Bill Wood Blog

MapMyRide.com | View Tickle Creek Climb in Clackamas, Oregon

2010-07-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

MapMyRide.com | View Tickle Creek Climb in Clackamas, Oregon

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2010-04-19T18:16:00.001-07:00

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2010-04-19T17:00:00.001-07:00

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2010-03-25T22:47:00.001-07:00

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2010-02-14T10:11:00.001-08:00

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2009-12-30T07:47:00.001-08:00

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2009-12-11T12:53:00.001-08:00

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2009-10-26T00:06:00.001-07:00

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2009-10-19T17:22:00.001-07:00

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2009-09-27T23:22:00.001-07:00

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2009-09-26T11:10:00.001-07:00

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2009-05-22T06:57:00.001-07:00

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2009-03-18T04:07:00.001-07:00

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2009-02-05T05:40:00.001-08:00

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2009-01-26T13:51:00.001-08:00

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Posted via Pixelpipe.

2009-01-04T15:44:00.001-08:00

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bigfoot patterson

2007-10-01T14:23:00.001-07:00

Original Patterson Gimli footage of Bigfoot...never been debunked.

My future wife and Dave, before his decline

2007-03-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

Rube, Me, Jay and Leslie Lindig (who once got a dinner out of Jay)

2007-03-12T03:54:00.000-07:00

Me, Rube, Scott and Dave in front of the Arms

2007-03-12T03:53:00.001-07:00

The Tarantula Arms, back porch

2007-03-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

2007-03-12T03:50:00.001-07:00

Babo and Mushrooms

2007-03-12T03:38:00.000-07:00

Babo and Mushrooms

Images of the historic American West dance through my hemispheres. I have been watching Little Big Man. It was a movie I saw at the Drive Ins in Tucson. I had to see it three times to put it together in it’s entirety, because Drive Ins, those airy, dusty pillars of sight and sound, where all things were possible in the confines of metal and glass, were the province of dates with young high schoolers. Sheleen Lemar was one name I remember. Others are lost to time but not to feelings, the feelings of fight and conquest.

The glorious history of the American West was once a life force in several friends and me. It was in us as we hefted our old backpacks and headed down trails in desert and mountain where society croaked and solitude breathed.

Baboquiviri is the Center of the Universe, at least to the Papago Indians who live in this dusty southwest corner of Arizona. Nothing is more attractive to a couple of guys on shrooms, i.e. psychedelic mushrooms, than the Center of the Universe.

Here is what Wikepedia has to say about shrooms:

Sensory
As with many hallucinogens, the sensory effects are often the most dramatic of the experience. Common doses cause effects such as a noticeable feeling of heaviness, relaxation, enhancement and contrasting of worldly colors,[4] strange light phenomena (such as auras around lights sources),[3] surfaces that seem to ripple, shimmer, or breathe,[4] and other such visual hallucinations.[1]
Higher doses elicit a variety of intensified and distinct perceptual changes: complex open and closed eye visuals of form constants or images,[6] objects that warp, morph, or change solid colors (juxtaposed with the free-flowing colors of LSD), a sense of melting into the environment, trails behind moving objects, and auditory hallucinations.
Natural and artificial sounds seem to be heard with increased clarity; music, for example, can often take on a profound sense of cadence and depth.[4][6] Intriguingly, some users speak about the feeling of their senses overlapping or synesthesia, a rather interesting experience wherein the user perceives, for example, a visualization of color upon hearing a particular sound. The surface detail of everyday objects is viewed with increased acuity.[4] Unusual natural designs, such as wood grain, flow like rivers. Interesting textures can be quite stimulating to some users. A simple action such as pouring water into a glass can be extremely visually stimulating.
Emotional
Feelings of bliss, relaxation, wonder, anxiety, sadness, or fear have all been reported.[3] Some users may experience intense episodes of hilarity, such as laughing for the duration of the psychedelic experience.[1][6] Emotions can be experienced with increased sensitivity.[3]
Higher doses carry the increased possibility of a surreal event known as ego death,[4] whereby the user loses the sense of boundaries between their self and the environment, creating a sort of perceived universal unity. Users may experience intense feelings of connectivity with a higher power. Contradictory emotions, such as euphoria and despair, can be experienced simultaneously.[4] A sense of paranoia may be present,[3] and if provoked enough, could culminate into a bad trip. However, the possibility of a bad trip happening can be reduced by a comfortable set and setting.

Of course they didn’t look like that in the freezer of the Tarantula Arms. The Tarantula Arms? It was the nickname we gave the vomit-green stucco buildings on Euclid where we lived as undergraduates at the University of Arizona.

A little history of the Tarantula Arms. It was an apartment building a few blocks away from the University of Arizona campus. Rube and I rented it, but many others enjoyed its slack-eyed comforts during our time.

When we first went to check it out, the landlady, who looked like a trailer-park version of Wednesday Addams, showed us the second floor loft that would be our home for the next year and a half. She told us, dramatically, that there had been a body found in the attic, as if that would seal the deal for us. It did. During our stay there were no more bodies found inside the building, but there was one in the trunk of a car that came to be parked out front for week.

I don’t know who actually named it the “Arms”, but it was apt. The place enveloped us and the many friends who found it a swank place to hang out. Something was always going on there. Impromptu gatherings that were not really parties, but were sort of parties if you define that as people gathering and having fun and interesting times.

The man with the long dark hair is Dave Morris, who figures prominently in the Baboquiviri escapade. In fact, if not for Dave, I would never had enventured to Babo on Shrooms, so it is something I must hold in a bit of gratitude, since it is now a memory I hold dear of a life once lived and adventures once had.

Dave, sad to say, is now doing time for several misdeeds, drugs, fleeing, that sort of stuff. We think he’s in a work camp now. He was at Pima County for a while. I know of no one who has visited him, though Jay went out there once, but then walked away indignantly when they asked him to write down his social security number.

An interesting trivia about the Arms. It had bay windows in my bedroom nook that looked across the parking lot to the women’s dormitory. Of course, someone brought in the requisite telescope and we had our fun, but not excessively so. Not like the fun that Mark Delesdernier had. He was a friend of Bob Estes, who came over with Bob after being discharged from some sort of military service. He still had the haircut and the free-at-last facial expression. Mark was introduced to the telescope and the women’s dorm and took to it like honey on a snapping turtle.

The first time I had to go to class and Mark asked if he could stay and scope things out. No problem. He was still there when I got back from class. Turned out, he was back in the optic saddle every day for the next week, glassing all day and often into the night. I had to kick him out at bedtime. Finally I called Bob Estes and tasked him to break it to Mark that the Beaver Astronomy course was at an end.

The Arms was the starting point of many trips into the wilderness, caravans of beat-up 60’s era cars waddling into the sunset crammed with gear and excitable matriculators. Many voyageurs of the day came through our digs, including Dave Morris and Scott Vojta. We met Dave in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona University, where several of our pod had started out. Dave and Scott were from Crystal Lake, a suburb of Chicago, and there was a connection from that geography with a number of Arms people. Dave and Scott had lived in Portland, Oregon for a while, before hitchhiking down and taking up residence in the Arms. Now, I live in Portland. Scott Vojta lives in Flagstaff and Dave is incarcerated in Tucson. Funny how things end up.

Dave and Scott just showed up and moved in with Rube and I. It got pretty cramped for a while, but Scott turned out to be a great cook and started making breads with fascinating ingredients. You could live off that bread. We did.

What probably saved an unpleasant end, was that the Arms became condemned and suddenly we didn’t have to pay rent and no one showed up and told to us to move and the apartment across the hall was vacant so Dave and Scott moved in there and decorated their side with palm fronds. All was groovy.

Dave, in particular, was a connoisseur of psychedelics and was adept at guiding others down the path of fluidity. Over the Christmas holidays that year I eschewed the usual hearth and football games pudding and took a series of mind-bending trips under the tutelage of our provincial Prankster. It turned out to be a trilogy. It turned out the trilogy ended before the holidays were over and I was back to a sort of normalcy before classes began, but it was a changed normalcy, not to make too much of the spiritual evolution that psychedelics are famous for.

Forget the first two trips. That is, you forget them, I never will. An amalgam of images inhabits from those first two. Roads becoming rounder and never ending and each curve having the same “Pat’s” hamburger joint. A Dickensian image of rooftops on stores on 6th Avenue, black silhouettes like chimney sweeps popping up and down behind rooftop entries while exciting police cruisers menaced below. The Heart of the Sunrise viewed from the top of Wildcat’s Stadium above the calculus of empty seats and the ghost of roars. You can sense where it all leads.

But it was the final trip, the climax of the trilogy that led me back home and I shudder to think what would have become of me if I hadn’t taken it. The first two trips had been mescaline or LSD, heck I can’t remember, but the third was shrooms. They had been sitting in the freezer for a while. It was just Dave and me at the Arms one night. Dave was also a connoisseur of Carlos Castaneda. Dave suggested, “Let’s take the shrooms and go out to Babo and spiral up the mountain and ascend into the universe.” Sounded good.

We threw together some pack gear and took the shrooms and drove out to Babo, which is outside of Sells on the Papago reservation, about an hour and half from Tucson. The night was dark. Duh. Black clouds scurried overhead. We headed up the trial.
I don’t remember how we got separated or why we chose to ditch our packs for the climb. But, I remember sitting on a large boulder by the trail. Dave walked by.

I said, “Dave”. Dave whirled.

“Who’s there?”

“Dave, it’s me.”

“I knew you’d be out here. I knew you’d guide me. It’s just like Chinese checkers in the desert. I’m going to the top, but I’m not stopping.”

Dave thought I was Don Juan. I let him keep thinking that and he eventually headed up the trail. I headed up the trail behind him but soon he was nowhere in sight. By now it was inky black and huge fog banks were pushed overhead by a cold wind. I could barely see the trail. I had a conversation with myself about fear and about how fear could be separated from the mind by an act of will and I was willing my fear to separate and it was actually working pretty well.

Which was a good thing because, suddenly, there was a huge roaring sound all around me. It didn’t have a focal source, it was all enveloping. It’s one of those things that happen so fast the mind can’t process it. But the image clicked and it’s still in its cortical file to this day. Coppola could have used this image in his overwrought Black Stallion movie. I was only able to shutter click a few frames of the bouncing withers of the herd of Indian ponies as they disappeared into the swirling fog. They had run around me in the blackness without ever touching me, flowing like an equine river around a very stoned stone.

That alone would have made this trip a worthy one, without the later near-death experience.

There is a point where the Babo trail runs into a stone face and one must begin a basic rock climb to make it to the top. In the daylight the climb is not excessive, although it is exposed and potentially dangerous as Mike Flood found out when he fell off and broke both his legs and spent four days in a sleeping bag waiting for a rescue that was initiated, actually, by Jay who was supposed to go on a ride with Mike (he prefers to be called “Miguel” in the manner of most people in Tucson prefer nicknames) and when Miguel didn’t show up, Jay called his work and he hadn’t reported for work on Monday and Jay knew he was going to Babo and eventually a search was started and they found Miguel in a state of sanguine discomfort peacefully contemplating his death.

I don’t know if the shrooms were waning, but Dave showed up at the rock escarpment and we wisely decided not to try the climb in pitch darkness and headed back down the peak. It was raining by then. It was cold. We didn’t have adequate thermal protection and I became increasingly cold and eventually sleepy.

Dawn came. We were lost, disoriented. We couldn’t find our packs. I told Dave I needed to rest and promptly lay down in the dirt. Dave told me later that he couldn’t wake me up for five minutes and started pounding on my chest. When I woke up I could hardly walk. We might have been totally off a trail by then. Somehow we stumbled across on old cowboy shack. There was a fireplace. We gathered wood. We had a few matches. We tried to light tinder with the matches and it wouldn’t go. We were down to the last match. It lit at the last second. I started to revive with the heat, but didn’t think I could walk very well. Dave said he would go look for our packs. I couldn’t believe it.

An hour or so later Dave came in with both our packs. Maybe this was a miracle or maybe it just seemed that way to me. We ate. I felt stronger and we finally made it back, all the way to the welcoming Arms and bread and friends and whatever the future held.

Wrting Resume

2006-12-31T17:09:00.000-08:00

My son's field trip to Oregon Volcanoes.

2006-12-17T03:17:00.000-08:00

Oregon Volcano Field Trip

2006-12-02T03:56:00.000-08:00

The Universal Answer

by William J. Wood, Jr.

I went riding with some lads the other day. Bicycle. I’ve been in the habit of solo riding for a long time. I like to cruise with my iPod and meditate, so it was a change to be back in a pace line.
There is an etiquette to the pace line. The lead rider signals things in the road, like potholes or gravel or a strangely mangled doll’s head with iridescent black lipstick applied carelessly such that it extends beyond the vermilion border of the lips. This allows the riders behind to avoid the impediment. I will explain in a minute how this custom gave rise to the Universal Answer.
I found that I was a bit rusty, a bit annoyed by the burden of pace line etiquette. I had to think about signaling and also I had to think when a signal came down the line to me. For me, the whole point of the cycling experience is to not think or only think about the detritus that drifts up from limbic fermentation.
But I tried to be a good pace line citizen. I sent the signals back when I was in front. I wiggled my fingers when there was gravel. I’m sure, somewhere, there’s a formal description of the exact hand sign for different objects. One for car. One for gravel. One for Lucinda William’s breakout hit: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.
I actually developed that one during the ride. The little finger is pointed downward in a thirty-degree arc with a slight bend at the last metacarpal. I sent that sign out a few times, but didn’t look to see if it traveled down the pace line, nor did I later ask my friends if they understood the significance of the hand sign. The pace line behind me was Ron, Ron, Sean or variations thereof. Therefore, I was the odd phenome out.
So, when I went out for a ride today, sans pace line, it got me thinking about my old friend Leo. Leo is blessed and cursed with the genius of the lament. Leo used to be a cardiac surgeon until he went manic-depressive. But even before that time he was really interesting.
I’ve always been drawn to people who place no limits on their personal behavior. When Leo was going through the process of his mania, the inflorescence, so to speak, he did some really interesting things. For instance, he started carrying a short-handle axe with him on rides and chopped out people’s headlights that didn’t give him his props. He got a 140 mph traffic ticket. He rode down a car that had shaved him in traffic and got into a fight with the guy. When the cops arrived, Leo was kicking the guy; it turned out the guy had had a cardiac bypass. Somehow those keen-eyed journalists at Reader’s Digest got wind of the story and published a jocular piece entitled, “Cardiac Surgeon Attacks Cardiac Patient”. Life in these Effing United States. That’s true. Sad, but true.
Leo and I used to ride a bit. It was during one of our rides that he germinated The Universal Answer. (Wait. It’s coming.) I can’t ever remember being bored when I was with Leo. There, I’ve just tried again and no go.
Well, I noticed after a while that Leo never sent signals down the pace line. I would be riding behind him and he would swerve and I would be facing an enormous pothole. No warning.
After one exciting ride, I finally asked Leo why he didn’t signal to the riders behind him. He gave the Universal Answer. It is the answer I’ve been thinking about these many years since Leo moved to Florida and married a lithe ex-Wall Street financier who now trains thoroughbreds and, interestingly, is a Republican.
It is the answer of answers and I think it may end up being the saving grace of mankind. It is the answer to virtually all questions. It is bigger than Jesus + Mohammed + Buddha + �, either combined or added together algebraically.
Are you ready for it? Of course you’re ready. Not only ready but also you’re starting to get pissed off that I made you wade through this doggerel prose to get to it. Oh, but it will be worth it, my squirmy child. This is the answer that will save mankind. You should like that, assuming you are a member.
Ok. Ok. OK. The Universal Answer is, “I’m just not set up for that”.
Think about it.
Done?
Think some more.
That’s right. You can answer any question, ANY QUESTION, with this answer.
“Would you like to order now?”
“Could you take out the trash?” (Note: UA can also be used in response to non-question, command forms.)
“Would you like to have sex?”
“Would you like to not have sex?”
“Mr. President, would you like to invade Iraq today?”
That’s right, Dude. You can answer any question. So, what happens when all questions are answered? Don’t know. Well, next time there’s a Jehovah’s Witness on your porch, ask them, because they know. When all questions are answered, it’s the rapture, or heaven on earth, or cancellation of all property taxes or a band named after a Hindu state of eternal peace. Something like that. Something really good happens when all questions are answered.
I admit this is a hypothesis. Think of how many good things have come from hypotheses. Done? Actually there’s two hypothesii. Number one: If an individual, you, me, or you and your folie au deux partner start answering all questions with the universal answer, amazing things will happen.
First, you will find that life becomes simpler, deeper, more meaningful and more complex. Why? See, you will filter out all those people, that tsunami of humanity that you never want to talk to and desperately hope you don’t have anything in common with. Then, without that sanity-destroying static in your life, you will awaken. “I never noticed that tri-note robin call before.” The world will shine. You will never again have a reason to flip someone off, even if they’re so stupid they can’t understand that when two lanes narrow to one, one car has to wait ever so slightly so as not breach the effing principles of effing physics.
See. And then the Universal Answer, or Unians, will spread like a beneficent virus that does not require sexual transmission. Everyone will start using Unians to answer every question. World peace. Nirvana. Kurt Cobain.
Hmmm. Unfortunately, there is an alternative hypothesis, as required by all Institutional Review Boards and every 2x4 impacted academic jerk who never had to work for a living.
Hypothesis II: The Universal Answer, when universally applied, will not lead to world peace or Jehovah heaven, but will, instead act as a filter.
A filter?
Yes, a filter.
Think about it. As the undesirable masses quit talking to you (and by this I mean people who haven’t the capacity to logically extend a conversational opener and thereby lead to new thought, learning or consensus building. For example, you say, “I saw a type I gastric carcinoid the other day that did not have an elevated gastrin level.” The desirable person responds, “Interesting, then perhaps gastrin is not the etiologic agent. There must be some other common element,” whereas the undesirable person, who in their suffocating fog of insecurity can only parry and thrust at any statement placed before them, would say, “Yeah, well I had a patient with an obstructed duodenal diverticulum from ingesting the bezoar of a Nubian cat.”) Then, unfortunately, you might also loose the fraternity of that pitifully small handful of people that you actually care to talk to.
Then what? This is the worst of all. The only people you might not filter out by always responding to every question with the Universal Answer would be those genetically lobotomized types that walk up to you unintroduced at any generic social gathering and say, without asking your name, “I have a Nubian cat.” (Pause.) “I named her Mrs. Bigglesworth.” (Pause. Giggle. Pause.) You say nothing. (Pregnant pause.) (Pause that gives birth to something that shouldn’t be seen in this sector of the galaxy.)
So which hypothesis is true? Only one way to find out. My friends, I implore you to join me in this epic experiment. Start using the Universal Answer for all questions posed to you. Try it just for a day. See how you feel the next morning. See if something’s not just a little different when you roll the sodden carcass out of bed. You feel, perhaps, lighter, perhaps, like the dawn has a different hue that you’ve never noticed before, perhaps, you feel just like that monkey in 2001: A Space Oddesy, who grabbed that stick and for the first time, didn’t think “stick good, scratch ass,” but instead, had the thought, “stick look like forme fruste of automatic weapon”.
And if that first dawn is a good one, keep going. A week. A year. A lifetime.
If hypothesis I is true, then Unians will spread and one day, when our leader is asked something like, “Mr. President, the troops are massed at the Iranian border. Would you like to proceed?” he will give the Universal Answer because it has made his life stress free and has disengaged him from the snarky charms of multi-home owners.
If hypothesis II is true? Well, you will die a miserable and lonely death.
But, we must know.

Or...buy this album

2006-03-14T17:10:00.000-08:00

Buy Album

2006-03-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

Link to William Wood's Comics

2006-01-14T19:32:00.000-08:00

Check out my comics, created on Comic Life.

William Wood’s Comics.

2006-01-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

Grizzly Man: Fred Rogers On Acid.

Theme: You can make friends with some of the bears, some of the time.

Grizzly Man is a combination of a captivating movie and a snuff flick. Werner Herzog, master documentarist, existentialist and one-time NASA employee, narrates this tale of beauty and madness as we watch Grizzly Bear activist, Timothy Treadwell, videotape himself interacting with grizzlies over several summers in the Katmai Peninsula of Alaska. Treadwell, after an alcoholic crisis, decided to return to nature and live with the bears. He was able to do this successfully for thirteen years, until one of the bears decided he’d had enough and ate Treadwell and his girlfriend. Treadwell formed an organization, Grizzly People, to fund his efforts, and in the off season he gave lectures to elementary schools, without charge.

It’s exciting to watch Treadwell slowly approach a huge griz and touch it on the nose. It’s embarrassing to watch Treadwell’s adolescent Marlon Perkins act. Treadwell speaks to animals, the grizzlies and his adopted fox family, in a high, plaintive voice. He sometimes forgets to turn that voice off as he goes into his narrations, which come off like a jilted drag queen holding court. “I would never, ever, hurt a bear. Even if they hurt me.” He is the love child of Fred Rogers and Priscilla of the Desert. At one point Treadwell explains that he wishes he were gay, because it would be easier to get sex, but, sadly, he’s not. Imagine Marlin Perkins steering off course like that while filming killer hippos.

One longs for the Herzog’s sane monotones to offset Treadwell’s twittering babble. Interviews with an Alaska native and other bush folk, reveal that most of them thought Treadwell was crazy and was actually disrespecting the bears by trying to become one. Perhaps most bizarre of all, are interviews with Franc G. Fallico, medical examiner. Fallico novelizes the demise of the duo as if he were auditioning for the part of Quasimodo.

Much footage is given to the fatal attack. It seems a rogue griz, not one of Treadwell’s longtime friends, did the deed. Park Rangers felled the bear in a prolonged hail of magnum, and then discovered that they had, indeed, killed the right bear after examining the stomach contents. Bears are known to have an overwhelming rage response, not unlike humans (Bubba after Mama throw out the six pack). Treadwell always ended his summer sojourns and ultimately his life in “The Bear Maize”, a dense area of berry bushes riddled with end-of-season, hyperphagic bears. Treadwell was constantly testing his theory that he could meld with the bears. Well, it worked.

Bill Wood Blog

2005-12-18T14:47:00.000-08:00

/Writing Projects/Christmas letter 05.htm

The Human Stain (or, Boy is my wife mad at me.)

2005-11-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

The Human Stain: The Movie, The Book

Question. You’re a screenwriter? Someone hands you a moderately popular novel by a Pulitzer-prize winning author, which is 10 % plot and 90% exposition, heady and often annoyingly repetitive, and says, “Tee this thing up and smack it down the fairway.” You don’t like golf because of its association with smug capitalists, so instead you grapple with ways to make exposition seem like movement. You settle on two common devices: The Billy Pilgrim effect (you are unstuck in time) and character narration, which is the attempt to fuse a movie with its audio book. Does it work?
This movie flunked at Cannes and garnered some seriously ugly reviews, which proves to me that film critics don’t read books. Maybe that’s why they’re film critics. This is an instance where book meets movie and they mate. They are the two sides of a lean-to, which doesn’t quite make a love triangle.
Coleman Silk is a light-skinned black that made the fateful decision in his youth to “pass” for a white after a romance with a sultry midwestern blonde failed when she met his family and learned the truth. In the book, we also learn that he was ejected from a cathouse when the whore identified him as a “full-blood nigger” with his clothes off.
He became a successful Dean of Classic Literature at a cozy, sub-ivy college, but made enemies while re-shaping the department. He referred to two missing students in his class as “spooks”, not knowing they were black and the ensuing vilification by jealous, moralistic colleagues caused him to resign, after which his wife died of a stroke. He blames his colleagues.
Both book and movie allude to the moralistic societal campaign against Bill Clinton, but only the book goes into a polemic that Clinton could have kept the whole thing quiet if only he’d “ass-fucked” Lewinski.
Silk, 71, begins an affair with a 34-year-old, Faunia, an embittered, trailer-parkesque cleaning-woman-with-baggage, played by Nicole Kidman. Faunia’s baggage is an abusive stepfather, an abusive Vietnam-psychotic ex-husband and two dead kids. Silk’s “last love” blossoms. Faunia’s ex-husband kills them both.
I’m not giving away an important plot twist here. The movie opens with the murder. Roth, more dramatically, withholds this information for the first third of the book.
The poly-critics all point out the poly-themes, such as racism, “racial passing”, the healing quality of love and the spineless tendency for society to hide behind morals. The book also explores the characters of Delphine Roux, Silk’s academic nemesis, who is a textbook study of defense mechanisms and Les, the psychotic vet. One of the high points of the book is the comic-ironic detailing of the anti-fear therapy imposed on Les by his vet buddies. They take him, repeatedly, to a Chinese restaurant so he can get use to being around “gooks”. The movie expounds on Les only with psychologist interviews.
I know and Roth knows, that all these themes are mute. There is only one theme that explains all human behavior. That is the quest for orgasm. It is the ultimate motivator and it is the foundation of all behavior: Coleman Silk’s abandonment of race and family as well as Achilles’ moodiness. Roth knows this, but it’s better not to say it or else we would quit reading his books as if they were mystery novels.
I note that director Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer) grew up in Waxahachie, Texas, which is near my old south Fort Worth neighborhood, not that this matters at all.
If anyone is reading this on Pat Fitzgerald’s web log, please note his refusal to publish my review of Batman Begins, which, indeed, was a nonsensical, drunken rant. You can find that review on my blog at http://billwoodblog.blogspot.com/ . Thanks for your insouciance.

I don't know why Pat wouldn't put this review on his blog?

2005-11-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

Batman Begins, as does this review.

First of all, Fuck you Robert Ebert and praise you. You started off with “the movie is not realistic…” OK, Mr. Former Humvee, how realistic is a gastric bypass? Guess what, I’ve assisted on numerous gastric bypasses. I know exactly what they’re like. Obesity is evil and I’ve tried to fight it. But obese people are damaged goods who could never overcome childhood trauma, unlike Batman, who COULD overcome his childhood trauma. Yes, I’ve talked to all these simpering fatboes, who always want more pain medicines for any little thing. Batman would squash them like banana slugs in the gravel path. OK, I’ve not even watched the whole movie yet. It’s on pause on my oversize TV. I’m going back now to watch the rest of it and then I will finish this review.

OK. I’ve watched almost all of it, up to the point of the kiss (Christian Bale vs., Katie Holmes, now impregnated by Tom Cruise, and hey I’m cool with that). I’m inspired. I want to fight evil. I told my eight-year-old to fight evil, but he said he didn’t want to, but then shot me with his EMP rifle.

Well, I still want to fight evil. When I rented this movie at Hollywood Videos, there was a sign that said, if you like this movie, you’d like blah, blah, blah …Blade Runner. Oh man. Cut me with a scimitar. Blade Runner is my all-time number one movie. OK. Rutger Hauer was in this movie. Rutger is the incarnation of evil, at least as an actor. But, I suspect if I could only meet him, he would be a profound person, devoid of real evil. And there was one scene with the oriental bicycle-neon effects that gives the impression of Blade Runner, but not much more. No, this isn’t Blade Runner, but I dig it. Hear that, you saggy adipose freak.

Well, I really am inspired to fight evil. Maybe it has something to do with Famous Grouse, but you minions figure that out. I have always fantasized about finding a criminal in action (maybe a rape) and pulling out my 25 caliber Beretta, which I keep in my car (I do have a concealed weapon license.) and dispatching the rapist with a few words of significance. Like, “ You picked the wrong night to do the penis dance,” or something like that.

OK. I know that some of you out there in cyberspace have enjoyed my reviews and I appreciate that. But, this movie has grabbed me. For instance, I’m keeping an eye on my neighbor. One night, I came home and there were eight, (count em) eight cop cars blocking the entrance to my driveway (0.2 miles, gravel). I pulled up and the cop said, “Who are you?” I said, “I live down there,” He said, “You can’t go down there.” I said, “My wife is down there, get out of my way.” He did. Well, it turned out, some guys had invaded my neighbor’s house and tied up his (then) wife and said they were going to kill her. They ransacked the house and then left.

Now, it’s a number of years later and there’s a new wife and several kids. One is a fifteen-year-old named Jake. Jake always seems really friendly and waves at me, but then he’s running away and one time comes to our house and then one time comes to another neighbor (Naife, who gives really great massages), and the cops come and he goes back and then gets hit by Mike, but his mother says he threatened to kill them and described exactly how he’d do it and in what room, etc. I’m just watching right now. Just like Batman. Just like Christian Bale, who was great in American Psycho.

My friend Pat? He’s got some really heavy artillery. I mean really heavy. He’s let me shoot this stuff at Tri County. Bad guys, I’m just waiting. If you’re not Batman, you’re Bad Man.

The real Kung Fu Junior.

2005-10-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

Kung Fu Junior, in technicolor!..

See all my movies and albums.

2005-10-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Link to Bill Wood’s Homepage, All movies and albums..

Skiing in the Wallowas. Living in Yurts.

2005-10-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

Wallowas Ski Movie. Album.

The Ominous Sky

2005-10-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

Where can I get one of those Bill Wood albums?

2005-10-07T06:43:00.000-07:00

Link to CD Baby.

Movie Review: Serenity

2005-10-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

Serenity: A Bill Wood review

One problem I had with this mixed-genre, way-cool, sci-fi fest was that it’s title kept putting me in the mind of the Seinfeld episode Serenity Now, where George’s father would utter “serenity now” every time he was about to get mad. But that’s my problem. Another problem was that Pat and I gave this flick Three Thumbs Up. Three? Well, Pat gave it two and I gave it one. When I told Pat he could only give it one, he replied, “If God had intended man to be ape, he would have given him only one thumb.” I was left, literally, holding my thumb. The next daunting mind itch, was trying to figure out exactly which John Wayne movie writer Joss Whedon (who also wrote the TV series Firefly, upon which the movie is based, also Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was channeling. I think it was Chisum, where rogue rancher Chisum fights the power with fellow rebel Billy the Kidd. Whedon cooks up a tasty genre-fusion stew here. There’s Wayne-esque dialogue, mainly from Mal (Nathan Fillion), the troubled, but secretly stalwart ship’s captain. “No more runnin.” But then, there’s ultra-satire from the rest of the crew that could have come right out of Doug Adam’s Hithchiker’s Guide series. Zoe (Gina Torres): “If we stay here we’re all going to die.” Jayne (Adam Baldwin): “Well…I might live through it.” The Zombie angle is nicely played by the Reavers, hyperaggressive canibals whose origin is a big plot point. Tales From The Crypt fans will love the decayed flesh-fest on the planet Miranda. It gives a whole new meaning to the term “Mirandized”. The humor popped up frequenlty enough to keep me cortically engaged. Watching River (Summer Glau), weird psychic and beautiful ex-ballerina, kick ass in the most erotic art form ever, energized a different part of my brain. Sorry, it’s my brain and you can’t go there. The corporatized reviewers are all predicting poor receipts from this cult-oriented project. To that, I say, who gives a shit.

Summer, will you marry me?

How now Mao

2005-10-07T06:03:00.000-07:00

172nd Comitatus Group

2005-10-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

Etan Thomas' Poem

2005-09-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

Out of the ashes of Iraq come soldiers dressed in fatigues of fire Wearing helmets secured in smoke They've choked off the lies spewed out of the mouth of a burning bush
The true warrior's existing wake
Who's flames burned them at the stake
Cremated their bodies
And stuffed them in an urn wrapped in red, white, and blue....
Rummaging through a forest set ablaze by one lethal match
With witty catch phrases forever attached to the side of their kingdom
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Links to Al Qaeda
Eminent threats
And weapons of mass destruction.....
They've been skillfully thrown into the lion's den
Out of the frying pan and into the furnace
Their courage exceeds any measuring stick
But they can hear the footsteps of death creeping around the corner
For they've been led into the eye of the storm
Transformed into peacekeepers
Lending a helping hand for the poorly planned post-war strategy......

Livestrong ride

2005-09-30T05:38:00.000-07:00

Thought you might want to hear about the Livestrong ride.

Notice the two spikes in the elevation chart. Those are known as “ball-breakers”. Ergo, one for each testicle. I didn’t do 100 miles cause I didn’t reach the 2nd loop turn-off in time. Probably just as well. They started people in different groups. I was in lane 7 and started about 45 minutes after lane 1. Also, had a flat and almost all the remaining 100 milers passed me while I was fixing it. When I left Bald peak, the second spike, there were only two other riders.

However, when I got back on the 40 mile course there were still lots of riders, some the 100 milers that had done the other loop and slow 40 and 70 milers. I did 74 miles, plus pegged another 4 miles looking for my car on the Nike campus where all buildings and parking lots look the same. Never saw Lance, but I heard him, or else someone that sounds like him. He gave a little speech. The only thing I remember was he said something about sperm donation, and now I wonder if that had to do with the two climbs on the route. I fear my sperm production is katrina-ed.

I think I might have had a better time if I could have ridden Lance’s bike.

After the ride, they had a concession area next to the Lance Armstrong Center. I didn’t see Lance or George Hincapie or Eddie Merx. They were greeting the cancer survivors who finished the ride. I did get to tour the Center, but they wouldn’t let me swim in Lance’s pool.

The Nike campus is impressive. There were security people all over and I thought I shouldn’t touch anything, lest I smudge the patina of corporate power. It reminded me of the setting of the movie “Scanners”.

All said, it was a fun ride and well supported. I didn’t get to have a heavy rap with Lance, but I did meet some nice people on the ride.

Next year?

Bill

The Original Woodstock poster

2005-09-16T15:25:00.000-07:00

Hemingway's Operative Report

2005-09-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

The other day I took a book with me into the OR to read between cases. It was a book of Hemingway's comments on writing. There were frequent comparisons to lovemaking and war and good clarets and lots of gutsy existentialism. Then I thought about the mindless writing of medical documents and wondered how Papa would have dictated an appendectomy.

HEMINGWAY'S OPERATIVE REPORT

The steel went out of her eyes as they ran the juice into her. Steel. It was a man's metal, not like zinc or molybdenum. Her sleep came on like the dreamless fog of a good claret. I grasped the knife, the dog of a knife, and cut into her. Was it her skin or mine that I cut? Did it really matter? Layers were divided. We are nothing but layers, and when the last layer is gone there is nothing. Yes, there was blood. There is always blood. Her blood reminded me of a certain vineyard in the Alsace, where the blood of battle could not be separated from the blood of the grapes and all was the harvest of cannon and madness. They said the bottling that year was the purest vintage anyone could remember. It was like drinking the tears of the Madonna, they said, and it brought on both joy and sadness, though none would touch it and the bottles cried in their caves degustation till they ran to vinegar. With my finger curled in the shape of a milk white thigh, like the thigh of a certain girl, no she was a woman, but she fooled all the pining lads in the village, who would have died for her for less than a kiss, but she had no desire to harvest the lives of fools, for she was a woman even at that age, I brought the diseased old man, whose name means less than nothing, into the light that was no longer dark. One tie and a purse string, made of moth's vomit, were all it took to bring him down. He did not beg, for he was one who had lived and he had no fear of death. Death to him was like the swirl of a good Pernod sweating down the side of Alsatian crystal on a night when Hatchet Jim came back with a fresh load of Cubanos and the table stakes occasionally contained a woman's name. We parted friends and that is the best way and maybe the only way, since any other parting is not that at all. With the final layer closed, the soft, sad one that hides everything and yet speaks every language known to man, I stood, or did I sit, and with the urge that was obsession only to myself, I began to write, for writing, as lovemaking, can truly begin only when there is nothing left to say.

The Samaritan

2005-09-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

The Samaritan

Here’s what happened.
I had no cases on a Tuesday. The weather prediction was “sunny”, though a dense fog came around at night and was still hovering in the morning. Usually, the valley fog here in Oregon burns off to give sun.
So, I decide to take a ride, a bike ride, down the Upper Clackamas. It’s a ride I usually do in the summer, since there are no facilities for the 25 miles to the Ripplebrook Ranger Station, except in summer the marina’s open and I can get Gatorade and burritos. Once, I ran out of water and had to drink from a waterfall. But, I have a fanny pack that holds two water bottles, plus the one on the bike and I think I’ll be OK.
When I take my bike off the hooks in the garage, the rear tire is flat. I change the tube and it holds air. Hmmm. I drive to Estacada and the tire is still tight.
The three-mile hill out of Estacada goes fine, though the tire seems a little splayed. Then, the downhill where it drops into the river gorge of the Clackamas. It’s a picture postcard right after the crest with the river winding blue through the big forest canyon and a Montana sky above.
The marina is closed. Fine. I have the three water bottles and a tasty steelhead pita sandwich in the fanny pack. Also, have my Ipod. Me, myself and Ipod.
At mile 36.5 (Estacada is mile 25) there are road crews and a woman flagger where the big slide happened last week. But, it’s open. I stop to take the plastic bags off my socks since it’s getting warm. The cattle dog in the woman’s truck barks fiercely, but when I talk to it, it sits down behind the door. She tells me it’s a “red” and her husband is at the truck on the other side with their other heeler, a “blue”. I tell her about the two cattle dogs that always chase me on the climb up to Sandy. They run right out on the highway. The last time I went there, they were gone. She says they don’t recommend bikes going through since there are big rocks on the road. I say, “It doesn’t bother me.” There are always big rocks cracking off the basalt cliffs in the canyon.
So, the tire seems to be holding and I cruise into the flats by the river. Soon I’ll see kayakers. They road trends upward since it’s upriver, but you don’t really notice it until you come back and realize you’re riding faster.
I’m at twenty miles and looking for the hill before the ranger station. It warms so I pulled over to shed the Lycra.
The back tire is spongy. Shite. I take out the tube and inflate it and find the leak. I had checked the inner tire in my garage, but now I know where to look and sure enough there is a razor thin rock sliver, about 3 millimeters, in the tire. I get it out with my knife and put the spare tube in. It seems OK. Soon as I saddle I know it’s bad. Total flat. OK, patch kit.
I find the leak in the first tube and sand the rubber. I pull off the glue cap with my teeth. All the glue is dried. Old kit. Defeat.
The first car that passes is a shiny Subaru and it doesn’t even slow. Maybe my cycling glasses make me look sinister. The next car, an old dust-brown Fairlane pulls over.
He looks Mexican, but says “ju”, so I think, maybe Cuban, but, no, he is from Mexico City. The speed limit is 40, but he drives between 10 and 15 mph. Sometimes a car passes and sometimes he pulls over. He is driving down the river to enjoy nature. “I like seeing the nature.”
There are bible quotes stuck all over the car. I relax.
I remember the drive from Vera Cruz to Mexico in Rube’s old truck. “This area looks a lot like the mountains between Vera Cruz and Mexico City,” I say.
“You know Vera Cruz?”
“Well, we stayed in a little place called Tuxpan.”
His voice rises. “You know Tuxpan? My mother lived very near there. The river runs into the ocean.”
“Yes, I remember that. There was a white sand beach that went for miles with no one, except a few horses.”
He smiles.
I tell him how we all got sick in a restaurant. He tells me how he always gets sick when he comes back from Mexico to the U.S.
I tell him the story of my flats. He tells me how he got a flat once taking a short cut from Highway 26 to the Clackamas through Timothy Lake. “You don’t have to go through Sandy.”
I’m curious. It would be quicker to stay on the highway. That’s a very long short cut, I think, over a lot of rough dirt road, but then I remember he likes to drive through nature and I get it.
He tells me someone stopped to help him fix his flat. It seems life is balancing.
After a while, he asks me if I read the Bible.
“Sure.”
“How did God make the Red Sea open? How could he do that?"
I say, “Maybe an earthquake.”
He looks puzzled.
“You know, the land comes up.”
Still puzzled.
“Well, what I’d like to know is how they walked across that. It must have been thick mud, you know, a total swamp.”
Still puzzled. Brow wrinkles.
“You know, there’s no roads on the bottom of the ocean.”
Finally, he laughs a little.
I ask him if he knows Luis, my neighbor, who owns three Mexican restaurants, all named Cha Cha Cha.
“Cha cha cha,” he says very rapidly. Then, he pauses. “I don’t know him.” He pauses. “The Mexican restaurants are becoming very popular.”
We climb up the hill at 12 mph. He says, “You ride up this hill? It’s a big hill.”
“Yes, but then I get to cruise down the other side all the way to Estacada.”
It turns out his name is also Luis and we marvel at the coincidence. I buy him a Gatorade and chips at the market and invite him to share lunch on my tailgate. Suddenly he says, “Amigo, I have to get going,” and launches into an explanation.
“No problem. You were very nice to pick me up.”
We shake hands. “Con Dios,” I say.
His grin is wide now. “Vaya con Dios, amigo.”

Movie Review

2005-09-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

Review: The Aristocrats

Pat enticed me to go to this movie, which I hadn’t heard of. He gave me a short intro before the reel rolled. I’ve just read some reviews, which were all sub-rave positive. My take? If you’re trying to establish or maintain the image that you are a sophisticated intellectual, who can see beyond the social prison imposed by conventional morality, tell your listeners you really liked this movie. Say you now have a deep understanding of comedians and what makes them tick. If your self-image, like mine, is pleasantly fermenting in a landfill, protected by an acid stench that only certain birds will penetrate, feel free to groan and let that groan turn into a mantra that takes you beyond the sad comedy of this clubby documentary. I did laugh a few times, but mostly mildewed as the reservist roster of PROMINENT COMEDIANS OF OUR TIME let us into their inner sanctum by reciting their oh-so-creative versions of this anally retentive non-joke. It’s the comedian version of jock bravado. We’re so brave we let the vile-adolescent-in-us-all out to play. Hey public, if you were that brave, you’d get to sell tickets to the schmucks and tell this joke backstage, because only true pros can handle this genitalia. Maybe it’s the climate here in the rainy Pacific Northwest that makes me cynical. Maybe if I still lived in Arizona or moved to L.A. the sunshine would allow me to appreciate even the faintest entertainments. Ah, Kurt Cobain. Now there’s a funny fucking story.

Treehouseetee

2005-09-03T06:42:00.000-07:00

In the woods behind my house.

Goat Rocks Photo Album

2005-08-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

Goat Rocks Trip, August 2005. Album.

El Tour de Tucson cyclecam

2005-08-29T20:26:00.000-07:00

Ride the El Tour de Tucson with Bill and Jim Wood.

Mount Adams from the north

2005-08-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

The usual climbing route is on the opposite, south side.

Me at the lava fields

2005-08-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

At the Lava Fields near Bend, Oregon

Young Backpacker

2005-08-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

My son enjoying the high country.

2005-08-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

Tents in the clouds

Goat Rocks in Washington State

2005-08-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

Goat Rocks looking south

2005-08-25T20:31:00.000-07:00