the drama of getting kids forced to get OUT of the pool. I just heard a whole slew of that (the neighbor kids have now gone in, and it's quiet out here again as the sun sets). The whining. The bargaining. The feeling of being so horribly wronged, forced by adults who don't understand to leave the cool, fun comfort of the pool and return to the indoor world of brushing teeth and finishing spinach. I feel, now, for my poor mother, as I can still see her standing there at the ladder of a public pool, tired and low on patience, trying to get me out, with me offering a compromise of "just going under one more time"...which then got amended to one MORE time... Poor Mom. Is this a birth thing? Are our bodies remembering the liquid, carefree peace of the womb, and our parents forcing us out of it into a cold, unpredictable world with all its clinging gravity and hard surfaces? The ease of floating carelessly is gone. Out in the world, all is heavy, all is work. And yet, if we don't leave it behind, we miss out on all that life has waiting for us out there. Plus, our skin gets all pruny.

My apartment is directly across from the pool, so either through the sliding glass of my bedroom, or from the open air of my patio, I hear all the screaming, the splashing, the anarchy. And you know what? It never bothers me a bit. There's something uplifting about hearing kids just being kids, being free and being themselves. Perhaps it's just a reminder of what those simple, less complicated days were like. Whatever it is, I welcome the din.

Marco Polo for all, I say.

Boldly going...again.

Yes, I went last Thursday. And yes, I'm going again.

While I'm not ready for my full review yet (I want to have a second viewing before I do that), the fact that I AM going again should tell you how I felt about it. All manner of awesome.

I snuck out with my pal James opening night, before I left town for the weekend. I got back into town and am still getting reports in of who did and did not make it. But every single one of them who did make it expressed a need to see it again as soon as possible.

There are a couple who didn't make it, so after talking with them, we've schedule a viewing this Saturday night at 7:00 PM at the Century theater on Ethan (the usual haunt). So if anyone's yet to make the plunge, or just wants another chance to see Uhura in her underwear, the invitation's open. Join us! I would again advise Fandango, but there's less chance, obviously, of a sellout on the second weekend. So either way. Hope to see you there, and stay tuned for my big review!

I'm boldly going...but unfortunately, probably not with you...

The first (and arguably most anticipated) of the summer films hits theaters this weekend, Sac-Town Summer Movie Gang! And that is the J.J. Abrams monster re-ignition of the once-failing Star Trek franchise.

It would have been nice of me to be in town this weekend, then, huh?

Big apologies, gang. It's the opening volley of the season, I was planning to get a big group thing organized, and then I realized I had my weekends wrong, thinking Mother's Day was the FOLLOWING weekend. It's easy to get dates mixed up when you sit on your ass at home all day and don't pay much mind to the calendar...

My folks will be coming into town Friday morning to take care of some of their big-city business, and then I'll be following them back to Lakeport (about two, two-and-a-half hours) to spend the weekend at their place up in the woods - my Mother's Day gift to Mom (no, I'm not just cheap...it was her request!). I won't be coming back until Monday sometime. So the weekend movie action is, sadly, out for me.

That being said...just as I was getting ready to start putting this blogapology together, I remembered that the movie actually opens on Thursday. Thursday nights, of course, are not a serviceable gang movie night, since people have these things called jobs (I'm going to look up the definition of that later, as the word is a mystery to me), and some have these other strange things called kids...and those often require equally bizarre things called babysitters (that's just a disturbing word, isn't it? Who are these people, and why do they sit on babies?). Seeing as how this is all last-minute and on a week night, I don't imagine that would work for many, if any, of you.

However, I, myself, am going to do it. Even if it's got to be solo. I don't want to sit up in the woods all weekend thinking about it, after all this time waiting, while spoilers and reviews are stacking up and filling the web, my voice mail and my email. And I'm not expecting anyone to wait around an extra week for me, since the luster of the opening weekend excitement will be over, and THAT's no way to start the movie season.

So I jumped on Fandango and got myself a ticket. I'm going to the 7:30 PM show on Thursday (May 7) at the Century 16 theater on Greenback. You know, the one right by I-80? I repeat...the Greenback one, NOT the usual Century theater on Ethan that we normally go to. This is mainly because this one's right by my place, and if I end up the only one going, I don't see the need to give myself a freeway drive. I just went ahead and jumped on that ticket because I suspect the Thursday night shows will sell out pretty fast. The 7:30 show there is a DLP (digital projection) showing, so while that won't be an IMAX viewing, it'll still be nicer.

So if anyone feels they can sneak out on a school night without getting busted by their totally square parents and join me, that'd be great. That's where I'll be (are you taking notes, TMZ? I know your cameras will, once more, be all over me as soon as I park...). I would advise doing like I did and going to Fandango.com and getting your ticket secured that way. And then just letting me know that you're coming, so I can keep an eye out for you. You can either email me or just post up in the comments right on this blog.

Sorry, again, that this is last-minute, and that I won't be able to go with you all. And by you all, I mean the regular gang, who can, of course, still coordinate and get together. I'll get an email out to the regulars with notes on how things were looking best for some folks, day- and time-wise. Sorry that, unless you get on my schedule, I won't be experiencing what, so far, is still a 100% film on the Tomatometer after 30 reviews (woo hoo!) for the first time. It sounds like one hell of a ride. But if you decide to skip this weekend and see it next week, I have this sneaking feeling that I won't mind seeing it again at all. So let me know!

Love long. Prosper. All that.