October 2011

Four score and seven beers ago

October 30, 2011

On the great big list of Things I Love, you’ll find costumes, morbid stuff, vampires, fake eyelashes and making people uncomfortable. Put all of that together, and you can see why Halloween is my most favorite holiday of all time.

Every year it’s like getting a big, gift-wrapped package from Edward Gorey, addressed to me.

Hooray for creepy crawlies and ghouly goblins and things that go bump in the night!

In the past few years, however, I’ve been disappointed to see all the whored-up women’s Halloween costumes. It’s beyond ridiculous.

Sexy remote control?

Get it? You can mute her. And I don’t even know where those batteries are supposed to go.

Also, sexy chicken waitress slaughterer lady thingie?

I don’t get it.

A couple years ago, one of my friends even dressed as a sexy mummy. A SEXY MUMMY. Crazy, right? The whole thing about mummies is that they are inherently not sexy. They are part of the undead. They are dehydrated, and they have their brains pulled out of their noses, and eventually they go on to star in Brendan Fraser movies. And none of that is sexy.

It takes all the fun out of Halloween when nobody wants to be funny or silly or frightening or decaying. Just slutty.

So this year, as I prepared for a pub crawl through Palm Springs, I decided to mock the trend by taking a traditionally unsexy but recognizable character and giving him a slut overhaul.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Baberaham Lincoln.

Also, I’ve been reading “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”

I just thought it was a silly way to laugh at all the overtly “sexy” Halloween costumes. Little did I know how many pervs would actually want to make out with Honest Abe.

It was still a lot of fun though. A lot of folks wanted their photo taken with me. A few people thanked me for emancipating their people. I got a lot of random shouts from passers-by on the street: “Hey, you’re my favorite president!” “I see you on the penny!” “Don’t get shot!”

And I got to dance around and act silly with my best friends.

My favorite moment from the night happened when we all piled into my friend’s car, like the start of some bad joke. “So a wine goddess, Pebbles Flintstone, Abe Lincoln and a chicken get into a Toyota …”.

REO Speedwagon came on the radio and we cranked it up for a top-of-our-lungs singalong. Except we only knew every fourth word or so.

“Thinking blah blah blah lies

Nah nah nah bedroom eyes

You say something something something when …

YOU TAKE IT ON THE RUN BABY! If wah wah want it BABY! You’re under the gun so you TAKE IT ON THE RUN!”

Also, I woke up with a purse full of candy. Tell me that’s not a great holiday.

Ring my bell. Or don’t.

October 25, 2011

So I have a phone now, which makes this a very exciting and frightening time for me.

On the one hand, I love my phone. Specifically, I love iPhones. I love that my iPhone has a pink case with birds on it. I love that it is filled with magical gnomes who fetch my email and play Scrabble with me.

Mostly, I love that Siri is my little bitch and has to do what I say. I can push her around in three different languages, not including UK English or Aussie English. (UK English doesn’t even count because Siri takes on a masculine voice and never understands my commands, even when I use my best Bridget Jones accent. And Oz Siri sounds like Robot Olivia Newton John, which is terrifying).

I am very attached to my phone. I would have my hands surgically replaced with iPhones if I could. Except then I think it would be really hard to use them.

That said, I hate telephones. They terrify me. I never understood how people could casually say, “Oh, just give me a call!” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. When I have to make a phone call, my palms sweat. I break out in hives. I imagine all the things the person on the other end is doing, and I feel terrible for intruding in their world. It feels so needy, like dropping by someone’s house unannounced, clanging a bell at their head and screaming “Answer me! Answer me!”

I am not even comfortable calling for pizza.

Unfortunately, extreme phone phobia is not a great quality in a journalist. I used to make my phone rounds when I was confident the person was unable to answer — dialing his or her office line at 5 a.m., for instance — thus forcing them to return my call, since I’m more comfortable answering the phone than I am initiating. That’s not always a reasonable approach, though, and it sometimes took hours for me to muster up the courage to make just one call. I’m lucky that newspapers have relatively forgiving deadlines.

I don’t know why I can make hundreds of skydives without batting one pretty little eyelash. But put a telephone in front of me, and I crumble.

The past year of travel sans phone was glorious. Yes, an iPhone was part of my gear. But since I no longer had a contract and didn’t jailbreak the phone, I could only use it for wifi, notes and various apps.

Having no phone was remarkably liberating. When people wanted to talk to me, they had to find me. I received handwritten notes slipped under my door. I had messages left at the corner store or at a hostel desk or with baristas. When I made plans to meet friends at the coffee shop at 2 p.m., they actually had to be at the coffee shop at 2 p.m. What a concept! There was none of this business of calling and saying, “Oh, something came up. Can we do this tomorrow?”

When I returned to the U.S., I tried to avoid getting a phone as long as I could. I used Skype sometimes. I borrowed my husband’s phone. I’ve been sending a lot of emails. But having my own cellphone does make things easier, especially when I’m going to school, running my own freelance business and making appointments.

Also, the iPhone 4S wooed me with her luscious curves, thin frame and sexy talk.

My phone phobia is gradually getting better, especially since the world has embraced other platforms for communication. I don’t feel forced into phone conversations anymore, since I can easily Facebook, text or tweet people instead. I also don’t have a newsroom full of colleagues sitting nearby, listening in to my interviews, rolling their eyes at my questions, trying to talk to me at the same time. And now that I’m not doing any hardcore journalism, there are very few occasions in which the person on the other end of my call will get all screamy and instruct me to go die.

To help with my recovery, I’ve been stashing away some celebrity phone numbers, and I look forward to having an epic prank call night in the near future. “Is your refrigerator running, Anthony Bourdain? Well, you’d better go catch it!”

The last letter writer in Vietnam

October 20, 2011

Duong Van Ngo knows the power of words.

That’s because he is Vietnam’s last professional letter writer.

For decades Ngo has been writing and translating love letters between soldiers and their lovers, families and loved ones, parents and children.

Each day he arrives at the Saigon post office, an intimidating, peach- and green-colored colonial structure, at 8 a.m. sharp. He leans his bicycle underneath the sycamore trees.

Inside the building, Ngo situates himself at the end of a long wooden bench near a pastel portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Here the 81-year-old unloads books of postal codes, dictionaries, piles of files and stacks of papers. Finally, he pulls out a cardboard sign that reads “Information and Writing Assistance.”

It took me several laps around the expansive building to find him.

Translation is tricky business, according to Ngo, who is fluent in Vietnamese, French and English.

“Each word means something,” he says. “You must choose with care.”

Ngo is the last of his kind. There was another professional letter writer in Vietnam, also stationed at the Saigon post office, but that man died several years ago. After he passed, there was nobody to replace him.

“It’s a shame,” Ngo says. “Connecting people with words is so important.”

He knows what he’s talking about. Over the years, Ngo has negotiated business partnerships. He has reunited families. He has proposed marriage. He has used his words to bridge cultures, miles, time. He has wrapped up love in an envelope and sent it across oceans.

Though he says he never inserts his words into other people’s messages, Ngo is a master at massaging language. He has an instinct about what to say when and how. He knows when to use affection and when to remain aloof, when to gush and when to be restrained, when to be a professional and when to be poetic.

I hand over a postcard for Ngo to pen for my husband. I want it to be a love letter in Vietnamese, and I push him to help me write it.

Ngo’s blue pen swirls and swooshes with curls like delicate lace. He points to the first line, “This says, ‘My darling. Saigon is void of beauty without you here.'”

Every word is gold.

I ask if he ever uses a computer or sends e-mail. Has he ever felt pressure to adapt with the times and modernize his work?

“Never,” he says. “Machines are cold and have no soul. Letters have heart.”

When I try to slide some money his way for writing a couple of postcards, Ngo refuses.

“I love what I do,” he says. “It would be wrong for me to accept payment for something that is a pleasure.”

Mr. Postman

October 18, 2011

I had a stack of souvenirs and clothes, ready to ship back to the United States. Except the employee at the Mysore, India, post office wasn’t having any of it.

“No. Send.” he said, abruptly clipping each word.

“But why? Why no send?”

“No send,” he repeated.

“Please help me.”

“No send!”

After several frustrating minutes, that’s all he would say. It was infuriating.

Just then a boy tugged at my sleeve. “You want to send parcel?” he said.

“Yes, I want to send parcel,” I growled, hovering on the verge between screaming and crying. “I am here to send parcel.”

“Come with me.”

The boy held my hand as we weaved in between speeding rickshaws and honking motorcycles. He led me down into a basement, where he pulled up a plastic chair and motioned for me to sit.

A few seconds later, the boy’s father appeared. Syed was the 43-year-old owner of his own parcel packaging service. Or, as his hand-painted sign stated, “Parcle paking.”

It turns out that all packages mailed from India must be wrapped in cloth and sewn shut, with the seams covered in globs of sealing wax.

As we chatted, Syed pressed my stack of clothes in between two empty sari boxes, then tied them together with twine. He covered that with plastic and taped it together several times over. With a quick snip of some scissors and the whirr of a sewing machine, Syed fashioned a cream-colored cloth bag for the entire package. It fit as snugly as a pillowcase. He sewed the end shut by hand using mustard yellow thread.

Over a cup of tea and a hot samosa, Syed showed me the book where he keeps meticulous records of each and every package he has mailed — including gushing e-mails from thankful customers who receive their souvenirs at home, intact and on time.

He was interested in trying out my computer, so we flipped through photos together. He pointed to a shot of my sister.

“She is very beautiful,” he said.

I agreed.

“More beautiful than you,” he said.

“Yes, yes. My sister is much more beautiful than me. She always has been.”

“She is younger, yes?”

“Uh … actually, she’s 13 years older. But thanks.”

He pointed to another photo.

“Who is this?”

I told him it’s me.

“No, really? But this woman is beautiful!”

“Yeah, I can’t explain it. Maybe that picture was taken on a good day.”

“And this? This is you?” he pointed to another photo of me. Then he carefully eyed me up and down. “It is my thought that you have gained weight.”

“You are probably correct,” I said, then shrugged. “What can I say? I like samosas.”

On that note, I excused myself from Syed’s shop.

The package eventually arrived in Palm Springs with no problem, even though Syed addressed it to “CALIFORNIA GURL!” (I’m still shocked it didn’t end up on Katy Perry’s doorstep.)

And now it seems Syed has decided that I am something of a looker, after all. We’ve become friends on Facebook, and today he sent me this message: “Hello, dear maggie your all of photos most beautifuls. your face is the moon. best regurd.”

It was terribly sweet. If there’s one thing this California gurl loves more than samosas, it’s best regurds.

Steve Poltz and a kale salad

October 7, 2011

I’m a firm believer that almost everything you need to know about a person can be determined over lunch.

It’s certainly a far better gauge of personality than the music they download, the clothes they wear or the car they drive. I always get so frustrated when I’m watching “Law and Order” and the cops find all their clues by looking at the victim’s bookshelf. I end up screaming at the TV, “That book doesn’t mean your victim was in a cult! Maybe she went through a harmless Wiccan phase!”

No, if you really want some insight into a person, just grab lunch. (Obviously that’s not an option for the “L&O” cops, since their victim is dead and therefore is not a quality lunch companion. But this is my analogy, and it works for me.)

My theory was confirmed the other day when I grabbed a salad with Steve Poltz, a musician I have liked for a long time.

This is Steve. I stole this photo off his website.

If you aren’t already familiar with Steve Poltz, here’s the quick and dirty low-down: He hails from Palm Springs. He formed a band called The Rugburns, and they played all over the world. The band eventually parted ways, but Steve Poltz continues to play solo. He dated the singer Jewel for a while and wrote a lot of songs for/with her, including the hit “You Were Meant for Me.” You can also see him in the video for that tune.

He’s the one who is not Jewel.

You might also remember this Jeep commercial, which used his song, “You Remind Me.”

I used to listen to The Rugburns when I was growing up in Ohio. Those were the pre-internet years, when a teenager in the Midwest had to acquire new music by any means necessary, which included using fake IDs to get into 21-and-up shows, trading music with your friends and shoplifting. I was so hungry for music, I would use a VCR to tape the MTV show “120 Minutes,” then play it back while I held my cassette player against the speaker to record the music from the TV. The result was scratchy and shitty and low quality, but it was music and it fed me.

I damn near wore out my cassette tape of The Rugburns’ “Morning Wood,” my reward for trading in albums by Public Image Limited and Frente.

“Morning Wood” was a fixture in my little red Chevette (no relation to the Prince song), until the tape met an untimely end during an irrational, hallucinogen-fueled drive to Chillicothe in the middle of the night.

RIP, beloved Rugburns tape. Now I will just enjoy your songs on YouTube.

Through happenstance and a great friend named Dean Lockwood, I ended up having lunch with Steve Poltz the other day. It was delightful. Here’s what I learned about him.

1. Steve Poltz stands up to greet people.

2. He has a firm handshake. Not aggressive, not floppy, but appropriately in the middle.

3. He is kind to servers. As someone who was once a waitress, I can tell you this is a huge indication of overall character.

4. He ordered the kale salad, a meal that is both nourishing and hearty without any added pretense. That probably says something about Steve, but I’m not going to go so far as to compare him to kale. Also, he ate his food with gusto but paused long enough to offer everyone else a bite.

5. He politely listened to all of my boring stories. If you know me at all, you also know I tend to babble when I get nervous or excited. So the fact that Steve Poltz put up with this and was still nice to me by the end of the meal — well, that says a lot.

6. He really, truly loves making music. Steve has spent decades on the road — not for adulation and fortune it could bring, but because he genuinely enjoys doing it. He has a strong musical point of view, and he has remained true to his artistic integrity.

Put all of that together, and you’ll understand why I can’t wait for Steve’s show next weekend in Palm Springs. Proceeds from the backyard benefit concert will raise money for the Palm Springs Kiwanis Club literacy program and the Boys & Girls Club. (Cool piece of trivia: Steve Poltz participated in the local Boys & Girls Club program in the 1970s.)

The show is Saturday, Oct. 15 and is a mere $20. Click here for tickets.

I’m definitely going to be there on Saturday. So is my dad.

If you don’t already have plans, show your support for some good causes and a good-guy musician. And if you do already have plans, break them. This is going to be worth it.

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