The Maverick Tribe - life

Back from vacation

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:05:00 +0200

I've been away for the last week on the Yucatan Peninsula. A much needed break from this increasingly depressing campaign. I'll get back on the saddle soon.

Call me Calango

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:15:00 +0100

Those of you Mavericktribesmen and -women who hang out with me on a regular basis know that my latest pursuit that I simply won't shut up about is capoeira. Capoeira is a martial artform developed and practiced in Brazil by slaves of African descent (most are thought to trace their roots to Angola, and capoeira is probably derived from cultural traditions practiced there). Stories about capoeira's genesis differ, but one theory holds that the slaves wanted to practice their fighting skills without their Portuguese slaveowners knowing, so they disguised their practice as a song and dance routine. The art of capoeira is the result.

So anyway, in a couple weeks I'll be participating in my capoeira school's Batizado ("baptism"), where I'll be getting my color cord (similar to a particular color belt in karate). At this time I'll be officially christened "Calango". Don't ask me why I got this name... calango is the portuguese word for a type of lizard. Is there something about me that's reptilian? Well at least I didn't get Pao de Azucar ("sugarloaf"), which was (somewhat callously) given to a fellow newbie who is, shall we say, a tad on the chunky side.

Here's a taste of capoeira heavy on the acrobatics:

Here's a short reel about my school:

Happiness, distilled

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 06:35:00 +0100

My favorite little 2-year-old Nico brought his parents Tina and Stefano to Hawaii recently. Here he is showing them how to swim:

This photo belongs in a travel brochure with the caption: "Bask in the warm Kauai breeze with a 4-day/3-night package your whole family will love."

Installing Windows

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 06:10:00 +0100

And, no, I'm not talking about Microsoft. It's window time for "my" house. The place is totally framed and the plywood sheathing is on there, so on Friday I learned what it takes to install a window. I also learned how not to install a window, i.e., positioning and nailing it in without remembering to put on the flashing first.

I promised some pictures last time so here goes.

Here's more or less what it'll look like when it's done:

Another day at Habitat

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:25:00 +0200

So today I put in another day at Habitat for Humanity. This is the fourth time I've been out at the site. Today we worked on putting up some plywood sheathing. The first two floors are framed, and we spent a lot of time on what will eventually become the attic crawlspace. I sharped my skills with power saws (circular, reciprocating). By the end of the day my hammering arm was a little sore.

The Habitat crowd is about what you'd expect: liberal, crunchy, hipster, generally vegan, and uniformly white. At lunch someone loaned a Noam Chomsky book to someone else. Another guy named JoJo, who probably dresses up like some sort of jester at the Renaissance Fair, went around asking everyone what their "spirit animal" was. (His was the satyr-panda -- and no, I don't know what that is either. He even drew a picture of one on plywood with his pencil. All of it was slightly Napoleon Dynamite but without the autism.) Someone else was chowing down on a "Soy-rizo", which is, as was explained to me, a meatless, soy-based version of chorizo. Yum.

A freckly blonde gave me a personality test where she had me describe a cube, a sphere, a horse, and their relative placements to each other, and the sphere represents your life, and the color of the sphere represents your personality, and the horse represents... eh, who the fuck cares. Building stuff is fun.

Here's a picture I found of some of the completed homes. (I'll take my own pics the next time I go out.)

My House

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:45:00 +0200

Today I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. One of my goals for the month of August was to do some volunteer work, and building a house seemed more rewarding than spooning out beef stew to the homeless. Early this morning, I dragged myself out of bed and with apprehension made my way over to the constuction site, not knowing exactly what to expect. (I have about as much experience with carpentry as Charles Bukowski had with sobriety.)

The site was in one of the many drab, foggy neighborhoods in San Francisco that most people never visit or even hear about. Prosaic, square housing units crowd up against winding streets. (These are, apparently, the scrappy and proud anti-Victorians.) The occasional resident, usually Asian, ambles down the sidewalk. Everywhere one looks, grey is the dominant color.

The houses already built by Habitat are, by contrast, cheerfully painted and architectually creative, if not particularly ornate. They neither patronize nor condescend to the surrounding neighborhood.

The house we were working on was little more than a foundation. The site was being supervised by a friendly lesbian named Erin (or Aaryn? I don't know how lesbians spell it). She looked tan and healthy, and born to wear a toolbelt. The day pretty much went like this:

Erin/Aaryn: Here's a shovel. Dig this ditch.

Me: Ok.

Erin/Aaryn: Here's an industrial-size power drill. Drill seventy holes in these 4-by-12's.

Me: Ok.

Erin/Aaryn: Here are some bags of cement mix. Mix up some cement and pour it.

Me: Ok.

And so on. And I don't know what else I can say about this day except that I loved it. It was the perfect antidote to sitting in cubicle, sifting through emails, worrying about PowerPoint decks. Digging and moving dirt around was good exercise and meditative to boot. Drilling all those holes nurtured my perfectist urges, as with each one I strived to manuever the drill such that the hole was exactly straight and precisely centered in the right place.

At the end of the day, my hands were sore, but in a satisfying way, not in that pinched, tense way one's hand and wrist get sore by operating a mouse. As I thanked Erin/Aaryn and walked back to my car, I absently passed my hand over the burn in the back of my neck which was bright red. And I recognized a strange, parental attachment to the house. I wanted to see how it was going to grow, and have my hand in its development. And most of all, I didn't want any of those hack volunteers of tomorrow to mess it up.

Jake and Noe Valley - together again

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Wed, 8 Aug 2007 01:15:00 +0200

Well, as of the first of this month, I'm back living in Noe Valley. It has been one of those years of going hither and thither, and I hope I'll be staying here for the time being. I found a great house owned by a friendly guy named Rick, a stone's throw from where I lived around five years ago.

Deep Thought (Inspired by last night)

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:15:00 +0200

As I gaze into your eyes, bathed in moonlight, my naked body quivers, your ninja costume shuffles, and as Scott snaps a picture, I wonder, What will we say if a park ranger finds us?

File Under 'Life is Fragile'

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 02:50:00 +0200

Up here on my current little perch at Alamo Square I've been surveying a landscape fraught with peril lately. First there was the Kadner family's havoc on the highways (the friend I'm staying with, Debra, and her brother both had serious auto accidents earlier this year), then there was the sudden death of local newsman Pete Wilson on Friday night (not to be confused with former California governor Pete Wilson). Pete anchored the Channel 7 evening news and hosted an afternoon show on an affiliated talk radio network, KGO. The man went in for hip replacement surgery and during it had a massive heart attack, which claimed his life.

I am haunted by this whole ordeal not because I'm a huge Pete Wilson fan or because I'm naive about the possibility of catastrophe on the operating table, or because Pete affected my life in any meaningful way. But I was listening to his radio show just last Wednesday, his last day at work before the surgery. And the final topic of discussion was his imminent surgery, where he invited listeners to call in and recount their operating room horror stories. One caller claimed that doctors had inadvertantly left various pieces of hardware inside his cousin's abdominal cavity. Another caller described having an adverse reaction to morphine wherein he was completely sentient to the pain of the surgery but couldn't move or speak. Pete's colleague Gene Burns talked about the blood-curdling experience of doctors having to literally break his neck while he was under merely a local anaesthetic. Listening to all these harrowing tales made Pete feel better for some reason.

So there I was, at Debra's place, washing the windows, chuckling with Pete about these surgical mishaps. That Pete would suffer the ultimate mishap was unbeknownst to both of us.

Back in San Francisco

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:30:00 +0200

I've been back in San Francisco now for over a week. And, long story short, I'm single again. I'm hoping the second half of 2007 isn't quite the emotional rollercoaster that the first half was.

Let the couch surfing begin

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:40:00 +0100

The night before I was to leave for Brazil, David W, a (former!) coworker of mine who happens to live near the airport, was nice enough to let me stay over at his place, so I wouldn´t need to sleep on the floor of my now barren apartment. So here is the first couch of a whole succession of couches that I´m likely to be privy to over the next couple of weeks to months:

All in all, it was very good. A very good firmness, and a two-cushioner, which mean fewer cracks for appendages to get lodged into while sleeping. I would definitely sleep on this couch again should the situation arise.

The Real World 2003

noreply@blogspirit.com (Jake) — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 23:35:00 +0100

(Ed. note: This piece is recycled from a contribution the author made to his friend Randy's traditional "Year in (P)Review 2003/2004". Don't be confused by the author's use of the third person. The author and his subject are actually one and the same -- unlike yours truly, the editor, and the author, who are two completely different people. -- MT)

Looks like it's time for another update on this bastard form of Reality TV known to most of us as... "reality".

Last season began routinely enough with our hero, Jake, fresh from a mission in the cantankerous wilds of conurban London and gainfully employed in the Bay Area. Alas, it wasn't long before the storms of our modern economy advanced upon Silicon Valley, precipitating pink slips high and low. Single, jobless, and sequestered at the Kadner Inn with his friend, co-star and fellow economic-fallout victim Debra, Jake suddenly found himself with a lot of time on his hands. He was primed for a May sweeps month chock full of blossoming romance, intrigue, and betrayal. But after Elimidating the handful of potential mates allowed through the white picket gates of Kadner Inn, our Bachelor and Bachelorette fell into regular episodes of cooking and gardening, and not much blossomed save the plum tree out back.

Fearful the producers would sell off the domestic and sexually tepid "Kadner Inn" to PBS, Jake and Debra cancelled the series and went off on their respective Amazing Races; Debra to Madagascar, Turkey, and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia; Jake to Singapore and Bali. Negotiating successfully the dangers of terrorism, SARS, and airline food was apparently not enough to garner a cash prize, but they did both manage to return home safely.

Speaking of cash, Jake was in dire need of it by this point. (The unemployment consolation prize in California is a mere $1300 per month.) Luckily, he was cast in a surefire attention-grabber: a San Francisco start-up called Rapt, Inc. Audiences just can't keep their eyes off it. Under the auspices of Rapt, Jake has been involved for the latter part of this year in a consulting engagement with the online advertising business at Yahoo!, Inc.

The wedding is scheduled for the season finale.

Here's hoping all of you have had a blockbuster year in the Nielsons, and that 2004 will bring a series of madcap adventures neatly fitting into 60-minute time slots.

...and don't forget to vote you-know-who off the island in November!