177/365 Rocket Man

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Til touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home

At 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, the phone did not ring. Tim said George would call if the rocket launch was on; if there was no call, there was no launch.

I looked outside. Perfectly sunny.

Is it windy? asked Tim.

I saw some ripples in the plastic-covered construction site across the way. But then I looked at an American flag, and it hung straight down, lifeless.

No.

Around 7:30, Tim called George. His wife, Michelle, answered. George and daughter Emma had already head out to the launch site.

George was sure we’d gone to Rocky Horror and was afraid to wake us up. Plus, he thought he and Tim had left it that Tim would call him.

Luckily, we’d called in time.

It was a perfect day for a launch. So perfect that the first time the rocket landed extremely close to the liftoff point. I worried it would actually hit our cars in the lot.

Nothing had broken, so George got to launch again. This time in landed in the next field.

We’ll have to wait for the camera results. George mounts a camera inside the rocket, and when all goes well, the resulting footage is amazing.

176/365 The Time Warp

For July’s four Saturdays, a downtown Portland movie theater was playing Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight. I really wanted to go.

But midnight. Geez. I could barely make the midnight showings when I was young.

Still, we figured this past Saturday, we’d try.

That afternoon, we ran into Heidi’s main squeeze, Colin, at Maine Squeeze, the yummy new smoothie place downtown. Heidi had told Tim that she’d never seen Rocky Horror in her youth. When she’d tried to go, her mother hadn’t believed her, saying something to the effect, A movie at midnight? How stupid do you think I am? We’d been thinking about calling Heidi to remind her that it was the last night, so it was fortuitous running into Colin. He said yeah, they’d thought about going, but it was at midnight, and they were usually in bed by, like, 9:30.

Thank god. These people may be a decade younger than we are. I thought we were the only ones.

Apparently we’d all previously joked about how they needed a senior citizens’ showing, like maybe at 7 p.m.

Then Tim and I tried to stay up. We hung out in the room and watched some DVDs. I played a Youtube of “The Time Warp” to get psyched.

At 8, I was feeling pretty good.

Then George called. He was going to do another rocket launch avec attached camera on Sunday morning, early. Tim (over)confidently said we’d likely to go Rocky Horror, but he still wanted in. There was some discussion about who would call whom the next morning, which got muddled later, of course.

At 10:30, Tim was “napping,” and I was having serious doubts.

At 11:15, I turned off the light.

I love Rocky Horror. I do. I wanted so much to be the kind of person who could stay up til midnight and see it.

But I also know that it’s the first hour that’s really good, and the last half hour falls apart a little. Or at least it always seemed to. And I’m not sure if that’s because it actually does, or if it’s because by 1 a.m., something would have to be magnificent for me to not think, When will this be over? The last half hour of RH is not that, in my memory.

The thing is, the theater was practically just a jump to my left . . .

175/365 You Shook Me All Night Long

I’m back in an urban environment for a few days. Yesterday, after a long, hot walk by the water, I stopped in coffee shop on the way to Suzanne’s new gallery. I was desperately thirsty. I picked up a bottle of water and got in the long coffee line.

This AC/DC song was on. Far from me, near the front of the line, this guy was totally rockin’ out to it. Singin’ a bit, the works.

He was black.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had never seen an African American guy rockin’ out to AC/DC.

Then I wondered if the realization of that was a racist thought of some kind. You know how white liberals are. Always on the lookout for their own racism, which they desperately hope isn’t actually there.

And yes, I know that the song is on Back in Black.

Of course, there are lots of things I realize I’ve never seen at the moment I first see them. If it’s taken me more than 27 years to see a black guy singing and dancing to “You Shook Me All Night Long,” well, then, that’s how long it’s taken me. When the song was popular, I was in a fairly white environment. My DC decade happened past the song’s prime. I’m not coming up with any time in my life when all proper stars would have naturally aligned for this occurrence. And I’ve never invited anyone of any race to come over to my place and forced them to listen to AC/DC. In fact, I don’t even play it when Tim’s around.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an Asian guy rockin’ out to this song either.

Maybe I should put that on the to-do list.

174/365 Cocaine

It seemed that every time I turned on the radio the summer of 1980, I heard the live version of Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine.”

That was the summer I was 18. I’d graduated from high school. I was on my way to college. I was all the time begging for use of the family car.

I was gettin’ some.

This song was always in the air. And although cocaine wasn’t my drug of choice, the song was part of the perfect soundtrack to “Let’s get this party started.”

173/365 Fat Bottomed Girls

Are you gonna take me home tonight
Ah down beside that red firelight
Are you gonna let it all hang out
Fat bottomed girls
You make the rockin’ world go round

On Tuesday I woke up to some serious pain. My hip hurt, my knee hurt, as well as parts environ. All day. I got more than a little freaky about it, because last time I had hip pain, I did lots of physical therapy, lots of acupuncture, and really, the only thing that worked was to rest the hip. Which meant quit exercising in the fashion to which I’d grown accustomed.

That time, I didn’t feel completely pain-free for about two years.

So even a twinge in the hip freaks me out. Tuesday was a particularly bad day. I don’t know if it was bad because I was in pain, and this colored everything, or if the pain was just one more part of a bad work day. Politics in the office of my main client, you know. Nothing directed at me, but just same old stuff. The chronic pain of the organization.

I had my ice skates in the car. I decided it best to not ice skate.

Wednesday, after hip rest, a round of antiinflammatories, and a good night’s sleep, it felt better. But I decided to not get on my NordicTrack elliptical cross-trainer. And I decide to not go back to the river, which means climbing up and down that steep bank.

Thursday arrived with a few twinges. I cut back on the antiinflammatories. I again skipped the elliptical, but, living on the edge, I went to yoga class. So far, so good. Today I have a long day of car travel ahead of me.

Here’s the thing. I’m an eater. I love food, and I eat a lot. The only thing that makes this habit possible in any semihealthy way is the fact that I exercise almost every day. I was a chubby kid, and when I truly discovered exercise that I could love and manage at age 22, it changed my life.

It also works as an antidepressant.

I live in fear that I will have to stop.

But I am forever grateful to Brian May for writing it, to Freddie Mercury and Queen for singing it: that ballad to fat-bottomed girls.

Now your mortgages and homes
I got stiffness in the bones
Ain’t no beauty queens in this locality (I tell you)
Oh but I still get my pleasure
Still got my greatest treasure
Heap big woman you gonna make a big man out of me

172/365 London Flat London Sharp

I’ve gone to see the Dave Brubeck Quartet a couple of times in the past few years. The experience is always transcendental.

The last time I went, I didn’t buy tickets til the day of the concert. There was a lot going on, Tim couldn’t commit, and I figured I’d see what the day would bring—then if tix were still available, I’d go by myself.

That morning I ran into Leslie at the post office. On a whim, I asked if she wanted to go, and she said yes.

I’d been warned about the balcony at the Paramount—about how the rows were too close together, that there was barely room for one’s knees. All true. But the only seats left were there.

We spent the first set in those uncomfortable seats. But then Leslie spotted some empty chairs on the side balcony—those kind you find around dining tables in ballrooms, ten to twelve to a table. She knew an usher and asked if we could go sit there.

We could. We sat right above the Dave Brubeck Quartet, stage right.

I alerted Leslie to my crush on Bobby Militello, the saxophonist. We realized that we were now close enough to possibly throw undergarments on stage. She suggested a bra, and I said I couldn’t do that, because, well, a bra in my size is just too embarrassing. This is when she recommended carrying a bra in a much larger size in one’s pocketbook, for occasions like this one.

Brilliant.

Here’s Bobby and Dave, along with Michael Moore on bass and Randy Jones on drums.

171/365 Someday My Prince Will Come

Have I mentioned how much I love Bill Evans? Hmmm. Looks like a word I used previously was awe. Let me say it now: I love Bill Evans.

Apparently Dave Brubeck, another favorite of mine, is the mastermind behind taking Disney tunes and turning them into jazz masterpieces. But my first exposure to both this tune and “Alice in Wonderland” was via Evans. The tunes themselves are good, of course. But jazz milks the sappy out of them. One suddenly sees that they aren’t so innocent after all, that they lie in wait in the keys, sultrily whispering “Play me.”