1980

A Lot to Learn

I have come to believe in the prophetic value of Monday Night Football. Example: Ever so slowly in the last four years, the heretofore eternal Oedipal struggle ("Hi, Mom") has been replaced by the Super Bowl Syndrome ("We're Number One!") as the camera roams among the players on the sidelines and, especially. among the fans. Using this phenomenon alone as an unofficial Gallup poll, one could have predicted the outcome of the recent presidential elections, in which The Caners, an Oedipal situation comedy — with Jimmy, Lillian, and Billy equaling Oedipus, Jocasta, and a drunken Teiresias — gave way to an actor committed to the Super Bowl Syndrome, who deserves an Oscar if not for his performance, then at least for his ability to curb his urge to improvise on the script prepared for him. Ancient Thebes has become Marlboro Country. and all was foreordained on Monday Night Football. — Jeff Smith, November 13

Photo by Rick Geary

One Good Bounce

While the pro's shot was hanging in the air and was beginning to hook toward the out-of-bounds markers on the left, I felt I had to say something, anything, to Mr. Nixon, if only to register our presence. Letting someone play through you on a golf course is a courtesy. I simply wanted it acknowledged. Not that I was going to screak about the need for morality in high public office. (Although our collection of transgressions on the first four holes would not implicate us as unindicted co-conspirators in a public scandal, neither would they qualify my partner or me to reproach the sinful.) No, a subject like that was way off the graph by now. But apparently in the mind of the man standing three feet away from us, Shanks and I were nonexistent, too. Not that we're all that remarkable. Hell, our ideal of greatness is a legitimate par — no mulligans, no gimmies, no what-lucks. But we were extending a courtesy, and I refused to stonewall my urge to say something.

The pro's ball started to hook left and was heading for trouble. But it hit a rock and kicked back onto the fairway. "Good bounce," I yelled, seizing the opportunity to speak. — Jeff Smith, February 28

My Son, the Tube

Do I approve? What's to approve? I love the kid. His name is Vince Wei nick, he's my son, and he plays keyboards for the rock group the Tubes. Lord knows, it's not how his father and I dreamed it when we bought him piano lessons. As a mother, I know too well how the rock scene cripples those not tough enough or wary enough to pick their way through its land mines. But I had to make a choice years ago: either live with the fear and keep a hand on the kid's shirttail or kick him out into the street and reject him, along with his lifestyle. The latter would buy me nothing except the dubious right to claim I wasn't involved if he were to fall prey to the pitfalls he would encounter.

— Jackie Dewey, March 6 | Read full article

This Week's Concerts

A revived interest in surf music has people who never liked the stuff in the first place all abuzz. One of the fathers of the movement, guitarist Dick Dale, will be at the Belly Up Tavern Friday and Saturday. There are certain types of pop music I find amusing but not much more. Surf music is one of them. It bespeaks a culture alien to me, even though I've lived near the ocean all my life. It was campy from the outset, and consequently, I cannot grasp why critics are tossing around such adjectives as "minimalist" and phrases such as "endemic to the California culture" to explain away their love of a genre which is as minimalist and endemic and cultural as a Jumbo Jack and Gilligan's Island. Surf music is just dumb. — Steve Esmedina, April 24

Letters

Isn't there anyone out there that recognizes the total incompetence of Steve Esmedina? He single-handedly bums out my weekly reading of an otherwise well-done paper. Where did he become a musical know-it-all? I've never seen a person that is so misinformed and then goes ahead and prints his faulty information without doing any research or even as much as trying to find out the truth with a single phone call. Come on, guys. Put the boy to sleep! — Marc Berman, July 3

The Muck Stops Here

When [Newsline's Larry] Remer and his reporters hit on a good story, they can be lively and incisive, but any story that has the slightest political content is often drenched in left-leaning verbiage, so much so that the facts are made suspicious. Every strike by workers is good. Policemen think of new ways to oppress minorities as they lace up their boots in the morning. Large corporations love nothing better than to squash consumers like so many cockroaches. And it is this predisposition to write from that particular standpoint that alienates Remer from his colleagues at the more traditional newspapers in San Diego. — Mark Orwoll, April 3

On-the-Job Training

Tom Voss

My next stop was May Company in Mission Valley.

"Why do you want to work for May Company?" asked the interviewer. Good question, I thought.

"I love retail; I love to sell; and I feel that May Company would bring out the best in me. It would provide an environment in which I could maximize my potential skills and abilities as a retail salesperson. I feel I could do an excellent job for May Company." (Translation: I need a job. I just happened to be in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd stop in and fill out an application. Any moron can sell underwear, and for $3.10 an hour, you're not going to get Norman Vincent Peale anyway.) I really had the rap down by this time.

"I see here that you have your bachelor's degree in mathematics. and you've even done graduate work in that field. Don't you feel a little overqualified?" A fair question.

"Well, I left that field for good several years ago, and as you can see from my work record, I've been in retail ever since. I have no plans to return to mathematics in any capacity — ever. I'm doing some writing in my spare time, and that provides me with the personal enrichment I would have sought as a professional. But it's next to impossible to make a living as a writer, so I look to retail to provide me with a steady income, as well as an outlet for my exceptional sales ability and my skills in dealing with the public." (Translation: Just give me the goddamn job. Trust me.)

"Why should we hire you?" "Because I have excellent communications skills and a great personality and because I feel I would be a real asset to May Company." (Translation: I just told you why, jackass.) — Steven Janoff, July 31

Gustavo Romero

Photo by Jim Coit

Fifteen Going on Eighty-Eight

It is impossible not to be curious about where all this may come from. If a cheerful, sheltered, quite ordinary boy of fifteen can embody so convincingly the intense, conflicted emotions of a composer more than twice his age (Tchaikovsky was in his early thirties when he composed this concerto), one begins to wonder what exactly musical emotion is. An actor of the Stanislavsky school will look into his own past to find the emotional equivalent of the fictional experiences he is portraying; but there is certainly nothing to indicate that Gustavo Romero does anything of the kind. Are those musical sensations we perceive as "feelings" really that, or something else entirely? And if they are indeed feelings and if the pianist is in some sense undergoing them himself as he transforms the score into sound, can we say perhaps that me really accomplished musical performer has access to an emotional source beyond anything he can have experienced in the actual events of his life? — Jonathan Saville, August 14

City Lights

San Diego's first clothing-optional apartments have opened in a rambling. eighty-five-year-old building located just steps away from the crumbling cliffs of Ocean Beach. Owner Alan McPhee doesn't want to publicize the exact address; he says when nudist apartments opened in Houston, "a bunch of Jesus freaks picketed the place. And that I don't need!" — Jeannette De Wyze, April 17

1981

David DIaz

A Young Man, a Troubled Life

I know I talked with one of them — not the one who attacked me, but an older, calmer punk standing under the streetlight. It was the oddest sensation: I felt exhilarated, strong, terrific. While I jabbered at him, he calmly insulted me. He told me not to set foot in his neighborhood and not to park my car on his street; he said I was probably a fag getting fucked by Stanley or fucking him, one or the other. He was so close to me. I wanted to jump on his face, but my body was paralyzed: nothing moved but my mouth. I swore at him, not just the words of swearing, but the music, too, and though I can't remember what I said, I know it had a pompous, generalized air about it, as though I were addressing the U.N. — Joe Applegate, March 12 | Read full article

The Final Days of Dewey Taylor

She had dreamed the last moments her husband’s life and the first moments of his death so often and so vividly that when the time finally came, Joani Taylor kept wishing she’d awaken. But this was no dream. It was a little after 11:00 a.m. on December 18, 1979, and Dewey Taylor’s heart was about to give out. It had been growing in size and weakening in strength for more than five years, and were it possible for him to walk, Dewey Taylor would have been a walking nightmare that morning. From a vigorous, muscular, six-foot, one inch, 200-pound man, Dewey Taylor, at the age of 34, was now a drooling, nearly blind, wheezing, 120-pound invalid. Pus ran from his eye sockets; much of his hair was gone; his head looked out of proportion to his withered body; his urine ran black; his skin was dry and scaly. He was conscious of only two presences: his wife Joani, and death. — Neal Matthews, April 16 | Read full article

Catherine Kanner

Put Out the Dog

The name ... ah, yes, the name. This was a very important aspect of having a dog. A name was a verbal coat of arms, Scott thought up some really good ones, mostly drug-related and very hip. Reefer ... Kif ... Maui ... Coker .... No, these didn't quite hit the mark. Trendy, perhaps, but they might easily go out of fashion. This would have to be a name beyond fashion. A timeless name. What about giving it a human name? Something a little goofy but still sort of cool. Like, say, George ... Ben ... Albert ... Fred .... These weren't quite right, either. Something slightly obscene that would get a laugh, maybe? Dickface? Wazoo? No. dammit. This was serious, now. It had to be something that wasn't going to wear thin. It had to be a name that literally rings out with righteousness. Something you can shout out real loud at the beach so that people are just going to know that this is a bodacious dog. Something like ... Diablo. — Mark Orwoll, February 19

Tom Voss

Sports

I'm going to miss the Chargers' press box. By any reckoning, it has to be one of the best seats in the house (though the way the team is playing, one wonders if there is such a thing as a good seat). It's not the view that's so special as the treatment that goes with it, a tender kind of handling that, for a few hours anyway, offers the sports reporter the illusion of privilege, a momentary escape from his routine as a working stiff, a passing fantasy that he must be doing something worthwhile to be accorded such attention.

Before the game, there's a big lunch — fried chicken or roast beef with salad and vegetables. At half time, George Pernicano, local restaurateur and part-owner of the team, sends up stacks of pizzas for everybody to munch on while they watch one of the day's other NFL games on TV. At one end of the eating room, cold draft beers are set up for the taking. At the other end is a bar, and you need only belly up and ask. During the game, when you're supposed to be busy taking notes, pretty young women bring the drinks to you in your seat. Some of the guys like to drink coffee and make it appear as if they are really working, but a bunch of chilly lager goes into a typical game's coverage, especially afterward, when the writers have nothing to do but lean around the bar and wait for their press handouts. — Stephen Heffner, November 12 | Read full article

Letters

So Steve Heffner's (two f's, right Steve?) has uncovered for San Diegans the secrets of the San Diego Chargers' press box ("Sports," November 12). I'm impressed. In a few short hours, Heffner managed to see it all — the pluralistic pampering of the press, the bell y-up bar, the booze, young women catering to a media man's every need, writers reeling around, staggering under the weight of a plethora of Rick Smith's PR — statistics, play by play, and — oh my God — postgame quotes.

One minor problem, Steve: your story is slightly, if not completely, out of focus, at least where it counts — with writers/reporters/media men and women who represent the "working" press in the county, the professionals so to speak (pardon the expression in your presence).

But you didn't get to see those people, did you, Stevearoo? Too busy inside the press room checking out the menu, the bar, the pizza, and what game was on TV that afternoon. Sure you had company. Every press box does. But you should have taken your Calvin Kleins down to the real press row - those thirty or so reporters who sit front and center along the fifty-yard line, who have earned that spot on their newspapers.

I know what I'm talking about. I sat in that row for two years as a member of the Times-Advocate sports staff; I still write in this city for San Diego Magazine, the Union, and am the PR director for the Olympia Gold Bowl (thought you'd seen my releases, didn't you?). There's a story in that first row, Steve, just as there's a story with those writers who like to drink, to accept PR info as gospel, to do less instead of more ....

— Armen Keteyian, Dec. 3

Sports

So last week I got a letter from Armen Keteyian. It was buried away in the tail-end section of the letters to the editor, but I found it. Armen, writing as a sportswriter (yes. with grammatical errors and syntactical clumsiness appropriate to that genre faithfully included), wanted to complain about some disservice he felt I had perpetrated on his kind in my column about the Chargers' press box, Rick Smith, Gene Klein, et al., of a few weeks back.

The letter puzzled me for several reasons. First, he spoke directly to me throughout, calling me by my first name, as if he knew me. And he even called me "Stevearoo," as if he knew me well. I scanned my brain to place this old friend. My mother's family name is Avedisian, so J sought a mutual ethnic connection. Had he been a member of the Armenian Freedom Fighters with me when we were kids? I thought not. Maybe I'd met him at Bill Saroyan's funeral. I had talked with a fellow there who grieved that Saroyan had died before the man had a chance to show the famous author a manuscript he had written. He had the book with him, a collection of stories about his growing up in an Armenian neighborhood in California. He called it My Name Is Armen, but I just can't be sure if his last name was Keteyian.

My friend Lola, who runs my life, including my social agenda, checked my appointment calendar for the past few months and suggested, "Maybe you met him at one of the Mensa Club meetings." There was a chance, but after reading Keteyian's letter a second time, I decided that Mensa could not possibly have been where I met the man. Oh, well, it'll come to me.

— Stephen Heffner, December 10

Love Conquers All

"Do you really think," I said to my friend, "that I dare put down in newsprint, under my own byline, the statement that selfless, devoted love, the love that wants above all other things to rescue, to liberate, to gladden, and to care for the beloved is the most important thing in the world, the reason for our existence, the meaning of life? Won't everyone think I am a "hackneyed sentimentalist, instead of a hard-nosed critic?"

"Do you think that's what Talley's Folly really says?"

"Absolutely"

''And do you think it's true?" my friend persisted.

"I'm ashamed to confess it, but I do."

"In that case," she concluded briskly, "write it, and the public be damned."

— Jonathan Saville, July 30

Billo: The Salubrious Life and Salacious (Well, Maybe) opinions of Willis Bennett Ballance

Ballance is a modem Ambrose Bierce — from whose witty, acerbic Devil’s Dictionary he occasionally borrows — a Dear Abby of the airwaves.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

“This is Bill Ballance, self-ordained lay therapist to those huddled, perspiring masses yearning to be stroked, eager to participate in the Bill Ballance communicative pentathlon, a certified incubator of soaring euphoria carefully programmed for the interplanetary generation. Right here, every night for six hours on radio station KFMB, we thoroughly explore our universe of the mind with single-minded intensity, with dedicated ferocity, and with the amplitude of communicative velour. If tonight you feel that your wagon of destiny has swerved over on the soft shoulder of that grim dirt road to oblivion, my fine show will guide you to that haven of serenity — within. And now let me slip a few friendly chives into the psychic bouillabaisse of a woman named…”

“Sherry.”

[The resonant, baritone voice lowers.] “How old are ya, punkin?”

“Nineteen.”

Ballance listener Roger contends that the average IQ of the people who call is quite low, “around room temperature,” and that the “popular psychology that passes for wisdom on the show is ludicrous.”

Photo by Robert Burroughs

“Empty the cockles of your cavorting heart to lovable Billo.”

“It’s my boyfriend.”

“Is he a chronic oaf? With few remaining frizzled synapses in his avocado-size brain?”

“Yeah, but that ain’t it.”

“Wait! You aren’t a porker? You aren’t a lardo? You aren’t one vast waddle of womanhood? [The voice lowers.] How much do you weigh, sweetheart?”

“Aren't we getting a little personal?” “Why yes, my dear. That’s the whole point of the show!”

For 36 hours a week, Bill Ballance converses with callers — mostly women unafraid to publicize their experiences in marriage, divorce, parenthood, sexuality, love — on his nighttime talk show. He does so in a stream-of-consciousness style replete with aphorisms, maxims, and oracular (though tongue-in-cheek) “immutable” laws, and with a vocabulary so baroque that he seems not to be working at the KFMB studios on Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa but rather to be emanating from within the private lexicon of an early seventeenth-century sonneteer.

— Jeff Smith, March 26 | Read full article

1982

Events

"It will be hot — but there will be mangoes." Everyone said the exact same thing to me when I arrived in India in March. The mangoes were delicious, but it was hot. I decided that any book I ever wrote about India would be called The Heat and the Dust. The monsoon arrived shortly after, and I was able to think and move at a normal pace again. The streets flooded, and manhole covers were removed to hasten drainage. A pedestrian wading ahead of me suddenly disappeared, sinking into an opening left by a missing manhole cover. The air, which one is always conscious of in India, felt cool and even cold, though the thermometer never dropped. After the rains stopped, I bicycled along muddy roads to a woebegone village north of the city. On top of a small hill, some steps led down to a series of beautifully carved underground chambers, going ever deeper. The level of the groundwater would rise and fall with the seasons, and the villagers descended into the step well as far as necessary to fetch water. The contrast between the village above and this scene, subterranean realm of echoing verticals and horizontals was so typical of the surprises within surprises throughout India. — Amy Chu, January 28

The Inside Story

Police Chief Bill Kolender has been cleared by the city attorney of "improprieties" surrounding his February bachelor's party at the police department's pistol range. Kolender, though, is still miffed that his old friend, City Manager Ray Blair — with whom he has a close working relationship — would call for an investigation in the first place. Blair called for the innocuous city attorney's investigation to prevent himself and the chief from being caught in a political squeeze. And they almost were. On one side was Newsline publisher Larry Remer, who reported, without citing sources or evidence, that the ten-dollar-per-partygoer cover charge was forwarded to the "Draft Kolender for Mayor" campaign — which would have been a direct violation of the city charter. From the other side came Councilman Bill Cleator, himself a mayoral hopeful, who issued a memo asking what Blair was doing about the charge that Kolender had collected campaign funds on city property. As Blair now says, "I didn't want to say I was doing nothing." Instead, he could tell Cleator he was doing something about the investigation, confident that his friend Kolender would be cleared. Remer meanwhile backed off the solicitation issue, leaving Kolender foe and mayoral aspirant Roger Hedgecock to sniffle about how the stag party was "clearly a political event." — Paul Krueger, April 1

Stage One: Invulnerability

I said yes. But when I got home, what I was mostly thinking was, Slow down. Wait a minute. Consider the facts. Here I was with a lump. I'd had it barely 8 hours, and I'd been manipulated by three strangers and my own doctor, not exactly a close friend. What had started out in my own mind as a speculative situation had become immediate removal by surgery. an intimate intrusion, the cutting open of my body. — J.K. Amtmann, September 16

Little Sister, Big Trouble

David Diaz

I hadn't told any family members I was going to visit my sister because I knew they'd object. They felt we'd all gone through enough hell coping with Linda's problems, but still I agreed to see her. She sat across from me in the visiting area. A window of plexiglass separated us, and we spoke to each other over the telephone.

While she was in the middle of a sentence, Linda stopped talking, tossed her ash-brown hair, and began batting her eyelashes and smiling seductively at a red-haired sailor standing behind me on the visitors' side. "What in the hell are you trying to do?" I asked when I followed her gaze and turned to see the pimple-faced young man. He was mouthing something to her. "Do you even know that guy?"

Linda unconsciously affected a jive-talk accent and, still keeping her eye on the boy, said, "Hey, man, he could be my ticket outta here if he got the money."

I was incredulous. "You don't even know him and you think he's going to bail you out?"

''You don't have to know 'em to know what what they got." She smiled again and met my eyes for an instant. Her gaze was vacant; her bright blue eyes darted away. She took a final drag from her Kool cigarette and butted it out with an aggressive jab. "I feel so old, you know?" she said as she exhaled. "All the girls I see look so young to me now. Maybe it's all this shit I've done and I'm old before my time. Look at my eyes. See those lines?"

She was twenty years old. I stared at her face and thought of her father. My sister was a stranger to me. — Renee Prince, February 25 | Read full article

You Know How Critics Are

Sviatoslav Richter (yes, that's really his name!) gave a concert last night in Gorboduc Hall. The Russian pianist came in all dressed in a tuxedo, and there was wild applause before he even sat down.

Finally he sat down at the piano, raised his hands above the keys, and played. And how he played! His hands rolled up the keyboard and down the keyboard, white keys and black keys, sharps and flats, so that it really look your breath away. And to make things even more amazing, he knew all those millions upon millions of notes by heart, and he never forgot a single one.

It was also very exciting to see how he used the pedals. He would push them down and — boom!

The first number on the program was the Moonlight Sonata by the great German composer, Ludwig von Beethoven. Richter played this well-beloved piece so that you could literally see the moonlight! Later on the piece became very fast, finishing up with a big climax, which got the pianist a round of applause.

This was followed by a piece by the great Hungarian composer, Liszt. The piece was called "The Fountains of the Villa d'East," and the way the Russian maestro played it, you could literally see the fountains, rising and falling. It was as if the whole piano had turned into a pool of water!

— Jonathan Saville, December 16

A Small Room at the End of the Hall

I wonder what he thought of as he was falling. Was he smiling, was he at last peaceful? I hope so. I hate to think that he had changed his mind. How long did it take? Could he see the ground rushing toward him? Were the lights of downtown flashing by him in a blur? The street lights, the headlights, a light in a room on the fourth floor? When he hit the ground, could he feel that? Is that when it all stopped? Or were death and the fall not quite synchronized, and he had to lie on the sidewalk a couple of minutes to let death catch up. Maybe you just jump out a window and die. — Richard Smith, October 14 | Read full story

One Woman, One Man, No Baby

No guilt plagued my conscience. War and abortion. Some people may say both are forms of murder. But how easily they’re accepted by society as natural phenomena, despite the sorrow each may bring. And since the spiritual questions couldn’t be empirically proven, rather requiring some degree of faith, of which I have very little, I put aside that question. I decided to get on with more pragmatic matters, such as the cost of having the child, or how long Kelly would wait before an abortion would become quite expensive. — David Steinman, November 18 | Read full story

North to Mexico

Her eyes appraise the square dining room with certitude. In addition to my friends and myself, there's an Asian couple with a child. Some Mexican men in work shirts sit along one wall, but they may be friends or even relatives. A jukebox decorated with red and yellow glass serves not only as a source of music but as an an object, a bulky harbinger of the pop age. Its music, however, is Mexican and loud. As soon as the music fades, either Maria or one of the men sitting close to the kitchen gets up and feeds the machine some coins. It is evident that they are trying to please the diners with the music, trying (0 create some atmosphere. Outside the plate-glass windows, one can only see a gas station, and that, too, is strangely deserted.

"On Saturdays and Sundays," Maria continues, her smile wide with remembrance, "we get some excitement. Sometimes the Chicanos, they come in here and start to bother the field hands. The field hands, they like it here, they like the food, they're very quiet, they don't make trouble, But the Chicanos, they think they know everything. One time this Chicano kid, he came in here on Sunday when we were very busy, and he goes from table to table, bothering people. The kid wants to fight. I tell him to get out, he doesn't listen. I pick him up by the neck, and I want to throw him out the door. I push him right into the cash register, and then I throw him out. My kids say to me, 'Momma, you a lady wrestler?'" Maria flexes her biceps. "You have to know how to take care of a business." Her sigh is followed by easy laughter. "Sometimes I think the only way to have a Mexican restaurant is without Mexicans."

— Eleanor Widmer, August 12

Tales of Captain Dick

My own education in the life and times of Dick Yount began one night in the Beachcomber saloon in south Mission Beach, a place long renowned for its collection of strange agents posing as clientele; but Captain Dick would prove himself unusual among the unusual. I had seen him there in the past - a short, somewhat ragged oldster in a battered Bucknell baseball cap, smoking a pipe over beers and looking in general like a typical aging beach wino, belly-riding into the near hereafter on a slow wave of sauce. This night he happened to be on the perimeter of a conversation I was monopolizing with some historical pontification on the linguistic origin of the name of Ireland's capital city, Dublin. "Dubh Linn in Irish," said I, "or Dyflin, in the language of the city's Norse founders, meant 'black pool' and referred to the dark bog water of the River Lifley that runs through the city.

"Horseshit," mumbled a demure lass in the group, who mistook me for one who had deceived her before in another matter. From below me, a voice came to my defense. "No, he's right," said the rough old buzzard, "but you have to be careful when you say Norse because it's a pretty general leon. There's good evidence that Dublin's founders were Danish."

Of course, he was correct and I agreed, more than a little surprised that he had joined the conversation, and doubly so at his measured, confident recitation of the facts. It wasn't long before our talk became a seminar of sorts that included only Captain Dick and me, with the captain doing most of the talking, as I spoke only to ask questions. We drank Budweisers, and he led us from the founding of Moscow by Vikings to modern-day applications of the codes of Hammurabi to a discussion of Omar Khayyam's prowess as a mathematician. We talked about cosmology in general and black holes in particular. He said he'd been up until two-thirty the previous night reading about Egyptian hieroglyphs. I mentioned chess, and he said he owned an original, signed set of chess pieces by Howard Staunton, the English chessmaster credited, perhaps inaccurately, with the standard design of modern chessmen.

I looked around the disheveled beach bar and at the raucous, beery crowd. "What are you doing here?" I asked my intriguing new acquaintance. He just smiled broadly beneath his bushy mustache, as if my question were highly amusing. "Who the hell are you?" I blurted finally. He kept smiling and answered with a nod and an almost musical lilt in his voice. "I am many things."

— Stephen Heffer, April 29

D.S. on E.T.

Virtually all the insights into children and childhood in E.T. are rooted in the truism, common to all the aforementioned movies and to countless others, having to do with the separateness and secretness of children's society, the Them-and-Us relationship between the adult world and the subterranean childhood one. Spielberg takes this truism, or pretends to take it, not as a simple fact of childhood but as a virtue of it. The distinction is worth making because of the notion now being spread around that no one in moviedom understands children better than he. This notion might usefully be amended to read: no one understands better how to butter them up.

As kiddie movies go, E. T. is far from the bottom, and its actual merits might be interesting to debate. But when you must start from the proposition that the movie is a magical miraculous masterpiece for all age groups and untold future generations — well, it's a long road back. D.S. feel tired. D.S. feel depressed. D.S. point finger to head and say "Oww-w-w-ch!"

— Duncan Shepherd, July 8 | Read full review

P.S.
Naturally, I knew enough to brace myself for the blast of invective that must beset anyone in my position who should disdain a ride on the E. T. bandwagon. If, however, I had anticipated accurately the full force of what was to follow, I might not have laughed quite so cavalierly, quite so carefreely, quite so Errol Flynnishly, at my loved ones' entreaties that I contact the Ninja Society about a round-the-clock team of bodyguards. Now that the ironfisted Reader editor has come to the decision that too much is enough, and has closed the door to further correspondence, things ought to settle down quite soon, and an attitude of quiet reminiscence might be brought to bear.

For anyone who has been, as I myself would have been wiser to be, on retreat in the Yucatan the past few weeks, here is a brief recap of the accusations brought against me: "ignorant," "impotent," "frustrated," "burntout," "obviously disturbed," "neurotic:' "sociopathic," "misanthropic," "misanthropic," "self-induIgent," "self-indulgent," "smug," "petty," "inane," "cynical," "cynic," "killjoy," "an old stick in the mud," "a drag," "B.S. ," .. B.S .t:" 8.S .: "pseudointellectual," "pseudo-reviewer," "mental midget." There was more. Nothing, however, that had not been aired many times before, if not quite so many times in so short a space.

What is lacking here, beyond imagination, is a sense of civilized discussion. If any of my attackers had encountered some of my same points in some other context, let's say at a dinner party, rather than in cold, hard, smug, self-indulgent print, I can scarcely believe they would look across the table at the speaker and suggest to him that he needs to see a psychiatrist — or some similar sentiment which the original speaker would be obliged to respond to with: "Would you like to step outside and repeat that?" The foregoing is a big "if," since most of the attackers had evidently never before heard such blasphemies in any context, and would not conceivably be invited to the sort of dinner party where such ideas would come up (and where the main course, presumably, would be live nightcrawlers).

One correspondent, who felt, as I did, that I had been "moderate, even tactful" on E.T., wondered why people who look at me that way would ever trouble to read my stuff. I wonder that myself sometimes. My sense of it is that there's some sort of inexorable law at work whereby certain infrequent readers are moved to read only the occasional piece which is most apt to offend them; and then, too, there is always the first-time, newly arrived reader who sees an alarming discrepancy between what I write and what they write in Cincinnati, Working, as they do, in inexhaustible relay, these people have far more capacity to resurrect basic misapprehensions than I have to lay them back to rest again. An especially wearying theme that surfaced in the recent spate of letters was the imagined rift between Art and Entertainment, and the necessity, when watching movies in the latter category, to suspend critical judgment. (Suspending critical judgment must be relatively easy for people who have little of it, or make little use of it.) I was a bit disconcerted that no one on my side of the fight seemed squirmy over this point, but it's probable that they were all as bored as I am at the prospect of having to plead that critical judgment is no stumbling block to entertainment, and that it can even generate its own entertainment when movies, as they so often do, let you down. I honestly have to wonder, when anyone avows that he goes to the movies to be entertained, to what extent he thinks he is narrowing the field. As I tried to make clear in my original article, E. T. is just not my idea of entertainment. — Duncan Shepherd, August 5

Erratum

An article entitled "One Step Ahead of the Devil," published in these pages October 21, 1982. made reference to a Mr. Tim Sulton having been killed in the course of a bank robbery. Mr. Sutton was not involved in a bank robbery and is still living. The Reader regrets the error. —Ed., November 11

1983

Events

I was always a dance maniac. I was the first girl in my neighborhood to learn the bunny-hug and the two-step, and I did them magnificently. But when I actually got on the dance floor, I always had trouble. "C'mon, Violet, follow my lead," my partner would groan, or "There's no step like that in the bunny-hug, Violet!" How could I help it? My spirit was too big for these limited dances. I had too much to express. I kept making up my own steps and doing the standard steps in my own way. Finally, there was not a boy in Port Washington foolhardy enough to take me dancing. — Violet Rosenbloom, May 26

City Lights

Most everybody likes to see his name in the paper, and Tribune editor Neil Morgan certainly takes care of his old friend Dick Cramer in that regard. When Cramer's medical instruments firm, IMED, was sold to Warner-Lambert last June for $465 million cash, the news was announced in a front-page, banner-headlined story in both the news rack green sheet and the home edition, and was followed a day later by another front-page feature on Cramer himself. Since then, Morgan has written about Cramer more than two dozen times in his daily column on the front page of the Tribune's Metro section.

The Morgan-Cramer connection goes back about eleven years to when Cramer had just lost control of IVAC — another medical instruments firm he had founded — in a proxy battle. The Tribune carried a series of articles about Cramer's predicament, and Cramer and Morgan (then only the Trib's columnist and travel editor) became friends.

— Thomas K. Arnold, April 28 | Read full article

After the Bucket

I was walking my dog down what should've been a deserted street when I saw a pickup truck filled with teenagers advancing. The road was officially closed because of damage from recent storms, but there they were, going at high speed. I wedged my body as close as I could to some bushes, pulling my dog out of the way. As the pickup came parallel to me, one of the youths heaved an entire bucket of water on me. I stood there outraged, sputtering, covered with water. In a rage, I screamed an obscenity at them. If I had my wits and could see, which I couldn't, I would've taken down their license plate. My hair was drenched, my clothes soaked, and I removed my sunglasses cautiously to try to determine what they'd thrown at me. I could hear their laughter receding down the road. What a joke it was to them! Existentialist writers called it "the gratuitous act." Someone walks down a quiet road, a car barrels by. Lucky for me what was heaved was only dirty water. It could have been much worse.

After I returned home and showered, my mood shifted abruptly. What I needed most was calm surroundings, very good food, solicitous people, marvelous dessert." With a friend, I embarked upon a trip to Frederick's in Solana Beach.

— Eleanor Widmer, April 14 | Read full article

Letters

In your April 14 edition, Eleanor Widmer was allowed to carry on in a very unattractive manner and at some length about getting wet. I would like to suggest that those were no crazed adolescents simply out for a good time; their purpose was much grander. They were acting on the just behalf of providence, punishing Eleanor for her deceitful restaurant reviews. Allow me to explain.

We should have known better. When Ms. Widmer described ("Three for Tijuana," April 7) the hills surrounding Tijuana as "romantic," we should have known better. If Ellie-baby thought that the dim lights shining out from the homes of the abjectly poor were charming, then it's only natural that she went gaga over her latest T.J. find — La Playa de Pepe. We were drawn to it, however, by a fatally human weakness - the desire for cheap seafood. From her seductive description, we pictured tremendous planers of sturgeon-size shrimp and fish so fresh as to be caught while leaping from holding tank to fry cook's pan. So is the tragic whimsy of youth: the willingness to believe those who say they know better.

Oh, I could go on. I could go on for pages cataloguing the little surprises of our meal, but discretion and propriety dictate that I mercifully draw the curtain here. The meal transcended what is commonly called "bad food."

it became for us, at the very least, the archetype of Evil Cooking, something over which Plato would have gotten all misty-eyed, something of which Pythagoras would have been proud. It was all this, except it lacked the conviction of a truly Faustian malevolence and so remained merely benevolent dreck.

Eleanor, honey, get a real job.

• Randy Opincar and friends Scott, Tim, Nadine, Jay, Peter, and Bernard
• Golden Hill
• May 5

City Lights

The wrong way to buy drug paraphernalia: walk into The Trip record and poster store on Genesee Avenue in Clairemont and ask for a coke spoon, bong, and rolling papers. The salesperson will point to a small, hand-lettered sign on the store wall that reads, "Any person attempting to buy merchandise for illegal purposes, or implying illegal use, will be denied service and asked to immediately leave the premises."

The right way to buy drug paraphernalia: walk into The Trip record and poster store on Genesee Avenue in Clairemont and ask for the gourmet cooking utensils, vitamins, and tobacco products. Show a California driver's license or any picture ID proving you're eighteen or older. The salesperson will press a button that frees the lock on a door leading to a drug user's paradise. — Paul Krueger, May 12

1984

The Faith and the Fortune

Bishop Leo T. Maher

This source was unwilling to be identified for fear that Bishop Maher could cause personal problems in the future but still offered detailed criticisms of the annual balance sheets printed in the Southern Cross newspaper. The scanty one-page summaries, says the source, "don't tell you very much; they obscure." The financial statements don't even include two elements found in all corporate annual reports: a profit-and-loss statement and a statement of changes in financial position. "The diocesan statements don't impart any sense of continuity."

This accounting department source says one specific example among many of misleading figures contained in the financial statements is the entry for land, buildings, and equipment owned by the diocese. Last year the value of those items was listed at $5,914,408. "horribly understated," according to the source, who explains that the figure only reflects the value of the property at the time it was acquired. "A raw piece of acreage that was given to the diocese, let's say ten years ago when it cost $100.000, may be worth a million now. But it's on the books at $100,000 .... A good statement would try at least to give you some idea of what the current value would be." The source estimates that the true value of total diocesan assets is closer to $35 million to $40 million, instead of the official figure of $10 million.

— Jeannette De Wyze, August 23

The Greyhound Tales

Horseback, canoe, bus, or airplane, one aspect of travel has always been the same. Once the traveler is on the road, he is suspended. He hangs in an ether between the past and the future, between good-byes and hellos, between here and there. He is not who he was when he closed the door on his room, and she will be changed when she arrives at her next destination.

— Judith Moore, April 26 | Read full article

Letters

I thought that racist stereotypes in all but avowed racial purity sheets were a thing of the past. Apparently not so with the Reader. as indicated by [Slug Signorino'sJ "illustration" for Eleanor Widmer's review of Shirahama restaurant ("Ethnic Eats," November 8).

The fact that it got through the editorial board or whoever or whatever group is responsible for such decisions indicates that an appeal to Reader policy makers would be useless. However. I am writing because I think such blatant prejudice (in the name of humor, no doubt) demeans Widmer and diminishes her work.

I wonder when an illustration for an African or Afro-American restaurant will include a wooly-headed, broad-nosed, thick-lipped "Nigrah" and one for a kosherstyle deli will be characterized by a hook-nosed, salivating, beady-eyed sheenie.

Really, both columnists and readers deserve better. And an apology to our Oriental community is in order.

— Matthew Schwartz, December 16

The Man Who Broke the Rules

He would canvass the neighborhood on his Schwinn, with the book tucked under his arm, dressed in army boots and denim, long hair and beard flowing, like Isaiah on a bicycle.

David Diaz

When Carl walked down the streets of Encinitas at night he set the dogs to barking. If he reads this I hope he'll understand and forgive me, but there was just something odd about him, something eccentric, and the dogs knew it. Maybe they could smell it. Maybe they could hear it in the rhythm of his gait. They might let fifty people pass by in the dark, including fall-down drunks, gurus with shaved heads and third eyes painted on their brows, teenage hitch whores, and hyped-up marines gone AWOL. But when Carl walked by, their hackles rose, their upper lips curled back, they thrust their snouts toward him, and told him in no uncertain terms that he had overstepped the boundaries of acceptable human behavior and if he so much as set foot in their yards they would tear him to shreds. Carl just snarled back. I don't think he cared anymore about what dogs thought of him than he cared what people thought.

— Steve Sorenson, November 8 | Read full article

Young People's Writing Contest — 1984

SECOND AWARD WINNER

Wednesday and Thursday of April, on spring vacation, Jason James Cavin and Kendra Mechille Brown caught 357 pollywogs. Jason and I both raised the pollywogs. But of 357, 300 of the pollywogs turned into frogs. One of the ones that died was Oggy.

One day Jason was over and we were checking on the pollywogs, and Oggy got hurt and a lung must have collapsed. So Jason

had to, just had to do surgery. Jason used his sharpesed nail and cut open the pollywog, moved the lung in its place with his finger. My mother would not let us use a thread and a needle to sew up the pollywog. So Jason took some tape and tried to tape the pollywog together. But the tape did not hold underwater. So 20 minutes later poor Oggy died. (By the way, we did not name all the pollywogs. only our favorites.) One of our favorites was Alben, whom died of being to fat. Well at about summer all the frogs turned in to handsome frogs smashed all over the street. That is about the end of the pollywogs.

• Kendra Brown
• Age 10
• Valley Elementary School, Poway
• December 20

Events

When picturing a nuclear activist. one generally imagines some serious individual in a Pendleton shin waving a crustacean over his head demanding to know, "Why is this lobster glowing if the reactor is so safe?" or urging preschoolers before Senate subcommittees to admit that, after all, they're terrified of being vaporized by a warhead. One even envisions Carl Sagan or Helen Caldicott intoning that an all-out, world-class nuclear holocaust is not the skull-warping tragedy we imagine it to be - it's worse. All this is enough to make anyone start searching through Uruguayan real-estate catalogues for that charming, rustic, subterranean hideaway he's always dreamed of. — Randy Opincar, March 15

Ages of Plelmeier

In case anyone thinks I am criticizing this abominable play because I too am some kind of rationalist atheist. let me say that in my opinion, the true lesson to be learned from Agnes of God is the persistent presence in human affairs of the devil. I am not speaking of Agnes's problems, or Dr. Livingston's; neither of them ever existed (even as stage characters), and the devil is far too busy intervening in real life to bother his horny head with fictions. It is John Pielmeier the devil has been after, and through him the audiences whose minds have been corrupted by his diabolically successful play. — Jonathan Saville, February 23

1985

The Last Wrestling Piece

Okay, get out your notebooks. This here is lecture time. Wrestling Goes Mainstream. An outcome that is vile, it's loathsome, it may even cause cancer - don't laugh, this is serious. Somebody help me wheel out the blackboard ... where the hell's my chalk? Okay, pens and pencils ready: I HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT.

1.) By plugging right smack into the Master Program. wrestling has gone from being something uniquely fake, archetypally fake. paradigmatically fake for real, to something nonironically fake per se, standardly fake like Everything is fake: movies, TV, "real" sports, fashion trends, heart transplants, national elections. — Richard MeItzer, May 30

Events

Dinosaurs evoke in even the most rational of us a kind of brutal nostalgia. Just a glimpse of a massive tusk, a giant wishbone, a crumbling egg causes the most stalwart heart to ache with yearning, albeit misguidedly, for a more romantic age — a time of nightly campfire sing-alongs, furry boots, raw meat, roots, and berries — a time when everyone was a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, chipping flint, making spears. and hunting and gathering with the rest of the gang. To be sure, such feral fun had its drawbacks. How often did a young mother call out, "Honey, have you seen little Bobbie?" only to hear her mate reply, "Funny, he was playing at the mouth of the cave just a few minutes ago"? — Abe Opincar, June 13

Emo Therapy

Even if you've never seen or heard of this Emo Phillips, you probably knew an "Emo" quite well when you were in elementary school. "Emo" was the skinny, awkward, somewhat homely kid, who every single day wore the same ill-fining, badly matched, rummage sale ensemble. "Emo's" clothes lived a life of their own, abetted by suspect personal hygiene habits. No one in class wanted to sit next to "Emo," especially on warm, muggy days when he exuded a pungent odor reminiscent of tainted vegetable soup. Too uncoordinated and disinterested to participate in boyish games, "Emo" spent his recesses reading horror comics while munching on cheese sandwiches, remnants of which were always visible between his teeth. "Emo" got called a lot of unflattering names by the class toughies. "Homo" was the epithet of choice, not because it connoted anything remotely sexual, but because it was the perfect catchall term for any defenseless introvert who just didn't fit in anywhere. Relentlessly teased and completely ostracized from all school activities, "Emo" occupied his after-school hours slicing off the heads of plastic army men or feeding the more brittle, dilapidated constituents of his bug collection to his pet tarantula. There were rumors about "Emo's" family being a little "different," but no one ever saw his parents, who never came to open house or other school functions. Years later, when "Emo" graduated from high school, he was voted most likely to get beaten up every day of his life. — John D'Agostino, May 23

Sports

Only someone who thinks that a "herni" is slang for something that makes it painful to sit down could bring an objectivity to the task of viewing a truck-pull as a sporting event. I'll leave considerations of overhead cams and fuel-injection and bar-angle treads to the guys with archaeological digs under their fingernails. I'm more concerned with whether or not it's worth fourteen dollars to sit for several hours watching truck after modified truck thunder down a fairly short stretch of imported dirt, pulling a contraption specifically designed to slow it down. My conclusion: If you're into bizarre, a track-pull will provide an evening's diversion like no other. — John D'Agostino, May 9

The Idealization of Jessica Trump

She was stunningly beautiful. Love beat like dove wings in my brain. The choir in my stomach strained at the chorus. She gripped the steel arm of the turnstile in her velvet hand and pushed her way into the lobby where I stood. My mind went blank. I tried to collect my thoughts as I watched her glance expectantly in my direction. To my horror she looked straight at me, her smile broadened, and she squealed as if she recognized me. Never had anyone been so visibly excited to see me.

She had the unmistakable dew of love in her eyes, and I tried to smile as she came toward me. I opened my mouth, but just as I was about to speak. one of the marines I had seen earlier brushed by me and threw his tattooed arms around her. — Tad Simons, December 19

The Art of Emergence

The rumors began in mid-December when the letters started coming out. Who had been invited? Who hadn't? When it grew apparent that no formal announcement was forthcoming, there were rapid calls across town, hurried meetings among friends. "You could tell by the smiles who had been picked," says one woman who waited through those anxious days. And that was about the only way. The scores of area artists who wondered if they might be included in the "Emerging Artists" exhibition at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary An could only make their requisite trips to the mail box that final week before Christmas.

Within the week. however, anxiety gave way to more definitive emotions. which ran the gamut from elation to indignation. Photographer Suda House, who made the list. says happily. "I almost hit the ceiling when I got my letter," Ellen Salk, who has a large installation in the La Jolla exhibit, says. "I was really very pleased. It's the first curated show I've been in, so I was very happy."

A small but vocal number of artists and arts activists, however, was nonplused as reports continued to circulate and the list

of omissions seemed more remarkable than the roster of invited artists. Marjorie Nodelman, a local painter who had heard of her own exclusion from the museum show before receiving official confirmation of the fact. immediately wrote a letter to museum director Hugh Davies and expressed her astonishment at his failure to include her in the planned exhibit. North County artist Aviva Rahmani also wrote Davies, asking that he reconsider before the show opened and answer questions concerning the disproportion of men to women. of established versus unestablished reputations. and the impact on individual ambitions. UCSD visual arts professor Eleanor Antin made a New Year's Day call to Davies to express her own displeasure in having so few women represented in what was purported to be a show representative of San Diego's artistic vitality. Another arts activist and long-time museum supporter, Ellen Phelan, called Davies to protest Nodelman's absence from the list.

Before long Davies was hearing his own rumors. "It got back to me," he says, "that there were discussions of a boycott or a lawsuit."

— Dinah McNichols, March 28

Events

Animal liberationists, so currently in vogue, claim to be concerned with the welfare of all of our pals clinging to the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder. Yet the most casual scrutiny of the cause lays bare a base hypocrisy. They are, in fact, as anthrocentric as Farmer John! While they may rush with evangelic fervor to picket labs or risk life and limb to kidnap rabbits from universities, these zealots are conspicuously absent from other sectors of the animal-exploitation biz. One does not see them forming human chains around steakhouses. One has yet to witness the occupation of a single Burger King — and do they think that those all-beef patties had an easy ride on the way to that sesame-seed bun? — Abe Opincar, February 21

Straight from the Hip

Dear Matthew Alice:

Why do balloons pop so easily when they land on the grass in the yard? And if you couldn't answer a question, would you give an answer saying you couldn't answer that question? Please answer if you can. — Mort Schwarz

Tut, tut, of course I can answer this question (and if I couldn't, I'd never admit it — too many bloodthirsty readers looking for a sign of weakness). Balloons pop on lawns for a very good reason: to make little kids cry, especially if they're at a birthday party or they've just come home from the circus with their precious balloon, and they've only thrown it up in the air a couple of times and then Sis grabbed it and threw it and didn't catch it and it landed on the grass and popped! This is an invaluable lesson for the little tykes to learn. In the middle of good times, there's always something or someone just waiting to pop your balloon. — Matthew Alice, February 7

1986

Or Marian, Rose, and Frank

Every morning, sometime around eight, Rose would walk to the liquor store and return with a bottle for each of them. Relations deteriorated just before lunch. At noon they would begin fighting about whether they would eat ham sandwiches or bacon and eggs, where Frank's cigarettes were, and who was going to take the clothes in from the Iine. They cursed at each other creatively and comfortably. "You haven't got the brains God gave a fish head" was how Frank warmed up. Rose chewed on her words as she said them and couldn't match Frank's volume. But she compensated with her reach into the depths of swear words. Hearing a 78-year-old woman say "You wouldn't make a scab on my ass" was startling at first, but I grew accustomed to it. — Brae Canlen, October 2

Sports

The other night I shelled out $8.50 for a ticket to a Padres' game, figuring that I was buying a seat where I stood a chance of grabbing a foul ball. Got a ball all right, but it was a home run ball because my seat turned out to be in left field. I was in a section on the fair side of the foul pole, and the last time I sat there it was a general admission section that cost $3 a seat. Why the hell are the Padres charging us $8.50 to sit in the outfield? — H.V., National City

Let's begin to answer your question with a riddle: name something other than McDonald's cheeseburgers that's born every minute and that is helping Joan Kroc stay rich.

Actually, the little switcheroo you've just discovered has been in effect every since last season, when Joan Kroc used the expansion of the stadium to annex parts of the general admission seating for plaza and loge. It was a slick and quiet maneuver performed under the cover of the large event (the expansion), not too unlike the way Stalin used World War II to pick up a little European real estate. — Stephen Heffner, June 12

The Correct Question

And finally: why, why, why, must I always write in such long, and such serpentine, such torturously qualified, such comma-studded, such tiger-bythe-tail, sentences? Or did you think that was one of your questions? — Duncan Shepherd, March 6

City Lights

You're bopping along on a Sunday drive, looking so cool and with it, the proper smirk plastered on your fashionably stubbled mug, slouching behind the wheel of the proper Volkswagen convertible, and all of your accouterments are regulation: from the studied grunginess of your deck shoes to the bagginess of your shorts and the smugness of your tank top, each with the proper brand name clearly visible. Right down to the leather side shields on your Vuarnet sunglasses. everything in your universe is in its place. Now all you have to do is wait for the women to notice — but what's this? A motorcycle cop is flashing his lights at you? — Neal Matthews, April 3

Sports

Normally, I will throw away the thick packet of advertising brochures regularly mailed to American Express cardholders. I know I am easily seduced by lush graphics into the belief that I share some unspoken kinship with the beautiful people who seem to do little else but bike, smile, play tennis, smile, and cavort (smiling) in the tourmaline surf of secluded island paradises....

Over the last few years, I have so improved my technique that I can deliver the unopened packet from the mailbox downstairs to the wastebasket beneath the kitchen sink in a single. fluid motion. without one dollar having changed hands In the process (okay, I sprang for the digital bathroom scale — let's not get dogmatic about this).

— John D'Agostino, May 1

Memorable

Once upon a time, the only cure for having seen one of Neil Simon's high-calorie comedies was to take two aspirin and call Samuel Beckett in the morning. Surgeon General's warnings used to hang in box-office windows where Simon's shows were playing. These said: "Caution: this play will try to convince you that everything is actually okay; it just looks haywire from out here on the street." Often weeks after they had seen a Neil Simon comedy, people used to complain of a lingering malady called in medical journals "one-liner-iris." This was a vague yet heartfelt sense of being slowly zinged to death. Though never fatal, the illness gave its sufferers a Simonized view of the universe, the profound impression that they should regard all pain. including fatality itself, as a real knee-slapper. It also used to be that Simon's all-purpose answer to questions about the human condition was, "Don't ask." — Jeff Smith, September 25

Events

A bit of the lemming remains in man's chromosomal soup. How else to explain the lure of water, in particular high tide, for otherwise sane, productive members of our species. Last May, when the National Weather Service predicted a tsunami as the result of an earthquake In Alaska, thousands of Californians crowded the beaches in hopes of seeing a tidal wave. — Orlando Ramirez, December 18

Straight from the Hip

I was about to put my dinner in the microwave the other day when I got a big surprise — the oven was crawling with ants! After pondering ways to clean them out, I got a brilliant idea. Just turn on the oven I I thought, and a short time later I could sweep out the little bodies, no muss, no fuss. Well, I was amazed to find that the microwaves didn't kill the ants. What goes on here? Are ants going to take over the world after we all perish from the Big One? — Gerry Smolens

Photo by Rick Geary

The first lesson you learn in this business is to be skeptical. couldn't believe Gerry's claim of indestructible ants — despite my vivid childhood memory of giant ants crawling through the sewers of Los Angeles in the film classic Them — so I decided to re-create the alleged incident. I went ant hunting in my back yard and found a sizable population on the hummingbird feeder. I asked for a half-dozen volunteers and brought the valiant sextet back inside on a paper plate.

Into the microwave they went, with my reassurances that their children would be well taken care of. Thirty seconds later, I opened the door and found three ant corpses, but three of their comrades were still crawling. Back in for another thirty seconds. Add two more fatalities, but amazingly, a particularly hardy individual was still alive and mobile. Feeling a bit guilty as well as awestruck, I decided to spare the life of Superant. In fact, I thought I would reward him, so I carried the noble insect back out to the feeder and placed him with his fellow sugar-water addicts. Words almost fail me here. Superant's fellow ants greeted him in normal fashion, giving him what I thought was a rousing welcome home, but my happiness turned to horror as within thirty seconds the brutes committed myrmecocide — they murdered him!

— Matthew Alice, June 5

Boy Scouts Will Be Boys

He detailed several other strange and gruesome instances, including this: "Last year a young scout touched the rock. The very next day he was bit on the tongue by a snake in the nature den. What he was doing trying to French kiss a snake, I don't know. The point was, he was bit on the tongue!" And so on.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

As the group moved out toward a scheduled stop at the barn where John Treannor supposedly died (we had passed its sinister, dark shape on the way up), two boys jumped on top of the rock and danced on Treannor's grave. This sent the boys who witnessed it shrieking down the black hill, trying to avoid being touched by the now luckless duo, who naturally were chasing everybody in their troop like a couple of murderous lunatics. It was a riotous journey to the barn, where a staffer was hiding inside a coffin and another was hanging like a dead man from the rafters. If you've never been squashed inside a dark barn on a moonless night with 150 terrorized Boy Scouts, you can't comprehend the meaning of the word hysteria. Luckily, as the crowd carried me past the body swinging from the rafters. which was lit eerily by a dozen sweeping flashlight beams, my feet remained under me.

On the way back to camp, Jason stayed close and kept repeating the same question: Did I believe in the curse? Well, I told him, I didn't go near that rock. — Neal Matthews, September 4

1987

The House on Elm Street

"Hey, Jesse, why do you always carry that water jug?" Marshall asks a man whose plastic water bottle has become a trademark because he is never seen without it. The answer comes slowly from the forty-five-year-old Berkeley graduate who seldom says anything. "Maybe," he pauses to stroke his graying beard, "Jesse wonders why everyone doesn't carry a water jug." — Sue Garson, August 6

An Encounter with Bill Coulson

"Teachers would come back from one of the encounters, and they'd be fluttering around the ceiling. They wouldn't want to teach. They'd want to 'relate.' They'd tell students about what they'd experienced, and everybody would stand there crying. Why? 'Because it's so beautiful.'"

Though Rogers knew perfectly well just how drastically Coulson disagreed with him, the two men didn't argue ideas, and La Jolla minister and counselor Doug Land, also once a member of CSP's innermost circle, offers this explanation for why. "Carl of course was a genius, but Bill was a lot smarter than Carl in a lot of ways. Carl was no scholar. He was not widely read and was not the Thomist casuist that Bill could be. J mean, Bill just will not lose an argument." Equally tough-minded, Rogers also couldn't tolerate losing an argument. according to Land, so "he would just stop arguing:'

At the same time, Coulson says, Rogers himself ironically never embodied his own doctrines. "Carl was not Mr. Nondirective in his own life. He wanted' impact! He wanted influence. I mean, we were sitting around talking about feelings, and Carl was at home, writing another book:' Coulson says he and others sometimes pointed this out, asked, "Carl, why don't you write about discipline? Really, we're misleading people, putting so much emphasis on spontaneity." But Coulson says Rogers replied, "I can't. Discipline to me is like water to a fish. It's my element. I can't see it."

— Jeannette De Wyze, August 20

Visitation Rites

Given a chance, I will always opt for as much clothing as is reasonably possible when meeting people for the first time. This certainly rules out naked hot-tubbing, an availability I have apologetically turned down (why was I the embarrassed one") at several San Diego gatherings. The mores I best learned from my parents came through osmosis, an unspoken "transfer of decency from one generation to to the next: Don't pick up candy from the sidewalk and eat it, don't maim small animals, and never take your clothes off in front of strangers. — Brae Canlen, September 10

Straight from the Hip

How many facts of life are there, and what are they? And which really came first, the chicken or egg? — Murray Schwartz, Ruby Mine, Virginia

At last count there were three facts of life. There will always be death. There will always be taxes There will never be enough parking spaces. We used to have five facts of life, but recent state and federal cutbacks have eliminated two of them. And the chicken came first, definitely the chicken. — Matthew Alice, May 21