Blog of Nambot

Here's a little obituary written by my dad, Ed, in celebration of the life of our most-loved family member, OJ:


OJ the cat was born on November 14, 1987 in Nevada City. He died in Grass Valley on January 7, 2009, when he failed to recover from an abscessed tooth.

During the course of his life he traveled as far a Loomis, CA for emergency services when he got into a hornet's nest. Remarkable for a cat, he received mail from Fortune 500 corporations, was elected to the position of seventh grade president at Seven Hills School, and was a distinguished guest in high school graduation pictures.

OJ was gentle, and did not bite or scratch people. Furthermore, he did not catch and kill critters that were smaller than him. He was well respected, and worked his way up to the position of leader over people who towered over him in physical size.

Preceded in death by his companion, Bandit, OJ now lies under his own color coded rock at the far end of the back yard.

OJ, we'll miss you and think of you every day. Your shiny spirit is awesome and it lives in us.

Annual New Year's Polar Bear Swim Club swim at Coney Island. The temperature was 18 degrees, with 20mph winds making it feel like 0. I am very proud to have shot this footage with my bare (definitely not bear) hand.

Dear Blog,

I mean, Dear John,

I think you're the only person left who still reads my blog on account of me being an unreliable, fair-weather blogger. In real life I purposely failed to recount the following story in your presence, knowing that it would soon be at your electronic disposal, internet access and necessary hardware permitting. Why divulge a perfectly weird story on a regular day, when it could instead be unleashed during a moment of debilitating procrastination?

I admit it, John, I waited for your finals to begin. A crap tale for you in your time of woe in exchange for that disgusting gin & tonic. And dude, every word is true.

It was Halloween and I was riding my bike home from work, as I always do, underneath the Manhattan Bridge through a field of pot holes and a never-ending construction site. It was gray and cold, and the sun was setting. A vomitous green mist settled over the empty street. I could hear cars idling on the BQE and the wind whooshing past my freezing ears (unless I turned my head sideways) as I absorbed bumps in the road and negotiated scattered gravel ponds.

In addition to me, the only person or thing present underneath the bridge seemed to be a sweatshirt and sweatpants wearing middle-aged woman hauling a bloated wheelie suitcase. She shouted 'Sweetie! It's time! Come on out!' From a large pothole to my immediate right, a tiny, wide-eyed boy of about six years of age emerged. He was wearing a brown corduroy suit and an argyle vest, and his hair and skin were stark white. If not for his reflectivity he would have been translucent. For the sake of making the story easier to digest, I would like to say that the boy crawled out of the hole. I would like to say that upon closer inspection, the hole was very shallow, and that the boy was probably lying down in it. I should say he came from somewhere. Unfortunately, he didn't. Instead, he rose out of the deep dark hole without stepping, moving his arms, or even looking around. This caused me to gasp and rely on my reflexes to steady my bike as I rode past gawking. Like monster tentacles whipping out from beneath a childhood bed, this boy evoked paralyzing fear in me that some adults can't feel or remember. Surrounded by so many New Yorker's daily commute, the impossible boy showed how the backdrop of everyday life can bring the extraordinary into stark relief... even on Halloween, or perhaps especially on Halloween?

Expressionless and nonchalant, the tiny boy trudged up the hill as the woman in sweatpants wrestled with her suitcase.

Dear Blog,

Today was my first day back to work after being holed up with the flu for an entire week. Being sick and awake sucks, but dreaming when you're sick is awesome. There's really no reason to be awake unless you're eating. Here's one of the dreams I had:

There was a huge hike going on in my hometown alongside the south fork of the Yuba River. If you've never been to the Yuba, google it. Even uncoordinated people who confront moving bodies of water with extreme awkwardness or hate the outdoors completely will make an exception for this river. It sits at the bottom of a steep canyon lined with huge pine trees. Rocks jut out everywhere and the rapids kill thrill-seeking tourists a lot, but most people go to the river to lay around. The water is clean and clear, warm in the summer, deep in some places, and it runs over gigantic granite boulders. There are tall slate cliffs wherever the surrounding mountains are steep, and the rocks and the canyon shrink as the river heads toward the Sacramento Valley. All in all, it's a good place to spend every waking hour of your life when you don't absolutely have to be somewhere else.

Annnyway... in the dream, I was wading in the river during this hike. All kinds of people, kids, old folks, suburbanites, etc., were hopping over rocks on their way downstream. Everybody was wearing visors, aqua socks, and numbers like marathon runners. They were sponsored by their friends and neighbors, and were raising money for the Sierra Club or something. The finish line was at Bridgeport, and there was a terrible BBQ and ridiculous prizes awaiting the hikers. Standing waist deep in the water, I was totally annoyed with these interlopers. In my dream I was a "riverist," and it was my job to keep all of the rocks in the river organized. This seems pretty impractical, but most days I looked out for precariously balanced rocks and settled them into stationary positions. Imbalance and disorganization might be the result of interlopers, but was usually caused by strong storms that raised the water level and pushed the rocks around. I'd figure out which large rocks had shifted with the crazy currents, and try to resettle them in safe places where they wouldn't tip over and smash people. I was out on the day of the hike because the traffic was causing debris and rocks to fall into the river, and I was there to keep an eye on things. I kept yelling at people, telling them to take it easy and be a little lighter on their feet. I enjoyed giving everyone a hard time.

The End.

Dear Blog,

1. While I was riding my bike home from work on Bowery tonight, I accidentally pulled up beside this little chinatown bus full of passengers. Out of nowhere a man stepped out from between parked cars and stood right in front of me with one arm in the air. Simultaneously, the bus driver slowed the bus down, reached across the passenger seat, and stretched his arm through the open window. The two men appeared to be hi-fiving at a very inopportune moment for me. Instead of slapping hands, the bus driver passed something down to the man on the street that was about the size of my shoe and turned out to be... a wad of cash big enough to buy two pet dolphins, and a 4Runner.

2. Instead of riding directly home, I took a little jaunt through Prospect Park where I saw a woman walking a dog that was wearing what appeared to be a fiber optic light-up collar. Awesome! The sun had just set, so the dog was totally tricked out and very visible compared to other dogs. The dog's owner set it loose in the long valley at the north end of the park. As soon as it was off-leash, the dog bolted out into the night, racing through the trees like a little sparkly torpedo. It was the raddest.

3. A little Bonnie Tyler for you, oh blog reader, because your happiness is important to me. Also, if you have free moment, watch from 1:20 to 1:35 a few times in a row. That part where Bonnie disappears for a second is almost unbearable! OMG I cannot stop watching it:

Today I was so homesick for California that I used google street view to navigate from my parents house to my high school.

Hipsters take heed! Peek out from beneath your greasy side-part for a few seconds to observe the mini-movement before you that’s fraught with drinking and kicking things. Still not big enough to be called a scene, country music is coming from bars, little venues, and country fucks who found their way out of the proverbial sticks. (As a side note, this ramble is courtesy of Animal Collective, the not-country band who have an album named Country Fuck, and the The Felice Brothers, both of whom appeared at the All Points West music festival yesterday)

Remember, perhaps, where you came from, and I don’t mean Oberlin or Purchase. Think back a little farther, if you can bear it, to the time before college when you were trapped in your parent’s house in ruralville. Remember how you worked day and night at the only movie theater or record store in town so that you could afford the gas that kept you mobile and away from the clutches of your nuclear family? You fled to the library, the outdoors, some backwoods rave, and into the arms of some atheist, some queer, and the most blue-blooded classmates you could find. On the weekends, you and your friends drove two hours to get to a red state punk rock dungeon in Omaha, Asheville, Kansas City, Gainesville, Columbus, Denver, Austin, Missoula, or even Portland(s), Sacramento, or (god forbid) Salt Lake City. Is it any wonder that you’re playing in a noise band and hiding behind your hair in Brooklyn? Yet you somehow eventually discovered singers your rural yuppie parents might have avoided like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. Too often associated with the Right, so much country music was made for folks who never trusted the establishment and didn't like getting dressed up (leather notwithstanding).

I’d like to suggest that this inclination to shit-kick isn’t incidental, and that country fucks should mobilize, recognize their escape from conservatism and talk about their complicated roots. Juggling the politics of radio play and popular music, the country stars that make music that’s still danceable are heroic to me. In his own way Johnny Cash somehow managed to criticize the prison industrial complex before Angela Davis. Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton spent (and continue to spend) much of their careers speaking directly to women in their kitchens about the male dominance that put them there, giving them a few tools to get out.

I’d also like to encourage everybody who relates to a rural-escapee mentality but feels suburban to look over your family history. How many church-going relatives do you have? Did your parents fail to mention that your great-grandparents were from Louisiana? Are they still in contact with those second cousins in Georgia, or have they “lost touch” since mom n’ dad planted themselves firmly in the middle class? You can get the fuck out of the country, but you can’t get the country…

1. Boomer Vamps:
Baby Boomers - they expect to live forever and they're going to leech off of us the whole time. Mom, if you're reading this, don't worry. We'll find you a nice dungeon in the suburbs that's ready with all manner of appliances and a nice coffin with lumbar support for you to sleep in. You're gonna love it. I promise.

2. T.S. Eliot:
"Do I dare to eat a peach?"... ??!!! I mean, I know what you're saying, T.S., but if you'd eaten a peach recently you'd forget all about whatever shameful inhibitions, decisions and revisions creep up beneath your bald spot. Peaches are GOoooD.

3. Summertime Dishes:
I don't want to hear anybody complain about doing the dishes in the Summer. Like eating a peach, cold water is GOoood. If you don't believe me, stick your hands or your elbows or one whole arm under a faucet, wonder where that water comes from and think of how spoiled you are.

The corner store
has one dimension more
than ours:
a portal to
anyone temporarily.

A high school boy asks:
"Hey Miss, do you smoke Marijuana?"
I reply
"No, but thank you..."
As I approach my stoop
he's looking still.
I raise my fingers to my lips
and take a huge pretend hit.
He motions,
"Call me".

Dear Blog,

I haven't been posting lately because I've had technical difficulties (verizon discontinued DSL in my neighborhood), I graduated from school, and have been working at a really hard job. Please pardon my guilt and excuses and have a look at the ponystation site if you get a chance, since I've posted some drawings there.

Love,
nambot

Cheap, Not Free

Dear Blog,

In the last year, it has become apparent that our country, which was at one time purportedly "free," is free no longer and has been sliding toward the bed-pooping moment in which we now find ourselves for the last forty years or so. By bed-pooping I mean economic instability (thanks Nixon for taking us off the gold standard!), corporate takeover (thanks Reagan for privatizing everything, imprisoning everyone, and letting drug violence and AIDS kill your least-favorites!), election-heisting dictatorship, and a not-too savvy elimination of civil liberties. Our government has always been a business, but this never bothered most americans until recently, when we collectively realized that our dollars weren't worth two bits, and our financial system looked about as patched together as the Joad family truckster. Did the smartest guys in the room just pay themselves to go to war with our worthless (tax) dollars? Crap!

Q: Hey, where'd our $520,000,000,000 go? Do you guys still have that, because none of the kids on my block know how to read or write and their school looks like a prison.

Meanwhile, there are so many European tourists in New York City this spring, I'm beginning to gravitate toward asymmetrical hair. Perhaps some of our friends from across the pond will buy our whole city, enslave us with a little more tact, and teach our kids how to pass the ball when they play soccer. The world's greatest city is now available at rock-bottom prices, and though we're certainly not free, we are cRaZY cheap.

If I could make one request of the whoremongers who purchase our dysfunctional country, it is that you folks always remember the funny movies and TV shows we exported to you for so long. Not only are you getting a sweet deal on our infrastructure and our people – labor... I mean labor – you're also buying the world's most talented all-singing, all-dancing citizenry, and we are eager to please. Remember that time we depicted people from your country in our films and they were villains with bad accents? Remember when americans seemed rebellious and cool because we were rich from pillaging "our" land and imperializing? Maybe you'll still think we're cool five years from now when our country reverts to the Wild West.

Ah, I can't wait.

Love,
nambot

Dear Blog,

Forgot to tell you the other day that I discovered a tiny chunk was missing from my cat. The dime-sized divot was just above his shoulder blade, and was a little bit crusty. In an uncharacteristic move, I momentarily feigned adulthood and applied a topical antibiotic ointment to my cat's wound. I am now metaphorically over thirty.

Love,
nambot

Dear Blog,

This morning while I was walking in the park during free-dog off-leash crazy-dog time, I was bombarded by miscreant dogs. Several pugs roved in packs like schools of fish, warding off me, other humans, and other dogs. An ancient golden retriever rolled in the grass, slapped its gangly limbs to and fro, and emitted a growling sound with cavernous reverb. A dobermann pinscher conquered a pomeranian next to the BBQ pits and gloated by performing an unsettling 3-legged prancing manuever. At one point I was approached by an enormous non-descript brown dog with a cranium the size of an ice chest who dropped a slobbery ball before me. Never one to disappoint dogs, I attempted cooperation, at which point I was issued a premeditated blow in the form of a "canine" tooth to the knuckle of my right forefinger. Dehabilitated, i thrust the dog's slobbery ball into the air with gorilla force and scuttled away to console myself.

Bad dogs.

Love,
nambot

See ponystation.blogspot.com (there's a little link above) for posts in April and May of 2008!

Love,
nambot

Dear Unhappy People,

Be you ill or well, with means or without, Ohioan, New Yorker, Immigrant, Floridian, relatively originless, unemarkable or quite distinctive, nice looking, hideous, kittenish, sheepish, bookish, privileged or overprivileged, friend, foe or total stranger:

You're not fooling anyone, grumpy.

Love,
nambot

Dear Blog

Okay, so I'm breaking a rule by not blogging from my phone, but it's an emergency. Some friends at Anthology Film Archives were extolling the great virtue of their new slide duplicator for making small gauge film blowups, so, like the enthusiastic idiot I am, I went out and bought one THAT DAY. Blog, I know you probably don't know what a slide duplicator is, but it's basically a stand for an SLR camera that is pointed at a transparency that's mounted and lit by a blinding bulb from below. Guess I'm still going to have to fork over the $800 for a digital SLR, but meanwhile, my 5 megapixel Canon Elph produced this semi-fantastic terrier from Super 8 film. I am most pleased. Scanners be damned!! I mean, it's kinda blown out, but SERIOUSLY BLOG, how awesome is this freakish and WICKED CHEAP combination of analog and digital media?

Super awesome!
nam