bring the noyz

So I'm just sittin' on our new couch, because after seven years of being the prime daytime spot for The Boy. . . well, let's just say it was time for a new one.

Stewart and Colbert are over. As a brief aside, tonight's Daily Show bit with a Seinfeld cameo about Michelle Bachmann's husband damn near had me in tears on the floor. Beautiful. Brilliant.

The Wife and The Boy are snug in their beds, so I'm just channel surfing. I land on FOX News. Hannity. As a rule, I avoid Hannity because for me anyways he has this nails on the blackboard way that best exemplifies the arrogant self-important douche-bags who pass for news people and journalists nowadays. Okay, with Beck currently off-air in reality it's probably a toss-up between him, O'Reilly and Olbermann's new old show on the Al Gore channel.

As you are surely aware, my dear reader, I am a media junkie who just can't get enough of the 24 hour cable news cycle. Not because I wish to be informed. I have the internet for that. I like cable TV news because it amuses me.

I'm freaky like that. We all have our hobbies.

I am fascinated by the different news networks ability to take complicated issues, such as the current debt ceiling discussion, and distill them down to sixth grade level sound bites with flashy graphics designed to appeal to their core demographics. Whether they are "conservative" (FOX) or "liberal" (MSNBC) or try for a more "moderate" (CNN) approach, there is one common characteristic that judging from their predominant advertising most of their viewers share: erectile dysfunction.

But I'm watching Hannity for a few moments because I notice that his hair is getting grayer. Recent photos of his nemesis Obama have shown a similar trend towards more gray on the ol' noggin, so I'm guessing Hannity is just trying to keep up. I see from the guide on our digital cable that Family Guy or something comes on the Cartoon Network in few minutes so I leave it because I need something to pass the time.

In the corner of the screen in that big scary block letter font: THE DEBT DEBATE or some such nonsense. Hannity has a panel of guests to discuss this issue of grave importance to our nation. There is an old white guy and a bald black dude. In all honesty, the sound was down because I received a phone call a few minutes prior and the remote that handles our surround sound was slightly out of reach on the other end of the couch. So I will admit that I am going with stereotypes and just guessing. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the old white guy was playing the "conservative" role and the black dude was the "liberal" on the panel. You know, to keep things fair and balanced.

There was a another person on the panel: Miss America 2008.

Wait. What? Who?

Miss America 2008? I am skeptical, but not so skeptical as to be motivated to lean over two feet to grab the remote and turn the sound up. Perhaps she studied economics in college and is currently comparing and contrasting current policy to the theories of Malthus and Adam Smith.

Cut to commercial.

Cialis. Because you never know when it will be the right time.

There she is, Miss America.
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Many,  many years ago, before the Google gave us the way to instantly connect and hyperlink to all human knowledge, I remember reading an article about J.R.R. Tolkien.

Anyways. . .

I read about this FAMiLY group in Iowa, and this pledge they created for Presidential candidates to sign to earn the support of their organization. It's full of lots of crazy sounding shit about "Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy" whatever the fuck that means. I mean really now, in some circumstances the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy could be referred to as Santorum.

Okay, I'll link to that because it's funny. Almost makes me want to start a contest. What's a Bachmann?

Back to the pledge. The rejection of Sharia Law. What the fuck is that? Where did that come from? Because the President is a secret non-American muslim? Because our nation was founded on The Ten Commandments of Jewish law?  Because we should base our lives on and our laws on one ancient mythology and not on another? It almost makes me want to start bitching that all the trouble in our nation today is caused because we have turned our backs on Zeus. You don't want to slight him. Nope. He's not one one to trifle with. Ask Odysseus. And Zeus was as kinky as he was vengeful. I'm not talking just the standard whips, chips, chains, and dips type of stuff. I'm talking hardcore, like beastiality. He banged Europa as a bull, and Leda as a swan.

But I am really digressing. . .

Back to Tolkien.

For Tolkien the hobbits and The Shire were a metaphor for the English people. Not the Williams and the Kates nor the Harper Sevens of England, but the people of England. The hardworking, honest, and sensible people that made (and presumably continue to do so) the majority of the country, just the people living their lives in the hamlets, villages and hillsides. The hobbits and The Shire represented the fellows who got up every morning and did their job without complaint so long as they could enjoy a pint with a friend at the end of day, the salt of the earth folks.

Some might say Springsteen paints a similar picture of America for our times: "I had a friend was a big baseball player back in high school. . . "

Or David Byrne: "People like us. . . we don't want freedom, we don't want justice. We just want someone to love".

Iowa.

Iowa is that place and those people for me. Iowa is my Shire. Sweet Iowa, the land where the tall corn grows, the land of my birth, the land of my childhood, the land of my idyllic Tom Sawyer days running through the woods to the banks of the river.

"Is this Heaven?" "No, it's Iowa." - Field of Dreams
"I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space." James T. Kirk, Star Trek IV

You know that scene near the end of Lord of The Rings? The books, not the movies. The Hobbits return to The Shire and discover to their horror that it had become the ugly scene that Sam witnessed when he looked into The Mirror of Galadriel.

I feel like that. It cuts me to my core to see the good people of my Shire fall prey to the evil and ignorant, hurtful and hateful speech of such a Wormtongue.
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Have you, my dear reader, seen that Hitchcock film where Jimmy Stewart is stuck in his upper floor apartment because he has a broken leg? You know, the one where he passes the time looking out his window watching his neighbors and becomes convinced that one of them murdered his wife? The Simpsons version where Bart sends Lisa into Flanders house is classic.

Well, we're not there yet. But some shenanigans are going on at the house behind ours.

First, some background information. Our house sits on a large corner lot in a neighborhood that was a country subdivision a few miles from the city when it was built in the fifties. Now it is prime centrally located real estate. Our yard is half a block deep. The back of our yard abuts the back yard of the corresponding corner house on the street behind ours. When we moved here in 2006 an elderly couple lived there. Last May I noticed the house was on the market, and within a matter of a week or two somebody else moved in. The new resident immediately replaced a decades old chain link fence with a large wooden fence. No big deal, right? I personally kinda like it as it adds to the privacy of our own back yard.

It was soon after that I began to notice things that seemed odd, but I fancy myself as a great neighbor in that I keep to myself and mind my own business and don't give a rat's ass what you do so long as you do the same and don't bother me. I was curious as to why I saw cars coming and going from the backyard at all hours of the day, what is going on over there? But again, it don't bother me so it ain't my business.

About a month ago, one afternoon there was a knock on the door. It was our new back neighbor. He introduced himself, an Asian fellow, said his name was Vinny. He asked me about the neighborhood, and asked a curious question about if we had a problem with complaints from the neighbors for entertaining guests. While we have frequent visitors, therapists, case managers and what coming to see The Boy, perhaps a friend or two stopping by for an after work beer, we rarely have gatherings at our house that involve more than a few cars. They are easily parked by our house. On the maybe once a year occasion we have a real party, well honestly no, we've never heard a complaint from a neighbor about the parking, traffic or the noise.

He told me that after being in our neighborhood for maybe a couple of weeks, he had already received complaints about all his guests and their cars, that is why he turned his back yard into a parking lot behind a large wooden fence. While I must admit, at first it was an odd sight to see the lights of multiple cars shining through the wooden slats driving around his back yard on those nights where I sit on my patio having a nightcap, playing on the internet at two in the morning, I never heard a peep of noise. So ya got no complaints from me, mister.

The conversation was friendly but strange. But again, your business is just that. You mind yours, I'll mind mind, never the twain shall meet.

Until one night a week or so ago, sometime around midnight.

I let our little dog out one last time before going to bed. Beasty. A yippie little Yorkie. He was a stray The Wife and The Boy found in February. He's misbehaved and ill-mannered. I can't count how many iPod earbuds he's chewed up. But he is cute, sweet, incredibly good natured, and great with The Boy. He's small, shaggy, adorable and endearing as all Hell. I never wanted a damn yippie little dog, but that is a story for another time.

Anyways, Beasty starts freaking out. He's going ballistic at the side of our back yard. I come out to see what is going on and I see two cars, running with parking lights on sitting on the side street. I approach. It's two police cars. What's going on? I am standing there, flashlight in hand in my jammy shorts and shoddy t-shirt when two of my town's finest walk up the side street from the direction of the new neighbor's house:

"Good evening, sir."
"Everything okay officers?"
"Yes. Have a good night."

They get in their cars and drive off.

Hmmm. . . Most curious. . . Police hanging out beside my house in the middle of the night? Can't say I'm exactly a fan of that. What's going on?

Well nothing, at least not then. But I began to take more notice. I'd go by the house and wonder, "I don't remember the garage windows covered with foil when the old folks lived there?"

All the while I resisted the temptation to just go to the back end of my yard and peer over or through the fence. Because again, I wish to respect the privacy of all my neighbors with the expectation that they do the same for me.

That ended around eight Friday night.

There was a knock on the front door. I open. Two cops stand there, the badges pinned to their uniforms were shinier than I thought they would be, more golden less brassy. That scene with Eddie Murphy from "Trading Places" pops into my mind, "Is there a problem, officers?"

They were very polite and cordial, but guarded in their conversation and answers the way police officers are. The asked for permission to enter our back yard to get a better view into the neighbor's.

While it is my general rule that with all due respect officer if you wish to enter my property uninvited well then I wish to invoke my rights so show me the warrant, these guys were clearly on a mission that didn't involve me or my household. So what the heck, hold on a sec, meet me around back and I'll unlock the gate.

As I let them in my back yard they asked me general questions inquiring about my knowledge of the new neighbor. As I spoke one of the officers, the one that appeared younger and the more junior officer jotted down notes on a small pad. They walked in and spent a few minutes at the fence line. They asked if they could use the ladder from The Boy's still not set up above ground pool to get a better view. Sure, go right ahead. I stayed back by the gate, not wanting be viewed as meddlesome or interfering. The younger officer continued to jot things down.

After a few minutes they came back to the gate and politely thanked me with an apology for interrupting my evening. When I asked more directly what was going on, one of them used the phrase "an ongoing investigation." Then they got in their cars and drove off.

What the Hell were they looking at? An ongoing investigation? Of what? Overwhelmed with curiosity, The Wife and I went to have a look for ourselves. There were at least a dozen cars parked in the back yard. Why? What is going on in that house?

I recalled a conversation I had with a street-savvy former coworker five years ago when I told him we were looking at buying a house in this neighborhood: "Be careful, that part of town is controlled by the Asian gangs."

It still feels uncomfortable, as though this is politically incorrect and smacks of racial profiling, but my mind began to wildly speculate as to what was happening behind us. Asian gangs? Drugs? Guns? Prostitution?

Well early this evening I learned the alleged truth and it blew my mind just a little. A fellow resident posted this to our neighborhood's Yahoo! news group: "I wanted to make the community aware that a new owner has taken over the property & is now operating an illegal gambling operation. He turned his back yard into a parking lot & gamblers arrive almost daily from as far away as Oklahoma."

Wow.

Last night at this time there were still over a dozen cars parked in the back yard. Tonight there are zero.

Never a dull moment in the big city.

Wow.
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Author's Note: I have delayed publishing this little rant for a couple of days because I wanted and thought I needed to say more. Upon much reflection and re-reading I have decided I have said enough. I rest my case.
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(While The Wife is as gorgeous as she is generous, caring, empathetic, and kind; there are somethings about her amazing husband that even after a decade together she just doesn't get. This late-night mild to moderately drunken rant is an attempt to explain. Or maybe because she is working an all-nighter for some extra cash, The Boy is snug asleep, and I just feel like rambling on a bit . . . )

Join me now my dear reader on a journey, as though we just used the gravitational pull from the Sun to accelerate our humble plastic starship to such a high rate of speed that we slingshot around our fair star and travel back through time. . .

High School.

In a moment of sad irony John Lennon is gone but Reagan survived an assassin's bullet and is in the latter half of his first term. We are deep in the heart of The Sprawl. It is a different world from the one in which we now reside. The internet as we now know it exists only as a vision in an about to be published William Gibson novel. Computers are just beginning to leave the realm of sci-fi and scientists. If you were lucky you got to play with an Apple II in school.

DVDs? Nope, not yet. The Beta/VHS war is beginning to rage. As we are in an affluent suburb, most of the homes had one or the other machines. But there was not yet a Blockbuster on the corner in the local strip mall to provide content to watch on the new marvelous invention.

Hundreds of digital TV channels on demand? Nope. Pink was Bob Geldof, not a spunky tatted-up pop star. When he sang "thirteen channels of shit on the TV to chose from" you were jealous because had like five more than you did. Really. Cable TV had not yet expanded to The Sprawl.

A gallon of gas and a pack of Marlboros both cost around fifty cents. You'd buy one of each. With the other of the two dollars your dad gave you each day to buy lunch in the high school cafeteria you'd buy a Big Gulp and a bag of Skittles at 7-Eleven on your off-campus lunch break. If it was a lucky day, a friend supplemented your soda from a Jif jar filled with a collage of booze stolen from a parent's liquor cabinet. You'd giggly sit as quietly as possible in English class that afternoon, holding your breath whenever the teacher drew near.

Any change that was left was plunked into the Spy Hunter machine in the nook where the ATM machine now sits.

It was a different place and a different time, but sadly, yes very sadly indeed, not all that different from the Planos and Round Rocks of the world that still vapidly exist.

It was like a John Hughes movie, but before John Hughes fully defined and described it for us and posterity. If it was like a John Hughes movie, we imagined ourselves as Judd Nelson and envied Emilio Estevez. We lusted after both Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy although both were out of our league because we were the Anthony Michael Halls.

So what did you do? What did we do?

We watched Star Trek. Because we were the Anthony Michael Halls. We watched episodes recorded from syndication on our new VCRs. Over and over and over again, until they were engrained and we could recite them line by line from memory. We watched Star Trek and talked about music like Rush, U2, Pink Floyd, The Who. We watched Star Trek and we drank dad's Natural Lite beer and smoked his Merit cigarettes. He was a cool dad and didn't really care so long as we left him a couple of each. We watched Star Trek and imagined that we were Kirk and that new girl from the other high school just hired at the grocery store or burger joint where we worked was the bikini-clad green chick.

Star Trek's utopian egalitarian vision of the future stood in stark contrast to the consumer caste system suburban society that surrounded us. It was an escape that helped to soothe the unattractive truth. And that was (and remains) precisely its appeal.

Period. The end.
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