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You've played with the toy. Here comes the action movie.
Taylor Lautner's decision to sign on to star in "Stretch Armstrong" is not necessarily a great move for ambitious casting or movie-making. The role of a clumsy spy who discovers a stretching formula won't require too much reach even for the young star. Clearly all he's really going to need is to stay ripped (no problem) and to show off that killer movie star smile.
But it does highlight how Lautner is showing his willingness to take on the big-budget projects away from the Twilight series that his indie-vibe co-stars are shunning. Whether it's this project, detailed in The Hollywood Reporter, or the two other projects to which he's signed on -- "Max Steel" and "Cancun," the young star is proving that he's going to be a big-name player long after he lets out his final wolf-howl in the "Twilight" series.
Through all the publicity events around "New Moon," Lautner showed a general ease and charisma in dealing with the press which his more introspective co-stars struggled with. His answers were efficient studies in movie promotion all made with a dazzling white smile. This is how the big stars promote their projects and it will serve Lautner well.
He also has shown that he can mock his own persona, taking potshots at himself on "Saturday Night Live" and even an over-the-top role in the upcoming "Valentine's Day" -- where he plays a guy too uncomfortable to take his shirt off.
We'll see plenty of those famous abs in "Stretch" which will be made in 3D, pushing the release date to some time in 2012.


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by MIKE CHAIKEN
Editions editor
For more than 30 years, the world has had Goo Goo Dolls' music to sweeten up their ears.
Whether it's on record, or on the band's endless tours to support each release, the Buffalo-originated band has been a going concern—even before they hit the general public consciousness with the classic, "Name" from the album, "A Boy Named Goo."
In the world of rock and roll, 30 years is a long time. Think about it, The Beatles barely lasted a decade. Same goes for Led Zeppelin. And some bands flame up and flame out even more quickly than that.
But the core of the group, guitarist Johnny Rzeznik and bassist Robby Takac, keeps on ticking. "Magnetic," their album released last year, earned kudos and spawned a couple of hit singles ("Rebel Beat" and "Come to Me").
And in 2014, the band is still making the rounds in concert venues around the nation. Earlier this year, the band stopped in Ridgefield for an acoustic performance at the Ridgefield Playhouse. And June 12, the band scheduled a stop at Toyota Presents The Oakdale in Wallingford with Daughtry and Plain White T's.
Calling from a brief pause at home in Buffalo to reconnect with his family and take a breather, Robby was asked why the band still does what it does after all these years.
"It's just sort of what I do," said Robby. Goo Goo Dolls has been part of his life for most of his years, said Robby. "I don't know anything different."
One of the best parts of touring, said Robby, he gets paid to work for just 1 1/2 hours a day. Yes, the traveling, room service, and being away from his family "can be a pain in the butt." But, he said, "I live a blessed life that many people never get to do."
Goo Goo Dolls are a constant presence on the road, even though they have an extensive recording catalogue. Asked what he liked about taking the stage, Robby said, "I think one of the coolest is things is going out and being a band.
Sometimes, he said, a band can get a little burnt out playing the same songs again and again. But, once you take a bit of break, and you rehearse, you might find a new way to approach a song that differs from the original recording and how you've performed it before. All of a sudden, there is a renewed energy about the song and taking it on stage. "It's like reviewing an old friend and seeing it from a new perspective."
That's one of the reasons why Goo Goo Dolls like acoustic tours such as the one that arrived in Ridgefield, said Robby. It gives the band a chance to rethink its songs. For instance, in the acoustic tour, the band revisited some of its older tracks, ones where the records were a bit noisier and raucous than the most recent efforts. By transforming these older songs to an acoustic number, Robby said he learned a little bit more about those earlier songs.
With so many years of live shows under Goo Goo Dolls' collective belts, has the group considered releasing a live album?
Robby said the music industry has transformed quite a bit in 20 years. It's a much more visual audience, which seems counterintuitive for music. The band released a live DVD in 2004 of a show in Buffalo, recording in a driving rain, in front of the city hall. "It was a cool document."
But, Robby said a live album in the coming years has never been ruled out. The band has recorded its live shows through the years.
And the recent acoustic tour was recorded, said Robby. There were interviews conducted to accompany it. So, the material is out there and available to be released if the band is so inclined. But Robby said, "I'm not sure what will happen."
Tourmates Daughtry and Goo Goo Dolls are no strangers. In Hartford, several years ago, they were on the same bill for a radio station concert at the now-XL Center.
And, Robby said, the two bands often would cross paths. There have been discussions as well about hooking up for a tour. But things never really gelled.
But the groundwork for this summer tour was cemented in the cold of winter, said Robby. Both bands were recruited for a live performance in association with this year's Super Bowl. The show was held outdoors along the Hudson River, when temperatures dipped to a mere 3 degrees F.
"You kind of find a kinship when you're nearly freezing to death," said Robby.
The talk of a tour came up at the Super Bowl gig, said Robby. And when the promoters and managers were brought into the conversation, they agreed it would work. And then the Plain White T's were added. Goo Goo Dolls had pulled together a "good bill," said Robby.
As for plans to follow-up "Magnetic," Robby said Goo Goo Dolls still have a good four months of touring—about 60 shows– behind "Magnetic." And, he said, there haven't been many spare moments to sit down and do some writing.
Once the summer is over, said Robby, the band will begin the writing process again for a new release.
After 30 years as a band, what would cause the group to finally say, "This is enough"?
Robby said the band has been fortunate. Its audience still fills the arenas and is still passionate about their music.
But if that should ever go away, and the band found itself downsizing from a tour bus to a van, then it might be time to hang it up.
"But we haven't reached that point," said Robby. "The fans are pretty amazing."
"We'll continue to play."
Goo Goo Dolls, Daughtry, and the Plain White T's perform at Toyota Presents the Oakdale in Wallingford Thursday, June 12.
For more information, go to GooGooDolls.com

subset: commoncrawl


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We hear a certain sporting team lost a football match of sorts over the weekend — at least, this is what we understand to be the reason for the even-more-morose-than-usual drinking our friends seem to have been doing for the last 48 hours. If you want to try switching things up, may we suggest going to a venue where people are playing live music and drinking there instead, with other people, possibly while moving your feet? A handful of options:
As the wild frontman for The Legendary Shack Shakers, Col. J.D. Wilkes brought together a wide array of blues-infused and swampy sounding rock n' roll, earning them the admiration of fans and invitations to tour with noted performers such as Robert Plant. Wilkes — a bonafide Kentucky colonel, hence his title — formed The Dirt Daubers in 2009 with his wife, Jessica, and added guitarist Rod Hamdallah and drummer Preston Corn for the band's most recent album, Wild Moon (Plowboy Records). Produced by iconic punk rocker Cheetah Chrome (The Dead Boys), the album finds them back in the vein of mixing traditional sounds with an infectious rock attitude and approach. — Sean McCourt
8pm, $10-$12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
What do you call the darlings of the San Francisco psych-rock scene when half the band migrates to Portland? Wooden Shjips is what you call 'em, and as much as it pains us to admit it, the move was just what the doctor ordered if the calm, confident, melodic landscapes of last fall's Back to Land are any indication. The record is as dreamy yet cohesive as they've ever sounded, with acoustic guitar adding a new layer of warm haze, but there's still plenty of distortion and unexpected riffs, and drawn-out organ licks that somehow bear no resemblance to anything you've ever heard in a rock song. You can pout that they left, but you're not gonna not catch them on home turf.
With Carlton Melton and Golden Void
9pm, $14-$16
777 Valencia, SF
(415) 551-5157
Over three albums, Dent May has been a bit of a indie pop chameleon. Take the fabulous lounge kitsch of The Good Feeling Music Of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele. Or the drum machine disco revival on Do Things. And May's latest, Warm Blanket, is predictably unpredictable: See the Bowie styled "Let's Dance" intro that quickly upshifts into an afrobeat groove on "Let Them Talk." Still, one thing May shares with his label bosses Animal Collective is a shared affinity for Brian Wilson, and it's the biggest referent, with a track like "Corner Piece" sounding like it could have spun off of Pet Sounds, and it's the perfect opportunity for May to get increasingly open-hearted and romantic. — Ryan Prendiville
With Chris Cohen, Jack Name
9pm, $12
333 11th St., SF
(415) 255-0333
Nicki Bluhm has had a big few months. She's been Bay Area Americana royalty for several years now, but when her self-titled album with the Gramblers dropped last August, it took the bluesy-folk songstress to a new level, adding appearances on Conan and the like to her staple appearances at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and, you know, in viral videos covering Hall and Oates songs in a van. The band's live show has only gotten tighter and somehow simutaneously more playful as a result. Bonus: Hometown openers Goodnight, Texas, who sing foot-stomping songs about Civil War-era romance and coal mine disasters with a musicianship and joyful sophistication that seem much older than their (20-something) years.
9pm, $25
1805 Geary, SF
(415) 346-3000
Also Sat/25
We've seen a major resurgence of UK-based R&B-circa-'89 over the past few years, but while songstresses like Jessie Ware tackle those Lisa Stansfield-ish stylings with showy emotivity, Canada's Jessy Lanza takes a borderline-shoegaze approach to her vocals, filtering ambiguous yearnings and half-confessions through delay and echo until they're just another instrument in the mix, as stark and percussive as they are ethereal and melodic. Released on the much-fetishized Hyperdub imprint, and produced/co-written by Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan, Lanza's icy, prickly, spacious debut LP, Pull My Hair Back (2013), updates a flashy throwback genre for introverted, LCD-immersed times, in which the people can't quite be trusted to say what they mean, or vice versa. This Saturday's Popscene-curated show marks Lanza's second-ever West Coast appearance, and might elucidate a persona that, similarly to those of labelmates Hype Williams and Laurel Halo, remains well concealed. — Taylor Kaplan
With Running in the Fog
9pm, $10
853 Valencia, SF
(415) 970-0012


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Night fell over the vast surface of Lake Superior, and families huddled around bonfires as cold waves crashed nearby on the rocky beach, drowning their chatter and the crackle of burning wood. I was glad to be sitting at a table in the candlelit dining room at Lutsen Resort with my two pre-teen nephews, first-timers to Lake Superior.
I'd been making an annual pilgrimage to the lake since I was a teenager, and I hoped that a long weekend on its shores would be the start of a yearly tradition. For my nephews' first encounter, I picked Lutsen Resort because I wanted them to get a taste of resort life rich with history, but free of fussiness. I wanted to create memories, not manners.
Not that I didn't mind the white tablecloths and linen napkins or the tasty $45 filet mignon with scallops and truffled butter sauce. My nephews didn't feel the same way about their meal: pan-fried trout with patti-pan squash.
The waiter happily said that he'd substitute fries for the squash, but he brought both, and while I was staring out the window -- stuck in a trance as I watched the waves come and go -- Joey and Chayse neatly folded their unwanted squash into their napkins and set it next to their plate. I looked around the pine-paneled dining room to see if anyone had noticed, but other diners seemed focused on the water, and without remarking, the waiter carried the butter-stained napkins to the kitchen.
In that moment I was grateful to be at Lutsen, where nostalgia wins out over pretense and the view of the lake trumps the etiquette of its guests.
The resort -- one of the state's oldest, celebrating its 125th anniversary this year -- dates to the late 1800s when Swedish immigrant Charles Nelson built a homestead on the site. In the early 1900s his house became a stop for passengers aboard the steamship America, and when Hwy. 61 was improved, the Nelson homestead became a popular destination for travelers.
That homestead burned in the 1940s, and another built to replace it burned, too. The current lodge, designed by Edwin Lundie, a Minnesota architect with Scandinavian roots, was built in 1952 by Nelson's son, Ed Jr., who learned to ski in Europe and developed the Lutsen Ski Resort in the steep hillsides across Hwy. 61 from the resort.
Back then, families spent their days outdoors, took their meals in the restaurant and slept in the spartan rooms that fill the top two floors of the lodge.
Many families today favor the dozens of modern cabins and townhouses that have been built among the woods on the hillsides beside the lodge. We stayed in a log cabin with a wood stove and a deck overlooking the lake.
"Sweet," Joey said when we stepped inside. I was excited, too, but mostly because we had a modern kitchen with a dishwasher and microwave oven, and the beds were a lot more comfortable than the ones I'd tried in the lodge during earlier visits.
Casting about for fun
Our plan was to limit the activities to one a day. That way, we would have time to enjoy the lakefront and its wide, rocky beach strewn with Adirondack chairs, and time to explore the trails that run along the river that spills into the lake near the lodge.
On our first day we met Lutsen activities director Adam Harju on the beach for fly-fishing lessons in the river. Adam gathered the boys and a couple of others about the same age for an on-land demonstration. Afterward, he waded into the river with coffee mug in hand and the boys in tow.
Harju somehow kept the boys from snagging one another as they practiced casting into the river. Fling. Fling. Fling. With each cast the boys ventured farther into the river, stepping carefully through the riffles and over slippery algae-covered rocks. With their heads bowed toward the water and their arms spread for balance, they waded through the ripples calmly and silently, like zen masters in search of enlightenment. I sat back in an Adirondack chair and watched. Neither got the lunker they'd hoped for, but they seemed to revel in the experience.
The next morning we ate breakfast in our cabin, then the boys searched the nearby golf course for errant golf balls.
By afternoon we drove to the ski resort across the road, which becomes a popular alpine slide during the summer. Riders with plastic sleds in hand take chairlifts to the top of the hill, then zip down the half-mile concrete slide to the base of the lift. We'd signed up for an eight-pack of tickets, but after their first run, the boys were begging for an unlimited pass.
I joined them for a couple of runs, and could see the appeal. I put the sled on the concrete track, sat down, leaned back and gripped the shift-like brake as gravity sent me flying down the mountainside. At first I kept steady pressure on the brake, but let go as I neared the bottom. Everything -- the woods on either side of me and the lake view ahead -- became a happy blur.
That night we built a fire in the wood stove and the boys curled up in their sleeping bags in front of it. I opened a window so we could hear the waves crashing on the shore below us, and we cooked a pan of Jiffy Pop on the stove.
Coming back next year
By the next morning the weather had turned -- it was raining and cold, and I worried that our kayaking trip, their first, would be a bust. At the lodge, our guide, Melissa Carlson, helped the boys practice getting in and out of their kayaks, and then we loaded the boats onto a trailer and drove about a half-hour to an inland lake, where we parked and unpacked the van.
By then it was pouring and cold, and I expected the boys to complain about the terrible weather and leave Lutsen hoping that next year we'd go to an indoor water park. Instead, they paddled around like pros, skimming the water with outstretched hands. And when the sun peeked out for a few minutes, they stared into the clear shallows, where they could see the muddy lake bottom and small fish darting under their boats.
Carlson told us that kayaking, even in the rain, had become one of the resort's more popular activities. I wasn't surprised. Despite cold fingers, wet heads and a long drive back to the Twin Cities ahead of us, the boys seemed to love it, and even before getting out of their kayaks they were asking if they could come back next year.
Jim Buchta • 612-673-7376


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"Nobody said it was easy,
ah it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy,
no-one ever said it would be so hard
…i'm going back to the start"
The Coldplay anthem pounded out from the 'Force lead car at the penultimate feedstop of the event 17km from Versailles. Sarah, ( the event 'Wonderwoman' who manages staff, hotels, food, coaches, shelter from storms,shopping, & everything else that cyclists need but dont have to think about once off their bikes) , strolled randomly through the cyclists, arms swaying, duetting with Chris Martin. As I drove back to Liege this song echoed in my head: yes it had been hard, but YES it was a bigger shame to part; of course it had been hard and no-one could really have known how hard it was going to be to get up day after day, without enough sleep, and do it all again. And again. But as bodies took even more pounding, self-confidence and friendships grew to counter the pressure that the numbing fatigue caused.
Stage 19 consists of a flat 51km TT that kept to pleasant quiet roads all the way into Chartres. But after 5 hours in a coach and another stuff-your-face moment with a ham&cheese baguette on arrival in Bonneval, heading out directly into a full-on headwind is bloody hard work!!
Those who wanted to 'go for it', went, fighting to find some sense of speed from somewhere. The headwind made that a painful process, especially until lungs opened up to give half a chance for the necessary oxygen to get into the blood. Others suffered for other reasons: celebrations had begun for some earlier than for others. Cycling hard into a headwind is one way of getting rid of a hangover...and of what was left in the stomach.
I flitted around 'my flock' & was in awe at the pace set by most. Fortunately, after about 10km, the course changed direction, heading directly towards Chartres in a N-E line, and our vicious headwind for once became a very friendly tailwind pretty much for the whole way home. The fastest time was set by our 'Flying Doctor' at 1.18 hrs, which, for 51km & a red light or two at the end, is OK in my book (he had fitted tri-bars though, so had a MASSIVE advantage over the rest of us!) It was so gratifying to see some of the riders who had suffered so badly in the first week with various injuries now riding so well, smiles all over their faces. By 3pm all the riders, (which included two early- teenagers, who successfully rode the last two stages), were in and for once everyone had time to relax and enjoy the town of Chartres and our town-centre hotel.
Stage 20: the "Glory Ride" into Paris.
To avoid yet another transfer, Sarah and I had designed a 110km course from Chartres instead of from Rambouillet, so at 8am, with two riders still trying to sleep off ANOTHER hard nights' drinking (they easily caught the pack at the first feedstop, despite v****ting stops, we all set off to Paris. Roads were empty (Sunday morning & the day after Bastille Day) as we rolled along roads across wheat fields, still enjoying that tailwind. The peloton buzzed with up-beat chat. The Champs-Elysées felt undeniably close. The route gave us an enjoyable Sunday morning ride, complete with a couple of "Bumples" (ask a Lifer...!), smooth new tarmac, dense woodland, and a great feedstop right in front of the Palais de Versailles. After a steep climb up over the final ridge, rewarded by our first sighting of the Eiffel Tower, we sailed down into the Parisian jungle and hopped our way, from one red light to the next, towards the most famous piece of scaffolding in the world! Another photo-shot-stop, complete with cheering 'WAGS' and family, we took off again to complete a couple of laps of the final circuit. The incline on the Champs Elysées, as one approaches the Arc de Triomphe, surprised more than one as did the cobbled road surface. Despite having to battle with traffic, to ride up this iconic boulevard is still a thrill. I took the Lifers round the Arc (if you hug the centre of it, you are reasonably safe...!) for a couple of extra turns, or four, before we continued on to our close-by hotel. Hugs, tears, smiles, and more hugs. Words were superfluous. How could any of us express what we felt?! A very memorable dinner party followed on a Bateau-Mouche on the Seine, after which we piled into a pub until closing time in the early hours.
As some of us met at breakfast, for once relaxed, with no cases to hastily pack and carry out to the vans, the inevitable moment had come to face our Real Lives again. "Nobody said it was easy, ah it's such a shame for us to part." All good things have to finish some time. We had been reminded to "Live in the moment" by Pittsi half way through the Tour. That has to be Rule Number One. To finish the Tour was our common goal. But of course it was the Journey itself that was the real thrill. Undefinable fleeting moments of "bonheur" that disappear as soon as you recognise them. Moments when you just feel SO GOOD on your bike. When cycling makes perfect sense. When your whole life makes perfect sense. When your reason for having signed up for this thing makes perfect sense! Even those who joined us for just a stage or two could feel the "something special" that was going on. Our Bubble kept us safe and together for three weeks. It burst in Paris, but by then we had all absorbed so much Bubble-Medecine that we could go into our Real Lives with much of it still intact, strong in our hearts and so healthily fit in our bodies.
" No-one ever said it would be so hard.... i'm going back to the start." I did warn Lifers at times, but I knew they could take it! Driving back to the start I was already thinking of next year, smiling to myself in anticipation. Vive le Tour!! But above all, thank you to the Wates Foundation. In memory of William Wates. Through the extraordinary warmth that the Wates family feed out to those around them, I feel that I know Will too, and know that he must be smiling too, thinking about next year!
that's it.
First started in 2010, Tour de Force is a unique event for those people that have ever wanted to ride the entire route of the Tour de France (without needing a pro contract!).
Riding the 3497km route one week ahead of the race, the riders will roll up the Champs Elysees on 15 July. Lead cyclist Phil Deeker (who also organises the Rapha Cent Cols Challenge), is sending us daily blogs from each stage, which will service as a interesting preview of the stages before the pros ride them a week later.
Tony has been editing cycling magazines and websites since 1997 starting out as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - which he continues to edit today. His favourite ride is his 'commute' - which he does most days inc weekends and he's been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes.


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If you want a nice, family friendly beach vacation, look no further than Gulf Shores, Alabama and Orange Beach, Alabama! This area is located in the southeast coast of Alabama, near the Florida border. It boasts beautiful white sand beaches and the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. With 32 miles of soft sand and clear water, you can surely spend your days swimming and taking walks up and down the beach. If you prefer to be more active, ziplines, championship golf courses and fishing are all popular activities! In fact, Orange Beach is home to the countries largest artificial fishing reef!
However you may chose to spend your vacation, laying by the beach or deep sea fishing, give Gulf Shores, Alabama and Orange Beach, Alabama a try. Once you visit, you will sure to go back!
Tip: If you are looking to fly into the area, the nearest airport is located in Pensacola, Florida.
To help make your stay the best yet, consider a vacation rental in Gulf Shores, Alabama. These properties will allow you more room than a standard hotel room and for a great price! Here are a few examples of vacation rentals in Gulf Shores, but don't worry, we have over 530 if one of these does not work for you!
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If fun in the sun is what you are looking for on your next vacation, check out Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Alabama! We promise it will be a vacation you will remember forever!
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Phillip Phillips Becomes New Top 10 Video Countdown Champ – Vote for Next Week's Countdown!
Whoa, whoa, whoa! This week saw some major switchups on the PopCrush Top 10 Video Countdown.
The first order of business is congratulating Phillip Phillips, whose 'Raging Fire' ousted reigning champ Lady Gaga from the No. 1 spot! The video snagged almost 20% of the votes. Way to go, Phillip!
Gaga claimed the runner-up spot, followed by Sky Ferreira's 'I Blame Myself' in the No. 3 spot. Rounding out the top five are Lily Allen's 'Sheezus' (No. 4) and Shakira's 'La La La (Brazil 2014)' (No. 5).
The rest of the top 10 is just as varied, with Sara Bareilles' 'I Choose You' climbing to No. 6, Lana Del Rey's 'West Coast' snagging No. 7, One Direction's 'You and I' falling to No. 8, Ed Sheeran's 'Sing' entering at No. 9 and Cher Lloyd's 'Sirens' landing at No. 10.
It's up to you to decide who will be in next week's Top 10! Remember, you can vote once per hour (on the voting widget to the right of this page) until the polls close at 3PM ET on June 12.


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In her dream, her husband had written her a love letter. It closed with the following sentence: I've looked at myself in the mirror—an admittedly warped and unreliable façade—and been keenly aware of how lucky I am that you still want to live with me.
"Humble bugger, aren't I?" her husband said when she told him about the dream letter.
"But what about me?" Nana answered. "So self-aggrandizing! So passive-aggressive!"
He rose up on an elbow to blink down at her, his large head and leonine hair eclipsing all else. "I dreamed that some friend of ours, some preposterously impossible person, was pregnant."
"Someone like Helen?"
He agreed: Helen. "I was very impressed, in the dream. It seemed so goddam optimistic."
"What was I doing, in your dream?"
"You weren't there." He fell back upon his pillow. Mention of Helen, who had been their hostess the previous evening, reminded Nana that she had a phone call to make. It was not an uncommon call; it might not even be necessary with this particular hostess. Yet perhaps that's what Nana had been trying to tell herself in the dream—that her husband was lucky to have her. Drunk the night before, he'd made a pass at Helen's nineteen-year-old daughter.
"I hope Rebecca wasn't alarmed," Nana said to Helen on the phone.
"Please. She was flattered, just like anybody." Nana heard the faint sniff of competitiveness, the knotted business between mother and daughter. This vexed tolerance wouldn't have been the response if one of Helen's sons had been kissed on the ear or patted on the fanny by a family friend. As a young girl, Rebecca had been overweight and overly furred, with a mustache, thick arm hair, heavy brows; other children had called her Ape Face. The transformation into confident womanhood had been impressive. Her parents weren't native Texans, but lately they'd been participating in their own version of unveiling the débutante—buying a new wardrobe and bringing her to parties. Nana's husband had been exceedingly complimentary. "My God, you're gorgeous!" he'd declared one evening, genuinely astonished. "Look, everyone, isn't she spectacular?" And there Rebecca had stood, turning red in her tight-fitting green dress.
"No worries," Helen said. Nana made out the cigarette-lighter flick, the deep, first-of-the-day inhalation. Helen's bad habit made her less likely to judge others'. She and Nana had met in graduate school and ended up in the same city a dozen years later. Nana wasn't sure she would have agreed to move to Houston had Helen not been there. Helen was her best friend, although she suspected that she was not Helen's.
"I was thinking of wearing the poppy dress tonight," Nana said, "unless you were?"
"We should match on purpose. Just to make Libby less bitchy. She'd love to be able to ridicule us. What a generous hostess gift that would be, us in our matching dresses, sizes S and L. She couldn't keep hating us, if we gave her that." Nana was the S—in every way less than Helen, not only physically smaller but with fewer attachments, no children, less money, renter rather than owner.
"I'll wear the poppy dress, and you can decide whether we'll match or not. Will you apologize to Rebecca?"
"She isn't so innocent as you think, Nana. I'm sure she was flirting. Just spreading her wings, testing the water. Et cetera."
Nana closed her eyes, visited the scene, her husband with his arm around Rebecca's bare shoulders, his mouth at her ear, his diving glance into the décolletage, solicitous, drunk, benevolent, happy. He could not resist beautiful women. "Sometimes he sort of oversteps the avuncular role," she said.
"Young girls are teases. You and I were, right?"
Nana and Helen were a generation younger than Nana's husband, their former professor, Dr. Shock; back in graduate school, it hadn't been clear for a while which of them he favored, brash Helen or tagalong sidekick Nana. Nana hung up the phone, thinking about those flirtatious days, knowing that the circumstances hadn't been the same. She and Helen had met her husband when they were all at an apex, his as a certified academic celebrity, theirs as nubile acolytes. Back then, he had been a casual tenant of his attractive, still-young body; now he was a fearfully vain and anxious occupant of an older model. For two recent consecutive years, he had gone around claiming to be sixty-nine, not even consciously, so averse was he to the number seventy. Now he was seventy-one. Before climbing into bed at night, he would perform his exercises—chin-ups, sit-ups, pushups. "And sometimes throw-ups," he would always cheerfully conclude the list. Of Nana he had the expectation, never put into words yet understood nonetheless, that she would keep herself fit and trim and youthful, and that the effort, like the expectation, would be invisible. To that end, she now fixed herself a viscous muddy sludge in the blender, consumed it, and then pulled on her gear, gathered the dogs and their leashes, and took herself for her morning run, all before Dr. Shock, her husband, the emeritus, rolled out of bed.
"Your mother called," he said without looking up from the Chronicle, when she returned. "Hello, fellows," he said to the corgis, who dropped themselves panting at his feet, back legs splayed like chicken drumsticks. He'd sat there and not answered the phone. On the machine was her mother's tentative inquiry into Nana's life. Her parents had not known what to make of her marriage to a man their age; they still, many years later, were perplexed, treating Nana as if she'd suddenly transformed from the girl they'd known into an adult they couldn't fathom. Which was, essentially, the truth. She was an only child, the first on either side of her family to go to college. They could not debate what she'd learned there, or what she'd acquired: a husband who not only was old enough to be her father but was divorced, with two estranged sons who were her age. Never mind her degrees, undergraduate and graduate, a redundant pedigree that appeared to have led her no further than to housewifery, in the end. When her parents visited, they tried not to bother anybody, inhabiting the guest room like ghosts, treading lightly. They brought her news of her old neighborhood in Wichita, and of their ailing siblings, and a box of waxy chocolates from the local candymaker. They sat working not to wince as they sipped the wine that Nana's husband insisted on serving them, an expensive bottle, always perfect with whatever meal they would politely eat but not enjoy, a recipe that Nana had chosen from a gourmet magazine and that was, she would realize as soon as she was in their presence, far removed from their modest tastes. They wanted sweet tea and cream gravy. They wanted grandchildren.
Her husband, the professor, had assumed that he'd be able to expand his in-laws' horizons. He had been confident that he would seduce them, as he was famous for doing with students and colleagues, by means of generosity, immodesty, flamboyant declarations, sodden affection. But although Nana's parents were nothing but gracious to him, they were never going to fall under his spell.
"Daddy's had an accident," Nana's mother told her when she called her back. Her father had lost control of his car, driven onto a sidewalk and into an outdoor café. Nana hadn't even known that Wichita had outdoor cafés, and, fortunately, the place wasn't popular enough for there to have been anyone sitting at the tables he'd crashed through. Her father had been injured, though, and then cited, requiring, first, surgery and, next, perhaps, a lawyer.
He came onto the phone now, clearing his throat, speaking weakly from his hospital bed. "Nana, honey, could you come help Mom?" And within the hour Nana was behind the wheel of her car, headed from Houston to Kansas, Dr. Shock left behind to hold down the fort: care for the dogs and make an appearance at Libby's dinner party.
When she spoke with her husband, the next day, he dismissed her question about the party. "Dull," he declared. This meant one of several things. Least likely was that the evening was actually dull; more plausible was that he'd got too drunk to recall events in a narrative worth retelling; most probable was that he'd done something he could remember very well and did not wish to discuss. Nana sighed, wondering if she should phone Libby to give a generic apology, then decided to consult with Helen first, and discover what it was that her husband wasn't saying.
"Was Helen wearing her poppy dress?" Nana asked.
He paused before responding. "I don't recall." This was a lie, Nana could tell. But why lie about something so trivial as that?
"Was Rebecca there?"
"Yes," he said. "Her dress was black, in case you're wondering. A little black dress." The dogs began to bark then. Nana guessed that her husband had incited their racket, just to give him a good reason to hang up. It was easy to work them into such a state. You had merely to lead them to the plate-glass porch door and point out a squirrel or a cat running on the railing, or the automatic pool vacuum flipping its tail in the water as it carried on, side to side, end to end. They were brothers, two and a half years old. Lacking children, Nana and her husband had settled for dogs; their friends no doubt joked about their misplaced affection. This was the third pair of siblings they'd owned, first black Labs, next cocker spaniels, now the corgis—each set a slightly smaller breed. "We'll die with Chihuahuas," Nana had once told her husband. "You'll die with Chihuahuas," he had corrected her. "I'll die during the dachshunds." In the past, he had enjoyed pointing out the discrepancy in their ages. He didn't do that anymore. "The lads are protesting," he now said faintly into the phone. "I'll call you later."
Nana's mother asked about the dogs before she did her son-in-law. And how she struggled to call a man her own age her "son-in-law." The title begged to be inflected with irony, and Nana's mother wasn't capable of irony.
"All well?" she said cheerfully, disallowing any answer other than an affirmative. She was rooting in her purse for lipstick, preparing herself for the morning's trip to the hospital. Nana had arrived too late to visit her father the night before.
"Whose shoes are those?" Nana asked as they headed out, noticing for the first time an array of children's footwear—snow boots, flip-flops, plastic high heels—by her parents' back door.
"Didn't I tell you who moved into the Dixons' old place?"
"Remind me," Nana said.
Peter Hinshaw. Nana's first boyfriend. Who now had a wife, and two children. He'd come to the open house only because he'd mistaken the address, thought it was Nana's home on the market. On a bored Sunday whim, he'd brought his wife and son and daughter, expecting to revisit the rooms where he'd first had sex, first got drunk, first dropped acid, but, instead, had found himself in the house next door, and his wife, untutored in any kind of context, had fallen in love.
Pete's wife had fallen for her new neighbors, Nana's parents, as well. Her children had become their surrogate grandkids, running through the drive and yard that connected the properties, charging up the back steps, kicking off their shoes, and entering Nana's kitchen as if it were their own. They called Nana's parents by their first names, Bud and Lil. They had favorite places around the house, stations that they visited: the piano with its glass dish of meltaway mints; the base of the dining-room table, where a town of blocks and thimbles was set up; a giant jar of change in the sewing room, too heavy to lift but lovely to study; and the aquarium full of fish, into whose gawping mouths they took turns dropping the minutest bits of food. Nana's mother's joy in these children, her father's reputed amused lenience, stung Nana. Nothing she could do would transport her parents in quite the same way. Indulging these two small people, ages three and five, was as much as they could ever wish for.
Nana and her mother came home from the hospital to find the children waiting on the back steps. With their pink skin and blond mops, they did not resemble their father. Peter's skin had always been sallow, his hair a dark kinky mess, his eyes sunk in gloomy sockets. These drug-addict, rock-star features had attracted Nana in high school. She was not immune to their appeal now. Pete had broken up with her to date a college girl, trading up. Nana hadn't held this against him, although for a long while she had suffered—suffered as if kicked in the ribs by a horse, in tremendous pain but with no real hostility toward the animal itself. It was perhaps that college girl, all those years ago, whose allure had convinced Nana that she absolutely had to attend college herself. And a better one than the local U. She would be a coed from a school with a national reputation. She would show Peter Hinshaw. In fact, her eventual marriage to her professor could very well have been the fruition of that seed sown by Peter.
"Hey, Pete," she greeted him, when he slouched into her parents' house to retrieve his children. She wished that he had lost hair and gained weight; instead, he looked as she remembered him, which is to say that she felt herself attuned to him, to everything about him, once again. She knew what those lips felt like, that coiled hair; she remembered the odor of breath mint, smoke, beer when he kissed her on the cheek. Still indulging and hiding his vices. The badly shaved rough neck.
"Ba-Nana," he said drolly, not bothering to disguise his lazy leering scan, dragged from foot to head like the amplified snarl of a guitar riff. From the hallway came the commotion of his children, the little boy and girl running headlong into the room then, suddenly silenced—brought up short—by his presence. It was as if he beat them. Except that he wouldn't beat them. He would embarrass them. He would make them self-conscious. He would not laugh at what wasn't amusing, or praise indiscriminately, out of politeness. He was finicky, and frank, and relentless. "Intense," everyone had agreed uneasily, in high school; it had been a coup to be his girlfriend, to pass his peculiar muster.
"What are you no-necks up to?" he asked the girl, turning in her direction without releasing Nana from his glance.
"Playing," she said shyly, edging behind Nana's mother's knees.
"Playing," her brother echoed, a plea. In his hand he held an unravelling cardboard tube from gift wrap; they'd been charging around the house, sword fighting.
"Peter," Nana's mother said, ecstatic as hostess, mother, ersatz grandmother, queen of the castle, bestower of cardboard swords. "Sit down. Say hello to Nana. She's come to help." Her mother had no idea what had happened in her house, all those years ago. The blow-outs in the basement, the escapades in Nana's bedroom, the hidden niches where the bottles and pills and baggies had been stashed—her own little stations, Nana thought. Her parents had been notoriously oblivious.
The woman's innocence, compounded by the children's, returned them to high school, Peter and Nana staring at each other through the whir of sweetness that ensued: bright-pink juice being drunk and spilled, cookies offered and crumbled, sugar suffusing the atmosphere, while across the table, across years and other partners, a snaking heat coalesced between them, something engineered out of naughtiness and nostalgia, the knowledge of a shared history, wavering there like a faint layer of pollution.
Which would be thoroughly whisked away by the arrival of the wife. She wasn't the cool coed from back when. He'd married a physical therapist, an upbeat, wide-faced young woman, a leader of cheers. She, like her children, entered Nana's old home as if its inhabitants were her close relations; it was a confidence that had to do with good intentions, purity. "Honey, I'm so sorry about Bud" were her first words to Nana's mother. "I took him a can of cashews and a puzzle book. Pete, you know you have messages on the machine?"
"Unemployed," Pete explained to Nana. "Downsized."
"Taking stock, sweetheart," the wife scolded. "Weighing other options."
Pete's wife held out her hand to shake Nana's. "I would recognize you anywhere! All those pictures in the albums." Her smile made her eyes wrinkle atop her apple-round cheeks. She was so unlikely, Nana thought, though perhaps Pete needed such a girl to keep him in line—to provide cover for him by making small talk, uttering pleasantries. A person person, as opposed to a misanthrope. To her every address she appended a term of endearment: sweetness, monkey, pie-pie. Her children scooted onto chairs beside her as she sat at the table, each leaning close to her radiant good will.
But what did he offer her? Martyrdom?
"Come see my tree house?" Pete said to Nana.
"It was our tree house," the little girl said, "but Daddy took it."
"Our tree house," the boy repeated sadly.
Pete stood, patting the shirt pocket over his heart, where a hard-pack of Camels showed itself. "I'll check the messages," he told his wife. "Bye, Lil. Coming?" he asked Nana.
Nana's husband wanted to hear all about her ex-boyfriend.
"Why didn't you answer, before?" Nana asked. She imagined him ignoring the ringing phone, humming boredly right beside the machine as she left her messages. It was nearly midnight, and she was up on the porch roof, beneath the tree limbs, looking down at the Dixons' old house. Pete's house. Faint pink night-lights lit the upstairs hall; in the basement, another light was on, this of the bare-bulb variety. Nana guessed that Pete was under that bulb, either there or in his tree house, designed for the children, co-opted by him. He'd led her up its circular metal stairway treads, into its boys'-club confines. First he'd got her stoned, then he'd leaned over to put his lips on hers.
The night had turned brisk, as it always did just before Halloween; a wind had whipped up, and what few leaves were left in the trees slapped against the porch roof, switched at Nana's legs. Her mother would have been horrified to find her there, imperilled on the roof, as she had been in the old days. Would Nana never cease scaring that poor woman?
Meanwhile, Nana's husband was drinking. "The old soldier's joy," he informed her jauntily. He would be snug in his reading chair in their Houston study, paging through weighty art books. He couldn't concentrate on words in this state but enjoyed falling into the large color plates of these expensive volumes. His Rauschenbergs, his de Koonings, his Twomblys, and, saddest of all, his Rothkos. In this abstract mood ("This is when I relish visions of suicide," he'd told her once), he tonight discerned something about her commentary, peeled back her father's (stable) condition, her mother's (chatty) busyness, to inquire into the neighbor, the former boyfriend, the surprise, the narrative aside. Underpainting, Nana thought, the hidden figures beneath the public subject. He could perceive it anywhere.
"Tell me about the reunion with the boyfriend," her husband said. "Spare no detail. A hug?"
"Peck on the cheek? Kiss? Lingering glance?"
Nana heard his longing to have her say that they had fooled around. He wanted to be titillated by the situation, turned on by the scenario, have a little phone-sex intermission before returning to his art books. He liked it when men flirted with Nana, when they stood too close or stared overlong, tucked in her dress tag or brushed against her. And, in the past, Nana had exaggerated these incidents, especially while making love with her husband, so that he could feel like the winner, so that she could feel like the prize. He made use of it as foreplay; also, he seemed to think that it excused his own lecherous tendencies. But now that his inquiry might lead to something true, Nana found it difficult to remember how she usually played the game. "You sound like you want me to sleep with him," she said eventually.
"Do I?"
"You do."
"Maybe I do. If you did, would you tell me about it?"
"I don't want to sleep with him," she lied. "We already did that, a long time ago."
"Therefore, if you slept with him again, your over-all stats wouldn't change." Her "stats" were known to her husband. A mere handful. Nana had been timid. His number of partners was much higher, higher even than might be expected, given his twenty-plus-year head start. He couldn't remember all their names, those many women with whom he'd had sex.
"The stats would change." She had never been unfaithful, had never wanted to be unfaithful.
"Nana," he said, laughing. He was so confident, she thought, so sure that she still felt herself the lucky object of the esteemed professor's attention. In her mind, she opened the drawer of his night table, just to be appalled by the number of pill bottles there, the dirty secret of his decline. At that moment, the side door at the Dixons' clattered open; it was Pete emerging. He didn't let the storm door rattle shut behind him, but held it on its wheezing hydraulic arm, then simply sat on his side steps and lit a cigarette. Nana watched him from her perch.
"Sh-h-h," she whispered to her husband, without thinking.
They made love in her bedroom, on the bed where they'd first made love, when they were sixteen years old. Their bodies loved each other, she thought; they remembered—they knew what to do when put together. Outside, the sky was tin-can gray, a depressing light that softened Nana's embarrassment. Yet, naked, there was no longer awkwardness between them; his suit of flesh, unlike her husband's, did not hang loose upon a discernible skeleton. His mouth tasted of marijuana, his body temperature seemed to be precisely the same as hers, his arrangement of limbs designed to perfectly match hers, so that embracing him was like entering a dream, like falling under a spell. They moved with the familiarity of instinct, and when they rolled over, still attached, it reminded Nana of her dogs at play, harmonious intimacy. Was she really comparing them to animals? Forsaking words, or articulate thought at all? Was that a way to disclaim the significance of what passed between them? In fact, mightn't she find it all the more profound for that reason?
She wanted to say that she loved him—because she loved what had just happened, because she loved the strange intoxicant they had recovered and shared—but only a fool made that claim first.
"Last time we used a rubber," he eventually said, a half-smile on his contemptuous lips. Nana hadn't even thought about protection, proof of her innocence.
"Last time it moved along a little faster." She was trying to match his nonchalance, but nothing could have been further from the truth of how she felt.
They heard her mother arrive home downstairs. Nana had claimed a headache that morning, watching from her window as, first, her neighbors took themselves away, the mom in the car with the boy and the girl in the back, waving to Pete in his sweatpants on the porch. He'd raised his eyes from their car as it pulled down the drive, seeing Nana through the glass. Not long after her mother had also driven away, he had rapped on the back door. She'd opened it and then had not moved out of the way, forcing him, if he planned to come in, to step up and into her arms. They hardly spoke as they wandered the familiar path from kitchen to dining room, then upstairs and down the hall to Nana's girlhood room. "Haven't been up here lately," he murmured as she shut the door and latched the hook and eye that she'd screwed into the woodwork years ago.
Later, they'd listened as her mother made her slow way along the same route, then knocked on the bedroom door. Nana finally registered something of what she'd expected: guilt, shame, delinquency. Till that moment, she'd been operating in a sort of fog, acting on the hazy excited intuition of what felt good and of the merciful absence of her mind. She called out that she'd be right down.
"Daddy's coming home this afternoon," her mother said through the door. "Maybe you could pick him up while I fix supper?"
Pete was sitting on the edge of the bed by then, still naked, like an athlete on the bench, after a game, revving, yet worn out. He turned and gave her a devilish grin. "Sure," Nana called.
"Daddy," he mouthed. "Supper."
She laid her head on Pete's back, on the soft top knobs of his spinal column, where his hair reached her cheek. Again, she wished to say that she loved him—not because she was sure she loved him but because it was such a perfectly insular sentence. No one knew that they were here, together. She wished never to leave this instant, its singularity and repleteness.
"Keep her in the kitchen," he said into Nana's ear. "I'll go out the front."
Her father reclined across the back seat, pain medication making his sentences syrupy, his bare toes at the end of a heavy full-leg cast resting on the door handle. Without meaning to, he'd lowered the back window. The air was wet and cool, and Nana cracked her own window. The chill felt good; it cleared the odor of antiseptic and plaster from the vehicle. Her husband was only four years younger than this man. Of course she had always known that. It was because her father was sedated and prostrate, because he hadn't bothered to put on his eyeglasses, that his age and vulnerability, and by extension her husband's age and vulnerability, now suddenly upset her.
And also because of Pete, because making love with him had left her younger.
"Mom's fixing meat loaf," she announced, over-loud.
"Mom," he said, the only word he'd ever need; it would be his last, she thought.
For the rest of the ride, Nana let herself fall into a full flashback of sex with Pete. In the windy car, it warmed her like a glowing pilot light, steady, ready to flare into action.
On the phone to her husband, she lied, claiming that her father wasn't home yet. She was sitting on the roof again, as a cold dusk settled, the sky tinged green. "They're worried about infection," she said. "He still has a fever. And diarrhea," she added, for the verity that only a non sequitur could provide.
"And how's the boyfriend? That good neighbor?"
"Pete?" She looked down automatically, to the places he might occupy, and felt a faint ignition in her chest.
"Peter, the boy next door, that one. How's the reunion shaping up? Nothing like a rekindled romance, in my experience."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I fucked Deborah, a few years after the divorce, and it was terrific. Much better than when we were married, light-years better, like strangers, like Anaïs Nin characters. Ahh," he sighed happily, for a moment off in memory somewhere, then back. "Of course, that was long before I met you. Now, tell me about Peter."
Pete, Nana corrected, as if cradling his warm head in her palm. "I don't like that word," she said.
"You use it all the time."
"Not as a verb." She hadn't fucked anybody, ever. "He's fine," she said, of Pete, wondering what her husband really hoped to learn. It bothered Nana to hear his self-assured voice, his confession about his ex, which seemed to demand a reciprocal response, tit for tat. It was like a parent trying to coax a lying child into admitting an obvious truth. Or maybe it felt like that because that was what it so closely, factually, resembled. "He's pathetic," she plunged ahead. "Unemployed, hanging around like a sullen teen-ager. Even down to the tree house. He'll be lucky if his wife doesn't leave him."
Her husband laughed. "Just like me! Isn't that what I wrote in that letter in your dream?" Then he told her that he had been invited to the Merrills' for dinner, was leaving in a little while. Their friends would take care of him, in Nana's absence, would rally round to feed and entertain him.
"Stay away from the stemware," she warned. He'd broken many glasses, over time, at the Merrills'. They insisted on serving wine in extremely fine crystal; sometimes he demanded to use a jelly jar, prophylactically. It was a standing joke. Their friends found him charming; he was famous for his passionate arguments, his stormy exits, followed by exorbitant apologies, heartfelt embraces, exquisite handwritten notes. Beloved, he was, flaws and all.
He said one more thing before hanging up: "I don't care if you sleep with him, but you have to tell me. Agreed?"
"I'm not going to sleep with him," Nana said. She closed the cell phone and held it to her throat, shut her eyes, and felt Pete all around her.
Now she debated phoning Helen. One wanted to tell, she realized. After the initial crucial privacy, one wished to speak aloud what had transpired. As an excuse, as an opening gambit, she could ask Helen to keep an eye on her husband's drinking at the Merrills'; also, she could thank Helen for the flowers, which had arrived that afternoon, lurid non-native blossoms that vaguely alarmed Lil. Nana could ask what Helen would be wearing tonight, what had happened at Libby's, two evenings before.
Rebecca answered at Helen's house.
"She's over at your place," the girl said.
"No, I'm in Kansas. My father was in an accident." Nana started to fill in with the information about his hospitalization, when Rebecca cut her off with an exasperated sigh.
"Come on, Nana. Do you really not know what's going on with them? Are you really so totally out of touch?"
"I'm sorry?" Nana's first thought was that Rebecca was drunk or high, that she had regressed to the terrifying adolescence that her parents believed had, thank God, passed.
"It's been, like, years," Rebecca went on. "If I know, if my brothers know, it just seems impossible that you don't know. Doesn't it?" The girl paused. Nana had pushed herself back to the window that led onto the roof, was beginning to climb inside. Fear had gripped her; she felt as if she might suddenly, after all these years, truly be at risk of falling from her perch. "O.K., whatever," Rebecca said. "I'll tell her you called."
Nana was out the front door before she realized she'd gone down the stairs. They'd flown beneath her feet, lightly, as if she had floated from second to first floor, noting on her way the purple-and-black flowers from Helen, obscene red stamens lingering on her retina as she left her parents' porch. She went straight to the Dixons' house, stepping up Pete's walkway and to his front, rather than side, door. Her mother did not have a view of the front door from her kitchen window. Her father could not see it from where he was propped before the television in the den. Pete did not immediately ask her in, but stood on the other side of a torn black screen. She must have had a look about her, because his expression grew more guarded. Had she come here to test for that guardedness?
From the kitchen, at the back of the house, came the sound of singing, of children laughing. That was what he was guarding.
"I came to say goodbye," Nana chose to say.
Now he unhooked the door, pushed it open. He hadn't shaved; she longed to bury her face in his rough warm throat. She wished to banish both her husband and Helen, forget Rebecca's no-nonsense voice, and disappear in Pete's embrace. But he turned his back, picked up a beer from the end table next to a chair. Why was he in here, in the dark, instead of in the lighted kitchen? What had he been doing when she rang the bell? Back when he'd found the college girl, when he'd shrugged his helpless farewell to Nana, she'd taken her cue from him, too: she would not show her need.
"Daddy's home?" he asked.
"Daddy's home."
"No complications? Lawsuits?"
She shook her head. "He's fully insured," she said. "Over-insured, maybe."
"Good to be insured," Pete agreed.
When her husband was being courted by the department in Houston, he had been taken out to dinner with the other endowed chairs in the liberal arts. Helen was married to one. Nana's husband had phoned her later, in California, to tell her the news: her old friend, now Mrs. Helen Nolan, was ready to reënter her life, lucky happenstance, a sign. Helen might have been standing beside him in the hotel room even then, pulling earrings out of her ears, or replacing them, lighting a cigarette, pre- or post-coital.
Nana could not say which of these people, her husband or her best friend, was the most responsible for the pain she felt now, that kicked-in-the-ribs sensation.
"Beer?" Pete finally said, glancing reluctantly toward the noisy kitchen, where the beer was apparently kept.
"Do you think I should stay here?" she asked, and, when he scowled, as if she meant his living room, added, "In Wichita, I mean? Should I stay with them for a while?"
"I don't know. They'd be happy." He fell back into his chair, looked at the ceiling. He could be cold, she remembered; it was all coming back to her. When she began crying, he jumped up and hustled her out the front door. "This way," he said, not waiting for her to agree, but leading her around the drive, to the back, to his tree house, where he lit the gas heater. "Don't tell the codes people," he said, "but this is an illegal appliance." The small space filled with the odor of both the gas and the struck match. They sat on the floor beside each other, knees touching. Nana put her hand on his, and he removed it. "No," he said. "That would be a mistake."
Why? she wanted to wail. Why aren't I enough? For anyone, it seemed?
Instead, he reached for the hookah.
"Mr. Dixon died in your basement," Nana told him.
"Yeah," Pete said as he slowly exhaled. "It's got that aura." From the tree house they could see both kitchens below, his and hers, figures moving in the lighted windows. Nana took her turn with the hookah, inhaled, felt the blue glow enter her. She and Pete had first kissed at a party in the country, sitting around a fire, smoking pot. They hadn't said much, just leaned away from the group and into each other. Now Pete held a lighter to the bowl, circling it expertly with the flame.
"You'd rather get high than kiss," she said. "Or make love."
He looked up, his eyes reflecting the lighter's yellow flame. "Or anything," he said. The hashish had calmed him, made him the beautiful boy he'd been. She nodded, hoping that she looked to him like the girl she'd been.
She came home red-eyed, her shoes filthy with mud from the yard between their houses. She slipped them off at the back door, left them with the children's shoes there.
Her father had somehow ambulated in from the den, and was arranged sideways at the kitchen table, his bright-white cast propped on a second chair. Her mother fussed between stove and table, narrating happily, like a twittering bird. As usual, her parents were oblivious of the redness of Nana's eyes, of the odor she had surely brought with her. On the table, meat loaf. Milk. Soft bread and margarine. Nana fell into her chair as if she'd been pushed.
It was so exhausting to consider, the whole past that she would now have to revisit and amend, unstitch and patch back together, her husband and her friend Helen, from graduate-school days to the current moment. Right now those two would be sitting under the twinkling lights and the elaborate bug zappers in the Merrills' courtyard sculpture garden, passing appetizers, discussing art and politics, staring at each other over the rims of fine stemware.
"Just in time!" her mother said, hovering above the food, filling three plates, then settling in her customary seat.
"Thanks, Mom," Nana's father said.
"We're so glad to have you here," Nana's mother said to her. "I was telling Dad, even in these crazy circumstances, it's awfully nice."
Concentrating hard through the foggy effects of Pete's hashish, Nana picked up her fork and faced this simple meal. It was very difficult, as if she were starting all the way back at the beginning. ♦


text:
We are in Pre-alpha stage of a game development project and haven´t yet got reply from Valve about how it works to distribute through Steam. We need this information to do a business model with all the different costs of developing and distributing this game.
So my question is, what is the pricing structure? Do they take a per cent of our sale? If so, how much?
Thanks Felix


text:
Welcome to our new web site!
To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely available, through August 1, 2019.
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It was a cold and blustery March morning, and as I made fresh tire tracks through the light dusting of snow, I saw a mink dart across the driveway and under a rock along one of the three ponds at the Augusta Acres homestead in Welcome Lake, PA. It was too cold for the sap to be running yet, but the plastic tubes and hundreds of buckets lining the way to the house were ready for the sap to flow as soon as the temperature rose above freezing. In the distance, a small flock of ducks waddled along the bank of the frozen pond as if also wondering whether the ice would melt soon.
Today was the first day of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Maple Producers Association's "Self-Guided Maple Tour," and Todd and Sue Klikus, the operators of one of 10 local "sugar bushes"* participating in the event, were busy boiling away in the sap house when I arrived. [*Sugar bush: A wooded area where sugar maples predominate]
Producing maple syrup is the most recent of many projects on which the Klikus family has embarked since building their home in 1993 on the old 20-acre hunting and fish-rearing property once owned by Sue's grandparents, John and Augusta Rickard. What began as an interest in horses, gardening and outdoor projects has today blossomed into a modern-day, diversified homestead that currently produces meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, honey, maple syrup, cut flowers and even some of its own energy.
Todd and Sue grew up in Pike and Wayne counties respectively and spent part of their childhoods working or playing around dairy farms. However, when choosing a career, neither decided that farming was in the cards. Todd became an electrician and now owns Tri-County Inspection Agency, while Sue served as an elementary school teacher in the Wayne Highlands School District for over 30 years. After her retirement, the couple's latent interest in farming reemerged.
With the encouragement of their family and the help of friends made through a committed group of local farmers (the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Wayne County group), the couple and their son, Carson, began working to develop a sustainable, diversified homestead.
In recent years, "homesteading" has experienced a resurgence in popularity as more and more people seek to produce as much of their food and energy as possible. Thanks to many new technologies and the ability to learn and share knowledge and skills easily through online blogs and forums, modern homesteading has become an achievable, self-reinvented way of life for thousands of families all across the country.
Like Todd and Sue, many seek to reconnect with the land and simplify their lives. "It's the only way you'll absolutely know what's in your food," Sue said, "and the taste and quality is hands-down unparalleled. There's something very satisfying about sitting down to a meal that consists entirely of products you grew yourself or raised on your land."
After attending many farming and homesteading conferences, reading a variety of books and websites, and watching tons of YouTube videos, Todd began modifying the infrastructure at Augusta Acres. With the help of his Kubota tractor, he has plowed, tilled and planted gardens and pastures. He has built a wood-heated greenhouse; raised-bed gardens; an open-air abattoir; chicken, duck and turkey coops; hog shelters; top bar beehives; and, with the help of a friend, a sap house.
"I really don't have a favorite thing to do around the homestead," Tod said. "I like it all. When it's maple time, I like to syrup. When it's berry season, I like picking berries. Sometimes, I just like to go down and sit on a bucket and watch the bees. I like the variety that homesteading offers."
When the first guests of the maple tour arrived, Sue left the sap house to take the couple on a short walk through the sugar bush, and Todd added more wood to the fire. The sap rolled to a boil and filled the air with a sweet maple smell.
"It's not all fun," he said. "I never look forward to butchering or processing the chickens, but it has to be done."
According to Todd, Sue has come a long way since they first started processing their own meat chickens. "She'd just leave for the entire day or not set foot outside of the house." That started to change after Sue helped plan an educational, backyard chicken processing workshop for the Transition Honesdale Skillshare Project. Now, she recognizes that their efforts to provide their poultry with an excellent, natural environment—healthy, non-GMO feed, plenty of pasture, everything a chicken could want—are part of a reciprocal relationship. "All in all," she said, "they live great lives and only experience one bad day."
Because they raise such healthy animals, Todd and Sue are sure that they are eating the most delicious and nutritious food possible. One of their primary focuses has been raising heritage breed poultry and livestock, whose genetic preservation is threatened. Together they have bred and raised Old Spot and Tamworth hogs and hatched out and tended to a variety of heritage chickens, including Buckeyes, Ameraucanas and Australorps. They raise and tend Bourbon Red turkeys and Muscovy ducks and allow a flock of Guinea hens free range over the property to control ticks.
It is important to note that homesteading is an endeavor that should not be taken lightly. "It's a 24-hour, 365 day job," says Todd. "Someone always has to be home to take care of the animals every night. We face so many predators that we can't afford to leave their coops open throughout the night."
Like any farm operation, the success or failure of the homestead depends on the dedication of the farmer to a lifestyle. The notion that a homestead is "just" a hobby farm or has less of an impact than scaled-up farms is misguided. It's also potentially disastrous to animals on a homestead if the level of commitment involved is not appreciated.
Even as more people strive to develop self-reliance and a connection with their food source, Sue points out how essential it is to forge a community network to learn from, barter with and offer each other knowledge, feedback and experience. Thankfully, we live in an area rich with farming knowledge and with groups committed to creating a stronger, more prosperous community. As the "sustainable agriculture" movement grows throughout the Upper Delaware region, it is the Klikus's hope that more families will be inspired to take more control over their homes and lives and to produce as much food as possible at home.
As I left the sap house, I took a slight detour through the sugar bush. The sun had just begun to break through the clouds and the snow was disappearing in patches throughout the woods. I peeked into one of the sap buckets and waited until a bead of liquid formed at the end of the tap. With a finger, I tasted the mildly sweet water and, in the distance, heard a rooster crow. This is the life.


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Quick Preamble on the Kalaam Cosmological Argument
As a part of an argument for the existence of God (known as the Kalaam Cosmological Argument), the Christian apologist WLC has argued that an actual infinity as realized in Nature is physically impossible. He argues that the the consequences of physical infinities are illustrated by Hilbert's Hotel. ODN now has many, many other threads on the Kalaam Cosmological argument (e.g. Clive's well-known thread against the KCA), and I encourage readers unfamiliar with the Kalaam Cosmological argument and Hilbert's Hotel to quickly peruse those threads before continuing on this one.
The purpose of this thread is to conclusively demonstrate the falsity of WLC's assertion by constructing an explicit counter-example. This will be done by creating a physical system that:
a.) Explicitly obeys the laws of physics.
b.) Contains an actual infinity, and thus is a physical analog of Hilbert's Hotel.
c.) In a finite amount of time, fully accommodates an additional "guests" (particle) into it's infinite hotel even though all of its rooms (occupied points) were previously full.
Note that I am not arguing that such a system exists in the real world, the only point that I am making is that this system could exist in the physical world and if it did, it would break no physical laws and thus cause no physical contradiction. For simplicity, I'm choosing to work with Newtonian mechanics as my model for physical laws, but in my footnote at the bottom, I address why it's unlikely that there's any practical obstructions when incorporating more modern physical principles, such as quantum mechanics or relativity. (Note that I've previously explained that if you understand that quantum gravity might disallow the argument I'm giving here, then you've actually already ceded other premises of the KCA, but I leave this discussion for other threads. I'll ignore the full implications for the KCA, other than noting that if this argument is correct, then at least one central premise of the KCA must be false.)
: If you disagree with me that the following system obeys the laws of physics, you need to explicitly explain to me which physical law has been broken in the following system. Note that "it violates common sense" is not a physical law.
The Argument for the Possibility of Actual Infinities
Let's begin with definitions for the Newtonian system:
Def 1: A particle is an object with zero extent (it's a point), but has dynamics (it's a function of time, and so it can move around). At the first instant in time, the only things needed to specify the particle is its starting position, x0, and starting velocity, v0. I'm assuming no forces, so the time evolution of each particle is governed by the equation, x(t) = x0 + v0 t, for the position of the particle at all later times. This uniquely defines the point each particle sits at for all times t, such that t ≥ 0.
Def 2: The momentum, p, of a particle is defined to be p = m v0, where m is the mass of a particle. The energy, E, of a particle is defined by E = 1/2 m v02.
Ax 3: In Newtonian mechanics, the only criterion for the system to be physical is that in any finite volume with particles, all of the masses of each particle must be greater than zero, the total energy of the system must be finite, and the the total momentum must be finite. Thus if the system starts off with a well-defined set of initial positions and velocities, and in each finite region of space there's a finite amount of energy and momentum, then the system has not generated any physical contradiction according to classical mechanics. In other words, the system is entirely described with physical laws.
So that's basic 100 level Newtonian mechanics.
The Scenario: Hilbert's Hotel in a Finite Amount of Space
Suppose this hypothetical universe starts out with an infinite number of particles. Again, classical mechanics has no objections to this (in fact, the consistency of infinite particles is used thoroughly in statistical mechanics to approximate systems of large particles), quite literally, the only question is "How many particles, where are they, and how fast are they moving?" As long as you can specify this data whilst keeping finite momentum and energy, there's no physical contradiction. So let's just pick their positions (Remember, I'm not doing this in real time, I'm saying that my initial time, this system happens to be in this configuration).
Let's start all of them off in a finite interval, say [1,2). For the sake of the argument, let's take some specific length scale, for instance a meter, and just call it "1" in that length scale. To do this, start the particles off in the following positions (known as a geometric series):
x1 = 1
x2 = 1 + 1/2 = 1.5
x3 = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 = 1.75
xn = xn-1 + (1/n)2 = 2[1 - (1/2)n ]
Here's a graphical representation of the positions of the first three particles:
It's easy to verify that all particles will be at a point greater than or equal to 1 but always less than 2 (i.e. no particle sits at point "2", just arbitrarily close to it, on the interval known as [1,2) by mathematicians). However, each particle is also never lying on top of one another; for each n, each particle is at a distinct point. This is an infinite collection of points where each particle is located, but in a 1 unit distance interval.
Causing the Hilbert "Paradox" in a Finite Amount of Time
Now for the alleged paradox. It's been incorrectly conjectured many times now that it would take an infinite amount of time to accommodate the Hilbert Hotel, and this might be resolution to the paradox; it's also been stated that you could never physically accommodate another particle in Hilbert's Hotel (the infinite points on the interval [1,2) which occupy a particle). Let's prove that neither of these assertions are correct. Suppose I give you another particle, let's say at point 0. Let's show that it is physically possible to accommodate the new particle inside of "infinite hotel" in a finite amount of time, and saliently with finite total energy and finite total momentum on the interval. In other words, where no physical contradiction has occurred Specifically, we'll start off with an infinite number of particles occupying an infinite number of points inside the finite interval [1,2) with a single particle lying outside that interval, and then evolve the system forward a unit of time until there's now be "infinity + 1" particles inside of the finite interval, but also with all of the same previous states occupied.
We also control the initial velocities of these particles, so after a given interval of time, we can uniquely pick each particles next position and that specifies the initial velocity. It's rather simple to solve the set of evolution equations xn(t) = xn vn. Thus, for our setup, we want each particle to move forward by xn -> xn+1 after the allotted finite period of time. So, we require that each particle moves forward by an amount xn+1 - xn = 1/n^2. This means that each velocity needs to be:
vn = (1/n)2
So after 1 second, each particle will have moved forward to the next position, particle n moves to particle (n+1)'s spot. This completely defines the system, and the total energy & momentum can trivially be evaluated (let's assume they all have the same mass, m) as
E = Σ∞0 1/2 m vn2 = 2/3 m [unit distance]^2/[unit time]^2,
which is finite (I used the above formula for computing infinite geometric series, which can also be found in the Wikipedia article). The particle at x=0 also has a velocity (which is just 1 [unit distance]/[unit time]), so add 1/2m to get the total energy, including the particle that starts off outside of the "hotel." The total momentum can be more easily calculated with the same formula, and is simply 3 m [unit length]/[unit time].
So at the instant t=1, the new particle has moved to point 1, particle 1 have moved to point 1.5, particle 2 has moved to 1.75, and so on. Each particle has moved to the next previously occupied point in our set. This means that Hilbert's so-called "paradox" has been realized in a finite amount of time and for a completely physically sensible system.
In summary: Hilbert's Hotel can be physically realized and everything can happen in a finite amount of time and in a physically sensible manner. Start at t=0, there's an infinite number of points with particles occupying specific points in the interval [1,2), plus one particle outside at x=0. Evolve forward a finite amount of time, i.e. to time t=1, and now an "infinity+1" of particles are sitting inside of the interval [1,2) and occupying the exact same points as were previously occupied. Each particle still has it's own unique point in space, there's no overlaps, and the newest particle was added to the bunch in a finite amount of time, using a finite amount of energy and momentum, not assuming "successive infinities," and the "absurdities" regarding the occupations are as real here as in Hilbert's Hotel. Nevertheless, this is entirely physically possible in classical mechanics and is completely allowed by classical laws of physics. The conclusion? The so-called "paradoxes" that WLC asserts invalidate infinity are essential features, not irresolvable bugs. This is simply how infinite sets work. Your intuition simply has to be modified for how you think about infinite sets.
N.B. I am also quite certain that I can setup the same system for an infinite number of non-interacting quantum particles (Take it in QFT, where this is easiest to describe and the non-relativistic limit requires it to be valid in QM, too), and where the probability of the transition to including the "infinity + 1" particle should be finite. I may work out this example to make the point really concrete, but it would appear that at first glance, there are zero obstructions to causing this in otherwise completely sensible physical systems. It's also worth pointing out that the Fock space of a free QFT explicitly includes the case of an infinite number of particles (as previously mentioned in other WLC/KCA threads), so literally every assumption there would be unimpeachable (i.e. definitely physically allowed) from the standpoint of QFT, the currently most complete description of Nature until we develop quantum gravity.
Also, I have notably neglected gravity, but this shouldn't impose any problems. In principle I could add gravity to my evolution equations, only now I'd need to add as a postulate that there's finite mass for every finite region and then setting up the equations to end up at the nth -> (n+1)th positions, for all n. It seems laborious, but not impossible.


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Posted by Editoress on 02/11/10
The West Quebec Wheelers are into season 3 of our winter roller racing antics. We have been making the most of our unique old school 4roller set hosting winter racing fun in the beer halls of Ottawa while raising awareness and funds to support the Echelon Projects youth cycling initiatives and our Tour of Martinique participation.
Race #1 of the 2010 season packed the hall in Aylmer QC on January 23rd and a record 63 riders took a shot at the Gold Sprint style 500m fixed fork, the 1000m free rollers or the 5km invitational. Close finishes forced a re-run in one semi-final. Young speed and enthusiasm held off all challengers in the 500m. Grit and spit spun 53x11 to top speed. Beers and cheers raised the volume to frantic level for all the finals. Fun cycling celebration in dark winter indoor warmth.
Next stop is February 20, 2010 in Montreal, in the heart of Canada's cycling scene.
Round #1 champions Flo Laplante (Espoir Saputo) and Alex Cataford (Élicycle Rocky-Mountain) will be making the journey from Ottawa to take on all challengers in the 500m. 2009 Quebec-Montreal Champion, Jean Sebastien Perron of Louis Garneau will be down from Quebec City to take on all in the 5000m head to head match.
With the great support of Martin and Fernand Rooseboom of Patrick Sport and Cycles, the Wheelers are coming to town with our old school 4-roller Racing Clock.
Time for a winter celebration of bike racing. Money raised will be donated to the Bromont Velodrome Racing program.
Anyone can ride the 500m, we supply the bikes mounted to the rollers. Free wheeling roller racers can bring your own bikes, 53x11 max gear and race 1000m.
These competition rollers are heavy, silky smooth and a joy to ride on. At 50lbs a set they sit solid on the floor and have the floor rumbling.
There are sure to be some challengers in Montreal for our champs.
Bring your own rollers to warm up in the back. 500m bikes are set with 48x15 on bikes with toe clips and straps. Race in sandles to cowboy boots. Natural speed shows up.
If you are not racing then be ready to cheer on your favorites.Fund raising raffles for some great prizes. Race for fun, glory and a shot at a medal.
Everyone gets a qualifying ride and the top 16 head to the elimination rounds. 4 in each FINAL.
In Town for the Montreal Bike Show??
Judges and critics wanted. 10$ ticket price
email firstname.lastname@example.com for more information
Saturday February 20th
The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 4 Verdun
La Légion Royale Canadienne Filiale 4 Verdun
4538 rue de Verdun, Verdun, Québec Canada H3G 1M7
Courtesy John Large
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