Author: Stagger Lee

…but while we have an interlude, I give you Han Solo, P.I. – enjoy.

Never forget. Never forgive.

I forgot who Chicago was playing in the Eastern finals – maybe Cleveland? – but it was definitely Utah and Portland in the West. I watched Johnny Carson’s last episode of the Tonight Show from a hotel room in Panama City in the company of my then-girlfriend and her roommate. School was out, classes done, nothing left but to log some beach time and watch basketball – but then, I wasn’t interested in the beach and she wasn’t interested in the basketball.

To boost the new guy, NBC did something they hadn’t done in ages: the first week of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno went out live, following the conference finals games. And – I remember this clearly – the third night or so, they had Blue Man Group, who did an amazing routine with drums and PVC and Captain Crunch, and the crowd went batshit, and Jay was half-sheepish as he chimed in, “This is not your father’s Tonight Show.”

It didn’t last, of course. Leno became about as edgy and entertaining as 1% milk sometime around the fifteenth Judge Ito Dancers appearance, and even a bad night on Letterman entertains me more than the best of Leno. But all these years later, I feel like I should at least give the new guy a chance.

David Gerrold, the sci-fi author, famously said that when you get right down to it there are only three occupations in the world: Producer, Servicer, and Salesman. (He contemplated Godhood as a fourth but decided that fell under Services.)

Maker Faire is for the Producers. The people who turn old typewriter keys into cufflinks. The ones who use old bookcovers to produce spiral-bound notebooks. The ones who make huge plush porkchops and felt bomb pops. The ones with giant mechanical snail cars that breathe fire and Victorian mansions on wheels and four kinds of hand-roasted coffee and a hand-wired 8-bit CPU of their own design and silver earrings shaped like theobromine molecules and 1/144 scale battleships that blast the bejaysus out of each other and PVC marshmallow blowguns and a 10,000-year clock and brass-rimmed leather goggles and the Bellagio fountains executed in Diet Coke and Mentos and…

…well, I would say “you get the picture” but it’s really hard to explain unless you’re there. It’s like music festivals, I guess – all these artists you’ve never heard of, working in a thousand different genres, things you just have to see to believe.

If you don’t think I’m going to be there from the minute the gates open every day of next year’s edition, you’re crazy.

ITEM! Ever wonder why the Federal government still requires certain states to pre-clear under the Voting Rights Act? Because it’s 2009 and they’re still segregating proms!

ITEM! Ever wonder why we have such a complicated process for amending the Constitution? Because if you allow for amendment by simple popular majority vote, a 52% share of 58% of the voting age population – in other words, less than a third of all people over age 18 – can make their own oogies the law of the land!

ITEM! Ever wonder if you really are the Angel of Death? Maybe, if every new job you take starts with a mass layoff of contractors!

What the hell is wrong with me that I knew all of this was going to happen and I still got up and out of bed at 6 AM? Aside from a massive sinus infection and a really bad attitude problem, that is. This is your notice that I am now actively Looking For Trouble, so if you are finding yourself short of an ass kicking, come on.

In other news, the black cloud can be dispelled temporarily through the cunning use of breakfast and jokes about state data managers trying to ghost-ride the whip. The two-stripers know: GOOD end-users are worth their weight in platinum.

…my knee is shot to hell again. The one that had surgery, that forced my premature resignation from my first Silicon Valley job, has started to hurt in a very different way – and has started to impact my ability to walk. NOT CISED.

The great relief here is that not only do I have my own insurance this time, but I have more than three sick days a year. If I’d pulled up with this back in 2007-08 on my last job, I’d have to suck it up and walk it off. Even as it is, I’m hoping I can get anything that I need done to it done at work, so to speak, but it may not be my call. Memo to all the fainting goats who wail that “socialized medicine” will mean waiting lists and an inability to choose your own doctor…that’s what we have RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Don’t believe me? Ask a person I know who was hospitalized with an infection and had to change hospitals halfway through because her insurance WOULDN’T PAY FOR THE FIRST ONE.

I’ll probably have something more philosophical on this front later, but I have an early morning tomorrow…

The scariest, stupidest shit imaginable.

Seriously, how did anybody AT ALL think this was a good idea? Anyone? And more to the point, why do mental defectives like Harry Reid live in pants-pissing terror of these people? Memo to Senate Democrats: just because Republicans shit themselves in fear when you whisper “terrorist” doesn’t mean you should try to out-pussy them! Actually, I take that back, as I would not want to sully the good name of pussy by association with members of Congress…

I told you that changing administrations wouldn’t make a dent in the state of things. This is why.

It was pointed out to me that I forgot the central bit of California, which is a key omission – this is, after all, the bit made famous by The Grapes Of Wrath. It bears pointing out that if it’s on your plate and it’s not made of meat or bread, it probably came from the Central Valley or the San Joaquin Valley or somewhere thereabouts. California produces more rice than Japan, seriously. This is also where all those fleeing Okies settles, and the cultural and political impact of that migration is still a major factor in state politics seventy-plus years on.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that the entire aerospace industry – not to mention the Reagan doctrine – are completely unimaginable without considering Orange County in the last sixty years. (This is not necessarily a plug for Before The Storm, the best book ever on Goldwater in ’64, because I assume you’ve read it already, and if you haven’t, you’re just not paying attention, because it is really compelling stuff.)
For all the guff about Texas splitting into 5 states, let’s be honest, you could split California into at LEAST 5, and all with a pivotal hand in the national economy – agricultural, technological, media, booze, you name it.
There are far worse places to call home. =)

OK, I will freely admit that it’s kind of a show out here. Exhibit A – they threw out a perfectly mediocre governor because of, well, I don’t even remember what, and replaced him with a Botoxed foreigner who didn’t even pull 50%. And now said Botox receptacle is in much worse straits than his predecessor ever got into, but nobody’s clamoring to heave him out on his steroid-pocked ass, because nobody’s got any better ideas. The local football conference can’t get their bowl bids sorted, and if I’m honest, the hippie quotient is probably above the level specified by the board of health.

And yet.

When I first volunteered to become a DSW, and learned that I would have to be sworn in, the thought occurred to me that this was really it – that after almost five years, I would really be an honest-to-God Californian. Which was kind of a strange thought. Ever since I arrived for good in 2004, my gimmick has largely been that as an Alabamian, I am probably the most exotic ethnicity anybody here will ever meet. Think about it. The Latino population of California dates from Fr. Serra’s string of missions back in the 1770s. The Chinese arrived with the Gold Rush. That person in line in front of you at In N Out could be two weeks off the boat or they could be seventh generation on the Peninsula. Meanwhile, California leads all states in population of Catholics, Muslims and Buddhists and is second in Jews and Mormons.

Everyone known Hollywood down South and thinks they know San Francisco…but people in Berkeley know the real hippies are in Santa Cruz, and people forget that Reaganite conservatism was birthed in Orange County. An entire wave of country music grew out of Bakersfield, when Buck Owens used his radio-engineer knowledge to optimize his sound for AM transmission. There were honest-to-God separatists all the way North, who planned to join bits of Oregon and carve out the new state of Jefferson, but scheduled their big announcement for December 7, 1941…and wound up punting. There are mountains with fog in the morning, kind of like the Smokies. There’s an old downtown with subways and ethnic neighborhoods and major league baseball – San Francisco is basically the New York of the West. There’s cool weather most of the time and rain in a tightly confined space on the calendar and, well, Silicon Valley. You know, where the future comes from.

And all things being equal, there’s a spot for anyone and everything. Just because I struggle with cramming myself into it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I guess my point is: the thing about California is that it’s just like the rest of America, only more so. I was raised in a very insular place that actively taught that not only was the past not past, you could make things the way they used to be. Out here, not only is the past past, the present’s past, and when the future comes, California is the one kicking down the door and charging through first, for better or worse. California will not hand you everything you ever dreamed of on a silver platter, but neither will it decide you don’t belong and slam the door on you. California is the Mos Eisley cantina – if you want in, seat yourself. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

And that’s where “foreign or domestic” comes in. Given the choice, if I have to decide between here or a place that still thinks they’re two elections away from being able to turn the clock back 50 years…well, the hills send back the cry, we’re out to do or die. To crib from Lord Webber, the choice was mine and no one else’s, and if that makes me a scalawag, well, wag is as wag does.