Hustler of Culture
So my buddy Dave has moved to Philadelphia to be with his lady after a lifetime in Baltimore. This is historic as Dave was my last remaining tie to the city where we went to college. Now, save our university and a few places I worked, I really have no reason to go back there.
Time marches on.
My friend Megan has gone into business designing handmade knitting needle cases. I don’t knit myself but I hear from those that do that it’s hard as hell to keep the needles from stabbing holes in your supply bag or your hands when you reach into the bag for them. The Organized Knitter looks to be a stylish, compact way of storing knitting supplies.
Youth Speaks, an organization I am proud to support in addition to being a big fan of, is now the proud owner of a new computer lab, thanks to the generousity of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Although I know very little about this band, this strikes me as an enormous act of altruism. Well done, Flea, Anthony et. al.
What a lovely New Year’s Day. Suzan and I had our second annual Open House and folks stopped by throughout the afternoon for granola and lounging. Tantek and Amber came straight over from another party and were still in their pajamas. They brought board games and I learned that I suck at Scrabble. Jessa, MJ and Anne Marie braved the rain from disparate parts of the bay to come and visit. Wendy was here all through the Rose Bowl (in which Michigan played pathetically and deserved to lose), a few games of Trivial Persuit and a late afternoon screening of House Party).
It’s pouring again this morning but I’m looking at is the floods from above, washing away the old of the previous year and clensing the earth in preparation for the new.
2004. It begins.
So Suzan and I are back from my brother’s wedding, an amazing display of family love, togetherness and loyalty amongst friends and community. It’s got me thinking…
I know a lot of wonderful people here in San Francisco, people I wouldn’t trade for all the tea in Chinatown. And yet, as a group, they’re a bit scattered and don’t often gel as a unit. I don’t exactly know how important that is to me yet, but it feels that way. And I’m guessing the hard truth is that groups/crowds/tribes are not engineered but find each other through equal parts hard work and luck.
So I’m going to try. Try to see how the people I love work together, try to spend more time on spiritual and emotional growth, because, as my dad once said, that’s where you meet the best kinds of people. Try to worry less about living a literary life because, while I think that’s important, I’ve mostly been obsessing about this new career out of fear and anxiety. That’s not where I want to be.
So I’m going to try something different. Wanna come along?
(Begun after getting the microphone from my brother Matt)
“There’s a quote I like from F. Scott Fitzgerald where he says “Most American lives have no second act.” I take that to mean that Fitzgerald, who wasn’t a very happy guy, thought that most people were children and then spent their adult lives desperately trying to get back to childhood. Their lives never reach any kind of potential but they’re simply prolonging in vain what has come before.
I’ve often felt like my relationship with Daniel lacked a second act. He was 13 when I left home for college and so I wasn’t around for his second act, his ackward, tugging adolescence.
Well Daniel and I have gotten to know each other as adults in a why we didn’t know how to as children and weren’t able to as teenagers. Now he’s entering a very real phase of adulthood with a wonderful women who not only appreciates and challenges him but, maybe most importantly, can keep up with him as few can.
I’m so glad I was here for this part of us, not only as a witness but of counsel and in frienship. In short, as a big brother.
To Daniel and Beth. Let us all bear witness, as friend, relative, or both, to their first step and whatever comes next.”
Cheers.
So my youngest brother, Daniel Smokler, is getting married this weekend and Suzan and I leave for New Haven Friday morning. Sunday morning at the ceremony, I’m slated to give a toast as the brother of the groom.
I’m kinda freaked out. Most wedding toasts I’ve heard are tittering anecdotes about something embarrasing the groom/bride did in younger years or a few sacchrine lines of sentiment reheated to sounds genuine. I want to make mine special. And I’m the writer in the family, which means expectations are high.
Daniel isn’t the least bit interested in me telling stories about his childhood or snarking at him and Beth from the microphone. Also, I have a tendency to tear up at inopportune times so laying it on too thick will make me cry before everyone else.
Here’s what I’m thinking…Daniel and I have a much stronger relationship now than we did as children. I had left the house by the time of his adolesence so I wasn’t around to see him grow up. Oddly then, we have a greater appreciation for each other as men than as boys. So I’m going to try to string together a few thoughts on how, despite what we remember as children, how proud I am at the man Daniel has become.
I hope Beth doesn’t mind.
Invisible Ink my buddy Roman’s radio show has been made a featured show on the web site of the Third Coast International Audio Festival, a celebration of feature and documentary radio put together by the folks at WBEZ in Chicago. This comes on the heels of the show being awarded a “Best of the Bay” by the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
All this for a half-hour a week show produced by one guy? Pretty f’n remarkable. Listen for yourself and see.
My bestest birthday wishes to my friend Sarah, who doesn’t look a day over 23.
Men’s Weekend was fantastic. As we were walking down 57th street to catch everyone cabs to Penn Station, my buddy Dave and I marveled at how easy it was for the seven of us to mesh, to pick up like we’d never spent a day apart even though we only see each other once a year. How we’re all pretty sure that we’ll still be doing Men’s Weekend after we are married with grown children and mostly talking about perscriptions rather than random sexual encounters.
I don’t keep up with too many people I grew up with so these guys from college are really my first friend generation. Those 10 minutes Dave and I spent going back over the weekend and beaming at one another gave me a quick reminder of what a special thing we all have together and what a rare, unique thing old friends are.
This evening, I was fortunate enough to have dinner with some slighty newer friends whom I convened as an informal panel of experts on the Virtual Book Tour. At issue were whether the tour should accept money from publishers for our time, access and connections, whether we should be focusing on small publishers instead of big ones and if said money did, come along, how should it be divided up.
Jason and Carrie weighed in with their experience of being stops on the tour while I counted on Meg and Jeffrey to speak more to the general ethical issues as oldtimers in the weblog community. Anil mostly cracked jokes but with a full injection of intelligence cuz that’s what he’s best at.
I feel good about what everyone said. It’s too easy to take every piddling criticism seriously when you’re in the middle of a project and it’s your idea to begin with. But these wise folks have given me faith that the VBT is a fine idea and moving in the right direction.
We spent the rest of the time catching up, which is really why were there.