Ballet

During this Covid quarantine I have been falling asleep later and later. In the good old days, I usually drift off between 2330 and midnight but now I find myself lying awake after 0200. I sleep with the TV on all night so I switch to KCET at 0200 to put on Classic Arts Showcase. I find the classical music that is on it soothing and calming. The music helps me put my brain in standby.

A portion of what they air is ballet and even though I thoroughly enjoy the music, I find the, so called, dancing downright silly. All of that prancing and jumping around make me ask myself what I’m missing. Myself always answers that I am asking the wrong person that he doesn’t get it either.

 My first wife loved ballet and I felt that I was obliged to occasionally take her to performances. This was OK with me but, as I explained to her, I’ll just sit here with my eyes closed and enjoy the music, which I did. I know that I am treading on thin ice when I mention this but I find synchronized swimming even sillier. The worst part is there is no music to distract you.

I know that the Russian people absolutely love Ballet which I find paradoxical due to the perceived brutishishness of their  nature. They also love poetry which also makes me ponder this apparent absurdity. I must also go on record as a self professed intellectual. That I am not a fan of poetry. When I am reading something and the author inserts what he, or she, perceives to be some relevant bit of poetry, the passage is always indented somewhat and my eyes automatically jump down past the indention. I have tried to at least read some even though I don’t really get poetry and it just isn’t in me. It’s not residing in my DNA.

Maybe as a child I was frightened or bit by a rabid poet.

As Popeye was fond of saying “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam”.

Maybe it’s a sailor thing?

Hesitant Pirate

I always have fancied myself as a latter day pirate.  One of my favorite songs is Jimmy Buffett’s  A Pirate Looks At Forty.

Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothin' to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late

After my eight plus years in the Navy, I like going to sea and I like being at sea. Sailing into port after a long voyage is bItter sweet. You’re back to where you live, but you’re not back home. Home, to me, is at sea. Some swab somewhere said that  the sea is a cruel mistress. But I don’t feel that way at all. She is a mistress of that you can make book on, but I don’t find her cruel. Like any woman that I’ve ever been around, she is demanding and unforgiving, but cruel, I don’t think so.

Anyway to help propagate my swashbuckling image, I drink rum. Mostly wine or beer but when there witnesses, it has to be rum.  I used to drink that cheap ass rotgut $10 a half gallon stuff but now my palate has grown up and I like a better quality quaff. I buy, or should I say stock up on Bacardi when it is on sale being the parsimonious old bastard that I am. My son David brings me Nicaraguan or Cuban rum  back from his Central American surfing safaris. That and eight year old rums are great for sipping. My friend Scott favors me with a bottle of Pyrate Rum every now and then and then I am really in my element.

The one thing that has been the missing link is my cigars. I buy them online by the bundle or box. Now don’t get the idea that I am a rum soaked cigar smelling old pervert. Maybe I am sort of but not totally. I smoke maybe two cigars a month and a bottle of the good rum lasts me for about nine months. I have made the greatest discovery of the twenty first century, ranking up there with a cure for cancer and where the other sock goes after coming out of a dryer.

Hesitant Pirate cigars. Big deal you may think, who cares you may say. I do. I can sit up on my fly bridge with a glass of rum and a Pirate cigar and survey my whole world during this Covad 19 horse crap. I don’t care if it rains or freezes as long as I have my plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my boat. 

 

 

Ultra-large crude carriers (ULCC)

Lots of people talk about the super tankers in Long Beach harbor. The fact of the matter is very few people have ever seen a super tanker. Certainly not in Long Beach or LA harbors. The reason is that the really big boys, the Ultra Large Crude Carriers, ULCC, draw 82 feet of water and the channels into the harbors are dredged to maintain 53 feet.

Most all of the so called super tankers ply between The Middle East and Europe or Asia. Back in the late 1970’s because of the oil shortage here in the USA some ULCC’s came to SoCal. Because of their enormous drafts, they would anchor near where the undersea shelf drops off. This is about ten miles off shore which is where the oil platforms  Edith, Elly, Ellen and Eureka are. This is a good anchorage for a big ship. The depth to the bottom is about 50 to 60 fathoms, about 300 to 350 feet.

While at anchor out there the tankers that can fit into the LB, LA channels come out and the oil is pumped from the big guy to the smaller ship. This is called lightering in our world.

The size of a ship is generally determined by it’s displacement. A ULCC displaces 500.000 tons. The “smaller” tankers are in the 80 to 100,000 ton category.

As a comparison, the aircraft carrier that I was stationed on in 1963-64 USS Constellation was a super carrier and was then the largest ship in the world. You could place both the Queen Mary and the Queen Elisabeth on her flight deck and nothing would hang over and Connie displaced a mere 83,000 tons or 166 million pounds.

We used to see those big ships out there transferring massive tons of crude oil on our way to Catalina back in the late 1970’s but like a lot of other interesting things, those days are over.

UFOs

It was 1974 and I was living the LA suburban dream. I had a house with a pool near the foothills of Glendora. I had a 22 foot trailerable sailboat in the drive and a Norton Commando in the attached garage. There was a few notable things missing however namely my wife of twelve years who had moved out with literally without any warning with our five year old son. But I was, as they say, moving on with my life.

My friend Denny Moore had come over one evening to sample some of the wine I had just made. We were standing at my front door saying our good byes when it flashed by. It was a distinct round disk of light. It was not blurry and did not leave a trail like an incoming meteorite would do. I was six years out of the Navy and had spent many many hours tracking aircraft as the gun director officer at condition three off of the coast of Vietnam. Condition three on a ship is relaxed General Quarters. It is three sections of four hour watches which means I spent usually ten hours a day tracking targets. I had radar range and bearing indicators up in the director so I had sharpened my aircraft sighting skills. I determined that the disk of light was no more than three miles away and was moving well over the speed of sound and made no engine sounds. It went into the foothills and there was no report, no bang or boom. It just disappeared. I said to Denny something like holy crap, did you see that? Of course he hadn’t he had his back to the thing.

I am convinced to this day that I actually saw a UFO. OK now that I am a believer, I need some answers. Particularly like where in the hell did it come from? Assuming that Albert Einstein is correct, a very safe conclusion, and the speed of light  which is 186,000 miles per second and the nearest star system is forty light years away, things just didn’t add up. I couldn’t  fathom some intelligent being sitting in his spacecraft for forty years just to come us on Earth staying around for a few months and spending another forty years traveling back again even assuming that the little green man could actually travel at 186,000 miles per second. Which is debatable.

I kicked around this notion for a few years until the answer came to me from the most unlikely source. From the comic strip Brenhilda in The Sunday LA Times. In the strip the owl, naturally he is the smart one, says to another character as they are strolling along “You know some people believe that these aliens are not from another planet. They believe that they are from Earth but from another time.”  Eureka! That was the answer.  That I could buy.

If you hear enough tales of UFO encounters, all of the sighters describe the same thing. Two arms and two legs. A head with twp eyes a nose below the eyes and a mouth under the nose. The are human beings. The likelihood of such similarities of beings from another planet are too far fetched. They don’t have three eyes or four nostrils. They all have two. It is all too much coincidental. This gives me hope that we probably won’t blow us all up in some nuclear mushroom cloud.

The next probable event is contact. Are you ready to meet these folks? I’m not so sure I am ready for that. Besides which, what if they are Democrats or here to sell us some Amway?         

CAB CALLOWAY

My dad who was a five foot eight afraid of nothing, except maybe my mother, outdoors, athletic guy. He actually enjoyed brawling. I can recall as a wee lad watching my dad duking it out with my six foot two ince Uncle Dan, or some other contestant. They would carry on for about ten minutes and then laugh like hell and saunter down to the corner bar for a beer.

When we were in church, during the singing of the hymns, he was the most off key, tone deaf person I have ever met. He seemed to have no inclination, or interest, in music. He did, however have a soft spot for Cab Calloway.

If you don’t know who Cab Calloway is and you probably don’t, I’ll splain. Mr. Calloway was in the words of Wikipedia “Calloway was the first African-American musician to sell a million records from a single song and to have a nationally syndicated radio show. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular big bands from the early 1930s to the late 1940s.”

At the mere thought of Mr. Calloway, dad’s face would light up and he would tell of the antics of Cab. If Rock and Roll was the burr under my parent’s saddles Cab was the equal to my grand parents. There are many films, if you’re interested, on Youtube of Cab struttin’ and being as negro as can be. I say negro because back in that era, black was akin to the N word, a huge insult.

I’m sure that my dad is now ensconced in heaven and is watching Cab Calloway on his laptop or iPad and the Indians. His other loves were hunting, fishing, sports in general and baseball.

COUNTRY AND WESTERN MUSIC

A friend of mine said that he liked both kinds of music, country and western. I never much cared for either or that’s what I thought. Looking back I remember liking The Sons of the Pioneers and singing cowboys as a young lad. I was weaned on classical music since I could remember.  

The reason I mention this is because of Ken Burns. I watched his series about a month ago on PBS on country music. I thoroughly enjoyed the historical part but the actual music, not so much. I know that when I was in the school orchestra in grade school one of the song books that was used was The Music of Hank Williams. I really liked the music of Hank Williams but didn’t much care for old Hank’s singing. Too hillbilly for my taste.

I try to practice what I preach and one of the things that I preach is don’t knock it unless you have tried it. Back in the eighties when I was bitching to my son about Rap, he asked me if I ever listened to Rap Music. Of coursed I told him that I had, which I hadn’t, and that Rap shouldn’t even be called “music”. It isn’t melodic and there is nothing to like about it. I was a salesman on the road around LA and spent many hours in my company car so I found a rap station and did try listening to it. It became much like a trial by fire to me. I’d push the button on the car’s radio and see how long I could bear it. About four minutes was my record. I couldn’t figure out how my smart cello playing son could like anything about it. To this day, I still think he was pulling my leg as any respectable teenager would just to get a rise out of the old man.

But I digress. While watching the Ken Burns series I developed a taste for Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. I never really saw what all of the hoopla was about for Johnny Cash. Since the beginning of time I always liked Kris Kristofferson and I am in love with Emmy Lou Harris.

Come to think of it, my classical music pianist mother one day out of nowhere took a huge liking to Country music. Maybe this liking is an omen of old age but I would certainly not describe myself as elderly. As I write this, I am listening to The Highwaymen.

Maybe I don’t have to be all in for C & W.

WINE

Wine is the very stuff of life. Liquid pleasure. Almost, but not quite, as good as sex.  When I was going to Missile Technician B School in Vallejo, we used to take a short jaunt over to Napa Valley and visit some wineries. Of  course back in 1963 wineries in Napa weren’t the big deal like they are now. Besides the fancy wineries there were some down and dirty places like Italian Swiss Colony and Virginia Dare.

Later on, when the ship hit Japan, instead of swilling down Asahi beer all of the time in the sailor bars, I would drink Akadama Wine.

I mention all of this because I feel like the mustang of wine drinkers. FYI, a mustang in the Navy is an officer who has come up through the ranks. My, so called, palate has earned it’s stripes, paid it’s dues.

Fast forward five years and I am now living near the foothills in Glendora. We had it all. Three bedroom house with a pool. Two cars and motorcycles the whole suburban disaster. I started making wine at home.  Sourcing the juice from several sources and getting into the whole world of wine. The Los Angeles Times ran a wine column twice a week. One in the LA Times Sunday Magazine and the other in the Thursday food issue. It was written by the Wine and Food Editor Robert Lawrence Balzer. Twice a year Balzer even had a beer tasting with his friends and wrote about the results. The winner(s) of the tasting varied back and forth between Pilsner Urquell from Czechoslovakia and Bohemia from Mexico. Needless to say, I was a regular reader. I had an image of Mr. Balzer in my mind. He was to be rather tall, somewhat slim with a thin mustache and a slight English accent.

I the early 1980’s, I had a friend named Jon who assisted Mr. Balzer in a class offered by Long Beach Parks & Recreation on California wines. He said that I should sign up and take it, which I did. I finally met Balzer and far from being the tall thin suave gentleman, he was a short little queen. But he was very knowledgeable on wine, very well connected in the industry and was an accomplished raconteur. The class was limited to 75 people and was always sold out by people who had been attending it for years and years. They brought cheese n crackers and chocolate to class. It was a wine snob convention every Monday evening. The class offered tastings of  fifteen to twenty  different wines at every class meeting.

We would start off with three, or four champagnes and then five or six whites. After the whites were five of six reds and lastly two or three desert wines. These were all offered as part of the $150 to take the class. The program followed a formula. Each week Robert talked about a different California appellation. Napa one week, Carneros next week Monterrey and so forth. Being that Robert was so well connected, he got all of  these fine wines for free as this was a good advertising ploy. He also had speakers come in to talk. The speakers were the wine makers of the various wines or the owners of the wineries.  

I really enjoyed the classes and the wines but $150 every twelve weeks was kind of rich for my blood. Just after the class was over, my friend Jon told me that he was moving to San Diego and Robert would be in need of a replacement assistant. I unabashedly volunteered to take Jon’s place.

The job consisted of  putting the champagnes and whites on ice and then  writing numbers on brown paper bags for the blind tasting. I once mentioned to Robert how I had higher expectations than drinking  wine from brown paper bags. We both had a good chuckle at that. After the champagnes and whites were on ice and the bags were numbered the reds were uncorked and the all 108 of the wine were slipped into their bags. Then we, Robert and I, went to dinner. Robert picked up the tab. Than was my remuneration for my labors. Dining at a fine restaurant with the LA Times food and wine critic was a new and enjoyable experience. Waiters hovering around the table ready, willing and able to fulfill your every wish. Once however, when we went to Mum’s Restaurant in downtown Long Beach  on Pine Ave nobody knew who he was.  John Morris the owner of  Mum’s and I go way back for thirty years. He stopped as he walked by our table and we chatted for five minutes. Robert, who had an ego as big as Texas, was miffed at  not being the center of attention but was impressed nevertheless at our being recognized. We usually had a wine maker or winery owner accompany us. Over the few years I helped Robert, I became fairly well connected myself.

I remember one time I was at some winery in the Santa Ynez area and asked if they had any Viognier wine. The gal at the bar asked how I knew about this relatively unknown variety and I told her I was Balzers assistant down in Long Beach. She looked me straight in the eye and said “Here try this, you don’t want any of this commercial mouthwash”. She reached under the bar and brought out what she called THE Good Stuff. Another time after I was done with a job up in Chico I drove through Napa valley and stopped at Beringer. It was Friday July third and naturally the next day was the Fourth. I asked if the wine maker by name was in and she asked if I knew him. I gave her the old Balzer’s assistant spiel and I knew him when came down and had dinner with us. She told me the wine maker had taken the day off but she would be more than happy to serve me. I sampled a lot of the Good Stuff and mad about twenty selections. As she was checking me out at the counter she casually said that I would get “the industry discount”. She said the industry price was four dollars a bottle. I was sorry I hadn’t bought a dozen cases.

Once, Robert asked me if I would help him out on a Saturday. He explained that some lawyer had won a private tasting and talk in a silent auction. We got there early to set up. The lawyer’s offices were the whole very top floor of the Union Bank building which they owned. The offices were a cozy little set up which included a large restaurant quality kitchen and a rather small bar. As I was icing down the whites and enjoying the Sam Adams beer which was on tap there I started looking at the pictures on the wall. There was Ronald Reagan enjoying a cocktail at this very bar ar was H W Bush. That was impressive enough but the picture that really impressed me was the one of Margaret Thatcher imbibing at this bar.

At the tasting, my job was to bring a bottle in it’s paper  bag to the crowd of vultures while Robert lectured. A very sweet looking lady looked up at me with very sad eyes as to say is this one any good. Her husband, sitting next to her, didn’t notice me shake my head no. About the third wine, I smiled at her as I handed her the bottle and nodded yes. After all of the whites were sampled, Robert had his “beauty contest” for the whites. He asked who liked number one and a few hands went. When he asked who liked number three only her hand was raised. She looked at me like did you set me up and then Robert said “Very good madam”. Then we did the reds. I gave the nice lady a nod when I gave her the bottle that I knew Robert really enjoyed. When she responded again with raised hand, Robert said “Madam you have very exquisite taste. Her husband turned and looked at her like who the hell knew? She was beaming from ear to ear. I knew that I had just punched my ticket into heaven that day.

On Tuesdays, we’d drive up to Beverly Hills for the weekly season. The BH folks were much better healed than their Long Beach brethren but not as well savvy in  the world of wine. As I would hand out each bottle some of them would whisper to me “Did the people in Long Beach like this one?”   

Over the course of time, Robert and I became good friends. We, Dave and I, had several Thanksgivings at his home. Robert was surprisingly a very good cook. He not only talked the talk. He walked the walk. He showed me haw to make a proper omelet and other skills at the stove.

He was also an ordained Buddhist monk. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and one day I asked him why he didn’t quit smoking. He replied that he did quit once and it threw his palate all out of whack.

He did live to be 94 and did pass a few years ago. I still keep his number on the directory of my iPhone.