Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Lunch with the Galactic Warrior and Rick, The Man With No Last Name
“I’ll have the schezuan beef,” Andy said, setting down his menu. Just thinking about the shezwan beef made my eyes water.
“What’s in the T-sing pow kun?” I asked, sounding out every syllable.
“Sing Po Kahn,” she corrected in her heavily accented, barely-English, English. “It noodles with vegetables. Some chicken.”
That really brought me no closer to an understanding than the last dish I had asked about. Shuffling the menu, I twisted in my seat uncomfortably, froze for a second then let out my breath.
“Hey Rick, why don’t you go ahead,” I said.
Rick spoke slowly, hardly waiting for the words to escape my lips, and confidently told our Asian waitress what he wanted. “I’ll have two of them monster burgers, but I want one without the bun.”
The waitress wrote this down far too quickly and turned her head back to me, her pen poised waiting for my decision. I looked up and smiled at her tiny face. Sneaking a peak at the rest of the table, I looked to see Andy and Rick’s faces of anticipation. “Okay, I’ll have the number one,”
“Chicken or beef?” the waitress asked.
I paused and stared into space. I liked the chicken, but beef was good, too. My thoughts were interrupted by an interjection from Rick. “He likes the chicken.”
“Yeah, I do, but,” I began.
“You like the chicken,” Rick reiterated.
“I guess you’re right. I’ll have the chicken, “ I said finalizing my decision. Rick was certainly an odd one, but Andy was even more so.
The adventure with Andy began five years earlier Out of the blue the phone rang and a job was offered to me. A job in construction. Granted, I didn’t have a real job at the time, didn’t have a car, girlfriend or even the necessary skill that would motivate me to get off of my ass and make a buck or two, but I accepted the offer graciously because of a fundamental problem: lack of cash to have or do anything. I /did/ have Saturday morning cartoons and a fairly nice, back wrecking bed to sleep in whenever the hell I wanted. It was a pretty nice life, but I figured I needed to find something more. Something that would give meaning to what so many would consider a worthless existence.
My employment began the next day a couple of miles down the road from my house. I rode there on my bike for lack of better transportation. That’s when I met Andy, the boss, for the first time. He was by no means a normal fellow in the typical fashion of the construction trade, or any other way either. Despite whatever anyone may think about those who work in the construction trade, not all are without integrity, though most are nothing more than white trash with stolen tools and a tiny bit of know how. There are varying degrees of integrity represented by construction vocation. There are those who are at the very bottom of the integrity graph such as those in the roofing, insulation and drywall trade. I must say that those people scare me and I have a sneaking suspicion that they are nothing more than animals in very lifelike people suits. The graph continues up from there to heating and air conditioning people, painters, framers, plumbers and electricians in that order. The simple, nut shell difference was that the low end drove up to a job site in 1972 Datsun B-210, spoke constantly about how well endowed they were and complained that their landlords didn’t understanding their problems while the high end drove up in fuel consuming Landcruisers or some other form of land boat, didn’t yell at the clients when the clients wanted what they paid for, and spoke of ways of better heating their homes. The only variety of construction worker that remained without a specifically defined space on the construction worker integrity graph were the concrete men who ranged from those who didn’t show up to others who were singing hymns while floating on the slab. Andy was a guy who had done it all, but maintained the integrity of those at the top. When I first met him his hair was dark brown and shaggy and he had the biggest eyes I had ever seen. His age was indistinguishable. Over the years, my brother, who helped us on large projects asked Andy in tactless ways, “are you 50 yet?” His vision was bad, 20/1000, which anyone who wears glasses can tell you is very, very bad. He chose to wear one contact to semi-correct his vision. I’d seen him drive drill bits into wood thinking they were nails. “Andy,” I’d say. “Are those drill bits that you just drove in?”
“Probably,” he’d answer then he’d pull out a cats-paw, rip the drill bit out of the wood and show it to me. It was always a drill bit. I had perfect vision and was never wrong.
That first day, he had me removing old drywall in preparation for a remodel. What fun that was. My first job at my first decent wage. Five dollars an hour! If I’d had a car that would have almost been enough to pay for the price of gas to get to work. As time went on I was escalated from the first guy to be fired in the path of an oncoming recession to the second guy to be fired and my duties began changing drastically. Instead of cleaning up and other remedial responsibilities fitting of someone with the intellect of a lampshade, I began to create. I started framing and doing just about every other form of work possible. Over the course of my first year working for him, Andy’s hair quickly went grey. I pointed this out to him recently and he was surprised to find out that it coincided his first year of employing me. He missed my semi-subtle attempt at pointing out that I was a hair greying event.
The next year was the year of McDonald’s. We spent months building two Golden Arch shrines, and were, upon completion, offered free food as the trainees were mastering the fast food profession. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. To be honest it was an experience that won’t soon be forgotten. Standing, dressed like slobs, no one else around us, we casually ordered at the amply staffed counter.
“I’ll have a Big Mac, large fries, large drink, and a large orange juice,” Andy said. I had stared at the menu for a second longer and decided, “I’ll have the same thing.” Our burgers were awful. Our fries were awful. They must have given us to much orange power in their, so called, orange juice because it was awful. But, the drinks, they were faboo! It was barely possible to screw up the mixture in a soda no matter how little compensation a Mcemployee was given.
A year later we built a small subdivision and I ascended to the top rung in the company. It wasn’t much of a feat considering that most everyone else who had worked for him quit because they thought he was crazy, and I was all that was left other than the flunkies who were replaced weekly. It was sort of a settling process more than an advancement where if I stood in the same place long enough I would eventually be all that was left.
During these times I got to know Andy and his family better and better. I got to know Andy’s wife, Ann and his children, but the majority of focus will continue to be on Andy. He’s the one that psychological, philosophical, and various sci-fi books need to be written about. I didn’t have any friends and he didn’t have any friends and we were both what the general public would call rather odd birds. It was inevitable that we would become friends. Hanging out with him was like hanging out with a guy my own age, though he was quite a lot older. He knew of many cool, really stupid things that could be done in a little town in Oregon. We’d go down to the local white trash market, fill up 44 ounce soda cups up with root beer then dump soft serve ice cream in for the biggest root beer float experience possible. I’d hang out with his band and help out at gigs with sound and be the all around roadie boy. We’d go to stupid macho man movies; we’d think they were cool from the second row because of his blindness. I’d go on trips with his family all over Oregon, all expenses paid. I was considered part of the family and enjoyed my times with them tremendously. But the work began to grow wearying as time wore on.
“Must find reading material,” Andy said as he left the table out to the parking lot before the meal was served. Through his truck, lovingly labeled Death Truck due to the fact that he had accidentally pushed it into a telephone pole in a snow storm, he tore, trying to find anything that would allow him to escape the world of conversation. It was his custom to never eat without his mind being full of someone else’s thoughts. Under the seats, in the toolboxes, and in the glove box he looked, where he finally found some old receipts which looked to be of some interest to him. He now sat with his plate in front of him surrounded by his reading material while Rick and I talked. Typically, talking to Rick was a one sided conversation. “Hey Rick, how’s it going today?” would usually be met with a few nouns, verbs and a long string of profanities. “Pretty &^@!!#^ good,” or “Pretty #&@#^!$ bad,” usually was the extent of his comments. He was opinionated and had a fairly sharp mind for someone who gave off the anti-establishment, anti-government, pro-big beef hamburgers, ex-heroine dealer, but he wasn’t much to talk to. I had never met a more polite ex-con.
We met Rick a couple of years ago and he would forever change the way we looked at freakish, long haired, gun toting, short people. He was the first of a long line of Ricks working for Andy which were thereafter appropriately named Rick 2, and Rick 3, and so on. But none who came after had the impact of Rick except Rick 2 who drank before breakfast and Rick 3 who dank /as /breakfast. We guessed about most of his past and pieced it together from what we could tell and what he would tell. It was like putting a puzzle together after the pieces had been dropped on the floor of a bar and pretzels, beer, and vomit had covered the images. From his mild accent, we could tell that he was from back east, Michigan or Boston or somewhere between. He did open up to us over the years on a few things. His past was a checkered one of making alcohol out of orange juice under heaters in prison to not letting anyone know his real last name. He was a reformed alcoholic and drug addict and smoked a pack a day of Philip Morris’s cheapest filter-less cigarettes. His clothes, truck and even his dog reeked of the smoke that permeated every fiber of his being. Sometimes I felt as though the poor dog’s life was being shortened as a second hand smoker, but thought better of mentioning it to Rick. He drove everywhere in his beat up blue Chevy truck, and held to the standard that drivers licenses were for loser-conformists. As far as Rick was concerned, there was nothing that could not be done with his truck. Sometimes you could hear me screaming, “I’m going to die!“ from the back of his truck where I would be deadweight on top of super long pieces of wood fighting to keep them from falling out as Rick, cigarette hanging from his lips, calmly backed up hill, sliding sideways as he went. Thankfully, it wasn’t always like that.
At first when we found him, he was working for an ex-alcoholic taking care of horses in the sub-suburbs of nowhere. A horrible little town called Takilma. Despite his past and lack of an identity, he was the finest, most meticulous finish carpenter that the world had ever seen. His lack of identity kept him from getting a real job, paying taxes and what he deemed /sissy/ social security stuff, but doomed him forever to his life of odd jobs, mostly working for odd people like Andy. On his arms he had tatoos. Lots of them. Racoons, spider webs, women and a whole array of things you’d find on that convict type of person. He was built like a body builder and his long brown hair swung past his one dangling, beaded earing down to his shoulders. Both Andy and I were instantly fascinated with his odd brand of profane howls, of which two were never quite the same. Considering himself to be a connoisseur of profanity with never a sentence coming from his mouth without some evidence of his apparent hobby, Rick was a trip. His mastery of the art was apparent with his eloquent spouts of grammatically perfectly sentences created of nothing but profanities. Of course each individual profanity was used as noun, verb, and adjective limiting his entire vocabulary to six or so words, but was still awe-inspiring. It was an art that I happily never understood, but looked upon with astonishment.
When walking down the streets with Rick, I would see people suddenly bolt for the other side of the street in a panic at seeing him. He normally dressed in ragged clothes with much of the life worn out of particular spots. Not to say that I, with my torn out knees, ripped up jacket and shoes with more than ample ventilation gave anyone any hope of polite conversation as they passed us on our side. One thing about construction that I do miss is the ability to wear whatever I want, though college is a close second. Andy had a simple dress code consisting of four words: Remember to wear pants. Andy had the hardest time remembering this. On arriving at work on several days, Andy would painstakingly crawl out of his truck, stand, stretch, glance down and confidently say, “Hey, I remembered.”
“So how’s Gus doing these days?,” I asked trying as usual to gain a little bit more information about Rick and his amazingly blank past. I always asked about Gus because he seemed to be the only soft spot in Rick’s exterior and it was always a good way of extracting information. Gus had been picked up off of a highway after he had been run over by a car. Rick spent months nursing him back to health only to have him run over again out in front of his house. You’d never be able to tell that he had been run over by looking at him, though. In the cab of Rick’s truck in the parking lot behind me, Gus yelped through the wide open windows telling us that he knew we were talking about him.
“Since I got him that flea collar and canned dog food he’s never been better,” Rick said. He took a bite of his hamburger after he spoke and looked to be savoring it’s flavor. The other hamburger, minus the bun sitting in a box, was for Gus who was often spoiled in this manner. Rick wasn’t much of a fan of Asian food.
“Ever had a dog before?” I asked.
“Nope,” said Rick. Damn. I glanced at Andy to see if he was listening, but he was busying himself behind the receipts. He was listening. He was just about willing to go to any lengths to find out more about Rick aside from asking him questions outright, but his mind was such a disheveled mess that he probably didn’t remember what he wanted to know.
Trying to open up the conversation so Andy would help to get Rick talking, I asked, “You haven’t had a dog in a while have you, Andy?”
“Hmmmm? Oh, no. Not since Sam and he was no Licorice! Licorice was so smart, but then he ran away,” Andy spoke, looking up from his food and receipts. “Now all we have are big fat cats.”
“What the Hell do you feed those monsters?” asked Rick. “I’ve never seen cats so fat before.”
“My wife feeds them,” said Andy. I don’t have anything to do with them. “I’m so spacey, they’d have starved to death if they had me as a provider.” He went back to his papers with what appeared to be a sigh of relief after his stunning, almost coerced sounding sentences.
I laughed at thinking that Andy’s family had to rely upon him as a provider. At least his wife remembered to feed the people as well as the cats. And from Andy’s overwhelmingly terrifying midriff consisting of a beer belly which he constantly maintained was his fourth child, I think that there was some serious providing going on.
I shuffled my feet and looked at my food racking my brain for something that wouldn’t invoke some sort of horrible death followed by a quick burial while greasing Ricks mind for information.
Unexpectedly, Andy spoke. “So Rick, what is your last name?” Andy blurted this out and looked at my horror with almost glee in his eyes. For one second following Andy’s question all time stopped and my beating heart was silenced and every blood cell could be hear rushing throw my eardrums. What was going through his head? This was not my plan. Of course it would have been nice to have a plan to not implement, but this was not the way that I would have implemented it. The waitress was frozen in time delivering, on a small black tray, our check and fortune cookies. My mind raced and I began visualizing each of our individual fortunes. I read the first one. It, being the one that was mine. “You shall die horribly.” I picked the next for Andy and read it’s providential message. “You shall die horribly.” I read Rick’s with growing horror. “You shall kill your coworkers and everyone else you can find.” The fantasy my mind was living ended and time began again and Rick turned, looked at Andy sideways and snorted as if to say, ‘yeah, sure.’ The waitress set down the tray with the cookies and glided away. Another second passed and he went back to his waiting hamburger. Andy looked at me questioningly. I didn’t move or return his look. He shrugged and went on with his reading.
There was quite a silence after that where nothing could be heard but the subtle sounds of the restaurant. Perhaps it wasn’t as important to me as I thought it was. What would I do with the information when I finally found out? I suppose it was just something that I was not privy to and wanted to know because I didn’t. I relaxed a little and let the whole thing go.
“You know what?’” Andy spoke, looking up, his eyes gleaming. “I’ve never told anyone else this before, but I’m a Galactic Warrior.” He said these words with all the insanity that I had come to expect from the years I had know him, but there was something different today. Something that I could not place.
“What the Hell is a Galactic Warrior?” Rick demanded. In his hands he held the last of his hamburger and he just stared in annoyed disapproval.
“Well, I’m a warrior from a far off universe who’s in stasis right now. Me and my fellow Galactic Warriors are on a long journey at the end of which is waiting a battle.” To punctuate this he smacked down his hand on the table with a slap. “To amuse us while in stasis, they created a life for us to live out in our minds. This is the fantasy my mind has created for me.” He pointed at me and said, “You,” then gestured to everything surrounding him, “all of this,” and then he pointed to Rick and said, “and you are nothing more than figments of my imagination.”
I just stared. I didn’t know what else to do. I was sure we were dead now. I just knew it. First we wanted to know Rick’s coveted full name and then Andy took away his cigarette smoking, one-named existence.
I quickly grabbed my fortune cookie and flattened its hard shell on the table. I then reached into the shattered remains and fearfully drew out the lone slip of paper then, bringing it to my eyes, I read. “Live long and prosper.”
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Studio Fun without the sun
We haven't shot that much studio since moving to Texas, so we hauled out the lights and shot a little of me and the kids this evening. I'm not used to being the subject of pictures and do a much better job behind the camera, but I came up with a few pictures for my wife as she brushes up for a maternity session.
Some of the expressions I made were definitely inspired by the movie 300, I think.
Now the kids on the other hand were nuts but they were extremely cute.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
ENGAGE: Matt and Rhonda!
I was worried that it was going to be intolerably hot today which would make their shoot miserable for them, but the mellow summer continued and the shoot awesome. Oddly we found out today that Zilker Botanical Gardens had suddenly decided to charge $50 for a photographer to shoot in the garden. As a principle I will never pay $50 to shoot at a garden that is publicly funded by my outrageous property taxes. We only found this out the day of the shoot when we met Matt and Rhonda there to shoot. We left immediately to the Capital then went to the warehouse district and got much better pictures there then we would have at the Botanical Gardens. Those gardens are nice, but only nice enough to pay $3 to park at, nothing more. Sorry City Of Austin, but I'm a bit of a rebel.
Monday, July 23, 2007
TWO RINGS BIND THEM: Judy and Lawrence!
So we spent the night in Victoria the night before and left late in the morning to find 183 underwater on the way to Judy and Lawrence's wedding. We had to get all the way up to Driftwood and there were a couple of roads that were closed and we had to make massive detours that filled my heart with fear because I was venturing into unknown territory and I was freaked out about finding water and floating away in my little yellow Tupperware looking car.
But, God is good and there were no delays at all in getting where we needed to go even though we drove an extra 40 miles.
Judy and Lawrence were fairly quiet. I was having a heck of a time reading them when we first met. They didn't laugh at any of my bizarre humor. But I think they were just a little shy and I'm a little weird. But their ceremony was probably the sweetest one I've seen this year. They had family from Asia at their wedding and they had planned on the wedding being an opportunity to witness with a very Christian message and Communion. They said this was probably the only time these people would ever hear the Gospel in any way. It was very touching to see that and I felt very honored that they chose me to shoot their wedding. It was a great way to end my summer and start off my August vacation that I so dearly needed.
They had more guest photographers at this wedding than any wedding I have ever been to.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
TWO RINGS BIND THEM: Jessica and Jason!
Google maps kept giving my the wrong directions and was trying to make me go 40 miles further than I had to for Jess and Jace's wedding in Victoria, TX. One thing I've learned about Texas is that every city in the world is somewhere in Texas. Victoria takes the cake as the most humid, sticky place that I have ever been. Not having air conditioning was not an option here. After we found the right directions on Mapquest (Obviously the definitive source for mapping information) we drove down to Victoria and as we got close a weird scum built up on our windshield and I couldn't drive anywhere without my wipers going. It never ceases to amaze me what drives all of these little towns in the middle of no where. Jessica and Jason grew up in this town of 60,000 and returned for their wedding. Other than the humidity, it was a great place. Lots of old historical buildings. The Catholic church that the ceremony was at had these fantastic weathered metal doors. I loved the shots there. Then off to this weird converted metal barn that was flipping awesome for the reception. They partied and danced until midnight when they at last left to sleep a little before their 8 a.m. flight in Houston the following morning.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
TWO RINGS BIND THEM: Charlie and Derek!
Derek was a Longhorn at UT in Austin and had a great ring from winning against USC which is in their engagment shoot somewhere in the past on this blog. His family was somewhat obsessed with this and very proud of him.
The next day their wedding prep began at their church. Their reception was short as the newlyweds needed to get on the road to Galveston to board a cruise ship for their honeymoon the next day. Ah, people after my own heart.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
TWO RINGS BIND THEM: Ashleigh and LJ
Ashleigh and LJ were really great and I worked very hard to make this day as special as possible. The wedding was held in Rosenburg, somewhat outside of Houston which was the home town of the brides father. The family was very adament about us having a hotel the night before the wedding and the night of so as make sure we were safe for the night. The day following the wedding the bride's cousin was brought to Rosenburg to be buried.
Since we were already in town we went to their reheasal dinner and then to their rehearsal and even were invited to go with the bridal party to Houston for a fun evening of partying which we declined because we were already exhuasted from traveling from Austin.
The wedding was held in a small Catholic church in a tiny town just outside of Rosenburg.
The bride's mother's family were from Lousiana and they were all dancing maniacs. I think I need to visit New Orleans some Mardi Gras and experience the whole thing to really get a good grip on the people and customs. What's with the umbrella? They all seemed to know what to do with it! Christina was eventually dragged on the dance floor by some family member or friend towards the end of the evening. The band played for half hour after the bride and groom exited to keep the family excited while they cleaned up the hall.