Bad Ideas

Hello Kitty Tattoos. In general, I have come to understand tattoos are a bad idea for many people.  There’s a tattoo philosophy that says if you don’t want 3 (or 5 or 7) tattoos, then don’t get one, since if you like the first one, there is a chance you may get more. But if that idea does not appeal to you, then stay away altogether. If you can picture yourself with one or more, then ink away, but do so carefully. New laser surgery and pseudo temporary inks make them somewhat less permanent than they were, but they’ll never wash off like those cracker jack prize tats. Why Hello Kitty? On a trip to Pittsburgh, I stopped for lunch at a ‘SoupMan’ franchise and was served by a young woman with a 5” diameter Hello Kitty cartoon cat almost in the middle of her chest – definitely between the shoulders and below the neck. She wasn’t showing any more skin than was appropriate, but short of wearing a turtleneck, the body art was going to be visible. Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I admire the all-in aspect of getting an unorthodox tat in an unusual place. This was way cooler than a back of the shoulder dolphin or a ankle chain of roses or the hideously eye catching lower back ‘tramp stamp’(or the male equivalent – bicep barbed wire). But I have to wonder how cool this is going to be when she’s no longer pouring bowls of chowder for an hourly wage. I know quite a few people with regrettable or questionable tattoos. Some of them have deep personal meaning, but most of them lost their cool soon after and now look ridiculous. There was a big group of guys in my high school who found an unscrupulous artist in New Hampshire (before tattoo parlors were legal in MA) who would ink up just about anyone. And of course they went and got a slew of bugs bunny/bulldog/fighting irish tattoos on their upper thighs, so no one could see their new body art. In the 90s and 2000s there was a lot of tribal art going around. I think the ‘tribe’ the tattoos refer to is a variation on the Maori-style art done in black ink and in a geometric or patterned way. Celtic knot style tattoos were also very popular. Neither style is especially unique or remarkable. If I had to, there are a few ink roads I think I would go down. Given that none of these match what I thought would be cool back in high school, I’m glad these will most likely never happen. First off would be the Latin/Russian school of prison art. These are usually single color, very elaborate and full of symbolism. Unfortunately these are heavily regulated by gangs and wearing tattoos symbolizing acts you have not done can get you in trouble, so I will be avoiding these. Next would be some sort of giant body piece. This is really the only style that makes any sense to me. If you’re going to make modifications, make some big ones. I’m thinking about something encompassing the whole back, maybe extending to the legs, arms or even stomach. There are some incredibly detailed and downright creative artists out there. It would make for a great conversation starter, even if after you walked away everyone would make the ‘crazy guy’ gesture behind your back. The third style is harder to describe, but it’s the one I think looks the best and that’s the old-school sailor tattoos. They combine the great symbolic aspects of the prison art and the creativity and color of the bigger pieces. I think a lot of sailors still get these, although as many rotate out of the seafaring professions, their opportunities for covering their arms with sea maidens, mighty ships, monsters and anchors lessen. An old salt could tell his life’s story with his art, and since many of them were illiterate, this was possibly the best way to accomplish it. Bottom line is, tough looking prison or sailor tattoos = good. Hello Kitty Tattoos = bad.

Selling old plumbing on Craigslist. Since M and I redid the downstairs bathroom, we have had a vanity top, complete with sink bowl and faucet, sitting on the floor or our loft. There’s nothing wrong with it other than it didn’t fit in with our plans and sits forlornly waiting for its next home. I figured with the grand renovation budgets all over being slashed that the market for decent used bathroom parts would be robust. Not so. I put the whole thing for sale for $50 and didn’t even get a sniff. Now this could have been because geographically, people see the name of the location and think ‘where is that place?’ or ‘I’m  not driving out there for that’. But after polling others who had done bathroom renovations, I found out old sinks go to the dump, not the used sink store. Still, there are other sinks for sale at higher prices. I’m starting to think the vultures are waiting for the price to go down to free before we’ll be rid of it.

Breaking ice dams with a shovel. There have been some ferocious, nearly record setting snow storms in our part of the world recently. As soon as the last storm is cleaned up, another one or two come by and dump 8 more inches of snow. If we lived out by Jackson Hole and tended bar to pay for our ski tickets, I think M and I would be down with this, but we are not. During the first really big storm we got, M stayed home and noticed there were some ferocious icicles hanging off the roof. Since we had just seen a TV special on the merits of snow rakes and preventing ice dams, this was close on her mind and she asked me to call the condo association to warn them. Supposedly they sent someone out to check things out, but by the next day they were melted and gone. Turns out some of the melting went into our neighbors’ bedroom closet, causing quite a bit of damage. Since that happened, I have been on a mission to not let that happen to us. Every time it snows I keep a watchful eye on the gutters and melting roof snow to see where it’s starting to pile up and where possible, I try and break it loose. To accomplish this, I take a garden shovel to our master bedroom, open the windows and remove the screens and proceed to swing the shovel above the window and onto the roof. Sometimes a great icicle will calve and explode on the back porch, but most times I only splinter ice everywhere and get soaking wet. I am satisfied that this does something, since I am at least relieving some of the weight on the gutters and I see more water dripping from the broken icicles. Unfortunately, this is also incredibly frustrating. The ice piles are huge. I would need a hammer and a chisel to break them up. I know the condo people are wary of paying more insurance claims and I see there are contractors there this week, peeling the condos like bananas to fix whatever’s underneath. Hopefully they’ll do something by next year to fix it, but for now it’s just me swinging the shovel and trying to stay dry and not fall/fail.

 

No resolutions... yet

2009 is going to mark the 10th (!!) year since I graduated college. I’m not sad or upset at that. It’s more like a sense of amazement that I’m starting to realize that time is sailing by pretty quickly. The self help industry has made itself a nice little niche by hammering on people’s insecurities about where they are when they turn 30. After all, 10 years is plenty of time to have started a job, gone to grad school, started a different job, gotten married and spawned a kid or two. Maybe you even bought a house? These are the things that some people think they’re supposed to do, right? Maybe you spent your 20s wandering around between jobs and cities, crashing on people’s couches, ‘finding yourself’? You could have 2 completely different people, both with the same base of 21 years or so of primary and secondary education and socioeconomic birth circumstances. They’d have an equally good chance of being completely miserable or beside themselves with happiness. I know people who are getting another graduate degree after they already graduated law school. I know people who only now just finished grad school and have the freedom of unencumbered employment for the first time at the age of 31. I know people who have had at least 3 completely different jobs since they graduated and still have no idea what they want. And everybody else falls somewhere in between. I do think I’ve been fortunate to have been exposed to enough elders in my relatively short adult life that I realize that whatever happened in 2001 and whatever happens in 2009 have almost no relation to what will happen in 2020 or 2031. Companies come and go, fortunes rise and fall. Circumstances force people to make hard decisions about what they need against what they want. I’ve worked with former prison guards, concrete workers, force recon marines and ski bum bartenders. Sure we crossed paths where we did, but that doesn’t mean that what I’m doing now is the path forever. One former colleague left and started a gym, another guy I know quit it all and became a chef and some others were forced out and still haven’t found work. Being out of work is a full time job for some people. I’d argue that surviving in a world that requires an income (houses, kids, cars) is harder than scraping by in one that doesn’t (hunter-gatherer living in a cave). I try not to have many regrets. There are certainly some situations that I wish I could take back, but there haven’t been many that were so profound that they changed the course of how I’ve played my hand. There’s still plenty of time for a big and fulfilling life. I’ve made choices that hopefully have me positioned to take advantage of opportunities that come my way. I’m looking forward to the next ten 10 years way more than how I felt back in January of 1999. Back then, I was terrified. I was on track for a couple of liberal arts degrees but then what? I’d invested considerable time in learning how not to fall asleep in a snowbank and other valuable life skills (I still know how to bull my way through a crowd without spilling anything on myself, although I don’t get to practice that one very much anymore. ). I had 3 reliable recipes that didn’t kill me or break the bank. I had a somewhat fading head of hair, a navy suit and a book on job interviews and not much else. My original plan was to get a high flying job somewhere and make the best of it. The placement office did a great job getting me a series of interviews that I thought I flourished in, but apparently I didn’t have that star power the judges were looking for. I still remember the jobs I didn’t get. I had whole plans for the life in LA, working up the chain at Toyota. I’d probably sitting in so cal traffic in my Prius right now and be hating the woeful state of the economy. There was the analyst job at Sanford Bernstein that I wore the mismatched suit to. I was going to live in Manhattan, go to B-school and become an investment banker. I’d be out of a job right now with 100,000 others just like me, except I’d be 50lbs heavier and be living in a $5000 a month apartment with no way to pay rent. Columbus, OH had a job at Abercrombie & Fitch. I had convinced myself that Ohio would be a fun place to live. I’d get to see Ohio State Football games and live cheaply. Since then Ohio State has lost more big games than I can remember and Ohio, despite being a fun swing state, is just above Michigan and Indiana on my list of places I want to live. Of course these never went beyond chatting up an overeager recruited who did this thousands of times a year, so I went home to find something else. I bought a Bridge for Dummies book and vowed to learn how to play cards and work on my golf game. I don’t know where this would take me, probably some sort of country club boy toy with a sugar mamma or high stakes hustler, separating codgers from their grandkids’ trust funds? I ended up taking the first thing that came my way and it got me directly to where I am now, so no regrets there. 2009 will also mark my first working years away from the George W. Bush era. It only recently occurred to me that the majority of my adult life has been spent with dubya in office. What would the world be like had grizzly Gore won? Had 9/11 not happened? I’m looking forward to the new regime. I’m looking forward to a progressive, intellectual leadership. This is an exciting time to be alive. I think we’ll see some things in the next ten years that are going to completely change the game. The boomers are retiring, genetics and computing research is starting to realize the next wave of achievements. The 60s, so long a source of strife and pride, is the realm of the old guard. The culture wars that were fought against commies seem quaint and archaic. People who grew up in the 70s and 80s fight different fights. Even the Vietnam War seems like a long distant memory. When someone says they’re a veteran, I picture a young person or even a woman. 10 years ago I didn’t have a cell phone or a computer. I didn’t instant message or use Napster. Although, speaking to M, who is a little younger than I, maybe I was living in a cocoon or in hiding. I bought a DVD player in 2000 and while it’s long gone, dvd are now almost obsolete. I still have the TV I bought in 2000, but M won’t let me throw it away. I’m thinking I should set some ten year goals, but so much is going to change between now and then I doubt that they’d still be relevant. Might be fun though.

Righteous Kill, starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, written by the same guy who gave us the clever ‘Inside Man’, is a movie that should have happened 20 years ago. I’m not saying these two don’t have anything left in the tank. They do. DeNiro gave us a great dose of the dangerous, caged-animal type he did so well in Heat and Casino. Pacino still does the fiery, flamboyant, intelligent id-type he did powered out in Scent of a Woman and Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s just that these two have been playing the same characters for so long that they don’t have the same punch they once did. As everyone out there who gets reviewed for their job knows, if you’re always 20% better than everyone else, eventually it no longer becomes remarkable and you have to start being 30% better to still get the same recognition. There weren’t any surprises here and I suppose that was the surprise for me. The ingredients were all there for a great meal and we get served a Chili’s appetizer plate. I think old guys can still act – take a look at Anthony Hopkins and of course Clint Eastwood, but these two need to be take different types of roles, something where we can be reminded what they can do out there.

The House Bunny, with Anna Faris, was something I enjoyed quite a bit. Adam Sandler produced it, so expect a ton of 4th grade-level jokes, but they seem to come more naturally than in your typical offering of this genre. It’s an equal opportunity offender and has a somewhat less than wholesome message, but the low low expectations were pleasantly overcome with some laugh out loud moments. There are some big Hollywood stars’ kids in this one. I won’t reveal who they are, though. At first you’re staring at them and you know something isn’t right, but you can’t place it. Then when you’re saying, “that really looks like…” and you’d be surprised that you’re right. Although it’s bizarre what characteristics children of celebrities inherit. Makes me a little scared to think about what I’m going to be passing along… But I digress. It’s an enjoyable movie, akin to getting half your dessert in a doggie bag. You know it’s not great for you, but you don’t regret it afterwards.