Shots Fired! They Tell Me!

Living here in Long Beach you hear firecrackers, and other pops that are usually written off as other kinds of tiny toy explosives. Other times...well, you never know. I've never felt in danger, and never even felt like I've had to be paying attention to everybody like was the case in Bed-Stuy.

But the other day, I heard some strange voice over a digital loudspeaker outside. I couldn't make it out, but the tone was very insistent. I looked out the window, and then got as fast as I could over to my camera and back to the window:

Pardon the blinds reflection, but, if you look close there are a number of things you can notice. The first, is that there are two cops with guns drawn on that black gentleman. The second is that nearly centered near the top of the screen are cops hiding behind a champagne colored civilian car. The third is that there are cops huddled behind a cop car in the upper right hand side of the picture.

I watched the scene long enough to tell you that the guy who they had guns on, the black guy in the white tank-top, looked drunk to me. He wobbled and swayed and generally looked harmless. If he had still been armed, I'll bet you anything he would've been shot dead.

I went out to take out the trash, no small feat for a guy in my condition, and asked the crowds that had been watching from all angles what was going on. Somebody told me that there were shots fired.

Here's some of the crowd across the street:

The cops hung out in a variety of forms on the street for maybe a pair of hours afterward. You could hear people heckling them from the safety of their darkened windows for the entire time. But that's not really the whole story; folks spent almost the whole evening out on their stoops and front areas, laughing and talking and blaring music and mostly ignoring the hecklers.

Etymology and States

I'd been thinking about state manes, for some reason. I was thinking about the rhyme they taught us in school, the alphabetical rhyme, "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas...", and it started to dawn on me that each of those four states has an Indian name, a native aboriginal language name.

That idea had sitting somewhere in my craw, and I finally went out and crunched the numbers, and tried to get a count of the native names in our states. Before looking it up, you get the feeling that there are a lot.

This is true and the numbers bear it out. Besides each of the "A" states, you have: Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisonsin, and Wyoming. That's 22 total so far.

I didn't list Indiana, which is an English word meaning "land of the Indians". I also didn't list Idaho, which is most likely an Indian term, but it seems to look like a white guy made it up (invariably inspired by Indian words) and it stuck around Congress long enough to finally get used. I also didn't list Oregon, which is either formed by a misinterpreted map of an Indian word, or from the french word for "windy", "stormy". How about North and South Dakota, combining English and Indian? Same goes for New Mexico, since "Mexico" is a word from the Aztecs about a region in their lands.

That would bring the total to 28. More than half.

While we're at it, the English clock in with the next most: Delaware (from Baron De la Warr), Georgia, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. That's 14.

We're up to 42.

Next we have the Spanish: Colorado, Florida, Montana, and Nevada.

That brings our total to 46.

Then from the French: Louisiana; and from the Austronesian Hawaiian: Hawai'i.

Up to 48.

Only two left. The first: Vermont.

Vermont has no real forbear in either English, French, or Indian. Since one of the militias that fought to keep free the area fought over by New York and New Hampshire, the area today called Vermont, was called the Green Mountain Boys, I think it's safe to say that "Vermont", when broken up like "ver-" and "mont", can be seen as roots beaning "green" and "mountain". This doesn't seem that crazy to me.

Lastly, we have California.

Many think the term is Spanish, since it's generally agreed upon that it comes from the Spanish novel Las sergas de Esplandian, written around 1500. In the novel, Calafia is the queen of an Amazonian warrior nation, and her island-kingdom, California, is one of the exotic places Cortez went searching for.

Scholars tend to agree that Montalvo, the writer, used the word "Calafia" as the name of the leader of an exotic people because the Spanish public would recognize the Arabic root "caliph", which is a leader of a group of Muslims. It would make sense to his readers.

That pretty much makes California the only US state with an Arabic etymology.

Two Quick Movie Notes

Recently Corrie and I watched a pair of movies, and and I felt compelled to write a few words.

1) Holy shit! The first movie we watched was The Expendables, from streaming Netflix.I was compelled to sit through it after talking with Tony and then reading somethings about the sequel. If all you want to see is an orgy of violence and corny one-liners, this one's for you. I'm almost tempted to go see the sequel, which is something else for me, a guy who counts On the Waterfront and Chinatown as two of my five favorite movies.

I only wanted to day two things about this movie. The first: the dive-bombing, machine-gunning, fuel-dumping, flare-shooting action sequence is about as cheer-worthy a scene as I've ever witnessed in big action movies. Hell yes. The second: when did the AA-12 come into existence? Nobody told me that Terry Crews, the same guy playing Chris Rock's dad in "Everybody Hates Chris", carries around and rules the day with the craziest gun ever made. And I thought the tommy-gun was sweet--that only fires .45 magnum rounds. This thing is an automatic shotgun. Here's a link to Crews in action

2) We also watched Wing Chun. When we noticed that it starred a young Michelle Yeoh, we decided to try it out. The movie was directed by Wing Po, who is the martial arts coordinator in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix, and although he was mostly unused, Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Wing Chun is a lady warrior who ran off and learned kung fu instead of marrying her betrothed. She was condemned to live the life of a roving fighter/warrior, and won't be able to wed. She is played by Michelle Yeoh.

Michelle Yeoh played Lu Shien, the older lady warrior in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Chow Yun-fat played the retiring swordsman, Li Mu-bai, who's giving up the life because he's in love with Lu Shien, and the Zhang Ziyi plays the young girl trying to avoid marriage by becoming a warrior.

That's a lot of background from Crouching Tiger..., but I state it because Wing Chun is, for all intents and purposes, a direct prequel to that movie. Michelle Yeoh plays basically the same character in both, just at different stages of life.

I remember having a long conversation with someone (Murphy, RIP) about how Lu Shien is probably the most bad-ass warrior in the whole movie, and in Wing Chun, Yeoh is easily the most bad-ass character in the movie. Easily and by far.

Zhang Ziyi plays a girl that tries to live the life that Wing Chun lived, follow the path blazed by Chun. If you like Crouching Tiger..., check out Wing Chun if you come across it. Seriously, you could watch them back to back, Wing Chun first, then Crouching Tiger..., and it could flow seamlessly.

Looking Shiny, Feeling Shiny

I spent more than 33 years without crutches, but it's like they never existed. My life just started back on June 15th. Before that, who knows what happened. Memories of the "before-time" are even more blurred now than they'd ever been with drink and smoke. My arms are big and strong now, like that summer I set tile.

Oh yeah, I set tile...worked with Boo...he even came to the graduation party at the Madonna Inn...

My right leg is toned and muscular, and my right foot is probably a whole size larger than my left. That's probably due to shrinking rather than extra growth, but still, I notice it. My left leg looks like it needs to go to a rehab clinic, like it's been hitting the pipe or needle or too long.

I've become quite the killer of Musca domesticus; to keep the breeze circulating I keep our back door open, and we don't have a screen door.

The other day I looked down at the incision, now healed up and smooth looking, sealed up and all, and I noticed it looked shiny.

The sun was hitting it just right, and all along the incision, along a path a half-inch wide to each side, it looked like someone slathered Vaseline. I started to notice something else: feeling was returning to the area.

It was feeling shiny as well.

During all this time, I noticed that the area around the incision, maybe an inch and a half total centered on the cut-line, was totally numb. I could feel in my leg as my finger would get closer, then I could only feel it in my finger, like I was touching someone else.

Only the other day, when it was shiny and glimmering in the sun, I realized that the feeling was returning to the numb no-man's land. I imagined the life shining out of it, and the return of feeling personifying that life.

The doctor told me that in time full feeling will return (he said it could take years), and that it was the shock of the trauma (making the incision) had caused the local nerves to wig out and turn off. I think his "years" estimate is off, by, eh, years. It's almost back right now.

I've spent a few weeks doing exercises that strengthen and stretch the ligaments and muscles in my muscle-less left leg, and now I'm allowed to put some weight on it. Not full weight-bearing yet---they want to be sure everything is fully healed before they let me go crazy with it.

That just means more time before Corrie and I can go play some tennis. Bummer.

But soon enough...

Two Anecdotes from Today

As I waited for my X-ray, a nurse was pushing a bed with a blanketed man laying in it. I heard her ask him, "So, what are you here for?" There had been an older man with a large cast on his left leg sitting in a wheel-chair and taking up lots of hallway space, enabling me to hear this exchange by way of their reduced speed through the hall.

The man in the bed responded, "I swallowed some glass." 

"And how did that happen?"

"When I was smoking." 

The nurse, who obviously had prior knowledge of what was going on, started in almost immediately about how that's the real concern, and that's what we need to focus on, and that makes these other current problems a little less important.

Wow. I could tell this wasn't some resin covered colored hand-blown glass, if you get my drift.

Minutes later I heard the call from the X-ray tech, "Pah-teeq Sur-wuud?" Uh, what?

I'd never heard my name butchered as bad as that in this country. Seriously, no "s-h" sound in my last name. As I was getting up from my seat I laughed and looked at Corrie and said, "Ssssuuuurrrr-whad? Okay..."

I got into the room and the tech, a short and young Vietnamese girl, asked me which knee was bothering me. Bothering me? I said with my eyes as I took my seat on the bed.

"Neither of 'em." 

"Huuuuuuhhhh?" with a slight valley-girl upward lilt.

"Well I broke my left one, so that's probably the guy you'll wanna X-ray."

She gave a cutesy laugh that would be a chuckle in someone else, someone with more girth. Then she had me pose a certain way for the picture, and kept saying things like Wow, that must be a huge pin in there, assuming that the long incision meant I was carrying some serious hardware. I told her no, there wasn't one long pin, there were multiple screws and a plate, but no single long thing.

The second shot she wanted the inside of my left knee up. She jammed the plate that collects the X-rays under my leg (which was unpleasant), and had me turn towards the left, bringing my knee into the orientation she wanted. It was like I was trying to spoon. The knee wasn't quite in the right spot, so she had me swing my right leg over my left, leaving it dangling over the side of the table, and incidentally crushing my testicles.

As I was getting into this position, a guy had entered the X-ray room and was having a talk with this tech about what they were going to do for lunch. That's probably why they couldn't really understand me when I yelped, "That's my balls!"

I was adjusting myself when she admonished me to stop moving, to which I said clearly, I'm just adjusting my testicles, which were getting squashed. I don't think she was listening though.

I couldn't help by have a laugh about it after leaving and heading to the other waiting room.

Exceeding my expectations, depravity and all...

Heat Wave

Yes, yes, I know, the weather in places I used to live is much worse than we're currently getting.

Brooklyn right now? Or Sacramento? Or fucking Austin? Yeah, those places are like blast furnaces or even-the-shade-sucks muggy, or both.

But our little slice of paradise has been suffering from---get this---a low '90s heat wave!

Well, that's just us in Long Beach. In the upper reaches of the valley or the desert on the other side of the mountains it's been well into the triple digits, like the sort my mom in Phoenix has been suffering through.

When everyday is the same and really nice, when it gets above 85 your body starts to yell at you and bitch and moan about how "hot" it is. When I get outside, it's pretty nice, but there is a nice (see: shitty) level of humidity that we normally don't get here in the Southland. So when I get to my destination, I'm extra super sweaty. Then when I make it back to our apartment, the passive heating and cooling it uses makes it so the apartment doesn't need an air-conditioner---except for when it's extra hot, which happens about ten days a year.

Our apartment is nice and cool in the morning, as it has let off all of the previous day's heat throughout the night. By noon, you know it's gonna be a warm one, and by three in the afternoon, it's probably fifteen to twenty degrees hotter inside than it is outside. In fact, after ten in the morning it'll be hotter inside. The peak of the heat outside is between 1:30 and 3, but the apartment is between 3:30 and 5.

After doing dishes, beside being even more winded than normal (try doing dishes on one leg and you'll get the idea), I find my face, arms, legs, hands, and feet are all covered in sweat. It's really quite gross, actually, to be literally drenched in sweat. I eventually sit to do my later-day stretches and exercises, and I'm flush, sweat beading and dripping from my nose like I'm jogging in Round Rock in late July.

I've been to Bangkok with the white sky of a 97 degree day with humidity so bad my balls chafed in seconds. I remember days in Brooklyn when you step out of the shower, having "dried off", you find yourself still too wet to put on clothes. Then there was the warehouse job in Austin (actually it was Round Rock) that was so hot you went outside to cool down.

This wave has been different, most likely because I have limited ability to get out and defeat the hottest part of the day by just being away.

Just tough sometimes...

Olympic Observations: High Jump Hi-jinks

So, stop me if you heard about the drunken Russkie who lost his shirt on the way to the Olympic High Jump event?

Well, I did lump some of the different aspects of Ivan Ukhov together, in one of the more memorable events from this installment of the Olympics.

Ivan Ukhov is seen below, the long-haired Russian guy holding the gold medal he won in High Jump. Up until then, he was best known as the "Drunk Guy", a Youtube star now for a 2008 match he showed up at hammered. He had just had a huge fight with his girlfriend and had missed the Olympics and was disconsolate, so he did what anyone in that state would do: get drunk. Then he went out and competed". That 2008 footage is pretty amusing.

Ukhov fared better in 2012, and made the Olympics, and apparently after every event, he would take off his singlet--his little Russian-branded tank-top. At one point, he lost it. He lost his shirt, literally. He couldn't find it, and started to panic.

He was told he could pin his number to a t-shirt, and that he better do it fast because he needed to go do his next jump, which was coming up fast.

He ended up finding his singlet, jumping again, and winning the gold.

Now, in that picture above, you see five guys, which is weird in itself. Here's a link to an article about those four other guys, one of which posed nude for a gay magazine. Guess who?

Flags! Logos for Countries!

In getting into the spirit of the Olympics, I decided to hold my own impromptu games concerning only the coolness of the flags. My decision making about the coolest flags out there are broken down by continent. I've had other flag exploration post ideas, like the pan-Arabic flags, the pan-African flags, or all the uses of the Danebrueg, but those will be saved for later, when I'm bored but want to look at pictures and talk about something else that doesn't really matter.

After seeing so many flags on the the 'Toob for these games, I got onto Wikipedia and decided the snazziest or most dramatic or dynamic looking flag for the continental groups of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the two Americas.

This was tough business, and there were some surprise victors. One of my favorites that didn't make the cut was Angola:

Black for the people and power, red for the blood shed, the gears of industry crossed by the machete of, uh, clearing jungle...this flag is all about power and kicks ass. It also has that communist look that stands out against other tribal or religious symbols. You know what? Fuck it. This is my pick for Africa. Forget the other choice I had (it was between Kenya and Seychelles, but RSA is pretty cool, too).

This next flag is definitely not on the list, but it's also one of my favorites. Too bad large swaths of the world cringe in anger at the sight of this naval ensign of wartime imperial Japan. In some spots, this is probably as despised as anything with the ancient swastika image is in the western world.

I think it's just dynamic as hell.

Okay, so getting on with it...

The winner from Europe was the little Balkan country of Macedonia:

The "Sun of Progress" seems like it's better suited for a central Asian country. It was so weird and eye-catching that I had to go with it. Scotland? Sure, the saltier is cool...France and Italy and Ireland going back and forth and the strange connection between Germany and Belgium demanding attention...but I went with this little know country, that was actually sued by Greece for choosing the name "Macedonia".

For North America I chose Barbados:

Along with having one of the cooler names in the world, the broken trident symbolizing the break from their colonial occupiers. It doesn't look like any other flag in the zone, the colors scream ocean island.

Next, for some reason the continent of Oceania is represented (uh...in no particular order) with this kick ass flag from the Marshall Islands:

The swooping lines representing the arcs of the rising sun and setting sun, and the star represents the archipelago surrounded by the blue of the ocean. Pretty sweet. It was designed by the First Lady of the Marshall Islands in 1979...bet that's a rarity.

From South America I have chosen, in a close competition, Guyana:

With the cool double triangle on the hoist side and the pan-Africa colors (strangely for So. America), this dynamic look is startling.

From Asia, I guess I went with a cheat, the elegant Hong Kong:

Cambodia's flag with Angkor Wat, or some other cool Wat, and the sweet Thai flag, proved too difficult to choose over the white petals over the red field.

Then I went out and got a little crazy. How about US states? I know that people who have state pride would probably choose their own state flag, and I realized that I'm no different. With my idea for my first tattoo notwithstanding, I tried to examine the flags objectively. I ended up with this constellation flag:

Yes, that's the Alaskan flag, with the Big Dipper and Polaris, or, Ursa Major and Polaris. Ursa major means "big bear" and Alaska has lots of big bears. I like the story behind the flag as well. After the land was purchased from Russia, they had been flying just the US flag. In 1927 there was a contest to design a new symbol for the territory, but it was a design contest for kids between 12 and 17. A 13 year-old native Alaskan of Aleut heritage named Benny Benson designed the winning entry, an entry that would eventually become the state flag. (Honorable mention to Ohio.)

Then I went and looked up some cool American city flags, and there are some doozies. Here's my pick, Wichita  Kansas:

I don't know, it just looks cool, like it could be the best use of red, white, and blue yet.

And then, since I couldn't resist, I've grabbed, like, the "Greatest Flag Ever" just for the end, like on the Fourth of July at the end of the show, they shoot up the wild ending. Tibet, people...Tibet:

It's got that cool Japanese "Rising Sun" look (I hear it was designed by a roving Japanese officer); it's got a Sol de Mayo, albeit faceless; it's got two snow-dragons; and it's got a taegeuk (that yin-yang symbol).

Sweet...

Picture 7000

I know...this is a wasted post. I'm working a little thing here and I didn't want to see that long list of July posts staring back at me.

I realized that this was picture 7000 with the Canon point-and-shoot some time after it was taken. That's the camera we bought right before a wedding trip from Austin to SLO in 2010.

I was taking pictures of an episode of the Simpsons, for a post about "Life in Hell" character Bongo. That's how I work, I guess.

I saw an image of John Swarzwelder hanging out at the burlesque house. I'm familiar enough with how they animate the show and who people are and where you could expect to realistically find some of these guys, and in a burlesque house works for Swarzwelder. I grabbed the camera and took the picture, and it turned out to be number 7000.

He's the shaggy guy on the right.

Do yourself a favor and check out the Frank Burly detective novels from John Swarzwelder. It's some of the funniest stuff this side of Pat Yamamoto.