Month: January 2016

Elvis, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Eddie Cochran, Sam Cooke, John Lennon, George Harrison, Janis Joplin, Steve Marriott, Sandy Denny, Jerry Garcia, Michael Jackson, Richie Valens, Duane Allman, Frank Zappa, Patsy Cline, Randy Rhodes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jim Morrison, Carl and Dennis Wilson, Freddie Mercury, Brian Jones, Bo Diddley, John Entwistle, Marc Bolan, Tommy Bolin, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Dio, Karen Carpenter, Richard Manuel, Captain Beefheart, Cliff Burton, Johnny Cash, June Carter, D. Boon, Levon Helm, Lux Interior, Amy Winehouse, Rick Danko, Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, & Tommy, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Jack Bruce, Ronnie Van Zant, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Johnny Winter, Paul Kantner, James Brown, Cass Elliott, Lou Reed, Lemmy, Bowie…

All the best rock stars are boarding the Celestial Arc bound for a much cooler world. I picture it as a cozy, robust music scene, with lots of small clubs that have impeccable sound and no cover. All beer is $1 a pint.

The deceased would form fleeting new bands in confounding configurations, like Nico, Hendrix, Phil Lynott, and John Bonham, who are still working on a name.

And I would be a ghostwriter for the local rock rag, forever making picks for this weekend’s shows.

Friday

Tick Tock Toreador @ The Bottomless Pit

Could be your last chance to catch this super-nova super-group before their tour of eastern afterlives begins next week. Who would have thought David Bowie and Bon Scott could harmonize in such delirious blue-eyed soul fashion? Link Wray’s thoroughly nasty guitar and Philthy Animal Taylor’s demonic drums, however, expertly undermine that heavenly blend.

Pigs & Smith @ The Flooded Basement

I don’t recall if Elliott Smith and Tom “Pig Champion” Roberts, ever jammed back in the day, but their gritty, hard-rocking folk, lustily accompanied by the bluesy crooning of keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, is a constant thrill on this side of the River Styx.

Saturday

By George @ The Stinky Shack

It seems like an eternity since I’ve seen Lowell George fronting a new band, and while his trio, By George, looks good on paper, it remains to be seen if the former Little Feat singer can inspire bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Keith Moon to mind their manners in support of his wistful honky tonk narratives. Oh, wait. This is rock ‘n’ roll heaven; of course it will be a revelation. See you there!

Hangovers don’t exist, there are only good trips, and the food is constantly evolving for the better—and shockingly low in calories.

I don’t think that’s asking too much.

 

 

Man, I need to find a job. Fresh off my stint as a government mail drone, I’m percolating with great ideas, but none of them are going to be buying groceries in the immediate future, and frankly, I’m in a funk. And out of prospects.

The problem is, I keep waiting for a kindly employment angel to appear and save my ass. Because that’s how it’s always been, at least since college—a friend has vouched for me and I’ve gotten a job, or at least a face to face interview. Now it’s just too tight, and I totally get that.

I should be out there chopping my own wood, like Abe Lincoln, Han Solo, or other movie notables. Sadly, my own instincts have led me nowhere except the post office and a yearlong gig writing for GoLocalPDX, who stiffed me out of a chunk of money. It wasn’t a huge amount, but it still chafes my hide when I get snookered into doing free work, or even worse, losing money on the deal. I’m usually able to sniff out a grifter, but I’d gotten dumb and hungry.

Not having a job at 50 eats away at you. It’s like a daily affirmation of your obsolescence. Plus, I miss having co-workers to gab with. All I have is a dog that needs a walk. Instead of shooting the shit, I’m gathering it up in a bag, looking more and more like the old neighborhood kook to the new arrivals fresh off the boat from California.

I’m currently exploring several remote possibilities, and nothing looks promising. I’ve set snares and traps around my social media territory, in hopes of landing a few writing or editing assignments, but there are never enough of these to pay the bills. So, I’m seeking honest labor.

An application for Plaid Pantry sits immediately to my right. I’ve been chatting with the older hippie dude who works down at the Southeast Belmont store and he was refreshingly candid.

“Do you think being a bartender is an easy job? Do you think anyone can do it?” he asked me.

“Oh, hell no.”

“It’s the same sort of action here. It requires you to be present, but also detached.”

Somehow, I think I can handle that. In fact, I look forward to what many consider an undignified position. With pride and self-esteem long since buried, I just wants to get paid. Even if it means (shudder) customer service.

Hello cruel world.

And thus ends the post office experiment. On a night when I arrived for work soaking wet, sleep deprived, and sporting a hacking cough that would unnerve a roomful of tuberculosis patients, my supervisor decided to “teach me a lesson” about something or other by assigning me, perhaps permanently, to the ONE job I said I wouldn’t do.

I know the zip codes by heart and I was the fastest sorter in the department, but the boss felt my talents were better suited to dumping huge sacks of boxes and parcels onto a conveyer belt. Forever. It’s the absolute worst job in the post office and it requires the arms of an orangutan and the constitution of a navy seal. On my third day, I confessed to the supervisor my back couldn’t handle working that particular station for longer than an hour at a time, and I was told not to worry about it, that my back was covered. Besides, I was too valuable “sorting and sweeping” to spend time dumping sacks. 

We really shouldn’t be afraid of hard work, but alas, I am. At least for what the Postal Service is currently paying me. Unless they come up with some kind of decadent incentive package that includes a steady two days off per week, 12-hour shifts at my discretion, a Swedish masseuse, and a key to the executive outhouse, my days as a box bouncer are surely numbered.

At my interview, I was asked if I could routinely lift 70-pound boxes. I said, “No sweat, daddy-o. Check out these guns!” Things got a little weird and uncomfortable after that, I’ll spare you the details. 

When working at the post office, paradoxes bloom up like algae as far as your bloodshot eyes can see. For example, the postal service seems to be a benign, compassionate master, employing all manner of scofflaw as well as a choice assortment of people with pronounced mental disorders (including me). As one old-timer told me, “If you’re not crazy already, you soon will be.”

Conducting your business (processing the goddamn mail!) here is kind of like living in a giant pinball machine. There are forklifts and mules screaming down every alley, and if you happen to be pushing an OTR full of Eddie Bauer catalogues, you’d best get the hell out of the way. And those dudes (and many women) really enjoy laying on the horn! I’ve already had a vivid nightmare about being chased around by a panzer division of beeping, honking postal vehicles.

What I’m trying to say is that this shit is plenty dangerous, and I’m not as spry as I used to be. I’ve already seen a horribly gashed hand (stitches), a smashed finger in a mail carrier door (it took 10 seconds to get the door open again, and the guy was screaming the whole time), and another fellow carted out on a stretcher. “That’s Bob Hobbs, the ol’ chicken scratcher,” said Harry, one of approximately 22 co-workers. “That’s like the seventh time he’s gone out like that.”

“Holy shit! Why doesn’t he retire?”

“He needs the money. Who doesn’t?”

Harry is an LD (light duty) guy who stands by one of the main loader belts, ostensibly to scan tracking labels. Mainly what he does is ask you weirdly personal questions about where you’re from and what you do. When I told him I was a Film Studies major and had worked as a movie reviewer from time to time, he FOLLOWED me around for 40 minutes telling me about a script he wrote for a class. In 1978. It’s about an evil hitchhiker who kills people. Like in that Rutger Hauer movie that came out in 1986. Harry figures that someone in his class stole his idea and went to Hollywood with it and made “like a couple million bucks.” He is clearly haunted.

Harry is probably an old union guy. While I’ve always been vociferously pro-union, I have, to my chagrin, subsequently discovered that (some, not all) old union guys don’t have to do jack shit, and there’s not much you can do about it. On the one hand, I’m happy to observe that the union (there’s actually three postal unions) takes care of its own. On the other, it means I have to work roughly three times harder because some of the people working around me are “tits on a boar hog” useless, or worse, prone to getting in the way.

At the post office, the competent folks (i.e., three-digit IQs with reasonably strong backs) really have to bust ass to help their less gifted and less-motivated comrades, otherwise, we’re looking at consecutive 12-hour shifts. I did four of those in a row this week, and there are plenty more on the horizon. Mainly, we all just want to get home and sleep. I know I do.

Anyone with a time management problem should go to work in the post office immediately. I’m well into Week 2 and am now a master at nodding off to sleep for exactly 11 minutes, which gives me just enough time to get up from the only cozy chair in the break room and jog three miles back to the secret entrance to my hash* so that I can appear (and apparently working, to boot!) before my supervisor (whom I refer to as Mr. Wilson) begins shouting “John!!!”

*A configuration of wheeled mail containers ranging from roughly man-sized to XXL leviathan) adorned with color-coordinated labels that explain to someone smarter than me where this pile of mail is ultimately bound. These containers are mostly OTRs (Over the Road), which look like unpainted dumpsters, and GPs (General Purpose, see photo below).

Postal Notes 2: The things people mail to each other is flat-out nuts. Shovels? Rugs? Tires? Livestock? Bullets? Golf clubs? Barbells?

It seems Benji Doopman doesn’t have any chains available to him in the town of Unxom. No problem! His Uncle Jibber, who lives in the big city (Dumwader), has an old pair in the barn. Just get that postal fella to parcel ’em up for you.

“Damn! Whatever’s taped up in this diaper box weighs a shit-ton!”

Wow. Working in the bowels of the downtown post office is incredible and only a little hellish. My first night I worked a 12-hour shift, which is not uncommon. Half-hour for my brown bag lunch. Constant running around dodging forklifts and gigantic iron mail holders on casters. I work from 6pm to 4:30am and likely won’t get a day off before New Year’s. Note: I’m 53, and haven’t had a job that didn‘t involve a desk and chair since the mid-80s. 

This isn’t a “poor, pitiful me” post. My body is painfully adapting to the workload, and it’s taking a little less time for me to recover each day. I’m inspired by the diversity and demeanor of my coworkers, who, for the most part, are cheerful, supportive folks, who go home after 10-12 hours and take their kids to school, or go to another job. Holy. Shit. Nothing but respect from me. Don’t know if I’ll “make this a career,” but it’s been a mind-expanding experience. And Jeezus people, learn to wrap a goddamn package! I found a box of bullets that had broken open and had to gather them all up on a moving conveyer belt, while explaining to a coworker the difference between Woodland, Woodburn, and Wood Village. Postal power!