Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Taking its toll



I'm driving up the Turner Turnpike, which is the part of Interstate 44 between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, to go to work. As I pulled up to the toll plaza, I saw I was getting the booth with the blonde with curly hair. I hadn't seen her in a while.

"Hey, I haven't seen you in a while." she says to me.

Wow.

I am at the point that the tollbooth operators recognize me.

Let me just say that if I hadn't already given my two-weeks notice the day before at my job, I would have done it as soon as I had gotten there today.

My CR-V is about to hit 145,000 miles. It was at about 118,000 when I started this job -- close to 30,000 miles in a little over eight months.

But thankfully, it has shown no signs of slowing down. I mean, a little while back kc and I were going to Hy-Vee in Lawrence and she asked me if something was wrong with my engine because of the way it was groaning.

"No," I replied. "We're just going uphill."

So that's why it's amazing that this little four-cylinder engine has made six trips through the Rockies and seven trips through the Sierra Nevadas. It's cruised on portions of famous highways such as U.S. 1, Route 66 and the Pacific Coast Highway. And I mentioned the Turner Turnpike; my car has traveled the full lengths of the Kansas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Florida turnpikes.

No wonder I feel like I don't have a home -- all my time is spent in my car.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Oklahoma's sex drive


You've all seen them: Those signs by the side of the highway as you enter cross the border to welcome you as you enter another state.

The Texas Department of Transportation has that sign above by Interstate 35 about 0.15 miles south of the Red River to give a big "Howdy" to motorists venturing into the Lone Star State.

But there's one problem with the logistics of that sign: It comes about 0.1 miles too late.



This is the sign that actually greets travelers when they cross the Red River as they're leaving Oklahoma to go into Texas.

Any adult who has lived in Oklahoma knows why: You can't get porn in Oklahoma. At least not the hardcore stuff. That's why I was so shocked to find it playing in motels here.

But I guess the law is that it's only illegal to sell it. Hence the store right across the border: DW's Adult Video, which I find very interesting. DW has rekindled my interest in film lately. And now this -- coincidence??? If it is him, I guess it's what puts the wood in "Driftwood."



You can see here just how close to Oklahoma this store really is, calling, beckoning us to make the trek down south on a porn run. It's the state's dirty little secret. And yes, I have made this trip on more than one occassion. Why am I not embarrassed to say it. Why? First, after the motel porn adventure, can I really find anything more embarrassing? And second, I know I'm not alone. For many Oklahomans, this store is a tradition, a rite of passage. I learned this when the subject came up several times working at the OU paper, pretty much everyone had done it. They even had a column about it last month, (jokingly) arguing that legalizing porn in Oklahoma would reduce greenhouse gases. Indeed, in the parking lot Monday, there was a nice black Mercedes that pulled in just as I got there, a Cadillac, a Toyota and a pickup truck -- all with Oklahoma plates.

And let me say now, please don't think I'm some sort of porn addict. The number of porn runs I've made you can count on one hand (give or take a finger or two). Plus, I actually haven't bought any in a while, since it doesn't matter if I'm 14 and it's under the mattress, or I'm 30 and living at my own place in Florida -- if my mom sees it, it's going in the trash.

The reason I'm sharing this? Well, I guess I'm not going to be an Okie for all that much longer, so I don't feel the need to keep our dirty little secret.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Live On, University

Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner,
Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner,
Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner,
Boomer Sooner, OK-U!

Oklahoma, Oklahoma,
Oklahoma, Oklahoma,
Oklahoma, Oklahoma,
Oklahoma, OK-U!

I'm a Sooner born,
And a Sooner bred,
And when I die
I'll be Sooner dead!

Rah, Oklahoma! Rah, Oklahoma!
Rah, Oklahoma! OK-U!



OK-U!
This, up until a few months ago, was my favorite OU shirt. It commemorates OU’s national title run in 2000. That fall was one of my most memorable semesters during my college career. I got to follow the Sooners all the way to the Orange Bowl.

My mom and my sister hate this shirt, because no matter how big the holes in it get, I still wear it. My mom says it makes me look like a homeless person.

But I guess I’m just hanging on to that shirt for the nostalgia. Fall 2000 wasn’t just about football. That was when I added journalism as a second major, having found that I could be really good at it, and it was the semester I earned a copy editing internship to The Boston Globe before I even took an editing class.

As you can see, the shirt seen a lot of wear, and has gone through extensive repairs. I should have thrown this shirt away years ago.


OK, you!
The shirt was knocked off the top spot by my OU scrubs, given to me by the gang at the Journal-World. That’s it over on the right, next to my jersey. It was so cool that they did that for me. They know how much I love OU and how much thought I had given to going to nursing school. It was perfect.

Or so I thought. The main reason I wanted to study nursing at OU was the intensive one-year program. But that fell apart pretty quickly. And now, really my entire plan has come undone. I don’t want to go to nursing school at OU any more.

Really, it’s hard to think of OU without conjuring painful memories. And thinking of only good stuff just reminds me of good times, that try as I might, I can’t get back again. Going back to OU is like hanging on to that shirt. No matter how much I sew it up (OK, OK – no matter how much I get my mother to sew it up) it’ll never be the same, and it won’t fit quite right anymore.

Oh, KU!
So I figure this brand new career will start someplace else. So I’ll get a new shirt from my future school, and I have a pretty good idea which it'll be -- the one that matches my new hat.



We can credit kc for getting me out of the KU closet. She was the one who first saw it, when about a year ago at work I mentioned a KU story, and she called me out when I referred to the Jayhawks as "We" instead of "They."

I'm a Sooner born and a Sooner bred, so I wondered whether becoming a Jayhawk would make me a traitor, but even though I'm just going from crimson and cream to crimson and blue. But I've gotten a seat for kc on the Sooner Schooner, so it kind of evens out.

Boomer Sooner, and Rock Chalk, Jayhawk.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Momma's boy

OK, I figure if I do this, it has to be in vignettes. Giving a full dose of my mom is like going into the reactor room or looking at the sun too long; prolonged exposure can have harmful effects.

- You've probably seen how my mom had me dressed when I was very young. Add to that how she refers to my shirts as blouses and my underwear, whether they be boxers or briefs, as panties -- well, it's a good case for homosexuality being genetic, not environmental.

- My father was named George. She named me after him. That's not an uncommon thing. My mom named her youngest daughter Kim -- Kim Novak Z., actually, after her favorite actress. A bit unique, but not weird. Then my mom received her citizenship, and got to choose her own name. She chose Kim. Yes, she named herself after her own daughter.

This also caused plenty of confusion when someone would call and ask for Kim or George, and we'd respond "Which Kim?" or "Which George?" My mom often adds "Big Kim or Little Kim?" with her being Big Kim and my sister being Little Kim -- this just adds to the confustion; my mom is 5'0" and 100 pounds. My sister is considerably bigger.

- Speaking of names, she can't even pronounce mine. Imagine how much I was teased growing up, as we all know how cruel kids can be, when she came along and called me "Zhock-ZHEE."

I actually have a Vietnamese name as well, but I think I'll keep that to myself.

- I mentioned she's 5' and 100 pounds -- she's had two lipsuctions and three facelifts.

- My friends in high school learned it was futile to call. Before she'd let me talk to anyone, she'd have to know not just who they were, but she'd ask whether they were going to college, what they planned to major in, and what their grades were. They'd complain to me later that all they wanted to do was talk to me, not play 20 questions with my mom.

- There was the time she yelled at me because I had gotten my car all dirty and wasn't trying to immediately wash it. I told her it was salt and sand from the road, and I couldn't wash my car because it was like zero degrees outside. She told me she didn't care and left to wash her car. She was back 10 minutes later, freaking out and now yelling at me to help her get the inch-thick layer of soapy ice encasing her car -- like I said: it was zero degrees outside.

- She tends to perpetuate certain Asian stereotypes: She's been in four car accidents in the past four years. And a while back, she decided she wanted to buy a convenience store. I was the only one against the idea, everyone else told her to do it. So when she did buy it, she didn't tell me. For three months she left every day to run her store, and I had no clue (this was my freshman year at OU). It wasn't until one of my sisters accidentally told me. I don't know why she felt the need to hide it from me. I supported her as much as I could, working when I wasn't busy skipping classes.

She lost the store a little over a year later.

- Just a few weeks ago, she told me I should stick with journalism over nursing. She said I was an editor, and that's like being a doctor of the newsroom. She's never understood my explanation of just where copy editors are in the newsroom heirarchy, though I have a suspicion she sometimes has selective fluency in English. Actually, I know this is true.

- She took 12 years to get her degree. Not a slam against her, because it took me 12 years to graduate college, too. And while I got two degrees, she took over a decade because she was also working a lot of the time, and raising two kids. And while I spout off on how much weirder she made things for me growing up, and still makes things weird today, I know that she's always looking out for me.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Filmwurst

It was the culmination of my education in Film and Video Studies: my senior capstone project, a 45 minute featurette written by me, directed by Wes and shot by Dusty about a criminology student who, for his senior capstone project, decides to plan a crime spree.

And it’s gone.

I had decided I might YouTube the film, or at least the portion of the film I wrote, and blog about it. But the thing is, my only copy of the film wasn’t where I had left it. I have moved 12 times since spring ’99, it’s a wonder I didn’t lose it earlier. But I know I had it in OKC while I was living in Lawrence. Who knows where it is now.

The name of this film? Well, for those of you who know me it won’t be a surpise: “Cap a Stone in Yo’ Ass.”

I had already lost all my papers and scripts from my film school days in a computer crash in 2002, as the backup CD, I found out later, didn’t burn properly. But that didn’t bother me that much. But losing the film does. Three years in the Film and Video Studies program, and that was what I had to show for it. (Well, that and my degree, which has been proudly placed in the backseat of my car.)

I didn’t hang on to the film because I thought it was good – there are good things in it, such as some great performances from some of our actors, who we got from the drama school – but I actually consider “Cap a Stone” one of my biggest failures.

I mean, I got an A on it, and I would consider it watchable. But making that film was one of the most painful experiences I ever went through. Wes and Dusty worked hard on the film, but I don’t thing they ever really understood just how much I put into that film. Originally, Wes was to buy the digital camera, which he did, spending about $2,000; I was to buy the editing hardware for my computer, spending about $1,000. But while my computer met the minimum requirement for the editing board, for it to actually perform properly I needed to buy a new video card ($200), more memory ($250) and a high speed SCSI hard drive ($400).

But it wasn’t just the money I poured into it. I was committed to this film. While Wes and Dusty were going to classes during the day, I was skipping classes to scout locations, buy clothes and find props – which included two realistic-looking pistols, a Dieon Sanders T-shirt and a wooden duck, which, given that this is Oklahoma, was much harder to find than you’d think. I spent weeks combing sporting goods stores, but since it wasn’t duck season, I had no luck. It wasn’t until I stopped at an antique store in Moore that I struck gold. Jesus, I just realized that I skipped all those classes just to find a fucking duck for a three-second sight gag.

So for all this work, I got an A in my senior film class. I also got a B in my Lit class, and an F in my other English class, Critical Reading and Writing. (After that semester, I changed my second major from English to Zoology, with the idea that I would make nature documentaries.)

Really, for an undergraduate student film that was 45 minutes long and edited on hardware that even after I spent all that money was woefully inadequate, it wasn’t too bad. My real regret was not telling Wes, after coming to me to tell me that he doubled the size of the script because we needed a scene to “explain” everything they were about to see, that if what I had already written needed explaining, then I should be kicked off the damn project. He even agrees now that the exposition scene in the apartment before the robbery was a bad idea, and he wanted to re-edit the film without it.

But that’s the other thing: Wes had the master copy on digital cassette – and he lost it last year. But he still has his other scripts and film projects. “Cap a Stone in Yo’ Ass” was the last bit of what I had.

There are copies out there; we gave some to the performers, and our capstone instructor was given a copy. But after writing this, that copy of the film isn’t what I miss most. You see, even though it got battered during shooting, I kept the duck when we were done. I had it for a few years, until my mom tossed it – it was broken, she said.

So I have my film degree, but really, I didn’t work all that hard as a film major to get it – I worked a lot harder just to get that stupid duck, and I’d rather have that wooden mallard to show for my troubles.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

My mom's front porch



As I can't think of anything else to blog about, I'm going to do what I always do in this situation: steal from someone else.

You might have read before kc's excellent post about her front porch. You can call it an allegory for everyday life in east Lawrence.

Now, I have to settle for my mom's porch.



As you can see, it's quite large (That's me helping paint the columns). There's plenty of space, and could fit all sorts of outdoor furniture for plenty of people. It was also one of my favorite playspaces growing up. The walkway that ran adjacent to it was my highway for my toy cars, and when it reached the door the path turned left down an incline toward the street; at that point gravity would sent the cars to the street without my help.

Now that I'm back on Sherwood Drive, I've taken to the porch once again. But it's not the same. Really, it's kc's fault. When I visit her in Lawrence we pass the time with a beer or brandy discussing parliamentary procedures. For one, as you can tell the view of the neighbor's back fence doesn't exactly add any charm to the street, and since it's late at night, I'm all alone on the porch. And no cackling girl stuffing her face with sweetrolls, asking whether we have cigarettes or how much the place next door rents for and she's going to drop off some old bread to the homeless shelter down the street, and say it all in one sentence. No eccentric Ed, nor Eddie the dog, faithfully waiting on his porch for his owner to return.



But I do always get one visitor, almost without fail: a gray cat. The kitty never comes over, just sits and watches me, almost accusingly. I think it wonders what the hell I'm doing back in the neighborhood -- I don't belong here anymore.

No, this hasn't been my neighborhood for a while now; the house no longer feels like home. Life as an Okie suburban cowboy isn't for me anymore, no matter how much I thought it was.

But still, it's good to visit the place. And as boring as the neighborhood is, I'd miss it if it were gone. Which it almost was after May 3, 1999, when tornados tore across Moore, and then again in 2003, after this happened:



So the neighborhood rebuilt its homes; I'm getting ready to rebuild my career. Maybe after that, I can work on finding my place to call home.

And you'll be invited to come sit with me on my porch anytime.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Inn cahoots

A night that shifted from surreal to scary.

As I got off work Friday night, I was greeted by one of the many homeless who wander the streets of downtown Tulsa. She asked me for change. I told her I didn't have any. Then she saw I was carrying a plastic cup filled with soda.

"Can I have some of that pop?" she asked.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a silver can.

"Ooooooo! A beer!" she exclaimed as I handed it to her.

She sang some little ditty as she skipped down the street with the Diet Coke I had just given her.

That night I stayed at another motel. Not the Interstate Inn, but the Royal Inn: it's in a different area from the other ones just off the turnpike, kind of an industrial area just off the I-44/U.S. 75 interchange. The time I stayed there before it wasn't bad; slighty bigger room that was slightly cleaner, wireless Internet and no porn channels -- just Showtime.

As I pulled up into the parking lot, I saw a woman, scantily clad, get out of a car in the lot, while her male counterpart stayed in the vehicle and watch. She knocked on one door, then moved to another. It seemed like she wasn't sure what room she was looking for.

As I headed for my room, a man walked across the courtyard, making a beeline for me. In a way, I really wasn't surprised at what happened next:

"I need a friend; would you be a friend?" he slurred. "I'll give you $10 if you can give me a ride."

I can't help but wonder whether offering $10 for a ride is some sort of street code for something unsavory. It was eerily like before.

I got to my room and locked the door, a bit disappointed that there wasn't a deadbolt. This was when I found this in the bathroom:



Then a knock at the door -- a very soft knock.

I slowly hooked the doorchain, which seemed woefully inadequate.

At this point, I don't know what's scariest: the homeless lady who's going to be mad at me for turning her beer into a soda, and a sugarless one at that; what might be pimps and hos canvassing the neighborhood; the ginormous syringe that is used for purposes in seedy motel that I dare not imagine; or just that fact that I keep staying at these places.



LF: $204.38