I was raised by two English majors, so you’ll have to cut me some slack here. I’ve always been a stickler for proper speech. There’s a time and a place for colloquialism, and lord knows I use it in my speech and writing.

But there are some verbal ticks that just really bug me. I’ll see if I can come up with 13.

1. “Yeah, no…” I’m not sure where this came in, but it’s a meaninglessly self-contradictory interjection used to start sentences in conversation. I hear it all the freakin’ time at work, and it drives me nuts. I worry I’ll start using it. Maybe I already have.

2. “The thing is, is…” I’ve even heard the variant “The thing was, is…”

3. “I mean…” This one I hear all the damn time on NPR when a news anchor is talking to a reporter. It’s the new “you know,” I guess. The irony is, is, I mean, it has no damn meaning. Okay, fine, use it in everyday speech. But if you’re on National Public Radio? I mean, Come on!

4. Upspeak. This is when topic sentences? or clauses? are inflected as questions. It’s residue of valley girl talk, and as the valley girl generation has grown up, it’s become common in adult speech. I think of it as a solicitous tick, as in “Are you listening? I think I have something to say?” Our local NPR affiliate’s morning anchor does this, and it drives me crazy.

5.”Uh.” Practically everyone says “uh” in everyday speech. No big deal. But when the Secretary of State of the United States of America can’t speak a single extemporaneous sentence without uttering it, I cringe.

6. “…for Jack and I.” Or the equally jarring “…for Jack and myself.” For whatever reason, nobody wants to say “Jack and me”. Me is a proper object, people, I can’t emphasize this enough.

7. This one’s common among stewardesses for some reason: “If you do need to leave your seat, we do ask that you do buckle your seat belt when you return.” We ask that you do omit needless words.

Okay, I guess that’s all I can come up with off the top of my head. Apologies to the Thursday Thirteen crowd for punking out early.

Appetizer
Name something you think is “the best.”

This world, of course, is “this best of all possible worlds” (“ce meilleur des mondes possibles” cf. Voltaire’s Candide).

Soup
On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 highest), how stressed are you today?

Considering the dental work that started my day, I think I’m down in the <5 range right now.

Salad
What kind of cleanser do you use to wash your face?

I use Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint all up and down.

Main Course
Tonight is a blue moon! What is something that you believe only happens “once in a blue moon.”

I win at ping pong.

Dessert
When was the last time it rained where you live?

Last week some time.

I’ve added another design to my stable of t-shirts. I’ve also consolidated all my designs under one roof, the Left Coast Hockey League Team Store. The “Shop” link above now leads directly there, as does the link in the sidebar. Thanks to all for your support, and don’t forget: If you buy something and are not satisfied, please call customer service and request a refund. Everything is backed up with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

And: Go Wings! (I’ve got to write up a commentary about the playoffs one of these days….)

I’ve gotten kind of tired of Thursday Thirteen. I can’t ever seem to come up with thirteen of anything all at once. I thought I’d try my hand at this meme, which I first saw on Jon Tillman’s blog.

Appetizer
List 3 emotions you experienced this week.

1. Joy at beating the snot out of the other team in beer league hockey last Friday
2. Contentment that we’ll at least have one new school board member in Portland, with the faction that hired and supported Vicki Phillips now in the minority.
3. Trepidation when my son came home from day care with a bloody contusion on his forehead

Soup
Name a car you’d love to have.

My friend Anthony dreamed up this idea to join two bicycles side by side, with a cargo sling between them, and perhaps an aerodynamic weather shell over the top of it. There would be a linkage between the handlebars and brakes, but the drive trains would be independent.

Salad
Describe your typical morning routine.

Get up. Get kids up. Shower. Get dressed. Make breakfast for self and kids. Make lunches for kids. Drive kids to school. Drive to office. Go get coffee with office mate. Read e-mail. Think about playing hockey.

Main Course
Have you ever emailed someone famous? If so, who, and what did you say to them? Did they reply?

I e-mailed Rick Lyon to congratulate him on Avenue Q. Rick is a professional puppeteer and puppet maker who conceived and designed the Avenue Q puppets. He has worked with the best, including on Sesame Street. He’s been behind (and inside of) the most beloved Muppets, including Big Bird, Grover, Oscar, Ernie and Cookie Monster. He wrote back to thank me for my kind words, and let me know Avenue Q may skip the traditional post-Broadway road show in favor of a Las Vegas run. The only reason you’d ever catch me in Vegas would be to see that show.

Dessert
Do you listen to podcasts? If so, which ones?

Nope, never.

It takes great chutzpah to choose Rachmaninoff’s infamous 3rd Piano Concerto as an 18 year old. It takes even more chutzpah — and raw talent and sheer dedication — to pull it off with aplomb.

Judy Park did both Saturday with the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Park led off the PYP’s final concert of the season, also the final Portland concert with Mei-Ann Chen as Conductor.

As chance would have it, Wacky Mommy and I put off buying tickets until just before the show, and chose seats I normally wouldn’t consider from the few that were remaining. Front row, keyboard side, with a perfect view of Chen, Park (and her hands!) and the first violins. Park nailed Rach 3 technically, with strong backing from the orchestra. It was an audacious choice of material. Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote it to show off his own virtuosic piano skills, and many seasoned professionals shy away from it. It’s considered the most difficult concerto in the classical piano repertoire.

Despite all these warning signs, the young Ms. Park plunged ahead and pulled off not only a stunning technical display, but also a nuanced, emotional and powerful rendering of the beast. It left me wanting to hear more of Park, and I have a feeling we will have the chance to hear much more from her as she matures as an artist and enters the professional world.

After the intermission, the brass section took up two opposing formations for a brief antiphonal fanfare by self-taught Japanese Composer Toru Takemitsu, from his Signals from Heaven. Takemitsu claimed Debussy as his “teacher”, and Chen followed his sleepy fanfare with a Debussy Nocturne.

The evening was capped off with Béla Bartók‘s Concerto for Orchestra. I’m kind of a Bartók nut, so this was a great capper for the evening. There is nothing on this Earth that compares to sitting in the front row with your eyes closed, enveloped with the three dimensional world of sound sketching the ethereal outlines of Bartók’s soul onto your psyche.

I’m ashamed to say that this is the first PYP concert I’ve been too. I’m very sad to have missed Mei-Ann Chen’s tenure here. Judging from her final concert, she is something of an undiscovered genius. She had an obvious rapport with the musicians (several of them presented her with flowers and touching tributes at the end of the evening). But she is also an obvious task master, a stickler for details, and forceful, emotive and sure in her conducting. She had this band of teenagers playing together in ways many (ahem) professional orchestras don’t pull off on a typical night.

You still have one last chance to hear Chen lead the PYP, May 27, 2007, 4:00 PM at the Resort at the Mountain in Welches, Ore., featuring highlights from the ’06-’07 season.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a eulogy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. that doesn’t include that phrase, so I thought I’d get it out of the way in the title. Considering the body of work he leaves behind, I think it is appropriate.

Growing up in Iowa City, you pretty much have to be a fan. Vonnegut taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 1965-1967, and left an indelible imprint both on the Writers’ Workshop and the community. He lived in a big old farm house at the cobble-stoned end of Van Buren Street, just off Brown Street. Later, after he’d left to go teach at Harvard, the house was turned into a rental. I don’t know when it started, but an institution took hold that was beyond anyone’s control.

Each May Day, the grounds of the house became the scene of the biggest party in town. The “Vonnegut House” became legendary, not for the kind of party that once drew the likes of Saul Bellow and Jose Donoso, but for all-night, beer- and psychedelic-fueled, shout at the moon craziness. I was surprised by how well organized the thing was, despite having a life of its own. Bands played, including mine in 1988 and 1989. There was a beer trailer. A giant bonfire. Somehow, the huge old barn that served as stage never caught fire.

The cops would just block off the cul de sac and let the party run its course. Some time in the ’80s, the house was sold, and the tradition ended. The new owners wanted nothing to do with the tradition.

A tradition which, of course, had nothing to do with Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I came to love Vonnegut when I was working as a waiter at a steak house in Coralville, housed in an old power plant along the Iowa River. Between shifts, I devoured his novels in chronological order. Even though many of them were written before I was born, they seemed to fit the zeitgeist in Iowa City at the time. They probably still do (I wouldn’t know; I moved away in 1989).

I only knew the man through his work and his imprint on my home town. I have enjoyed reading all the eulogies on the Web. Salon has a nice compilation of remembrances from some who encountered him in real life, capturing a hint of who he was as a human. The L.A. Times published an excellent obituary. (There are many more out there; too many to list here.)

When Vonnegut came back to Iowa City in 1989 to speak, he would only speak to students at the Workshop. This annoyed the hipsters in town to no end. The light his legacy cast across Iowa City was ultimately larger than he could have known. His influence on my writing and world view is immense, and the world is a poorer place with his passing.

So it goes.

You may have noticed that I’ve gotten really bad about writing these lists. For a while, it was a good impetus to write every week, but lately I’ve been pretty uninspired. Also, I don’t exactly fit in with the “TT” crowd, and I’m not good about visiting everybody’s blog to leave comments. Most of my online reading is political, and my writing tends that way, too. That’s a whole different ball of wax than most of the TTs, which tend toward the personal. Plus, I haven’t even been able to come up with thirteen things the last couple of times. Lame!

But since I’ve written some pretty snarky things about North Portland and Portland Public Schools lately, I thought I owed one to North Portland. Here goes. (Let’s see if I get to thirteen on this one.)

1. Great transportation. We’re two blocks from light rail transit, just a bit more to I-5. We can be downtown in 10 minutes by freeway or 15 minutes by train.

2. Hockey. The home of the Winter Hawks is in North Portland, just four light rail stops away.

3. Real neighborhoods. The streets are laid out in a grid. There are sidewalks. Parks. Nice old houses. Tree-lined streets.

4. Great views from the bluff.

5. More and more, nice urban amenities like bakeries, restaurants and shopping within walking distance.

6. Socio-economic diversity.

7. My choice of churches on Sunday.

8. The Peninsula Park sunken rose garden.

9. The Peninsula Park Community Center and pool.

10. The Portland Ship Yard on the site of the old Swan Island airport. This is viewable from the bluff, especially from University of Portland. It’s pretty cool to see the big ships in dry dock, and the old, gigantic tankers in fresh water storage before they’re sailed or towed to Asia to be scrapped.

11. My lovely wife.

12. My beautiful children.

13. My happy home.

Edited Friday, 4/20/2007: I can’t believe I forgot the St. Johns Bridge.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Portland dodged a major bullet yesterday, when a federal bankruptcy judge ruled that they don’t have to sell any properties to settle child sex abuse cases. In an answer to their prayers, they get to transfer church and school properties to the parishes. This is exactly what the gambled on when, in 2004, they were the first archdiocese in the US to file for bankruptcy protection in the face of hundreds of millions of dollars in sex abuse lawsuits.

Wacky Mommy took one look at the picture in the paper of St. Andrew’s Church in Northeast Portland and said “I wish they’d make them sell off their churches, and then they’d have to open up store-front churches like all the other churches in North Portland.” You know, like “Christ Died For Your Sins on the Bloody Cross of Holy Redemption Church of God in Christ our Lord.” But seriously, the Catholic Church’s holdings, including St. Andrew’s (pictured above) are quite ostentatious compared to the rest of the churches in the neighborhood. Would it kill them to cough up a little more to atone for protecting child sex abusers for so long?

North and Northeast Portland are home to the only historically black neighborhoods in Portland. Store-front churches abound, but with gentrification pushing in (and Portland Community College’s Cascade campus expanding), they may soon be an endangered species. So while Wacky Mommy took the Wacky Kids to swim lessons this morning, I took a brief tour of North and Northeast Portland churches.

First stop was the Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ, with its adjacent “Future Home of Community Center & Basketball Pavilion.”

Next comes what we refer to as the “LoveLee Ladee” complex, which includes both the Holiness or Hell Church of God in Christ and the Jubilee Tabernacle Full Gospel, Pentacostal Church. We refer to it as “LoveLee Ladee” because of the painted-over sign above the entrance to Holiness or Hell, indicating it used to house a beauty salon, or, uh, well, you know.

The entire complex used to be Holiness or Hell, but at some point the Jubilee Tabernacle came in.

Across the street from LoveLee Ladee is the Full Holy Ghost Mission Church of God in Christ, Inc., fronted by a lot of blacktop and a forbidding chain-link fence.

A block further, we get a threefer: A More Excellent Way Christian Center, Northwest Voice for Christ Community Church, and The Ark of Safety Church of God Pentacostal, all housed in a building with a facade made to look like Noah’s Ark.

Just a few blocks over, we come upon the Open Door House of Prayer.

I’m not posting pictures here to make fun of these joints. Even though I am a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, I respect the right of people to worship (or not) as they choose. And I am impressed by the humility of these neighborhood based churches, many of them unaffiliated with larger governing bodies. They stand in sharp contrast to the Catholic church, one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations on the planet. And every Sunday finds them brimming over with lively music and sharply dressed parishioners (oh the hats!).

The gentrification I mentioned before recently claimed the only black funeral home in town, and turned it into a pub. I’m not shitting you. Across the street from that is the Florida Room, a hipster restaurant whose reader board proclaims it as the Church of the Bloody Mary and for a long time also sported the message “Go Team Evil! Sin all the Damn Time!” This is just a stone’s throw from the LoveLee Ladee. Of course, as an atheist, I have no problem with this personally, but it is culturally insensitive (to say the least).

In ten years, there will probably be no more store-front churches in this neighborhood. The part of me that sees religious belief as the source of global strife doesn’t care. But the part of that appreciates diversity and humility is saddened.

It’s playoff time, and it’s wall-to-wall hockey. Our local cable affiliate is carrying some of Shaw Cable’s coverage of the WHL playoffs. Vancouver just beat Seattle in game four, taking their series to 3-1 Vancouver. Now I’m watching the NHL Vancouver, tied with Dallas in the third 4-4. Damn, those NHL guys can skate.

Playoff hockey… is there anything better?

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. No, it’s Thursday eve, and I’m supposed to crank out another Thursday Thirteen (turns out some of you expect these of me). So here are Thirteen Ways my Life is Like Slap Shot (the movie):

1. “She’s not happy….” (Wacky Mommy that is.)
2. She sits in the stands while I play my old farts beer league games and chats with the other hockey wives. “He doesn’t care for the fighting,” she tells them, “he told me.” And “He always says you can just screw so much and drink so much.”
3. She told me the other day “If we got divorced, I wouldn’t have to watch so much hockey.” Did I mention, I never asked her to come see me play. Seriously, watching beer league hockey is like watching paint dry. She told me. And we haven’t been to a WHL game since February, I think. And she’ll never watch hockey on TV, unless it’s game seven of the Stanley Cup Final and I beg.
4. Yesterday at the rink, there was a guy who shows up occasionally. He’s kind of slow, and yesterday he was being especially goofy, celebrating goals and shit (we generally don’t make a big deal of goals at stick time). One of the regulars said he always shows up drunk. I went up against him and hoo boy! did he reek of alcohol. So I’m thinking, if I board him, will he pee himself? Total Nick Brophy moment.
5. If the mill closes (i.e. my software factory)… Fucking Chrysler plant here I come.

Ah, crap, that’s all I’ve got. I’m really getting lousy at this Thursday Thirteen thing. But five’s better ‘n none, eh?

Have a great week, and maybe I’ll post again before next Thursday.

Wacky Mommy said I take too damn long writing these things, and I need to learn to just dash shit off. So here ya go, Internet, Thirteen Random Thoughts From a left-wing hockey nut in the Pacific Northwest.

1. There is much intrigue in Hawkey Town, as Portland Winter Hawks owner Jim Goldsmith has taken over hockey operations. The big questions now, buzzing around both the Oregon Live Winter Hawks forum, e-mail lists and blogs, is this: What does the future hold for long-time G.M Ken Hodge, head coach Mike Williamson, and the rest of the hockey staff? No matter how you cut it, this has got to sting for Hodge, a broadly respected figure in major junior hockey.
2. There is even more intrigue in Washington D.C., as George W. Bush careens into his first real collision with the newly Democratic congress. Will he negotiate with the Democrats, or will he remain on a collision course?
3. There is intrigue in the Portland Public Schools (what else is new?) as rumors begin to circulate about another round of school closings, and Neighborhood Schools Alliance founder Ruth Adkins challenges incumbent Doug Morgan for his school board seat. I’m proud to support Ruth, who has long advocated for a community voice in important school decisions, and for a reasonable school size policy.
4. Oh man, that’s just three, and I’m definitely not dashing! Okay, here goes, quick like a bunny!
5. Spring is in the air. Man, I love spring because I love sumer even more.
6. I joined a hockey league. So far we’re 2 and 0.
7. Everything’s better when you put on a sweater.
8. Coffee tastes good.
9. Especially a good double shot of espresso, straight up, baby!
10. It’s spring break, and I’m taking a day and a half of to hang out with the family. Nice. Wish it were more.
11. Wacky Mommy has turned into a serious hockey chick. I can’t get into details here, but let’s just say I’m shocked at the times she brings up hockey.
12. Damn, I’m already 3 minutes over my self-imposed deadline… quick here’s number 13:
13. I’m not so good at dashing shit off. And I probably cuss too much.

Okay, only five minutes over. Good. Night.