Show and Tell

A lot has happened since I posted last. (That was about ten months ago.) I embarked on a brief but much-needed road trip to Connecticut in March 2013, visiting family in Groton and helping a friend by hauling a van-load of personal items back to Pittsburgh from Hartford. (While in Hartford I walked around the magnificent Mark Twain House as well as the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and photographed Richard Meier's gleaming white Hartford Seminary.) My beautiful niece Ariana Genevieve--hometown Groton, CT--was born at the beginning of March. I traveled to Seattle, Portland, Mount St. Helens, Vancouver, and many points between with my loyal long-time travel partner Amanda in March, staying with other wonderful friends and their kids as our 'home base' in Tacoma between side trips. I flew to Atlanta in May for yet another good friend's wedding. My leopard gecko Luna, with me since 1997 and much-loved member of the family, finally passed away in the spring; but I also acquired a new pet, a spunky red-tail Boa constrictor named Reggie that likes to hiss a lot with his mouth open (trying to be a bad-ass...) but behaves himself once he's out of his terrarium. I sold a painting (this one) at Lawrenceville's Art All Night in April and completed my eighth consecutive Rachel Carson Trail Challenge in June.

An American five-lined skink (sometimes called blue-tail) that I found in Georgia.

In April, I participated in a benefit art and music show hosted by a group called Project Okello at Grove City College after having been contacted by one of the event organizers through Etsy. I met some really fantastic people, handed out some business cards, and enjoyed the top-notch live music provided by student groups. My friend Ryan and his son Kole stopped by as well as my parents. (Dad's a Grove City College alumnus.) I was really overwhelmed by the atmosphere of positivity, warmth, and community at this event, and although I didn't sell anything, I'm glad that I took the risk of participating.

There's been plenty of live music in the past ten months as well: Martha Wainwright, Carrie Rodriguez, Soul Asylum, Suzanne Vega, Aimee Mann with Ted Leo, The Black Keys & The Flaming Lips, Dave Matthews Band with JD McPherson, Mary Fahl, Brett Dennen with Goldspot, and the incomparable Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers featuring Edie Brickell--probably the standout show of 2013.  (We'll see if Nine Inch Nails on October 8 can top it!)

The big project of the year--ongoing but nearing completion just in time for autumn--is the reconstruction of my front porch. My long-time partner in crime Ryan and I demolished the original porch on Mother's Day. As of this writing, the cedar skirting is being installed and we still need to add the railings. I've been working with Matt Johnston of Johnston Woodworking and everything looks fantastic. It's been a long time coming, and this is one project that I'll be grateful never to have to do again (at least not on this house!). You can see photos of the porch progress here.

The rest of this post is basically a Show and Tell from the past year--no staggering literary icing, no profound sprinkles of wit, no Maraschino cherry of glowing insight, just pictures paired with brief explanations. Enjoy!

First, here are some photos of Reggie the red-tail boa:

 

 

...and a couple of Lucinda (one of my two corn snakes) just because she likes to show off from time to time:

We hauled much of the debris from my front porch up to Cochranton, PA and had ourselves a little bonfire on my friend Ryan's parents' property. Along with wood from my porch, we also incinerated paneling and other debris from a crumbling mobile home that Ryan and I spent much of the afternoon demolishing. Behold the fire:

This past summer was the third in a row that I "had a disagreement" with Poison Ivy and walked away wounded. However, I was extremely fortunate this time, owing largely to the great care that I've taken in working to trim down the evil plant where it resides in my back yard; rather than having it all over my body, I only suffered from a breakout on my right arm. No big deal (although the constant seeping is disgusting).

The adventures continued with the appearance of a sinkhole that opened up beneath my street, directly across from my house. Fortunately the Wilkinsburg borough responded relatively quickly to fill the hole in. It was a little scary considering how difficult it sometimes is to determine how deep and extensive such a hole can be, or just how serious the subterranean erosion is--especially if it's caused by a ruptured pipe or storm sewer line.

On a whim, I planted some sunflower seeds in the back yard this summer. Not only did I not expect any of them to actually grow, but it didn't matter to me. It was really just an experiment: would any of these find purchase? If yes, fantastic; if not, oh well. As a matter of fact, one hearty specimen--and one alone--did decide to take up residence. (I'm wondering if I might have accidentally weeded some of the others out before I'd realized what infant sunflower plants look like.) Here it is:

I'll conclude with a little DIY project--the creative repurposing of my old (and useless from the time I moved into the house) kitchen garbage disposal as a planter. It's doing a lot more good sticking out of the ground filled with dirt and hosting a gladiola bulb than it did producing odors of death and shameful filth beneath my sink basin for two years. Plus, it looks really cool. The photo below was taken several weeks ago; the entire bed is now finished with uniform crushed stone, decorated with interesting objects including rusty saw blades, a ceramic insulator, bathroom cup/toothbrush holders (one pink, one white), a cologne bottle, an old steak knife, and a retired paintbrush that served honorably in the name of house improvement for two years. I'll share photos of this garden of whimsical oddities at a later date.

Homeowner wins & woes

Goodness, I'm a bad little blogger.  Here we go again. I haven't posted since January--nine months ago.  Can a person even call himself a blogger if he only posts a few times a year?  Eh, who cares, right?!  It's not like I'm getting paid to do this--and, for what it's worth, I don't consider myself a real blogger anyway.  Fortunately, despite my abysmally casual commitment to this blogging hobby which borders on abandonment (with parental visits just frequent enough to avoid the tragedy of forgetting altogether), my last post really caused a stir, bringing decent-hearted human specimens from varying walks of life together under the banner of common experience--and all because of a miserable ass who enjoys attacking other people through craigslist.  Who'd have thought?!

Turtles in Central Park, New York City, August 2012.  (Photo by Michael Jehn.)

Over the past nine months, I've received numerous responses from fellow craigslist patrons who have, through no act of malice, misspoken word or knowing crime, incurred the wrath of crenovationsllc@gmail.com (whose real name, mailing address, phone number, and other juicy personal tidbits were provided by individuals who kindly responded to my January post).  I won't provoke or indulge Mr. Dan Hobbins of Gibsonia, Pennsylvania further--since I've already stooped pretty low by now--except to say:

Mr. Hobbins, I'd love to share your fruitful wisdom, your razor-sharp insight, right here on my humble blog. Please, grace us with your staggering intellectual presence, under your own name, in your own earnest and completely uncensored words.  You are welcome any time--but only if you stand behind your true identity. 

(Somehow I don't think he'll show...)

Anyway, enough with the facetiousness and on to some real news. I've called this post 'homeowner wins & woes' because I'd like to share a few of each with the world.  I'll start with a win.  The foyer flooring--a handsome dark manufactured bamboo product with a pitted, antiqued surface texture that complements the existing wood paneling and stair railings beautifully--has been installed, thanks to a lot of hard work by Mr. Matt Crowe. Sure, there were some woes associated with the win.  The bamboo wasn't my first choice for material, but the stuff I really wanted wasn't in stock at Lumber Liquidators and would have taken two months to arrive on order.  The foyer sub-floor was so uneven, the walls so untrue (i.e., not straight and precisely aligned, as opposed to "not really walls" or "walls that are lying") that we didn't get the first piece down until late afternoon on the second day.  Of course, the bamboo is so dense and solid that many of the hand-hammered nails wouldn't go in even after pilot holes had been drilled--and the nail gun simply kept splitting the tongues on the boards.  Frustration...but not defeat.

Fortunately, one new nail gun and two weeks later, the floor was complete: shiny and new (DUM, DUM, DUM--like a virgin...), glassy in its perfection, complemented by new quarter-round shoe moldings, doorway thresholds, and a brand-new $115 cast iron register grate from Signature Hardware to replace the existing one that had been so grievously molested by time and moisture that it might as well have been recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.  A final minor woe regarding the floor: every speck of dust, every tiny scratch, stands out instantly against such a dark patina.  Luckily I'm a cleaning freak.

In addition to the flooring, the foyer walls leading all the way up the stairs to the second floor have been completely repainted in a warm, inviting yellow tone called Caribbean Sunrise (win), although the amount of pre-painting plaster repair necessary was unbelievable (woe) and painting itself, especially above the stairs and the stained glass window--where I teetered precariously on an old chair resting atop a haphazard pile of furring strips and plywood scraps stretched between the second stair landing and the top rung of a ladder (disaster waiting to happen but thankfully avoided)--was a total bitch (woe).  The heinous old mini-fridge-sized air conditioner in the foyer window that I couldn't even use because its plug doesn't fit standard outlets is gone (win) and my metal scrap-collecting neighbor Dave helped me get it out of the window and took it for me so I didn't even have to worry about how to dispose of it (win) and the tacky-as-sin paneling that had been hammered in above the air conditioner is gone (win) and, miraculously, the original double-hung sash window was hiding inside (win) and is in terrific shape!

Furthermore, my mom--who is awesome--found very cheap, very hip curtains for both the entryway window and the living room window that perfectly fit the mid-century modern look that I'm going for (win).  By the end of the year, I should have the rest of the stair treads painted and the two landings professionally carpeted; the second-floor hallway floorboards will finally be painted within the next month; the master bedroom on the second floor will be remodeled by mid-December including drywall and carpeting; and, with any luck, I'll be getting a new front porch in the spring.  (Matthew Johnston, if you're reading this, please let me know whether or not you still want the job; it's been a while since I've heard from you!)

I will end with one last, but lingering, woe: I've been having a lot of trouble getting rid of one of my tenants.  Call him whatever you'd like--Stefan, Sylvester, Simon or Salvatore--since I'm not going to reveal his actual name on the Internet.  The guy's got a lot of serious issues that I had not anticipated and am not professionally equipped to deal with: chronic hoarding, poor hygiene, and a manner of aloof passivity that I didn't even think was possible.  He's so unassertive, so lacking in proactive initiative or self-defense--of ideas, personal needs, or opinions, I mean--, that I've wanted to scream out loud on countless occasions.  I was a fool for having allowed him to move in at all, my judgement blinded by the prospect of quick, easy rent money; for this I accept full responsibility.  Per our original verbal agreement, pursuant to the lease, he was supposed to have been vacated by the end of September; but, as I should have expected, he managed to completely avoid moving out, and naturally he failed to communicate any concerns or unexpected snags to me ahead of time (lack of communication being another one of his issues).  I granted him another full month.  He didn't move out--and then the trashy wet week-long misery delivered by superstorm Sandy created a scenario in which I wouldn't have wanted people trudging into and out of my house repeatedly anyway, tracking leaves and mud everywhere.

So, my tenant has until November 15th, and that's final.  No more excuses, no more bullshit, no more house projects delayed by his frustrating ineptitude.  If he attempts to linger for one more day, he will encounter a front door whose lock has been changed upon return.  On the bright side, at least he's a harmless soul who wouldn't intentionally harm another breathing creature--or, for that matter, likely utter a profane word--if a gun were pressed to his temple.  I wish him joy, prosperity, and fulfillment in all his future endeavors, and openly acknowledge that he is probably a better person than I shall ever hope to become; but I also want him the hell out of my place.  Is that so much to ask for?!

One57 luxury apartment and condominium tower under construction in midtown Manhattan, August 2012. (Photo by Michael Jehn.)  The construction crane visible in the photo was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Stupidity: when it comes to people, you can count on it!

People are really damned stupid. Not you, of course. Not everyone. Just...a lot of people. Give stupid people a forum for unbridled self-expression like the Internet and their stupidity--manifest in the form of irredeemably idiotic blog rants, self-incriminating photographs, belligerent discussion board personas, relentless strings of unrestrained typo-laden Tweets, less-than-pointless YouTube clips, you name it--will flourish like bacteria on the floor of an Interstate rest stop bathroom (especially during those frantically busy holiday travel periods when the janitors can't get in there often enough to push stinky pink bleachy bacteria-murdering stuff around with the mop). For the record, I will attempt to demonstrate here and now that this is not an irredeemably idiotic blog rant; but that's ultimately for you to decide, not me.

Anyway, I would like to share a recent instance of incredible--yet sadly typical--human stupidity with you. No, I'm not referring to the capsizing of the Costa Concordia cruise liner off the Italian coast. That was certainly stupid, avoidable, tragic--which is nothing to say of the captain's criminal egotism or staggering cowardice--, but that story is not my own. No, my story is about linoleum flooring. Specifically, it's about my attempts to recycle some old linoleum flooring from my house for artistic purposes by offering it for free on Craig's List. That act in particular is not the stupid part, but let me explain.

Last week, after months of procrastination, I finally got around to downloading about 400 images from my digital camera to my computer. Among these were photographs of the linoleum flooring that decades ago had graced one of the bedrooms in my house--a bedroom that had clearly once been a nursery or baby's room before it was carpeted and turned into Mrs. Brown's dressing room, complete with an enormous vanity and the most gratuitously large collection of [mostly unused] makeup products that I have ever seen outside of a department store. Here are a few photos of what I like to refer to as the creepy nursery flooring:

Here's another photo that illustrates some of the other cute figures that appear in the flooring, like kittens and chickens (on wheels?!), rabbits and piggy banks, even a camel:

I knew that the flooring wasn't in fantastic shape; but it's certainly unique, rare, slightly endearing, definitely amusing--and a potential goldmine for artists who use such materials. Thus, I posted on Craig's List, as I have done on many occasions before, this time offering any and all of this linoleum flooring for free to anyone of creative persuasion willing to stop by and check it out.

One of the first individuals to respond said this (and only this): "some of that old flooring was made with aspestas."  Okay... Appreciate the warning, but, um, that's not even how you spell "asbestos." Granted, I could have been a snarky shit by responding to that effect but I simply thanked this person for the concern and forgot about it.

Now, here's where the stupid comes in. The very next day I received this response to my earnest attempt at freecycling from the faceless dunce hiding behind the e-mail address crenovationsllc@gmail.com: 

LOL !  You must be drunk ! IT"S GARBAGE ! Where do you drunken nuts come from ?  Did it ever occur to you that the" VINTAGE" linoleum has "VINTAGE" asbestos in it?

Okay, stupid! I thought to myself. You wanna show the world how unequivocally stupid YOU are by attempting to make a fairly smart person feel stupid?! Think you can get away with jabbing an honest gent who happens to enjoy a good stiff drink now and again? HUH?!  And this is how I responded:

Drunk?!  Occasionally, absolutely, but not when I posted (to the best of my knowledge...) and certainly not right now.

Honestly, what was the point of your responding to my post if your only accomplishment was to sound like an ignoramus fuck?  Why do you think that I'm giving this stuff away as opposed to trying to sell it?  Clearly you're not familiar with the fact that some people actually use this material for art.

www.billmillerart.com

If even one person can or will use this linoleum to create something funky, unique, beautiful or inspiring, why NOT give it away as opposed to tossing it in the trash?  One last thing: asbestos is only dangerous when large quantities of it are inhaled in airborne particulate form.  Working with materials that contain asbestos can be done safely as long as one protects oneself from airborne particles--especially when those materials aren't known to crumble into clouds of fine dust.

Do a little research before trying to sour perfect strangers' evenings with your abusive ignorance, chap.  In plain English, get a fucking life.

So there you have it. I never heard back from the prick, in case you were wondering. Maybe the universe afforded him a moment of clarity just potent enough to recognize that he, in fact, was incorrect about something. But probably not. In all likelihood my response was deleted without ever having been read. You know, my mom was right years ago when, during any one of a number of arguments, she would rhetorically remark You always have to have the last word, don't you? DON'T you?! Yes, mom, and I still do.

Before I finish, I would like to share one final example of stupidity--or whatever you want to call it--that I have encountered perhaps half a dozen times in the past few weeks. Perhaps you've seen it yourself:

The day that I first encountered--and subsequently screen-captured--this particular web artifact, I was enjoying an uneventful music-supplemented morning at work doing something or other on the computer. (At that very moment, as you can tell, I was listening to songs by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour--one of the best guitarists of all time--on YouTube.) So, you ask, what qualifies this as an example of stupidity? The claim, boldly splashed across the top of the image like a front page newspaper headline, that Jesus Christ is Lord? No, certainly not. Lots of people believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. The fact that an online Christian dating service is trying to seduce me and thousands of other unsuspecting viewers with an image of a generic bleach-blond Barbie slut who, for all I know, could boast a laundry list of mastered (and commercially available) filthy acts that would put poor Mary Magdalene to shame? BINGO! I can think of some other things to call it, too: shamelessly desperate. Tacky. Sad. 

* * *

Oh, and to the blond girl in the image: I'm sorry for the things I said. You're probably a very nice girl. I just hope that that particular shot of you doesn't appear in your high school yearbook anywhere. Or as your Facebook profile photo.

A funny little zombie poem to whet your appetite

I'm a little ashamed that I haven't posted anything new in months. Nothing informative, nothing clever, nothing insightful. Nothing. Then suddenly this zombie poem idea comes along and I figure that I should post it just to see what happens. (Certainly, the dead will not rise as a result of my desire for attention on the Internet--at least not this time.) In the past few months I've become enamored with AMC's The Walking Dead for numerous reasons, like so many millions of other zombie-lovers and TV-lovers in general. It's a harrowing, approachable, highly addictive post-apocalyptic narrative of surprising depth and restrained programmatic saturation (which is to say, each season is limited to a relatively small number of episodes); horror fans are guaranteed to crave the impressive realism of the gore and makeup effects as well as the suspense and the timeless appeal of a familiar modern American landscape--in this case, downtown Atlanta and surrounding rural environs--transformed by total zombie plague, while those who appreciate dramatic television writing will find themselves easily attracted to the substance of the program's characters: easy to identify with, relatively non-cliched, and refreshingly genuine.


Recently I thought that it would be amusing (at least to me) to write the synopsis--essentially in the form of a theatrical trailer's creepo Vincent Price-style narration or the description on the back of a video sleeve--for a highly ridiculous fictional zombie film called Lighthouse of the Living Dead. Why a lighthouse?! I don't know. I like lighthouses. I love the ocean. I'm intrigued by the idea of a seaside town besieged by hungry walking corpses. There's a lot of atmosphere in just about any seaside environment, you know. Especially when the weather's gone foul. Anyway, the synopsis became a bit unwieldy; I wanted to pack too much detail into it, and my tendency toward rhythm and sound-play--brimming with alliteration and internal rhyme as so many of my poems are--began to foster a beast that was something more than a long-form movie tag line. So, folks, here you have it: the lovingly polished (and utterly melodramatic) description, in prose poem form--divided into quatrains because I don't know why (other than they looked good at the time)--of a movie that almost certainly will never exist. And if it ever does, I want to work Justin Bieber in there somewhere in a breakout role that will blow the world's feeble celebrity-drunk mind. No, Justin Bieber will not appear naked in the film. The only thing that will appear naked--many times over--is the juicy abomination of human victims' eviscerated digestive tracts strewn in steaming piles across brine-coated tide pool rocks beneath the early morning sun. Cheers! 

Lighthouse of the Living Dead

Beneath the cruel indifferent darkness of night,

guided only by the moon's deceptive glow

and the distant pulsing beam atop their trusty

seaside landmark, they risked deadly cliffs

and biting winds in a desperate flight to survive—

to witness the sun’s triumphant rise into a new

tomorrow, a better world.  A chance to start again.

They prayed the relentless fetid zombie masses,

horrific shambling shells of former family

and companions Hell-bent on their quest for flesh,

would never find them there.  The lucky few

who reached that ancient brick bastion of might

against the gales and tides believed they’d be safe.

But the light betrays them.  The goddamned

lighthouse beacon.  Round and round and round

it turns, cutting miles through the night.

Round and round and round.  And round.

(And round.)   Panic rises when the townsmen find

there's no way to turn the bastard off—

stairs to the lamp room chained and locked,

keeper hanged from the rafters in despair

by rigging rope and a suicide note lying crumpled

on the floor by his corncob pipe.  Outside,

amidst the swiftly shifting sea oats just beyond

the wave-wet rocks, there’s alarming movement

all around them barely visible in the blackness,

evil groans and shrieks carried on the wind

growing closer by the moment.

Now they are pretty fucked.

House progress -- photos and notes

Warning: this post probably won't be very interesting to folks who don't know me and/or are not even remotely interested in following progress on my house. However, if you are interested, this post is just for you!  Yes, you!  That makes you a very special person indeed.

First, a few shots of one of the two third-floor bedrooms, AKA Wayne's Room, AKA the Pisces Room.  These photos were taken at the beginning of July and lovingly illustrate not only the criminally nasty green color of the room but also the scope of the necessary plaster repair work which took us more than a week to complete and was extremely messy during the sanding process (but turned out not to be nearly as torturous as one might think, especially after having had a fair amount of practice on a previous room).  Back in the day, when young Wayne Brown occupied the room, he was obviously offered a pretty generous helping of creative freedom and ran with it.  Zodiac Pisces was painted on the ceiling in purple splendor, visible in the photo showing my friend Dan working.  The walls were also pockmarked with approximately four million pushpin holes.  Thankfully, both third-floor bedrooms are now complete with fresh white walls and ceilings, newly painted window sills, and clean hardwood floors that don't even really need to be refinished.  (When I first bought the house, those hardwood floors were hiding beneath mid-century linoleum sheet flooring and quasi-zebra print carpeting that would blow your mind.)  All I need to do now is update the electrical outlets on the third floor, mostly so that window air conditioners can be safely installed (thereby rendering sweltering barely-inhabitable-in-the-summertime rooms comfortable for tenants!).

 

Next, the glorious back yard, also taken at the beginning of July.  Throughout much of June, and much to my embarrassment, a large portion of the back yard was a bombastic fast-expanding tangle of chest-high weeds--in other words, an honest-to-God Pennsylvania jungle.  Many hours of sweaty labor later (not to mention an extremely unpleasant case of poison oak that left pus-oozing sores all over my forearms and itchy rashes everywhere else, including above one eye and all over my male parts), the yard was tamed.  Since these photos were taken, the patch of grass in the middle of the yard has been trimmed; a compost bin has been purchased and placed in the back corner of the yard; several new plants have been added to the collection, including Northern sea oats (a type of tall decorative grass), chives, and a tiny little gingko sappling; and the rusty green steel pipe in the middle of the brick pathway has been removed and given to my neighbor to sell for scrap.  Next Monday, a gentleman from the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association will install a large rain barrel at the corner of the house, meaning that the innanely-installed PVC pipe running across the patio (and causing all kinds of erosion damage every time it rains hard) will be gone!

Finally, some recent photos of the front yard, a true obsession of mine in the landscaping project department and a seemingly never-ending work in progress.  (Wait, isn't that the whole house?!)  Little by little I've been acquiring large rocks and extremely heavy chunks of slag metal (mostly from a debris pile in Duquesne, PA, on a riverfront wasteland property once occupied by the Duquesne Works steel mill) to use both as retaining wall along the sidewalk and as decoration throughout the yard.  These unique objects, which look almost like rocks except for their oxidized surfaces and graphite-gray metallic textures, have turned out to be the ideal landscape feature for my yard--heavy enough to create a durable, permanent barrier and a fitting found-art tribute to Pittsburgh's legacy.  The red-brown pine bark mulch that I chose is also a perfect fit for the house, although as long as the retaining wall remains unfinished, and until I can reroute the downspout rainwater through underground pipes and out to the sidewalk, the mulch and much of the bare soil is at risk of washing into the sidewalk every time we experience a heavy downpour.  (This has happened twice now.  The first time it happened I spent almost half an hour shoveling mud out of the sidewalk and back onto my hill.  That kind of made me want to scream and break things.  Instead I got dressed and went to work and was bitter all day.)  Next spring or summer, provided that I have some money saved up, I plan to rebuild the entire front porch deck.  I'll feel a lot better about the house in general once that project's done!