RIP, Heath

From the New York Times:

In a recent interview with WJW-TV, a Fox affiliate in Cleveland, about “I’m Not There,” in which he was one of several actors playing the music legend Bob Dylan, Mr. Ledger struck a philosophical note. He responded to a question about how having a child had changed his life:

“You’re forced into, kind of, respecting yourself more,” he said. “You learn more about yourself through your child, I guess. I think you also look at death differently. It’s like a Catch-22: I feel good about dying now because I feel like I’m alive in her, you know, but at the same hand, you don’t want to die because you want to be around for the rest of her life.”

I heard Heath Ledger had died through my coworker tonight at the annual meeting, watching the news ripple through the rows as it came in through a Blackberry news alert.

I wondered -- briefly -- why the news felt more meaningful than any of the other multitude of deaths that have occurred already in this new year, here in Boston and further abroad. We've been at war now for seven long years since 2001, during which time I've always known that other human beings are encountering untimely deaths around the globe. Cancers, heart disease, strokes and respiratory diseases are part of the U.S. experience. Malaria, dysentary, drug-resistant TB and other infectious diseases are unpleasant additions worldwide. The 57 million people that died in 2002 primarily passed from a combination of those causes.

So why does his passing touch me? As a devout movie watcher, his performances entered my visual memory in a visceral and lasting way.

I never felt "A Knight's Tale" or "The Order" or "Ned Kelly" were entirely his fault; "Brokeback Mountain" and "Monster's Ball" and even "The Patriot" showed his talent in a variety of meaningful ways. I enjoyed him in "The Brother's Grimm." Ledger's portrayal of the Joker in the new Batman movie, due on IMAX this summer, now takes on the unique resonance of the young actor's last performance, where he appears to fill some large shoes occupied until now by Jack Nicholson. I'm hopeful that the laughing, brilliant maniac portrayed in the trailer.

I hope the movie is a classic. Heath certainly was.

He leaves a two year old daughter and the promise of a brilliant acting career behind.

He'll be missed.

New year, old resolutions

I may be slightly behind the curve in posting a list of resolutions, but then I've had other priorities over the past week.

That being said, it was time for some housekeeping. I removed the widgets from my sidebar that were cluttering up the page and weren't adding much value to any casual user.

I've ditched the long blogroll and links to magazines, neither of which represent what reading these days. Once I switched to Google Reader, I stopped using bookmarks and certainly that list. Instead, I've simply added the blogs of friends, near and far. For those interested, my linkblog and shared delicious bookmarks are still there to be explored.

Once again, I found myself wanting to add links to the URLs of former friends and classmates. It wasn't easy to abstain. Despite myself, I still find it all too easy to click over, both because I find the writing entertaining or that I still care what's happening in their lives.

In the spirit of the new year, however, I've resolved to no longer put energy into dwelling upon sundered relationships, especially as it's long since become clear that the only evidence of them lies in my IP logs. Wherever you are in your lives and in the world, I wish you well.

Other resolutions are easier to articulate:

• Exercise more
  
• Volunteer
  
• Tell my family and friends that I care about them more often
  
• Write daily with passion, precision and pithiness
  
• Pursue creative outlets in woodworking, painting, photography and Web design
  
• See the dentist, now that I've dealt with the doctor
  
• Better prepare my truck for offroad use and learn to get myself out of sticky situations in the backcountry
  
• Be a better editor, whatever the medium -- sound, video or text
  
• Read more, watch less.
  
• Fish smarter and earlier
  
• Be greener
  
• Become more involved and invested in social media
  
• Most of all, love myself and those around me; karma comes around.
  

I know that if I can persevere through the past year's challenges, 2008 will be a cinch. Here's to the year ahead.

Tagged, tagging and tags

Somehow, I managed to get through November without posting. I have a draft that was never quite published, after a trip to Maine for an acappella reunion, and memories from a week in Maryland that deserve some time and thought. For the moment, however, I have been "tagged" by Grateful Girl, the significant other of a great friend. So... I'll use that as the impetus to get back on the personal blogging horse.

Tagging, in my world, is nearly irrevocably associated with folksonomies and tag clouds. For those that are unfamiliar with that sort of jargon, that term refers to user-assigned taxonomies, a phenomenon assessed and described with eloquence by David Weinberger in his excellent Everything Is Miscellaneous. Here, the tag is more of a throwback to the hoary days of 2002, when bloggers tapped each other to pontificate about the most recent Internet meme.

It's fun, it's friendly and I'm glad to play along.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Don’t break the chain!

1. I adore "pickle pottage sandwiches" -- stoned wheat thins, peanut butter and dill pickles - though I have them infrequently.

2. I tried to literally cross the Rubicon as a teenager and left a Teva embedded in the river back after my classmates pulled me out of the muck.

3. The first television show I ever watched was a Bugs Bunny episode, courtesy of Warner Brothers. I think it was Duck Season, and I wouldn't see TV again for years.

4. I won a pesto challenge at Star Island when I was 19 by drinking a full tureen of creamy sauce in a go, nearly two quarts. I earned a stomache ache, bragging rights for a week and five large raspberry rickies at the snack bar. Even trade, IMHO.

5. I own not one but three cast iron crepe pans, along with more than a dozen other cast iron skillets, pots and sauce pans. Go figure.

And with that, I hereby tag the following folks:

Matt
Brian
Jack
Beth
Gimpadelic (who, even if GG tagged him already, might benefit from the additional impetus.)

Why I won't be an Anchorman again soon.

Stay classy, Interwebs.

The mustache contest is over! Shaven again, I feel like a new man. I even placed second, albeit in a three-way tie in a five man field. I may grow a goatee again some day -- but this particular brand of facial fur is firmly off the table.

*.deity is after me

SOME deity is definitely after me -- or at least it feels like it.

After working hard all morning and early afternoon, I decided to take a ride out to Walden for a swim, an incredibly attractive prospect given the 91 degree weather.

I've cycled out there at least once a month since March -- ok, not August -- and thought it would be the perfect way to clear my head and then tackle a long-standing coding project.

I wish I'd found some other way to decompress.

I went downstairs to get my bike and found the front tire flat.

I pumped it up and then drove over to the bike path, thinking I would avoid having to cycle through rush hour traffic and give my already-sore legs a break when I returned.

I geared up and pedaled all of 8 strokes before the back tube blew, sending me skidding sideways.

I broke my fall with a gloved hand (fine), knee (now sans a large swatch of flesh and skin) and my pedal.

Determined to persevere and get out to my swim, I drove back to the bike shop and then went over to CVS and bought a big bleedstop bandaid.

Patched up, I extricated the tube, bought and installed a new one and drove back to bike path, sure that I'd overcome my challenge and was still going to get a pedal and dunk.

And then I saw that my pedal had broken in half due to the force of the skid, no doubt preserving my joints but making the bike more or less unridable.

I tried to stop at my favorite BBQ place on the way home to console myself over while I iced the knee....and of course my debit card wouldn't read on their machine.

A long, hot shower later, I'm shaking my head and wondering where the bad karma came from while being thankful that I didn't wipe out in traffic or on the trail.

Frickin' hump day. My knee hurts.

Rattouille & Brunch at Wimbledon

If I'm watching any television on Sunday morning, it tends to be Meet the Press, Face the Nation or other Sunday morning gabfests. Watching NPR commentators Juan Williams and Maura Liasson square off with Barnes and Kristol from the Weekly Standard under the watchful eye of Britt Hume on Fox News, however, was a new and not entirely unwelcome addition to the weekly spincycle.

It floors me to note that how long I stayed on Fox News -- but there it is.

Much better, however, was the epic and superlative battle between Nadal and Federer this morning. A 5-set championship battle between the two best players in the world? A++ tennis? Spellbing. Federer is, more or less, the kind of tennis player I dreamed of being growing up, before the small issues of talent and coordination kicked up. I'll always love the game but the sorts of shots he's able to make, looping around the net or located in the only four square inches over the net that would escape his opponent's racket is just mindboggling. The grace that he approaches hitting each shot with is extraordinary, reminding me of the swing of Tiger or Ted or MJ's jumpshot. Beauty.

The unexpected tennis-fest follows on a brilliant Saturday. I caught up with the remainder of the spring cleaning left by a departing housemate, primarily organizing, doing laundry & dishes, gardening, stowing gear from the sojourn to Maine and generally getting settled in again. I shaved three weeks worth of beard -- always rejuvenating for me -- and celebrated with a walk around Fresh Pond, dinner on the patio at Jose's, a fantastic local Mexican restaurant with expertly executed authentic dishes, followed by G&Ts on the back porch. I was lucky to find spectacularly good company for my summer evening, a stroke of random luck that's still sinking in.

We caught the late show of Ratatouille at Fresh Pond, walking through Dennehy Park on what can only be described as sultry summer evening.

Pixar recaptured and rekindled the same spirit that drew me in with Toy Story, raising the bar yet again for digital detail and dazzling with whirling, twirling shots that left me a bit breathless. I loved it. I loved the reflection of the streetlights in the textured granite sidewalk, the bright copper showing in the scratches on the patina of the well-used pans in the kitchen and the fur of the rats themselves, a marvel of autonomous fibers animated in an utterly realistic way. It took an artist's eye to raise my appreciation of all of those elements to another level -- I was a fortunate soul to have one next to me. Two of 'em, in fact.

Ben Bird's characteristic flair for sweet, universal humor was on display throughout.

For this cook and foodie, the theme of the movie itself was probably the biggest treat. I'm looking forward to attempting that presentation of ratatouille myself sometime soon, though the smoker and grill are calling to me more than anything else these days.

I'm about to bike out to Walden and swim, hoping to escape the load of the 90+ degree humid blanket of hot air that is suffocating Cambridge.

Ah, summer.



SUCH a happy camper this morning.

95 Days Later

Three months on, I'm still getting to know Cambridge and my new neighbors. On the whole, it's been as welcoming and smooth a transition as I could have wished for, much less hoped for or expected. I'm wrote this post from the congenial atmosphere in Paddy's, a local fixture since 1934. The regulars are a mix of the backbone of the city, so to speak, policemen, firemen, tradesmen and repairmen, with veterans and old salts sprinkled liberally throughout. The pub itself has some of the old country feel about it, as decades-long friends and neighbors but rounds more often than single bottles or pints, though the florescent lighting is a bit harsh.

The presence of a storied local is one of many net positives in the move. The other side of the ledger isn't clear -- the cost of food and housing aren't negligible here and may be unsustainable in the long run -- but on the whole I'm sure I made the right choice when I moved here from Roslindale in the beginning of March. While I miss the Arnold Arboretum, Shadow and Roberta, my (new) roomate's dog, have been running around Fresh Pond a couple of times a week, which amounts to about four miles and change. These days, it's going faster and without much of a pause, a sign that I might actually be returning to some semblance of physical shape. Shadow is game, after he gets through marking at the beginning of the circuit or dropping off the inevitable deposit at the bank, so to speak, though I notice that he's perhaps lost a step in his smooth gait to match the increasing grey around his muzzle. He'll be seven in August, no longer the muscle-bound bolt of black lightning that I adopted five years ago this May.

I took three significant steps towards residency on Friday as well, acknowledging "on paper" what's been true in reality for a while: I signed up or a library card at my local library, just three blocks away, paid the excise tax on my truck and visited City Hall to secure the golden ticket that is a Cambridge resident parking sticker.

A parking pass, library card and taxes; I'm on my way to residency, anyway.

There are other, less tangible benefits to the move as well. Proximity to the Minuteman Commuter Bike Trail at Alewife, running all the way up to Bedford. A ten minute walk to Porter Square's T stop, shopping center, restaurants and music venues. A quick exit to Route 2 outbound or onto 16 to go into the city. A reasonable Chinese restaurant, Lucky Garden, a mere block and a half away, with creditable versions of any number of tasty dishes. The Fresh Pond shopping center only a walk -- or blink of a bike ride -- away through Dennehy Park, where the inexpensive if average-sized wonders of the cinema await, along with the paycheck-devouring aisles of Whole Foods. The young Indian brothers who run the convenience store next door that embody laid back ease and good humor. The library around the corner or the Hi-Rise Bakery a few blocks beyond that.

That laundry list, of course, ignores my luck in roommates or the cool twenty-somethings that inhabit the floors above me, along with the dog-friendly backyard, storage and laundry in the basement.

Karma comes around. I'm sure that with time other black marks may emerge. For now, I'm more than content to meet new neighbors, watch the vegetable garden explode out of the ground and pots in the back garden and make the most of the opportunities that now lie within walking distance.

I can't say the adjustment to single life has been easy. There's no doubt that the choice to move to Huron Village, as some realtors have taken to calling the neighborhood, has made the transition less painful.

Cantabridgianity, here I come.

Transition

I have no idea what the next 30 days will hold.

Now, while that technically isn't completely true, it's not exactly the converse, either. I've taken a faltering step in new direction, though the path is still unfolding.

I'd like to think that watching all Six Feet Under would have taught me that long ago, but here we are in 2007, more than a year since Sia's Breathe Me took us out of the final episode. That moment remains a sobering, beautiful resolution to a brilliant series, a reminder that we all die, sooner or later.

This song still chokes me up when I hear it.



It really took my uncle's passing last year to drive the point home, however. Memorizing the following words from the Bard long ago, in sixth grade, certainly didn't imprint that reality on my heart or outlook.

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

--From Macbeth (V, v, 19)

I suppose, at 30, I'm finally conscious of my own mortality.

Looking out at the vista

I should really start by apologizing for the title of this post. I've been completely saturated in Microsoft's launch of Vista this week and couldn't help the foul play on words.

That being said, I really do feel like I'm looking out over some extraordinary unexplored country, as I look out at the coming year. I've been rapidly and powerfully drawn to making and consuming online video this past week, both for work and for fun. As a result, I may have "cheated" more than a little bit by posting video instead of any grittier or more serious thoughts or comments on what I've experienced or felt recently.

There's just too much, really. Life just seems to accelerate when you're not looking. I can't believe it's already February.

At the top of the list should be the fact that I'm an associate now, with no trace of assistant anything in my title. I like that. I like that the word means much more than one thing. One can associate sounds with experiences, smells with memories or ideas with people. It's a fully loaded word. I'm a fan.

I caught myself describing my state of being to my mum on Thursday as "exhausted but high functioning." I've apparently absorbed too much psychobabble along the way.

That being said, it's accurate. I'm writing, editing, interviewing and reading as much or more than I have in a while, and generally at a much higher level. What a shock: I love being an editor.

I'm even starting to get back into better shape, stopping by the health club to check out the facilities on the way home last night and breaking out the free weights for the first time in months.

My only real complaint is that I wish I were reading more books and being more creative with photography, painting, poetry and woodworking. Blogs, magazines and newsprint seems to take up far too much of the bedside table and work downcycles these days. After reading Jeffrey Toobin's engrossing tale of Google's moonshot, however, I did head over to Google Books. I hadn't been there in a while. Seeing Dad's book was a reminder, however, of how much is lost on screen. The feel of the paper, the spareness of a poem on the printed page, even the smell of a new book is lost completely in the scanning. Minor quibbles next to the creation of the world's largest pool of information, of course, but I do enjoy slipping a thin volume into my pocket when I board the T. It beats reading it off my MDA, certainly, though I'd like get my hands on a Reader again for more than a few minutes.

It also bears mentioning that making new friends, in and outside of work, is deeply satifying. Many of them are now aware of this blog, so for once I'm picking more words more carefully. I think there will always be a part of me that will mourn the absence of former friends that I thought I might have for life, along with the cascading actions that led to the end of those relationships. It's taken me much longer than I care to admit to move on.

I'm kindly reminded by the friends I still have, thankfully, that it's out of my control. They've made their decisions. All I can do is try not to make the same mistakes and be kinder to others and, in the end, myself. Life is too short and bitterly unfair to do otherwise.

I think 2007 is going to be transformative, if the first 33 days are any clue.