deeplyshallow // my sad, droning blog

my sad, droning blog

Valencia Peak, which is where I went hiking this morning with a couple of friends from work, is one of those lovely California hills that is classified as a mountain, but to anybody who has ever seen McKinley is but a foothill. That said, the hike was exhausting. Four miles round trip, with a few stops for deep, deep breaths, and the odd coincidence of running into my landlady on the way down. She’s preparing to hike Yosemite with her father, and they were testing the weight of their packs. Thirty-five pounds on their backs, and here my shoulders were all discombobulated and back all stressed just from carrying a liter bottle of water.

The view from the top was pretty spectacular; the clouds burned away by the time we reached the peak, so we sat and rested. A few minutes later, a crew of old-timers arrived, walking sticks in hand. Why didn’t we think of that, we wondered. When I met my landlady on the downward slope, she said that they’d had a hard time deciding whether or not they needed walking sticks. I suggested they catch up with the old farts, who had been debating the merits of the sticks as we caught our breaths. What did they decide, she asked me. That they wish they made the walking sticks in blue, I answered.

Hamburgers at Sylvester’s afterward, and then out for a haircut — seeing my shadow on the trail ahead of me today convinced me it was time: I looked like the Eskimo in the Alaska Airlines emblem. I called every barbershop and salon in Morro Bay, and only one picked up the phone; she was busy, but referred me to another place, which squeezed me in and turned out to be a nice trip. Weirdly, the haircut included a neck massage. That’s never happened before. It’s an alright haircut, nothing special, but I tipped well anyway.

Saw Hollywoodland a little later, and wished that I hadn’t bothered. What a shitty piece of entertainment. Here’s why you should see Hollywoodland: Bob Hoskins. Here’s why you shouldn’t: everybody else. Yeah, everybody. Affleck is atrocious, which doesn’t bode well for his little reimagined career. Adrien Brody did alright, I suppose, but they did a couple of shots of him turning slowly to look at something, and zoomed past him, and it reminded me of Paul Shaffer’s old Don Kirshner impersonations on SNL. Diane Lane, who was pretty much the reason I bought a ticket, was the worst I’ve ever seen her. She looked fabulous as usual, but came across as if she were auditioning for a Tennessee Williams play. I blame the director. It couldn’t possibly be her fault. Anyway, the movie was interminably long. I almost walked out twice, it was so bad, but I stuck around because I felt an obligation to learn what conclusions they drew from George Reeves’ death. They didn’t draw any, and I resisted the urge to throw my soda at the screen.

Now hanging out alone at home with a drink and the laptop and Hem’s new album on loop. It’s a very good record, not quite as lush as Eveningland, but it feels a little more like a transition album for them; less arrangement, more simplicity, a little less refinement in the vocals, etc. It reminds me of a night in L.A., club shaped like a telephone handset, waltzing fingers, warm reverb. It’s a comfortable, quiet evening. Maybe I’ll read the Annie Proulx collection I just bought. My stack of books is growing, but my available time for reading sure isn’t. I like having a backlog again.

I wasn’t kidding when I said the other day that it’s been a little startling to find out who reads the site. Turns out my parents do read after all — though they gloss over my blushworthy adjectives, I’m sure — and now my grandmother does, too. The problem with having a site like this is that when you leave people behind, they still have a window into your life; it’s one I don’t think about much, because it’s only got one solution: stop writing. I’d rather not do that. I left a lot of disappointed people behind me in Reno, along with a couple of good friends. At least one of them is irritated enough with me to have posted an anonymous comment that sounds as if it were written by a person who reads at a sixth-grade level. Here’s the best part about this observation: it doesn’t narrow the pool of potential culprits, not even a bit. Is it my ex-wife? Is it her sister or mother? Is it my former pastor? They’re all probably equally dissatisfied with me. The possibilities are almost endless. My blog might be sad and droning, anonymous commenter, but here’s one thing you can’t say about me: you can’t say that I don’t know how to use a semicolon. Because; dammit; I so totally; do.