The Ruins of California

I'm feeling the emotional hangover of a beautiful book come to an end.  A story of a girl who I feel like I’ve known and loved in real life, of her father and her half brother and her grandma and her father’s lovers. It's called The Ruins of California, it's written by Martha Sherrill, and I think you should read it.

Inez Ruin is a little girl growing up in California. She lives with her mom in abuelita’s house, and occasionally she travels north to San Francisco to be with her father.

Paul Ruin is tall, dark and handsome.  He’s brilliant, interesting, honest, and self-important.  He’s a professor who dates his students and has an opinion on everything.  He does things that I want to do for my little girl one day, like reading all of her assigned reading throughout her scholastic career, and sending a check for $1,818.81 on her 18th birthday.

Inez narrates the whole thing, hopping forward through the years and the styles and phases and friendships and loves, with varying degrees of interest, disgust, passion, regret, and always with a sense of humor. She is in so many ways a girl that I know, and reading this book was like learning the childhood I never knew and rarely imagined.

This book popped into my hands at the local library.  I liked the cover and I opened to a page in the middle, read a few paragraphs, and decided it was well-written and worth a try.  Now I can’t imagine my life without having read it.

How does somebody make such a beautiful thing?  How does one craft out of paper and words a complete reality that is clear and full of people that I know and love?  To me this is the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen or felt or held - this little book that took me so deeply into its story and made me imagine my future and helped me understand the people I’ve known.

As my mom says, we’re all multi-dimensional, existing simultaneously in many different places and times.  A writer like Sherrill can tap into these other realities and simply open the door to let us see them.

I often talk about believability - in books, in movies especially.  I can’t enjoy a movie if I don’t find it believable.  It doesn’t have to be a true story, though, or even a reality that I’m familiar with.  It just has to be a reality, and I think we know when something is real or not by how we feel when we see it or read it.

The Ruins of California is real, and as I linger in the space it just left in my life and in my heart, I’m seeing everything a little bit differently.

Wednesday Morning Part One: A Story in the Style of Ernest Hemmingway

They left the house in a hurry as the traffic cops were due to arrive in their three-wheeled “interceptors”, and both cars would be ticketed.  The taller of the two reached the street first and started his large blue car and waited for his brother.  Together they drove just up the street where the shorter boy got out and into the small gold car and started the engine.

They sat there for quite some time as the sun came up and warmed their skin through the car windows and the boy in the small car waited for his engine to warm.  He had made oatmeal with raisins and now, sitting behind the steering wheel with his foot holding down the clutch he ate the oatmeal out of a plastic tupperware with a spoon and watched his brother in the rear-view mirror.

Finally the car was warm enough to move, and in procession they made their way up to Market Street and turned East to face the rising sun.  There were cars in neat rows stretching ahead into the sun and the road was so crowded that they were forced to inch forward very slowly and the boy in the gold car, who was in front, turned right off of Market and led his brother on a different route.

They moved much faster now, and with less cars around the going felt easier and the boy in front thought how his brother would enjoy the scenery because the city felt good and clean in the morning, with no ill effects from what had happened during the night.  They turned left on Church Street and went up the hill two blocks and turned right again, heading straight through the Mission district now and there were people walking in every direction and all the shops were starting to come to life.

The boy in front held a small notebook on his lap, and he opened it often to check one of the back pages where he had written directions to the shop.  He knew that they were to turn left at Portrero street but since he didn’t know exactly where it was he lifted the notebook to his eyes often and read each street sign carefully as they passed.  Coming out of the Mission now the road felt more open still and they were moving very well now and they both felt good to be driving into the sun in the morning.

They reached Portrero street and turned left and the city appeared ahead of them in the sun.  The buildings were tall and white and gold and so close together that they looked like something out of a dream.  They went under the freeway and there were more cars now and everybody was driving fast heading towards the city.  They were getting very close and again the boy in front checked his notebook and read the addresses on the buildings as they passed, and he thought that it was very possible that they had gone past the shop without even noticing.  Finally he saw it and felt very relieved and as he turned on his indicator and pulled into the driveway he was glad to have arrived easily and with his brother in the big blue car behind.

There were cars everywhere, some that were old and dying and others that were shiny and new and he parked the gold Honda amongst the other cars and put on the parking brake before gathering his bag and the empty plastic bowl that had held his oatmeal and got out of the car.  The older boy had turned around and sat with the engine on and smiled as his brother approached and reached through the window to leave the plastic bowl on the floor of the blue car.

“Is it OK if I leave this here?”
The older boy nodded, “I’d come in with you but I’m not sure where to park”
“That’s alright I’ll be right back”
The boy walked through the wide garage door and into the dark interior that was cool and quiet in the morning and smelled just slightly of oil.

“Good morning” he called to the shop man who hadn’t seen him come in and, turning around, smiled and walked towards the desk at the front of the garage.

He explained how the car needed to have the oil changed and how in the morning there was no pressure in the clutch and how you had to wait at least ten minutes while the car warmed before you could drive.  As they spoke the older boy came inside, very tall against the sun and he stood beside his brother as the shop man wrote on a piece of carbon paper.

“OK no problem I’ll take a look and let you know what I find.  Phone number?”
The younger boy gave his phone number and then the key to the car, and they all nodded in agreement and the two boys went out and together got into the big blue car.

The younger boy looked at his phone and saw that it was still early in the morning and they’d made very good time driving to the shop.

“I’ve got one hour.  Maybe we can find a cafe around here and have some coffee”.

Hulu Rant

One of the most prominent websites in my life is Hulu.  Every time a season of The Bachelor is airing, Hulu breaks into my top ten most-visited sites.

Hulu is a great service, but lately I think they’re starting to take themselves a little too seriously.  They’ve got this paid version called Hulu Plus, and they push this on you every time you watch a show.  Frankly, if I wanted to pay to watch TV I probably wouldn’t be on Hulu in the first place.

And then there’s the ads.  You can now “create your own ad experience”, which is a totally sick concept.  Hulu wanting to make sure the ads they play are relevant to me is like asking somebody which way, exactly, they want to be screwed.  I don’t want to watch your ads and please don’t patronize me by asking for my feedback like you actually give a shit about me.

You also get to suggest how you’d like to have your pile of insidious shit served: all up front, in an extended two minute segment, or in normal bite-sized chunks of horseshit throughout the show.  I know, this decision is a difficult one, but don’t worry—Hulu gives you time to decide.  You can sit there for 15 or 20 seconds staring at the two radio buttons thinking about how you just want to watch the goddamn tv show and Hulu will sit there quietly and await your decision.  Finally, they’ll assume you want the poop fed to you in manageable bits, and serve you up your first spoonful.

From there it’s just like watching TV.  Your show streams in quite nicely, you can expand it to fullscreen, and every now and then there’s a commercial break.  It’s at the end of the show that Hulu really pisses me off.

The show’s over, the credits and catchy/emotional music is rolling, and you’re getting ready to do some dishes, and on comes another ad.

HOW FUCKING STUPID DO YOU THINK I AM?  DO YOU HONESTLY THINK I’M GOING TO SIT THERE LIKE A NEWBORN CHILD AND WATCH ANOTHER FUCKING COMMERCIAL AS IF THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING GOOD ON THE OTHER SIDE?

I’m no rocket scientist, but I know when my show’s good and done and I don’t need another commercial crammed down my throat right now.  But there’s no pause, stop, or mute.  The only way out is to close down your browser window, which they know is entirely possible but they’re betting that the average American is so fucking stupid and lazy that they’ll sit there and watch one last, final commercial because it just feels so damn natural.

Well fuck you Hulu, I will “x” out your window with no reservations, and I will never, ever, let you know if an ad is relevant to me or not.  But please continue to air The Bachelor because it’s coming up again in June and I can’t wait to see how 25 single guys respond to Ashley H’s weird hand gestures.