I have the day off of work as we are between sessions at the center. Deby and I each decided we would bookend the week with three day weekends, this is mine. She was hoping I would travel, do something I wouldn’t ordinarily do, but I am too broke to get away. I’ve been playing phone tag with Thad so no clear roommate solution. Saturday I steam cleaned the upstairs again just in case. I’m a little at a loss for what to do with my day, I imagine I’ll clean and do laundry. It’s past time to figure my taxes, so I guess I’ll do that. Friday BJ came into town.

I’m caught in a bit of a tension. Jen is bored by her latest blog, as her voice feels restricted, she has too much stewing and doesn’t want an uncooked meal of ideas all over the place. I too am bored a bit by my blog as is– listing the events of a given span of time does offer the reader the limited entertainment of the reality TV show. Some of my readers have told me as much, I get occasional questions from far off friends about some of the stuff I’ve written about – to write more about certain “characters”. Angela has repeated her request for more literary efforts. I might start a second blog, with more of my fictive writing there and keep this blog for the cathartic self-reflection, which would mean I should do less listing and seek more catharsis.

Friday BJ came into town. While I was waiting for him to get in I mixed a stiff gin and tonic and watched the first half of Silverado. The Western is key to the cultural construction of masculinity. For a much better read on this then I can give here checkout Jackson Katz – particularly Tough Guise, which is a video available from The Media Education Foundation.

My father’s father died when my father was young. During the school year he was raised by his mother, together with his two brothers. Summers he lived on a farm with Karl Wentzle and worked for room, board, and a few dollars a week. I am named after Karl. I’ve only heard a few stories about him. He was a first generation German immigrant who worked hard and belched loudly after meals to show his appreciation. He had a dog that my father would race down the hill on his bicycle to get the mail.

Without other role models I think my father fell back on the culture. He loved the tough image of the Western heroes. I’ve spent endless Saturday s watching the various classics with him: the films of Clinic Eastwood, the John Ford & John Wayne films, the Dirty Harry films and the James Bond canon. The weak points of these characters are clearly their misogyny and their use of violence as conflict resolution. But the strong silent image of the capable man is attractive.

This is funny in the context of my weekend as I end up heading out to BJ’s sister’s house in St. Charles and when I arrive he is watching Tombstone, the Val Kilmer argument in Latin is a great scene. The extended appearance of western themes dominated the weekend.

Paul is in town and he calls me on Saturday to hang out. Paul was a roommate of mine in college and is now in his pathology residency in Columbia. He’s like Quincy, only more “what kind of cancer is this” then “who is the killer,” though a fair amount of “how did they die?” He wants to know if we can hang out and if I want to go to the shooting range with his father-in-law. My father tried at various points to teach me to shoot, I’ve even gone deer hunting a few times (extended early morning nature walks really), but it’s just not my thing. I take a pass on the shooting range as I want to get some cleaning done and his father-in-law drops him off after. The Paul quote, “Even with the laser at the number two setting I was down into the nuts.” He could hit the target at short range, but long range he was down and to the right. His father-in-law was in the next booth and the bullet casings from his rounds were flying up over the divider and falling on Paul’s head as he was trying to line up his shots. That’s a great image.

So Paul arrives and we spend the day junk shopping. At the first stop we buy matching Philippine wedding shirts, his brown mine blue, and later we pick up a pink one. Cutting against the Western grain & yet Gene Autry was a shirt man. We went to see Mary’s place, she’s planted a variety of roses all around it. We talked for an hour or so and then I was going to run Paul back out to the county, where his in-laws live. We stopped by my place to let the dog out and got a message that his wife and her parents had gone to a movie and he had no way to get into the house, so we made espresso and took the dog for a long walk.

He eventually decided to go with us to Tyler’s BBQ/poker party, to which we made Beth wear the pink shirt. We played nickel dime quarter Texas Hold Um (more western themes) and I kept winning all night, I was up thirty bucks until I went “all in” on a big pot and lost by one card. Beth and I were both very ready to go at that point, Paul had already left. When Dan & I kept winning Bree started feeding us top shelf Don Hulio(sp?) tequila shots to undermine our game. It worked.

We picked Angela up on our way back in from Fenton, she had braved the crowds and gone to the Democratic Party rally in Forest park. She got within eight people of John Kerry and is now more impressed with him than she had been. Vanessa is volunteering for his campaign. Angela was supposed to come out to the BBQ after the rally, but couldn’t get Hannah or Vanessa interested in driving out to the county. There is a city county tension in St. Louis, and I have to admit the county does make me uncomfortable, though this is less true of south county. St. Louis is a white flight city where the suburbs take conformity of ideal and appearance to frightening extremes. The Jones on Jones competition is astounding and longhaired red heads in Philippine wedding shirts are a rarity to say the least.

Sunday Angela and I coasted around the city shopping for nothing in particular. We had a great lunch at Il Vachino in Clayton, they have a stone hearth oven and make great sandwiches and pizza. In the evening we decided to do a wine and cheese thing but could get no takers, so we gorged ourselves on havarti, port wine cheddar, English stilton, and Wisconsin sharp cheddar with several wines from The Wine Merchant on Forsyth. I loved the David Lee Roth cameo on The Sopranos and was overwhelmed by the home improvement show we caught, they went into Watts and redid the home and neighborhood of a woman named Sweet Alice. We just caught the end of that and I would love to see it from the start. Ah well, I need to do more with my day off then sleep in and write blogs, so I think I’ll go walk the dog.