Steven Rubio's Online Life

the kind of stuff i’d have to write if this was a real column

Several hundred words about daylight saving time, for instance. I don’t have to write those words, because this is a blog, and I only write what I want. Still, I thought of the following DST-related items:

My maternal grandmother used to complain twice a year about daylight saving time. Her argument was always the same … cows didn’t know the clocks had changed, so DST just screwed up the lives of farmers. As I write this, I realize that for all I know, she never even lived on a farm. She was from Kentucky, but I don’t know what her family did when she was there. And one other thing. Daylight saving time was implemented in the U.S. in 1918. So my grandmother, unlike everyone I know who is still alive, actually lived before we had DST. Lots of us lived without DST, though, since the initial try lasted less than a year, and it wasn’t until 1966 that the Uniform Time Act gave some semblance of organization to daylight saving time. As far as I can recall, California has had DST since before I was born.

I lived in Indiana in 1971-2. A few years ago, Indiana elected to observe DST, but when I lived there, things were confusing in the extreme. First, much of the state did not observe daylight saving time. Much, but not all … there were a couple of areas near big cities in other states (Cincinnati, Louiville) that did use DST. Also, there were two different time zones in Indiana, which was mostly in the Eastern Time Zone … the part of the state near Chicago was on Central Time (I assume so workers who commuted to Chicago wouldn’t change time zones every time they went to work), and they practiced DST.

Finally, there’s the act of changing the clocks. In our house, I’m the one who performs this chore. But in recent years, it barely needs doing. In rooms where there is a cable box, we use the box when we wonder what time it is, and they reset automatically. For the 18 hours a day I spend on the computer, I use its clock … and it resets automatically. I don’t wear a watch anymore … I use my cell phone if I’m out and about and need to know the time, and it resets automatically. In the bedroom, my Internet radio sits at my bedside … and it resets the time automatically. I think when we were first married, it was some odd mark of incipient adulthood when I, rather than my father, reset the clocks. Now, that job is up in the clouds.

And that’s 452 words about daylight saving time.

what am us, anyway (spanish-american division)

I was reading an essay by Ilan Stavans about Cabeza de Vaca and came across this:

[A]nthologies and literary histories often name Cabeza de Vaca as the “first Latino writer” – a problematic label, given that most accounts of Latino identity stress mestizo origins, whereas he was a Spaniard with nothing to say on the topic of intermarriage.

This got me thinking once again about my identity. I am Spanish-American, 50/50, and there aren’t a lot of us. Wikipedia has this to say about Spanish Americans (no hyphen … I don’t know why):

The decrease in the flow of Spaniards to the United States in recent decades, combined with their ability and willingness to form part of both the Hispanic sector and the society at large, has largely obscured any specifically Spanish presence in the States. As Europeans, Spaniards are the Hispanics who are the least different from the country's predominantly European cultural and racial origins; they are often perceived as less alien than other ethnic groups, and are more readily accepted into American society.

There is also a Wiki-page, “List of Spanish Americans,” that defines us as “European Americans who have predominantly Spanish (European) ancestry. Also, people who claim ‘Spanish’ or ‘Spaniard’ as one of their two ethnic ancestries are also included in this list, e.g.: Martin Sheen.” (Among the listees: Lynda Carter, Cameron Diaz, Jerry Garcia, and Keith Hernandez.)

I thought to ask Google “are spaniards …” but I wasn’t sure how to finish that. Hispanic? Latino? But when I typed “are spaniards” into Google, the first suggested auto-fill was “white.” And that’s funny, because while I often wonder “what am I,” I never think I’m not white. I get all of the advantages our society offers to white people … no one would look at me and think I wasn’t “white” (in part, I suppose, because there aren’t very many of “us” … people probably think I’m Italian-American). But apparently Google assumes the question I want answered is “are Spaniards white?”

I got stuff like this, in answer to someone’s query, “Are Spaniards white or Hispanic?” “Hispanic, most spaniards are brownish. Many of them are in denial though and like to tell people they are ‘white’, but its not true. They are dark.”

As far as I can tell, “Hispanic” is used by the U.S. census as an identifier. Their definition of “Hispanic” changes every ten years, apparently, so they don’t really know what one is, either. These days, “Hispanic or Latino” is used, I think. (If you’ve read this far, you can probably tell I’m confused.)

So … am I Latino? I don’t think so, that seems like a co-option of cultures I don’t deserve. Am I Hispanic? I usually say yes on forms I fill out, but as the above demonstrates, I don’t really know what Hispanic is. As for the most accurate description of my background, “Spanish-American” (with or without hyphen), I’m not sure I feel a kinship with Lynda Carter and Keith Hernandez. Although maybe I should reconsider Hernandez … his grandfather was from Malaga.

20 years

Early in the life of this blog, I wrote about my memories of the ‘89 earthquake. Many times since then, I’ve linked to that post, so I don’t have to tell the story again. It’s mundane … was at the World Series, lived to tell the tale, took five hours to get home. About the only thing I can think to say on this anniversary is that My Quake really wasn’t special at all. Virtually every reminiscence I’ve read of people who were at Candlestick is the same (quake, survived, took five hours to get home). In that sense, at least, natural disasters bring out the commonalities in us all.

And so, for another year, a shout out to Laura, who was with me at the game, and who drove us home that night. We are bonded together forever thanks to that night.

know your neighbors

I’m out in front of my house talking to a friend, when a nice woman pulls up in her car and asks if I live there (as she points at my house). Yes, I say, going over to talk to her … I see she has a nice doggie sitting in the passenger seat. She asks how long I’d lived there, but before I had time to answer, she said “you’ve got two kids, a boy and a girl, and some cats, am I right?” Yes, I say, how did you know that? She points to the end of our block, to the corner house, and says “I’ve lived there since 1984.”

We moved here in 1987. So that’s 22 years, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this woman before in my life. She was quite charming … I assured her my status as a hermit and as someone who works online explained why she never sees me. We talked for awhile, and she remembered back to the earthquake in ‘89 (for those of you outside the Bay Area, everyone is thinking about that right now). She remembered how worried the kids were, Sara in particular … Robin and I weren’t home, if I recall correctly my brother was staying with us then, and he might have been there, but basically, the biggest freakout of our lives happened and Sara, who was 11 then, had no parents around. So this woman remembered that, and we talked about life and the neighborhood, and I told her that Neal and Sara were in their 30s now and were everything a proud parent could ask for. She was astonished that they were that old … in her mind, Sara is still 11.

So, my life in a nutshell: a very nice woman who has lived a few houses down from me for the last 22 years, and I just met her for the first time.

i wish i was special

Last Xmas, my brother David noticed something about the Rubio family get together, which culminated in a spirited session of Rock Band:

A strange thing happened at this family event that hadn't occurred before. It was like a "passing of the torch" to the next generation of Rubios. Somewhere after dinner, I realized I was sitting in an "elders" place in the room as were most of my siblings. The "kids" were now promoting the activities and direction of the party. My memories see my parents sitting at their table watching us "young-uns" enjoying ourselves and having a good time doing just that. Likewise, it felt okay to be sitting while the kids did their thing. More so I think because I knew I could jump into the mix at any time and be welcome. Just the same, it was an odd revelation.

In 2000, Nick Hornby famously reviewed the Radiohead album Kid A:

You have to work at albums like "Kid A." You have to sit at home night after night and give yourself over to the paranoid millenial atmosphere as you try to decipher elliptical snatches of lyrics and puzzle out how the titles ("Treefinger," "The National Anthem," and so on) might refer to the songs. In other words, you have to be sixteen … I suspect that people who have been listening to music for decades will have exhausted the fund of trust they once might have had for "challenging" albums. "Kid A" demands the patience of the devoted; both patience and devotion become scarcer commodities once you start picking up a paycheck.

Hornby was then famously attacked for his “I’m an old geezer” review:

[T]his is a band that hates you, Nick Hornby, you and your ilk, with your philistine taste and the abominable arrogance which allows you to claim you know what rock-and-roll ought to be about.

Somewhere in all of this, my feelings about Sleater-Kinney’s “hiatus” fit:

Because, as I said at the time, I knew that … I would never again obsess as much about a musician as I did about Sleater-Kinney. I was in my mid-50s …

Today, a Facebook friend posted a note about Pitchfork’s #1 album of the 2000s, saying it was “predictable but a good choice, nonetheless.” It is a sign of my own Old Geezer status that while I am aware of Pitchfork’s importance in the world of contemporary music criticism, I never actually read it. Still, seeing my friend’s comment, I mentally imagined what that “predictable” #1 album would be, then checked the Pitchfork site to see what was the actual #1. As I commented to my friend, both he and I were right: it was predictable enough that even I knew the winner would be Radiohead’s Kid A.

Pitchfork, and Radiohead, and Kid A, are the music culture equivalent of the youngsters at last year’s family Xmas party. It’s their turn. I’m a fossil who prefers Nick Hornby to Pitchfork or Radiohead.

I have nothing interesting to say about the actual Kid A album. I’m pretty sure I’ve never listened to it all the way through. As I wrote this, I played the four songs from the album that I had on my hard drive. A couple made for good background music … none of them sucked. But the only Radiohead song I know well enough to love remains “Creep.”

I will note that Kid A came out in 2000. Four of the top ten albums on the list were released that year … three others came out in 2001, and only one came out in the latter part of the decade (2007). This, to me, is the most important thing to learn from the Pitchfork list: albums don’t matter the way they used to. I may be a geezer, but in this I am as modern as the next guy: I don’t listen to albums, I listen to tracks. I have 14 Radiohead songs on my hard drive, no more than 5 from any single album.

But mostly, this is all about being a geezer. Not that I didn’t already know that. I still love music, I still listen to it regularly, I still listen to new music. But in the larger culture of pop music, I am one of those elders, past my sell-by date, telling Radiohead to get offa my lawn, and ignoring Pitchfork.

happy birthday, robin!

Thank you! ILY!!!

i read the news today, oh boy

Zen Habits:

What’s the fastest way to get a task off your to-do list?

Just delete it … or don’t put it there in the first place. …

Because not doing it at all is often the best way to get things done.

Phil Plait:

Incidentally, saying that the Universe is meaningless doesn’t imply there’s no reason to live. What I am saying is that there is no direction to the Universe, no intent, no internal morals or purpose or meaning. But we still exist. People look for meaning in everything, even when it isn’t there, and it can lead them astray. …

And finally, don’t ask what I think the meaning or purpose of life is. I think it has neither, but that makes it no less magnificent or joyous to me. I know what I want my life to be like, and I have enough real questions to keep me busy for a thousand lifetimes. I don’t feel the need to look for ones that aren’t there.

who am us, anyway?

It might seem odd coming from someone who has spent close to 8 years writing about himself on the Internet, but I have a very shaky notion of who I am. For whatever reason, I don’t trust my own senses … I need to have someone else tell me that what I see is really there. Combine this with my deep-seated self-absorption, and you’ve got someone who loves to read what other people say about him. Because if I tell you something about myself, it should be taken with a grain of salt, but if someone else says something about me, I believe it 100%.

Which is why, even though this never occurred to me, I find it fascinating that Profe over at Latino Like Me says of me that I have the “unique perspective of being a baby boomer with genX sensibilities.” First, it’s just an honor to get props from Tomás. But also, I like having a new way to explain my tweener identities. In terms of cultural/historical events/movements, I’m a tweener. I was only 3 when Elvis recorded “Hound Dog.” My teenage ambition was to be a hippie, but that’s just it: I was only 14 during the Summer of Love. I had fantasies of being a punk in the late-70s, but by then, I was in my 20s, with a wife, two kids, and a job as a steelworker.

But it’s not just the music I listened to that gave me tweener-itis. I’m a hyphenate American, half whitey, half Spaniard. But even there, I barely have access to “real” tweener status. To say you are half-Spanish is to say you are 100% white European. My roots don’t reach back to Pancho Villa, but to Hernán Cortés. My childhood is more accurately reflected in Steven Spielberg movies than in My Family, Mi Familia. I grew up in a town where the only people who weren’t white were brown … I was olive. For as long as I can remember, I have both been a part of my environs, and separate from them.

And I’ve been romanticizing that separation my whole life.

So, finding out I’m too genX for the boomers, and too old for genX? Makes my day.

a confession

I figured I’d eventually say something about Kanye, but didn’t know what or when. I think I have my angle.

I need to issue a disclaimer. I’m coming at this through the backdoor, so to speak. I don’t watch awards shows, and only recorded this one so I could see Pink. I didn’t watch Jay Leno … I didn’t watch him when he was on at 11:35, why start now? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a Taylor Swift song … I feel v.old writing this, but I don’t think I’d even heard of her before last night. The only person I care about in all of this is Kanye, whose music I mostly like, well, Kanye and Beyonce. The point is, I’m just a middle-aged white guy watching this stuff on YouTube, not someone with any useful insight.

And now my confession. I am going to admit to being extremely naive. And here’s why. First, I think Kanye’s appearance on stage during Swift’s acceptance moment was unplanned. I am aware that in itself qualifies me for the Naive Hall of Fame. I appreciate that MTV is milking this for all its worth, and that they are very happy that it happened. But I don’t think they were “in on it.” I think Kanye had a point to make, and he made it. I think his methodology sucked, and I think whatever point he wanted to make is lost under all of the “Wow, Kanye’s a dick” tweeting going on. I thought he was a dick, too. But he has never been afraid to put himself out there, and he’s not always wrong … I loved it when he tossed George Bush into the mix while Mike Myers looked stunned.

And here’s another example of my naivete: when he sat down with Jay Leno, and Jay brought up Kanye’s mom, I think those were real tears. They convinced me that Kanye’s regrets are also real. Kinda late, of course, but nonetheless, I don’t think he’s playing the media to win back the affection of his fans. I think he feels like a shit, and is working it out the best way he can. I know that we live in a culture where everything is permitted as long as we issue an apology or disclaimer after the fact, and I don’t like that about ourselves. But in this instance, I am naive enough to think Kanye West does feel crappy about what he did to Taylor Swift.

And here’s one reason why I think that: I’ve been there. More than once. More than twice, more than thrice, I’ve been there a hundred times. Anyone who knows me … even my closest family and friends, perhaps them more than anyone … knows that at times I just blurt out whatever has me pissed off at that particular moment, and more often than not, what I say is inappropriate. There may be an element of truth in whatever I say, but it’s fueled by meanness, and it is hurtful. And it usually takes me about four seconds and two deep breaths for me to realize I’ve fucked up again. And just as I really mean it when I pop off with something shitty, I really mean it when I say I’m sorry. Obviously, the best thing would be for me to quit popping off in the first place … that’s what the meds are for. But I know from personal experience that it is possible to go from asswipe to penitent in a second. And my guess is, that’s what happened to Kanye.

jillian’s annual giants game

We even picked a day when they won, for a change: