The Demon Called "Introspection"

There's a book out there somewhere called "The Lesser Key of Solomon", which supposedly contains instructions for summoning any of the 72 demons of hell to do one's bidding. Among them:

• Agares, who can make runaways come back, cause earthquakes, and teaches languages
• Vassago, who can discover hidden and lost things
• Furfur, who can cause love between a man and a woman

In true demonic fashion, I'm sure that there's some unintended consequence to using their services that wreaks terrible chaos on the summoner.

In my experience, there's a 73rd demon out there who tends to go unnoticed, and I sometimes feel that I'd rather face all 72 others simultaneously than this one alone. I speak of the demon known as "Introspection", who appears unsummoned and unwanted.

His power is to make long journeys quiet and uneventful. No turbulence. No jammed landing gear. No gremlin on the wing. Peace and quiet leaves no outward commotion to grab the traveler's attention. This forces the traveler to direct his attention inward. And when said traveler is moving across long distances around the holidays, it can lead toward introspection and the consideration of one's current circumstances. Where do I stand with the people I am now leaving? With the ones I am going to? What on earth am I going to do about so-and-so? And the dreaded "What am I doing?" (or even worse "What am I doing with my life?").

I hate asking these questions. I hate trying to figure out the answers, if there even are any. I can fall asleep on a plane pretty easily. This past trip he managed to make sure I got a good (and I mean really good) night's sleep beforehand so I wouldn't be too tired to think. He's a tricky devil, I have to admit.

DC Activities

I was very happy to be able to spend the New Year's holiday in and around some of what I'm starting to think of as the "old places": Smithsonian Museums, Pentagon City, the tunnels beneath Crystal City, Sign of the Whale and some other spots have received a great deal of my time and attention over the last nine years, and it was nice to get back to some of them.

I got into BWI on Sunday and met Kathy and Adam at Union Station. They are wonderful people. Dinner at Carlyle restaurant was chicken paillard. Very nice.

Monday I went to the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial, which opened just before I moved. This was the first time I had seen it. It's a series of 184 benches, each dedicated to a victim. The benches are arranged according to the birth year of the victim. The youngest was born in 1998, the oldest in 1930. There were at least two sets of spouses that I saw. A spouse's bench also includes their husband or wife's name and year of birth so you can find them as well. The year 1947 had the most victims with 11.
Benches facing towards the Pentagon represent people who were on the plane. Those facing away from the building represent people in the building. It's definitely not flashy, and I don't find it particularly moving. I guess it's more interesting than anything else. There's a lot of trees but little greenery. I'm not disappointed in it myself, but I imagine that other people are.

After that I wandered over to the recently-reopened American History Museum, which had been closed for two years until November. The line out back stretched to and down the sidewalk. The line out front was even longer, but moved pretty quickly. I'd heard they were going to change the interior layout to make it easier to get around, but I didn't see anything like that other than a new entryway.

Something I liked but didn't get to see too much of was a stage set up for singers to perform old songs and standards. These were theater or Broadway-type singers, and they were good. It occurred to me that there are probably 50 understudies on Broadway who actually sing better than just about every recording star in America, but just don't have all the extra stuff that goes with stardom. After the museum it was off to help Cousin-sama move some stuff, then a custody transfer to my friend Melanie, where I stayed the next three nights.

Tuesday I finally paid a visit to the George Washington National Masonic Memorial. I say "finally" because I lived two metro stops away from it for six years and got off at King Street Station a hundred times (or more) without even looking at it. It was more interesting than I had figured, and I'll probably go back and take the official tour one day.

Someone had told me about something at the National Gallery, but I couldn't remember what it was, so I wandered around for a while. I like the religious triptyches and ships at sea.

NOTE: "Triptych" is one of my favorite words. Anyone thinking of producing a "word of the day" calendar in the future should seriously consider it for entry.

It turned out that what I was looking for was the exhibition on Pompeii and the Roman Villa, which was pretty good. I had lunch with some former coworkers again, then plans for seeing a movie fell through. Soooooo...what does one do in D.C. with a couple of hours to kill? I thought you'd never ask.

Terry Pratchett talks about Samuel Vimes knowing where he is in his city by the feel of the cobbles beneath his boots. He also talks about the policeman's walk, an efficient stride that a seasoned policeman can maintain all night. Walking from Chinatown to Sign of the Whale felt just like that. I've approached SOTW from the South/Southeast hundreds of times. The exact route varies from time to time, but the general pull is the same. Sort of like turtles using magnetic north to navigate their way across the oceans. The passing of the city blocks was a trancelike blur until I got close.

On my way out, Vito recognized me and said, "You're back!" I always liked Vito for rescuing the Whale from the spawn of Satan that was going to turn it into an Irish pub, but I never really spoke with him until a few months before I moved. So it was nice to be remembered. Dinner at Noodles and Company and a trek to Crystal City, then konked out on the couch. Thus endeth the Tuesday.

Wednesday I went back to the National Gallery to do something I never had before: pay for those audio devices that tell you about parts of the exhibits. So I plopped down the five bucks for the Pompeii stuff. I learned a good deal, though I can't promise that I remember anything. Back to SOTW for lunch with Cousin-sama, then Gran Torino. Melanie and I ordered pizza that evening before heading to Bobby McKey's for New Year's.

Bobby McKey's is a dueling piano bar owned by the former owner of my former company. It's nice, the piano players are good, and I hope it does well.

I'm never going there again.

It's in an inconvenient location, the crowd is boring, I couldn't sit at the bar, and the check I got averaged out to $14 a drink. Just for the record, that's more than 60% more than I would get charged at SOTW, and there I frequently paid for only 60% of what I drank anyway. My impressions of the place the next morning were filled with profanities. What a great way to start the year.

New Year's Day was spent as it should always be: sitting in front of a TV watching bowl games. If we ever stop doing this, the terrorists have already won. My trip back home on the 2nd was smooth and uneventful, for which I am grateful. I owe a big debt of gratitude to my friends for letting me stay with them during my visit, which makes travel so much more convenient (and affordable).

In my next post, we'll go over one of the great hazards of traveling long distances, which is being confronted by a very overlooked Demon of Hell: He Who is Named...



...Introspection.

cue dramatic music, lights fade to black

Gran Torino

On New Year's Eve I visited one of my old haunts, the Regal Gallery Place movie theater in DC's Chinatown. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have gone to the AMC theater at the Hoffman Center on Eisenhower Avenue, since I spent much more time there when I lived in Alexandria. Alas.

I went to see Gran Torino, starring Clint Eastwood and a bunch of people you've probably never heard of. I say "probably" because it's just within the realm of possibility that you may recognize John Carroll Lynch, who played Drew's brother on the Drew Carey Show. When reviewing an older movie, I often say something like "XXXX was the year that brought us Movie A, Movie B, and Movie C." However, 2008 is a little too recent for that. So before going into the movie itself, let's do a brief review of some of the things Eastwood has accomplished, film and otherwise.

He's got five Oscars, though none as an actor: 2 for directing, 2 for producing, and 1 lifetime achievement award. How many people win a regular one nine years after their lifetime achievement award? He's played two iconic screen characters, the Man With No Name and Dirty Harry. He was the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea for two years, and carried a loaded pistol to city council meetings. He's been on the cover of Time Magazine.

Back to the movie.

Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet who loves America (or what he thinks it used to be) and uses racial slurs at frequent rate, especially against his Asian neighbors. He gets involved with them in spite of his feelings, and the story goes from there. I recommened to someone, "Go see Gran Torino. Walk over dead bodies and hot coals if you have to." It's really, really good, and comes with my Scotty Williams #1 Grade A recommendation. I loved it. I came way, way closer to crying at this movie than I ever would for something like The Notebook. Movies about strength humbling itself for other people always get me. Throw in Eastwood pulling off the grizzled, tough old guy to perfection, and it's fantastic.

Sometimes the slurs are used to give a portrait of his character, and other times they're used for comic effect. The movie has a few cliche elements, most notably a mentor/apprentice relationship, but it's done well enough to be easily forgivable. Be warned that the movie has A LOT of bad language even without the racial stuff. It's very raw and doesn't bother to sugarcoat anything. It starts early and doesn't really let up.

There are times when you can tell that most of the Hmong characters haven't acted before, but this was done on purpose to give things a more authentic feel. I don't think they've got too much to apologize for.

NOTE: The Notebook is a good movie. I'm not banging down any doors to see it again soon, but still good. A little predictable, but that's okay when the predictable thing is well done. At one point I said something would happen and it happened. I turned to my viewing partner and said, "I haven't seen this movie, but I've seen a lot of movies." Well-written and acted, good-looking cast who knows what they're doing, and it's got most of the elements of a good love story. I can see why so many girls list it as their favorite movie, though I would of course recommend to all of them, "You should see more movies."

Smiles und Sunshine

"We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine."
-- Simpsons episode 8F09, "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk"

Saturday December 27th, 2008 was a bright, sunshiny, pleasant day with clear skies and a gentle breeze wafting through the tree limbs. It was a fine, fine day to be out and about with friends and loved ones, and there was nothing at all to mar the experience. Smiles und sunshine, indeed.

Now, it may just so happen that one day you will run into someone who was in Natchitoches that day and will call me a loon, a liar, or something even worse. "Is he stupid? It was raining cats and dogs that day! It was awful! It dropped 30 degrees from noon to nightfall once the rain started, and we were lucky to get the fireworks in? What is he thinking?"

I'm thinking that that person didn't have the company I had. Because any day spent with my friend Sandy is full of smiles und sunshine, and no mere trifle of weather phenomenon can change that. Many moons ago we went to school and worked at camp together and were forged in the same fires, and it is the value of shared experience that means so much to me, both with her and with so many other friends. We caught up on what happened to so-and-so and whatever became of you-know-who. We swapped stories back and forth with another friend, some of them new to me. It is something I get to do much too rarely these days, and I murmur a word or two of thanks to God in His Heaven for making it happen.

I even got to meet a few new people along the way in the form of our friend's family. Her mother is an amiable spitfire of a lady who could probably chew me up and spit me out seven times before breakfast without breaking a sweat, and yet was gracious enough to accept me at her table for dinner, dessert, and very pleasant conversation. Her first words to me: "I hear you're a Williams."

I must have it tattooed on my forehead or something.

NOTE: Before I start to sound "woe is me" about it, it does occur to me that there are probably very few people who are consistently around the (non-family) people they experienced a certain stage of life with, and that it probably decreases the older they get. So I'm hardly alone in this regard. I'm also pretty sure that there are plenty of old friends I'd like to see on a much less frequent basis, so maybe a little absence isn't so bad after all.