A Clever Sheep, Jr.

2008-10-25T19:40:08Z

2008-09-08T15:04:20Z

2008-09-05T13:50:20Z

Garbage

Every Tuesday morning at 6am I’m reminded what a lousy homeowner I am. I hear the garbage truck rumbling down the street and I rush to throw on some clothes to gather up the garbage and put it on the curb. We’re the first stop on the garbage route – not our house, but the house two doors down, just past the intersection. So, when I hear the truck I’ve actually got some time to make my run.

The garbage-men get out of the cab where the three of them have been sitting in the nice warm environment and the two outside men slowly jump down to the ground, put on their reflective orange vests, chat about whatever they were chatting about in the cab, then start grabbing garbage bags from the curb and throwing them in the empty truck. I wonder if the driver feels lonely, since the two guys grabbing bags are constantly in conversation.

The regular guys are two young black guys, one of them with dreads and the other pretty close-hewn hair. No matter what time of year, it seems they always have steam coming out of their mouths. The bags dropping in the truck’s maw make a crashing sound or a wet thud or a crinkling noise, which is usually followed by the clattering of hard plastic on the concrete sidewalk. They're pretty good about making sure the cans don’t wind up in the street.

Meanwhile, I’m running around the house, frantically emptying waste-bins, checking the bathrooms, picking up bowls of peanut shells, tossing out empty wine-bottles, checking the vegetable bin of the refrigerator to find out what rotted over the past week, or what was unlikely to be eaten and rot by next week. Then it’s down to the garage to gather up the other garbage bags I’ve tossed  in there over the week – or two or three weeks – since I last caught the garbage-man. Bags in the can, open the garage door, trundle it down to the street on its creaky plastic wheels, then back to the garage for whatever miscellaneous stuff I’m trashing.

By this time, the truck has made it around the block and is now coming back to my side. I don’t want to be seen, so I quickly duck inside, slam the garage door closed and breathe. I am sure my neighbors are all sleeping or getting their kids ready for daycare or for school, or enjoying their newspaper and coffee before getting on the road. Their garbage bags were all on the curb last night.

I wonder if the garbage-man notices when I miss a pickup for 2 or 3 weeks in a row. There’s cars in the driveway, so I’m sure he knows we didn’t move. Is his garbage always out on time? Or does he take it to work with him? And do my neighbors notice when they drive down the street on Monday night, back from the supermarket or some errand and notice that mine is the only house without the evidence of the consumer culture on display? No new TV boxes, no new computer boxes, no kids’ toys.

One house down the street put a TV out on the curb – a 32 inch Phillips, just like the one we have – but the garbage-men wouldn’t pick it up. It’s been sitting there on the curb for a few weeks now, like some test of wills between the homeowner and the garbage-man. Who will break down first and take the thing away.

At my parents’ house when I was growing up, if there was some junk we didn’t want or didn’t want to throw away because we thought it might have some value for someone, we’d just leave it on the curb on a Friday night when we knew the weather would be clear of precipitation. On Saturday mornings, the yard sale crawlers would come cruising around, and there was always someone matched with everything we put out there. A pee-stained mattress? No problem! A stack of cracked parsons tables? Certainly! A chess-table in faux Spanish style with 2 chairs never truly meant to hold a human body? Gone in a flash. I wonder if yard sale crawlers still roam around like that? Has eBay made all that obsolete? Or is there still the serendipity of finding that you connect with some unloved lamp or ancient appliance?

Anyway, the garbage-men are gone from my street. I can hear them around the corner, their backup beepers bleating, crashes of glass breaking. The dog is pawing at the inside garage door and I’ve gotta go in and take him out. Into the back yard, where I’m confronted with further evidence of my lousy homeowner status: the scattered piles of dog shit he leaves and which I really need to pick up.

What's "the grain"?

One of the "Hip Tips" presented at the end of "Queer Eye on the Straight Guy" told men to always shave with the grain. The comment was inspired by one of the straight guys' mishap with a razor. The Fab 5, watching their Eliza Doolittle get prepared for his girlfriend's visit, all cringed as the subject of their attentions nicked himself badly on the chin while shaving. "With the grain... WITH the grain!" they yelled. "Why is it that straight guys don't know how to shave with the grain?"

Ummm... this straight guy here hasn't a clue. My father, who has always been the guru of male grooming to me, never mentioned shaving with the grain. This is a man who knows three different straight-tie knots as well as how to hand tie a bow-tie. He can pin a carnation on a lapel with his eyes closed, can fold a pocket handkerchief in dozens of different styles, polishes his shoes with spit and wax and owns at least a dozen pairs of cuff-links. While he usually shaves with a double-bladed razor nowadays, I'm sure he could still do a perfect job with the straight-razor he used until shortly after I hit puberty. He gave me my first shave with that straight-razor right before a friend's Bar Mitzvah, and not long after, he showed me how to shave myself with the safety razor.

After lathering up, I start at my right temple and come straight down over my jawline, all the way down to where the beard growth ends, then I lift the blade and start the next row down. I continue this way until I've cleared my cheek, then I move over to the left temple and shave down and over, down and over, then I shave my throat, starting below my goatee and straight down again. Then, I start the whole thing over, but this time, I start at the throat and shave up. When that's completed, I shave my neck from one ear to the other, right to left, and finally, from left to right. The last part I shave is my lip, carefully shaping my mustache by shaving down from the nose, then up from the mustache. I can usually do this whole routine without anything more than an occasional nick, which is quickly stanched with a touch of the styptic pencil. The shave is smooth and clean and close, but...

I have no clue what the "grain" is. Am I doing it wrong? How embarassing...

A Day in DC

Jenn and I drove down to the Kennedy Center yesterday with another couple to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company's most recent production, called "All the Great Books (abridged)." It was a blast!

An excellent mixture of slapstick and rapid-fire satire, the show is run like a summer-school make-up class, covering 83 works of literature in 98 minutes. The class is taught by the Coach (Reed Martin), Professor Tichenor (Austin Tichenor) and Matt, the Student Teacher (Matthew Croke), each wearing a ridiculous assortment of wigs, skirts, hats and scuba masks. There are long segments on "War & Peace" and "The Idiodyssey", including an unforgettable portrayal of Polyphemus, the Cyclops. I was this close to being the guy they called up on the stage to assist in the Dating Game panel, where the poor guy next to me wound up wearing a blonde wig and playing Bachelorette Number 3 -- aka Virginia Woolf -- opposite Jane Austen and George Eliot. When Pofessor Tichenor, who was portraying George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), was asked by Coach, "Bachelorette Number 2: How do you reconcile your physical life as a woman with your literary career as a man?", He replied, "That's easy... I'm the Professor AND Mary Ann." Groan...

Afterwards, we headed into Georgetown to savor the incredibly bad traffic management, near-nonexistent parking, and the dozens of yuppie stores which make M Street look like any other upscale urban center. We popped into a place called News Café for dinner & had a nice, not particularly memorable meal. It was a beautiful evening, much cooler and drier than its been for a while, so we walked down along the river for a little bit, then headed back to our friends' apartment in Frederick.

On the way, we stopped at the site of their new house, presently under construction, and located in a pretty space overlooking a golf course, and in view of the Catoctin Mountains. The sun set while we were there, and then Jenn and I headed home. Just a nice day doing stuff.

Rekindling the Romance at the JiffyLube

I worked from home today, since Jenn's car was acting up. The "Check Engine" light came on and stayed on 3 days ago and she just told me about it last night. She took my car, and I brought hers over to the JiffyLube because I kinda had a feeling that it might have something to do with the oil. Sure enough: there was NO oil in the car when they checked it! The disapproving looks the mechanics directed towards me reminded me of my mother's reaction when I failed high school Calculus -- my first non-A grade.

So, I slunk into the waiting room while 'Dre, the mechanic assigned to my car, showed the dry dipstick to all his co-workers. I took the one empty chair, in-between a somewhat attractive middle-aged white woman whose shorts exposed varicose-veined legs which totally belied her age, and a very large, athletic-looking black man who might have been on a break from the Baltimore Ravens football training camp just up the road. A guy in an expensive-looking tan 3-piece suit and slicked-back black hair sat across the room from me, sipping at a styrofoam cup of sour-smelling coffee from the stained stainless-steel machine to his right. Another guy, a delivery driver of some sort sat to the left, separated from the football player by the very loud television set. The driver was shuffling pink-backed forms and talking by cell-phone to his dispatcher about his upcoming deliveries, practically yelling over a "Today Show" story about hormone replacement therapy. The woman next to me was aimlessly flipping through a well-worn "Sports Illustrated", while the guy on my other side was leaning his head back against the window, eyes closed; the businessman was poring over one of the glossy brochures about windshield wipers.

And then Katie Couric announced her next guest: Dr. Gail Saltz, talking about planning a romantic summer getaway with your spouse while the kids are off at camp. "You have to realize that just being in a romantic place does not mean that you will automatically have hot sex every minute," she said, and the room froze. The football player opened his eyes and turned toward the TV, the businessman put down the brochure next to his barely-touched coffee cup, the driver had finished his call and stopped dialing the next number in midstream, the woman leaned forward with her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees.

"In terms of romance, women really find talking to be one of the best forms of foreplay. For men it is really more physical. You must both know this about each other, because if he jumps on you the minute you are in the room, you may be angry, and neither of you will know why. Tell him you really want some time to talk and that talking intimately on what you both care about is very romantic and stimulating to you."

The businessman snorted; the woman subtly nodded her head. The talking head continued, telling us to be spontaneous, recognize our differences and be romantic at home. She signed off and a loud commercial came on. The deliveryman resumed dialing, the football player leaned back against the window, and the businessman went through the door into the garage, presumably to see about his car. The woman continued leaning forward, absent-mindedly twisting her wedding band and smiling, just a bit.