California - the Sights and Smells

I took a training class in Long Beach, CA, last week, on the topic of Lean Six Sigma / Value Stream Management for the Transactional Business Environment. Had I not had the foresight to bring along some sudoku puzzles, my brain certainly would have crawled out of my skull and caught the next Greyhound back to the east coast.

It was actually a very interesting class, no it wasn’t, it was so painfully dull I thought I had died and gone to heck. But I did learn a lot, no I didn’t, I think my IQ is actually lower now! There was a generous snack and soft drink bar in the hallway - that was one silver lining.

My brief stay in “the land of fruits and nuts” did afford me the opportunity for some people-watching and sight-seeing; any trip to a new place is implicitly worthwhile, even if you’re not planning to stay. Long Beach is a small pocket of semi-nice surrounded by the oppressive drabness of Los Angeles, CA. There’s a sea port there, supposedly the largest in the world, subject to some abstruse qualifications blah blah blah, and Long Beach boasts a downtown/artsy/touristy area with plenty of mechanisms for separating the intrepid traveler from his per diem.

I actually expected LA itself to be a little nicer, based on the scenery in the background during OJ’s slow police chase, but it’s basically just a big American city surrounded by miles and miles of housing and concrete, with the added benefit of being ensconced in a dome of dense brownish-gray haze. It does have a lot of palm trees, so it’s a lot like Florida, but without the charm and sophistication.

LA weather is pretty much the same every day, all year; I think easiest job in the world is LA weatherman. And the traffic report is pretty predictable, too - gridlock every morning and afternoon. One thing that struck me, though, was the smells -- maybe Los Angelinos are used to it, but their city really smells bad. The smog blanket that creates the “bloody red sun of fantastic LA” that Jim Morrison sang about so eloquently also contributes to making the place smell like a German latrine. So instead of traffic and weather, the AM radio stations should broadcast periodic smell reports: “…and along the Santa Monica Freeway, we’re detecting heavy nitrous oxide odors with a hint of sulfur, possibly a mix of diesel and gasoline exhaust fumes, and we expect that to clear out by midday to be replaced by a tinge of dank wood smoke from the Catalina Island fires…”

The Long Beach architecture was nice - kind of old Spanish / art deco. Big deal; I’m not going to live there. It smells.

My last trip to CA was in the early 90’s for a mini-course in some aspect of control theory at the UC-Berkeley. During this trip I discovered that CA is not all mountains and vineyards and movie stars; in fact, a lot of it is pretty seedy. I nearly got mugged on sunny, palm-lined Telegraph Road in Berkeley.

In addition to accumulating arcana from my academic field of endeavour, I was entertained by an assortment of weirdos on the UCB campus:

- A man painting madly away on an easel that only he could see, with equally nonexistent brush and pallette.
- Another man fighting invisible enemies with what appeared to be invisible medieval weapons.
- A woman badgering whomever was not sufficiently agile to avoid her, with articulate but insane rantings.
- An overachieving Chinese bum collecting cans. His bag of cans was enormous. Maybe he was a professor. Maybe he had a yacht payment due.

And in San Francisco we were treated to the din of one disheveled “street musician” after another, banging out the hits, deploying a potent mix of guilt and pathos to extract greenbacks from the well-fed tourists.

So I was a little disappointed in the rather tame human circus I saw in Long Beach. I did catch sight of an 80’s vintage punk rocker with spiked hair, face full of fishing tackle, etc., more than a few George Michael fans, and plenty of urban campers, but no genuine full-fledged lunatics. One curious thing we saw was a number of men who circumstantially appeared to be hetero but looked like they shopped for clothes in the Lane Bryant casual department.

One member of our group was describing her walk home one evening. “I just about jumped out of my [expletive deleted] skin when the [expletive deleted] bushes started [expletive deleted] talking to each other!” (you’ll have to forgive the language - she’s former military so I figure she’s entitled to it). Anyway, she was just describing the bums in the bushes talking to each other, not a prophetic biblical experience.

I’ve been to a lot of different places domestically and abroad (thank you taxpayers, automobile purchasers, and utility customers), and often when I’m in a new place, my mind wanders into pondering the prospect of living in that place, where I’d work, what I’d do for fun, etc. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. Well, not so with Los Angeles. To commemorate this important finding, I present the following haiku:

               O Los Angeles
   Home of Jed Clampett and Cher
          You smell like wet dog

Worked All States

As we were leaving for our trip I observed to the ineffable and longsuffering Mrs. Bruck, “we’ve never been to Minnesota before; you know what that means, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know.” Rolling eyes. Pained, patronizing expression. “I know, dear.”

There are myriad certifications and distinctions available to amateur radio operators, based on making contact with (“working”) stations in diverse geographical regions on different bands, using different modes, etc. Hey wait, come back here! Don’t worry, we’re not going to spent the whole column today talking about ham radio! Just a little, just to set the stage…

Worked All States, or “WAS” is usually the first certification to which a new ham radio operator aspires. There are several versions of it, but most basic WAS entails simply making, and confirming, contact with each of the 50 United States, on any band (range of frequencies available to hams), in any mode (a.m., morse code, single sideband, etc.), over any period of time. This accomplishment garners the operator a certificate suitable for framing and display in a location far away from where any normal person might see it. There are many other ham radio certifications but I think I’ve already told you about 74% more than you wanted to hear.

Since you asked, no, your faithful editor does not have a WAS certificate. I could apply for one, as I do have confirmation cards from contacts with stations in all 50 states including MN, but… applying for it just hasn’t risen to the top of my priority list over the 11 years I’ve been licensed, and I don’t expect it to any time soon.

Okay, there. Done with the geek speak.

Long before I had heard of ham radio or contests or certifications, two of my college friends devised a “Worked All States” contest of a different kind. Their competition was to be the first to micturate outdoors in all 50 states, vying for a prize of a case of beer to be provided by the runner-up. I assume the contest was governed by the honor system, as any kind of confirmation of such activity would be impractical and potentially incriminating.

I don’t know how the competition is going, or even if it is still going on; I’ve lost track of the fellows over the years. I do know that they were taking it very seriously during the years shortly following graduation. For instance, one of the contestants and I took a driving trip out east after graduation, and he was quite keen on “hitting” all the states we passed through. We actually went a little out of our way to maximize the number of states we passed through. I was driving when we passed through Rhode Island, and at one point, as we were approaching a rest area, my passenger said, “Stop! Pull over here! This is our last chance to hit Rhode Island!” So I of course pulled off, whereupon we proceeded to try to find the most inconspicuous spot for him to “work” RI. It wasn’t easy in a highly-populated urban rest area, but he found some semi-secluded bushes and I positioned the car strategically to help reduce his exposure.

I was not personally in on the urinary Worked All States contest; I could have joined it, but declined, foreseeing that completion, let alone winning, was a rather remote prospect, and certainly more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe when I’m retired and the Mrs. and I are tooling about the country in our Four Seasons RV with Good Sam Club and Wall Drug stickers on the back, I might dangle my catheter tube out the side door, but back in my young adult days, and even now, it really wasn’t and isn’t a constructive pursuit.

But I was, and still am, intrigued by the idea of the contest, and participate in spirit by endeavoring to lay claim, in the canine sense, to any new state, province, or country I visit. I would like to know how the contest is going, so if a wedding or funeral ever brings us back together, that’s probably going to be the fourth or fifth thing I ask them about.

Mrs. Bruck and I spent last weekend in Minneapolis, attending a wedding and visiting her brother and his family, who happen to live in the vicinity. The wedding was a pretty straight-up affair, despite the tacit involvement of a dead rabbit and a shotgun, and uninspired officiation by a rather unconvincing rent-a-preacher. The visit with the in-laws was richly rewarding in many ways as well; my bro-in-law handed my gluteus maximus to me on the skeet range, and I took the opportunity return the favor on the racquetball court the following day.

And by virtue of a simple but meaningful ritual performed on the levee of the Minnesota River, the state of Minnesota is now the sovereign territory of Bruck.

Desert Cuisine in VA

If you’ve been following this blog closely, or if you know the family of Bruck personally, you’ll know that we made the move from the Detroit, MI, area to northern VA in the summer of ’06. You’ll also know that there are a number of things we miss about southeast MI, including good radio stations, navigable roads, and some discernable culture beyond chain restaurants and townhouse developments. We know it’s a fool’s game to try to replace all the things we left behind, but that hasn’t stopped us from trying!

A unique demographic of the Detroit area is a large Middle Eastern population, mainly Shia Muslims, the largest concentration being in Dearborn, a suburb to the immediate southwest of Detroit. Dearborn is also home to Ford Motor Company, where your faithful editor collected paychecks for most of the last 15 years. During this time, I developed a deep appreciation for ME food from the various restaurants and bakeries in the vicinity.

This affinity is shared by my remarkable wife and at least half my kids, so since we moved to VA, one of the missing pieces of our jigsaw puzzle has been some good ol’ down home imam chow. Until recently, we’ve come up short on that count. A few months ago we did find one purported ME place that garnered (or bought!) good reviews, but which turned out to be Persian, not Lebanese or Arabian, a bit pricey, and fairly prissy in its presentation, and whose clientele seemed to boast a bit more than a proportional representation of Marilyn Monroe fans. So we crossed that one off our list, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. It offered a perfectly good meal, but it just wasn’t what we were looking for.

Unrequited yearnings for Hezbollah Helper thus remained our state of affairs …until a few weeks ago when I found a flyer on my windshield at the train station parking lot, advertising the new Sahara restaurant. The included menu featured many of the Lebanese items we’d been craving, including baba ganoush, hummous, various kebabs, falafel, etc.

Okay, before we get too much further, let me expand on the cultural scene in northern VA. There, I just did it. Wanna see it again? Really, if you have so much as a shred of awareness of the level of sophistication and imagination in northern VA, you’d know that a quest for authentic Middle Eastern cuisine would be an uphill battle. And this would be all the more true of Manassas, whose claims to fame are two major civil war battles (2:0 Confederates), and the distinction of being the hometown of John Wayne Bobbit and his incisive wife, Lorena.

So we gave the Sahara a try. We found it in a strip mall of sorts, in an industrial/commercial area not far from the train station. Its layout and ambience were pretty similar to the Detroit area Jihad Joints - fairly clean with formica tables and tile floors, an illuminated menu on the wall behind the walk-up counter, and garish but inexpensive décor throughout. We were the only customers in the place. The prices were pretty reasonable, and the food wasn’t too bad. Not like anything in Detroit’s “Little Lebanon,” mind you, but pretty good, considering… considering that it’s in the hometown of John Wayne Bobbit and shares a building with a U-Haul dealership.

We infidels would frequently chuckle at the background music at the Detroit-area ME restaurants. I really couldn’t do it justice trying to describe it to you, so just imagine the neighbor’s cat in heat with a sitar and keyboard accompaniment. Not so at the Sahara. When we arrived the first time, there was no music at all, and after a while, it was Kenny Rogers’ Greatest Hits. That’s right, She Believes in Me, Lady, We’ve Got Tonight, You Decorated My Life, you know what I’m talking about. After a while, though, they started playing some genuine ME hollering and twanging, so we felt right at home again. But then we noticed something really strange. The ME “music” was fairly loud, but during the quiet parts, we could make out Kenny Rogers, still belting out the cheesy hits. It was just so profoundly deranged we couldn’t help but laugh. Fortunately, after a while they gave up on trying to induct us into their peaceful religion, and we went back to Kenny, solo.

A couple weeks later, we went back to the Sahara for dinner, and again we were the only customers. There were some other people in the dining room, but they appeared to be the rambunctious kids and testy wife of at least one of the employees. And after not too long, Kenny Rogers was back with us, his Greatest Hits wafting from the speakers to our grateful ears, and this time he wasn’t drowned out, even temporarily, by Sing Along with Ahmed. We had another fine meal and wished among ourselves that their small business loan doesn’t run out too soon.

So really, we’ve killed two birds with one stone. In northern VA of all places, not only can we get passably good ME food at a reasonable price from a restaurant that’s not too far away, but also, if we’ve got a bad jones for a dose of schmaltzy, post-menopausal 70’s and 80’s easy-listening crossover country tunes, we know where to get that too!