Hustler of Culture
Last night I attended the opening of “New Moves: Fast Forward & Instant Reply” at the LIMN Furniture Gallery. My friend Courtney Skott had a piece in the show, the cloud bed seen above.
Courtney graduated from California College of the Arts in May and has already shown her furniture in a bunch of places. I’m eager to see where her work goes next because that bed friggin’ rocks. I want it to have a steering wheel so I can drive it around.
Ya know the guys in khakis you see doing reports from trade shows on like the Flooring and Carpeting Network? My buddy Dave is now one of those guys.
The fact that he doesn’t show up as cleary as his co-host I am attributing to the latent racism of, er, someone involved.
We’re in the middle of Men’s Weekend here so this will be it for posting today.
We have assumed control.
My friend Dave has put this video together about racism, tolerance using, eh, bobbleheads. F’in genius.
Headed to New Mexico this weekend for a family wedding. Expect blog traffic to be light.
A true story about me and my dad, Irving Alan Smokler. And yes, I will be counting flags again this Independence Day.
Happy Father’s Day, dad. I love you.
So my 15-year high school reunion was lovely. I don’t lovely like “tolerable” or “non-awkward” or “I was reminded why I live 2,000 miles away.” More like I enjoyed myself a lot.
I’m not sure how it happened but everyone who came to the reunion I liked. Some were married with kids, others single, career focused. Everyone was still trying to figure out the great mystery called life but they’d also reached a place of relative adult serenity. Everyone had also put aside whatever hangups they had about everyone else long ago. The sensation that hung in the air was something like “Wherever I am now, I have a shared experience with these people. Perhaps that’s something to relish, at least for today.” And we did by staying out late, playing “do you remember” and laughing like kids.
When I called my parents the next morning, I said perhaps the best thing one can say about a high school reunion. I said I was happier having gone than not.
So Liz, Dan, Fred, Matt, Leigh, Francine, Tracy, Kara, and John, thanks, all of you. You made my weekend.
…and this post about mothers broke my heart, I’m going to throw in a little a about my mother, Dr. Carol Smokler, who will turn 60 this September.
My mother is trained as a clinical psychologist but has spent her sorta retirement doing philanthropic work, mostly in the Jewish community. Currently, she is the director the Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Relief Committee of the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization looking after Jewish communities throughout the United States.
My mother had occupied this post for several years now, a job she admits doesn’t see much action unless a giant disaster comes along. She was just about to step down this summer and let someone else have a go at it when Hurricane Katrina struck.
Over the last 9 months, my mother has met with President Bush as a representative of the Jewish community and spent much of the winter in Louisiana and Mississippi directing relief efforts. The days are long, the devastation like getting a daily emotional beating. Most people my mother’s age are getting ready to slow down or already have, filling their days with long lunches and funny stories about grandchildren and trips to the doctor. Not her.
The Jewish concept of social justice is called Tikkun Olam, which from the Hebrew means, “to heal the world.” It’s not a fancy way of saying “We look after our own” although that is part of it. It does not mean “To heal the Jewish world” or “the Israeli world” even “to help people who think the same way we do.” It means everybody, because being Jewish meanns an obligation to represent the best of humanity. The Bible calls that “a light unto all nations.” In these times, we call it suiting up and showing up. For everyone.
There are very few Jewish people in the Gulf Coast region destroyed by last summer’s hurricanes. It doesn’t matter. Being Jewish means everyone matters.
I learned that from my mother who spent much of the beginning of 2006 embodying it. Today on Mother’s Day, I just wanted to tell you all how proud I am of her.
So I’m at my friend Min Jung’s birthday last night at this bar and I look around and geeks have just consumed the joint. Literally everywhere you look, someone has just come from a venture capital meeting, sold something (perhaps even a kidney) to Yahoo and, as I did, feels completely in their element yelling insults based on tag clouding.
Oh and there’s karaoke. My “where’s the party” friend Glenda belting out “I Feel For You” did not surprise me. Nor did my kareoke hero Ernie knocking “Don’t Stop Believin'” out of the park. But please tell me someone has pictures of his duet partner, the unassuming, quietly-taking-over-the-world Andy Baio, hitting the high notes?
And then it was my turn. I have trouble being near a singin’ machine and not wanting to do my one and only song U2’s “With or Without You.” I’ve embarassed myself with it before. A lot.
So I do my thing. Glenda joins in. I sing every other line because its safer than harmonizing (harma-what now?). When I finish, I slink away. I run into my friend Lucia who remarks…
“That just made my night.”
I think it’s time to take those singing lessons I’ve been talking about. One of my life’s ambitiions is to be a decent karaoke singer. Maybe I’m on my way.