A week in the life of Koszka Koszkavich
22-Jul-07
Tacoma has a way of rendering color snapshots taken with cheap digital cameras into nearly true black and white. This is the green-grayish tower on the new Narrows bridge, which opened this last weekend during my visit home for my brother’s wedding. The new bridge (which is *cough* the third span, with the most famous one now located underwater) hasn’t been given a name other than “2007 bridge,” a fact I frankly find retarded.
Here’s the 2007 span and the 1950 span and about 40,000 geegawing Tacomans. My dad and I walked across the bridge and back through this crowd, and ended up walking all the way back to Tacoma Community College (my alma mater) rather than waiting in a ridiculous line for the free shuttle.
So, yes, I haven’t posted anything to the blog in a while. I went to Chicago on the 11th to see Os Mutantes, a Brazillian psychedelic band Jeff and I are currently into, on a very rare US tour. I remember hearing that this was their second US tour in their 40-year history. I’m not sure if it was worth driving to Chicago and back, but it was interesting in any case. In short, the songs I recognized from their first two albums were fun. Everything else, mainly consisting in songs in English from their lesser 1970 album, was passable. I also didn’t enjoy $6 Sam Adams and getting bashed into by a Brazillian fratboy, but such is life. We stayed in Jeff’s friend’s enviously nice apartment and explored a little bit of Chicago before the show. I still didn’t find much evidence for it being anything but a really big, or, rather, really inhabited Cleveland. Aside from this trip, I’m only familiar with it from being obsessed with the Blues Brothers movie in high school and getting stuck in the Greyhound station once for six hours, so there’s probably some kind of magic and mystery there that I’m missing. For now, it’s “New Yorky Cleveland Town.”
So I returned to Cleveland the evening of the 12th, then in about 24 hours had to ship off to the Cleveland airport to go to Washington. I was hoping flying on Friday the 13th would leave me with a half-empty flight, but people just aren’t as superstitious as I want them to be. I was wedged into the window seat with two other people between me and the aisle. I never try to make small talk with people on planes. I’ve flown a lot in the past, and it just seems like people on planes never have anything in common with me, or anything interesting to say. I suppose my “I have no job and I hate my family and I don’t watch TV and I listen to music you don’t know exists” status probably makes me a small talk challenge to the average Joe/Joan. Oh well, fuck it.
I showed up at Seatac at 11.30 PDT, about an hour late but otherwise without complication. I think I’m going to try to get the Continental nonstop flight whenever I go back again, because it’s so much nicer than dicking around at Midway or Detroit or Phoenix or Dallas wherever the shit they feel like sending me. My dad was there to pick me up and launch into one of his infamous “long tangential tirades that are sort of interesting for the first fifteen minutes, then get annoying.” I notice that my dad swears a lot more than he did when I was a minor, but I like it. We stop at Jack in the Box for some late night fries and a blackberry shake. I go home and say hi to my mom and everyone goes to bed. Well, they go to bed, and I try to figure out what the fuck is up with my parents’ computer, try to sleep, eventually take Tylenol PM, then sleep fitfully.
The next day featured Taco Time and my brother getting married. I introduce myself as “Matt’s little sister” to everyone, which is weirdly funny since I’m almost as tall as he is, but accurate since he is 13 years older than me. I honestly like his new wife. She gives off this “sincerity” vibe that I dig. She also has a twin sister who reminds me of Helen, this sort of “vixen” actress from ’50s/’60s Bollywood movies. They’re from Panama and her mom speaks no English, which is kind of awkward. They also do the “air kiss” thing a lot. Even though that’s kind of awkward too, it makes me feel like there’s at least one classy part of my family. The ceremony is short but sweet and takes place in this botanical garden I didn’t even know existed in Tacoma. Then we all go eat Mexican food.
Then the day after that was the bridge trip, and a visit to my favorite sushi place for some avocado nigiri and sake. I wander around in the woods by Tacoma Community College, chainsmoke, and listen to Rudimentary Peni’s “Death Church” on headphones. I don’t see another person from when I leave my parents house until I’m in the sushi restaurant. I try to take pictures of a flock of crows. It all feels too much like the weird time I had between me moving back home after basically running away and leaving again. This period was mainly marked by me becoming nocturnal and avoiding all human contact for weeks at a time. I hate it at the same time that I want to do nothing but wallow in it. I’m glad I’m only staying for three days.
The Monday I left was uneventful to the point that I can’t really remember it. And then I was gone and relieved. I’m beginning to hate Tacoma again for entirely different reasons than I did as a kid. Tacoma, the place so nice you’ll hate it twice? There also seems to be a limit of two or three days before I start to become insanely frustrated by my family. I’m very civil towards them and we don’t get in fights anymore, but I just can’t take very much of them.
Oh, and I finally got a picture of my dad’s awesome Alaskan totem pole bowling trophy.
Also, the 1964 Chevy Corvair Monza Spyder (the car that made Ralph Nader famous) I last remember being in working order sometime in 1986 has finally been restored!
I wanted to go for a ride in it, but forgot all about it until I was on the way to the airport. Actually, I wanted to drive it, but inasmuch as I sort of only know how to drive an automatic, I don’t feel like taking my first stick-driving lesson in this thing. According to my dad, it drives like a beast. No power steering (he said it’s something like five and a half turns lock to lock), the finest in transmission engineering the American car industry had to offer (he couldn’t even get it into gear taking it out of the shop), and a modified carburetor that allows it to run on unleaded gas at the price of having the engine constantly a hair’s breadth from backfiring. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, this thing has a turbocharged, air-cooled aluminum engine located where the trunk would be on a normal car. I once overheard my dad saying that he’d rather part with my mom than the Corvair, and I can’t say I blame him. It seems obvious now that my dad’s unswerving devotion to a completely bizzare, frequently maligned car that didn’t even run for 20 years left a big chrome streak down the middle of my psyche, but, eh, what are you gonna do?
