it's halloween.

so spooky halloween to you! i point you to this discobelle post of fun halloween music. i am currently rocking out to the halloween mix*. loudly, as i am the only one in the office right now.

(* track 15 on this mix: The Bulgarian (ft. Spoek) - The Zombie Door (Vox version) turns out to be rather filthy. the chorus seems to be 'jack it like a zombie' repeated. just letting you know so you don't, say, for instance, blast it in your place of work for everyone to hear.)

due to a miscommunication of sorts, half the team is working in san jose today, with two of us up here in the city. not a big deal, but annoying, as i had to buy a train ticket to get up here. goodbye 11 dollars it turns out i didn't need to spend.

also, mike sent me a list from the av club of bad horror movie villians. shockingly, i have not seen most of these films. more shockingly, mike claims to have. and triply shocking — morty, from 'the fear', jack frost (the evil snowman) from 'jack frost', or the gingerbread man from 'the gingerdead man' are not represented. i might have to call sheningans on the article now.

also, i need to tell you the taglines for 'jack frost': "He's chillin…and killin"
and for 'the gingerdead man': "Out of the oven… and into your heart!"
wow.

and i am in a funk. for a multitude of reasons.

but this morning, walking into the office, i passed an older, bald man with horns attached. i, myself, am wearing my old devil 'headband' which is an easy, lazy, pretend costume. but it was great fun to pass someone else in the street who had dressed up the same way. we said hello to each other and it made me smile a lot.

that made the trip up here worthwhile, i would say.

in other news, robert goulet died. this is not huge news and, sadly, i remember him most for his excellent emerald nuts ad last superbowl.

and if we want to really cheapen his memory, how about will ferrell impersonating him singing the thong song?

i haven't been writing. this fact, as an isolated statement, doesn't mean much. but when taken in a larger context, when factoring in this site and my own creative writing, it is bad. bad. i have spent more time in the last 2 weeks writing documentation for an api than i have on my own thoughts.

i had decided this weekend that this was to stop. that i had plowed through enough of my own small projects and could easily dedicate 15 minutes a day to writing. and the assumption is that 15 will snowball into something larger.

one of these projects over the last weekend was dvd-ing more home videos. 9 of 13 done. but i woke up on sunday morning, climbed out of bed and took the most recently compressed video and marked chapters, setting it to export as a video_ts folder. and climbed back into bed.

as i was marking chapters, i was skimming the video. this dvd is footage from 'urban light works' in 2000. it has a lot of footage of yoffy, who i spent the day with setting up an installation. it has footage of kelly, who came out. it has footage of me, bald and silly.

but as i was scanning the footage, a face popped out. popped out from the past; i stopped breathing. i felt sick. lia was staring at me. lia is dead. lia has been dead now for almost 6 years. i feel sick typing this right now, sitting in a tullys in downtown san francisco, a life-time away from that day.

i went back to bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about her. thinking about the murder. thinking about life. i felt sick. i thought i might actually throw up. i was completely and utterly ill-prepared to deal with seeing her on video sunday morning. i still am. i might never be able to watch that dvd, just knowing the pain it will cause my heart.

another dvd had been made last week. a silly one, of another vcu project. on it, i had found some footage that qualified as 'behind the scenes.' it was studio footage, a group shot of the entire class, with the instructor's voice coming from behind the camera.

patrick power.

sunday, after i came home from brunch, scant hours after the above story, i got an email. from meg. again, i was unprepared.

patrick died. i have no details; i immediately answered her email, but have not heard back from her. below is the email she sent out.

I am extremely sad to share with you all that my brother-in-law,
Patrick Donald William Power 2, passed away unexpectedly on October
16.

Loved by many - and at the beginning of a great life with his new
wife, Dawn Bennett, and his 5 month old son, Patrick Power 3 - this
man will be very much missed.

In lieu of flowers, his family is asking for donations for Patrick 3.
There are lots of legal and medical expenses that the family has
recently incured and ANY donation will be super appreciated.
Patrick's brother, Kevin, and I have set up this website as a place
for contributions:

http://www.forp3.com

I am sending this to many of Patrick's friends already, but please
forward to anyone who you think would appreciate hearing about the
news.

lea was a student at vcu. patrick was an instructor; he taught me 'intro to video.' he was amazingly kind and amazingly cool. i got updates every once in while through meg — i heard when he got married, i heard when he had a baby. and now this.

i hadn't seen him after my first year at vcu. once again, it feels like a life-time ago. and, in many ways, it has been. but my mind still cannot process this information; i had to read the email several times before i could even begin to believe that it could be talking about the person i knew.

i got a vhs dub of bjork tapes from him. i have silly videos from his class scattered around my harddrives. kelly got a nickname from him that still gets tossed around once in a while.

the guy was great.

there is a temptation on my end to ascribe some meaning to this; i believe it is natural. but i don't actually believe i can point at richmond or vcu or any aspect of this and place any meaning or blame. it isn't fair or good or even understandable that this has happened. but it has.

i hate that this is where my life is heading, what my age has earned me — the people i respect, the people i love, are slowly beginning to leave this plane. my heart goes out to his family. i am overcome; i cannot imagine their grief.

the world already misses you, mr power.

later:
i posted this yesterday; it is now midday tuesday.

there has been a flurry of emails and im's from people i knew from vcu. but there has also been a flurry of emails to me, from people who knew patrick through his time at vcu.

i invite any and all of you to post comments. i don't feel right posting your private emails to me; i hope that you can share your memories publicly to help everyone smile and remember this awesome man.

i didn't expect to be a conduit with all of this, but it's becoming clear that a lot of people have a lot of things they would like to say. please, please share them everyone. (but you can also feel free to email me with the button below the comment.)

just know that you aren't alone; the sorry and loss and confusion has been echoed by everyone i have spoken to. and our memories are big and large and more than any of us by ourselves.

(turns out cody has an excellent post on patrick as well.)

riding home today, there was a girl across the aisle crying. and crying.

i felt so awful. i couldn't think of a single thing to do or say. the only thing i could daydream about was writing her a note saying something like 'you are loved'. but that's not the kind of thing you want from a stranger on a bus while you are having a breakdown, even if they mean well. so i stared out the window, looking away from her, which seemed so mean.

then she got off.

i need to find out more, i only have an email mike forwarded me this evening. cece's mom has passed away.

i will be the first to admit that i haven't kept up with cece like i would like, so i don't know much more than that. but it sucks — carol was really cool and hearing the news makes my heart a little heavier.

the email did say that there is to be a celebration of her life on friday. the request is that everyone wear bright colors, which i think is fabulous. so even though i won't be there, i'll find something nice and bright to wear on friday anyway.

godspeed.

if i were to try to write, it would only be to say the things i have said before.

i miss you.

it seems like i don't have a ton of family. and, as of last night, i have a little less. my uncle soph (short for sophocles) passed away.

my mom just called me to tell me; she and my dad are still up in hartford with carter for her mfa show. according to my mother, it appears he had a massive heart attack and that was that. i'm in shock. he was 78 and, although his health has been not too good recently, i didn't expect this. the last time i saw him, i believe, was in 1999 in hatteras…i can't believe it has been that long. some of you had the pleasure of meeting him at various times — petunia, matt d, dan (way back in the day at the beach)…

my mother's sister's husband, he was quiet but witty. and gets the (perhaps dubious) honor of being the first man i knew who wore sandals a lot. i have an urge to just write and write now, mainly because i'm in shock and don't know what else to do. i'm going to bite my tongue though, at least for now.

i found this bio he wrote online on a railroad site:

"I was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. I was a typical New Yorker. I knew of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and of the eastern seaboard down to Virginia. I knew New Jersey was across the Hudson, and California somewhere on the other side of the globe. One day I reached the western edge of New Jersey at the Delaware River Gap. I looked across and, good grief, there was land over there! I crossed, and no one yelled at me, stopped me, arrested me, shot me, or jailed me. I escaped! And I never went back. This was my project in Creative Writing 101.

"How a kid moved from the concrete canyons of Brooklyn to the corn and soy bean fields of Iowa is a project for Creative Writing 102. But I love it here. Iowa and Mason City have been very good to my family and me.

"I am a model railroader, who likes to shoot photos of trains. I started in HO, but bitten by narrow gauge, found HOn3 too tiny and too primitive in 1953 (no tiny motors, for example), and, after two frustrating years, ordered my first On3 locomotive; it arrived in 1958. There was no Sn3 back then, which, I feel, is a more practical size than On3. I model the Colorado narrow gauges, but use my own RR name. My early claim to fame was a series of articles and photos in Model Railroader back in the 1950’s to 1970’s. I was once good enough to have the “Model of the Month.” But, at age 72, my eyes are not what they used to be and my hands are no longer steady. So be it…"

my mother sent me a scanned bio from the residence where they had recently moved into:

i want to say more — about the times i visited them, about the times at the beach with him (and the rest of the family), about the news that trickles through to me in email forwards and phone calls. the memories i have — all of them. isn't this always the case? isn't this the way it is? the desire to create meaning from loss, order out of chaos, permanence from memory?

godspeed, mr. marty. you will be missed.

This all makes me want to kick Richard Reid in the ballsack. No shoes, no water (no fucking beverage service on a lot of flights either, I might add!!!). Next, the terrorists will make exploding clothes (you heard it here first) and then we'll have to fly naked, because that's apparently how America rolls.

If I sound pissy, it's only because Amy's been pumping breastmilk ALL WEEK in Toronto. Yeah, this is going to work like a charm.

Terrorist douchebags.

August 9, 2006

If you ever think you ought to get a baby up in the middle of the night, chances are you should. I heard the little girl fidgeting in her crib around 2 this morning. She'd grunt and flop her legs around, then doze off for about three minutes. This went on for about 10-15 minutes. I fixed a bottle—knowing the tummy must be appeased should I rouse her—and went in. Her diaper felt quite full and I figured she was having trouble sleeping because of the wet diaper. Turns out the diaper was indeed full … of shit. Poor kid. I'm glad I went ahead and got ready and woke her; she'd only have gotten more and more agitated.

Yesterday I took Reed and Beks out to the library. Reed loves book (brag: he was reading independently at 2years, 9months!) so I've got Bek in the car seat stroller, Reed is holding one hand while "helping" to push with the other. Yesterday was also the primaries, and as such, the library was a voting location. As we strolled in, a candidate supporter with a sign said, "You're the first guy with kids I've seen all day! Everybody else has been women with strollers!"

Um. "Well, I'm a stay-at-home dad," I said. "It's what I do." That's me: trendsetter. Or the only guy who takes his kid to the library anymore.

Hmm. The rest of you guys are dicks.

At that moment, some small part of me felt I should have a minivan.

Later:

Speaking of minivans, I'm loathe to admit I felt my very first pang of minivan envy today. A woman with two children was exiting the grocery story as I went in. The kids hopped in, each with their own captains' chairs in the back, and she easily loaded all the groceries into the back. Shit. That's a lot of rolling space. I've got a full sized car, but for those of you without kids: car seats ain't made for cars. Wedging these huge hunks of plastic and padding into the back seat of a car is laughable … assuming you're not the one doing it. Upon trying to maneuver two of them in there, and having to shove my seat up a couple notches just to make everything work, I can see why so many families resort to the huge ass SUV or the minivan. Sadly, I also know that when the little girl outgrows the little car seat, she'll need to sit in the bigger car seat… facing backwards. Practically speaking, this is impossible in my car in this space/time continuum. Grr.