The Hotel Room

I'm in a really fantastic hotel room right now. I'm not far from home, in fact I can see both my house and the office from here. The window near my cubicle faces this direction, and the next time I'm at work, I'll look out the window at this tall hotel and see this spot and know that I was here, in this room on the south-east corner of the 26th floor.

This room has a stunning view of San Francisco, and a good view of Oakland and San Leandro and beyond. I'm in the dark - so I can see better - in bed, and so help me I could stay here looking at this view for days. I plan to leave the curtains open all night, so when I inevitably wake, I can look at the view.

The Bay Bridge is covered in lights, millions of lights, an art piece recently installed that flashes patterns suggestive of other not-bridge things - champagne bubbles, eddies of water, cars driving, falling rain - and I have a damn fine view of that especially.

The thing is, some jackass put an enormous flat screen tv against the window across from the bed, effectively blacking out the center of this stupefying view. The San Francisco skyline stands lit up and majestic at my feet, but no, here's a fucking tv with it's back turned dumbly to it. If I was staying here longer, I'd move the tv, but since it probably weighs as much as I do, I've been working around it. I ordered room service and pushed the cart right up to the window to eat my dinner, with the lights off of course. Earlier, I stood at the windows at one end of the room then the other and strained to look around the edge, to see as far around the sides as I could.

But it hasn't all be this eager looking. I also went to the spa. As it happens, many months ago I bought a package of three massages at a deeply discounted rate at the hotel spa, and since I was staying here tonight anyway, I figured this would be a perfect time to use up my last rub down.

The therapist I had was excellent. Not only was the massage deep and relaxing, but after, he filled a paper cup with wine so I could take it to the hot tub - no glass at the tub, of course. What a pal! When I got to the tub, it was full of little children, but I was relaxed and happy and had a to-go cup of cheap chardonnay, so I didn't mind. By the time I got dressed, I was ready to become a batty eccentric and move into the hotel, spending my days staring out the window and going to the spa (who'll pay for it I have no idea).

But none of that is why I'm legitimately here. I have an excuse: it's for work. I'm doing a work thing in a ballroom here tomorrow, a thing that I arranged and produced and am responsible for. I have had many emails and phone calls and meetings with the good people of this hotel, and am spending a lot of the office's money here, and I can only assume that's why I've been upgraded from the normal room I was supposed to have. Or maybe it's just because the hotel people came to understand, over all those emails, phone calls, and meetings, how much I'd love this view.

Regardless, after the spa, I came back up to the room, put on my pink velour track suit, turned out the lights, ate mac & cheese and salad while watching out the window, and listened to 70s soft rock. There is little more I could possibly want or need. A humidifier maybe - it's dry as a desert in here. But a trip to the steam room would take care of that.

The Traditional Posting of the Link

pinched from http://centreofthepsyclone.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/war-is-over-if-you-want-it/

Ah the holiday season. Like repeated viewings of Charlie Brown, debating the disgustingness of eggnog, and avoiding the Little Drummer Boy, this most wonderful time of the year wouldn't be complete without the traditional link to the Happy Holidays (If You Want It) mix, a set that contemplates war, peace, life, loss, childhood, Christmas, and polka. It features hand-turned 78s, a vintage Soviet kids’ record, radio recordings, Tchaikovsky, Vince Guaraldi and FDR.  I hope you enjoy!

http://soundcloud.com/sighafstrom

Track Listing: 

·         CH 3/72 Reuge musicbox, "Nutcracker Suite"

·         The Philadelphia Orchestra, Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers", from "The Nutcracker Suite"

·         Frank Knight, et al, "FDR 'Day of Infamy'"

·         John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band, "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" 

·         George Harrison, "All Things Must Pass" 

·         Moreno Veloso, "Deusa do Amor" 

·         The Vince Guaraldi Trio, "What Child Is This" 

·         Meryl Streep and George Winston, "The Velveteen Rabbit" 

·         David Bowie and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" 

·         Sir Adrian Boult and Members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, "The Viola" 

·         The Philadelphia Orchestra, Tchaikovsky's "Chinese Dance", from "The Nutcracker Suite" 

·         Frank Knight, et al, "President Truman Announces Hiroshima 'A' Bomb Attack" 

·         Sirat, "Moon Over the Ruined Castle" 

·         The Philadelphia Orchestra, Modeste Moussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" 

·         Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet, "Temple of the Golden Pavilion ("Like Some Enormous Music")" 

·         Donovan, "Season of the Witch" 

·         The Broadway Cast of Hair, "Aquarius" 

·         Walter Cronkite and Crew of Apollo Eight "'...On The Good Earth'" 

·         The Vince Guaraldi Trio, "Skating" 

·         The Philadelphia Orchestra, Tchaikovsky's"Dance of the Reed Flutes", from "The Nutcracker Suite" 

·         The Firesign Theatre, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger" 

·         Alex Pulaski and the Polka Dots, "Holiday Polka" 

·         They Might Be Giants, "Famous Polka" 

·         Jan Waters and his "Polk-Alongs", "How Good for Me Polka" 

·         Cantor Josef Rosenblatt, "Achanu Kol Beth Israel (Our Brother Israel)", 

·         “Teremok”

·         Music Hall Drama Group and Orchestra, "Santa's Surprise" 

·         "Jingle the Christmas Mouse" 

·         The Christmas Carol Orgy-
from the albums "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, and "Hi-Fi Christmas Party", by Domenico Savino and his Orchestra and Chorus; Charles Smart and James Blades, "Holy, Holy, Holy" and "Eternal Father"; Monks of the Benedictine Abbe, En Calcat, with Boys' Choir from L'alumnat, "Christe Redemptor (Christ the Saviour)" and "Hodie Christus Natus Est (Christ Was Born Today)" 

·         Simon and Garfunkel, "7 o'clock News/Silent Night" 

·         Jiminy Cricket, "When You Wish Upon a Star" 

·         15 1/2" Regina musicbox, "Silent Night" 

Recorded live in Oakland, California, December 2003

The First Writing In Ages And I Fully Intend...

Sunday afternoon at the Country Estate - a condo in suburbs north of San Francisco. I'm poolside, drinking a shandy and listening to Thelonious Monk, Brad Mehldau, Stevie Wonder. The sunshine is plentiful, but the air holds some cool, hinting - or perhaps overtly revealing - that just outside our sparkling sunbelt, the fog rolls, asserting itself, throwing its weight around. It's also an oblique reminder that summer is on the decline - oblique because in these parts, we still have glorious Indian Summer ahead of us before the seasons turn earnestly chilly.

Indian Summer is just ridiculous. Beautiful and perfect and calm, warm sun, long sunsets, a sense that everything is just good in the world. Of course, then the sunsets get longer as October stretches in, rain maybe even falls a time or two, then daylight savings abruptly ends one night at 2am, and we're plunged into darkness till we spring forward next year. 

But that's ages from now - two months - so for the moment, I will drink my shandy by the pool and stay in the warm sun and avoid thinking anything outside of summer being endless. 

There are three men in suits carrying bibles and stalking around the condo complex. They go from door to door silently, I assume proselytizing but who knows - it's the perfect disguise for robbing houses on a Sunday afternoon, and doors could be unlocked around these parts. They've noticed me and are noticeably  not looking at me, in the sun with my bikini and my drink. Monk's Honeysuckle Rose plinks away thought the little speakers on the side table.

Alex, love of my life, is up in the Country Estate writing and recording bass clarinet parts for a new song.  The low, throaty tones mix in the breeze with the sounds of a prop plane, rustling leaves, bird songs, the ubiquitous cars-on-road, my keyboard strokes, Brad Mehldau Trio, and occasionally a human voice.  And a weed whacker.  It is Sunday after all.  

I feel like I can hear the pool, but it's imaginary synesthesia.  It is a thing of beauty, though: artificially tropical blue, Caribbean-colored, from a bleachy bluish white in the shallows to a deep, clean sky at the 9 foot end. There's something perfect about a swimming pool: a promise of perfection, a dream, a myth - contained and controlled, but wet and therefore wild. David Hockney saw it, got it. Flying into an airport near a neighborhood rich with swimming pools, one can't help but look down into them and think "this is the place". A Talking Headsian paradise.  

Or something like that. Anyway, my shandy is running low, and I must must must keep writing - the first writing in ages, and I fully intend...

We're In Business!

Yippy! I here by declare my new business, Ace Holiday Gift Wrapping Service, officially open! Although I did the soft launch on Friday, yesterday was the roll-out-the-carpet day, in which I blasted email, tweets & facebook posts all over the internets. And frankly, today I'm tired, but no rest for this elf! There are gifts that need wrapping! If that includes yours, give me a buzz or email - 510.408.7441 or ace@acegiftwrap.com

And here's the lovely, fancy, magnificent website!

If I Was On Top Of Things, I'd Have Posted This For Valentine's Day

My love for you
is like a zombie.

Deep in its grave-dirt it lies
animated but unalive.
It twists, squirms, digs, climbs

until a fingernail pokes up through the daisies,
and then fingers (not quite ten),
and then the hands, wrists, arms, elbows,
and the horrible head.
And then it pulls itself out, like coming up out of a swimming pool,
lifts itself out of the dirt,
crookedly stands.
Corroded, worm-gnawed, full of holes,
the brain basin mucked with mildew,
its skin more a paste, and its eyes puddings.
Arms outstretch, and off it stumbles.

Meanwhile, back at my house,
dark, quiet, not a creature stirring, etc.
I’m asleep in my bed, covers up to my chin
AND THEN I AWAKE TO THE CRASH!
Stiff zombie arms wrecking through the window,
through the blinds bending and tearing from the sill.
They clatter with the glass shatter,
the zombie crashing in.

I try the praying, the incantations, the charms.
The zombie is unimpressed, and hungry.
It comes at me with great zeal, its teeth clack, its filthy fingernails rasp,
and the smell – have I mentioned the smell?

The smell is sweet like strange fruit,
like an mango, but sweeter, so sweet its sour,
like a thousand mangoes smashed in a sour brown mash simmering in the sun,
smells like bruised cherries, chewed pits, banana peels,
like a softly rotting cantaloupe.
The zombie smell is putrid, and pervasive,
and in no time I have this wet rotting sweetness in my pores, at the roots of my hair,
under my pajamas, inside me. The smell.

Meanwhile, the zombie
bites my face,
like seriously it bites so hard it breaks the skin. I grunt and push away, push hard into the flimsy flesh hanging loose from zombie ribs. My cheek burns, spit-streaked. The zombie's sallow teeth are exposed, my blood vivid against its lipless maw. The zombie rushes at me, and I punch, I kick, I thrash, but still it rushes. I punch the bony face and an eyeball slops out. I kick it in the bony thigh, old bone splinters, but the zombie is undeterred. It has a supernatural strength borne of a singular ambition, a focused, singular intention
To eat my brain. To consume my flesh. To have all of me.

Luckily, it is then I notice my trusty chainsaw in the corner!,
and my machete!
I angle our brawl, steer it just so -
and then I have my weapons!
The chainsaw chokes to life,
the machete gleams.
I swing my arms.
The machete catches under the chin, pops off the jaw.
And the chainsaw gets an arm, right above the elbow -
off. Onto the floor.
I swing and swing and swing
and the parts fall freely.
Of course I nick myself here and there
a cut, a gash
but a gash is a scratch when faced with the fate of being eaten by a zombie.

The awful zombie is in pieces on the floor.
This is of great relief,
but now, what, a pile of zombie parts in my house?
I put it in a garbage bag, a hand, a foot, a chunk (neck maybe?).
The pieces ooze,
the cuts have opened bad pockets of puss, maggots, curdled gore, runny marrow.
And the bag is heavy. Mostly bones, some mold, some meat, but still
it weighs a ton.
I drag the bag bumping down the stairs,
across the street, through the field by the gully,
into the woods, into darkness, into dew.
With shovel, pick ax, bare hands
I dig. The ground is damp, old, cold, but the musty dirt smell soothing. I dig

dig and dig and dig, deep as I can,
deeper, there is no purpose in putting any kind of zombie in a shallow grave.
I must ignore the shuddering sack, the black plastic bag spasms,
kick the twitching bag down the hole
and cover it, reverse it, put the cold clay back,
a low, smooth mound compact as asphalt. I jump a jig up and down
for satiety, to ensure it is tamped.
No problem.
Done.

Back at home, board up the broken window,
sweep the glass away. I'll get curtains;
I never liked blinds anyway.
And anyway, the place needed a good wash, a scrub,
the smell of bleach astringent in the sweet rot.
I wash off the gore and muck,
blood, mud and moisture.
I wash off the smell, the sweet sour brown syrup.
The house is restored.
All is warm, clean, replaced, at peace.
I go back to bed, covers up to my chin.

Meanwhile,
deep in its grave-dirt the zombie lies
animated but unalive.
It twists, squirms, digs, climbs -
rezombifies.

Repeat.

Repeat repeat repeat
because
my love for you
is like a zombie.

Please be so kind as to take my amazing survey. Thank you.

P-A-R-T-A-Y-!