A Work in Blogress

Sign(age) of the times

2010-02-22T14:17:00.000-05:00

In a response to a down economy, the definition of a "roadside emergency" has apparently been expanded to include the breakdown of, among other things, your TV remote control.

I like the delivery idea, because there are certainly days when I can't muster up the energy to drive the half-mile to the CVS, but let's be honest: if you are someone who requires help with installation, then I'm not sure AAA can provide you with the help you really need...

Some Valentine's Day advice

2010-02-14T12:46:00.002-05:00

Guys,

This is true on any day, but especially so today: whatever you do, do NOT be this guy:

I can't stress this enough. Otherwise, this may follow shortly:

No need to thank me. I'm a helper, it's what I do.

Have a happy Valentine's Day.

Note: the musical stylings above are from an Australian group called Tripod. If you like Flight of the Conchords, you should check them out.

Dexy's Midnight Runners never even occurred to me...

2010-01-26T15:40:00.000-05:00

Spend enough time in random conversation, or random thought, and eventually either you or someone you know will pose the question:

If you had a rock band, what would you call it?

We've all thought about it. Hell, Dave Barry made something of a part-time job of it. But at one time or another it has come up, because let's face it: we'd all just as soon be rock stars.

It took me a long time to settle on mine, and by a long time I mean I came up with it in the past year. And as it happens, it did come up at a party last weekend.

If I had a band, I would call it Something Else.

I like it for a number of reasons, but one most of all: no matter what someone is listening to, if they don't like it, they're going to ask for us.

If you had a rock band (or when you and your friends are playing Rock Band, whatever), what would you call it?

A brief look back

2010-01-01T15:33:00.000-05:00

I'm generally not one for Year-in-Review kinds of posts, but I have to admit that this past year was a pretty big one in a lot of ways for yours truly. Lots of changes in my life and those around me, and by and large in very good ways. Not every bit of news was happy, but on balance 2009 went pretty well.

The highlights (in no particular order):
- Bought a house (after a very long, eight-month search)
- Popped The Question (and got The Right Answer)
- Saw two of my closest friends welcome beautiful baby girls into their families, with kids coming into the lives of other friends and family as well.
- I stayed employed, and stayed busy (key to the staying employed, as you can imagine) with a company that actually saw growth in '09.
- Got to see my brother and sister-in-law in their new house (found, coincidentally enough, the same weekend we found ours)
- Had a great birthday and birthday week (although the actual getting-older part is somewhat dubious as a highlight...), followed by a fantastic Christmas visit with my family in Florida.

As lowlights go, just about the only major blemish on 2009 was that we lost Gramps. He is still missed, and still loved, and will be fondly remembered this and every year. One bittersweet thing about planning the wedding is the knowledge that he won't be there to see it. But he did get to meet The Girl, and it's good to know that he wholeheartedly approved of her. I guess you could say he will be there with us, just at a different table.

So as years go, 2009 was a pretty good one, and it gives way to a 2010 that is already looking to be busier (if that's possible). Lots of travel, and what I am sure are going to be many adventures in wedding planning. I don't know that I have much in the way of resolutions, but I have some goals. One of them is (again) to be a little better about keeping up with this place, but if you've been reading for any length of time you know how challenging that will be. But I do appreciate those of you who stop by. Some I know, many I don't, but I thank everyone just the same.

So Happy New Year to all. May 2010 bring you all the good news you can handle. And then throw in a little more, because moderation is overrated in that particular area.

A new box

2009-12-17T21:50:00.000-05:00

So I'm in the middle of my lunch yesterday, and I get a call from my mother. The conversation lasted all of about ten seconds. She called to say, simply,

"35 years ago today, right this minute."

Granted, we would talk again later, but that was her message at the time.

So yeah, yesterday was my 35th birthday. I'm now 35 years old. And at 35, you get a new box.

You are now, "35 or older." 35-plus, even. I'm a plus now.

It seems like only yesterday, I was one of the chosen ones, the sought-after. I was in that highly desired group, males between the ages of 18 and 34. But no longer.

Now I'm a marketing outcast. I'm not hip or interesting. Spike TV no longer gives a crap whether or not I watch their programs.

From an advertising standpoint, I no longer exist.

I'm overreacting, you say? Making a mountain out of a molehill? Maybe, but let's find out.

Go to google, and type in "males age 18-34." The first ten hits are all about advertising. In fact, the first link is to a conference; a conference whose entire purpose is to talk about marketing to males in that age range. In fact, the only non-advertising link in the first twenty hits? The UFC home page.

Now, let's look at the other age group, shall we? "males age 35 and older"

First hit? An Amazon.com link: How to Date Young Women. In fact, nine of the top twenty hits are on the subject of dating (both straight and gay). In the remainder, four are discussions of the male biological clock. Not a peep about advertising, marketing, or targeting that demographic (well, I guess you could say there's some targeting going on, but that's a whole different post). These are my people now.

Look, I'm not actually all that bothered about turning 35, just like I wasn't all that jarred by turning 30 (although 31 was a little strange). It's just odd to note that, simply by virtue of turning one year older, and entire industry seems to have lost interest in my opinion. They're more or less the same as they were on Monday, but they're just no longer suitable for measurement. Just feels a little strange is all.

But everything will be all right. I'm not going to start yelling at people to get off my lawn (at least, no more than usual). I had a great birthday with a whole weekend of celebration to go along with it. Now I can wind down a little, maybe watch some TV.

Maybe I'll even turn on Spike, just for old time's sake.

A different kind of holiday

2009-11-11T18:02:00.001-05:00

I have never been in the military.

For most of my life, I'd have told you that I wasn't cut out for it, mostly owing to a general tendency to question authority, and a distaste for because-I-said so. Because really, I'm a smart-ass, and from what I can tell that doesn't get you terribly far in those circles. And while I believe now that I would be a good officer, maybe even a natural leader, the simple truth is that I can't say for certain how I would respond in the white-hot crucible that is live combat, making those split-second decisions that quite literally are a matter of life and death. But then, I don't suppose any of us really can, until we find ourselves there. For better or worse, I have never had to find out. I have the luxury of speculation because there are people out there who made the conscious decision to put themselves in harm's way in my stead.

I am fortunate to be surrounded by current and former military, throughout both my social and professional circles. Two people I have written about before; many others I could mention given enough space and time. Cousins, friends, current and former co-workers, with one cousin and one close friend's significant other currently "overseas." I am fortunate for two reasons: one, because virtually every one of these people are a credit to the armed forces and to our country, for what they have done but more for the people they are; and two, and perhaps more importantly, every one of them has come home.

The convention for greetings on holidays is more or less always, "Happy [holiday name here]." That's fine in general, but I have some difficulty with it on Veterans' Day, mostly because while we are celebrating the men and women currently serving in uniform, we are also paying our respects to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the good of their country. So in that regard, "happy" seems a bit misplaced, if you ask me.

Instead, I will simply offer a Grateful Veterans' Day to all, current, former, retired, whatever. If you or someone you know and/or love is in active service, or supporting someone who is, I would just like to say thanks, and I hope that you or they remain safe and get home soon. Whether or not we remember to say it often (or often enough), we appreciate all that you do for all of us.

No politics, just respect: I support the troops..

Pet Peeves: Courtesy Uncommon

2009-10-28T22:56:00.001-04:00

Let me just put this out there : if you're walking through a door and you let it swing closed behind you without so much as a glance over your shoulder to see if anyone is there? You're an asshole (and I don't care if you're a man or a woman, btw).

It really is that simple. Unlike so many other areas of our lives that are filled with nuance and shades of gray, this is delightfully, blissfully clear: Asshole, or Not Asshole. No latitude, no margin for error, no wiggle room. No extra thought or analysis required.

I was originally going to elaborate on this, maybe even rant a little. But you know what? Not necessary; the moral of the story is plain and obvious:

Pay attention. Don't be an asshole*.

* I recognize that this advice/philosophy is applicable in a wide range of situations and aspects of life, but I prefer to keep my expectations reasonable (i.e. low). It's all about choosing your battles, people.

It's the little things, really

2009-10-08T22:53:00.008-04:00

I think that the ability to effectively wrap something in plastic is a skill, and a skill worth recognizing. It's like wrapping presents, but harder. Saran, Cling, what have you, it's downright impressive when it's done correctly, as I discovered this evening in yet another object lesson in humility.

The Girl brought home a macaroon with dinner the other night, and as you might expect from a take-out place, it was wrapped for safe keeping and to preserve freshness. We didn't eat it that night, and I set it aside without much thought. It's a wrapped-up cookie, the very definition of mundane.

Then, tonight, we decided to sample it, and damn if it didn't take me a solid five minutes to unwrap the stupid thing. It was sealed up like it was going out on the space shuttle. Less Reynold's than Rubik's, but without the shortcut option of moving little stickers around. We could count the pores on King Tut's face if he'd been mummified half as well as this cookie.

You know how most of the time you can find that one seam to start with, and then unravel the rest? Yeah, not this time. Turned it over, looked for edges, a seam, and found exactly bupkis.

And as an adult, with a technical degree no less, you only get about fifteen seconds of poking at something like this before you start to feel like a bit of a schmuck. Which I did. For five more minutes. Or at least, what felt like that long in schmuck-time (which is a longer measurement than conventional time; it's longer than that last minute before your metro train arrives, but not quite as long as the last minute you're stuck on that same train next to the guy with the really bad B.O. Point is, it drags). Ever been angry at a baked good? I have, now.

At least I was until I tasted it. It was very good, fluffier than your average macaroon if that makes any sense. Not too sticky, and not overpoweringly cocounutty. But while we enjoyed it, we didn't eat all of it tonight, deciding to save the rest for later.

I say that plastic-wrapping is a skill, because it is a skill that I, quite clearly, do not have. you would recognize both of these things were I to show you the before/after sequence. Like P90X in reverse. I'm not sure a reasonable person would buy a cookie I wrapped, no matter how good it looked; it's safe to assume there is no impending launch of a career on the bake sale circuit, that's all I'm saying.

Look, I know this probably seems a bit silly, me going on about something like this. But I would argue that it's worth highlighting, to one extent or another, even the small things that people do well. Granted, in this case it's a little begrudging, but it's respect nonetheless. We all come in contact with people who do some of those small things really well, and in the end doing those things well makes life a little better, doesn't it? So when you see it, acknowledge it. Maybe even celebrate it a little.

And if you want to buy them a cookie? I know a place to get a pretty good macaroon. I promise it won't go stale.

I know it's not the only reason...

2009-08-24T22:41:00.000-04:00

I had a physical last week for the first time in over a decade. Everything looks fine, although my cholesterol is a touch high. Not very, just a little over 100. Nothing to be alarmed about, but reading that over the weekend reminded me of a conversation I had a few months ago. It was at work, at the end of a couple hours of meetings with my client and a vendor.

It seems you can't get more than three adult men in a room for longer than about half an hour before someone starts talking about their cholesterol. In this case, the subject was brought up by my client, who had just been to the doctor and come home with one of those little blister-packs of Lipitor or whatever, and was doing that low-level lament that most of us go through when faced with involuntary lifestyle changes. I had little to say, since at the time it had been ten years or so since I'd had a checkup, and it wasn't something I was keenly interested in as it was. Anyway, this discussion was the first time I had heard that the goal was to get one's cholesterol down to, or below, 100.

According to the vendor rep, the trouble with this theory is that 100 is a very tough number to get to. His point was that it's difficult to expect an adult to maintain that level of cholesterol, considering the cholesterol level of a newborn is somewhere around 70.

It was then, after having nothing to say for most of the discussion, that I was finally able to contribute.

"Which is why," I said, "we don't eat babies."

Kind of amazing

2009-08-09T12:21:00.003-04:00

Most people, when they hear the name Bobby McFerrin, immediately think of one song, one song that many of those same people are thoroughly sick of (and they have been since about six months after that song came out). For many people, that's about all they know of him. They may have heard about something or other that he did with Yo-Yo Ma, but there was never a video on MTV or a special somewhere or a radio single, so chances are it slid past relatively unnoticed. And that's unfortunate, because the man is brilliant.

I've had the pleasure of seeing him in concert one time, several years ago, and it was spectacular. At this point, I see him less as a musician than as a musical philosopher, as you can see in this clip from the World Science Forum. It is remarkable.

(In case you have trouble hearing it, his comment at the beginning is something like, "Talk about expectations...")

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

How cool is that?

Plinky and the Brian: Pleasant Surpise

2009-07-29T22:22:00.007-04:00

Today's Plinky prompt:

What city were you surprised to like?

The truth is that while there are a lot of places I haven't been, I have been to some interesting places. My answer to this question has a lot less to do with the city than it does with the circumstances surrounding my visit.

The short answer: Cairo. The longer answer is, well, the rest of this post, isn't it?

I started the job prior to the one I have now on August 29, 2001. About my third day or so there, one of my coworkers came up to me and said, "Listen: don't tell anyone because it's not official yet, but it looks like we might be going to Egypt in early October."

At the time he told me, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. But you can imagine that about a week and a half later, my thinking was a little bit different. It was more along the lines of, "You want me to go where, now?" and "Oh, hell no." Or something to that effect.

Now, for reasons not directly related to 9/11, the trip got postponed for a couple of months, resulting in one of the busiest Thanksgiving weekends of my life: I had Thanksgiving dinner, moved from one house to another, more or less dropped all my stuff in a pile, packed and left for two weeks overseas. All in the span of about three days. It was a little hectic, to say the least.

But even a couple of months later, there was quite a bit of trepidation about the trip. Remember: at that point, people weren't even flying between states in this country, let alone over there. And while I have a different perspective on it now, at the time I lumped Egypt into the category of the Middle East, which was not a place Americans were generally all that thrilled about heading. The people I traveled with joked about getting Canadian flags to sew onto our bags. We joked. Kind of.

But off we went, and everything was fine. Better than fine, actually. Cairo is pretty amazing, and we had a great visit. The pictures alone are worth having been there. I have a bunch of stories, many of which deserve (and may get) their own posts, but here are some highlights:

- The next time you get frustrated in DC traffic, just be glad you're not in Cairo. There are something on the order of 20 million people there (at least, that's what I was told; I've never bothered to fact-check), and it seems like they're all driving around at the same time. We landed at Cairo airport just after midnight, and as far as the traffic was concerned, it might as well have been rush hour. It was shocking. And there are no rules that I can determine, instead bumper advantage rules the day. Oh, and you might have to share the road with a donkey cart or two. With all of that, though, I never saw a single accident happen, and only one or two fender-benders after the fact. And despite the volume, things move fairly swiftly (or more swiftly than you'd expect, which is to say at all). But more than once we had to fold the mirrors in on the van to get through a very tight spot.

- We arrived during Ramadan, which was fascinating. All kinds of decorations covered the city, and we were fortunate enough to be invited to the iftar (fast-breaking dinner) at the office where our project took place. Really, really interesting on a host of levels. Plus, awesome food, which always helps. Bizarre lasting image from the evening: large, round Arabic men wearing fezzes, dancing around each other like it was a club. As strange as that may sound, there's no way what you're picturing is as weirdly comical as what actually happened. Trust me, I was there (with neither fez nor dancing, just so we're clear).

- Our hotel was on the Nile River, and you could see the Pyramids from my balcony. You can see the Pyramids from just about everywhere in Cairo, seeing has how Giza is a little closer to Cairo than Baltimore is to DC.

- We got rained on while we were there. This is not something that happens often. We asked one of our clients how often it rained, and he said, "I think it rained three times last year." So we witnessed (and felt) what could have been roughly 30% of Cairo's annual rainfall during our trip.

- I may or may not have eaten camel. I say that not to be cryptic, but because I'm not completely sure. But I think so. And it wasn't very good. Suffice it to say that during Ramadan in an Islamic country, the options for lunch are not what I would describe as plentiful and/or varied.

- Speaking of lunch, we did make an obligatory visit to McDonalds (which is not where the might-or-might-not-have-been-camel experience took place, just for the record). As much as they say that McDonalds is the same all over ther world, it's not the same in Egypt. But you can get McFalafel there, which I find amusing and kind of soul-hurting all at the same time. But what was amazing was the block that the McD's was on; it was a city block of nothing but American franchises. You had McD's, Hardee's, Radio Shack, and.... wait for it....

Little Ceasar's pizza. Because apparently, nobody in Egypt teaches history, either. I mean, seriously: if you're going to import Western junk food, fine. Just have some national pride, and I don't know, pick a company not named for someone who conquered your country. Papa John never ruled an empire; that's all I'm saying. One of my biggest regrets is not getting a picture of the place*. I got the Radio Shack but not Little Ceasar's. Next time I'm there, though...

- We got at least one apology about 9/11, from a cab driver, while we were over there.

- It was really sobering to see just how hard a country like Egypt was hit by the aftermath of the 9/11. Egypt has no oil, and its economy is very dependent on tourism. Well, while we were there, we saw virtually no tourists. The point was made very clear one night when we went to a local restaurant for dinner. It was a nice place, definitely at the higher end of the spectrum; one of the places on the list of Places To Eat you find one travel websites, etc. Had a great dinner, then went over to the bar and got into a conversation with the manager there. At some point we ended up talking about 9/11 (because how could you not?), and he pulled out his reservation book and opened it up, to give us an idea of the impact 9/11 had on a place like Cairo. He opened the book up to July/August, and every page, no kidding, was completely full. Huge parties, 60 or so people, several to a page, crowded the reservations. He then flipped ahead to November, and again all the pages were completely full of huge parties. The difference: virtually every one had been crossed out, canceled.

- Everyone should go to Cairo just to see the Khan al-Khalili, which I believe is the oldest marketplace in the world. It's beautiful, once you get past the overly-aggressive shopkeepers. But I will tell you another time about Magdi, who is reason enough to go there all by himself. But we went, and we haggled. Because that's what you do.

- We spent about 3 hours on horseback, riding around the Pyramids. And yes, it was exaclty as cool as it sounds. We had found a cab driver that we liked, so we held onto his number and called him whenever we needed something. Turned out he knew some guys who ran a stable in Giza, so he took us over there and got us fixed up with horses and a guide. It was truly amazing, and humbling, to be among that kind of history (and scale; the things are every bit as big as they look and then some), and the horse thing was just a great way to go about it. Much better than camel, I think, for long periods. Less spitting, and the jerking forward and back. Mostly, though, the spitting.

As I said, I have more stories, but I'll save them for another time. In the end, I'm glad I went, and was fortunate enough to make a second trip about six months later. I'd go back in a heartbeat, and I recommend it to anyone who's thinking about going.

And I have the number for a great cab driver, if you need it.

* Longtime readers of Arjewtino might find that story familiar, as it was the subject of a comment and photo-post on his blog a while back.

A Memorable Memorial

2009-07-22T21:21:00.003-04:00

So it's been a family-oriented couple of weekends. This past weekend was a cousin's wedding on my Dad's side (very nice time, although getting there might be the subject of a different, far less positive post), and the weekend before was back up in Dagny's Land of Milk and Honey for the memorial service/party/gathering for Gramps.

It's one of those things where I feel like I should try to describe it, try to capture just a bit of the experience, while at the same time being at an almost total loss how to go about it. A simple recounting of details seems wholly insufficient, but we'll see how it goes.

It was simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking to be there. So many good stories, great memories shared, counterbalanced against the fact that it was going to be the next to last time I would probably ever set foot in that house. Lots of people who I was thrilled to see, but I would have just as soon had a completely different reason for us to get together. I could think of about a thousand that I would have preferred, with one more guest at the table. But such as it was, and has been throughout, it all went pretty much ideally. Under the circumstances.

I realize it might seem a little strange, to have a memorial service (I will continue to call it that, for lack of a better term; it wasn't a service per se, seeing as how there was no church and no religious aspect to it at all; but I'm not about to call it a party, so there we are) more than a month after his passing, but Mom and Dad wanted to give the various cousins a chance to make some travel arrangements, rather than all trying to rush down immediately. They wanted to be able to plan an opportunity for a small but significant number of people to get together, share stories, and celebrate the man that was my grandfather. And we did, and as people said during and afterwards, it was very him.

It was a very simple thing, held at the clubhouse in the community in which he lived, but there were some wonderful Gramps touches: his favorite local restaurant catered the event, my parents put together a few photo-boards of pictures from a wide variety of aspects of Gramps' life, and we had people who were both relatives and friends who knew him in different ways and on different levels. One amusing irony about it was that, while many of the friends from the community had known him nearly 25 years, they really only knew him as he was when he moved out of Brooklyn after my grandmother passed away, so there was this whole other aspect to him that they never knew (or at least, never experienced). So here I was, telling people who were 50-plus years my senior things they'd never heard about a man they'd known for almost as long as I've been alive. A little surreal, for all of us. But that was part of Mom's point: let people see and hear things that they may not have known, that helped make up who he was.

We had a little under 50 people there, in total, and it ended up being just about half and half family and friends. The food was great, and the conversation better. There were people there that I'd never met, or at least hadn't seen since Gramps' surprise 75th birthday party (at which I taught a room full of senior citizens the Electric Slide, but that's a whole different post), and cousins that I don't see nearly often enough. Plus one or two old family friends with whom I got to catch up after many, many years. I guess it's as close to the Irish wake you'd kind of expect, minus the large volumes of whiskey: mostly smiles and laughter. A tear or two, sure, but mostly good memories to share with good people.

The story sharing was the best, if perhaps the most difficult, part of the whole thing. Mom had asked people to, when they felt the inspiration, to share a story or memory about Gramps. It wasn't organized, just as people sat and talked amongst themselves, someone would get up and address the group with whatever they'd come up with.

From the beginning, before Mom even mentioned this part of the plan, I kind of expected that I'd end up saying something. It was quite a surprise, though, when mom specifically asked me to read the post I'd written about his passing, since it's more or less exactly the kind of thing she was looking for. I agreed, but we also agreed that something like that would probably not be good to open with, belonging more towards the end. My brother actually found a paper he'd written about Gramps back in 3rd grade, which along with every card we'd ever sent him, he had kept in the guest room of his house. So he read (paraphrased, more like) that as his memory, which kind of got the ball rolling. But it also sort of set the pattern, inasmuch as he got about thirty seconds in before having to pause and re-compose; something that would happen a few times throughout. I'll not get into all the stories, but suffice it to say that they were all funny and warm, much like the man himself.

And I pretty much went last. It was fitting, I guess, but I will say that it made for a much more difficult read than I had expected. I was convinced that after having written it and read it over, that I'd be able to make it pretty much all the way through. I made it about three lines in before my voice caught the first time. The first of several. I only actually stopped once, but I will admit that there are a couple of parts that I can't be sure that anyone heard clearly. But all in all, people seemed to appreciate it, and I was told more than once that I had done well. So I'll take it. Actually, my favorite part was the bit about the answering machine, because as I read the quote of his message, virtually every head in the room was nodding along and laughing. Everybody got it. That was pretty awesome.

I didn't read the whole thing, though. Knowing that I was going to be telling stories in front of a room full of people, I wanted to make sure that the stories I was telling were actually true. Turns out that a couple, which I had believed for a number of years, weren't. At least, not entirely. It was a really interesting conversation with my dad. As he said, it was the reality I was living in, and as such my parents didn't see a need to correct me, but there were some things that I just had wrong. So I didn't tell those parts (or I corrected them: the desks I mentioned? Gramps did those himself. I did tell that one. And he did quit drinking, but not for exactly the reason I had thought. I left that out entirely).

In the end, it was an entirely fitting tribute, and I have a hard time imagining a better way to have spent that time. And now, I make one more trip up there to pick up a few things, and pretty soon the house goes on the market. But it's all right. It was never really about the house; it was about the memories, about the stories.

And I've got plenty of those right here. A few more now than I used to.

The Darndest Things: Language Paranoia

2009-07-09T13:12:00.003-04:00

As I've mentioned, many of my friends are now with kid (or with multiple kids), and those kids are the subject of some pretty funny stories, more often than not by virtue of the things that come out of untrained mouths. This is probably my second-favorite, of which I was reminded by Lisa's post about watching her mouth.

My friend and former coworker S and her husband have two boys (and now a cute little baby girl, congrats to them), the older of whom was in the early stages of stringing sentences together. As such, they were trying very hard to monitor their language, for fear of the kid picking up some unfortunate habits (which he did, at one point absorbing both the pronunciation and use of "Dammit," much to the amused chagrin of his parents as they saw the child bump his head against his crib and let fly with a diminutive "Dammit!"). But small slips aside, they had done very well.

Or so they thought.

Fast forward a bit to a family trip out and about, with the whole crew sitting at a traffic light. Husband is driving, S riding shotgun, kids strapped in in the back seat. All normal, until the older child's voice cuts through the silence.

"Mommy," he says, "that's a dumbfuck!"

S just about passes out, as you can imagine.

She looks at husband, agog. Husband looks at her, same. And exchange follows, mostly whisper-shouted,

"Did you...?"
"I didn't!"
"Well I certainly didn't...!"
"Well then where the...?!?"

For about ten very long seconds. All the while S is borderline frantic trying to figure out where on Earth their child had heard that kind of language.

Fortunately for her (and her sanity), the source of the problem becomes clear, and she gently corrects her little boy.

"No, no, honey, it's pronounced Dump. Truck."

And then she could breathe again.

Further adventures in word choice

2009-06-23T10:29:00.008-04:00

So by now you've no doubt heard about this. Let me just say that I hope that any of you who travel the Red Line are all right, as are your friends and family. I'm an Orange Line guy myself, so I heard about it after I got home.

But it's national news. 7 dead, scores injured. Large-scale activities by rescue personnel, using heavy equipment to move through the wreckage. The true scope of the damage still undetermined, not to mention the unanswered question of how this happened in the first place.

And on my way in this morning, the sagacious disembodied voice of the Metro system suggested that I might be delayed in my travels this morning due to a "disturbance" on the Red Line.

A disturbance. That was the exact word.

For the record: I'm a rational adult. I can handle the maddeningly vague language in most cases. I can grin and bear the grotesque distortion they've made of the word "momentarily" and the condescension of thanking me for my patience while I'm stuck in an underground tunnel between stations. I can even grit my teeth as the Metro Lady switches to her mean voice and sternly tells me, sans "please" mind you, to STAND CLEAR OF THE DOORS. Because clearly, in a packed afternoon metro train on a 90-degree day, I need to be barked at by a fucking Tandy 1000 on wheels.

But "disturbance"? Are you kidding me? Seven people died, and you can't even scare up the decency to call it an accident? As if there's anyone riding the train at this point who doesn't know about it, especially since just about every single person who lives near the greater DC metro system got a call yesterday from some friend or relative to see if they're okay?

Of all the ridiculous bullshit. Just when you think that WMATA, whose manager apparently won some kind of award recently (I would imagine, or at least hope, that it was for Understating Euphemism of the Year, but I doubt they're that self-aware), can't show any less regard for the people who keep them in business, they set the bar so very, aggravatingly much lower.

I'm pissed. I'm disgusted.

I am, dare I say it, "disturbed."

Fuck you, Metro. Or, in a translation worthy of your PR people:

Thank you for your service.

We kinda got a mall...

2009-06-18T14:40:00.007-04:00

I may be the last person on Earth to have seen this by now (or at least, the last one in the DC metro area), but in the event that you haven't yet, you have to watch this. Like, right now.

Brilliant.

And while we're at it, a little something new from the man himself:

Because really? It's more fun than working.

On relative difficulty

2009-06-16T15:26:00.003-04:00

Japanese has three distinct levels of formality, the use of which depends on the relationship between the speaker and his or her counterpart. Talking to your boss? High formality, high respect. Your kids? Different level of formality. Your peers get the third. The concern over this distinction, and the embarassment associated with the use of the wrong level in a given situation, led to the creation of a totally neutral approach to answering the phone, just to help avoid the loss of face that would occur if you answered the phone expecting your boss and got your worst enemy instead. This aspect of Japanese is often referenced when I hear people say that it is among the hardest languages to learn.

Then consider that these conversations are taking place in English, a language in which telling someone "fat chance," and then saying their chances are slim, means exactly the same thing.

Still think Japanese is harder? Fat/slim chance.

Plinky and the Brian: Worst Job

2009-06-05T10:35:00.001-04:00

Part of the reason for my hiatus, and for the infrequent posting in general, is that I sometimes find it a little difficult to come up with a topic. Rant-fodder, if you will. I do not and will not keep this as a diary-blog (because really, I understand that nobody really cares what I do on a daily basis. Hell, I barely care), so something has to catch me a certain way in order to get the proverbial wheels turning.

Enter plinky.com, which I discovered kind of randomly in my web wanderings. Plinky is a site which basically asks questions daily, and lets people post answers on their site. In what i hope will become a regular thing here, I will pick the ones I find most interesting and answer them here.

Today's Prompt:

What's the least fun you've ever had at a place specifically tailored for fun?

The worst time I've ever had at a place intended for fun, hands down, is Chuck E Cheese. And it wasn't just one time, it was over and over and over again. There was a perfectly good reason for that, though:

I worked there.

See, I have been working either full or part time ever since I was fifteen. Never worked proper fast food, but I've done just about everything else: retail, restaurant, the works. But the summer between sophomore and junior year of high school was the Summer of Chuck.

I distinguish this job from a restaurant job for the simple reason that I didn't wait tables. No way. Not there. I knew better than that. I figured I'd play it safe and make pizzas. Safe. I wouldn't have to deal with the hordes of children. Or so I thought.

The truth us that working in that place was perfectly fine for the vast majority of the time I spent there. It was one of those jobs where you had long stretches of boredom punctuated by the frantic rush of mealtime, when the birthday parties would all show up at once. But Even so, we had a pretty decent group back there, and managed to keep ourselves entertained in those down times. All of that was just fine, and I even enjoyed most of it. There was only one thing, albeit one very significant thing, that made it the worst job I've ever had. And if you've read this far, and you've ever been in one of those places, you know exactly what that one thing is.

So the answer to the question you're silently asking (or not, maybe you talk to your monitor; I'm not here to judge) is yes, yes I did. And the answer to the question that follows is that it was both more and less awful than you think it would be. But on average, it sucked about as much as you'd expect.

They conveniently forgot to mention this little detail during the interview.

The first problem is the suit itself. It's heavy; all told it's probably an extra 10-15lbs of plastic and polyesther fur. It's tremendously awkward, considering the one-size-fits-Sasquatch gloves and boots and the instant conversion from a low-30s waistline to something closer to the low 100s. And worst of all, the kind of forward visibility that should come with sunglasses and a cane. You can't see directly ahead; you can only see upwards and downwards at about a 45-degree angle, up through the eyes and down through the tiny mouth hole (peripheral vision is for losers). It is in this ridiculous contraption that you are sent out into what could best be described as the world's largest low-altitude mosh pit to bring Birthday Cheer to some lucky kid. Have fun with that.

And then there are the kids. Oh, the kids. Chuck E. Cheese uses the tag line that their restaurants are Where A Kid Can Be A Kid, but that is somewhat inaccurate. What it should be called, really, is Where You Hyperkinetic Offspring Can Be Someone Else's Problem.

Indignities abound in this environment (the actual wearing of the suit notwithstanding), from the inability to see down in front of you well enough to tell if you're about to or in the process of running a kid over, to the random punches or kicks you get from some overly rambunctions little bas- er, tot, to my personal favorite: being told by one of these darling little angels that you couldn't possibly be the real Chucky, because the real Chucky is up there, pointing towards the stage, where the herky-jerky animatronic band is bobble-heading its way through awful song after awful song (unlike this, which is suprisingly well done). And through it all, you can't talk. Or Swear. Or howl in pain, as the case may be. And certainly not wring the neck of the kid who just leapt into the air and came down with the nose of your mask in his grubby little hands, causing the top of the thing to carve a groove into your skull. And then asked for a hug.

It's no surprise that they sell beer there. But honestly, they're giving it to the wrong people. Give it to the staff, the ones who really need it.

Start with the guy in the rat suit; trust me, he could use one.

It's not ridicule, it's ridicu-lay

2009-05-26T14:42:00.002-04:00

Note to the McDonalds people:

Adding a French flair and pronunciation to an otherwise base-level product offering is not going to add class/panache/cachet to your brand. It makes you look like morons who fail to understand your place in the market.

Nobody who works over there has ever shopped at Target, apparently.

Oh, right, sorry: Tar-jay.

Sad, but not tragic

2009-05-19T22:16:00.002-04:00

There's no tragedy here.

This is what my father said to me when he called this morning to tell me that, late last night, my grandfather passed away. I mean, he said a lot of things, but that's what does (and probably always will) stick out.

I know that sounds like a strange thing to say to someone under those circumstances, but it made sense to me. And all in all, he's right: it's certainly sad, but nothing about the man or his passing is or was tragic. Far from it. Nearly everything about both went more or less as well as anyone could have expected or hoped.

I've written before about my family, although all of those stories have been about the Italian side. Much of the same sentiment applies my Irish family as well, both in terms of my affection for the people and the running theme of longevity as well. Gramps was 92 years old at the time of his passing, and he packed those years full, believe me.

There would be too much to tell, and too many stories left out, to try and biography the man; but here are some things that will always come to mind when I think about my grandfather:

- His voice. Gramps had a great voice, and he used it well. The perfect mix of gravel and Brooklyn, and the man could tell a story. I have tried on occasion to mimic it, but I can't get close. Even his recording on the answering machine is guaranteed to make you smile.

- His relationship (or lack thereof) with technology. He never owned a computer, wrote many letters by hand, and was over 80 by the time he got a cell phone. Not that he ever bothered learning to use it, mind you. My mom programmed the two numbers he would need into the thing and showed him how to get to them, and that's about it. I'm not even certain he used the voice mail. He didn't' like his answering machine, either, and said so in the recorded message. "Sorry I missed your call, and I hate to make you talk to one of these stupid machines, but I do want to get your call, so leave me a message and I'll call you back." In the Brooklyn voice. Priceless.

- From the "You're Only As Old As You Feel" Department: he took flying lessons, and very nearly if not completed the requirements for his pilot's license. In his seventies.

- When we were kids, my brother and I used to jockey for who got to pour his beer at dinner. Partly, I think, because of the fizzing bubbles, and partly because, well, it was our grandfather. But later on, when it turned out his sister had a drinking problem, he quit with her in a show of support. As far as I know, he didn't take a drink for most of my adult life.

- Hard candy. He always kept a supply of mixed hard candy with him, at home and when he traveled. Think Brach's butterscotches, sour balls, starlight mints, caramels, you name it. If you had a hankering for a Werther's Original, this was the man to see.

- My desk. He and my father built a pair of desks, one for me and one for my brother. They're easily 20 years old now, and more solidly built than anything you're likely to find at IKEA.

- Eating Italian food in France. When I was in college, my cousin spent some time studying in Aix en Provence in France. Gramps took my mother and I over there for a week, to see her and to do some sightseeing. We had exactly one French meal that trip, our first. See, Gramps, being an Irishman, was very much a meat-and-starch kind of guy, and the French menu had too little of either (mostly the starch) to satisfy him. So from about our second day on, we ate mostly Italian food. In France. He did enjoy the tea, though.

- Traveling. Gramps was a customer of Cunard cruise lines for something on the order of 70 years, going back to when he would go see his family in Ireland as a kid, and continuing right up to the end. For as long as I've been aware of it, he has made multiple trips back to Ireland every year, for the longest time taking the QE2 over and British Airways back. Plus the occasional cruise to Alaska, or the Med, or the maiden voyage of the QM2 (he preferred the QE2, if you're curious). And he did all of his reservations by phone and mail, so he got to the point where he basically had friends at the various travel companies who he would call and talk to when he was planning a trip. And I do mean right to the end; he was over in Ireland as recently as about six months ago. He took me over there in 2004, to see the family estate and meet some of the Irish cousins. The picture at the top of the post is from that trip, from the original house on the land, in front of the fireplace where he spent a lot of time when he was young.

What was funny about that trip (or rather, among the funny things about that trip) was the circumstances under which I made it. My mother said to me, earlier that year, that if I was interested in seeing the family land with Gramps, then I should get to it, because he was 88 and slowing down, and would likely stop making those trips by the end of that year. So I went. And then he continued his trips for another five years. So much for predictions.

- Grad school. Gramps put me through grad school. That wasn't the intention when we started, but that's basically how it ended up. So there will always be a little tribute to him hanging on my wall.

All of this doesn't even touch on his service in the Army or for the state of New York, or any number of other things about him worth telling. Like I said, it was a full 92 years. Oh yeah, and he and my grandmother raised my mom, too, which I personally think turned out pretty darn well, myself. Perhaps the most vivid thing about the man, to me, was how he physically embodied the proverbial twinkle in the eye. Always ready with a grin and a wink, always happy to see you, that was my Gramps.

Not that everything went perfectly; we lost my grandmother to cancer when I was about 10, and he lost another partner to cancer years later. But on balance he had it pretty good, and so did we for having him around.

When his time came, I understand that it was relatively quick and painless, and my mother was there with him through the end. And now he gets to be with his wife and sister, and countless other people I'm sure he's glad to catch up with over a cup of tea.

Yes, we're sad to see him go, and yes, he'll be missed. But no, there's no tragedy here; just a large group of people who got to know and love a great man for a long time.

But I will miss talking to that stupid machine, if only just a little.

The darndest things

2009-04-14T23:44:00.005-04:00

There have been a host of new babies and new pregnancies among my friends over the past several months, both online and off. It's all very exciting (if a bit strange for me, to suddenly have parents where my friends used to be), and I'm thrilled for all of them. If you spend enough time talking to people about kids, particularly their kids, you will hear some funny stories. Some, naturally, are funnier than others. This is quite possibly my all-time favorite, which I heard from my friend M, at lunch, the day this took place.

M has two boys, 6 and 5, and what was a then-undelivered baby on the way (who has since greeted the world healthy and happy, I'm pleased to say). One morning, M, Older Kid (OK), and Younger Kid (YK) were getting ready to head out to school and work, and were running a little late. OK asked if he could buy breakfast at school that day, which suited M fine on account of the lateness, so she said sure. YK asked if he could buy lunch at school that day as well. M replied that with what she was paying for tuition for YK, his breakfast would be waiting for him when he arrived (or it damn well better be). At which point YK inquired as to what the Unborn Kid (UK) would be eating for breakfast.

M: UK will eat what Mommy eats, of course.
YK: How will he do that?
OK turns to explain to his younger brother.
OK: There's a hose. It goes from Mommy's belly button to UK's belly button. That's how UK eats.
YK looks down, puzzled.
YK: I don't have a hose.
M (Laughing): Of course you don't, silly. You eat with your mouth. And when UK comes out, he'll eat with his mouth.

And then it happens:
YK: How does UK come out?

To me, this would be one of those parental nightmares - it's way early in the morning, you're already late getting out of the house, and your 5-year-old just asked you where babies come from. There's not enough coffee in Seattle to prepare you to deal with that. But there you are.

But then, in a way that only a 6-year-old mind can conceive, OK steps in with a glove-save that would make Grant Fuhr tear up just a little. He turns to his little brother and says,with great excitement:

The doctors have magic!

Not exactly

2009-03-19T21:18:00.005-04:00

I went into the bathroom yesterday and noticed a roll of toilet paper on the floor, unraveled as though it had spent some quality time with a frolicking kitten. This wouldn't be significant except for two things:

1. I don't own a cat
2. I was at the office.

I am continually amazed (although not necessarily surprised) by the degree to which adults, working professionals with degrees and credentials and salaries and responsibilities, will behave at work (and in some cases, in the greater public) in a manner that they would not tolerate in their houses, or from their children. They will forthrightly go home and explain to their kids that they, the parents, are not the janitorial staff, while having left a day's worth of dirty lunch dishes in the sink, or food in the refrigerator for a month, or every single light in the office on when they leave, as if that's clearly the reasonable and appropriate thing to do.

There is actually a sign in the restroom reminding people to flush the toilet.

I so dearly wish I was making that up, but it's true.

It's amazing, but sadly not all that surprising.

Pet Peeves, Snow Day Edition

2009-03-02T21:05:00.002-05:00

An open letters to drivers,

On snowy days like this one, I ask you to remember one thing: When you clean off your car, please, for the love of sweet baby Jeebus, fluffy kittens everywhere, and the starving children in your favorite third-world country, clean off your car.

All of it. Really.

See, I get awfully tired of watching (and worse yet, driving behind) all of these lazy jackasses who can't seem to figure out that their car, and the snow-retaining surfaces contained therein, extend beyond their front and rear windshields.

I understand that this may come as a shock to some, but it's true. If you find that notion confusing, read the sentence over a couple of times and let the concept sink in.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that you're thinking far enough ahead to clean your windshields. That kind of foresight is certainly commendable, and I recognize the magnitude of the problems that would come from not getting that far. But I'm baffled at the sight of grown adults, who have presumably been through snowfalls before, piloting what can best be described as large, white armadillos down the onramp to a major roadway. Like we don't all know how that's going to end.

Unless you're in your first winter of licensed driving, there is absolutely no excuse for this. I can't count the number of times I've had to dodge the flying lunch tray of snow coming off of the sedan in front of me, at 65 miles per hour or so, just because Mr. Myopic up there couldn't take the extra five minutes to clear off the roof of his car.

And SUVs. Don't even get me started on SUVs. Listen, it's kind of like when you get a dog - you wanted it, you clean up after it. I don't care how short you are or whether you easily reach the roof; find a way to clear the damn thing. The laws of physics are unkind enough the rolling rectangle that is your SUV in the first place, and even moreso to the flat sheet of snow and ice that you have chosen to leave there for the rest of us to deal with at highway speeds. So get a stepladder or something and take care of it like the responsible adult you would have us believe you are (because the SUV is, after all, just so much safer than other cars on the road; but that's a whole different rant).

Case in point: driving on the beltway this afternoon (which was spooky, considering that at 4:30 in the afternoon I saw all of four cars on the inner loop that weren't salt trucks), here was this joker driving an entry-model Lexus who didn't even bother to so much as brush his rear windshield, which meant that there was a three-inch thick layer of snow gradually sliding down the back of his car, just waiting to jump into traffic behind him. You could practically see it moving, just watching him in traffic (for the record, I was a passenger, so I could watch without creating my own set of problems).

Tool. Douche. Jerkoff. At least make an effort, for crying out loud. Wave a broom somewhere in the vicinity of the window. Sneeze on it. Something. Anything. Pretend like you're paying attention, if only to suggest you might, you know, actually use your rear view mirror at some point.

I know. Beltway drivers. But I digress.

When I first started driving, my older brother gave me a single piece of advice that more or less summed up his take on the rules of the road, as it were. It's not as eloquent as the Golden Rule, it's not a commandment, just a simple, four-word motto that I try to stick to on the road, and just about everywhere else.

Don't be an asshole.

You should give it a try. You can start by cleaning off your car.

All of it.

All I'm saying is...

2009-03-01T20:56:00.001-05:00

I swung by the grocery store this afternoon, just to pick up some milk.

And the parking lot looked like Tysons Corner on December 23rd. Needless to say, I didn't stick around.

Seriously, people? I know there's snow in the forecast, and it may even be a lot of snow. But let's be real, here: it's Northern Virginia. We're in the South, and it's effing March. Do you really think you're going to get snowed in? In March? In Virginia?

At some point, you figure people would learn. But no, there they were, no doubt loading up on bread and water, getting ready for the long haul.

Both days of it, before it goes up over 40 and melts everything by the weekend.

But hey, at least you'll have plenty of bread.

Reboot

2009-02-18T10:25:00.001-05:00

In my defense, it's not the longest break I've taken.

Which is to say that yes, I have slacked for more than four months before. The difference was that I was in grad school then, and I was pretty much just an unmitigated slacker this time.

It was a busy fall, with job stuff and life stuff going on; all of it good but busy just the same. And when you spend your workday parked in front of a computer, it's tough sometimes to muster up the motivation to park in front of the computer in your leisure time (and yet, I manage to watch plenty of TV. I'll have to figure that out). Couple that with a general lack of inspiration, and you get a long hiatus.

But I started thinking about it around New Year's; not a resolution, per se, but more of recognizing something I'd like to be doing. Doing more, doing better, just doing. I figured that, while I was at it, I'd make a couple of changes to the blog. After all, if the title means anything (other than being a somewhat lame play on words) it should be all about improvement, evolution, etc. So I started working on that.

Which kicked off no less than a full week of fighting with Blogger and their template system, but that's a rant for another time. I'll not get into it here, lest the swearing begin in earnest. The good news is, I won. Finally. And so here we are.

Along with the new look is one other change: people who've been here before (if there are any of you left) may notice that I have changed my blog handle. There's a part of me that figures, once you've put your blog on your Facebook page, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try and stay all anonymous on the blog. Plus, I have never once in my life said, "Hi, I'm WiB, nice to meet you." Never. Tried something like it once, but it felt silly, like it wasn't me. Besides, it doesn't seem all that risky to put my incredibly-generic first name out there, so here it is.

Hi, I'm Brian, nice to meet you.*

Much better.

So this is the new place; hope you like it. I'm not entirely finished with the changes, but I have a good start here, I think. My goal is going to be no less than weekly posting, and we'll see where it goes from there. Stay tuned.

Er, again, I guess.

* It's not related, exactly, but I have to give a nod to Lexa over at Culinary Couture for getting there a little ahead of me. And for being generally kickass.

Warning: May Cause Whiplash

2008-09-05T14:27:00.002-04:00

I'm not saying. I'm just saying.

Why is this kind of fact-checking left up to a "fake" news show? Isn't that, I don't know, the job of professional journalists or something?

And since we're on the subject of gender-appropriate commentary, it's worth revisiting that ever-important subject, sexual harrassment in the workplace (NSFW for language).

I should have trained just to watch the Olympics

2008-08-21T10:15:00.003-04:00

As I'm sure is true with most people, I've been spending far more time watching the Olympics (and far less time sleeping as a result) than I expected to this year. What's been more surprising, though, is what I have, and have not, been seeing. For example:

- Almost zero coverage of men's basketball and women's soccer in prime time. Not just no games shown, since those clearly take place in the evenings in China (mornings here), but no mention of their progress. When I started writing this post, the US women's soccer team was playing Brazil for the gold medal, but you wouldn't have known from listening to the NBC coverage last night or any night previous. The basketball team has been crushing everyone they've played, but again, no highlights and no discussion in prime-time coverage. Strange, considering how popular the women's team is, and even more so given the attention paid to men's basketball this year.

It's even more conspicuous when you consider that the events shown in the past two days' prime time coverage have mostly been re-runs (track is an evening event in China as well). So while I'm happy to see Usain Bolt smash a couple of world records, I'm puzzled as to why the NBC brass seem to think that the 400m hurdles are more interesting to the American sports audience than the Redeem Team. Or Heather Mitts, for that matter.

- More volleyball coverage than I thought possible for a US audience. I'm not just talking about women's beach, either; there's no secret about why that's popular (15% the fact that the US owns the event, 85% tall, athletic women in barely-there bikinis). But I've seen coverage of men's and women's indoor, which during the other 3 years and 49 weeks of the year I'm pretty sure wouldn't even get broadcast on The Ocho. It helps, certainly, that the US teams are doing well, but still.

And I hope that you stayed up to watch Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh win the gold medal last night. That was a seriously good volleyball match. I hadn't really been a fan of the change to rally scoring in volleyball before last night (although I still think that allowing net-cord serves to count is absurd, but that's a whole different post). Watching Walsh and May afterwards, though, was almost as entertaining as the match itself. Bob Costas, proving once again why he's in on virtually every important sports broadcast, summed it up nicely after Walsh and May's interview, saying the team was going off to find more people to hug*.

I do have to give a nod to the NBC people, though, for the availability of free live streams on NBCOlympics.com, although my employer would probably go with a wag of the finger. I've caught some of the above-mentioned basketball and soccer, and I've even checked out some less-popular events thanks to their streams (tae kwon do, for example, which it turns out is not nearly as interesting as I had expected).

The other thing you get from watching the streams, it turns out, is the value of color commentary in sports broadcasts. The streams on the website are commentary-free, which is fine if you're very familiar with a sport and the people playing it, but it does pose a problem for the casual fan: no context. You get to see what's happening now, but you have no idea (other than the scoreboard) of what happened previously. Or in the event of overtime (again, gold medal match in women's soccer), someone like me isn't entirely familiar with the structure of overtime (two overtime periods, apparently) and there isn't an expert on the screen to catch up the unfamiliar.

There are a couple of things that bug me, though. Two of them are by no means specific to the Olympics, but the beefed-up nature of the attention just makes them more glaring. And more annoying.

1) Hyperbole. Michael Phelps is amazing, no question. I don't even blink an eye when someone says he's the greatest swimmer of all time. That's fine. But greatest Olympian of all time? And to set up Mark Spitz with that softball question (please; Spitz is a swimmer, and it's his record(s) that Phelps just beat, so what do you suppose his answer is going to be?) is kind of like asking the Hershey's people whether they prefer chocolate or vanilla. It's absurd. Eight gold medals is quite an achievement, but I'm not sure how you compare that to other Olympic events, since I'm fairly sure that swimming affords the most opportunities for medals, with less variety in skills required. Compare swimming (four strokes, all in the pool) with decathlon, for example. Which do you suppose takes more comprehensive athletic ability to excel? And yet, the winner of that event, after winning (or staying very close to the top) of ten different events. How do you compare the two?

And that's leaving for a second how we should define greatness in the first place. Do they really mean to say that Michael Phelps is somehow more important to the Olympics, or sports generally, than someone like Jesse Owens? Or overcame injury like Kerri Strugg? There's no way to compare them, and I don't see the point in trying. We should all simply raise our glasses to Phelps, congratulate him, and leave it at that.

And also share in the joy that, if absolutely nothing else, we beat China. Because that's what's it's really about, isn't it?

2) Interviewing the losers. Seriously, this has to stop. Not just in the Olympics (but especially in the Olympics). As if losing isn't bad enough, they then have to come and make nice with the sideline reporter, pretend they aren't disintegrating inside, just to give the producers a few seconds of good tape. It's sick.

Last night, they insisted on interviewing Wallace Spearmon roughly 12 seconds after he learned he was losing his silver medal in the 200m sprint due to a disqualification. The interviewer actually asked him how he felt. How he felt? Are you kidding? And they follow it up by dragging the 15-year-old American diver in front of a camera, just after she didn't qualify for the finals, and again, asking her how she felt. Is there some mystery there? Like we don't know? I'm waiting for the day someone responds like this (NSFW for language; skip to 3:00 if you don't want to watch the whole bit):

What they should say (especially to the diver) is this: We understand how you feel, there's no need to tell us. All you need to know is that there are 300 million people on the other side of that camera who are proud of you for being there, for representing your country and giving it everything you have. That's it. Then shut up and toss it back to Costas.

3) The IOC. We've all heard by now about how the IOC not only dropped the ball but kicked it into traffic on this whole how-old-are-those-Chinese-gymnasts-anyway issue. That's fine, I guess; at this point the IOC serves as little more than a punch line. But really, if you're going to dodge something as fundamental as whether countries are following the rules that you've written in the interest of fair play, then maybe you should just stay quiet, period.

But no. I guess they eschewed looking into something as trivial as eligibility of elite athletes for competition because they are preoccupied with matters as weighty and significant as over-celebration. It just warms my soul to know that the IOC has its priorities straight: Catering and pandering to the host nation, ignoring the tenets you're charged to oversee? Check. Sticking your nose into easily the least important development in the entire three weeks of competition, solely so that you get on camera for a few seconds and appear relevant? Check. Looking like a douche in front of roughly 5 billion people in the process? Check, check, and double-check.

Then again, maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm just cranky from the lack of sleep. I'm sure I'll look back and think about things differently starting Tuesday, once all this is over.

Maybe, but I seriously doubt it.

* This may not make a whole lot of sense if you didn't catch the broadcast, but it was absolutely perfect in context.

The importance of word choice

2008-07-15T09:21:00.003-04:00

In a story from Reuters today, China voiced its reservations about the recent ICC decision to charge the president of Sudan with genocide.

I'll leave aside for a moment whether China might be better off, considering its own record and behavior in the arena of human rights and treatment of its citizens, just staying very, very quiet on this particular matter; instead I will simply highlight a small piece of the statement released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry:

They expressed "grave concern" about the charges of genocide.

Just take a second and read that again, it should come to you.

Grave concern. About genocide.

The only response I could think of was to wonder: what if they needed to take a stronger position?

Would they express "mass grave" concerns?

Note to the Chinese Foreign Ministry: in future press releases, avoid referring to the ICC as a regulating "body," and if you have reservations about the fairness of any upcoming prosecution, do not under any circumstances say that you fear that President al-Bashir is going to get "bulldozed."

And get an editor. Like, right now.

Thursday = Friday

2008-07-03T11:47:00.003-04:00

Based on a couple of conversations last night, I offer the following:

First, "Everyone's a Little bit Racist," from the Broadway show Avenue Q. If you're not familiar with it, it's a great show. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of showtunes in general, but I have the soundtrack for this and love it. With song titles like this one, "The Internet is for Porn," and "It Sucks to be Me," you really just can't go wrong. Plus, it's R-rated puppets. 'Nuff said.

(I couldn't find a decent clip of the actual show, so I picked this one for the irony of putting a song about racism against Star Wars footage, after the flak that George took over Jar-Jar and some of his characters.)

And second, a truly honest R&B song. Just because.

Have a great weekend, kids.

RIP George Carlin

2008-06-23T09:17:00.002-04:00

After ten days out of town and away from home, I expected to have a fairly calm start to my first day back in the office. And it was going well, too, until I heard a coworker exclaim,

"Oh my god, George Carlin died!"

It's one of those situations where you're sure you didn't hear what you thought you heard, so you look it up. And you're surprised, even then, when you find out it's true. George Carlin, among the greatest comedians of his or any generation, passed away last night in California. It comes, ironically enough, less than a week after it was announced that George would be presented with the Mark Twain prize at the Kennedy Center, and award given for lifetime achievement in humor.

And what a lifetime it was.

I've been a fan of standup for my entire life. It started with old Bill Cosby albums in my parents' living room (actual albums, on vinyl; if you're under 30 just ask your parents and they'll explain it). My family was among the early adopters of cable and, later, HBO, which in the early- to mid-1980s was nothing short of heaven for fans of standup. Early Robin Williams, Howie Mandel, Rodney Dangerfield and, of course, repeated doses of George Carlin. I was introduced to Carlin in his 1984 special Carlin on Campus, and have been addicted ever since. He had a significant influence on my sense of humor growing up, and with new specials appearing every couple of years throughout my adolescence, he was frequently quoted among my friends. He's as much a part of my life's soundtrack as any musical group, really, to the point where in making a compilation cd for a childhood friend several years ago, a well-remembered Carlin clip went between almost every song. I still have the bulk of several specials committed to memory.

All of this, of course, was well after George had already had a significant impact on our culture, coining the Seven Dirty Words and being part of a Supreme Court case on obscenity. I didn't know much about that stuff until much later. I just knew he was funny.

In recent years, I felt that George had shifted from doing poignant observational comedy to mostly doing angry screeds. The social commentary, which had been at least light-hearted in previous iterations had become much darker, more pessimistic. During a brief period when I was doing regular video postings, I put up YouTube clips of a couple of my favorite Carlin routines (a list that would take several postings and a couple of hours of video), in which I said that I missed funny George, that angry George just wasn't the same. But I'd take angry George over silent, never-to-be-heard-from-again George anytime.

So thanks, George, for making me laugh, and think, for more than half my life. I'll miss you, as will laugh-prone people everywhere. Say hi to Richard, Lenny, and the others for us; I'm sure they're glad to see you.

Postscript: the original version of the Post story above used a word that George would have howled at. At the end of the story, in the line about his family, it said that his first wife, Brenda, "predeceased him." They have since edited it, unfortunately, because I think he would have appreciated the choice of words immensely. It reminded me of this bit, in which George talks about the softening of language, and even about how they might describe his own passing. Ever since this first aired, I've never listened to the pre-boarding call at an airport the same way.

I don't think it means what they think it means

2008-05-19T16:40:00.000-04:00

I'll get to why in a second, but I was thinking the other night about corporate sponsorship in sports. A variety of companies spend millions of dollars per year so that they can be considered The Official [product] of the [major sports team or league]. In theory, what this is supposed to say to the average consumer is that the team or league in question has a relationship with that product in such a way that the people who work or play for that organization would choose that particular product over its competition generally.

Most of the time, I don't think too much of this. I think that Popeye's, for example, is the Official Fried Chicken of the Redskins (or maybe it's the Wizards). And if they want to pay a bunch of money for that title, fine. And honestly, I suppose that I can imagine a guy like Clinton Portis, were he possessed of a craving for fried chicken, might very well decide that Popeye's is the place to go to get it. It's entirely possible that Popeye's is better than KFC, and if home cooking isn't available, maybe you make do with fast food. Fine, I can buy that. At that level, it makes sense to me.

What doesn't make sense is when they trot out a product sponsor that you know perfectly well the people being sponsored would never in a million years be caught dead using, let alone endorse. Sometimes the absurdity of it is so glaring, so jarring, that you can't help but notice it, and laugh out loud a little at the notion. This is what happened to me.

I was watching a bit of the NBA playoff coverage, not even really paying attention to the screen at the time, when I heard this: "NBA Shootaround is sponsored by Kia, the Official Automotive Partner of the NBA." Not surprisingly, my ears perked up at that.

Really? The Official Car of the NBA is a Kia?

Quick question: What kind of car does LeBron drive, do you think? Anybody offering odds that it's a Kia? How about Dwayne Wade? Kobe? KG? Shaq? Bueller? Bueller?

Okay, so none of those players are technically employed by the NBA organization; they're players for teams. So let's consider an NBA employee.

David Stern, proud Kia owner. Does that sound likely to you?

Me neither. I'm thinking we'd have to go pretty far down the org chart (or the bench, for that matter) before we're going to find someone whose primary vehicle is a Kia. Or secondary vehicle. Or who would even admit to test-driving one while car shopping. And I'm not suggesting they're bad cars; I'm just saying I've seen a few episodes of Cribs in my time, and let's just say there aren't a whole lot of Spectras parked next to the Escalades and Bentleys.

But that's what they would have you believe. Which is basically the people at Kia (and in the NBA, for that matter) calling me stupid. And I'm not about to put up with that.

Unless they'd like to sponsor me, of course.

Cake or death? Cake, please

2008-05-02T10:00:00.001-04:00

Tonight, 8pm, DAR Constitution Hall. Someone - and I'm not saying who - will be in attendance. And this person (who will remain anonymous) is pretty sure it's going to be kickass.

I guess it had to happen eventually

2008-04-28T14:11:00.002-04:00

I started this blog in the fall of 2005, and for two and a half years, I've managed to avoid it. I've seen it happen to other people, but it never happened to me. I will admit, I started to feel invincible. If I haven't run into it by now, surely I was safe, I thought. I thought so, but I was wrong.

I got tagged.

Part of me looks at tagging like the passing of a chain letter, like I have to do it or else something bad will happen, or Bill Gates won't send me a check, or some little girl will succumb to a brain tumor before seeing her email circle the globe (the check isn't coming, and the girl doesn't exist, by the way). But at the same time, it's a sign that someone wants to know you a little better, and it's hard to be annoyed when people find you interesting (yes, I know that there are people out there who find tapeworms interesting, but work with me here, okay?). So thanks to Ms. Lemmonex, here are seven things about me that you might not already know. I hope you won't regret choosing me over tapeworms.

1. In over 17 years of driving, I have received exactly one ticket, for speeding, in 2000. Now that I've said it out loud, I'm sure Murphy will be planning to correct that little statistic forthwith.

2. I don't keep a balanced checkbook, and it's entirely possible I've never actually balanced one at all (I may have done it early on, when I got my first account; the memory is a little hazy). I do most of my banking online, through direct deposit, and I hit the ATM roughly weekly. I monitor my credit card online, and I check the statement against the things I know I've done. I look for obvious anomalies but there's no fine-toothed comb involved. The only checks I write at this point are my rent and the occasional check to a friend for money I owe them, or for donations or entry fees for things (Race for the Cure, for example).

3. By virtue of having done some temp work a few years ago, I know that I can type somewhere between 55 and 60 words per minute. This is significant to me because when I graduated college, I couldn't type at all without staring at my hands, and now I can look away from the computer entirely while typing and not worry too much about making mistakes. On a related note, people find it quite disconcerting if you look them in the eye while continuing to type whatever it is you were typing when they first approached your desk.

4. I'm 33 years old, and I have probably drunk a total of less than three glasses of orange juice since kindergarten. I got sick on the way home from school one day (I can still remember it surprisingly clearly) and at that point my relationship with orange juice more or less ended. The thought of it doesn't make me ill or anything; I just don't want it.

5. I have never been what others might describe as properly drunk. Never fallen down, thrown up or passed out. The drunkest I've ever been is probably slightly off-balance, and that was on my 21st birthday. I rarely drink, and when I do it's almost never more than one drink or beer. I don't have a problem with drinking per se, or with people who do it; it's just never been something I've been interested in. I am regularly surprised at how hard it is for people to wrap their heads around this concept; like they'd be less uncomfortable processing the notion that I'm a raging alcoholic or something.

6. I can sing. Actually, I think it's reasonable to say that I have a well-above-average singing voice. But I could probably count on one hand the number of people I talk to regularly who have ever heard it. At some point, either during or shortly after college, I developed something of a mental block about singing around other people. I don't karaoke, I don't sing with the radio with other people, I pretty much clam up if i think someone else is within earshot. Oddly, I have less of a problem with the notion of strangers hearing me than friends. The only exception I seem to have is if someone has is playing an actual instrument. I'll sing along with someone playing guitar at a party with little hesitation, but karaoke is a non-starter. It makes no sense, and I don't get it myself, but it's there. I'll sort it out at some point. Maybe.

7. Between college and grad school, I have written a total of two applications and one essay. I applied early to Virginia Tech, planning to write the application for the in-state university as a backup plan, which was never necessary; no essay for the Tech application (all the more reason to love that place). I had a friend or two who wrote as many as 11 applications for college, something that I couldn't even fathom at the time. For grad school, I knew where I wanted to go and applied there; it wasn't a top-10 school and my GMAT score by itself could have gotten me in, so I was pretty well set there. Had to write an essay, but I couldn't really complain about it, could I? As higher-education experiences go, I'm pretty comfortable with how mine went.

So there you go, a small window into the man behind the blog. Hope you enjoyed it. Much like with chain letters, I will pass on tagging anyone else. If this wasn't really your thing, perhaps I can interest you in this.

I have my handbasket all picked out and everything

2008-04-17T11:36:00.002-04:00

The founder of chaos theory has died at age 90.

Reports differ, but it is widely believed that his death was caused by beating, specifically the beating of the wings of a butterfly, somewhere over central Mongolia. Mathematicians continue to investigate. A statement from Jeff Goldblum is expected sometime this afternoon.

What does it say about me that, at 8:00 this morning, this is what first occurred to me upon reading the headline of the story? It's good that the Pope is here this week. He can just give me my Downstairs Pass today and save all the waiting.

Things I learned in San Francisco

2008-04-13T14:30:00.001-04:00

In Part II of my west-coast journey.

- Golden Gate Park is beautiful. You could probably kill half a day or more there, if the weather's nice (California, duh), and there do seem to be plenty of things to look at. I had little time to spend on my visit, but did stop through the Japanese Tea Garden, which in addition to providing some excellent photographic scenes, allowed me to get the cherry blossom fix I was missing back home, minus the throng of underfoot tourists that clog the pedestrian arteries of our fair city this time of year. Points for that. There is also a rose garden, although apparently early April is not precisely the height of bloom season, as there was exactly one rose among the approximately seventy gajillion rose bushes in that part of the park. All of that said, it is a lovely place, and there are many more picture-worthy spots there than I had time to see, but would like to at some point. The DeYoung museum, for example, looked fascinating. There is also a flower conservatory which includes a butterfly house, if you're into that sort of thing.

- Maps are helpful. There are, to my mind, two major flaws in San Francisco's design, based on my short time there. First, and this is minor once you know your way around, is the signage. I'm very grateful for the Powers That Be for telling me the name of every cross street I pass; I think that's a wonderful idea. What would be brilliant, though, would be to occasionally tell me the name of the street I am currently on. This is important to know when you've just taken a poorly labeled turn that you think is the one you're looking for, and you travel a half-mile or so wondering about it but can't be completely sure because every signpost is blank. Big signs for cross-streets, roughly zero for your current street. Last time I checked, signposts could accommodate at least two signs, one for each direction of street; it seems reasonable to suggest that they be used in that manner, much like every major city on the planet. Except, of course, San Francisco. So knowing how the streets are laid out puts you at least in a moderately advantageous position.

Except for the one-way streets (Issue #2). I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that sorting out the one-way streets in San Fran feels somewhat akin to trying to decipher sanskrit using an Ovaltine decoder ring (and yes, finding out that the secret message is, in fact, "Drink more Ovaltine" is less than satisfying). I've never been so grateful for DC's user-friendly, intuitive urban design. At least here, you are fairly assured that if the street you're crossing won't let you turn left, the odds are at least 50/50 that the next one will. Over there, if you miss one left turn you might be in Sacramento by the time you get another chance.

(And before you say it: GPS is for wimps. Either that or I couldn't expense it. Pick the rationale that you like best. Wimp.)

- Thanks to the BART, I now have an appreciation for just how phenomenal the coverage of our local metro system is, in terms of access to different parts of the city. The BART has four lines, which all pass through the exact same dozen stops downtown, in a straight line across the city.

- The cable car is worth a ride. Because you're there, and that's what you do. Plus, it's a relatively cheap and easy way to get over to Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square, etc. It is a fun, scenic ride, and you can hang off the side all the way across town if you want to (which I did). Humming the Rice-a-Roni theme song optional but encouraged (or not). And if you're riding across town in the evening, it's entirely possible that your driver will stop the car in the middle of an intersection, hop off and run into a corner pizza shop to place an order.

The truth is, San Francisco is a very manageable size, and is generally walkable (or at least, don't-have-to-drive-able); you can get most places of interest other than Golden Gate Park or the Bridge without riding a municipal bus or getting into a cab. But given that,

- I am in lousy shape. Not that this is a surprise, but it was brought into uncomfortably stark focus on this trip. I was out and about in San Francisco for about eight hours or so on my one free day, with the total time spent sitting still (driving or riding the cable car) accounting for between an hour and a half and two hours of that time. The rest? Walking. Sure, a lot of stopping to take photos and that sort of thing, but mostly walking. And of the walking, there was a significant amount of climing. Not like rock-climbing or anything, but climbing hills and stairs. Because San Francisco? Not flat. Not even a little. It has hills. (Correction: make that hills).

I walked up Hyde St from the end of the cable car line to the top of Lombard St, the world's windiest street. On the map, this journey is about four blocks, which seems perfectly reasonable. In fact, it may seem reasonable enough that when the cable car stops at the top of Lombard St on Hyde, on the way to the Wharf, you might actually decide against getting off right then, instead figuring that you'll ride the car to the end and then walk over to the bottom of Lombard where the pics will be better anyway. This is a bad idea. Because when you fail to find Leavanworth St, which meets the bottom of Lombard, you will just end up walking up Hyde St anyway, retracing the path your cable car just took, without the benefit of mechanized transportation. And it will suck. The street is obscenely steep. Lombard St itself is listed as having a 27-degree incline; Hyde isn't quite that steep, but it's close. Or at least, it sure as hell feels like it. According to Google maps Terrain view, the trip from Bay St to Lombard St will take you up around 200 feet. In four blocks. With no stairs. It's steep enough that the middle of the sidewalk is cross-hatched, presumably to help people with traction as they climb. So yeah, get off the cable car, take pictures, then walk down the massive nasty hill to the Wharf. Down is easier. Or wait 15 minutes and catch another cable car to the bottom. I did none of these things, because I'm an idiot. But we've long since established that, now haven't we?

And all of that was after I had spent a couple of hours at the Golden Gate, where I climbed every bit of the 220 feet from the bridge deck to sea level, but at least there were stairs involved. See, you can park right next to the toll booths at the bridge, almost, take your pictures, then head on out to do whatever's next. You can, but I can't. I'm the one who notices the path off to the side, and follows it, ever looking for better angles for the photos. Then you realize that you can make your way all the way down to the water, where there's this cool concrete pier that gives you an excellent view of the bridge, as well as the city itself and Alcatraz; all it requires is that you descend, oh, say, 33885744 stairs to get there. At which point you're probably a little less than a half-mile from the bridge, and you notice that you can get almost right next to the bridge itself, also at the water line. So you go. It is at that point when you recognize that, while you may be standing next to the bridge, there is no direct path from there to the top of the bridge where you started. Instead, you ahve to go all the way back around and all the way back up the stairs. And did I mention 220 feet? Yeah. Awesome. And no escalators.

But the good news is, the pictures came out pretty well. They would be much better, if not for the final, most colossally aggravating thing I learned out there:

- My (brand new) camera has a defect in it. There is this small collection of circles, between two and four, in the top-center of just about every frame I took on this trip. They aren't always obvious, but they are always there, and always in the same place. So the clear blue sky surrounding the architectural wonder that is the Golden Gate Bridge has what appears to be a series of bubbles in it. Not that that's distracting or anything. I had purchased this camera about a week before I left for California, from a website that shall remain nameless (although one might suspect from its name that they also sell crackers, or that they're Putting On something*), but whose return/exchange policy, I found out later, is ten days. Ten days. That's it. Even for exchanges for defects. Ten days. So instead of making it easy to get this rectified, I'm going to have to send my camera to the manufacturer to get serviced, which will take something on the order of two weeks. Because the piece of crap website can't seem to figure out how to write a reasonable customer service policy. Fuckers. I have a $50 gift coupon that came with my camera, after whose use they will receive exactly $0 of my money ever again, and roughly that same amount from anyone who I ever talk to about camera stuff.

But that said, I did find some very good pictures in San Francisco, and will get some posted here one of these days. And I had an excellent trip out west, all things considered. This is a pretty busy travel month, so there may be more stories coming, you never know. Hopefully good ones, but since Murphy and I have the sort of relationship we do, you can never really tell...

* I should point out, however, that the brick and mortar stores bearing this name are not affiliated with the website, and as such I have no issues with them. The people there have been very helpful, in distinct contrast to their virtual cousins. Did I mention fuckers? Just checking.

They can't take it back now....

2008-04-09T23:12:00.004-04:00

While it took so long as to suggest less Pony Express than Limping Tortoise Express, this did finally arrive today.

Not that it was ever in doubt or anything, but actually being able to hold it in your hands is pretty darn cool.

But seriously, it took 'em long enough....

Doing a little West Coast swing

2008-04-02T14:36:00.001-04:00

Some observations from my first-ever trip to Los Angeles, the first stop on my two-city tour for work this week. Spent the weekend with a good friend from college, who was kind enough to play tour guide, and I've managed to see far more of the LA area than I had expected to. All in all, an excellent time.

- Why being nice to people matters: my seat assignment for my flight on Friday was waaaay in the back of the plane, on the window. Being somewhat taller than average, I tend to prefer the aisle because window seats usually have less foot-room on account of the curvature of the plane's fuselage. And exit row seats are always a good thing; but the seat-selection for exit rows, the computer said, would have to be handled at the departure gate. Not a promising sign, but I remained optimistic. At the gate, I inquired about a seat change, and was told that the flight was completely full, and there were no available seats, but the lady said she'd put in a request and we'd see what came up. Which sounded a lot to me like, "Don't hold your breath." But again, I remained optimistic.

Fast forward about twenty minutes, when the rest of that gate's staff arrived. The lady I had spoken to asked the arriving folks whether any of them had an extra pen, since she seemed to have left hers at her previous post. As it turned out, only one of them had a pen at all, so there was one pen available for three gate agents. Not an ideal situation, to be sure. I have my backpack with me, since that's what I use to carry my laptop, which has all of the supplies I used to take to class, including a plethora of pens. So grabbed one I hardly use, wandered over to the desk and handed it to her, saying,"And the best part is, I don't even want it back." She chuckled, said thanks, and I went back to my seat.

Another twenty minutes or so, and we're beginning the boarding process. They've already announced that first class is completely full, so there will be no upgrades, and we have a full flight, so the standby folks are SOL. But in the midst of all those announcements, the gate lady makes her way in my direction, holding a long slip of paper. A new boarding pass. Exit row. Aisle. Score. I'm not saying it was because I gave her the pen, but I'm not saying it wasn't, either.

- For some reason, United has decided that, rather than dividing the under-seat space evenly across the three seats in a row, the best approach would be to give the middle seat enough space to house a small third-world family, and the aisle and window each enough space for a business-sized envelope (standing on its edge), a thimble and a ball-point pen.

- Celebrity Sighting #1: Friday night in a small, relatively loud bar in Studio City whose name escapes me (I remember low, red lighting and a lot of noise, which narrows the list to roughly 4,556,533 bars in Los Angeles). Among the patrons, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who I recognize more as "that guy who looks like Robert Downey Jr's older brother" than for any of his acting work.

- Complain all you want about the drivers in the DC area, but compared to the drivers out here we are all extraordinarily thoughtful and considerate on the road. No wonder they shoot at each other. But then, if I had to deal with the 405 every day, I might be a little unhinged myself.

- Run, Fat Boy, Run is a very good movie, and the Cinemadome at the Arclight theater is an exceptional place to take in a film. It reminded me of the Uptown, in terms of the screen space, but it is a very modern, updated theater. As interested as I was/am in Grummann's Chinese Theater, I wasn't willing to suffer through Drillbit Taylor just to have the experience. I think I came out ahead here. Quick trivia on Fat Boy: co-written by Michael Ian Black, formerly of MTV's The State, and directed by David Schwimmer, of all people. And he does an excellent job. And let's be honest, you simply cannot go wrong with Simon Pegg. Hank Azaria doesn't hurt, either.

- I've seen more Italian sportscars here than I have anywhere else outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (yes, Milwaukee of all places. There was this little euro bar near where I stayed while I was there in 1998, and every night there were no fewer than seven high-end sportscars parked on that corner. Lamborghini, Ferrari, even Lotus were well-represented on that hundred-foot stretch of curb. We never understood it, but it was something to behold). Also, more than a few Bentley's and Rolls' out in normal traffic, driving to the mall.

- Celebrity(ish) Sighting #2: Santa Monica is a lovely place to walk around, between the Promenade, which has some exceptional street performers, and the Pier, which has some exceptional views of the Pacific Ocean and the surrounding beaches. In the Apple store on the Promenade I saw Amanda from that Tila Tequila reality show, A Shot at Love. Neither my friend nor her boyfriend knew who she was, but thanks to the internet-connected computers in the store I was able to enlighten(?) them. The site has switched to Season 2, so her bio is no longer up there. But I will say this: the makeup artists on that show were busy. Either that or she aged a helluva lot since that show ended. Possibly both.

- If you find yourself in Studio City, make your way to Sushi Dan. Trust me. Order the baked langostino roll. You will not be disappointed.

- Ditto for Duke's in Malibu, which offers the added extra bonus of a drive on the PCH. Sitting at lunch, looking at the ocean, watching dolphins go by. Yeah, that'll do. Plus, the food? Delicious.

- Celebrity Sighting #3: Vivian's Millenium Cafe, brunchtime. Order the banana pancakes. But get the regular order, because the large is just absurd (he said, having learned the hard way). But they're very, very good. Sitting about six feet away, just off the patio and doing a crossword puzzle, is Zach Levi. At one point, he disappears into the restaurant, grabs the coffee pot to refill his cup, then heads back to his table with it, offering refills to other patrons along the way.

- Petco Park in San Diego is a beautiful stadium, and an ideal place to take in a game. Our client decided to make an impromptu trip down for the Padres-Astros game Tuesday night, and I went along. We got there early, and wandered through the grounds and every level of the stadium. Great sight lines everywhere. Our client said that it's a very similar environment to the new Nationals stadium, actually. With the small exception of it being very chilly in San Diego that night, it was an excellent side trip to take, and we made very good time both getting there and getting back. And on top of it all, it was a pretty good game; we root-root-rooted for the home team, and they won. Like an idiot, however, I left my camera in my hotel, so we'll have to see how the cell-phone pictures come out.

- There is an endless supply of amazing views out here, to the point where you get oddly used to it. And it's hard to take pictures, since the panoramas far exceed the width of the camera lens. It's difficult to pick which part of the sweeping view you want to capture. I got a few good ones, though.

Next up is San Francisico, for the second (and much shorter) leg of the tour; I head home Friday. I won't have nearly the tourist-time I had in LA, but I do plan on seeing as much as I can fit in. I'll post some of the pictures once I get back home.

In which I support a good cause, but recognize I am closer to breaking a hip than being hip

2008-03-07T11:19:00.007-05:00

I recently had the opportunity to attend the annual dinner for the Syrentha Savio Endowment (SSE). If you're not aware (and let's face it, you're probably not), SSE is an organization dedicated to the fight against breast cancer. It's a small organization, nothing even approaching the Komens of the world, but naturally there's room for everyone in this area, and SSE is taking a different, and rather novel, approach to the effort and to outreach.

SSE was started by Mark Beemer, who had made his living as a rock photographer. Without getting into too much detail, events conspired to put the issue of breast cancer into stark focus for him, and in 2002 he made a slight change to his life's mission. Making use of his background in the punk-rock scene, and the network of people he knew there, Mark put punk-rock at the center of his outreach strategy. He knows bands, bands know him, and he gets them involved in his cause. SSE goes to shows to hand out materials, and the bands regularly mention SSE on stage, and direct people to their booth and the website.

The support of the punk-rock scene is even more evident in the centerpiece of SSE's fund-raising efforts, called Shirts for a Cure. Bands donate T-Shirt designs to SSE, and all proceeds from the sales of those shirts go to the endowment. And we're not talking about small bands you've never heard of, either. Bad Religion, Blink-182, My Chemical Romance (MCR), Fall Out Boy, and The Plain White T's are only a few of the myriad bands who have contributed designs to SSE's cause. They do some original stuff, too, including the punk-appropriately-titled "Fuck Cancer" line. They have some additional things in the works that haven't been announced yet, but will be very exciting and will expand their mechandise catalog in cooperation with a couple of big names*. They tour, they organize an increasing number of groups for the Race for the Cure, all the while helping to support breast cancer treatment for women who lack the means to obtain it on their own. These are good people.

SSE put on a show at the South By Southwest festival whose band list (including MCR) rivaled anything the festival's organizers could put together (in fact, the SXSW people are a little steamed at SSE for getting bands they can't, but that's a whole different story). They have gone on tour with MCR and other bands, getting out and talking with the fans, increasing awareness and promoting early detection/prevention of breast, testicular, and skin cancer. SSE has developed a number of materials that they hand out, including laminated shower cards promoting self-testing for boys and girls, complete with cartoon people sporting tatoos. By all accounts, it's been very successful and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

This year, I attended SSE's annual charity dinner, which was held at Maggianos in DC. So right away, you know you're going to eat well. This is a good thing. In addition to copious volumes of Italian food, we were also treated to an update on SSE's previous year, and some of their plans for next year and the future (see asterisk, above/below, for example). It really was a wonderful event, and I may or may not have eaten way more than I should have. But that is neither here nor there. Good times.

One of the most interesting things for me was being seated at a table with three-fourths of the band Senses Fail. They were in town for the week, working on a new album, and came out to show their support for SSE. And to eat. Now, I should point out (which will surprise no one, really) that I know virtually nothing about punk/indie rock (is there a difference? That's how little I know about it), beyond being passingly familiar with a few of the bands named above, and having been to a Guided By Voices show at the 9:30 Club a few years back. So it's not all that suprising that I'd never heard of my tablemates before that very evening. But to me, that meant that they were obviously some up-and-coming band just getting started or something.

I was close. Turns out they share a record label with Dashboard Confessional, Paul Westerburg, and the Lemonheads, and are in fact working on their third album, not their first. So yeah, a little pop-culture hubris to go with the gnocchi in vodka sauce. And the gargantuan tiramisu (family-style dining rocks, especially at dessert time). I then went from feeling ignorant to old when one of the other people at the table explained that Senses Fail is 'very popular with the kids.' A group to which I clearly no longer belong.

I should also point out that the guys from the band were hilarious, and great fun to share a meal with. I was able to talk music with people who do it for a living, and it was fascinating for me to get some insight into the process of putting an album together. There may also have been some discussion of Steven Seagal and Steven Seagal movies. Highly entertaining all around.

It was a great night, supporting a great and growing organization. And at the end of the evening I finished my prune juice, hiked up my pants, and hopped on the Rascal for the trip home.

These kids today...

* As soon as I find out what I'm allowed to say, or when it does get announced, I'll tell you. I promise. But it's very cool.

Dictionostalgia

2008-01-31T09:59:00.000-05:00

Like most people, I occasionally make up words. We all do it, don't we? We're trying to express or describe something, and can't quite nail it down with the words we know; so we come up with our own solution. Most of the time, these new words have a lifespan of that conversation, and are never heard again after that one use and chuckle. Some of them, however, bear repeating. They stick around. They go into a regular rotation, and our friends might even start to use them. Heck, some of them make their way into the national consciousness*. The average person might simply refer to these terms as made-up words, and they would certainly not be wrong to do so. But those of us of a certain age, who grew up in a certain pop-cultural period, recognize them as more than that. We know that some the best of these words fall into their own category, their own special place in the American lexicon.

We call them by their rightful name. We call them Sniglets.

Mention sniglets to someone, and if they remember them at all you will almost invariably get the same reaction, sort of like they just ran into a close friend from middle school that they haven't seen in years. But what they may not remember, however, is just where sniglets came from. Sure, there were books and even a sniglet calendar, but before all of that, there was a show. Much like Beavis and Bart (and Fergie, for that matter), sniglets started out as a small part of a larger show, which grew to far exceed (and outlive) the program that got them noticed.

Back in the early days of cable, when Nickelodeon was dumping green slime on people, and MTV was, well, something people actually wanted, HBO was coming up, still filling out its movie selections; but even then HBO was producing original shows. One of the first of these was a spoof-news program called Not Necessarily the News.

The show was decent, occasionally very good; kind of a distant progenitor of The Daily Show. NNTN introduced the world to Rich Hall, who in turn introduced the world to sniglets. And the rest, as they say, is history. But not nearly as many people remember the show itself so much as the new words the show provided. (For example, just look at the difference between NNTN's wiki entry and the one for sniglets. It's not even close**).

And if they do remember, then rest assured that not only do you get the holy-crap-i-remember-that reaction, complete with wide eyes and a chuckle or two, the person you are talking to will without fail proceed to tell you their favorite, the one that cemented sniglets in their memory. Promise. Everybody has one, and no matter how long it's been, they'll remember it pretty much on the spot. Mine? That's easy:

cinemuck [n]: the sticky substance that covers the floor of most movie theaters.

So this long string of nostalgia was sparked for me over the holidays, while I was down visiting my family for Christmas. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact circumstances, but I know I was sitting in the living room, talking with my brother and sister-in-law. I am blessed with a very funny family, and we spend at least as much time together laughing as doing anything else. It's a good group. Somewhere in the midst of all of the funny conversations, it occurred to me.

mirthquake [n]: an extreme state of amusement, in which one is laughing so hard, or has been laughing for so long, that the person ceases to make any sound; all that remains is a near-involuntary shuddering of the body, and frequently unsuccessful attempts to catch one's breath.

I have never had a short way of describing this condition, but I have always greatly enjoyed it. See, my friend Katie from junior high school was the queen of this sort of thing. She was an easy laugh, and once she got going she had a lot of trouble stopping. She would often end up in exactly this condition, a huge smile (that bordered on a pained expression, honestly), occasional tears, and shaking, punctuated by loud intakes of breath. I remember once in a math class, she got caught by something funny at her desk, laughed for a couple of minutes, but then had a question for the teacher. She got up to ask, but by the time she got up to the teacher's desk, she was in full mirthquake mode. She tried for the better part of a minute to work through it and ask her question, standing next to the teacher, but eventually waved it off, went back to her desk, sat back down, and dropped her face into her hands until she could re-compose herself. As much as we laughed, none of us were more amused than the teacher, who got quite a kick out of it. He was good like that. And I don't think she ever asked her question, either.

In many cases, the onset of the mirthquake is signaled by the

snortle [n]: laughter punctuated by an intake of breath through the nose, resulting in a sound reminiscent of a pig; this usually embarrasses the person making the sound, causing them to laugh further, often creating a snowball effect leading to general loss of control.

I have several friends who do this, and it's always hugely entertaining. First they're laughing at something else, then the snortle, then they're also laughing at themselves, and it just spirals. Personally, I love it.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to cause something to come out of your friend's nose; that's the grail, right there. But the mirthquake and the snortle are perfectly acceptable in the meantime.

So yeah. I made a sniglet (or two). If you remember them, please share your favorite(s), or one you made yourself.

* Only while writing this did I learn that the term I and all my friends always used to refer to a car with one headlight out (pediddel) is, in fact, one of these.
**Let's be clear: I am in no way suggesting wiki is some kind of journalistic standard, but I still think it says something.

I resolve to be immature

2007-12-31T14:13:00.000-05:00

While I am not one to normally make New Year's Resolutions, I guess you could say I have a few this year by virtue of having just finished grad school (and no, I can't say that often enough, in case you were wondering). As I mentioned earlier, I do have some hobbies on the drawing board (although drawing is not one of them): I need to get back into some kind of exercise habit, I want to learn the guitar, and there are a couple of things on the second tier that I'm considering. We'll see how it all goes. I just hope the motivation lasts longer than the average Resolution, which these days has the lifespan of a fruit fly.

Except yours, of course. I have no doubt that you will be completely on top of your resolutions. No doubt. Let me know how that works out for you, k? K. Although if you're hard-up for ideas and want some help coming up with resolutions, LemonGloria has some excellent suggestions.

In other news, it's rare that one can get away with publicly channeling one's inner junior-high-schooler, but today is one of those days. As I and many of my co-workers were preparing do depart at the end of our half-day, we traded the age-old cliche that never fails to get a giggle, or at least an appreciative (though they might disagree, we know better) groan. I now bid it to all of you:

Have a good night, and see you next year.

Just remember: If you're driving, don't drink, and if you're drinking, don't drive.

Happy New Year, everybody.

I am Legend: somewhat less than legendary

2007-12-22T10:37:00.000-05:00

The short version: good not great, but certainly worth seeing. One of the rare occasions on which I would have preferred a longer movie, since several aspects of the story seemed rushed (or ignored). But it's a good, entertaining thrill ride, even if I would say it doesn't quite live up to the hype.

I remember the first preview I saw for I am Legend, even if I don't entirely remember the movie I was seeing at the time. It was just about perfect, as previews go: you got a few shots of Will Smith in his house, driving through a desolate NYC, hunting with his dog, and you got the voice over of his radio message, which ends with, "you are not alone." Cut to title, cut to black.

That was it, and it was great. I knew that I wanted to see it, and frankly I didn't much want to know more about the movie than that. I desperately hoped that they'd keep it that simple in the marketing. I mean, it was brilliant in its simplicity: show the star, whet the appetite, leave the audience a little confused and a lot curious, and they will flock the theaters to see what happens. Genius, right? Less is more, tantalize them and they will come.

Apparently the commercial writers didn't get that memo.

I seriously want to find the people who write movie commercials and pimp-slap each and every one of them. They come very close to ruining most of the movies they're trying to sell, and I'm very, very tired of it. That's another rant for another time, but they really pissed me off with this movie. Mystery? Gone. Almost all of the anticipation about what the story might involve, the curiosity that the preview created, was pretty much shattered during the very first commercial. Oh, that's what they mean by not alone. Thanks, jackasses.

(In the hopes that some of you escaped the spoiler-filled commercials, I will try to discuss the movie vaguely enough to leave some mystery for you. And if you see a commercial come on, turn the channel immediately. Consider yourself warned).

Anyway, even though I knew more than I wanted about the plot, and even though I was pretty sure I knew what the ending was going to look like, I went and saw the movie anyway.

What I liked:

The suspense - this is not as much a scary movie as a jumpy movie. There is a lot of good suspense and tension, not much in the way of blood and gore, which I think is a good thing. My suggestion: no coffee before showtime. You'll thank me.
Will Smith - it should not be surprising to hear that Will Smith is pretty darn good in this movie, since he hasn't really clunked one in quite a while. What's most impressive is that he spends most of this movie by himself, in a way reminiscent of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. I don't think he's as good in this as Tom was in that, but there are similar aspects of the performance, including making characters out of his surroundings and having it be believable. But then, he has a dog, which is quite a bit more interactive than a volleyball. In any case, he does very well, particularly in showing how the solitude affects him over time. I don't think a nomination is out of the question, even though it's not the genre of film that award voters tend to look at closely.
The dog - you get exactly what you want/need out of this dog: a sympathetic side kick for Smith. The fact that they generate real exchanges, Smith and this dog, is a really a credit to the trainers and to Will's performance, but the whole thing works. You will root for the dog almost as much as you root for Will. Best Supporting Animal? I guess we'll have to wait and see how awards season plays out.
Almost no music - one of the things I have always given Cast Away (or more specifically, Tom Hanks) tons of credit for was the ability to create drama without the assistance of the movie's musical score. I applauded the decision then, and I applaud it now. There's not a lot of background music in this movie, and I think that was an excellent choice. It heightens the sense of isolation, and it also forces the actor to perform, and as I mentioned, Smith does a good enough job that he doesn't need the musical assistance that most suspense/drama movies get. For example, you don't get the high-pitched violin score in the background when something scary is happening. You get breathing, and darkness, and footsteps, and creaking of floors, and that's always better. Every time.

What I didn't Like:

Duration/pacing - this story could easily have taken a two-and-a-half hour film to really flesh out completely, yet the movie comes in at well under two hours and some of the storytelling suffers as a result. The price you pay is a rushed feeling through several points in the movie, as well as the utter lack of explanation of a few questions that seem fairly obvious to ask, although I won't, since doing so would spoil. But they're there, and you'll want to ask them when you're leaving the theater; unfortunately nobody there will be able to help you. There are many points that could have used further explanation, and the lack of it loses a lot of depth to the film.
CGI - considering the success of fully-CG characters in movies over the past several years, I was disappointed with the quality of the CG work in this movie. I fail to see what was gained by not using real people. That's all I'm saying. Maybe it was a budget thing (I'm not sure how much they spent to make this movie), but it detracts a bit from the overall experience
The fact that I, with zero military or advanced tactical training, and without being a research doctor, was able to suss out at least two things that somehow completely eluded the main character. Granted, you could argue their necessity for plot movement, but having highly intelligent characters suddenly go completely ignorant and unobservant is one of those devices in movies that always bugs me. Especially someone who has apparently developed such a keen survival sense and situational awareness.
The marketing/hype - this has a lot less to do with the movie than with the buzz that the people selling the movie have tried to create. I've already mentioned my issues with the commercials, but the real problem is that this movie has been so highly marketed, so intensely advertised, that I can't imagine it truly living up to the expectations that are set in the minds of the people going to see it. I mean, watching the coverage, you realize that if it's not the second coming of The Godfather or something it's going to be a huge disappointment. I think the larger issue is that studios see the drop in overall box office numbers lately, and they think that every movie has to be The Big One, just to get people in the door. They're doing themselves, and their movies, a disservice, though, because the higher you build something up, the more risk of a fall. Conversely, I really enjoyed Harold and Kumar go to White Castle as much because I had zero expectations going in as because it was funny on its own merits (which it was, but still). Anyway, I think that the studios put movies in general, and this movie in particular, at a disadvantage by talking it up so much. It's a good movie, but I think it would have had to be truly great just to meet the expectations, and that's not fair to the film itself.

Ultimately, I did like the movie quite a bit. Despite some of the issues, it's very engaging, it pulls you along with the story, and there are a few surprises in there that will help mitigate the effects of the commercials. I wasn't all that thrilled with the ending, but I respect the fact that it didn't end the way I thought it would, which I appreciate in and of itself. I think it's definitely worth seeing, and it's a movie experience that is definitely enhanced by seeing it on the big screen (the shots of NYC alone are practically worth the ticket). But you will probably enjoy the movie a lot more if you restrict your expectations to a good roller-coaster kind of movie, rather than some epic story. Think Aliens more than, say, Braveheart, and you'll be in better shape.

I give it a B+ for what it is, but a B- for what I expected it to be.

The commercials get an F. Fuckers.

And now for something completely different

2007-12-19T20:16:00.000-05:00

For the past three years, my life has been more or less defined by a particular two-word phrase, the mention of which has elicited reactions ranging from admiration to pity, depending on to whom I was speaking. That phrase, as many of you know, is 'grad school.'

Or more to the point, it was. As in past tense. As in no longer. Finished. Complete. Dunzo. No mas. I grajimitated.

It didn't quite wrap up the way I expected it to, though. When you think about finishing something like this, you envision going out after class with a couple of classmates and raising a glass in celebration, or heading home to relax and soak up the fact that after all that work and time, you're finally through it; something to mark the occasion, some reflection, some acknowledgement of the event. This wasn't quite the way it went for me. Instead of getting to the end of that final class and basking in the moment, I scampered out of class as soon as my presentation finished, hopped on the metro to my apartment, got in the car and began the 3+ hour drive to Atlantic City for work (that's right, for work). Drove back Friday, then rolled straight into the birthday weekend with plans Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The trip was fun (despite being work), the weekend was fantastic, but there wasn't a whole lot of time to digest the fact that I'm finished (but there was plenty of food to digest, to be sure).

Which brings us to tonight. Tonight would be a class night*, but I will be going home rather than to campus. I have been told that the being-finished thing sets in most on those first evenings when you should be in class but aren't. I'm kind of looking forward to it.

One of the most frequent questions I've gotten as the end approached is, "what are you going to do with all of that free time?" My answer usually involves sleep and/or the rediscovery of my friends' contact information (or their rediscovery that I, you know, exist), but those are facetious answers to an excellent question. I mean, I haven't had a hobby since the end of 2004. I've got this backlog of ideas that's, oh, about three years old now; now it's just a matter of figuring out how many I can fit in. That in addition to the sleeping and the friends, of course. I was only partly kidding about that. But really, all of those decisions will wait until after the holidays. Between now and then, I'll be concentrating on that whole relaxing thing.

I started this blog partly as a way to kill some of the time I was procrastinating from doing my actual schoolwork. I was spending the bulk of my time at home in front of a computer anyway, and that whole All-Work-No-Play thing made it seem like a good idea. And it certainly has been. Now that I'm finished, it will be interesting to see whether I get better or worse about the blog; I'm a little curious myself.

I'll figure all that out later. Right now, I have to go spend some quality time with my couch. Because I can.

And hey, did I mention I'm done? Oh, ok. Just wanted to make sure I covered that.

* Secretly, it is a class night, due to my prof taking certain liberties with the schedule. I'm not going, though. I did my presentation, the project is handed in, I'm done. Plus, I had told him I was going to be out this week anyway (work travel that was subsequently postponed), so I see no reason to confuse the man by showing up; that would just be impolite.

In case you ever wonder...

2007-12-05T16:53:00.000-05:00

...why people make fun of

a) blondes
b) southerners
c) the fanatically religious
d) the state of the American educational system

I submit Exhibits A thru D:

A) The Kellie Pickler Experience

That sound you're hearing is your own hand involuntarily smacking into your forehead.

B) Kellie Pickler, even Pickler-er

I mean, she's right, but holy crap. There are people out there who insist that Ms. Pickler's affectations are all an act, and prior to this I might have believed it. But not now. You can't write this stuff; only real people say things this ridiculous.

C) Sherri Shepherd demonstrates the power of faith to overcome fact, logic, and history

Um, what? The best part is Whoopi giving her the out ("on paper"? What does that even mean?), looking for some way to end that conversation without specifically pointing out how hopelessly, foolishly ignorant her co-host is. Because seriously. Jesus came first? Really? The Jews must be awfully confused, then.

But we get this level of uber-intellectualism not just once, but

D) Twice

I've got nothing here. Nothing at all. Because it defies words.

And I feel compelled to point out that both of these women make far, far more money than I do.

But remember kids: work hard and stay in school, because.... um, because that's the only way to.... er, because people who don't.... because, uh....

Turn off the TV. Because I said so.

Turkey Day two-fer

2007-11-21T14:12:00.000-05:00

family, friends, and
four weeks to go in grad school:
things I'm thankful for

turkey, stuffing, yams,
gluttony on the menu.
Happy Thanksgiving

And then the conductor said something about one hand clapping

2007-11-19T11:42:00.000-05:00

I will admit that I don't really understand Zen Buddhism. It seems mostly to be concerned with finding alternate ways of looking at things, pondering the kinds of questions that if you try to analyze them logically and rationally, you run the real risk of basically having your brain leak right out your ears.

This is what I was thinking about as I walked home to Ballston from the Clarendon metro station on Friday.

But wait. Ballston has a metro station, it's just two stops farther down the line from Clarendon.

This is true. It may come as no surprise, then, that the philosophical ponderings and my commute are related.

Friday afternoon, there were some issues on the Orange line which were creating delays. In fact, the Orange Line Delay was becoming an all-too-regular occurrence lately, but that's another post. Apparently, there was a disabled train somewhere around East Falls Church that was causing trains to share a track, hence the delay. Nothing new, same as it ever was. So I got on at Rosslyn, figuring that the trip would take a little longer than usual, but no big whoop. We were actually moving along better than I had expected. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, I thought. Until we got to Clarendon, where the conductor said, and I quote:

"This train will be going out of service, due to a disabled train ahead of this one."

Um, what?

Read that sentence a couple of times, and try to make any kind of sense out of it. It might help to plug your ears, just to prevent excess leakage. Don't think about it too hard, you'll just hurt yourself.

Utter ridiculousness aside, they still booted everyone off the train and onto the platform, at which point I decided that trying to figure out/understand what was going to happen next would probably take longer than the 15 minutes I would spend walking. As it was chilly but not raining outside, up the escalator and out of the absurd metro system I went.

Maybe that moment of Zen reflection is how they're justifying the latest round of rate increases. We're not going to appreciably improve service, no, but we will start contributing to your spiritual health. Think of it less as your morning commute than as one more stop on the Express Train to Enlightenment.

But grab a tissue first, because you've got a little something coming out of your ears.

I give it a B(ee)

2007-11-08T10:29:00.000-05:00

The expectations for Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie are understandably high. He's been hyping his project for what seems like forever, creating a spectacle at last year's Cannes film festival and spending a great deal of time on TV lately, from movie ads to McDonald's commercials, making sure that everyone on the planet (and anyone listening on nearby ones) knows that this movie is coming out, and by the way did we mention that Jerry wrote it? Stars in it? And he's in it? And he likes it? And don't you love Jerry? So don't you think you should run out and watch it? Like right now? I mean, it's Jerry! Go see Jerry! It kind of reminds me of that Beggin' Strips commercial: It's BACON!!! That seems to be the marketing philosophy behind this film: the movie? Oh, well, it's about some bees and stuff, but never mind that, IT'S JERRY SEINFELD.

One might be concerned that the commercials show more of Seinfeld in human form than in bee form, at least the one's I've seen: the producers appear to be more interested in selling the voice behind the movie than the movie itself. I mean, he wrote it, sure, I get that; but if he's as proud the project as he claims, don't you think he'd be more interested in showing it off than his face, especially since his face isn't in a single shot of the film? Maybe not: a $38 million box office performance speaks for itself, I guess.

But marketing plan (and box-office gross) aside, is it any good? The short answer: yes. It's good not great, consistently funny but not so much that your sides hurt.

The premise is quite literally one of Bee Meets World: the discontented dreamer strikes out on his own and ends up changing things for everyone, but most importantly himself. The movie hardly scores points for conceptual originality, but how many movies really can these days? The key is the execution, and this movie does a good-to-very-good job with what it has, and what it is: a kids' movie trying to entertain Mom and Dad, since they have to be there, too.

The plot? It's ridiculous, but it doesn't matter. If you're going to a CG animation movie looking for deep plot development, you have to stop going to the theater. In fact, just stop going outside, because you're creeping the rest of us out. The plot is enough to string together the jokes, and that's all that really matters. I'll leave the summary to others, but seriously, who cares?

The art/animation: excellent. The Dreamworks people decided to pull back on the photorealism on this picture, instead going for a more cartoonish look to the characters, and I for one appreciate it. Nobody will mistake the bees for real bees, the people for real people, but the backgrounds, textures, and effects are as good as you'd expect (the flying scenes with the kites are very good, for example). Frankly, if I want to see real people, I'll go outside. That's why it's there. But I digress.

Characters: fine. The characters are everything they need to be, but not a whole lot more; it's mostly archetypes, broadly-drawn characters who are, again, mostly there to keep things moving to the next line or the next step in the story. Jocks? Check. Overbearing Jewish-stereotype parents? Check (they even talk about being Bee-ish, so I'm not over-interpreting anything here). Dreamer's over-practical world-fearing best friend? Check. Sensitive stranger with a heart-o-gold? Check. Her (and of course it's her) overbearing insensitive boyfriend? Check. And on, and on. They're very simple, but remember: kids' movie. Simple is good. As long as it's funny.

The voice acting: Pretty good overall, with some definite bright spots. For better or worse, while his character's face bears no resemblance, you can almost see Jerry in his voice. His delivery is 100% Jerry, in the way that only he can really do it. One of the things I'm curious about is how funny this movie would be without his voice. I'd be interested to know how it does dubbed into other languages, where some of the subltelty of how you say something gets lost while what is said is preserved. As for the other characters, Jerry must have made a lot of phone calls, because this is a very large cast of names. Renee Zellweger is The Girl, and she does well enough as the sweet, sensitive florist who becomes Jerry's connection with the human world. Matthew Broderick is the best friend, and may give the best performance of the whole film. Naturally, a Seinfeldian or two is bound to show up: Putty, aka Patrick Warburton is The Girl's Jerky Boyfriend. There are more, but half the fun for me is guessing. So listen close, and check the credits. All in all, though, the casting was solid, and the performances were generally good. Again, some of the characterizations are a little over the top, but it's all in line with the rest of the movie (which, again, is totally absurd).

There were just a few things that I take issue with, but they aren't that serious. I think that the chemistry and rhythm between Jerry and Renee syncs up way too quickly for my sense; she gets over the talking-bee thing with far more aplomb than she should. I understand why they did it, but it struck me as a bit strange. And the ending is absurd, even by absurd standards. And it was kind of predictable; I remember thinking, "Oh, they're not going to... don't tell me... come on..." as I saw it coming. Some of the jokes are like that, too, a little on the predictable side. But you know what? Kids' movie, and it works on that basis. The kids in the theater where I was oohed and ahhed at exactly the right places.

You will appreciate this move if:
- You enjoy cartoons, the raft of Pixar movies, A Bug's Life, and their extended family
- You think puns, word-play, and anthropomorphic humor are funny
- You remember and enjoy Jerry's standup, if not necessarily the sitcom
- You are 7 years old (not required, but certainly helpful)

If you think puns are generally stupid or lacking in cleverness (no matter how clever they may be), or if the bee/people life parallels have little chance of amusing you, then you probably want to skip this movie, since the vast majority of the humor is exactly that. I can't disagree, for example, with a lot of what the WashPost reviewer says in that regard*, although I do think Desson is a bit stuffy and shortchanges the comedy a bit. But he's a critic, and that's his job. I just go to laugh. Which I did.

For what it is, though, it's done pretty well. Like I said, it's a funny movie: the jokes-per-minute rate is relatively high, and the laughs are good ones, if not tear-inducing side-splitters. This makes sense, though, for anyone familiar with the work of the writer and star. His comedy has always been illuminating, thoughtful, and insightful, but not that intense. We shouldn't expect this to be much different.

My final piece of advice: if you go, stay for the credits. There's a treat in there for you.

The bottom line, for me, is that it's worth seeing. I woudn't say you need to see it in the theater, but it's definitely worth renting/Netflixing/buying at a Shanghai pirated DVD kiosk, whatever (I kid, I kid; don't steal or download movies, kids. And stay in school. And say no to drugs. And stay off my lawn).

Actually, I disagree with his point about Chris Rock, but that's as much as I'll say about it here to avoid spoilage. And obviously, I like the movie more than he did.

I would much rather oversleep

2007-10-24T11:22:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, you wake up in the morning without your alarm, ready to go, and get your day started without that grating electronic screech telling you to get your lazy behind up and moving.

Today was not, strictly speaking, one of those days, and it reminds me of a similar morning I had in college.

My third year of undergrad I was an RA (actually for all of that year, the summer, and the first semester of the next, but anyway). Being an engineer, naturally I had 8am classes, because the department hated us. I'm sure they wouldn't have put it that way, but that was certainly the message they sent. Neither here nor there. Moving on.

One weekday morning, I woke up without my alarm, hopped out of bed and started my day. Grabbed my stuff and headed for the shower. In the hall, I passed one of my residents, said good morning, continued. The usual. I did notice, however, that there did not seem to be the usual activity I was used to seeing in the morning: people up and about, grumbling about the time, the sorts of things your average class-day morning are made of. I didn't think too much about it, lest I get distracted and end up with shampoo in my eyes, but it did occur to me. I made my way back to my room, at which point I looked clearly at the clock for the first time. the more perceptive children probably have an idea where this is headed...

It read: 3:15. As in a.m., ante meridiem, in the morning, a good 3 hours before I was supposed to get up; and there I was, not just up but already showered, and now more than a little annoyed. I hopped back into bed, determined to get back to sleep for at least a couple of hours before getting up for class. You ever try to go to sleep, like really try to sleep? It's hard. It's easily the least effective way to go about it, but I was pissed and had little choice. Fortunately, I did get there, got a little more shuteye before getting up. Again. Dammit.

Later that day, I saw that same resident again, and we talked about it. He agreed that seeing me obviously shower-bound at that time of morning (or night, really) was more than a little out of the ordinary; to which I replied: then just why the hell didn't you, I don't know, say something?

He just shrugged and said, "I just figured you thought you were dirty."

He just figured I thought I was dirty. And apparently had my cleansing inspiration at 3 in the morning. Um, sure.

This made sense, actually, coming from a guy who showered both when he got up and before bed, but I was less than pleased all the same. But I learned my lesson: look at the clock before you get out of bed.

I learned it. Or so I thought.

This morning was like that, although I did catch my error before actually getting into the shower. But I've been groggy all day and class tonight is not looking promising.

Is it just me, or does this happen to other people?

Just another day that I miss naptime.

Just say what?

2007-10-08T15:50:00.000-04:00

Walking back from getting lunch today, I wandered past what became the current titleholder for Strangest Overheard Conversation Ever.

Man, into cell phone: "... no, the... the cocaine.... the cocaine was out on the back porch. The other stuff...." That was all I heard, and frankly more than I needed to.

Bear in mind that it was just past 1pm, in the area just around the Ballston Mall, and this man made no efforts to lower his voice or seek any particular privacy. In public, in plain sight. My question is, if you weren't interested in concealing the fact that you're talking about cocaine, then what on earth are you into that has to be cryptically described as, "The other stuff"? And what kind of idiot are you dealing with who's leaving cocaine out on the back porch? I mean seriously: what if it gets windy? Think, man, think! I don't even do coke and I know better than that.

This follows a couple of instances in the past couple of months where I've walked behind or past someone smoking pot, while making no effort to conceal the fact that they're smoking pot. One was on GW campus over the summer, some dude just strolling up the street, smoking a joint like it was a cigarette, without a care in the world (except maybe for some Doritos). The other was last week, just after lunch walking down Pennsylvania Avenue. You know, one of the busiest streets in DC? Some guy not even walking, just sitting next to the sidewalk toking up, half a block from one of those really nice hotels. Blew his cloud right in front of me.

Gone, apparently, are the days when the good, self-respecting druggie was behind closed doors, towel shoved into the crack, blowing through a toilet paper tube and dryer sheets. No need for incense, kids, don't worry about it. Get some fresh air with your smoke. It's DC, after all.

You can insert your own joke(s) here about Marion Barry, the DC Police and/or the crime rate and parking tickets. I'd do it for you, but I'm suddenly very hungry...

Not technically, but I like the way it sounds

2007-10-03T15:11:00.000-04:00

For the next week and a half, I will be a burden on society, a blight on the American professional landscape, a hanger-on, a dragging weight on the progress of the national economy, contributing nothing of substance to the GDP, to the greater good, or to anything other than, perhaps, the viewership of daytime television, Sportscenter, and the Cartoon Network.

I will be, in a word, unemployed. Or, more accurately, I am unemployed right now.

That's the shorter, much more interesting version. The truth is longer and has, like most truths, far less flash. But it'll do.

I got a new job. Monday was my last day with the firm where I have worked for the past six years, and I start the new one in mid-October. While I had been planning to job-search when I was finished with school, and had every intention of polishing up the resume to support that effort, life stepped in a little early and made all of that unnecessary. It went kind of like this:

When I first started at my most recent job, J was also working there. Very solid engineer, strong business sense, overall good guy. He went with me on my Egypt trip, and we got to know each other fairly well (at least, as well as one can in the office). We would even kick around after hours shaking our heads at some decisions management was making, and wondering how it was that the right thing seemed so clear to us and yet eluded many people with far more responsibility, experience, and salaries than we had. But I digress. After a couple of years, J left the company to pursue his own thing. He was going to start his own company, and set off to seek his fortune, as it were. I pretty much lost touch with him shortly after that.

Fast-forward about three years, to a month or so ago. I get back in touch with him on another matter, and we catch up on what's been going on since he left. Turns out that rather than start his own firm from scratch (as was his original plan), he got the chance to start his own division within an existing company instead. And was, oh by the way, in talks to take that firm over once the owner decides to retire in the next couple of years. So at the end of that story, he asks what I'm up to and how things are going at my end. He knows most of the players, having done some consulting work for us since his departure, so he gets a lot of the shorthand. Long story short (ha), I get this offer about two weeks ago. A good one. With some pretty serious growth potential, and a clarity of career path which is more or less foreign with the current company. All that plus the fact that with a new, swiftly-growing firm there are plenty of things they haven't decided how to do yet, from a corporate policy perspective, and the chance to be involved with that appeals to my about-to-be-an-MBA brain quite a bit. The commute's about the same (Crystal City instead of DC), better health coverage, that sort of thing. And of course, more money. And did I mention I'm friends with the Big Boss? That doesn't hurt, either.

You can imagine how long I had to spend thinking about it.

The irony is that it's another federal contractor, and that's the one area I didn't expect to get involved with in a post-MBA career move. I had planned on going and looking into consulting, etc, with private-sector clients, and even had a small list of companies to go chasing. Instead, I got a job similar to what I'm doing, albeit a serious upgrade, and never had to update a resume or even really interview. It's something that I wouldn't necessarily have gone looking for, but I'm certainly glad it found me.

Six years is a long time to spend in one job, and truth be told the company has been pretty good to me overall during my time there. It's a big office, filled with a diverse group of smart, fun people, and that's something that's very difficult to find. While it is hard in it's own way to leave, it's the best move and I'm looking forward to the next step.

But in the meantime, I get to be a bum. Well, okay, not really. Since I'm not collecting unemployment or anything, I'm not technically a burden on society. And I won't be watching a whole lot of TV, what with the whole grad school thing going on. But being a bum sounds a whole lot better, doesn't it? The upside, though, is that I should be able to get on top of my classwork in such a way that makes the end of the semester a whole lot easier. I kind of wish that the move happened in August, between semesters, but you won't hear me complain. Much.

There seems to be a lot of this job-changing thing going around lately, I'm noticing. And that's just the people actually making changes; there are a number of other bloggers in the area either seriously considering changes or having changes looming in the not-too-distant future. In what I would describe as a relatively small community of local bloggers, that's an awfully high percentage. I don't know if it means anything, but I think it's significant.

Heck, it's almost enough people to co-host a HH. Well, almost...

Reading is fundamental

2007-09-18T16:32:00.000-04:00

*Credit to Jo for jogging my memory

Let me preface this by saying: they weren't for me.

I start with that, because it's the answer to the question that will fly out of your mouth/brain, unbidden, in just a second. So I will say it again, just so we're clear: they weren't for me. Got it? Good. Moving on.

I have, on two occasions, gone into a grocery store unaccompanied, and purchased pantyhose. Now go read that first sentence again.

If there were any questions as to whether I'm a good friend to have, I will now consider the matter closed.

Here's the thing: a lot of guys talk about buying tampons as being a big deal. Like it's the ultimate sign of either a) loyalty and devotion, or b) whipped-ness, depending on your point of view. But I disagree. Tampons are nothing. All buying tampons says is that more than likely there is a woman at home who will be very, um, grateful, when you get home (or at least in a short period of time). ('period,' heh) Tampons are unambiguous; everyone in the place knows what they are and what they mean. Ladies who see men buying tampons/pads will invariably see that man in a positive light, a gentleman to be respected and admired.

Pantyhose? Not so much. The social standing of a man buying pantyhose is, understandably, somewhat less clear. He may very well be a helpful soul, doing his part for a lady friend in need. Or, he may be a bank robber. Or a transvestite. Or something that makes either a bank robber or transvestite seem like a desirable alternative; I leave that to your imagination. Pleasant dreams. But I digress. I was the former, just trying to help out. This particular story concerns my first pantyhose adventure (which really sounds like a whole lot more fun than it was, as you will see).

My freshman year of college, I lived in a dorm that was coed by floor, and I happened to get to know a number of the girls who lived on the floor above me (somehow, in 1993, simply knowing how to get around in Windows made one an 'expert,' but that's another story). My favorite of these was 'Heather,' with whom I got to be pretty good friends that year and through most of college. Anyway, Heather got herself into a sorority, and come springtime she got all dolled up and went off with her boyfriend to her spring formal. Looked great, good to go, no problem.

Fast forward about three hours. I'm hanging out down the hall when I hear the door to our hallway open, and the sound of heels heading my way. Naturally, I poke my head out to see who it is, and there's Heather, visibly upset, and she comes straight to me and about loses it. Mascara running, tears all over the place, generally not a great scene. Apparently she got a little tipsy, did something embarrassing (or got in a snit with the boyfriend, I really don't remember) and made a beeline home. More or less inconsolable, and I somehow have to deal with this.

The solution: take her upstairs to the girls, and put her in the care of experts. Fortunately for me, a couple of her sisters had followed her home, so there was a cavalry of sorts. I did, however, make what would prove to be the mistake of sticking around, something I would come to regret. Twice.

So we get her calmed down, and ultimately decide that what she needs to do is put herself back together and go back to the formal. Excellent idea, all agree. So the crew gets to work.

Hair? Tara. Makeup? Keely. We're good to go.

Then, someone notices the run in the pantyhose (cue more crying). At which point the room basically turns and looks at me. Given that I had (and have) no skills in the hair or makeup department, and seeing as how both of my legs did in fact work, I was the 'logical' choice to go to the campus store and get black pantyhose for Heather. (cue Moment of Regret #1) And quickly, chop-chop. Regular black pantyhose, no frills, just get it. I'm a smart guy, I figure it can't be that hard, so off I go. I'm the man (er, as it were). I was to the store in back in less than twenty minutes, and proud of myself for it.

Now I should take a second and describe Heather: maybe 5'3", a petite little thing, cute as a button, etc. But the point is, tiny little blonde girl.

I should also point out the importance not just of reading, but reading for comprehension. And I should further mention, gentlemen, that if you find yourself in a similar position you should know that pantyhose comes not only in different colors, but different sizes as well (this is worth writing down, if you have a pen handy).

Because, it turns out, when a size 0-1 girl is already in a very, very fragile state, it does nothing to help matters when she is handed a package of pantyhose to wear, whose size reads: Queen. I am not exaggerating when I say that this went over poorly. There may have been more, possibly even louder, crying. I try to block that part out.

But the bottom line (ha) is, these will not do. But it's no problem, I will simply return them and get the right size, and all will be well. So again, off I go to the campus store. I have a receipt, so there will be no issues.

I get to the store, go up to the counter, and explain that I need to return some pantyhose. The guy behind the counter reaches down and pulls out a form, and explains that I will have to sign for that. (cue Moment of Regret #2) Apparently, my alma mater keeps records of all returns made to the campus store. So in the archives somewhere, there is written record of the fact that I returned women's black Queen-sized pantyhose, complete with (wait for it) social security number and signature. Awesome.

Plus, the whole transaction took time, of which I had very little. So little, in fact, that when I got back Heather was gone. They decided to skip the pantyhose and go without. Which if they had just decided in the first place, would have saved me two trips to the store and a signature for women's undergarments. And might have kept any potential political aspirations alive. But not so much.

But I hear bank robbery is a growth industry, and I do have a leg up on that now.

Not boxers

2007-09-17T16:02:00.000-04:00

Football

- If you're curious what it's been like to be a Buffalo Bills fan over the past, say, ten years, all you had to do was watch the game on Sunday. We finally get on TV in the DC area, and lay a big, fat egg. Chris Berman once said that nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills. Well, circle 'em up, boys, because that was ugly.

- If you had told me that the over-under on one of Sunday's games was going to be right around 100 points, then had me choose the matchup that would produce such a total, I can unequivocally say that Cleveland-Cincinnati wouldn't have made the top five. And we were stuck watching Jets-Ravens. Yawn. Yet another reason I despise regional broadcast rules.

- For all his extensive education and football smarts, Bill Belichek sure thinks that the media and fanbase of the NFL are a bunch of rubes. Like anyone believes for a second he misunderstood anything, and there's no chance the vague, non-acknowledgement of something that has apparently been a poorly-kept secret in football circles for some time is going to satisfy anyone, save the most die-hard Pats apologists. Note to Bill: come on. If I want my intelligence insulted, I'll watch Congressional hearings. I expect more from you.

Emmys

- Wow. I mean, wow. On a night celebrating the best of television, a night that should be all glitz and glitter, polish and panache, they choose to pull that crap. Okay, so you want to beep some bad words. Fine. But really, is that the way to do it? Like some seven-year-0ld got loose in the booth and started pushing random buttons? Cutting away to some still footage behind the disco ball, so everyone wonders whether you're having technical problems? Somehow the simplest move in broadcast television turned into Twitchy Moron Theater Sunday night, when they trot out the best and brightest to show just how good television can be.

- I'm all for theater in the round and everything, but that usually means that the show will play to all sides of the stage. That's the beauty of in-the-round. If you're curious about how it's supposed to look, check George Carlin, late 70s, or Def Leppard, Pour Some Sugar on Me. But no, really, I'm sure the cast of Ugly Betty really wanted to stare at all the presenters' asses all night. Good choice.

- I know awards shows are too long. I know that there are only a few hours to get it all in. I understand. But seriously: you do not, ever, ever play Robert Duvall off the stage. America Ferrarra? Sure. She won an award, say thanks, now let's go. But Duvall, one of the greatest actors of his generation (and possibly any other) can stand up there as long as he damn well pleases. Read his grocery list, I don't care. Show some respect,people, for crying out loud. Sally Field, too. Gidget can take her time. She's earned it. Want to save time? I only need one member of the cast of Entourage to present an award. Or, better yet, cut out Seacrest's monologue. No really, please. Cut it.

- Someone please explain to me why Ryan Seacrest is allowed to host anything other than American Idol and some girl's sweet 16 party. Nobody over the age of 25 wants to see this guy. I'm pretty sure most of the ladies will agree with me on this, not just the guys. In five minutes, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert were more entertaining than the host. My vote? Seacrest out.

- And finally, why I am a Katherine Heigl fan after last night: she corrected the patronizing, infinitely annoying disembodied Announcer Voice on the pronunciation of her last name. You would think that one of the key, critically important details of putting an awards broadcast together would be knowing how to say the people's names. You'd think that, but apparently you'd be wrong.

Thoughts about thoughts

2007-09-11T10:20:00.000-04:00

This is less about the day itself than about the peculiarity of the mind, and how things occur to us sometimes.

About this time six years ago, I was in my second week at a new job (this one), at my desk by Farragut West, about four or so blocks from the White House. As most would say, it started out like any other morning. Actually, I probably wouldn't have found out much about what happened if not for the fact that the lady sitting across from me was listening, as she did every day, to one of the local morning shows (PGC, or something similar). Like most people I've talked to since, I took the early news of a plane crashing into the WTC as something like a small Cessna or private plane; it wasn't until a short time later that the truth was made clear. But everyone knows what happened, and this isn't really about that.

The first thing I did, as I'm sure many did as well, was try to figure out whether I knew anyone in either of the Towers or at the Pentagon. I couldn't think of anyone, which was a relief, so I went to check the TV that had been set up in the hallway upstairs (our office didn't have cable or TVs, someone found a presentation TV and set it up with rabbit ears on the next floor up; I got to it just in time to watch the first building come down). I couldn't watch much after that, so I went back to my desk. I had talked to my roommate, who was home at the time, and got caught up a little on the news. We'd heard from a co-worker's dad, who was working in the Pentagon, and by and large most of the people we knew of were accounted for. One woman hadn't heard from her husband, and she left the office almost immediately. Again, I found myself glad that I didn't know anyone directly connected to what was happening.

But not long after (in the men's room of all places), a snippet of conversation floated across my memory, a question asked in what sounded a whole lot like my own voice:

So what's it like working in the World Trade Center?

Huh?

It bubbled up seemingly from nowhere, and it took me a few seconds to put the images together.

I was in St. Augustine, Florida, the previous Christmas. My cousin, her then-boyfriend, and I were at the tail end of driving up A1A after taking my grandparents most of the way home from the holiday festivities (we took one of our cars and theirs, drove them most of the way home, then put them in their car for the last hour or so), on one of the most beautiful winter days I could remember (75 and sunny all day) for a drive back up the coast to Jacksonville, where my parents live. We had stopped in St. Augustine in the late afternoon, walked around town, and had some phenomenal seafood for dinner on the patio, thoroughly enjoying the weather. It was over that meal that the conversation took place. My cousin's boyfriend worked for Black Rock at the time, as I remember, and they had an office in one of the Towers. So I was curious as to what that was like, working in a global landmark.

A global landmark that was, at the moment, in the process of disintegrating.

This all came back to me in a rush, and I could have slapped myself for not thinking of it sooner.

But really, all I thought was, holy shit.

Now, anyone who tried to make a call into NYC that day knows what it was like. Cell coverage was shot, because a) everyone and their brother was calling into town that day, and b) the cell tower that would have carried the incoming calls went down with the buildings. So I had little to no hope of getting directly to my cousin. Not that it stopped me from trying, mind you.

Fortunately for me, her parents lived in the Poconos at the time, so I was able to get through to them and find out that everyone was all right. My cousin's bf (who is now her husband) was actually between the buildings when the first plane came in, being one of the many who were running a little late that morning and probably being alive because of it. So he was fine. At least, as fine as anyone could be that day.

Not long afterwards, I made my way home and spent eight or so hours straight watching CNN. I finally hit my threshold around 9:30 or so, when they ran the same montage of footage for the third or fourth time in a row, and my and my roommates' brains just couldn't take it anymore. There's an extent to which I suppose mine still can't.

But I always sort of shake my head when I think back, and wonder just how the hell I didn't think of that conversation sooner.

Perhaps more bizarre, in terms of how-the-brain-works, is what my aunt told me about M's experience that morning (he hasn't told much of the story himself; doesn't like to talk about it). Apparently, in the midst of all that was happening, having seen a plane crash into a major building, one of the first things that occurred to him was this:

better get to an ATM.

Most New Yorkers carry little or no cash, and he figured he should probably get some in case he needed it and the system shut down. Under the circumstances it made practical sense, but it seems a totally bizarre thought to have. It's the kind of thing that actually gets a laugh when telling the story. But sometimes, the brain just sort of does that.

I don't have much of a point here; I just like to tell that story as an example of how even in the midst of tragedy and suffering, sometimes things happen that just make you chuckle a little bit, and maybe that's the best news of all.

Unlike the rest of them, I actually am back to school...

2007-09-10T10:20:00.000-04:00

Is there a better way to close my first week of classes than with the Back to School Blogger HH? There aren't many that I can think of. Once again, a very good time with the blogkids.

This one may have set a world record for number of co-hosts, which prompted my suggestion that if the trend continues, we will at some point have a Blogger HH where the co-hosts outnumber the attendees. It's only a matter of time before we have a HH comprised entirely of co-hosts. You laugh, but just wait, it could happen.

This was a really, really good HH for me, because it had what has become the usual suspects, plus a handful of bloggers that either haven't been out in a while, or that I just have missed over the past few HHs. At one point, KassyK turned to me and said that the HH had a very old-school feel to it, and I agree. I kept waiting for someone to walk up to Jessica and ask her if she was new, and did she write a blog. That would have been classic. It was great to see the erstwhile DC Cookie, just a short time before her upcoming wedding (and an even shorter time before a half-marathon yesterday. I get tired just thinking about it). She was my first blog friend, and it is nearly impossible to have a bad time when she's in the building. Go ahead and try; you will fail. KK, also one of my first blogquaintences, can easily hold her own in that department as well.

I got to Madhatter a little bit early, and found most of the co-hosts there and getting a step ahead of the party. More surprising than that (okay, so it wasn't surprising at all) was seeing Bettyjoan, who I almost didn't recognize with her lighter hair and whom I hadn't seen since I voted for her butt. That evening was going to come up a lot Friday, since it was also the last time I had seen/met I-66, VP of Dior, Hey Pretty, and Mandy. I got to catch up with each to varying degrees, but it was good to see all of them. My only request: don't let it go that long again before the next time, please. Also got brief hellos/catchups with Boztopia and Joe Logon, which is never a bad thing. And the retired blogstress of Circle V made an appearance,

Some of the newer familiar faces: the treacherous trio of gn, h, and Gen; I got to congratulate gn and h on their new jobs, and got to see (but did not meet) Gen's bf. Arj, of course, was in full Arjewtinian effect (which is to say, inebriated and amnesiac), sporting his new fannypack. We more pushed past than talked to each other most of the night, but that counts for quality time in my book. Same for INPY, who was somehow always at the other end of the room from me after about the first half hour.

And then the new (or new-ish) folks. Leon is one funny man, and has what I can safely refer to as the best business card I've ever seen, period. JustJenny has what may be the world's greatest blog title, at least to anyone who enjoys Eats, Shoots, and Leaves-type humor. I also got to meet the man behind DCBlogs, whom I had seen before but never spoken to. I re-met a couple of folks, including LMNt, fresh off of his blogging sabbatical, and Dagny Taggart, who I met very briefly at the last HH I attended and who I read just about daily. She also gets major cool points for making bearable, even enjoyable, a very long wait for the metro at the end of the evening. So thanks for that.

There were a whole lot more bloggers there that I recognized but never got to say hello to, and I know there were a bunch more that I didn't know but have heard of. But I suppose if you're going to have a problem, it should be of over-attendance and too many people to talk to, as opposed to the alternative.

I will apologize if I left anyone out; feel free to lambaste me in the comments. Thanks to the cornucopia of co-hosts for putting together another winner, and I look forward to the next one.

The rest of the weekend was also very good. If you ever find yourself in a postion to see Daniel Tosh do anything, especially stand-up, jump on it. Great show at the Improv on Saturday. One of the rare occasions when all three comics, from the emcee to the feature to the headliner, killed. The best emcee I've seen at the Improv in years, but I can't remember his name (figures; my best guess is Terry Tyler). The feature was a girl from Last Comic Standing (whose name I also do not remember; Amy something, I think), and was much better on stage than on the show; I think this is because a) LCS doesn't give comics more than a couple of minutes, which makes it difficult to hit a rhythm, and b) you can't be dirty on LCS, and she was, but she did it well.

And now, of course, it's Monday. I don't have a case of them, but it's possible that I'm a carrier.

One of life's great equalizers: the burrito

2007-08-29T16:44:00.000-04:00

It doesn't matter how successful, powerful, well-educated, or wealthy you are.

It's nearly impossible to carry yourself as a dignified, professional adult while trying to eat an overstuffed and poorly wrapped burrito from Chipotle. You just can't.

And this is the time, of course, when every single person in the office stops by. They have questions, and you're just trying to make sure you eat more of your lunch than you wear, and are barely succeeding. You could be the CEO, or King, and for a few minutes you're just some schmuck working way too hard to keep black beans and salsa off of your shirt.

So the next time one of your friends or co-workers gets a little too high on themselves, offer to take them to lunch. Just make sure to go to Chipotle.

Further adventures in declining productivity

2007-08-21T10:09:00.000-04:00

By now, pretty much everyone is familiar with these. Chances are that at one point or another you've wanted to make your own. Well, now you can.

It's fun, if a bit challenging (finding the right photo is the trick, I think). Give it a try. Send yours to workinblogress@hotmail.com and I'll put it up here, or post a link in the comments.

The Gallery
Arjewtino

... Another town, and one more show...

2007-08-17T13:45:00.000-04:00

There was surprisingly little shouting, jumping, hooting or hollering, all things considered. I guess you could say it went out more or less like a lamb. It was not nearly so much celebration as relief. But either way, the result is the same.

As the boys of Yes said (in case you're challenged in that area and didn't get the lyrical reference in the title): One down, one to go. I am now officially one semester away from being finished with grad school. Two classes and a little less than four months from now it will all be over. On the one hand it's kind of hard to imagine, since my life has been a certain way for going on three years now. On the other much larger, stronger, and more insistent hand, however, December cannot come fast enough.

Between now and Labor Day weekend, I am a free man (well, except for that whole work thing, which puts a bit of a damper on the freedom, but I'll take what I can get). I don't have travel plans this time, but I do plan to try and set up as many weeknight dinner meetups with friends as possible, since I can't really do that while class is in session.

Oh, and sleep. Sleeping will be good.

And probably some work on ye olde resume, just between you and me. I think it's about time to dust that off and polish it up.

But it is a definite relief, and I have a heavily-inked appointment for the shouting, hooting and hollering, and general carrying-on that will commence on or about December 10, 2007.

Lemming management, or why the iPhone is kind of a scam

2007-07-31T10:46:00.000-04:00

If you're like me (and whether that is a good thing or not is a matter of considerable debate), you've been watching all the iPhone mania and asking yourself one question:

Huh?

Maybe I'm overthinking things, but I have a hard time understanding what all the fuss is about. I have to admire the marketing folks for giving this thing that sort of messianic je ne sais quois, but honestly I can't buy into it. I know I'm a little late to this particular party, but I got into a conversation about it over the weekend, and it sort of flipped the rant-switch, so here we are.

My basic problem with the iPhone is this: it's targeted at the early-adopter, the gadget geek who wants the latest and greatest, the bleeding edge technology. This is the group that has been salivating over this thing since they'd heard about it, and you've been telling them (and everyone else who'll listen) that it's going to revolutionize their lives. But in the end, all it's really doing is adding time and cost to their lives, which isn't exactly the kind of revolution I think they had in mind. Let me explain (there is plenty of time, so no need to sum up).

Let's say you're a full-on Apple disciple. If that's true, you probably have a Mac of one kind or another, and love it. You probably also have a great big iPod with the video screen, and have ported over your whole cd collection, and are enjoying your iTunes and watching Scrubs on the metro in the morning every day. Now, you're just itching to pick up this new iPhone, because holycrapitsaphoneanditplaysmusicanditsawifisupercoolinternetcruiserandohboyohboyicantwaittogetone.

And so you camp out for a few days, you and your brethren turning every Apple store into its own little Geekstock village. And the doors open on That Fateful Morning, like the heavens themselves (just with more casually dressed angels), and all of your patience and enthusiasm is rewarded with the Greatest Electronic Gadget Ever, the iPhone. So you rush home to fire it up, figuring the first thing to do is move all your music from your iPod to the phone, since clearly now that you have the iPhone, you won't need the iPod anymore. This is going to be so effing cool, you think, until you get home and realize....

Your iPod: 40GB
The iPhone: 8GB, max

Which does pose something of a problem. See, it's one thing if you have one of those 512MB players, where you just switch out a few songs here and there since you're only working with a couple hours' worth of music anyway, but with 8GB? that's 20% of your collection, a fifth of your music will fit onto the Next Big Thing. Which means that you'll actually have to be judicious about what moves from one to the other, the avoidance of which is more than likely a big reason you bought the 40GB iPod in the first place.

So really, you can't replace your iPod with it.

Okay, so at least you can replace your phone. That's easy, right? It's a cell phone, so I won't need my current cell phone anymore. True, but as cell phones go it's awfully expensive, and it's not exactly slim and portable, is it? Say you're currently carrying a RAZR. That's a decent-sized phone, as the more recent models go, and the iPhone is considerably bigger than heavier than a RAZR. Part of the reason I don't want a Blackberry or a smartphone is because they're just too big for me to want to carry with me everywhere I go. But that's just me.

But yes, you can replace your cell phone with it. As long as you already subscribe to AT&T, or are at the end of your contract anyway. Otherwise, prepare for the $125 cancellation fee from your existing provider on top of the $600 for the iPhone and the AT&T activation fee that's going to accompany the Joy of iPhone Ownership. And while we're on the topic of cell phones, let me ask this question: in the past 12 months, how many times have you dropped your cell phone? How paranoid are you going to be about scratches, dents, etc after dropping $600?

And as for the internet thing, I would have to imagine that the people who really need/want internet access as part of their wireless activities probably already have a Blackberry or a smartphone or something, which again only bears replacement if you're at the end of your contract or if your current device isn't working very well. The wifi thing is cool, but if you already have data service, then do you need the wifi? I don't have it, so I don't know. But it's a reasonable question.

So in the end, you pay $600, still have to keep your iPod, and making significant changes in other areas of its functionality stands to cost you even more money. Does that sound miraculous to you? I don't really see it.

Okay, so maybe the ubertechie early adopter isn't the best target audience. How about Joe Average Consumer? That's easy: $600. No thank you, I'll wait, at least until they sort out all of the bugs (which I won't even get into here, but it's not like this thing performs perfectly out of the box). The list of things I could otherwise do with $600 is long and distinguished. Plus the added $50 or so per month it's going to cost someone who doesn't already have data service on their cell plan. That's a lot of money that if I haven't already spent, it's probably not because I've just been waiting for this opportunity.

I realize also that the word 'scam' is kind of severe, but if someone told you to give them a bunch of money in return for changing your life, and the only change is that it ultimately made your life more complicated, not less, then that's probably the same word you'd use. Plus a few choice others, I'm sure.

Don't get me wrong, I think the iPhone is cool. I have a coworker who was right up front to buy one, and I got to test-drive it a bit. It's definitely an innovative little device; I'm just not sure it's worth the $600 price tag. But they're selling, so what do I know.

Jeans-wearing CEO and a borderline-cultlike marketing culture: priceless.

Obligatory (but not burdensome) recap

2007-07-30T12:17:00.000-04:00

I don't get to nearly as many of them as I should, but I did make it out to the Happy Hour on Friday. The short version: loads of fun, great people, many laughs. Good times, as I have come to expect with this group.

This is my third-ish HH since I started this blog, and I'm still learning a few things (besides names and faces, of which there are many to keep track). For example, I'm still kind of getting used to referring to myself as "a blogger" in the first place. I know I'm going on two years here, but still. I don't talk about it often among my friends (the ones I know in 3-D), so it's something I rarely refer to outside of the HH's. Plus, I don't post all that often; I'm generally lucky to get something up weekly, what with my schedule. So it's still a little strange when someone asks me if I blog. It's getting better, in that I don't pause for nearly as long now, but it's still a little odd.

More than that, I am still apparently unprepared for when someone tells me that they a) read, or b) like this blog. Especially the latter. So it was pretty surprising when I had, on more than one occasion, not just recognition but enthusiastic responses to my blog. I have never taken compliments particularly well, my reflex generally being deflection and self-deprecation. It's always just kind of been my way. It was no different on Friday, I don't think. This may have resulted in something that looks like clumsy embarrasment rather than actual gratitude, so if you said something nice about me or my blog, and I tripped all over myself in response, please let me just say here: thank you, I appreciate it. While I may look like an idiot (and it would by no means be the first or last time), I am a very appreciative idiot.

Fortunately, the weather wasn't as much of an issue as it could have been. I got rained on in VA (heading to and from the metro) but not in DC, which was a very good thing. I was a little worried that it would keep people away, but this was not so. These folks are like the Postal Service: not rain nor sleet nor snow shall keep them from their appointed rounds. Of shots (the drinking kind, not the kind of shots you might expect from other kinds of postal workers). There was a very good turnout, and I was pleased that so many faces are becoming more familiar to me now, which is great, and I'm still meeting some people that I read often, which is also very cool.

- Kathryn and KassyK, two of the first blog-acquaintences I ever made, sort of bookended my HH experience: got to catch up with KK first thing, and Kathryn on my way out.
- Managed to greet gn, H, and Gen without falling victim to the awkwardness of the hugshake. I have only really met these girls together; they're like the Musketeers, just much hotter. And no swords (Ahem). Delightful, all of them, but I did have to give gn a hard time for not bringing treats to share...
- I dare you to spend five minutes with Jo and keep from smiling our laughing out loud. It's pretty much impossible. You'll lose before you get the watch started.
- Arjewtino is at least as funny in person as he is online, even if his short-term memory is a little spotty. And the former coworkers were great fun as well.
- INPY can work a room. And a patio.

And I got to see other familiar faces, and a few new ones. All in all, a good beginning to an excellent weekend, and a great way to end a long week. Hopefully it will be less than four months before I get to another one. Thanks to the hosts, and best wishes to Roosh on his travels.

Climate (out of) control

2007-07-20T17:47:00.000-04:00

The good news:
When the Metro doors open, a cool, light breeze blows onto the hypercrowded afternoon train, giving the riders near the doors a brief moment of comfort on a hot commute.

The bad news:
You're at Rosslyn.

WMATA gets the gas face*.

* A gazillion ultra-cool points if this makes any sense to you at all. Seriously. A gazillion.

And then there were four

2007-07-15T15:05:00.001-04:00

Generations, that is.

Saturday morning marked the passing of my great-great-uncle Mote, succumbing to cancer at the age of 97. Mote was the last remaining member of his generation of my family, and he had served as the family patriarch, in a way, for the past several years. We were fortunate enough to have him with us for that long, and long enough for him to meet the fifth generation, the children of my cousins, over the past three years.

I've written before about how pleased I am with my family, and how blessed I am to be related to them. I can't say I knew Mote all that well, given how far apart we were in age and geography, but I certainly had (and have) a great deal of affection for him. It's always tough, when you're a kid, to relate to the much-older generations, and by the time you are old enough, there just isn't enough time. But Mote was the grandfather-type with the gruff, gravelly voice and twinkle in his eye, and he was always happy to take a few minutes out to chat with us kids.

I do have one Mote moment, which will always serve as characteristic of him in particular and my family in general. This part of my family tree, my father's mother's side, has bi-annual reunions, where as many of us as possible get together in Ithaca, NY, and catch up. It's been a tradition for at least as long as I've been alive, and will hopefully continue for decades to come. In 2000, we had a double celebration, my grandmother's 80th birthday that year, and Mote's 90th. It was a lovely weekend all around (and it was also the site of the summer-prank story I referred to in the past post). But the funniest conversation I had all weekend was with Mote.

Mote comes walking by, and I inquire as to how he's doing. He says, "You know, I'm a little tired. I think I might be getting old." Now bear in mind, he's turning 90. I chuckled, and asked what brought this on. He then told me about the week leading up to the reunion. He had, in the seven days previous, done the following:
- played 18 holes of golf
- resurfaced/resealed his driveway (and yes, by himself)
- he and his wife, on the way to Ithaca, stopped and picked $25 worth of blueberries, so they could take them around to their friends, who were in many cases much younger than he was, who couldn't get out themselves (and blueberries were running at $0.75 per pound, by the way).

He spoke of these things as though it was the perfectly normal activity level for someone his age. I was tired justs thinking about it. So naturally, I told him that the kind of week he'd had would wear anybody out, even a strapping young lad like himself, and that I was sure he'd recover as quickly as ever. That, in a nutshell, was Uncle Mote. And by the end of the weekend, he would curse the heavens for raining and preventing him from mowing his daughter's lawn for her (who is my parents' age, give or take).

I'll always remember the big sunglasses and the big smile, on display for the whole weekend we would see him. He is survived by his wife, Dot, and an enormous extended family that will miss him dearly, all while hoping to have the kind of long, full life that he enjoyed himself.

And boy, did he enjoy it.

Here's to you, Mr. Absurd Cause-and-effect Connector

2007-07-12T18:13:00.000-04:00

If you haven't yet seen this, you should, if only to enjoy the feeling of your hand involuntarily smacking into your forehead at its ridiculousness.

The story refers to this research, which I don't really have an issue with. It's objective, measured data taken by researchers. Left alone, it seems reasonable, and kind of obvious. It's the inane interpretation that I can't stand.

This is a professor of finance (and we'll leave aside for a second the fact that he's a professor of finance, not social studies or psychology or sociology or any area of academia that would make him, I don't know, credible in this discussion), who should if nothing else be a fairly competent analyst, in general. And what he does is look at people who are at a minimum 18 years old, and deduce the cause of their behavior to be an experience that is roughly 12 years old by then, ignoring the host of influences that might have been present along the way. Whiny? Clearly, it's because of a single program they watched as a 6-year-old. That by itself should get him fired, for intellectual laziness unbecoming a college professor, and for piss-poor analytical skills which, if applied to his finances, would have him living in a Maytag box under a bridge somewhere, unable even to afford the coffee cup to collect donations with. Or, in a highly-placed position with the Bush administration. But I digress.

We're living in a time where
- kids can divorce (or sue) their parents
- the act of parental discipline has been reduced to softly-spoken comments and standing in a corner
- the 'tweener' age group has among the highest buying power of any demographic, and therefore marketing panders to them like nobody's business
- getting (and staying) in college is so competitive, and the pressure so high, that parents have increased the pressure on students to "succeed"
- the cultural role models are predominantly hypersexed, undertalented, spoiled brats who have done very little outwardly worthwhile to achieve their success
- everything is negotiable, from traffic tickets to hotel reservations to, well, everything.

But the reason they're self-centered is because some kind old man in a cardigan said they were special. Uh-huh. Right.

Actually, what I find really amusing is the clip from the FOX News program Fox & Friends, where their crack staff of investigative journalists takes on the issue. Watch it here. What's great about it is that the anchor guy basically gets most of his facts wrong. The "research" he attributes to the LSU professor is actually the study at SDSU; the quote about having room for improvement is actually not from the professor at all, it's from some commenter in a chat forum. The LSU professor didn't actually research anything, he just ran his mouth, and ignorantly at that. Clearly, he could do a stand-in on Fox & Friends if this whole teaching thing doesn't pan out (heck, it might keep him out of the Maytag box, you never know), considering the high standards of journalistic and intellectual rigor they have in place there.

I don't even want to get into his comments about Asian students; I really don't have that kind of time. But obviously, if you want to evaluate the influence of a television program on our youth, your best control group is one taken from a completely different social structure and culture. Yes, I think that is the Nobel committee on Line 1, sir; I'm pretty sure you should take it. Moron.

People get degrees in this stuff, apparently

2007-06-19T13:18:00.000-04:00

Ooof. The irony of summer classes in grad school is that, while you'd expect summer activities to be leisurely and slow-paced, summer classes are whole classes squeezed into half a semester (so we can get two out of the way in one summer). So while you're only in class for a short while, it's a fairly intense short while.

All of that to say: I've been a little busy, hence the silence.

But I did want to share something I saw in CVS yesterday, which has had me shaking my head ever since.

I stopped into ye olde CVS to pick up some stuff for the cold I'm fighting (a fight I appear to be winning, at least for the moment), and on my way to the cashier I spied a product that I literally had to stop, go back, and look at again to make sure I had seen correctly. I couldn't believe it, myself.

Waterproof diapers (I guess), for little baby to go to the pool in. To keep little baby from going in the pool. As it were.

Called... I kid you not...

Little Swimmers.

I want to know how this made it past a room full of adults. I mean, really. Maybe there were no men in the room, so there was no one to spit out their coffee when the name was suggested. That's my best guess. I can't for the life of me imagine a man making it through the decision process with a straight face.

Actually my theory (hope?) is that the name was suggested by the one guy in the room as a joke, and everyone thought it was adorable.

There is serious upside for fathers, though. At the public pool, they can be very proud, publicly, of their little swimmers. Actually twice, if you think about it.

I'm a mature adult. Except when I'm not.

2007-05-25T11:54:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while, you have one of those regression moments, one of those times where you see something, and your inner 5th-grader (or perhaps your inner Beavis) just takes over your brain. No matter how old you are, that little part of you stands up, takes notice, and takes over your head for a few, oddly gratifying moments. Most often, it is totally inappropriate, but also totally unavoidable.

I would say it probably happens more often with guys than girls, on average. And more often with me, I'm guessing, than most. I blame television. Yeah, television, that's it.

I had my most recent one last night, on the way home from class.

It's DC in the summertime, and that means that while many residents will be out of town on vacation, an even larger number of out-of-towners are choosing DC for their destination of choice: it's the annual Plague of Annoying Tourists. Often, large groups are distinguishable by their plumage, commonly taking the form of identical T-shirts displaying the name of the town/organization/school from which they are coming. This is what caught my attention last night.

Got on the train a little after 8pm, and found myself surrounded by blue tie-dye shirts, worn by a large group of girls, emblazoned with what I could only assume was the school these young ladies attended.

The school? Licking Valley.

I hoped for a minute that it was an all-girls school, until I saw a couple of boys wearing the same shirt. But still. Licking. Valley.

The prospect of their mascot is both delicious and disturbing.

I would like to find this place and visit the bookstore, if only to see if I could find a Licking Valley Cross-Country Shirt. I might never wear anything else.

Stop, drop, and... oh never mind

2007-05-16T11:13:00.000-04:00

When I was in college, I lived in dorms that were mostly populated by freshmen (the last two years as an RA). What that meant was, among other things, the buildings in which I lived were inordinately fire-alarm-prone, and usually late at night. My job, of course, was to go round up the stragglers (i.e. the people who heard the alarm and decided they didn't feel like getting up) and send them outside. So you can imagine how popular that was in January. Anyway, fire alarms quickly became something not to take all that seriously.

You'd think that would change as an adult, but not really. At my previous office, I can remember several times when the fire alarm would sound, and most people would take a moment and try to figure out whether or not this was something they could get away with ignoring. We're talking people with kids, behaving more or less like college freshmen. In their cases, I think, it was mostly laziness: uncertain danger of fire compared with walking down and perhaps back up eight flights of stairs.

Fast forward to last night, around 11pm. I'm in my apartment, minding my own business, watching a little TV and winding down. All of the sudden, this bell starts going off in the hall. It was a feeble bell, and kind of intermittent, but it was definitely persistent and obviously trying to tell me something. It just wasn't that convincing. It took about fifteen seconds of hearing it for me to realize that it was most likely the building's fire alarm.

My first thought was, "That's your fire alarm? Seriously? Get that fixed, because that's just wrong." The fact that I wasn't sure it was a fire alarm in the first place means there's a problem. I then actually stood in my apartment and debated whether or not I was going to go outside. Part of me still wasn't convinced that what I was hearing was a fire alarm, the other half was flashing back to college and kind of assuming (hoping?) that it was just some false alarm. But I was in a high-rise apartment building, not some freshman college dorm, so the odds of a prank were pretty low.

Of course, hearing the sirens in the distance helped make up my mind. Definitely tipped the scales a bit. I then cursed myself for never getting around to making that renter's insurace call I'd been meaning to for a couple of months, and headed out to see what was going on.

It's never a good sign when you see, at the other end of your hall, a steady stream of people coming out of the stairwell and heading out the door (I live on the ground floor, hence near the exits).

I made my way up to the lobby, only to find about 50-60 people standing around, not doing much of anything. I thought that was a little odd. I mean, the fire alarm is going, there's a fire truck parked outside, and you're standing in the lobby like it's social hour. GO. OUTSIDE.

I went out the back door, and wandered down the building towards the opposite end away from my place, where I could see flashing red lights off of the buildings across the street. The fire crew was running hoses, heading for the hydrants, which didn't exactly help my optimism. I could see smoke coming from around the corner.

Turns out the apartment in question was on the first floor, on the opposite side and end of the building from me. It didn't seem that serious once I got there, a fair amount of smoke but no obvious flames. An ambulance came, but it wasn't needed, thankfully. I saw firefighters moving around, inside the apartment, but I never saw hoses running inside. Good news there as well. It seemed to be pretty well under control very quickly, nobody injured and no damage to the building. In fact, the firefighters never seemed to be in that much of a hurry, which I took as a good sign.

The story ended up being that the guy living in that apartment had a stove fire while doing some cooking. He was fine, the apartment, it seems, is intact, and we had quite a show going on outside for a little while. All's well that ends well, I guess.

But seriously, fix that damn bell.

It figures...

2007-05-14T14:01:00.000-04:00

... that on the one day I'm in a kind of hurry, I hop in a cab with the World's Least Assertive Cab Driver. No exaggeration.

Coming up to a red light (where I feel obligated to mention, we were going to be making a right turn), the cab stops no fewer than five feet before the stop line, and made no moves to suggest making the right on red was even on his mind. Just waited patiently for the light to turn green (I looked for 'no turn on red.' didn't see it). On the way to the airport, he exhibited none of the maniacally aggressive cab-driver tendencies which most of us loathe and revile while driving near, but we do so tremendously appreciate when we're the ones benefiting from the onset of others' road rage. He let people merge. He didn't accelerate to stops, or jump from lane to lane at the first hint of a quicker line of traffic.

In short, he about drove me crazy.

I realize that we would all rather that more cab drivers would behave this way, but I'd just as soon they get enlightened when it better suits my needs. I don't think that's all that much to ask, is it?

I did see a couple of interesting things on the way, though:

A car turning into the flow of traffic with a steady stream of smoke coming from under its hood. The driver looked almost serenely unconcerned, which bothered me immensely. It bothered me that he wasn't bothered, and I was much happier once we passed him and made him someone else's problem.

If you travel down 23rd St to Constitution in the afternoon, you are no doubt accustomed to seeing the far right lane blocked by at least one car still parked at the meters, despite the fact cars aren't allowed to be there. The difference this time was that the lone offending vehicle was a WWII-era, olive drab Jeep. White star on the side and everything. I can only imagine Gen. Patton was off breaking a dollar for meter change.

The funniest thing about the trip was the car radio. Like many cabs, I'm sure, this one didn't exactly have a Bose premium sound system. Far from it. The upshot was that I got to listen to Wilson Phillips' "Hold On" with a disproportionately high bass level. Think about that: Carnie Wilson with Dr. Dre-level bass lines. It totally changed the song, which is to say it almost made it listenable. Almost.

Of course, Wilson Phillips was forever changed for me after I first heard The Dan Band. If you don't know who these guys are, you should, and here's why*:

I got to the airport and made my plane in plenty of time, so it was all good. But it wasn't quite the ride I was expecting, not by a long shot.

* safe for work, but there's a long-ish intro with some bleeped swearing.

Just.... A Little..... Farther...

2007-05-02T11:20:00.000-04:00

I'm finished with classes for the semester, but I have to turn in a project (today/tonight) and do a final (this weekend) before I'm officially free. Then it's two-ish weeks of (relatively) minimal responsibility before summer classes start.

Just two semesters to go. Summer and Fall. Then I'm done. No. More. School.

Probably not ever.

I can't begin to describe how deliciously good that sounds. It will be topped, I admit, in August and December, but it's darn good for right now.

All I'll need to do then is figure out just what exactly the %$*@& I want to do with my life, and I'll be all set.

One last thing

2007-04-23T15:40:00.000-04:00

For any of you out in blogland who are looking for something you can do for the people affected by the events of last week, here are a couple of links.

The Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

Hokies United (from whom I borrowed this excellent graphic)

And if you're a fan of collegiate a cappella, as I am, groups from around Virginia are putting together a compilation CD for sale, with all monies going to the above funds (all of it, they're covering the production costs themselves). Check it out here. Also, the Hokies United folks plan to have T-shirts available later this week. Keep an eye on the site for details and the design.

My goal is for this to be the last thing I say on the matter, at least here (hence the post title). Ultimately, it's not about me or what I think; it's about the students and families affected. So this seems an appropriate place to leave it.

As for me, I'm sure I'll be back to the moderately hilarious mediocrity you've come to know and tolerate soon enough. You can take that as good or bad news, as you prefer.

Monday

2007-04-23T10:11:00.000-04:00

People with far more talent than I have written at length about the tragedy at Virginia Tech, what it means to the university, the students, and perhaps to us as people. With the exception of that first day, I haven't had many words about it myself; it's been more of a quiet sadness, watching the pictures from campus, hearing the stories of the victims, and enduring the words of those who would co-opt the deaths of innocent students for their own purposes. By the end of the week, I was just tired. I had run out of energy even to respond to the kind messages from people who cared about me. It got to be difficult to write what amounted to the same message saying, "yes, I'm fine, thanks for asking," much as I deeply appreciated the thought. I'm getting to it, but not quite as fast as perhaps I should.

I have to admit, the whole thing hit me a bit harder than I had expected. I mean, sure, I went to school there and everything, but I haven't been back in almost ten years and I don't know anyone down there, with the exception of a professor or two. But there it was, a surprising weight in my gut. It got a bit heavier as I read the updates, and as I flipped past all of the news programs, since it seemed like everyone in the world was broadcasting from Blacksburg last week. Well, everyone except Lee Corso, who I think we'd all agree would have been a great break from what we'd been getting. I'd have gladly paid a dollar to have Lee walk around campus with that Hokie head on. Okay, maybe two. Just would have been a welcome change of pace, I'm guessing. But alas, no. We got what we got, and I'd had enough.

It still weighs on me, and probably will for a long time. What has been amazing, though, is the amount of support that I've gotten from people near and far, both fellow alums and folks with no clear connection to the school at all. Friday, I saw a truly humbling amount of maroon and orange around DC, and it's all been extremely heartwarming. I just want to take a second and thank everyone for their kind words, emails, phone calls, blog posts, you name it. It's been a great help to me, and I'm sure it's been for others as well.

It's Monday, the start of a new week. The students at Virginia Tech head back to classes today, and begin the extremely long, difficult road back towards normal (or something that passes for it). I just hope that the rest of the world lets them.

Beautiful

2007-04-19T09:08:00.000-04:00

Even to the casual observer, this is awesome. But if you know about the Beta Bridge at UVA, and how significant it is on campus there (to say nothing of the rivalry between the two schools), then it means just that much more.

As one of my close friends (and UVA grad herself) put it: "Amazing, wonderful, and quite possibly one of the signs of the apocalypse."

Which pretty much sums it up, I think.

I have nothing to add here

2007-04-18T11:31:00.000-04:00

Because I'm not thinking about much else today

2007-04-17T15:21:00.000-04:00

I've gotten several messages and emails over the past 24 hours, inquiring about how I'm doing. So thanks to everyone for your thoughts, I certainly appreciate it. It feels like a strange question, though, to be honest. I mean, I haven't been to campus since the '99 graduation, and like I said before, I don't still have any contacts down there. So my natural reaction has been, "Well of course I'm fine, I'm not there." But admittedly, the whole thing has been weighing on me a little heavier than I would have expected. It's really, really hard not to keep checking on the updates, despite the fact that I can't say for sure that I want to hear more about it.

Now, of course, we've gone from people talking about what happened to people weighing in with opinions about the how's and why's, and that's the part that I can't stand. Leave the police and university officials alone. They did the best they could with what they had, and no amount of second-guessing is going to be helpful to the families and students who just lost their children, siblings, and friends. The timing of the email isn't the point. The point is that, when police responded to the first shooting, they contacted the resident advisors within that building, had them go and check on their residents, and tried to contain the situation there. Who among you would have guessed that more was coming, and how would you have known? Even if you had, how would you have predicted that someone would wander all the way across campus, passing any number of buildings with people (and sadly, potential targets) in them in the process, to get to one particular class building? How do you cover a campus that large effectively in any case? It's not like Blacksburg has an especially large police force in the first place.

How do you get the word out? Of the 25,000+ students at Va Tech, only about 8,000 actually live on campus. That means that more than two thirds of your audience is beyond the reaches of any conventional alert system short of air-raid sirens, no matter what you do. That's just the reality. You do what you can with what you have. They had bullhorns and police cars and email and phone calls. They interpreted the situation a certain way, and it turns out they were wrong. It happens, and it's not a function of incompetence, necessarily, nor negligence; it's just what happened. It really burns me up to see people so eager to jump on the folks who were on the scene and trying to help, passing judgment from in many cases hundreds of miles away.

If you want evidence of how drastically your understanding of a situation can change from what you first thought, just go back and look at the reports that came out of this tragedy throughout the day yesterday. It's simply unfair to suggest that anyone, police or civilian, could or should have known more than they did. All of that energy would be much better spent focused on the people affected by the day's events.

Okay, I'm done. Sorry about that; got off on a bit of a rant there. I just think it's too easy to point fingers, as if that's somehow going to make things better. It won't, and it doesn't help.

On the upside, it's been hearwarming to read some of the stories, from journalists and amateurs alike, in the aftermath of all of this. A small sample: Brunch Bird has a good one, as does Stewart Mandel on CNNSi, and Hokie alum Hoda Kotb, a Dateline correspondent.

I could probably ramble on for hours about this whole thing, but I won't. I hope that the students and their families and friends are all right, or at least that they will be. I'm optimistic; one thing you figure out spending a few years at Tech is that the Hokie Nation is a pretty strong bunch. They'll pull through. I just wish they didn't have to.

In case you hadn't heard

2007-04-16T13:19:00.000-04:00

The fatality count is up over 2o now. The latest reports say that number includes the shooter, so hopefully the numbers won't go any higher. [ed. note: total up to 32. Just boggles the mind.]

It's all so sad and disturbing, and more than a little surreal. I went to Virginia Tech. I was an RA in West AJ, and spent the bulk of my time at college right across from Norris Hall (the Mechanical Engineering classes were primarily in Randolph); Norris was where the Engineering Science and Mechanics kids had most of their classes, and where, at the time, the Dean of the School of Engineering's office was (and probably still is).

I don't really know what to say about it. It's hard to get your head around the idea that something like this could happen much of anywhere, but especially in a place like Blacksburg.

Blacksburg is the picture of a nice, small college town; which is to say, it was almost mind-numbingly boring a lot of the time. Most people who went there will tell you, "Nothing ever happens in Blacksburg." Sure, the occasional incident downtown, some trouble with varsity atheletes, but nothing any different from or worse than a school of its size anywhere else. It's a beautiful place to be, absolutely picturesque on a sunny day.

Sadly, not anymore. Blacksburg is, from now on, going to be That Place. What was once described as a quiet, borderline-idyllic campus settled in the mountains of southwest Virginia will forever be referred to as the site of one of the worst disasters a college campus has ever seen. Virginia Tech is now inextricably linked to Columbine and every other school tragedy you can think of.

Fortunately for me, I don't know anyone still at school there, nor can I think of anyone I know whose kids are down there. I hope you don't either. But if you do, I hope that they're safe and unharmed.

Don't You Think?

2007-04-03T09:29:00.000-04:00

If you remember Alanis Morrissette from her Jagged Little Pill days, you probably had the impression that she took herself very seriously, was very earnest about her music and her message, and you were, if you're being totally honest, just a tiny little bit afraid of her.

Then she goes and does something like this, and..... totally redeems herself*. No kidding, this is brilliant. I might like this even more than the bluegrass rendition of Gin & Juice. Okay, maybe not, but it's damn funny.

* points if you can tell me where this came from; it's either movie or tv, but I can't quite place it.

Sometimes irony is subtle, I guess...

2007-04-02T12:17:00.000-04:00

So I spent Saturday afternoon/evening at a friend's place, watching my previously-first-place Blog Madness bracket disintegrate before my eyes. That sucked. What's worse is that the games themselves weren't even very good. After several weeks of nailbiting, down-to-the-wire displays of brilliant basketball, we were treated to a couple of games for which by halftime the over/under was going to struggle to break 100. When Florida is playing UCLA, both uptempo scoring teams, and it takes almost fifteen minutes through the first half for either team to break ten points, you know there's a problem. And it wasn't even good defense, either, it was just slop. And after all the slop, both of my finals teams were out of the tournament. Another one bites the dust. But this isn't really about that. I'm just venting.

Also on Saturday, another sporting event got started: the Civil Rights Game in Major League Baseball. Now, I'm not much of a baseball fan. I pretty much avoid watching it on TV; I just can't seem to get into it. Live is a different story: I'll watch just about anything live, and baseball parks are usually great places to spend a few hours. But again, I digress. I think that a Civil Rights game is a good idea; Jackie Robinson should be recognized, along with the contributions of countless minority atheletes to modern sport. And furthermore, I think that Memphis is an excellent place to hold such a game, being the location of the Civil Rights Museum, as well as the place where MLK was killed. Good ideas all around. What struck me was this -

The matchup for Saturday's Civil Rights Game: The Saint Louis Cardinals against...

The Cleveland Indians.

If you need to, take a moment and read that again. It'll come to you.

I couldn't believe it. Do you really mean to tell me that no one, while they were putting this game together, saw the teams involved and didn't at least raise their hands to say, "Um, guys? You sure this is a good idea?" Assembling an event to commemorate the progress of an oppressed minority and including a team named for yet another oppressed minority. Effing brilliant.

I guess it could have been worse. It could have been Braves-Yankees.

I guess I'm part of the Netroots now...

2007-03-21T13:28:00.000-04:00

This whole blog thing has been an interesting experience on several levels, not the least of which being the ability to develop virtual connections with people you may or may not ever meet in real life. Or to just develop a sense of someone entirely based on blog posts, comments, etc. It's admittedly a strange kind of community, but it's a community nonetheless. This isn't really about that, but it's related:

A local blogger is looking to generate some outreach (and donations) for a couple of friends in Charlottesville who lost their home, and all of their possessions, in a fire over the holiday weekend. If you have a moment, please check it out and donate if you can.

Thank you.

Don't You Forget About Me

2007-03-15T16:03:00.000-04:00

Thanks to honeykbee for today's Time Waster of the Day. I got a 124. Which just proves that I had waaaaaay too much spare time growing up...

When people wonder why I don't remember much of anything I learned in college, I point to this. The brain, it seems, was already full.

'Tube Treats: RIP Richard Jeni

2007-03-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

The casual fan of standup comedy has probably never heard of Richard Jeni. He wasn't really one of the better-known comics; he's had a career as long as Seinfeld, or Foxworthy, or Rock, but he's never quite reached their level of mainstream notoriety. But he was excellent. Being a bit of a student of the form, I've followed Rich's career for years. His special, "Platypus Man," is one of those specials that I've kept with me on VHS, part of a library that dates back to junior high (hey, you taped 90210, I taped HBO comedy specials). It's a good go-to when you need a laugh.

So you can imagine my surprise, and sadness, when I learned that Rich died earlier this week, of apparent suicide. Tragic. So as a tribute of sorts, and for those of you who weren't fortunate enough to see his material before, I found a couple of clips to put up and give you a sense for how good he was.

First, some older stuff:

And a more recent bit, from "A Big Steaming Pile of Me":

He will be missed.

Belated Oscar Thoughts

2007-03-01T14:38:00.000-05:00

- There needs to be a global ban on commenting about how long the Oscarcast is. We know it's long. It's always long. Enough already. No writing about the running time until the day they come in under 3 hrs. In other words, no writing about the running time ever again. If you're not sure it's intentionally 4 hours long, consider how much time could be shaved off by losing the parade of inane montages (except for the people who died; I'm all right with that one). Most of the viewing audience knows this, and they stay up anyway, then they bitch. It's been almost 80 years: you know the drill, so shut up already.

- Ellen did all right. Not great, but she certainly wasn't bad. To me, though, she was less host than featured performer. Her opening monologue was more stand-up-ish than I would have preferred, but it was funny. I did really like the bit with Clint, though, especially once she handed the camera to Spielberg. One of the best directors possibly ever, and she hands him a dinky digital camera to snap a photo with. Nicely done.

A couple of critiques I read commented on how the event seemed to overwhelm her a bit, as it has many of the hosts before her, and I thought there was something to that. I do think it says something that some of the best comic minds of the past couple of decades (Steve Martin in particular) have been mediocre at best under that particular spotlight. Then again, Bob Hope and Johnny Carson set a bar that may never be matched, and everyone else is just trying to tread water by comparison. Seinfeld might be all right, but I'm not sure his style could really carry a four-hour broadcast. He was excellent in his spot the other night, but that was a sprint compared to the awards-show marathon. Personally, I'd like to see John Stewart get another crack at it, but that's just me.

(Actually, what I'd really like is to see Robin Williams host. Sure the telecast would be seven hours long and they'd only give out three awards in the process, but it would be the most entertaining Oscarcast in history.)

- You can count me among those that are glad Martin Scorcese got an Oscar, but are a little puzzled that it was for this movie. Not that it isn't a really good movie; I've already written my thoughts on it. But I don't know that I think it's his best movie. Does anyone actually believe that The Departed is a better movie than Raging Bull or Taxi Driver? I'm thinking probably not. But then I guess it's less whether this was his best movie than whether it was better than the other movies nominated, and since I've been exceedingly slack in seeing the nominated films I can't really vote one way or the other on that. This does seem to be one of those Oscars given for a body of work rather than for a single film. It's like: Marty, we know this isn't even your best movie, but here's your Oscar, even if it is 20 years or so late.

And by the way, I laughed out loud at the presentation for the Director award. First, you have Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas roll up to the stage like they were going to bust out with some barbershop harmonies, which was funny enough, but then you had the schtick with Lucas and his lack of Oscars. If there was any justice in the world, Spielberg would have looked at him and said, "You wanna know why you don't have one? Three reasons: Episodes I, II, and III. They pretty much guarantee you'll never have one. You're only up here because we needed a tenor."

(And really, wouldn't it have been awesome if Marty had wandered up there, accepted his award, and then the four of them broke out in to a rendition of "Blue Moon"? Maybe it's just me, but that would be classic.)

- Forest Whitaker: hell yes. I didn't even have to see his movie to know he should win the award. Simply one of the best actors of his time, usually flying just below the radar in some excellent roles. You could tell he was going to win just from the trailers for the film.

- On the other hand, Jennifer Hudson: meh. Good story, seems like a nice enough girl, but you will have a hard time convincing me that she did a better job than Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal. I'm sure she was good, maybe even great, but Cate was amazing. Watch the movie. She and Judi Dench are both incredible.

- Joan Rivers, Mme Tussaud called to say that they're canceling your statue. With all that botox, you've done a better job than they could possibly manage. Bravo.

'Tube Treats

2007-02-19T14:15:00.000-05:00

Had a request for some stand-up, so I went looking for a couple of my favorite comics to sample from. This Viacom telling YT to pull all the Comedy Central clips down is pretty annoying, and kind of silly on their part. Apparently, they didn't like all of the potential viewers they were reaching, and would much rather piss off their target demographic. Brilliant business move, Viacom suits. Nice job. But we press on.

Jim Gaffigan, on Kimmel

Stephen Lynch, "D&D"

In order to improve his connection with 'the kids,' he has recently changed his name to P. Philly

2007-02-16T10:11:00.000-05:00

Puxatawny Phil is a lying bastard.

Okay, so this may be a little harsh, but you can't help but notice that the nasty Ice Age renaissance we've been seeing around here lately was oddly coincidental with the groundhog's rosy prediction for the upcoming season. Not that it wasn't already cold, but it certainly wasn't ass-numbing, holy-crap-I-can't-feel-my-face cold. That all started after we were promised an early Spring.

But then, perhaps it's less a lying rodent than a ticked-off Mother Nature giving the world's only nonhuman weatherman the finger (you'll note that the nonhuman variety is roughly as reliable a predictor as his human counterparts). She appears to be saying, "Early Spring? Early Spring?!? Are you kidding? You had an early Spring. It was called 'January.' Did you forget that I gave you blooming trees at Christmastime, you ingrate? No appreciation. No, 'Thanks, Ma, that was great, whatever you want to do is fine with me.' Of course not. You want the early Spring, too. Fine. Maybe, just maybe, I'll give it to you, but I'm going to park your scruffy behind in the freezer section for a while first. Suck on that popsicle, Chuckles." And of course, we all have to suffer for the groggy musings of the world's most famous garden pest (maybe second-most, behind his much funnier cousin from "Caddyshack"). I say he should just leave the incorrect guessing to the professionals.

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that, in a 30-second span while trying to fill out a deposit envelope last night at the bank, my fingers went from relatively warm in my gloves to stinging-and-barely-moving, with barely any transition in between. And this was without wind. That might be it. But I've had roughly the same thought for the past week or so, as I lean into the wind on my walk from the metro to work and back.

Stupid groundhog.

Smarter than the average bear. The average stupid bear.

2007-01-17T00:59:00.000-05:00

This just happened, like five minutes ago. I will blame it on fatigue, and stick to that story until my dying day.

I'm in the hotel, and knowing that it's time (well, really, past time) to go to bed, I pick up the phone to set my wake-up call. This seems like a great idea, until I realize that the phone has no dial tone. Annoyed, I hang up and try it again. Nothing. I do the old-school tapping of the switch a few times. Still nothing. Just because I haven't tried it yet, I say hello, as if there's someone on the other end just waiting for me to calm down enough to acknowledge them so they can try to sell me a set of encyclopedias. Shockingly, this also produces no results.

By this point I'm a little annoyed, so I do what any clear-thinking modern adult would do: I pick up my cell phone and call the front desk. When the front-desk person answers, I tell him who I am and what room I'm staying in, and inform him that my phone has no dial tone. I go on to tell him that I really don't care about the phone so much; all I'm really trying to do is get a wake-up call set up (if you've figured it out by now, please don't spoil it for the rest. Thanks). He pauses for a second, then tells me that sure, he can set a wake-up call for me, but he'd have to come up and knock on my door or something at the appointed time.

Because the phone, which I had just called to tell him about, does not work.

I am a genius. The facts don't lie (they're truthful that way, much like hips).

I will defend myelf in a very small way by saying that it did occur to me as he began his response what the issue was, but it really didn't matter. I had already asked for a wake-up call to a broken phone. A phone that was so broken I felt the need to go outside of the hotel communications network to tell him about. So I, being of the helpful sort, suggested that maybe I'd just set the alarm clock instead. That seemed to be functioning relatively normally. Of course, for all I know at this point it's really a jack-in-the-box, but I'll give it a shot.

And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, to maybe have someone fix the phone tomorrow. So I can get my wake-up call.

File under: Not Quite What I Expected

2007-01-16T20:37:00.000-05:00

So I'm on work travel for the second week in a row, deep in the heart of Texas (clapping optional). Had to rent a car. When I was making the reservation, picked the Intermediate size. The selection screen said, "Oldsmobile Alero or similar." Remember that: Oldsmobile. Alero.

Fast forward five days. Land at the airport (it's effing FREEZING, by the way), head off to the rental car building. Turns out my reservation wasn't quite right, so while it's being fixed I'm looking over the menu, as it were. Dodge is apparently the brand of choice for Thrifty car rental around here. Fair enough. I figure I'm getting like a Neon or something. Fine, whatever, it's late, I just want a car and to go to my hotel. Sleeping is much higher on my list of priorities right now than the cheapo rental car that's going to get me from hither to yon. Give me a Kia. I don't care. That's basically my position at the time. So Mr. Thrifty Man finishes his negotiating with the little gremlins in the computer (based on the time it took, it was quite a transaction), and goes to get me the keys to what I'm fully expecting at this point to be a '78 Dodge Dart (it was after midnight as far as I was concerned, after a flight that took a full extra hour to board and another extra hour in the air thanks to something like 170mph headwinds, so you'll excuse me if I was a little impatient). Hands me the keys, I half look at them on my way to Space #20, and off I go. I get out into the garage, and there are no fewer than five attendants hanging around my car, one of them might actually have been sitting on it, I'm not completely sure. But a van comes by, they all pile in, and I'm left staring at my equivalent of an Oldsmobile Alero.

A sotcky, silver, slightly hostile-looking new-model Dodge Charger.

Now, I know it doesn't have a Hemi, and let's face it, it's a Dodge. But still, what Dodge managed to do with its newer line of cars is produce what looks, at least from the outside, like a muscle car. Which for the record, an Oldsmobile Alero does not. Not even a little bit. It's very much like the Hefty vs. Wimpy; the Charger is hef-hef-hef-hef-Hefty.

I should point out that, after a day of driving it, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to own one. You're sitting suprisingly high up for what I expect of a car like that, and the rear visibility is lousy. But still, I chuckle a little every time I walk out to it, as if I should be looking for a place to cruise the strip or something (or if you grew up in Wilmington, DE, cruise up and down Concord Pike between Taco Bell and the McDonalds. Not that I ever did that or anything). But I will admit, I'm more of a fan of Thrifty Car Rentals than I was two days ago. I was totally expecting a Kia and I got a muscle car. That's pretty cool.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

2006-12-24T10:06:00.000-05:00

I've commented to a few people over the past few days that it really doesn't feel much like Christmas. Maybe it's the fact that it was 65 degrees in DC for the last week, or the fact that I hadn't gotten hardly any shopping done, or just the fact that between class and the couple of weekends after class I've been so busy that I've barely thought about it, but ultimately it seemed really strange to be packing for FL earlier this week, since it just didn't seem like it was time to do that. Even once I got down here, I spent the first day or so with the same feeling.

I think it really changed, though, once my brother and sister-in-law arrived yesterday afternoon. Now the family's all here, with cousins, grandparents, aunt and uncle set to come today. It's starting to make sense now. Well, it's either the arrival of people or the preparation of massive amounts of food (more reasons I love having Italian family). It's definitely one or the other, I will choose to assume the former. But now, on Christmas Eve Day, it's here. It's Christmas.

So I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday, wherever you are and whatever you celebrate. May your time be spent with those close to you, doing the things that bring you peace and happiness. Be safe in your travels, and make the most of the time you have.

Or, if that seems a little too Hallmark, try this:

Either way, Happy Holidays, everybody.

Almost Famous.... well, sort of

2006-12-13T14:59:00.000-05:00

When I got back from errand-running and lunch on Saturday, I found an odd email in my blogmail. It went like this:

Hey there.I noticed your posting on My Space and wanted to interview you brieflyabout why you think The Wire is such a compelling show. I'm a reporter atthe Washington Post and writing about this TODAY. What is it that speaks toyou? The power of the kids' stories? The failure of the schools and copsand everyone else to address their problems? Some first hand experience ofyour own with dysfunctional cities? Something else?

It closed with an email address and phone number, and the name was one that did show up on a quick search of the Post site. So I figured it was probably legit. What threw me was a) the MySpace reference, since I don't post anything on MySpace (I barely even have a profile), and b) that I got it at all, since mine is not a heavily-trafficked site to say the least. But I was intrigued, and glad that The Wire is getting some much-deserved attention these days (Bubbles got a profile on cnn.com the other day). I did call the reporter back, but didn't catch her; but it got me thinking about the show, and about the things that I find so gripping about it. I mentioned some of them in a previous post, but there is always more that can be said.

The article can be found here. I think it's a good one, and makes some good points. I am a little bit disappointed, though, because it only addresses a fraction of what I think is important about the show. I can't help but wonder whether the writer watches it herself, or was more just fulfilling an assignment. I felt kind of the same way reading the email, because it suggests a fairly surface-level thinking about the program. All of this is understandable, since I think her intent was less to talk about the program than about the personal reactions people have to it, but I also feel like a show this good deserves a closer look into what really makes it tick. Anyway, were I to have been able to speak with her as she was writing, this is more or less what I would say.

Let me preface with this: I am of the middle-class-white-kid demographic, so that is the point of view from which I approach the show. I don't relate in the same way some of the people quoted in the article do. I'm predictably fine with that, and I don't believe it affects my enjoyment, but I figured I should mention it.

I don't think that the show is about stories, really, and as such I can't say that the kids' stories are what makes it a must-see. It's about characters. Characters are compelling, in a way that stories are not, necessarily. We've all seen the downtrodden-kid-makes-good stories, or the downtrodden-cop-turns-his-life-around stories, but without deep and nuanced characters, the stories don't stick. What Simon/Berg and co. have done is create a world where all of the characters are themselves powerful, so wherever the storyline takes you, you want to go. Namond's story isn't remarkable; Namond is. Randy is. Cutty is. Bubbles definitely is. Marlo, while despicable in many ways, is extremely charismatic as well, and we want to see where the show takes him. I still think that Stringer Bell was one of the best characters this show has seen, but it's a crowded field.

The same thing is true of the "failures" of the police, govt, etc. It's not the failure that is powerful. It's the struggle. If they were failing for a lack of trying, that would be one thing, but you see well-intentioned people (and some not-so-well-intentioned) doing what they can and making small steps forward or large steps back. The new mayorship of Tommy Carcetti is a great example of this. He just keeps piling on examples of how "it's just not that simple." Just look at Prezbo. You could argue that the schools are failing, but you certainly get a clear view of just how much the people in the schools give of themselves to 'save' as many as they can in the process. Prezbo gives you a front row seat to the battle of idealism and hope with cold reality, and that even good people have to make compromises in order to keep doing good.

But really, it's hard to get a sense for how good this show is, or how well it's put together, just by looking at this season. Like many serials, there is a lot of inside baseball on this show, a lot of references and situations you don't fully understand without having seen previous seasons. And that background knowledge takes an already enveloping show and makes it even moreso. If you just watched McNulty during this season, you would get a certain impression, and you could get through the story without losing any critical info. But if you knew what he went through, from Season 1 to now, you would have an entirely different impression of him, and his actions would have a whole different meaning. His relationship with Bodie, and how it developed, is a really solid bit of storytelling, and it explains a lot of McNulty's behavior during the season finale (I'm being intentionally vague out of respect for those who haven't seen it yet. But seriously, get on it already). Same for Cutty, and Colvin, and Bubbles, and even guys like Prop Joe. You don't have to know how they got here, but it sure helps. Some shows are just like that. 24, not so much; this one, absolutely.

And the cast. Holy crap, the cast. Just the casting for the kids alone should be recognized, they're so good. They've cast convicted felons, people that Simon actually arrested years ago. They've got Method Man. And a whole truckload of people you'd never hear of otherwise. Everyone on that show does a superb job, and it seems like nobody notices. The fact that The Wire hasn't received more (any?) awards is, simply put, a travesty. I firmly believe that both the acting and the writing is better on this show that it is on the Sopranos, or Deadwood, or Lost, or pretty much any other drama you might point to.

I like to draw a particular parallel with Lost when I talk about it: there's a feeling you have while watching Lost, a certain tension you feel pretty much throughout the show, no matter what. It's like any minute, something major could happen, and you're just waiting for it. Watching The Wire is like that; there's a very similar sensation watching there as well. You don't know where it's coming from or for whom, but you know it's coming, and you're as much afraid to miss it as anything else. You know it's fiction, but you can't help it: you care. And that's the bottom line. That's the power.

If I'd been asked, that's pretty much what I'd have said. In the end, I wasn't, but it sure would have been cool, wouldn't it?

Off to an auspicious start

2006-12-11T11:02:00.000-05:00

Well, my semester break started pretty well, with a pleasantly busy weekend (for a change). It was a very long week, with paper and project to finish, but it's certainly good to be past it. The weekend began with the I-66-h0sted All Holiday Blog Celebration, so we'll do that first. Heck, that might be all we'll do; I'm not sure that anyone really needs to hear about my company holiday party. Anyway.

The double-edged sword about the HH's, for me, is that they are seldom more than about five blocks from my office. This is a good thing, in that it's never very far out of my way to get there, but at the same time it does result in a lot of pre-HH sitting around. My workday ends at 5:30, and there's really no point in trekking all the way out to Ballston and back, so I just hang out at the office. The result is that I am at the latest on time for the thing to start, which is not always a good thing when it's your second HH and you haven't, I don't know, met/seen the host before (at least, not in 3-D). So I got to Science Club at a couple minutes after 7, and wandered back to the DJ booth. Nothing. There were a fair amount of people there, but none that I recognized. So I did a tour of the place. Nice upstairs, although I have the feeling I was walking through a private party (buffet setup, some strange looks from people, that sort of thing), checked out the basement, no familiar faces anywhere. So I parked myself off to the side and waited (and people-watched, something of a hobby of mine anyway). There was one other person there who seemed to be waiting as well, but I figured I'd chill out a bit and see what happened (turned out to be HomeImprovementNinja, but I didn't know that at the time). I-66 arrived after a few minutes, I met him and HIN, and the HH was officially under way.

Science Club is a decent place, if for no other reason than it has a back room that we were able to more or less take over as the evening progressed. The downside, which is true of most townhouses-turned-bars, I guess, is that the space is long and narrow. I remarked to a couple of folks that it's kind of ironic to be in a bar/club and have less room to maneuver than in the average Metro car. But it is a pretty nice spot, and it was never all that cramped, so it was all good. (This was my first time there; the last time I was at that address it was a Thai restaurant.)

All in all, it was very cool. I met a bunch of folks who I have been reading, which was great, and got to see a few people again who I'd met at Gazuza (double-great). I will admit that I still find the whole thing a little surreal, particularly when people recognize the name of my blog. Good surreal, for sure, but surreal. Plus the whole keeping track of both real and blog names is its own challenge. But I think I did all right, and got to talk to a truckload of witty and engaging people while I was at it. I got to spend some time with repeat offenders Kathryn, KassyK, V, Brunchbird, Bettyjoan, Ashburnite, and HeatherB again, all of whom are tons of fun. V was officially my hero for bringing cake, since I had sort of skipped dinner (okay, Kassy also gets hero-credit for having the birthday for which said cake was brought). Always good to see folks again, and also kind of nice to be remembered (again, just a tad surreal). And like I said, I got to meet a ton of people who I read regularly, occasionally, or in various comments. Many I had never met, or only met briefly at my last HH: I-66, HIN, Velvet, Red, Hey Pretty, Joe Logon, Boztopia, VK, Mandy, VP of Dior, DCVita, FreckledK, Tyler, a couple of Carries whose blogging status I never quite nailed down, and Kathryn's BP. Throw in a few non-bloggers, BBird's S.O., a couple of Kassyk's crew, and you have a full evening on your hands. I made it until a little before midnight, at which point my week kind of caught up with me and I had to head home.

Just a couple of notes:

I-66 had what was, for me, the line of the night: "They do bar mitzvahs." I'll not get into the reason for the line, but trust me when I tell you it was hilarious. I-66, I hope you remember, because it was genius.
Props to HIN for the charity raffle. There would be more props if I had won, but much credit all the same.
Happy Birthday to KassyK.
In his primer (which is excellent, btw), I-66 makes a point about managing your expectations, in terms of how you envision people based on their writing vs. how they are in person. I found myself a little surprised a couple of times to meet the faces behind the words. I was surprised as much by my surprise as anything else, if that makes sense. I didn't consiously expect one thing or another, but I did say to myself, "Wow, [x] wasn't how I expected him/her to be." I should mention, having said that, all surprises were of the better-than-advertised variety. Which is just a credit to you folks, really.
Five years of engineering school, just so I could fix the battery door on Velvet's camera after it's trip to the hardwood.
Count me among those who are very much looking forward to January and the smoking ban. Holy crap. I couldn't even get near my jacket for the rest of the weekend, and it still had a little smokiness to it this morning. Thank goodness for redundant outerwear.
I will probably repeat this in recapping most of these, because it bears repeating: anyone who still believes that the blogs/internet are the domain of the socially inept and visually challenged should spend an hour or two at one of these gatherings. Charming, witty people and some seriously gorgeous women. Seriously.

So thanks to I-66 for playing host, and I'll see you at the next one. Right on time, I'm sure...

TT4T: Special Friday Edition

2006-12-01T16:39:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it was admittedly at the tail end of 8 straight hours of non-stop working on a project (took the day off to do schoolwork; fantastic use of leave, no?), but my friend showed me these two videos last night, and I just had to share.

Why do I love YouTube? Sure, the easy access to loads of stand-up clips is great for a guy like me, and the ability to dig up obscure clips from movies and shows is good, too. But some of the original stuff, the stuff from people you would never see or hear of otherwise, really makes it work. Granted, you have to wade through a whoooooole lot of utter crap to find it, but the little nuggets of gold really make the whole thing worthwhile.

Exhibit A: The Good Word - If at first you don't succeed...

Exhibit B: The Vader Sessions - This is really well done. Someone took Star Wars footage, pulled out James Earl Jones's original dialogue, replaced it with some of this lines from other movies, and left the other characters' dialogue as-is. Sounds odd, but it's brilliant. Just look at the way his new lines even match his movements. His conversation with Leia is priceless.
language warning: probably not safe for non-headphones viewing at work.

Right, Right... So tell me again how global warming is just a myth....

2006-11-30T13:52:00.000-05:00

Date: November 30
Lunchtime temp: 67 degrees F
Wardrobe: pants, short sleeve shirt

mmm-hmmm... right, no scientific evidence..... riiiight, yes. Clearly making it up... Yep, I totally see where you're coming from.....

I don't know about you, but I'm convinced. If anyone calls, I'll be laying out by the pool.

Please stand by...

2006-11-21T21:34:00.000-05:00

The roughly four of you who tune in here on a regular basis will notice that there's no 'Tube today. I wanted to, but I just didn't have time to pull it together.

I am now in the last three-ish weeks of the semester, and Crunch Time has officially begun (it manifested itself today, as I sat staring at my computer screen trying and failing to write cogent sentences for my paper, which oh by the way I'm presenting a week from tonight). The good news is, on December 8th I will get to have another Mel Gibson moment (which will mark exactly 12 months until I finish grad school, for those of you keeping track) and a little over a month off to decompress, do the birthday and Christmas thing, and all that fun stuff. The bad news is, the next three weeks are going to be their own special little plane of the Hell, and I'm out of sunscreen.

This whole semester has been a little off-kilter for me, starting with my textbook issues and never quite settling down the way I thought it should. I think this was the first semester I hit real fatigue with the whole grad school thing (not surprising, I guess, two years in). Whatever it was, I've had a much harder time focusing on the work this semester, and it's got me a little behind heading into the home stretch. I absolutely cannot wait for it to be over, but it's going to be kinda rough between now and then. So my four day weekend will really be four days of nonstop project and paper work with a short break on Thursday to go visit some local cousins for Thanksgiving*. I'm really looking forward to that, partly because they're wonderful people, and partly (okay, largely) because having local plans means I will not be among the frustrated masses trying to get from here to there throught the ironically-unfriendly-considering-it's-a-holiday skies. Travelers, I wish you luck, but better you than me. If it's any consolation, the chair at my desk does not recline, I will have to get my own peanuts and drinks, and I will be sitting in this chair for far longer, delays or no, than you will spend in transit. So if you're into comparative misery, tuck that away for during your canceled connection through Chicago.

All of this to say: the blog might get a little neglected for a few weeks. The irony, of course, is that it was just last week that I alerted my friends to the fact that I have a blog in the first place, so now that they know about it and might actually stop in to check it out, they get the blog equivalent of elevator music and "Please continue to hold. Your call is important to us." I guess on the upside, plenty of time to check out the archives.

But most importantly: have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Enjoy the food, and your families, your friends, your parties of one, whatever makes your world a better place. For those of you that are traveling, I will keep my fingers crossed that the skies stay clear and safe, and that the roads are at least somewhat less rage-y than ususal getting out of DC this time of year (and let's be honest, that would be a huge improvement).

If you do happen to be in town wandering around Arlington over the next couple weeks, and you come across a whimpering, fetally-positioned gentleman crying for his mommy, don't be alarmed. It's probably just me on a 'study break,' out 'stretching my legs.' It will pass. But please, no kicking.

*I would just like to point out, as is my habit, that to my knowledge Virginia Tech is the only major university that actually consumes its mascot as the centerpiece of a national holiday (partial credit to Arkansas, if you assume that razorbacks (wild boar = pig) count for Christmas). I have no idea what that means, but I am sure that it is critically important. Or it's just funny.

Two 'Tube for Tuesday: Denis Leary, Rocker

2006-11-14T00:10:00.000-05:00

If you've listened to Denis Leary's No Cure for Cancer, then you're undoubtedly familiar with his classic song, "Asshole." What you may not realize, if you didn't spend the kind of time watching MTV that I did as a kid, is that Denis actually had his very own episode of MTV Unplugged, with his very own band (that backed him up on "Asshole"). They've shown up with him at various events (hosting gigs and whatnot, particularly Comics Come Home, as I recall) over the past few years, and are apparently still playing together at shows.

First, a clip from the original Unplugged show, "Traditional Irish Folk Song" (which was also on No Cure for Cancer, I think, but gets a little added bonus here):

And second, the real reason for this post, a recent (by virtue of subject matter) performance, which also marks the first grab from the MySpace video collection, "Mel Gibson Blues":
Mel Gibson Blues

Add to My Profile More Videos

Good, wholesome, family fun. It's just the Leary way.

The sincerest form of flattery

2006-11-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

One more quasi-political thing, then I'm done. And this is less about politics, really, than funny.

Distillation of Bush on Rumsfeld:
"You know, I actually endorsed Rummy before I fired him."

Somewhere, John Kerry is howling.

Vicious Cycle

2006-11-07T23:55:00.000-05:00

I hate politics.

Okay, so that's not entirely true. I like politics just fine; I like talking politics with anyone who has a reasoned opinion and a willingness to debate. It's the political process I can't stand. More specifically, I have come to absolutley loathe the campaign process, and the current state of political discourse in this country. It's this time of year, the tail end of election cycles, that I am least proud of the American political system, in terms of the means by which the people who seek to govern get themselves elected, because it is in that very situation where they behave least like the kind of folks we should, as a nation, be putting in any kind of leadership role.

The state of politics in this country has been in a serious decline, in my opinion, for at least the past six years, and probably more like the past eight. The latter part of the Clinton administration was probably the beginning of the slide, but our current president has thrown the nose straight down and punched the afterburners since taking office. It's ironic, in a way, because he spent quite a bit of energy in his original campaign talking about wanting to unite the parties, and work together to accomplish great things. He wanted to be, in a modification of a more recent reference, the Uniter. Since then, he's become the Decider, and by and large the Divider. Regardless of your political leanings, you can't, by any objective measure, point to a single thing that this administration has done to improve relations between the parties, either in the legislature or the voting public. It's as if the word 'bi-partisan' was anathema, perhaps because it involves the prefix 'bi-' and we all know how uncomfortable that notion makes conservatives, compassionate or otherwise. But I digress.

Consider for a second the nature of campaign communication. Specifically, the kinds of things that the various parties and organizations put on television. Nobody really runs for anything anymore; it's all running against the other guy. And nearly every stance is predicated on fear: in the 2004 elections, Bush wanted you to vote for him because you were scared of Al Qaeda; Kerry wanted you to vote for him because you were scared of Bush. That's really all it amounted to, the whole election. And it hasn't gotten any better. It just keeps getting worse.When is the last time you saw a campaign ad that was less than a full-throated assault on the opposing candidate, in some cases for things that are completely unrelated to the issues of the campaign? It's all finger-pointing, oversimplification and a lot of misrepresentation, from both parties. I stared in amazement at the kind of commercials being aired in northern Virginia the last couple of weeks. Not a single positive ad, or not more than one or two. And the level of negative is just off the scale.

Both sides do it because, sadly, it works. In a lot of ways, I blame the American public, because we as a group not only tolerate this kind of trash, we make no bones about preferring it, both in our entertainment as well as our politics. Moreover, we crave it. We really can't get enough of it, the more vehement and brazen the better, in a lot of cases. And forget depth. We can't have that. Just give us straw men, the more the merrier! Any platform position that takes more than a single, three-second sentence to sum up is waaaaaay beyond our attention span anymore. Heck, if we have to actually read something to understand it, it can't possibly be that important. We should be more careful what we wish for, because we get it every time.

As an example, I submit the "Same-Sex Marriage Ban" that looks all but guaranteed to become part of Virginia's constitution. Never mind for a second that it's the 21st century and we're still codifying intolerance and bigotry into the fabric of our government; I could spend an hour on that alone, but not now. The effect of this amendment is pretty significant for unmarried straight couples as well, the way I understand it. No more rights. None. Period. Cohabitating for a few years, got your assets combined and just haven't seen the need to go official? Tough. This amendment is meant for you, too. There is some question as to whether written contracts could even be enforced in a situation like medical decisions. Oh, and common law? It will be interesting to see how that holds up. I wonder if the rural voting community thought about that at all when they went charging out to the voting booth. But I would be willing to bet that the vast majority, rural or otherwise, never read that far down in the language of the amendment. Gays? Married? Well, we'll just see about that. How could it possibly be more complicated? Wait, it is? Then allow me to plug my ears and sing. La-la-la-la-la, I can't hear you....

It's just saddening that at this point in history, our country is at the mercy of the fringes of both parties. It's true, and it will always be true, until moderates start shouting. I firmly believe that there are more of us than there are of them, but moderates are by nature, well, moderate, which makes us a less-loud, and unfortunately a therefore less powerful, group of people. I know very few people from either side that are all that happy with their party right now, but the nature of the two-party system leaves little in the way of options. So it's a matter of picking the lunatics that worry you less and just keeping your fingers crossed. And the conduct of politicans as a group isn't making great strides to inspire confidence, either. It's like used car salesmen and lawyers are just glad that someone is bumping them out of the top spot of people we wouldn't trust to walk our dog, and yet these are the people who are steering this country into the future. Need some Dramamine? Hang on, it might get a little bumpy.

Now, all of that said, let me say this: I love this country, I would far rather be here than anywhere else. I recognize and appreciate that the system in place allows me the freedom to say these sorts of things without fear. I'm not anti-American, anti-democracy, anti-military, or any of that crap; the truth is quite the opposite, so leave that nonsense at home. I am just troubled by the way the game is being played these days. I really don't think it's good for any of us, long-term, and unless something dramatic happens to make that clear, we're going to take more steps back than forward, which endangers our position on the world stage in addition to the problems it creates within our own borders.

But I voted. I did my part. I will say that it was a pleasant surprise to find that my polling station was all of a block from home. But I just wish that the people that I was voting for would behave more like the kind of people we want, and really need, them to be.

I would never have guessed it would be so much to ask.

Two 'Tube for Tuesday: Thanks KassyK

2006-11-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

I almost skipped this week, because of a pileup of work and grad school, but then I saw the title of Kassy's post today, and I just couldn't.

The "Choppin' Broccoli" song is quite possibly the funniest thing Dana Carvey has ever done (that didn't involve a funny wig and nerd glasses). It was made into an SNL skit, but my memory of it has always been from his stand-up. Here is the stand-up version, which gets a little more of an intro to the idea.

And if we're talking about Dana Carvey, then of course we have to have a moment with the funny wig and nerd glasses.

Party on.

What a difference...

2006-11-05T13:54:00.000-05:00

Five weeks ago: loss to Georgia Tech, 2 starters suspended.
Four weeks ago: loss to Boston College, 2 starters suspended (different players this time).
Two weeks ago: beat then-#10 Clemson by 17 at home.
This week: beat Miami by 7 in Miami.

Isn't it amazing what can happen when you manage to keep your starters from getting arrested? I'm pretty sure there's a lesson in there someplace.

And while we're at it:

What's a Hokie?
That’s the most often-asked question
regarding Virginia Tech athletics. The answer
leads all the way back to 1896 when Virginia
Agricultural and Mechanical College changed its
name to Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

With the change came the necessity for
writing a new cheer and a contest for such a
purpose was held by the student body. Senior
O.M. Stull won first prize for his "Old Hokie"
yell which still is used today.

Later, when asked if "Hokie" had any special
meaning, Stull explained the words he used had
no hidden or symbolic meaning, but had been
thought up in an effort to get attention. Hokie
soon became a nickname for all Tech teams and
for those people loyal to Tech athletics.

Two 'Tube for Tuesday: Whose Line

2006-10-31T08:18:00.000-05:00

I'm apparently one of the twelve people nationwide who actually watched Whose Line is it Anyway when it was on network TV, which always confused me because to my mind it was consistently funnier than most sitcoms. But whatever. It's been relegated to ABC Family on reruns, and that's fine. It seems that fans of the show have posted a ton of clips on the 'Tube as well. This is good news. So here are two of my favorites.

Improv is hard, and these guys do it extremely well, pulling off great comedy and never cracking a smile at their own stuff. Well, almost never. Some of the best moments, as far as I'm concerned, are when the people performing just can't hold it together, and crack up despite themselves.
First, Ryan and Colin in "Improbable Mission." Poor Ryan just can't hang.

And second, Wayne Brady doing "Song Styles" as a male strip-o-gram for a retired lunch lady. Quite possibly one of the best WLIIA scenes ever.

Low-effort Halloween is easy, thanks to the Wachowski brothers

2006-10-30T11:22:00.000-05:00

This has been kind of a hellacious week at work, and only marginally better at school. As a result, I had exactly no time to think about the weekend and any kind of costume ideas for the party I was planning to go to Saturday night. I usually try to be at least kind of clever about it, but there just wasn't time. To make matters worse, the party had a theme, villains, so just any old thing I could come up with wasn't sufficient: I had to be specific.

So I spent a few minutes thinking about it here and there Thursday and Friday, with little luck, and then it struck me. As a professional male, I have most of a pre-fab villain costume in my very own closet.

I own a black suit.
I own a black tie.
I own sunglasses (rimless, which came in handy).
I own white earbud headphones.
Just a quick trip to Target for a tie bar, and I was all set in my Agent Smith-ness.

Since it was chilly out, I got to add to the image with my trenchcoat, which made the entrance even better. As it turned out, people really liked it, which is always cool. The only downside was that, in keeping with the Halloween theme, the house was poorly lit, which made walking around wearing sunglasses a serious health hazard. So they didn't stay on all night, for the benefit of my safety and the safety of those around me.

The great thing about Agent Smith? The more people wearing the same costume, the better. We had two.

There were some great costumes there as well; some folks went all-out. Probably the best: a full-on Cobra Commander, with Baroness and Cobra soldier in tow, was amazing. We had a Borat, mostly because I think every party was required to have at least one this year. We also had the villainous trio from Superman 2 (brilliant), Dr. Evil plus Fembot (complete with ballistic boobs), Pennywise the Killer Clown, and a host of other well-put-together outfits. All in all, a very good time. I'm not a huge Halloween person, but it's always good to be around fun people who do it up right.

If I were in charge

2006-10-25T16:03:00.000-04:00

Kathryn's post yesterday strikes pretty close to home for me, as I'd imagine it would for most people I know. Pretty much all of my friends (and most of my coworkers and classmates, for that matter) are overworked or overextended and underslept. I have a lot of thoughts as to the hows and whys of it (possible subject of a later post), but the bottom line is this:

Who decided adults didn't need naps? Why did this get taken away when we were kids?

In grade school, we got naps and recess. Middle school came, and we still got recess, but no naps. High School? Lunch, but no recess and certainly no naps (at least, no intentional naps, ccasional in-class dozing notwithstanding). College was a mixed bag; if you were lucky, you could build a schedule that either let you a) sleep in, or b) arrange some mid-day naptime to recharge before the afternoon. If you were me (or my engineering classmates), you got neither. What you did get was loads of homework and a bunch of all-nighters, neither of which sound like naptime. And now, as adults, we get progressively longer work-weeks, work to take home, responsibilities for house/home, relationships, grad school, taking some hobby/recreation/social time, and trying to get as close as possible to a full night's sleep in the middle of all of that (which usually results in a change to what 'full' means for most folks).

A thought experiment: by how much would Starbucks' stock drop if we got to a point in this country (or just this city) where the average adult was actually getting 8 hours of sleep nightly?

I, like a lot of people I'm sure, spend a fair amount of time considering How I'd Run Things. That was one of the most interesting things, to me, about the dot-com boom: a whole lot of people who would not necessarily have been in charge otherwise started companies. The intense demand for skilled employees created an environment where the non-financial benefits of employment became nearly as important as the salaries: company-sponsored gym memberships; on-site pool, foozeball, or ping-pong tables; employee lounges in the true 'lounge' sense of the word (bean bag chairs, video game consoles); I even read about some companies putting together massages or salsa classes for their people. Granted, the demise of that industry, and the general downturn in employment overall, has led to the disappearance of a lot of those things, but a few still remain (my company subsidizes gym membership now, which it didn't a few years ago).

Personally, I'd give most of that up for a half-hour nap in the middle of the day, grade-school-style, just to avoid that stretch from about 3:00 - 3:30pm where I feel like I'm back in my freshman Chemistry class early Thursday morning, just trying to keep the eyelids open.

I have long said that if I am ever in the position to do so, I will set aside a room in my office that will be devoted to naptime. La-Z-Boy recliners and egg timers, that sort of thing. Maybe a Sounds of Nature machine. One of those bubbling fountain things. Something.

The point is, I want my naptime back. And while we're at it, some cookies would be great as well.

It probably won't happen, but it sure would be nice, wouldn't it?

Two 'Tube for Tuesday: Classic Carlin

2006-10-23T23:53:00.000-04:00

I have been a fan of George Carlin for years. That is, when he was still doing comedy, as opposed to what he's been doing on stage the last couple of years or so. In rememberance of the comic genius that was, I offer the following.

First, one of my all-time favorites, about losing things:

And second, one of the best versions of one of his best, "Stuff," from the '86 Comic Relief show:

I miss funny George. Angry screaming George just isn't the same.

Just one of those...

2006-10-19T16:48:00.000-04:00

Based on the way the past couple of days have gone at work, I have decided on a new favorite word:

clusterfuckery (n): the quality or state of being a clusterfuck.
["This is whole thing is an exercise in clusterfuckery."]
see also: FUBAR, BOHICA, WMATA

And that's all I have to say about that.

Two 'Tube for Tuesday

2006-10-17T00:07:00.000-04:00

Since other bloggers tend to post their weekly fare on Fridays, I thought I'd try something on an otherwise unclaimed (and frankly, underappreciated) day of the week.

I've been sending a bunch of YouTube clips around lately, and did an entire post of them on Sunday (some might call it procrastination, and I'm in no position to argue), so I figured I'd make something regular out of it. On Tuesdays, I'll post a pair of pleasing pieces (so I'm a sucker for alliteration; sue me) from my wanderings for your viewing (and my procrastinating) pleasure. Most will be from YouTube, but I'll dip into Ifilm and other places as I can find them. I'll embed where I can, and link otherwise. Pretty much everything will be safe for work, unless otherwise noted. Feedback/suggestions/requests welcome, of course.

For the inaugural T'T4T, we have a classic, and the extended version of one of my all-time favorites.

First, something everyone should see at least once: the Camelot scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, done entirely in Legos.

And second, the full-length version of a video I linked to a while ago, which is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen (the mime link). I've been looking for a longer version for a while, and I finally found it.

More next week, or at least until the Google people shut it all down...

Tasty nuggets of awesome

2006-10-15T15:39:00.000-04:00

Found this on Youtube today. Excellent JT parody, "Paxilback".

While we're parody-ing, we might as well give a nod to the master.
The latest, "White & Nerdy":

And the original, "Eat It":

And some more musical chuckles for your arse:
Flight of the Conchords, "Business Time"

Stephen Lynch, "Superhero"

And finally, this isn't musical, but it's absolutely hilarious. Check it out.

While I'm reviewing things...

2006-10-12T10:49:00.000-04:00

I did something over the weekend that I rarely do these days: went to the movies. I saw The Departed, the new Scorcese movie with Jack and Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio and Marky Mark (regrettably, still sans Funky Bunch) and a host of others. I really liked it, although there were a couple of things I could have done without.

First of all, pretty much all of the performances are great. Leo managed to go an entire movie without irritating the hell out of me, and that in itself is an achievement. But beyond that, he's really good. Ditto for Jack, but it's kind of jarring listening to Nicholson trying to inhabit a Boston accent. I kind of wish he wouldn't; I don't really think Jack is (or needs to be) acting anymore, he just has to find cool lines to say and go be Jack doing it (he gets a pass for this, unlike Costner, who is just incapable of anything else, including making movies that are under like 7 hours long). Matt Damon is managing to put together an awfully long streak of movies that I can't dislike (as opposed to Affleck, for example), and this is another good choice for him. I don't think that Matt is an overtly good actor, in the sense that he doesn't ever really wow you, but he just manages to put very believable characters on screen. Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin both pop in with good roles as well. Oh, and the girl - Vera Farmiga - is excellent (I say 'the girl' because there's really only one of any significance in the movie). Good job of casting and acting pretty much all around.

I liked the writing a lot, mostly because while being very dark, there is a whole lot of humor in it. This is a film that makes the most out of down time, with a lot of the the sort of back-and-forth banter and ribbing that you'd expect to find between the characters. I think a lot of serious films try to stay serious, to their detriment, but this one works plenty of comedy in to break up the rhythms a bit. Plus it's almost all sarcasm and snark, so that appeals to me immediately. I would be curious to see how people from different parts of the country react to some of the writing. I just think that the sense of humor that comes out of the Northeast is markedly different from most anywhere else: it has an edge to it that I don't find down here, for example, and I kind of miss a lot of the time. But in any case, this is a surprisingly funny movie, intermixed with a lot of violence and drama.

I won't get too much into the plot, since you get all you need to know about it from the commercial (and then some, but more on that in a second). Moves fast, has plenty of twists, the kinds of things you expect from a director like Scorcese. It gives you about 20 minutes to settle in and then off you go. And go. And go some more. Right up to the end, which is really the only major flaw in the film.

I'm all for plot twists, but I think there should be a limit to the number of them you can cram into a 2-minute stretch of film; there is one scene that violates that limit, whatever it would be. It's unfortunate when, after having an audience pretty well wrapped up in the story, to get laughter and strains of "Oh, come on!" in one of the more important points in the story. I understand the why, but I just would have preferred it to be handled differently. It in no way ruins the movie, it's just an unfortunate speed bump in an otherwise great ride. The only other thing that bothered me was that the commercial for the film, like so many these days, gives you a shot out of the last 2 minutes of the movie. I'm not going to tell you which one, but it had me looking for it for about half the picture, and I eventually figured out that it would be one of the closing shots. That's not the movie's fault, I know, but it irritated me all the same; it's becoming all to common with studios these days, and I'm really, really tired of it. What makes it worse for this one is that this is one of those movies where you really can't tell how it's going to play out from watching the commercial, and that's rare enough that they shouldn't mess with it.

All in all, I recommend it. Whatever flaws it has are vastly outweighed by the things it does well. Of course, if you're not sure about taking my word for it, here's a review if you'd rather hear what a pro thinks.