Posts from — July 2008

Brenda & I just got back from Denver, having just taken in the cutting, silly, schizophrenic, smart and above all, funny standup act of Eddie Izzard. Brenda & I saw him in New York back in 2003, and when we heard he was taking his new tour through Denver, we bought our tickets months and months ago. Turns out we had pretty great seats, just six rows back! Being that close to him, it felt like we were in a venue much smaller than the Paramount Theatre, and you could really see his expressions that are such a part of his stage presence.

This show was far better than the 2003 effort, I thought. His topics once again covered the gamut, with religion and politics taking their usual large chunks of the set. This time around, he was wearing man clothes instead of a dress, but there was still a few transvestite jokes (as well as a plug for his TV show “The Riches”).

His energy was high, and his digressions into improv did not disappoint. He spent some time debunking “intelligent design” by taking us inside the mind of an appendix (“we have this thing, an appendix, it’s there to digest grass, but we haven’t eaten grass for thousands of years, so they’re all just sitting there going ‘uhh, have you got any grass up there, hello?’… doesn’t sound intelligent to me…’hello, yeah, it’s me and Jeff here in the appendix room, we’re bored ‘cause you haven’t got any grass, so we’re just going to blow up now.’”). He also turned Noah’s Ark story on its ass, and pleaded for us all to vote for Obama in the election this year. Interestingly, that drew some boos and murmurs; I’m not sure how you can like Eddie Izzard and be a Republican. He’s so… smart! Anyway, all in all a great performance, and a nice evening.

Eighteen years ago last night, Brenda & I kissed for the first time. For nine years and change after that, July 28 was our “anniversary”, until I finally got my shit together and married Brenda. Nowadays, May 7th is our anniversary, and we’ve celebrated eight of those, but July 28 is still our first official anniversary and yesterday we marked eighteen of them. Kinda cool. We will celebrate this weekend in Grand Lake.

Emma was Brenda’s pet cat. Well, that’s what she started out as. Brenda got her shortly after the two of us got together, and Emma immediately spent much of her time showing her displeasure at having to share Brenda with me (especially the first year, when I was finishing school and Brenda often left Emma alone in her apartment while visiting me at school). But in those first few years after Brenda got her, I also took care of Emma during the summers when Brenda was off doing summer theatre gigs. I quickly became very attached to her, as, I believe, Emma got attached to me. We sorted each other out.

In total, the three of us went through almost eighteen years of life together, marking loads of residences, moments, anniversaries, milestones, memories. There’ll never be another cat like her, there’ll never be another Emma the Cat. She died, one year ago today.

Emma would never put up with another animal in the house, so/but for a very long and fun time, we were “stuck” with “just” Emma. And so shortly after Emma died, Hooper the Dog came into our lives, and in many ways I see my amazing experiences raising and learning about this dog as Emma’s last gift to us. I suppose Emma continues to live on in Hooper.

We also added another cat—Ellie—to our family last December, and while I haven’t written much about her on here yet she adds an extra layer of complexity to this weird little ride of adapting to life without Emma. She’s different, yet similar, to Emma. So it’s been fun and sad, exhilarating and disappointing, interesting and boring, to get accustomed to this new feline resident. More to come about her in the future, for sure.

But the main act tonight is Emma. I miss her still, always will.

I wanted to share with you one of my favorite Emma stories (more specifically, one of my favorites not already published on this website).

We had just moved from our first apartment in Hoboken, NJ, to a new, bigger, two bedroom place. It was hot—really hot—and humid. O.J. Simpson had beaten a murder rap that very day. We had paid professional movers to move our crap from Tenth and Park to Seventh and Willow Ave in Hoboken, and despite being spared the pain of dragging our stuff up five flights of stairs, we were still currently surrounded by boxes, brimming with Our Shit, swaddled in immense amounts of pro-grade, puffy and fluffy, bubble-wrap and puffy-paper.

Hours and hours after the movers had left, we were sweaty, tired, and painted into corners with our things and packing paper. Emma had been exploring the new digs with the careful stalk and active nose of a cougar in a new zoo. Emma jumped up on the microwave cart, currently in the middle of the kitchen, and—this is important—next to a recently-emptied box that was now the receptacle for all discarded packing materials, and began to walk around and eye the box adjacent. Three feet high, and loaded with puffy things, she began to show an unhealthy interest in the box.

“Brenda…” I silently gestured towards the scene that was unfolding.

Slowly, Emma walked to the edge of the cart and lowered her head toward the box, sniffing. She waved and poked a paw into the abyss, seeing that the paper would not hold her weight. But the curiosity was too great, and we watched her slowly try to walk on water, if you will, and fail miserably. She ended up doing a head-first dive into the box, disappearing instantly into the paper. We laughed, but the fun was just beginning. The box began to tremble, the papers churned and flew about, and eventually Emma exploded out from the paper, perched impossibly on the edge of the box, and then as the box began to fall over, she did a gainer off the edge of the box and shot like a bullet for the back bedroom, not to be seen for quite a while.

We laughed so hard, I can still recall how hard my sides hurt.

These are the memories I think of today. I’ll think of her all day today, and I’ll think of her at least a little bit, every day, forever.

You wanna know the secret to happiness? You ready? Meeting avoidance. Especially the ones with a million people in a small stuffy room, featuring some smiling idiot waving his arms around and acting like personal insight and self-reflection is some kind of new fucking concept.

I was unsuccessful at avoiding one of these types of meetings today, and I still have a headache.

What the hell is this crap, this “team building” bullshit?! It’s a colossal waste of time and money, time and money that will be bickered about at the end of the project when there is no budget left to get some actual work done. I spent four hours (FOUR HOURS!!) of my life today listening to some midget wearing a watch the size of a manhole cover talk about team building, ownership, frameworks, expectations (and of course expectation management), communication, trust, etc. A bunch of Type-As in the room pretending to get in touch with themselves and to make love to The Project. Bullshit.

Then you throw a few architects into the mix and you start talking about “expressions” and “gestures”, and hear “vis a vis” more than once, and listen to entire monologues that say absolutely nothing. More Bullshit.

Good god, I hate this shit.