From Russia with Love

"Ernie," I asked when I walked into the room.  "You know the Minutemen?"

"Sure," he said without taking his eyes off the television, his lanky body in a white undershirt and jeans sprawled out on the couch.  "They sang 'Punk rock changed my life.'"

I was surprised.  That was, like 1980, or even earlier, four years before he was born.  He was better informed than I thought.

"That's right."  The new documentary about the trio had arrived from Nexflix that morning and I was burning copies.  "The movie is pretty good.  I'm making you one."

I went back upstairs and logged onto the Russian music download website to see about finding some of their music as well.  Sure enough, the album was available, Double Nickles on the Dime.  I downloaded and burned it, so Ernie could take a copy with him as he drove to Colorado the next morning.

Andrew was also downstairs, equally inert. His marijuana/McDonalds t-shirt ("Millions Stoned") was confirmed by the thin joint he held openly, unlit, in his hand.  We hadn't seen him in about a year.  He'd been hitchhiking and hopping rails.  He was sleeping on a roof in California when the police busted him and bought him a bus ticket back to Champaign. 

Lee and I agreed it was probably cheaper for the State of California to deport him back to Illinois than to throw him in jail.

We were actually glad he was accompanying Ernie on the drive. He was sweet, a deliberate freeloader, a dedicated rambler at the tender age of 23. He'd get dropped off in Boulder, where the hippy Rainbow Celebration was about to get underway, before Ernie continued on alone to Telluride, where summer work had become available.  Ernie was eager to go.  He'd just quit smoking cigarettes two weeks earlier.  Maybe he could save some money this time.

"People who say it's harder to quit heroin than cigarettes don't know what they're talking about," he had said.  He was a lot easier to talk to when he wasn't smoking.  I will miss him.  I was glad he was leaving though.  Lee had started to cry before they even started packing.  He did pack.  That was surprising, too.  Maybe he even planned a little.

Keane sounds a lot like Coldplay, I decided while delivering today.  They're good.  I guess it's obvious that the two bands should sound alike, since the lead singers of both bands used to work together in some band or another.  Ernie will have none of it.  He's very specific of what he likes, but with the new facility of the former Soviet Union website, I can sample a lot of music, more or less legally for the time being. 

I burned all the Radiohead albums and printed CD labels for them, using the album covers as art and design, so Lee can tell Amnesiac from Kid A, Hail to the Thief from OK Computer at a glance.

"Happy birthday," I said when I presented them to her in the morning.  She was getting ready to make sausages and pancakes for the boys before they left.  Their scheduled departure was 8 am, but I wasn't betting on it happening like that.  I thought the gift might cheer her up a little.  It did.

"But it's not my birthday," she said.

At 8:15, they left.  We all hugged.

"Have fun at the Rainbow thing," I told Andrew.

"Oh, I will," he said with certainty.

Lee and I walked slowly back into the house which seemed suddenly deeply empty, purposeless.

"Look," I said.  "They left behind the MapQuest plans I printed out for them.  I can't believe it."

"Maybe we should call them," Lee immediately said.

"No," I said.  "Let them be gone."

Since it was half-price day at That's Rentertainment, I made an excuse to get out of the hammock and leave when it opened at 10 am.  They had four of the obscure titles that I had in my Netflix queue, including Mike Kuchar's Sins of the Fleshapoids.  That surprised me.  Kuchar was part of the San Francisco experimental art scene years ago, a group that included Curt McDowell, the filmmaker I'd stayed with, worked with, and slept with once.  He dedicated a movie to me, but that didn't really mean much, since he cranked out his mock Hollywood sex epics with abandon for the San Francisco Art Institute.  I never saw the movie of his I had narrated, but I still have a 16mm copy of his Siamese Twin Pinheads on my shelf, with no way to project it.

Curt was one of the first to die with AIDS, well before it even had a name.  Another bullet I dodged.

In addition to the Minutemen documentary, which is aptly titled We Jam Econo, the newest Michael Haneke movie, Cache, had arrived on Tuesday from Netflix.  It's the last of the Haneke's I have collected.  Watching them all, including the interviews with Haneke on each disk, has been a feast, but there's no one I know who has also watched them or cared to, no one to share about them.

I have things ironed out with Netflix in a way I can get four movies a week, including new releases usually on the day of release, burning them and returning them promptly to keep the flow going.

Last week my agent wrote with her usual suggestions, encouraging but not announcing anything. I don't think she really tries, but even so I felt like writing again, now that Ernie has left, my computer is back from repair.  I might turn the East Bend book into fiction, into science fiction.  It might be better if I don't think in terms of commercial audience.

After the route, Miles comes out to me in the hammock, begging for money. 

"I'm your son," he says, pleading.  "You should give me money."

"You should work," I say.  "Bring me a grape soda.  With ice."

"I'm going to be a college student," he said, proud of the fact that he's going to community college at 16, as though that entitled him to plunder my wallet regularly.

We've been looking at historic black colleges.  I'm convinced that is the route he should take, probably transferring for his third year.  Even if he just humors me to get money, perhaps the idea will rub off on him.

He's driving now.  We make daily jaunts through the streets in the Prius.  I hold my breath while he maneuvers corners and parking.  He's pretty good.

Lee is waiting downstairs.  We're going to watch Failure to Launch, the movie we had used to describe Ernie, so to watch it tonight might be timely.  I've already made popcorn.  It's all I'll have for dinner.  Henry called from California.  He needs dental work, but I'm not going to think about it right now. 

Ernie and Andrew are probably in Colorado already.  They could have stayed tonight with my sister in Kansas, but they left the map here by the television.  They'll probably just keep driving.  They'll be in the mountains soon, probably listening to the Minutemen.  Listening to D. Boone sing "punk rock changed my life."

"Learn to pray," I had told Ernie sometime in the past week.  "That takes forever."