A technical malfunction prevented all but a small handful their Wednesday episode, so today’s episode is mega-sized: Almost 90 minutes of Fumbling Towards Canada, a newly invented euphemism that seems to gather all sorts of meaning under its wide, flannel umbrella. Not just their health care system (which is cool) or their television programming (which rivals the BBC’s for quality shows) but the way we’ve sort of stereotyped that country here in America as being solid, and having things mostly together, and being nice. Yeah, there’s problems. There’s always problems. There’s always going to be problems. Problems like cancer taking good people too soon, and waking up at night still having nightmares about your husband’s heart exploding inside his own chest, and finding out that eight months after a personal ordeal has ended, you’re still a little emotionally wrecked, and those discoveries come at the oddest moments. But those problems seem a little bit more manageable the longer you keep Fumbling Towards Canada, to a maple-scented contentment that’s worth just as much, if not more, than millions of dollars.
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I was in a car accident where I was crossing an intersection on a green light, and I was T-boned by a car who wanted to cross the road. I distinctly remember seeing a car about to hit me, and I know there are people who will say that everything begins to feel as if everything is in slow motion. The discussion in the podcast about how one tends to remember every little millisecond of something happening to you is true. For me, I thought a number of things:
1) embrace the impact
2) oh fuck
3) oh holy fuck
I drove towards a neighborhood park as best as I could, but the damage was done to the car. Did life flash in front of me? It wasn’t as if all of a sudden I saw every good and bad event in my life, or every single positive choice and regret was squeezed into a second. The trees in the park looked “scattered” with light. Being the record loving nerd I am, it reminded me of this Beatles cover:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2ikecy0.jpg
I then thought of my mom, my sister, my nephew, my family back home, and then Hawai’i. Once the car came to a stop, I wiggled my fingers, moved my toes, tried to remember my phone number, address, social security # and what city I was in. Success on each one. My point is, sometimes we tend to forget insignificant things in our daily lives, and maybe age will do that too. Yet the moment I was hit, it was as if my brain had taken snapshots of every little element of the moment of impact. I said it felt like a few Samoans tackling me during football. I made it, the car didn’t, the guy who towed my car said I should’ve been dead due to the damage of the car. I was asked if I had an epiphany. It did lead briefly to thoughts about “I must be here for a reason”, but that was my ego talking, nothing religious by any means. It was honestly “I can’t dick around anymore and wait for things to happen, as I’ve often done.” Moments like that will make you think, rethink and revalue things, and it’s perfectly okay to break down when it affects you or those close to you. Now I deal with knee-jerk reactions if a car comes too close to the car when I’m driving but… I’m still here.
The bummer thing is the comic shop in Astoria is now gone.
Holy cow, the Bowpicker is great! My wife and I discovered them a few years ago on our way back home from camping up at Cape Disappointment, north of Ocean Park. I was not expecting something so delicious to come out of a dingy little boat like that.
Also, I agree Dan. Sad to hear about that shop closing.
I went a few months ago for the first time and was so smitten with Astoria I too had fantasies of kicking my feet up on the front porch rail of my old victorian, feeling the breeze bite as sip a whiskey ginger at sundown. God damn. I’m still thinking about that town. It reminded me, at least topographically, like a mini-San Francisco. Truly, all other towns up and down the coast are so chintzy in comparison.
Bowpicker fish is really great. Light batter, super fresh fish. Some of the best I’ve had. My other favorite food from the weekend, strangely enough: flavored popcorn from the Saturday market. There was spiced, garlic, parmesan and a few others. Made by a dorky family wearing goofy hats. Amazingly tasty. And Erik, walked around Cape Dssappointment, too. Very cool place.
Since you mentioned you like the New Yorker cartoons I thought I’d share a tip I found on the Making Light website. No matter what the original caption is replace it with the following:
“Christ, what an asshole!”
Many of the cartoons end up better, some make sense when they didn’t previously, and others just get surreal. It makes a fun game.