Who Asked Me?

well, you know, she still laughs with me
but she waits just a second too long
– John Prine

Thought I’d pen a brief follow-up to my below post, as the Oscars have come and gone and it gives me the chance to wax philosophic, somewhat at my pal’s expense. Neither my friend Tom Myers nor resurgent tough guy thespian Mickey Rourke emerged victorious. Tom was bested by an Indian fellow (dots, not feathers) named Resul Pookutty, who did the sound mix for Slumdog Millionaire. Pookutty dedicated the award to a billion Indians living in a country that “gave the world the word that precedes silence and is followed by more silence.” He was referring to the primordial Hindu syllable “Om”. This was some fairly heady stuff, but no more profound than what Tom had planned – an enthusiastic shout-out to Richie Allen and the ’64 Phillies. Pookutty’s trumping Myers was particularly disappointing for me, as I was counting on Tom bringing his Oscar with him when we ate at Marin Joe’s, to facilitate getting a table. I have no doubt that Tom will be back though, as he’s still young, hard working and talented.

On a less personal note, I was also disappointed to see Mickey Rourke lose to Sean Penn for Best Actor. While I give Penn his due, how difficult is it to win for playing Harvey Milk at an awards show often referred to as the Gay Superbowl? Still, it was somewhat fitting that Rourke would come up short, as this reflected the true nature of his role in “The Wrestler” and is an even more poignant storyline to accompany his return after falling from grace. Then again, I’ve always preferred teams like the Brooklyn Dodgers to the New York Yankees. Life seems more aptly reflected by those who strive for great things, go far, but never quite get there. Similarly, the things that we wish for most are typically entirely different if and when we realize them. This concludes my above mentioned philosophical waxing, as well as this year’s Oscar Wrap.

I was twenty the first time I met Danny Szeto. I’d just dropped out of USC after a two year stint, gotten fat, and started working for my family’s company driving the delivery truck. It wasn’t where I wanted to be. Danny had already been at the company for a year, having migrated from his native Hong Kong where he worked as a tailor. (I never could get my mind around the idea of a Danny Szeto altered suit, but that’s another story.) He’d started in the chemical mixing department of our film lab, developed a bad rash, and tried to hide it because he needed the work. Veteran employee Martin Hall called my father’s attention to the situation, and my dad suggested the position of janitor. We’d been using a nightly service, and they weren’t doing the best job. Danny jumped at the chance.

By the time I showed up, Danny had been at the janitor gig for a while. He was still (and always would be) working on his English skills, but he gathered that my name was Rick and greeted me with a friendly “Hello Rihhh” whenever we’d cross paths in the shipping department. About three weeks in to my employment, I was taping together a UPS package while Danny and machine operator Benny (Mac) McBride sipped at small Dixie cups by the water cooler. A call came over the intercom – “Rick Monaco, line two” –  and Danny got a curious look on his face. “Who is Rihhh Mah-naco? ” Benny gestured impatiently toward me. “This is Rick Monaco, Danny – his father owns the f*ckin’ company.” Danny got quite excited at this revelation and started congratulating me profusely. Drawing attention to my connection with ownership was the last thing that I wanted, but picking up on my self-conscious, self-loathing vibe wasn’t exactly Danny’s forte, either. For the next several weeks, wherever he’d see me – outside getting in the truck, in the freight elevator, up in the company lunch room – he’d start pumping my hand with those green-rubber janitorial gloves, and repeating “Rihhh Mah-naco, Rihhh Mah-naco” like I’d just won the lottery. That I wasn’t as excited about it seemed to matter little to him. My awkward indifference to this perceived good fortune couldn’t stop his fun.

I couldn’t have predicted at that point what a staple Danny would become in my long tenure at Monaco Labs. He wasn’t exactly a partner and he wasn’t exactly a foil. But he was always there observing the goings-on, pointing out the packaged assortment of tea, coffee and hot chocolate in the lunch room to those who might have missed it, and the first in the buffet line at company Christmas parties, piling an impressive assortment of chow on his plate. I helped him out with his English lessons on occasion by injecting various rock lyrics to the mix. I’d give him the lead line and he’d repeat and finish the phrase, whether it was Aerosmith ( “wahhh this way, tahhh this way” ) or Bobby Darin ( “splish-splash, I was takin’ a bofff..” ) Nobody seemed to mind when I taught him the correct response to “Merry Christmas” – Bah Humbug . He spat it out with proud conviction, and the laughs he got reinforced the routine. Years after he retired, I’d  get Christmas cards from Danny, and he’d always sign off with that refrain. He never missed any of my birthdays either – always sent a card.

Scott Miller, another long time Monaco regular, used to join me in taking Danny to various events like professional wrestling and Giants baseball games. One night at a Giants game, I was talking to Miller while Danny sat silently beside us with a rather substantial, slovenly fellow to his left. I was concerned with Danny’s comfort level, sitting next to this stranger.  Giants relief pitcher Greg Minton was having a bad year, and I had taught Danny one simple, two-word phrase to bring to the ballpark. They put Minton in late in a losing effort, to work some throwaway innings. When they announced his name, the big guy next to Danny got a disgusted look on his face and Danny instinctively uttered “Min-ton suck.” The guy slapped him on the back saying “you got that right, little fellow” and he and Danny were fast friends.

It came as little surprise the other night when the sad word arrived in Brooklyn that Danny had died. I hadn’t been in touch for a while, but it was the first year in memory that he hadn’t sent a birthday or Christmas card. The last time we’d hung out was a few years back in San Francisco. We went out for a coffee in North Beach and then did some people watching from a bench in Washington Square Park. I don’t think either of us ever fully understood what the other was saying, but I’d nod and repeat words that I could make out in his sentences and he’d smile like we were on the same page. There were long periods of silence that were equally comfortable, when we’d just sit and observe. I guess we were on the same page, in an odd sort of way, and I got the feeling that he read me well, going all the way back to when I was a wise-ass kid.  Afterwards he tried to teach me a Chinese card game at my place and then we gave up and watched the sun set on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a pretty good day.

I watched the inaugural yesterday. It was a decent show, and I’m waiting to find out exactly what “childish things” we’re going to be asked to put aside. I’m there for the new president, but if it means parting with my 1968 Nolan Ryan/Jerry Koosman rookie card he may have to go it alone. He is, however, welcome to my remaining Bank of America stock.  I remain skeptical but hopeful, which for me is a fairly optimistic condition. It was quite an impressive crowd – about as substantial as this country can muster at a non-sporting event. And there seemed to be plenty of good feelings all around, which is perfectly OK if kept in perspective. While there was something legitimately stirring about the images of black people in the crowd watching in joyous disbelief at the proceedings, I’m still a bit apprehensive about some white folks who seem a bit too anxious to cash in on this “shared struggle.” Let’s get this out of the way at the onset. As noble as it may have been, a vote for Obama never translated in to knowing what it means to be black in this country.

That’s precisely what I like about this guy. He was always two steps ahead of all of this effusive, altruistic bullshit. He’s known that his mere physical presence speaks to the barriers shattered, and seems anxious to get on to the business at hand. Let’s not fool ourselves – image has played a big part. Given his cool demeanor and articulate nature, he still wouldn’t have landed this gig if he looked like Bookman from Good Times. But he doesn’t, and up to this point he seems like the complete package. I read a New Yorker article some time back that included an email exchange between Obama and Patrick Gaspard, his campaign’s political director. It was after Obama’s first debate with McCain in September, and Gaspard wrote “You are more clutch than Michael Jordan.” Obama’s reply was to the point: “Just give me the ball.” This quote stuck with me, along with an image from just after he’d won the election. He was exiting his first national security briefing a day after becoming President Elect, and his expression was fixed and serious. Most of the boyish ease and natural assurance from his acceptance speech just the previous evening was absent. Whatever they’d told him, it was apparently sobering.

It’s your ball Mr. President, good luck.

I got my dad the eight DVD set of Ric Burns’ history of New York for Christmas. I watched the entire series two summers ago shortly after moving in to my apartment in Brooklyn. The first few episodes concentrate on the city’s origins, much of which take place in the areas that are now Brooklyn, the New York Harbor, and lower Manhattan. I got a charge out of pausing the discs on occasion and going up to my roof to take in this exact view as the sun set on the city. I used to think that life peaked at a certain, arbitrary point, and that everything on either side was either climb or descent. But I’ve come to believe it’s a series of potential peaks only attainable by the virtue of sustained movement. Some descent is almost guaranteed. This doesn’t mean that you’ve always got to be packing your bags for somewhere else, but you can’t park your chair on the roof and enjoy the same great view forever, either. But I digress.

If San Francisco is a little like the smart kid in the Gifted Studies program who’s read a lot of books but sucks at sports, then New York is like an intelligent, hot girlfriend who’s a little too loud and is always in your face. Of course neither is remotely like either of these things, but it’s as good a summation as any. What is a city, other than its people, its physicality (including climate and location), and its history? “Vibe” is kind of a hip word, but any perceived vibration is relative to that which is being put out by the individual. My buddy Mark in New York told me a while back that he thought he’d spend a year of his life in Los Angeles before he was done. He’d just come back from a visit there and enjoyed the detached, unspecific sense of freedom he’d experienced. “I think my Los Angeles might be your New York” he told me.

I was in Los Angeles not too long ago, staying with my father in a Torrance Marriott Residence Inn, due to circumstances largely beyond our collective control. I was laying on the couch and he on his bed, both of us having had a few drinks and he with chocolate cookie crumbs adorning his Hanes t-shirt just below his chin. He was reflecting on his life, a tendency for which I cut him ample slack in due respect of his having just turned eighty. Somewhere along the line the conversation switched to the potentially daunting question of why anyone chooses to push on  “I don’t know why I keep going,” he offered. “I guess I just wake up every day and I’m still curious how it’s all going to turn out.”  His response stuck with me more than he likely realized, and over the coming months I’d go back to it with a mixed sense of appreciation and envy.

I like the jogging route that I take most days in Brooklyn. The highlight comes when I turn down Remsen Street and head for the Promenade. There, all is revealed – Manhattan from Wall Street up to the Empire State Building and points beyond, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Liberty in the Harbor. There are always people taking pictures, except on the harshest of winter days. But part of the appeal for me is that I’m in motion, and not attempting to capture any of it. When I look west toward the Statue of Liberty, I typically picture California somewhere in the distance beyond. And then it’s gone and I’m finishing the rest of my run. There could be worse highlights to a day, and it’s as good a reason as any to keep on going.

When I was first kicking around New York back in 2003, I lived in a lot of sublets. There were five of them in a period of one year, and more to come after. It was an odd existence, but no more than some that had come before, or since. It felt like the thing to do at the time. The thing about what feels like the thing to do at the time is, you can fight it if you like, but you always know you’re in a fight.

I had one particular personal belonging that I carried with me from sublet to sublet back then – a Willie Nelson poster from a show I’d attended at the Fillmore in San Francisco in 2002. It was a mosaic of his face comprised of stuff that the artist felt best represented Willie. There were rusty old nails and bits of straw and pieces of bone and buttons and sunflower seed shells and pot pipes and plug sockets and bullet casings. It bore a striking resemblence when you pulled back from the individual components and took in the whole. I don’t know why I threw this in my bag before I left San Francisco, but I did. With one exception, every sublet I lived in was already furnished. One had a kind of lizard theme with ceramic geckos and salamander art on the walls and everything painted some shade of green. There were also a lot of Richard Nixon artifacts; Nixon bowling, Nixon buttons and pins, “Nixon Now” signs. Another place in Manhattan had more of a bohemian theme and smelled of curry. But the one part of me that I lent to each was Willie Nelson. I’d tack him up before I even unpacked my bags, marking my official arrival.

I’m still living among someone else’s furniture these days, but I’ve been here for well over a year and it’s starting to take on my own shape through repeated use. Willie is back in San Francisco, framed and on the wall. I figured he’d put in his time and deserved a rest, even if I wasn’t done. In his place now is an image of Neil Young from the cover of his 1969 album “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.” I’d always wanted a reproduction of this cover but could never find it. Then last year I tracked down a reasonable facsimile (as the kids like to say) from some hippie retro poster dealer in Nottingham, England. It cost a fair chunk of change to have it shipped, but I figured it would be up there for a while longer so it was worth it. The image of Neil and his dog stands alone, without the album title. But that’s OK because I’ve got the tune ingrained in my head at this point.  Everybody seems to wonder, what it’s like down here .. I used to see it from the perspective of a guy who was trying to get back home, but like any great song its meaning has changed for me over the years. I don’t seem to be fighting that as much of late either.