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Gone

July 6, 2010

Not to get all depressing on you, but I need to tell you something.

At 11:49 p.m. on Monday, July 5, 2010, my wife of 25 years — and my relationship partner of 29 years — departed this life after a lengthy, hard-fought battle with metastatic breast cancer and a progressive, degenerative liver disease the doctors were never able to fully diagnose.

She passed from this world holding my hand, before taking the hand of One greater and stronger than I, who welcomed her into the next.

KJ (as I’ve always referred to her in this space) was 44.

I will write much more about KJ, and our life together, in the days and weeks to come. But right now, my emotions are summarized by the words of this song, written by Tristan Bishop and recorded by one of KJ’s and my favorite a cappella groups, the House Jacks:

And now you’re gone
Somehow you’re gone
You were my midnight
You were my dawn
You were the shoulder that my life leaned on
You were my world
You were my song
You’re everything I could depend on
And now all you are is
Gone

Categories: Breast Cancer Awareness, Dead People Got No Reason to Live, My Home Town, Soundtrack of My Life, SwanStuff

Comments: 12 Comments

Rest in peace, Alicia

April 22, 2010

Although I’d known for several days that this development was imminent, it still grieved me to read the news that Alicia Parlette died from cancer today at the tragically young age of 28.

I first wrote about Alicia nearly five years ago, shortly after her blog Alicia’s Story began to appear on SF Gate, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle. At the time, Alicia was 23 years old, and recently employed by the Chronicle as a copyeditor. When she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer — alveolar soft part sarcoma — in March 2005, Alicia’s superiors at the Chron offered her the opportunity to write online about her journey through treatment. Her memoirs were poignant, inspiring, heart-crushing, and real.

By early 2007, Alicia’s health had deteriorated to the point that she was no longer able to maintain her position at the Chronicle. The paper allowed her space to continue her blog, but updates grew infrequent, and stopped altogether in August of that year. Readers were left to wonder how Alicia fared in her ongoing battle with her aggressive disease. From time to time, some blogger would throw out a mention of Alicia, or a public plea for information about her welfare, but for the most part, those of us who had come to care about her through her writing could only speculate… and pray.

Over the past couple of weeks, news surfaced, via the Chronicle and other media, that Alicia had entered hospice care. By all reports, she faced the end of her young life as she had faced the obstacle that would eventually overwhelm her — with courage, determination, laughter, and an indomitable spirit.

Today, shortly before noon, that spirit departed.

If you read this blog often, you know that cancer is a fighting word here at SSTOL. My wife — known in this space as KJ — was first diagnosed with breast cancer in September 2000, and with a metastasized stage of that disease in March 2007. We live daily with the spectre that touches far too many lives.

We never met Alicia Parlette, but we felt as though we did. Thousands of others out there in the electronic ether felt the same. Our hearts beat heavily today.

May those who loved Alicia in life find peace in her memory.

And let’s all do what we can to kill this monster called cancer…

…before we lose many more Alicias.

Categories: Breast Cancer Awareness, Celebritiana, Dead People Got No Reason to Live, Good Reads, My Home Town, Ripped From the Headlines, SwanStuff

Comments: 2 Comments

A shaggy dog story, in a comic vein

April 6, 2010

So…

The other day, I was chatting with the award-winning cartoonist who created the Flaming Carrot and the Mystery Men, and for whom SpongeBob SquarePants was named.

The artist said to me, “You know, now that Marvel is rebooting the X-Men movie franchise, you’d be the perfect actor to play Hank McCoy.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, you’re a rather squat and stocky individual, yet quite graceful and agile,” the artist said. “You’re also intellectual and erudite, as is Hank.”

Although flattered, I demurred. “They’d never cast a little-known voice actor in such a prominent role in a big-budget, live-action property,” I said. “That’s why Kelsey Grammer got the role in X-Men: The Last Stand.”

“Nevertheless,” reiterated the cartoonist, “if I were directing the next X-Men film, I’d cast you as Hank.”

To which I could only respond…

“I’ll never be your Beast, Bob Burden.”

Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Celebritiana, Cinemania, SwanStuff

Comments: 1 Comment

Supergirl is now officially Superwoman

March 25, 2010

Twenty-one years ago today, my daughter KM was born.

And, as they say in the comics, nothing would ever be the same again.

Clearly, from my perspective, KM’s birth is far and away the most significant event ever to occur on March 25 throughout the entirety of human history. (Which, if you think about it, is all the history there is. It’s not as though any of the other creatures who inhabit this planet are writing this stuff down.) If, however, one wanted to think about the importance of this date from a more global perspective, here’s some grist for the mill.

  • According to tradition, Venice (the one in Italy, not the one in southern California) was founded on this date in 421.
  • Robert the Bruce assumed the royal throne of Scotland in 1306.
  • Titan, the largest moon of Saturn (and the birthplace of Saturn Girl, of Legion of Super-Heroes fame), was discovered by Christiaan Huygens in 1655.
  • Slave trading was abolished in the British Empire in 1807. (About time!)
  • Greece — a lovely country where I spent two years during my halcyon youth — declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, and found itself compelled to make its own footstools from that point forward.
  • Beginning one of the most notorious travesties of the American justice system, the Scottsboro Boys were arrested in 1931.
  • The European Economic Community (what we Americans used to call the Common Market) was founded in 1957.
  • John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton in 1969.
  • In 2006, Kyle Huff shot and killed six people at a party in Seattle before turning his weapon on himself, in what came to be known as the Capitol Hill massacre.

KM shares her birthday with such notables as…

  • The late sportscaster Howard Cosell.
  • The equally late Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor in Doctor Who).
  • Astronaut Jim Lovell (who narrowly avoided becoming “the late Jim Lovell” aboard Apollo 13).
  • Film critic Gene Shalit.
  • Feminist icon Gloria Steinem.
  • The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.
  • The Queen of Rock and Roll, Elton John. (Sorry, Sir Elton, but you know you’d have made that same joke.)
  • Actresses and style-setters Sarah Jessica Parker and Marcia Cross.
  • American Idol contestants Katharine McPhee, Carmen Rasmusen, and Jason Castro.
  • Auto racer and GoDaddy pitchwoman Danica Patrick.
  • Three former members of KM’s beloved Golden State Warriors: Avery Johnson, Bob Sura, and Marco Belinelli.
  • The charming proprietor of my local comic book shop, Kathy Bottarini.

Happy birthday, Punkin. Your mom and I love you very much.

You go, Supergirl! I mean… Superwoman.

Yeah, that’ll take some getting used to.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Celebritiana, Hero of the Day, Listology, My Home Town, SwanStuff, They Say It's My Birthday

Comments: 1 Comment

Hero of the Day: Abby is nine

February 28, 2010

Happy birthday to my personal assistant Abby, who is celebrating her ninth birthday today.

Abby says: "Nine years old, and they still make me wear this stupid hat."

That makes her about 50 in prorated human years, which means that, relatively speaking, she’s now older than I am.

Abby would like you to know that she is never too old to wear a silly hat and play with a new toy on her birthday.

Or watch a little Olympic hockey.

Abby says: "Take the picture already -- I've got a toy to gnaw on."

Well… she doesn’t really care about the hockey.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Hero of the Day, My Home Town, SwanStuff

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Postscript… with a bullet

January 20, 2010

It’s indicative how stunned I was by the death of novelist Robert B. Parker that I neglected to mention in my memorial post the most personal element of my Parker experience…

I actually met the man once.

This would have been, I believe, in the fall of 1982. Parker was on a tour promoting Ceremony, the ninth Spenser novel, which had just been published. One of his stops was a B. Dalton Bookseller location on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. I was in the midst of my first semester at San Francisco State University — my third collegiate year overall, after two years at Pepperdine and a year off working full-time. (I’d hum you a few bars of the school song, but I’ll confess that I have no idea what it is.) When I heard that my favorite author was in town, I hopped on the Muni Metro’s M Line and headed downtown to stare greatness in the face.

Parker’s popularity was still in its nascent stage at this point, so there wasn’t a mammoth crowd in the store, clamoring for the author’s autograph. In fact, during the time I was there, I could have counted on my fingers the people who stopped by Parker’s table, and still had enough fingers free to tap out “London Bridge” on a piano.

Parker, a bluff, broad-shouldered man with a walrus mustache, gave the distinct impression that this sort of personal appearance gig wasn’t his greatest thrill in life. Of course, he’d probably begun the tour in his native Boston and worked westward, so San Francisco was in all likelihood near the end of a long journey, during which he’d fielded the same inane book-tour questions (i.e., “Where do you get your ideas?” and “What’s Spenser’s first name?”) several dozen times. So I was willing to cut the guy some slack if he didn’t feel particularly chirpy.

Being on a student’s budget, I couldn’t afford to buy Ceremony in hardcover. Instead, I picked up the newly released paperback of the previous Spenser book, A Savage Place, and handed it to Parker to sign. (Because Parker wrote a new Spenser adventure annually, Delacorte/Dell would publish the preceding year’s Spenser in softcover simultaneously with the release of the latest novel’s hardcover edition. I always waited to read each book until I could purchase it in paperback. Every time I walked into a bookstore or library, I’d fight the temptation to devour the latest hardcover, forcing myself to hold out for the paperback twelve months later. It was a masochistic exercise in discipline.) Parker stoically scribbled his autograph on the title page and gave the book back to me.

Determined not to embarrass myself in front of this person whose work I so deeply admired, I had rehearsed my comments on the streetcar ride over. I told Parker that I enjoyed his books very much, and that I hoped one day to write a novel myself.

“Writers write,” Parker said. “If you want to be a writer, start writing.” Simple advice, but sound.

I then asked him the one question I’d prepared — “Do you think you’ll ever write a book specifically about Hawk?” — referring to Spenser’s ultra-efficient comrade-in-arms. Parker’s expression betrayed the fact that he’d heard this one a few bajillion times already, and he responded, “No. I really only see Hawk through Spenser’s eyes. I couldn’t write a book from his point of view.” (True as that was, Parker did eventually write a couple of Spenser novels in which Hawk played more than just a supporting role — 1992’s Double Deuce and 2005’s Cold Service.)

That was it. I moved off to pay for my book. I overheard Parker telling another customer that the Spenser story on which he was just beginning work would lay the foundation for some major changes to come in later books. In retrospect, I believe that he was probably referring to Valediction, published in 1984. In that book, Spenser and his paramour Susan separate for a time — events that reportedly mirror those in the lives of Parker and his wife Joan.

My autographed copy of A Savage Place rests on my desk as I type this post. I guess it’s a collector’s item now.

Categories: Celebritiana, Dead People Got No Reason to Live, Good Reads, My Home Town, Reminiscing, SwanStuff

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Silver threads

January 19, 2010

On this date 25 years ago — a chilly, overcast January day here in Wine Country — KJ and I were wed.

What’s the secret of being married for 25 years? No secret, really. It’s the same as with anything. If you keep doing something without quitting, eventually you’ll have done it for a quarter-century. Assuming that you survive that long, of course.

In my case, the fact that KJ doesn’t own firearms has helped.

Seriously, though…

Anyone who can put up with my eccentricities for a third of a lifetime deserves a ticker-tape parade down Market Street, a Congressional resolution, and a handwritten letter from the President. (Those of you who know me personally know that’s true. Even then, you only know a fraction of it.)

Until KJ’s health took a hard left turn three years ago, we traditionally celebrated our anniversary with a vacation trip somewhere. It was our way of acknowledging the fact that we couldn’t afford to take a honeymoon when we first got married. Over the years, these sojourns have taken us to many intriguing locales — some more than once — including…

  • Lake Tahoe (the North Shore on our first anniversary; South Lake some years later)
  • Monterey (our favorite hotel: the Spindrift Inn on Cannery Row)
  • Greater Los Angeles (we once spent an entire day visiting as many SoCal shopping malls as we could manage in 12 hours)
  • San Francisco (I backed the car into a post in the hotel garage)
  • Hawaii (thanks, Jeopardy!)
  • Disneyland (we were there for a fairly strong earth tremor one year — fortunately, we went elsewhere in 1994, thus missing the massive Northridge quake)
  • California’s Central Coast (if you’ve seen Sideways, we’ve been there)
  • Reno (hint: ship the buffet at Circus Circus)
  • Las Vegas (most recently, for our 20th)

Mere minutes before the midnight start of our 15th anniversary, I was involved in a serious multi-vehicle accident coming home from a chorus rehearsal in the East Bay. Needless to say, we skipped the trip that year.

Thank you with all my heart for the past 25, my love. And here’s to whatever future God grants.

Categories: Hero of the Day, My Home Town, Reminiscing, SwanStuff

Comments: 6 Comments

Citizen of eWorld

November 30, 2009

A random post to an online forum I frequent jolted into memory a fact that I hadn’t considered before today…

I’ve been online for 15 years.

That’s almost as long as the World Wide Web itself has been around.

I bought my first computer way back in 1988, with a chunk of my original Jeopardy! winnings. This wonderful addition was an Apple Macintosh Plus, equipped with what seemed at the time like almost unlimited memory — a full megabyte of internal RAM, supplemented by an outboard hard drive boasting 20 (yes, 20!) MB. Heck, on my current Windows Vista-powered Dell notebook, a single keystroke exhausts 20 MB. (I’m exaggerating, but not by much.) But back in the day, that kind of juice meant I was living large in the cybernetic age.

Even more bizarre, I equipped that microscopically brained Mac with a slightly used floor-demo laser printer that cost more than all the computer hardware I’ve purchased in the 20 years since. Combined.

My Mac Plus and I chugged along happily together for six years, blissful in our word-processing glory. Then, in 1994, I started hearing about some newfangled “Internet” thing, and this “World Wide Web” that made it accessible to the common man. So, being about as common as men come, I invested in a fancy new Mac that not only possessed scads more computing power than my charming old relic, but even came with a color (!) monitor. Best of all, by connecting a snazzy dialup modem, I could launch myself out onto the WWW and communicate with folks near and far.

Talk about living large.

At the time, Apple offered its own self-branded online service for Mac users only, known as eWorld. I was, I’m fairly certain, one of the original handful of eWorld subscribers, joining shortly after the service went live in the summer of ’94. When eWorld debuted, it featured a quaint graphic interface that collected all of the possible online destinations under a handful of category umbrellas, organized to make the Internet feel like a global village.

Newsstand enabled one to connect with news and sports resources. What few e-commerce sites existed then were grouped under Marketplace. Such nexuses as Arts and Leisure Pavilion, Business and Finance Plaza, and Learning Center collected other types of sites. Computer Center offered Mac technical support. Community Center was eWorld’s native aggregation of forums and bulletin boards. If you couldn’t figure out where to go or what to do, you tapped the Info Booth icon.

Navigating eWorld was clunky and far from intuitive. in those halcyon days, though, one thrilled at the mere notion of linking to a world of information with a few clicks of a (single-button) mouse.

Frankly, there never was more than a smattering of citizens populating eWorld. That explains why Apple pulled the plug on the service less than two years later, fobbing us loyalists off on then-nascent America Online. In March 1996, my electronic address changed overnight from my very first, SwanShadow-at-eWorld-dot-com, to the somehow less cool-sounding SwanShadow-at-AOL-dot-com. (I imagine that latter e-dress is probably still extant, even though I haven’t accessed it in a half-decade or more.)

Without question, I’ve seen incredible change along the information superhighway over the last 15 years. It’s faster, infinitely more diverse, and innumerable ways exist to find what you’re searching for.

It’s just hard to believe I’ve been out here in the ether this long.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Blogosphere, Reminiscing, SwanStuff, That's Cool!

Comments: 2 Comments

SwanShadow Gives Thanks: This Time, It’s For Real

November 26, 2009

On each of the five most recent Thanksgiving Days, I’ve used this space — and the space this blog occupied previously — to itemize in alphabetical format a random sampling of things for which I am grateful.

This year, I told myself: If it’s working, don’t fix it.

Thus, the sixth annual edition of SwanShadow Gives Thanks. (You can peruse the previous years’ lists here.)

Amazon Kindle 2. A virtual library of books everywhere I travel, in a lightweight device the size of a DVD case. Everyone on the staff at the hospital KJ frequently visits wants one. I’m currently reading Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, Larry Tye’s fine biography of baseball star Leroy “Satchel” Paige.

Brizzly. A nifty online client that lets me track both of my Twitter accounts and my Facebook page in one convenient location. If you’re not already following me, you should be.

Common Elements, my signature theme of comic art commissions. Each artwork in the series depicts two (and occasionally more) unrelated comic book heroes who share something in common. The connections are sometimes obvious (i.e., Red Arrow and Red Sonja), sometimes obscure (i.e., The Question and Starfire, whose civilian names — Vic Sage and Koriand’r — are both herbs). You can see all 87 of the existing Common Elements pieces in my online gallery.

Disneyland, the Happiest Place on Earth. This summer, I had a chance to visit there for the first time in several years. It still makes me giddy.

Eugene Finerman, one of the all-time great champions in the history of Jeopardy!, and the man who every day on his excellent blog, Your RDA of Irony, teaches me something that I didn’t know. Eugene is a one-man compendium of all things historical — like a university survey class, only funnier.

Freebies. I love getting stuff for free, whether it’s product samples in the mail or random nibbles at Costco. Uncle Swan’s credo: If it’s free, it’s for me.

Gasoline. We need things to make us go.

Headlines, the most hilarious five minutes in weekly television. I missed my Monday night fix while Jay Leno was transitioning from The Tonight Show to his new 10 p.m. gig. I’ll probably miss it again when Jay’s new show gets canned by NBC, as I’m increasingly certain that it will.

Iraklion Air Station, Crete, Greece. I spent two halcyon years of my youth there, in the early 1970s. Some wonderful memories that I cherish more than 35 years later. The base is long since decommissioned, but I’d like to get back and see what’s left of it while I’m still on the planet.

Jon Miller, quite possibly the premier broadcaster in all of baseball. And we Giants fans have got him.

KJ and KM, my wife and daughter. I’m especially thankful that they are together for Thanksgiving. They’ve missed each other while KM’s been away at college.

My Lord Jesus, who makes all things possible, and who hasn’t given up on me just yet.

Max’s Café in Corte Madera. Terrific sandwiches, and friendly service. You’ve gotta love a joint that gives you both French fries and onion rings with your order. I recommend the BLT with avocado, and the Philly cheesesteak.

No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain’s show on the Travel Channel. I don’t think I’d want to tour with Tony — he drinks and smokes too much for me to find him a pleasant companion — but I’d like to see some of the places he goes. In fact, I have seen some of them.

Oracle Arena, the home court of my beloved Golden State Warriors. KM and I saw a few fun games there last season. The games will be even more fun when head coach Don Nelson finally retires.

Plasma TV. Ah, the wonders of modern digital technology.

Quiet. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how great a blessing it can be.

Round Table Pizza. It’s the last honest pizza, or so the ads say. All I know is that it tastes pretty good.

Sausalito, the beautiful waterfront town where I go every week to study the craft of voice acting. Speaking of which…

Traxers — my fellow students at Voicetrax. A more encouraging and supportive community of actors you will not find. Here’s to everyone’s success in 2010.

Unfriend, the Oxford English Dictionary‘s 2009 Word of the Year. In case you’re unclear, it’s a verb, not a noun. Although I’ve known a few people to whom such a noun might have been appropriately applied.

Vitamin Water. Because you could take vitamins, and drink water, but it’s just simpler to have them commingled together.

Walmart. Scoff if you will. They have the stuff I need at prices I like. And the other patrons provide free entertainment. Do I think the people who run the company are whacko? Sure. But I’m not so wealthy that I can afford to pay a premium for non-whacko. If you are, do what pleases you.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Not because it was a great — or even a good — movie, but because it made enough dough that other superhero films will continue to get the green light. You know I loves me some superheroes.

Yellow highlighter. Whoever invented this indispensable tool should have received a medal. Or a knighthood. Or something.

Zero Tolerance, manufacturers of military-grade blades. I like sharp things.

I’m thankful that you’re here, too. Be genuinely grateful for every one of your blessings — they can disappear in an instant. Never forget that.

May you and those you love enjoy a happy, healthy, and honored Thanksgiving.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Listology, SwanStuff, Thanksgiving

Comments: 7 Comments

Quizmasters!

November 10, 2009

Here’s proof that life sometimes winds around in bizarre directions that one never expected.

The game show fanatics in the room will recall that back in 2005, Jeopardy! mounted its Ultimate Tournament of Champions — or, as I like to refer to it, the Quest for Ken Jennings. 145 of us former Jeopardy! stalwarts were invited to participate in a mega-round-robin that played out over half a television season, for an opportunity to win major cash and reclaim a smidgen of (for some of us, anyway) long-faded glory. Brad Rutter, who had won a previous Jeopardy! super-tourney called Million Dollar Masters, plowed through the field, ultimately besting Mr. Jennings (no relation) and Jerome Vered in the finals to claim the two-million-dollar grand prize.

Shortly after the UTOC concluded, a group of Jeopardy! veterans from around the Bay Area — including your Uncle Swan — got together to play an evening of pub trivia at a Berkeley watering hole. We dubbed ourselves the Ruttersnipes, in Brad’s honor. Jon Carroll, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s human interest columnist, tagged along to document the event.

Now, four years later, I’m hosting a weekly game for the same quiz company.

I landed the gig via a serendipitous confluence of circumstances. As many of you know, a few months ago my wife KJ involuntarily retired from work on medical disability. Almost simultaneously, our daughter KM finished junior college and continued her studies at a state university. With our income shrinking and our expenses rising, I had my eyes open for opportunities to generate some additional revenue.

At the same time, Brainstormer, a San Francisco-based pub quiz company that runs trivia nights in taverns and restaurants around the country, was looking for someone to host the Tuesday night game at an establishment a mere stone’s throw from my house. (Assuming, of course, that you’re throwing your stones with a rocket launcher. A howitzer, at the very least.)

As Cinderella once said… put it all together and what have you got? Bibbidi bobbidi boo.

So, if you happen to be cruising through Sonoma County on a Tuesday evening, and experience a hankering to challenge your mental faculties (and perhaps nosh on a few freshly crafted tacos for a mere one dollar each), stop by The Cantina in downtown Santa Rosa around 8 p.m. We’ve got music, we’ve got laughter, we’ve got mind-bending trivia. Best of all, there’s no cover charge.

If the sleek, dashingly handsome quiz host looks familiar… I’m probably home with the creeping crud that night.

But if there’s a nerdy, middle-aged fat guy running the game, that’s me.

Categories: Aimless Riffing, Jeopardy!, My Home Town, Reminiscing, SwanStuff, Teleholics Anonymous, That's Cool!

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