iamanexurbanite

Faster and Furiouser

2012-01-21T14:36:00.001-08:00

It’s time to recognize why movies are still awesome and it starts with Fast 5, the latest installment of the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise, thus completing the pentagram of cars, crime and incredible awesomeness (or is it complete? More on that later…)

If you are unfamiliar with the Fast and Furious franchise, I suggest IMDB or Wikipedia or something. Suffice it to say, it’s heavily geared towards adolescent males (or maybe females too, who knows?) with megadoses of exotic cars, exotic women, cash and over the top illegal activity (racing, robbing jailbreaking, etc…). Pretty much what anyone with a little too much testosterone, a driver’s license and not enough free money thinks about all the time. I’d say it’s pretty standard stuff, except it’s not. These films feature one of the great enigmas of acting – Vin Diesel – a supposedly (really) short, overly muscled guy with a speech impediment that is somehow a master criminal, stand-up guy and toughest man alive. He’s sort of impeding on Sly Stallone territory with the short/thick/slurry act, but the Italian Stallion is pushing 60+ and the HGH dosing isn’t making him look any younger (although The Expendable was pretty awesome in it’s own right –the sequel is eagerly anticipated here). So we have Vin Diesel. Then we have his sister, Jordanna Brewster, who I cannot remember being in any other movies of note (nope just checked IMDB, I have seen nothing outside of the F&F franchise), and Paul Walker (another one franchise actor). They team up with a pack of oddballs they’ve met in the 4 previous editions to take down legendary movie bad-guy Joaquim de Almeida (go ahead and look him up, he’s always the drug lord and he’s great). The criminal team is also strangely made up of actors who only seem to appear in either the F&F franchise or something horrible (Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang) but the best and most entertaining of the henchmen are two Puerto Rican reggaeton superstars – Tego Calderon and Don Omar, neither of whom appears to ever speak English or Spanish particularly well. Tego Calderon seems to be doing his best impression of an inebriated Manny Ramirez and it’s consistently the funniest thing in the film (yes I said film, not movie). And to top is all of is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, a formed U of Miami defensive lineman and WWE superstar who does a reasonable job in action movies these days. Among the gems he’s spouted as a pro wrestler: “See, the Rock realizes, there is something deep down inside you that eats you alive, something that makes you wake up in a cold sweat, makes you have nightmares. And it’s the fact that as good as you are, The Rock is, simply, better”. Annnnyway, that’s what we know heading into the movie. Someway, somehow all these people are going to mix it up and have a good ol’ time.

We start off with Paul Walker and Jordanna Brewster, on the run, somewhere in Brazil, because they just can’t seem to not commit crimes no matter where they go. It’s not a sociopathic sort of crime spree, more like the kind where they were forced outside the law by unfair rules and this is the only way to live. So they’re there, broke, seeking refuge. A former associate who’s set himself up as a sort of crime boss locally gives them shelter and food and talks about a new crime he’s planning that requires a particular set of driving skills that only these two seem to possess. How fortunate. Since they are broke and hungry, they are sort of forced to commit this crime (see, they’re not BAD guys, just good people who do bad things). They decide to do the job. Vin Diesel miraculously shows up at this point, despite the fact that he’s the most wanted man outside of the middle east. Even better, he’s driving a somewhat rare 1972 Dodge Charger that has been all tuned up and ready for war. Our heroes are also driving a vintage 1972 Nissan Skyline GT-R that’s also ready to go. Now keep in mind they are deep in the pits of South America. Driving conspicuous old automobiles without money or a classic car parts junkyard anywhere to be seen. How have neither of these guys been caught yet? Who cares!

They do the job, Vin Diesel changes the plan, bad government type guys get killed (not by our heroes though) and now The Rock is on the case, working for the US Marshals. He shows up wearing a t-shirt designed for an infant and sweating profusely. For some reason The Rock is the only guy who sweats at any point in the movie, despite it being set in Brazil, and he is constantly DRENCHED. Even after a cartoonish brawl with Vin where they crash through so many wall you wonder how the building is still standing, he’s the only one sweating. At some point after the Rock gets involved and the evil Drug Lord decide to go after Vin and the gang, the gang decides to do one last job, to even the score and make their final getaway. Cue the criminal mastermind role for Mr. Diesel. We never get to see the entire plan, because that’s half the fun, seeing what they cooked up. Sooner or later though, the Rock catches up to the gang and takes them in. Or so it seems. Evil drug lord wants them worse and some more government guys die. Despite how much time and effort the gang put into staying away from the Rock, they somehow decide to help him out in his great moment of need and in a nod to the bro code of backing people when they hook you up, The Rock inexplicably decides to join the gang. Incidentally, Paul Walker used to be an FBI guy, but Vin Diesel’s particular brand of criminality is unusually persuasive and now he has 2 Feds working for him. There’s a very well done and particularly spectacular robbery/chase scene where half of Rio De Janeiro gets destroyed. (River of January.. why aren’t any US cities named like that? South America has the best city names). During the climactic chase scene, we learn that the team all of a sudden has thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment at their disposal and of course they all know how to use it perfectly. This is a bunch who was so broke they couldn’t eat a few weeks back and now they’re better equipped than the CIA. Delightful. The chase ends, everybody’s happy. The Rock even decides to give the gang a head start for helping him out? (I thought he was helping them?) A Rio cop lady falls for Vin D, and cue the montage of how it all turns out for everyone.

Does this all sound ridiculous? Of course it does. And I could watch 6 more hours of this, easily. It’s so much more entertaining than what would happen in ‘real life’. Sure the franchise is mocked by ‘serious’ critics, but it knows where its lane is and stays there. Show some girls, cars, cash, maybe a somber scene where the guys reflect on what they’ve done and swear allegiances, and start counting the cash at the box office.

Best part is, they’re making another one. Usually at the end of these, there’s a little scene that teases what the next one is about. Can’t wait.

What I'm happy for this Christmas

2011-12-19T06:33:00.000-08:00

Home brewed coffee. Not many thing better than grinding up the beans and making it right there in the kitchen. Instant coffee might have been cool for astronauts but it was a huge step back. I can't really think of anything 'instant' that is worth eating.

The free 5 guys meal M and I stumbled into. We were out last weekend? It was lunchtime, we saw a 5 guys, decided that's what we wanted. It was a new location. When we got to the door, we were asked for invitations. I guess the employees were supposed to invite friends and family. We were neither and almost walked away. The guy at the door let us in anyway. We ordered and were told it was free. What's better than unexpected 5 guys? Free 5 guys. Then the drink dispenser was like one of those ideas that the guy who spent 7 years getting his undergrad randomly spouts out at unexpected times. An unlimited beverage combination machine with more flavors than I have ever seen. We shall be returning, even if we have to pay.

Having a kid in May. It gave M and me the whole summer and fall to get used to the parenting thing. I don't know what people do who have kids in January.

DVR. I now watch football games in 45 minutes and don't chew up my entire day. So long as I stay away from sports news, I get away with this. M doesn't even mind tagging along. Bonus mention for the 30 second skip ahead feature. Recorded TV shows no longer require gunslinger reflexes to avoid rewinding when the show resumes. Even though I rail against cable TV, this is actually a decent feature.

Frozen breakfast sandwiches. Had to lower my standards here a bit. When we were in Delaware for a wedding the hotel had a wide variety of microwavable breakfast sandwiches. I hesitated but jumped in anayway. They were excellent. Breakfast sandwiches are easily one of the best parts of the grand and noble first meal of the day. The enjoyment I experienced inspired me to seek these out at the store. I don't eat them every day, but when I get a chance, I do not deny myself a nice microwaved sausage egg and cheese biscuit.

Ron Swanson. Too bad he's not real.

Discovering that we can run the house fan 24x7 and not need to crank the heat/AC to keep the house comfortable. Thank you nameless contractor who tried to charge me $7g for a few balloons and a netbook to make my house more comfortable.

And now a few things that I could stand less of:

Certain 'seasonal' songs. Go away already.
Rick Perry. Going away soon.
TV with laugh track. Should be gone by now.
All things vampire. Oddly not gone yet.
People who think Ayn Rand is awesome. I doubt you finished an entire book and basing your life on a single book, any book, is not giving your life enough credit.
Thinking that things were better 'back in the day'. They weren't. Those days are gone and not coming back.
Perfume/Cologne magazine inserts. I make every one I see gone.
Ryan Reynolds. Almost gone.
International Bad Guys. Ghadaffi, Bin Laden and now Kim Jong Il all gone. It was a good year. Still time for Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Cheney. You know Cheney doesn't have a pulse, right? Look it up. He probably falls into the vampire category as well.
SOPA. Hopefully gone soon. Contact your people in Washington. The olds are trying to take away the internet.
Bonus Rooms. If you can't afford your house, rent out your bonus room. Then go away.

Intruder alert

2011-12-17T09:38:00.001-08:00

This bandit was in my house. He took all my money, sleep and free time. I was glad to give it.

Carrot explosion

2011-12-12T14:55:00.001-08:00

Back to original

2011-11-30T17:19:00.001-08:00

Last gasp of the stache

2011-11-30T17:04:00.001-08:00

2 days left

2011-11-29T12:41:00.001-08:00

Tasty skull

2011-11-28T13:19:00.001-08:00

Lazy Monday

2011-11-28T07:33:00.001-08:00

Running out of places to take these pictures

2011-11-27T17:19:00.001-08:00

Desperado times

2011-11-26T17:25:00.001-08:00

Happy day after thanksgiving

2011-11-25T17:14:00.001-08:00

Only a few days left. Starting to get bushy.

Happy turkey day

2011-11-25T17:13:00.001-08:00

Yeah. Thug life.

Sipping till I feel it

2011-11-23T14:44:00.001-08:00

Holding it down on Tuesday

2011-11-22T08:50:00.001-08:00

My name is fritz and I will be your trainer today

2011-11-21T08:46:00.001-08:00

Getting bushy

2011-11-20T06:09:00.001-08:00

Morning sunshine

2011-11-19T06:27:00.001-08:00

Freak Friday

2011-11-18T06:50:00.001-08:00

On the Thursday grind

2011-11-17T06:10:00.001-08:00

Only? Two weeks to go

2011-11-16T16:53:00.001-08:00

Looking like a social studies teacher

2011-11-15T17:04:00.001-08:00

Happy nov 14

2011-11-14T05:01:00.001-08:00

Respect mah

2011-11-13T06:22:00.001-08:00

Authoritah

Mr Saturday

2011-11-12T16:43:00.001-08:00

Saturday night's alright for rocking the pushbroom.

Friday face

2011-11-11T17:20:00.001-08:00

Almost forgot. Never fear.

Starting to get used to it

2011-11-10T07:18:00.001-08:00

Wednesday edition

2011-11-09T05:10:00.001-08:00

Looking fierce

2011-11-08T06:40:00.001-08:00

It is getting hard to take these without laughing

2011-11-07T04:42:00.001-08:00

Starting to look like Tobias Fünke

2011-11-06T05:01:00.001-08:00

Mr mustache

2011-11-05T07:55:00.001-07:00

Latest progress.

Things I shouldn't like but do.

2011-10-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Getting my teeth cleaned. Yeah that's right. With the metal hooks and the aggressive flossing. I try to fall asleep when I go to the dentist, just to show how much it doesn't bother me. Daily flossing? Love it. Even some blood is nice - it's tells me I'm getting deep in there. I sort of like biting my nails, but lots of people like that. I read recently that nail and ice chewing is a mild form of Pica. No bezoars here.

Ever felt the back of a baby's leg? right behind the knee? Maybe it's just baby E, but there's a seriously weird fold there. Like a giant callus. So fun to feel that sucker.

Sore muscles. Like so sore you can't move. Then you take the heel of your hand and push really hard on that sore muscle, until it hurts so much you can't take it, then you push harder. Yeah that's good stuff right there.

Drinking nothing but coffee and not eating. This is probably downright unhealthy, but it sort of gets the whole body buzzing with no lethargy. I don't really do this often, it's more by accident. But when it does happen, it's amusing.

Gossip Girl. what? you don't like the adventures of Blair, Chuck, Serena, Dan and Nate? I left out Vanessa because she's just annoying. I only pretend to not like it so M will let me watch something else. It seems to be an entertaining, yet completely implausible show. At least it keeps my attention. And Chuck Bass is Roger Sterling's long lost grandson. He's terrific.

Nightmares. Every once in a while I get one that is so bizarre and twisted, I think I know where the human centipede guy is coming from. It's nice to know the brain can take a wrong turn now and then. They usually wake me up and stay with me for weeks, making me wonder what the heck is wrong with me. I love knowing that we're not all 100% in control, despite appearances.

Dubstep. This is probably the only one that I seriously questioned putting on the list. Dubstep has to be the tobacco of music. The first 15 times I heard it, I thought it was terrible and stupid. Then I had one more taste and I started to see why someone could like it. I don't crave it all the time, but every once in a while I sneak off and fire up some Skrillex when no one is looking. woobwoobwoobbangbangbangwoobwoobwoob. I feel like I'm in the matrix. I also love me some bad rap like Rick Ross and Wiz Khalifa. No lil wayne. I tried, but weezy got nothing for me.

Mullet cars. Just something about the cars I envied when I was 6. I hadn't even heard about an Aston Martin, but I definitely knew Knight Rider and the Dukes of Hazzard drove. I suppose mullet cars is a pejorative term, but I saw a lot of mullets in those cars and the two will always be associated.

Airplane turbulence. I don't know why everyone freaks out about this. There's 100% nothing you can do about it. If it's your time, it's your time. Deal with it. Being scared isn't going to get you out alive. Plus, going down laughing like a maniac is pretty badass if you ask me.

how to take out the trash

2011-10-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

This crude comic may look familiar to some, and others not. Just something I am playing around with...

Sponge B wetpants

2011-10-17T05:27:00.000-07:00

This is going to be borderline repetitive for anyone who has raised or is currently raising a child, but since this is my first rodeo, I am entitled.
Easy E has a new trick that he only performs with dad, which is to coat me with a thick morning vomit every so often. He eats his bottle, smiles, gets up on the shoulder to burp, I feel the burp gears turning against my shoulder, but instead of gently belching in my ear, he arches his back like a champion loogie spitter, unfurls a huge wet burp and with a 7oz finishing move of warm sticky milk, which seems to come out in a single continuous slug rather than several wet splashes. It's almost like it is encased in a slime membrane, only to disintegrate on contact with me or the chair.
The first time this happened he got it mostly down my back. A nice warm feeling yes, but a quick puke shower is not very satisfying. The next time he managed to get some in my mouth and my ear. Not cool man. And yesterday he dumped most of it down the front of my shirt and into my lap, making me the only person in the room with sopping wet pants, for a change.
These events do not bother him. I do not share his enthusiasm for purging.

new idea

2011-10-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

What if people could continuously grow teeth, like sharks do? Not that it wouldn't be painful and annoying when one went bad and had to be fixed or removed. I'm not trying to put dentists or dental hygiene companies out of business. Maybe denture manufacturers can go, but there would be a whole new industry in tooth pulling and prosthetics while the new teeth came in. I think it would be awesome.

new stuff

2011-10-06T12:41:00.001-07:00

So many ideas swirling around, it’s impossible to get them all into one coherent theme, so I’m just going to do this stream of consciousness thing…

Baby E has some new tricks:

The AM projectile vomit on dad. Yeah. In the mouth, in the ear, down the shirt. Everywhere but the towel I have draped over my shoulder. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. Sometimes it goes on the towel, but COME ON – it’s hanging veritically, he’s puking horizontally, what do I expect? A magic Velcro-vomit? I need a miracle vacuum towel to instantly adhere liquid to absorbent material instead of watching it all roll off like the towel was made of microfiber. Boooo.

He sort of rolls around.

He sleeps without his magic swing. This was a scary few days.

He has noticed my iphone and stops eating when I browse and feed. This is unacceptable.

Lots of toe, nose, hair, shirt and mouth grabbing. His hands are cold and slimy.

He reliably blows out the diapers. If he did the deed more than once every 2 days I think they could be contained, but this is not the case.

My new favorites – Spotify for it’s queues and Pandora for it’s genres. And I don’t even really like music. Saves me a lot of time scouring youtube for music.

Is there anything that is a bigger giveaway for your low station in life than a prominently displayed dreamcatcher? I’m not saying everyone with a dreamcatcher in their life is picking flies out of their hair every day, but I don’t see many of the top 1% rocking out with the dreamcatcher on the rear view mirror. I’m just saying.

What are you supposed to do when someone says you like someone else, but that comparison is not flattering? We have a new guy at work, and people all say I look like him and vice versa. He happens to rock the same haircut and similar eyewear. But is that where the comparison stops? Ok maybe I do look like Moby. This is where I start growing the beard.

My home gym equipment is all failing. My other pullup bar broke, but only with minimal falling this time. This is not acceptable. To get around this, I did some agility drills in the field near our unit the other day. Nothing shady about a guy running around in the dark at 6AM in a field. Nope. I only hope that no one sics their doggy on me.

And that’s about it. Weak. I really thought I had more. Maybe again soon.

Come on Irene

2011-08-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

With two natural disasters in less than a week, I am officially preparing for zombies next.

We lost power for a couple of hours, saw some rain and wind. I missed an online fantasy draft because of the power outage. It was pretty sad. All of that is nothing compared to what I saw this morning. It was almost too devastating to believe:

The garlic bulb I planted so many weeks ago has been knocked over, the leaves are all sad and droopy. I don't think insurance will cover this. We can only rebuild and move on.

Here taste this

2011-08-18T09:29:00.001-07:00

The other day, after returning from work, M handed me a baby bottle and asked if I thought it tasted bad. I took a sniff, didn’t smell bad. I even took a taste. It wasn’t terrib.. oh my GOD what is that get it Out Now!! IT IS STUCK TO MY MOUTH NOTHING TASTES GOOD DEATH ROTTING PLAGUE ROADKILL*&%# It really was unlike anything I had ever tasted. It started off kind of sweet, sort of like vanilla ice cream, then it took an almost savory note, sesame-like then diverting into pure copper/soap/funk. It coated my mouth, no matter how much I spit or gargled, it wouldn’t go away. It only made whatever I tried to mask the flavor with taste bad as well. So it wasn’t good.. I really don’t have the words to describe the flavor any more. Even thinking about it give me goosebumps and the weird saliva rush before you boot everywhere. Turns out E thought the same and while he didn’t cry or freak out, he definitely rejected the bottle no matter how hard M tried to get him to take it. Now the question was, how did it get that way? It was one of the frozen milk samples. We’d been feeding these to him for a while, there hadn’t been a problem. We tested the frozen stuff weeks ago when M read that sometimes it can taste bad. We thawed some and E took it fine. No problem. M had been defrosting them in chronological order, so we knew if they all of a sudden started tasting bad, we’d be able to find them. We tried a few more from the next scheduled frozen sample and BLEAGH MAKE OITSTOPAHHHHH. This was going to be a problem. What happened? We took great care to make sure it stayed cold. It didn’t taste or smell like spoiled milk, so I didn’t believe there was a temperature fail in there. It wasn’t very old, maybe 6 weeks, maybe less. Something weird was happening. Luckily we were at the end of May’s supply and had a schedule pickup/dropoff for June’s milk. I had high hopes. So Monday was my day off, I had E for the duration and my task was to find where the ‘good’ milk started. I believed it was M’s diet, maybe she had some garlic or curry or something that she ate that took a few days to leave the system and we’d be back in business. We had an entire month’s supply of frozen milk, maybe 50 bags’ worth, so a little more than one per day. I stared out thawing 3 at a time, careful not to let them get too warm, I didn’t want any ‘good’ ones to go bad by my hand. I set up fresh bottles for the milk to go in, I had spoons for tasting, I had grape juice to wash any bad taste away. First taste was bad, I expected that. I still wasn’t used to the flavor, so it was most unpleasant. I went to the next bag, still more awful. I think this one was actually worse. I gagged. My stomach retched. I had swallowed some. The sneaky bad taste didn’t come right away. It took almst ten seconds to set in. By the time I realized it was terrible, I’d already taken a second taste to verify, since the first taste wasn’t terrible and then it hit and built and didn’t stop getting worse. It coated my tounge, it got in my throat it was everywhere. I had to step up my anti-fouling procedures. I got a toothbrush, I got fresh coffee beans. After each wretched taste, I scrubbed my tounge, drooling the pre-puke drool, deeply inhaling coffee aromas to get the funk out of my sinuses. The nasty milk was all over the kitchen sink because the flimsy storage bags weren’t exactly pour friendly. The reek was everywhere. I was only 2 days into the month. I tried to discern what a ‘good’ bag looked like versus a ‘bad’ bag. I went deep into June – the 18^th, that was sure to be good. Gong. Wretched. Horrible. So did that mean that every bag from 6/2 – 6/18 was bad? That was almost 30 bags. I couldn’t arbitrarily throw them all out. M would kill me. I had to test them all. Wait.. I had to test them all?? Do you know how insanely BS it is knowing you have to repeatedly taste the worst taste in the world and you have no idea when it might stop? I was furious and profoundly sad at the same time. M suffered quite a bit to build up this store. Was all her work for naught? What was E going to eat? Why had this all gone so wrong? Why did it have to taste to bad, why did I get to taste it? When would it end!?! SO I started in, defrosting bag after bag. Gagging, wretching, spitting howling mad. E watched me with a curious look on his face. Innocent to the suffering I endured for his welfare. M occasionally ventured down to ask how it was going. The she would laugh as I described how bad it was. It was strangely hilarious. The empty bags piled up in the garbage, the world’s nastiest empties, never to be rivaled by any frat house recycling bin. My senses grew stronger or immune, because I stopped actually tasting how bad the milk all was. I had a hard time telling if it truly was bad, I had to take bigger tastes, gargling it like a fine, foul single malt, never swallowing. At one point, I couldn’t tell if the taste was permanently in my mouth. I needed a better plan. M had a new bottle of milk in the fridge. I tasted it. It was fine. I took a whiff. It smelled like… nothing. I took a big whiff of the nasty milk and there was a distinct smell. Not terrible on it’s own, but the association was enough to make it distinctly unbearable. Now I could detect bad milk without tasting it. Unfortunately I had to stick my nose in the bags and huff them like a shoe glue addict, deeply inhaling several times, getting the distinct aromas and molecules into my sinuses, only to replace it with coffee to overwhelm my senses back to normal. Bag after bag we went through. One of the bags had a leak. When I came back to the defrosting station, the bowl was milky white. I smelled it before I saw it. The horror. I have read that smell is the sense most related to memory, the oldest sense we evolved, the one most deeply ingrained in our brains. Now I had damaged mine with foul milk. I will always associate diesel exhaust with my father’s old diesel VW rabbit. Burning leaves and fresh cut grass have their seasonal associations. Even wet dogs have pleasant memories. I now have a new one to add to the catalogue. There is an end in sight here. I did eventually get to a good bag. There was no sweet smell of hell-taste in a bag from June 25^th. I had to be sure. I tasted it, waited for the foul and… nothing. I waited longer, Maybe it was sneaking up on me and… nothing. I was ecstatic. I had another bag defrosting, was that a winner too? It was!. Unfortunately I cannot assume the rest are winners. We have to taste/smell every on from now on. The theory is that there is a statute of limitations on the freezer milk and it’s about 6 weeks. Further research has shown that we can (and could have) prevented this by adding more steps to the process, but that’s a pain in the ass. But we are going to do the extra steps now. It’s all chemistry in the end. Now I have to go get something to eat to get this horrible smell and taste out. Even thinking about it makes me frown.

Fallin off the ceiling...

2011-08-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

Not that Lionel Ritchie song. I think he was dancin' in the ceiling. Maybe after he dances, he falls. But I fell. I good 5 or 6 feet. Yesterday at 7am or thereabouts the hook in the ceiling that had previously bore my weight during my home gym acrobatics for the last few years gave way, sending me crashing to earth, or at least the loft floor.
I often thought about what would happen if it did let loose. Would I die? unlikely. People fall from 5-6 feet all the time and they don't usually die. Maybe if I landed on my head, vertically, pile-driver style, I could die. Or maybe if I landed on some rocks or into a pit of tigers. But then I am dead, and so be it. Maybe I would be wounded, paralyzed. That would really really, suck. I was genuinely afraid of that. But then again, people crash around like that all the time - it's called sports. Hockey, football, MMA, racing they all see guys crashing every day. It's rare. I took my chances. And if something happened, well I wasn't naked or hanging out with reprobates. No one would say anything bad about it.
But then it did happen. I was doing this sort of inverted pull-up when there was a loud SNAP. I saw the hook go flying out of the ceiling. I saw the loops of the rock rings go slack. I saw the ceiling sort of twist and invert. I felt a big pain in my heel as I hit something on my way down then there was a really loud BANG. M happened to be watching. I knew she wasn't going to enjoy this. I think that was my first thought. Then I made sure I could breathe. Check. Moved my hands, then my feet, then my head/neck. Nothing seemed to hurt yet. My lower back was starting to get numb, so I knew I had landed there. And maybe my head? It was ringing. I could roll over maybe. I didn't hear any crack or snapping, so I didn't believe anything was broken. I rolled over, took a few more deep breaths and.. nothing. I was fine. The first thing I thought was "Wow.... that was F*****G CRAZY" and I started laughing really hard. I really haven't felt that great in a while. The adrenaline was incredible.
Back when I skied, in the last few years I had a number of occasions when I thought was going to die or at least really injure myself. I remember small details about all of these crashes, even though they probably happened in a second or two, the memories go on forever. The ceiling fall is like that. I didn't have my life flash before me, but I definitely had a lot of thought going on in a very short burst. I suppose it is good that I don't have these life threatening events too often. On the one hand every single last one of them burns like a hot coal in my mind, a more vivid memory than almost anything else. But on the other, I'd hate for the pursuit of one to be the last thing I do. So I will stick to more mundane stuff for now. Until I turn 44 and start having a midlife crisis. The I'll probably start running with the bulls or skydiving naked from an aeroplace... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkT_jkJHc0&feature=player_detailpage#t=27s

old habits break easy

2011-08-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

Maybe it’s E, maybe it’s the lack of sleep (related to E, but which isn’t technically true, I get plenty of sleep), maybe I am just losing my edge, but I’ve broken down in a number of ways recently. And really I don’t care one bit.

Cable TV. Yep we have real cable now. DVR, HD channels, hundreds of them. More entertainment than I can possible consume, even given an imaginary ‘reset the day’ button where I could go back and start every day over again, I would die before exhausting an entire day’s programming. Oddly, I have barely watched it, despite my extended summer vacation of sorts. Part of the reason is that the TV is in M’s ‘office’, but the real reason is, that there is nothing on that I am the least bit interested in watching. NFL coverage was nice to watch on ESPN, but that’s about it. The reason we got the new hookup was the old provider’s internet kept dying. With two people working at home, not a good idea. For the most part I am happy with the install, except for the installer guy who commented on the orphaned guest bed in the loft, saying it looked ‘wicked comfy’ and asked ‘if the baby slept there’… Errr….

Social Networks. I joined google+. I still will not join the face one. I am too late to the party on the face site and I still don’t get the point. I just figured I’d have to join one sooner or later. We’ll see if anyone else joins and uses google+.

Crappy sneakers. Yes, I finally decided I don’t need expensive sneakers anymore. In fact, the cheaper the better. I buy new sneakers maybe once every 5 years, so why try and look cool with my shiny new Nikes that are 4 years old? It looks ridiculous. So I got some epically lame kicks, that sort of look cool in a retro hipster way.

Changing clothes. It’s easy to wear the same shorts for a week or more when you don’t leave the house. I only have to change my shorts when E does some business on me, which is getting rarer. I did go into the office a couple of days this week, so clothing changes were required there. It really felt weird.

Truer words

2011-07-28T05:41:00.001-07:00

http://i.imgur.com/vHLx5.jpg

Thanks to A for this nugget of gold.

This other one I found on my own.

http://www.theredneckmommy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Redneck-vs-Baby.jpg

9:21

2011-07-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

Nine minutes and twenty one seconds. That's how long it took me to suck down 5.5oz from one of E's bottles. He can do the same in around ten minutes. My whole neck was cramping up, I had blisters on the inside of my lips, it was miserable. I did it with water, he does it with milk. I get points for not vomiting or crapping my pants. It was ridiculously hard and I will not be doing it again.

Another fun thing to try is answering telemarketers in character. For example, I received a call from 'blocked number' and answered as a pirate. "Arr.. who be this? Arrr this be Captain B arrr". It turned out to be our confused property manager. It sometimes backfires. I have also recently accused the caller of barking at me and then asking what the (non existent) ringing noise was. I have plans to tell the next wave of political callers about my miraculous conversion to a particular faith, and see how long they stay on the line (only if they are for the side I disagree with, of course). And any fundraisers, you're going to get me asking YOU for money. See how much fun that will be. muwhahahaha

House-man

2011-06-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

NOW I see where daytime TV and things like QVC come from... In the brief periods where E is not eating, howling, getting changed or playing, or things like the dishes or laundry are getting done, I really don't know what to do with myself. There are some exercises I do now and then, but these cannot be done infinitely. I can eat, which takes some preparation and cannot be easily abandoned if the lil man calls. Or I can screw off. Case in point yesterday I got caught up in an Amazon.com labyrinth, trading down purchases to get more and more for less and less. At one point though, M called down and asked if I saw Whitey Bulger was captured. Incredibly, I had not. Reading news requires a bit of concentration and time, which is at a wicked premium. It is much easier to find activities that require neither, like aimlessly cruising around online instead.

I read today that Whitey mocked Boston media members he recognized and then talked some trash to the judge at his hearing. The man has coconuts, I will grant him that. To be 81 and still getting this much attention, not bad for the all time FBI hide and seek champion.

I did manage to accomplish something else yesterday, lest everyone think I'm going start getting really wierd. I went grocery shopping at 8am. Surprisingly there were other people with the same idea. Some of them I even recognized. Our unemployed(? he rarely shaves, wears a lot of white T-shirts in public, and I hadn't seen him at the train in a while) neighbor was there, along with a lot of other middle aged guys, by themselves. When I worked at the grocery store in Brighton, the bachelor hour was 8pm on a weeknight. out here in the sticks, it's 8am.

Oh and to the old lady staring daggers at me for buying a lot of groceries early in the day and screwing up your 4 Skybar/4 Eclipse gum purchase - who eats Skybars? what is wrong with you? I don't even know what's in those things. I'm glad to see the 70s never ended for you.

Other things I have learned recently

2011-06-21T09:36:00.001-07:00

1. Salad spinners make excellent centrifugal drying tools for baby bottle parts that aren’t quite dry coming out of the dishwasher.

2. I enjoy spying on my neighbors from E’s bedroom window. It’s a bit of a ‘Rear Window” situation since I spend so much time in there.

3. The less I am able to be online, the more disconnected I feel. Eventually, I may become completely ignorant of the world around me. At least I’ll fit in more that way.

4. As soon as I sit down for a task that takes longer than 5 minutes E starts crying. Case in point. I started this entry 4 minutes ago and he’s freaking the F out. It’s a short one today.

8lbs of poo in a 6lb bag

2011-06-20T09:00:00.001-07:00

That’s what this is, sort of. The bag doesn’t have a weight limit, but it does weigh 8lbs, or what baby E weighed when he arrived a little over a month ago. He does this every 5 days or so. It’s been 6 and a half wild weeks since M woke me up at 2:30 and informed me that I I did indeed have time for a shower, but we were probably going to the hospital that Friday morning in May. And here it is, the last day of Spring. So what are my thoughts on this?

It’s mostly better than I expected. I must work with and be related to a bunch of drama queens, because everyone swore a baby birth was a cataclysm on my life from which I would not recover. It hasn’t been that bad so far. Sure I wake up now and then and stare at a howling red faced gas machine, but that’s ok, it’s what I signed up for. I say only mostly better than expected because there are some things I was not informed of that would have been good to know ahead of time.

1. The wild opinions of healthcare professionals. I used to have a high opinion of healthcare professionals. I suppose when it comes to lifesaving measures, I still do have a measure of regard and respect for them. However, when it comes to the mundane and possible nonsensical questions of new parents, the response I have received is less than stellar. Maybe I am no good at the boring parts of my job too? Maybe I am condescending and dismissive of the irritants and ‘this is not a problem’ problems I deal with? Nurses, administrators, physicians – all of them have been found wanting. Just about the only people I’ve had a semi satisfying experience with has been the Insurance company. Welcome to the new bizarre world. Maybe this is part of the cataclysm.

2. Everyone else acting crazy. Some people warned me that my wife and baby momma could potentially lose 15% of her mind in this baby process, and that I would need to make several long-term adjustments to deal with it. This piece of advice has been complete and utter rubbish. M has been, if anything, even better than before. Sure there was some mild crying initially, but things are much, much better now, as I was certain they would be. If anything, I think many other people are treating us differently than before and it’s a little weird.

3. The amount of stuff required to transport an 8lb human. Why does someone who weighs 5% of what I do require 500% more stuff to get around? No one told me I needed a panel truck to take a weekend trip and I am not sure this situation will get any better. I refuse to buy a larger vehicle. Maybe I will start wearing smaller clothing?

Those are my first impressions. It’s nothing that hasn’t been said before, but I’m sure people were curious about how I felt about this sort of thing. Maybe.

I can say unequivocally that I enjoy being a father, possibly more than I thought I would. I was a little worried that I’d start assuming that slope-shouldered, paunchy ‘dad’ stance with some pleated shorts and white sneakers. I’d grow some regrettable facial hair and be only able to talk about what the local sports teams were doing or the weather or my new snow tires. I’d have no idea what the wife did with the kids and step in now and then to be a ‘dad’ when I felt like it. If you see this guy coming, shoot me. Or at least hit me with the nearest heavy object. I can’t really see myself not being dad for a long, long time and I like that idea.

Part of the reason I have been able to get into this so much is that I’ve been spending a lot more time at home. A whole lot more. Like all the time. I haven’t been to work in 2 weeks. And I’m taking yet more time as I type. A could of weeks into this adventure M and I discussed how things were going and it seemed like the status quo wasn’t working, so I took advantage of Bill Clinton’s FMLA (thanks Bubba!) and will be spending lots more time with E and M while she goes back to work a bit early and I don’t. When I do go back, I will try and change my role a bit so I can spend more time with these guys, possibly working from home, and expanding the ol’ horizons. I’ve been doing the same thing more or less for almost 8 years now. Maybe I can do something else?

The worst smartphone in the world is a baby monitor. I know it’s not really a phone, but it’s sort of shaped like one, can be made by a handset maker, conveys basic information at a glance (time, date, temp) and like the worst of all email/texting/phone monsters, squawks uncontrollably at the worst possible times and is entirely un-ignorable. Well, you CAN ignore it at your own peril, but I choose not to as much as possible. And it’s not like an annoying email or even an ‘urgent’ call. Those are usually initiated by an adult, maybe even a semi-educated one. The baby monitor is initiated by well, a baby and rationales for being quiet or going away do not apply.

So that’s about it for now. I have a 6 week old who is going to wake up in 20 minutes and look for some food and maybe new clothes. And I love it.

Finally

2011-04-18T07:20:00.001-07:00

My bathroom project is finally (mostly) complete. It started with a sink (these things usually do for some reason). M and I got it in Montreal. It was amusing explaining to the customs agent that we were importing a sink. It was not amusing carrying it around Montreal on a hot summer day. We had the sink and the original bathroom. It started out like this.

The scruffy white areas above the sink and to the right (where the light switches are) were covered in this weak tile. Nothing horrible, but nothing exciting either. The tile looked like this:
We needed a countertop. The wooden vanities in the sink store looked nice, but buying these pre-fabricated was too expensive for my cheap ass, so we found 8 feet of Virgina rock maple butcher block counter top for a decent price. I ordered and waited and waited and waited. Eventually it arrived and I barely fit it in the Subaru. I drove home, trying not to be decapitated by 110 lbs of sliding wood. We got it home and it sat behind the couch for a few months while we decided how to approach it. I did my research, decided I could handle it and went looking for tools. I asked the local tool rental place about what I needed and they told me it would be easier to ask a local woodworker. Great. I liked that idea. I called a few and waited and waited and waited and decided if this joker didn't want my money, hey I have 8 feet of this stuff, why not at least try? So I turned the dining room table into a saw horse, made my cuts and went all-in. It was mostly good going. The wood was intended to be very hard and cut-resistant and was generally slow going. The hardest part was getting everything straight. Some of the cuts came out at funny angles. I borrowed a hand planer flattened those edges amish-tyle, but without the sweet beard or suspenders. M thought we should add a sidesplash to the backsplash, so I ripped a sidesplash out of the backsplash. This was not fun with hand tools. It took the better part of a day but it got done.

Next up was color and sealing. I don't need it to be food-safe, so a more industrial finish was acceptable. The fumes were a concern so I needed a good weather day to do it outside. A couple coats of cherry stain got a nice rich color. Th urethane came next. I read the instructions and started cleaning the countertop with mineral spirits, like the can said. Unfortunately it got all cloudy and started looking bad. If I read the can further along, I would have realized the mineral spirits came before the stain and I had just un-did some of the previous staining I just finished. A third coat was needed. We banged that out, got two coats of urethane on and it looked something like this:

So the wood was done. This weekend was the final assembly. After last weekend's toilet and vulgarity explosion I was not looking forward to another 5 hours on my back with water spraying in my face, but this needs to be done before the Rooster arrives. I jumped in after an enormous brunch and a gallon of coffee. Demolition was relatively fast. Once I fitted everything, I realized this bathroom didn't have 90 degree angles on the corners either. Yippee. The counter and back/side splashes were installed. The faucet was fitted, the sink was adhered and the last step was cutting and installing the wall paneling. we elected to go for a bronzed-looking metallic finish. It sort of matches the faucet. I think this stuff is intended for ceilings, but it can work on the walls. It's not cheap and kind of unpleasant to cut cleanly. Eventually we got it done with minimum destruction. The final product is here. I'm happy.

The hot/cold lines aren't exactly perfect. I bought the wrong sizes and my retrofit of the existing lines didn't really work, so it's one more trip to Lowe's and then we're done. Finally.

New Stuff

2011-03-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

I know I’m going to look back at this and think I was delusional, but right now, on March 8^th2011, I really don’t believe my life has changed all that much since learning I was about to become a father. The circumstances were not accidental, it is something I have thought about for many years, and I feel M and I are fairly well prepared to handle the eventualities of it all. Media portrayals of impending parenthood are usually filled with dread, consternation, anxiety or fill in the blank fear. I think I did have a rough sleep the first few nights, realizing that my life was going to change at some distant point in the future, but these days I sleep fine. I assumed there would be great upheaval or general craziness. I’m not complaining. I know a lot of people have medical situations that are out of their control. I’m referring to the complete lifestyle adjustment that I’ve seen happen when that first positive test result appears. For me, it just hasn’t happened.

What has been upended is our house. Sure we’d been a little slow in making changes over the past few years. I don’t think this was due to laziness, but more a sense of contentment with how things were. We had a big rush in the early days, covering up taste specific color choices the previous owners selected. There were some furniture buying expeditions and the semi monthly trips to Homegoods for ‘treasures’. Exotic vacations were the primary source of the various decorative items in the house. Every so often we’d decide something that sat in the corner disused was due for a charity run. Lately though, M (with some help from me) has been on a tear. A new working schedule has allowed copious unstructured time to comb less frequently used areas of the house, uncovering great veins of stuff that we just don’t need.

TV’s ‘American Pickers’ profiles two guys who look for houses with piles of junk in the yards. They pull up in their van, ask if they can look around and start asking what the owner (frequently an elderly man with a ratty hat) will sell his treasure for. Many times, after removing years of weeds or other layers of rusty junk, the pickers will present the old guy with something he hasn’t seen in years. At which point he remembers how much he cherishes that rusty bicycle and refuses to part with it for any price. I am fascinated by this show partly because I see a bit of myself in these old guys. I think it would be great to have a big barn filled with old tractors and jukeboxes. I’d plan on cleaning them up and displaying them or maybe selling one if I felt it was worth something. Realistically, I don’t have the time or inclination to do anything remotely along those lines. What seems quaint and fun when portrayed as old coots with valuable antiques could be presented just as easily as crushing mental disorder if someone decided to call them a hoarder. What’s the difference between an old lady in a house filled with porcelain dolls and some old farmer with a barn full of motorcycle parts? The problem is, I didn’t have any tractors, only boxes of wires, piles of broken picture frames, bags of curtain rod hardware, old magazines, older clothes, mementos from past jobs – nothing I remembered I had or anything remotely valuable. It all had to go. Rooms have been painted, framed art and pictures have been relocated. New art is up. I like the gallery and rotating display aspect of this. Much as I howl and complain during the course of these minor renovations, the results I have to agree with.

My bathroom renovation is also sort of moving along. I have decided to use butcher block for a counter top to go with a sink M and I picked up on our travels. Knowing my potential for destruction, I bought a much larger counter top than I needed and decided to cut it down to fit. In case I ruined one section, I had more than enough to start over. Someone as a local hardware store suggested I turn the job over to a local woodworker. I thought this was a good idea and contacted one. He never returned my call and in the meantime, I started to get creative. I turned the dining room table into a sawhorse, rigged a vacuum cleaner to the saw and started cutting. M was and continues to be skeptical. I have the final counter shape and size finished. I even used some of the scrap to make a backsplash. A sidesplash was also needed, so I hand-sawed 30 inches of 3” thick rock maple into two 1.5” thick pieces. This was not fun. 5% of the way through I had serious doubts. There was no turning back. There are some legendary tales of certain members of my family undertaking borderline foolish tasks when an easier way is available, and I seem to be no exception. It got done. I am proud of it so far. The final piece is to cut the hole for the sink. This could be my Waterloo, Barbarossa, Spanish Armada moment when it all goes down in flames, or sawdust. If this fails I probably won’t detonate completely, but I will definitely seek professional help. For the wood. Not for me. I don’t need that kind of help.

This was a legendary winter for us. I won’t get into tales of woe and shoveling, but I will offer one piece of advice about breaking ice off of your roof. Make sure there’s nothing underneath the icicles when you start swinging away. This includes anything that might be hanging on the side of your house. It seems that, similar to people jumping off buildings and pinwheeling off the sides as they plummet, large icicles do the same thing to houses and combing through snowbanks looking for shattered vent shrouds CSI-style is not very exciting. I’m sure the next home inspector will have something to say about our unusual looking vent shroud when it comes time to sell. I am hopeful, however for our shrubbery. Given that the last few bushes we purchased failed to thrive in the wintertime, I decided to take a more proactive approach to saving them. When the big snows came, I carefully covered the smaller bushes with garbage bags and then dug them out and uncovered them when the sun came out. Eventually this became untenable as the snowstorms piled up and I could no longer locate the bushed to rescue them. Eventually they emerged from the receding piles and for the most part they do not look like they spent the last two months buried in plastic in the dark under feet of snow. The bushes out front I cannot say the same for. They caught the brunt of the snow shoveled off of the walkway and look distinctly like someone dumped 400lbs of snow on them. The branches are mostly intact, but the footprint is more along the lines of flat instead of tree-like.

Only the spring will tell how well they handled the winter. Right about the same time we’re getting the first tips of the lilies we’ll get the Rooster hatching. This I am genuinely excited for, much in the same way a kid gets excited for Christmas or the first day of school. I probably won’t bawl or throw up though. We’ve stocked up on lots of bizarre baby gear with European sounding names. Exotic materials and clever designs all but guarantee a first round draft pick or an Ivy League scholarship, don’t they? I’m already planning adventures and activities for the little achievement machine, dreams that I hope won’t be dashed by temper tantrums or vastly differing interests. If the little man decides he really likes flower arranging I am in big trouble. I have no way of predicting these things. He seems to like kicking and thrashing about a lot. He likes it when M eats, or at least he thrashes more when food is involved. I hope he likes books – M and I have a lot of books. I hope he’s adventurous with food, but I don’t care if he isn’t. It’s easy to boil up some plain pasta if he doesn’t like whatever masterpiece M and I prepare for ourselves. Athleticism isn’t required, but it will help. He’ll probably be taller than both of us. This does worry me. I know how much I ate and still do eat. We spend a lot on food. Our cart of food for two people looks just as full as the cart with three kids hanging off of it. I can only imagine how muc more food we will be buying. I don’t know if M is prepared for it. I have tried to explain how gallons of milk disappear overnight, how cereal is eaten by the box, how I was rarely full and always hungry, but not for lack of food or eating. There was never enough. School will be interesting. I guess what I’m really hoping for is a 6foot plus nerd with a quick first step or decent putting stroke.

Yes I said nerd. I am a nerd. I’ll admit it. Another person came up in conversation and the nerd label was tossed out and I couldn’t stop laughing. Nerd fit them perfectly. Then someone pointed out that I, too, was a nerd. I denied it for a bit, searching for contradictory evidence, but I could find none. I like nerdy things. Maybe not in the comic books and role playing video game sort of way, but I love NOVA, The New Yorker, corny music, quirky movies, interesting cars, sports minutia, bow ties, and financial news. I read geeky blogs, I work in a very nerdy area of the economy, my friends are sort of nerdy, I make nerdy jokes that get lots of laughs. In high school I was in several plays and was on the academic challenge team. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle. Never driven a convertible. Never rocked a mullet. Never beaten a stranger up. I’ve never played a guitar or surfed. I was a terrible skateboarder. I’m no good at basketball. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get the cool clothes I wanted when I was younger, a fact that I somewhat feel good about now. I don’t like underground music or poetry, waxed cotton pants, civil war style beards or other hipster nonsense. I have no tattoos and other than watches, no jewelry. I’ve never worn Drakkar Noir or Cool Water or any other supposed aphrodisiac cologne. I don’t tan. I Can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t even hear the correct lyrics of songs. I like my glasses and I’m not visiting Dr Robert Leonard for that ridiculous teenager hair he touts. I guess Popeye the Sailor had it right all along.

The Sequel

2010-12-17T06:42:00.000-08:00

I like tests. Especially ones I’ve studied for. They’re a nice little chance to announce to myself, “Hey, you’re pretty awesome, and this here piece of paper proves it”. And if some slackjaw happens to be eavesdropping on what I got on the test, well, it provides them a little reinforcement for who is awesome and who isn’t. Early test taking ability hasn’t translated into unfathomable wealth and influence. Since I don’t get to take many test any more, I’ve gotten better and predicting the future and I’m pretty sure that isn’t going to happen. My wife however, has been taking a few tests. No, M isn’t going for her MA (Masters of Awesome), but she is going for her NM (New Mom) certification. Back on September 1, M passed the first level and it’s pretty much been a secret since. This has been hard to do. Various family members are eager for new additions. I guess the current members are old, stale, boring, rude and possibly smell bad. I definitely see how adding a newborn and requisite add new smells, spills, noise and chaos makes everything better. It had been hard not to say anything until the ‘right’ time. M is a good soldier, feeling ill and tired and hungry and not complaining very much at all. I think if I were hungover for more than 2 days (my previous unenjoyable record), I would start to get surly. M is a rockstar so far. Chewing on giant vitamins, getting lots of sleep, eating well (sort of), all the good stuff. We started looking at baby strollers a few weeks back. They look different from the stroller I had. I think I had a roller skate with a broom handle and an old handbag for me to rest in. The new ones come with heated cupholders and all wheel drive. I hope I get to make it into a go-kart at some point when it is no longer needed, since it will probably end up costing what a small used car would. But I digress. M and I decided we wanted to know the sex of the little person, and we learned last week that it will be a boy. So we will be having a son first. I was a first born son, my father was and I believe my grandfather was as well. Prior to that it was a law that all men had sons first so we will just believe it goes on until the beginning of time. I have generated my sequel. My hope is that he will be a Godfather II, Beverly Hills Cop 2, or Empire Strikes Back – type sequel. That is, one generally regarded as better than the first and not any of the myriad forgettable, regrettable second takes that we’ve all come to loathe. I have acquired 33 years of big mistakes and I plan on sharing each and every one with the hope that he will avoid these and make even more epic ones on his own, provided he does not end up on the front page of the NYTimes for a billion dollar swindle. The happy first birthday will be on or around May 11, 2012, We don’t have any names yet. Recent rejected nominations are: Rooster, Thump, Tasker and Ace.

In other sequel news Fast and Furious and Pirates of the Carribiean are coming out with new editions (the fifth and fourth, respectively). I have enjoyed both series quite a bit and plan on enjoying these in all their overblown cheesy and bad taste glory.

Happy turkey day

2010-11-24T11:55:00.000-08:00

The world waited nervously. A brave band of men who labor underground were trapped with no hope of escape. The tools they used on their daily journeys to the center of the earth were useless to grant them their freedom. They had food and water, but the prognosis for escape was slim, if any. We watched their progress from afar, but there wasn’t much we could do to help them. If they did manage to escape, would the outside still be hospitable to them? Today the last of them died. These were my own Chilean miners, an ant farm given as a gift from M for my birthday. I had an ant farm when I was younger. It was the classic sand variety, with a green plastic farmhouse. The ants were pretty good for a while, but they ran out of food. I didn’t order new food. I thought pouring sugar in there would help. It didn’t. They died quickly without real food. The new and improved farm I received was made of space gel that was antimicrobial, edible and mildly water based. All the ants’ needs were taken care of. All I had to do was order ants (I could have also dug them out of the ground, but passed on Viking-style kidnapping and incarceration). The ants were around $5 for 25, or $6 for 50. If a little is good, more is better, right? They arrived in a few days, all piled up in little vials. The documents said they would last 3 months. I opened the farm, poked holes in the gel to get them started and poured in the miners. At first they seemed disoriented by the gel, maybe they were happy to be released from the vials. They didn’t seem interested in digging. I thought about poking bigger holes in the gel, but there were too many of them. As soon as the lid opened they all tried escaping. I decided to let them go at it unassisted. Soon enough they had constructed a labyrinth of tunnels, creating huge piles of gel pebbles. We could track their progress and watch them connect the tunnels with remarkable accuracy. It was incredibly cool. The documents they came with said to open the lid every few days to give them fresh air. This caused some problems due to the overcrowded conditions. As soon as I opened the lid, the fresh air gave the surface workers a huge rush of energy and they all charged for the exits. There were escapees. Trying to capture one ant was easy enough, but these ants had enormous teeth and bit ferociously. Capturing multiple ants and then getting them back in the farm without getting bitten and allowing more to escape was impossible. Escapes attempts were brutally crushed. Literally. Hammer fists squashed briefly enjoyed freedom. I felt great regret at my oppression, but letting them roam free all over the house was out of the question. What good is a kingdom with no subjects? Waste piles started to build. Ants are clean creatures. The do their business in designated areas. They carry out the dead and bury them in the wastelands. The instructions said to periodically clean out the piles. M suggested slowing them down by refrigerating the farm. Seemed like a good idea, until I forgot about the induced winter and they maybe got a little too cold. Cold ants are much more docile. I was able to clean out the piles with minimal jailbreaks and let summer return. Attrition brought overcrowding to acceptable levels, but I think they became bored with digging. New construction ground to a halt. They were mostly content to walk around, moving the gel pebbles into new piles for fallen comrades and landfill. Every few days I would sneak up on them and blow more air in, causing a great riot, just to make sure they knew who was the boss. The trouble really started when they decided to dig through the roof to freedom. The foam gasket that held the roof on tight became their focus. Piles of foam started to appear and the lid no longer fit as snugly as it once had. I think they started to eat the foam because more of the ants started to die. Today, 3 months after their ordeal began, it has ended. It was pretty close to the 90 day life expectancy the documentation described. It was a fascinating and educational experience and I look forward to another reign sometime in the future.

Can work be fun? On days when many parents work and their children do not have school, we have children in the office. I heard one theory that this is a plan by parents to have an excuse to leave because children are distracting in the workplace. I don’t have many memories about my own workplace experiences. I know my father worked in a top secret lab (or so it seemed) because we never got past the lobby, and even those experiences were rare. My mother’s office was a little more interactive. We had typewriters to play with and lots of conversation oriented adults who tended to scare the crap out of me. My own workplace is a little different. We have vast bowls of chips, candy and cookies. We have refrigerators stocked with all the juice and soda a kid could want. We have televisions and video games and couches. Today we had two small girls visiting. They found the candy bowl quickly, helping themselves at will. Some people tried teaching them how to play video games, unsuccessfully. We watched the sisters try and play a soccer game, waving the controllers and mashing buttons to no effect. They informed us this was their first time every playing a video game (the parent is clearly a very good parent). I asked the older one if she thought work was fun, since she gets to eat cookies and play video games. She confirmed that work was great. I can only imagine what she will say at school when asked what her father does for a living.

Lastly, a coworker here recently learned that he has squirrels in his attic. His wife heard them at a late hour and in the cold and dark he ventured upstairs with a driveway reflector stick (it’s pointed and weapon-like). He killed no squirrels, but did find s stash of acorns and chewed insulation. We discussed several solutions. He does not know how they are getting in, but he knows if they build a nest, that is a bad thing. A large scale chipper-dipper could work, but the internet explained that dead squirrels stink worse than most, so this is probably a bad idea. We looked at predator urine, but the smell issue is probably worse there. The final solution is to deploy a have-a-heart trap. The recommended bait, strangely enough, is peanut butter and jelly, the universal attractor. The question now is, what else will he catch? Try explaining to the authorities why there is a toddler in a cage in your attic…

daydreaming

2010-10-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

I wanna be a billionairrreee.. so freakin bad.. Let me just start out by saying how much I do not like this song. While I admire the young man’s ambition and desire for untold wealth, his plans for the loot I find lacking. He sings about about hanging out with Oprah and the Queen (of England?). Personally, a couple of older ladies are not my choice of company, no matter how much money they have. The cover of Forbes magazine? Who reads Forbes? I don’t think any of those people would be much fun to hang out with. What would I do with B-level wealth? To start, I need a car. For me, any of these would fit my needs: Ascari a10, Mosler mt900, Gumpert Apollo, Koenigsegg ccx, Pagani zonda or the SSC ultimate aero. These are all immensely impractical, exotic and expensive cars. They are deafeningly loud. They should never be driven on the street. But if I am a Billionaire, that’s what I’m doing. I don’t want a copy of another fancy car that any old schlub can pick up on the auto mile. I don’t want a car that anyone normal person would even begin to recognize. There are more famous and expensive cars out there, but I don’t want to drive the same car Simon Cowell drives. If I need 4 seats give me a Morgan EVA GT. It’s not quite a grocery hauler, but it’ll come close enough. I kind of want to fear for my life every time I think about stepping on the gas pedal hard. That’s what my money buys.

What do I wear in my crazy car? I need a mechanical belt buckle to hold up my pants. Check out the offerings by Roland Iten. I think you get two free belts with each purchase. They run about the cost of a new Camry. Why so spendy? It allows the big eaters among us to surreptitiously let out a little slack after a big meal. I’m sure it does some other things, but it’s cool. I need some pants –how about the 1880’s Levi Strauss & Co miner’s jeans? They have this awesome rivet way up high where the legs come together. I bet it gets real hot after a few hours sitting in front of the ol’ campfire. I wonder why they stopped that feature? These run about the cost of a 1^st class airline ticket from Boston to Los Angeles.

But back to the car thing. Where can I really drive my new cart? If I’m near New York, I’m going to the Monticello Motor Club. For those really rich guys who hate golf for some reason, this is the place. They take care of your cars, offer instruction and even have five star dining. If I’m in Spain, I’m going to the Ascari Race Resort. Wait – Ascari – Isn’t that the name of one of the loony cars above? Yes it is. Turns out Ascari was started by a super rich guy who wanted his own car and a special place to drive it. Now we have both. Excellent. I am sure there are some other fun places like this, but I am not rich enough to know about them yet. If I am not feeling exclusive, I will drive on the Nurburgring’s Nordschleife. It’s very German and even *gasp* socialist, allowing anyone (!) to use it. 22 euros per lap and you’re off an running. Good times. Keep in mind that crashing your car will incur charges and if a timing device is found in your smoldering remains, your insurance company will most likely not pay. Something about discouraging people from timing themselves or something. Damn European socialists don’t want me attempting to time myself at dangerous speeds in a one ton carbon fiber missile filled with flammable liquid.

Now the only question is – where will get my billions? I recently brewed up a batch of homemade old timey gingerale. It was yeasty and spicy and super carbonated and mostly better than I anticipated. I expected there to be exploded 1liter soda bottles all over the kitchen, but explosions were nonexistent. I also feared some sort of mold or biological disaster and ensuing gastrointestinal distress. Thankfully this was also avoided. Now I was the only one to taste the brew – M wanted no part – so I cannot say if it’s worth a billion bucks or even if it’s worth the $.80 in materials to make, but one can always hope.

Maybe I can write a book? I’ve whined about my literary ambitions before. I’ve read some good ones lately – ‘Heat’ about a magazine editor who goes to work for Mario Batali. Let’s just say my suspicions about Mr. Batali and restaurant kitchens in general were confirmed. An excellent read. ‘A son of the circus’ not at all what I expected from John Irving, one of my favorite authors. Not bad, a little slow to get in to but worth reading. I have recently realized that some of my favorite sports bloggers are not actually good at writing, and therefore since I am not a trained writer either, I should stay far away. I will keep that in mind.

Why on earth would you leave your toothbrush on a public bathroom counter while you did your business? I understand mid-day brushing is important. But why the need to do all things at once. I usually bring my toothbrush in for a dedicated brush run and then leave. I don’t want any flying particulates on that sucker. I work with more than one person who likes to do a few tasks on each trip and there for get a mouthful of whatever is in the air tonight when they scrub the choppers.

The last thing I can’t get out of my head is how much Miami Vice influenced my life. We recently started streaming Netflix on our television and I found all the seasons of Crockett and Tubbs are available. I’ve seen a few current TV stars (Ed O’Neill - with hair, Jimmy Smits) with bit parts in the first few episodes that I’ve watched. This was appointment viewing for me when I was younger. I understand why my parents were not fans of this show – several people die violently in every episode. There’s drugs, sexy women, flashy jewelry, guns, smoking, explosions, childish temper tantrums and just about everything else a 7-12 year old boy could have wanted. Miami is full of wild accents and racing cars and over the top characters every week. I’m pretty sure it spawned a successful video game (GTA vice city) and launched the career of one of my favorite directors – Michael Mann. It even made the Colin Farrell/Jamie Foxx movie remake watchable, even enjoyable for me when almost everyone else hated it with a passion. Jan Hammer’s soundtrack always puts me in by vintage Ferrari and linen suit, running red lights and firing down lucky strikes with a .45 in my shoulder holster. If only none of those things led to an early painful death. I still have great respect for Don Johnson, even though people seem to regard him as a relic of the 80s. I love how Ferrari got mad that the Daytona used in the first season was a replica and gave the show a real Testarossa to be used, but only after the fake was ceremoniously blown up on screen. Despite all this, I always had a nagging problem with the fact that here’s this supposedly undercover cop, driving all over town in this crazy car, living on a boat with an alligator and every time he does a deal with someone they end in dead or in jail. He makes no effort to disguise himself when he goes in or out of the police station and yet not one of these criminals ever spreads the word about him. Despite all that I think the show holds up. And if I ever do get to be a billionaire, I may just skip all the racy cars and get a big ol 42’ powerboat and just roar around making big waves and rocking a ridiculous tan and giant gold watch. I know it doesn’t get any cheesier than that but come on, you know it looks fun.

gifts of the magi

2010-09-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Gifts and I have had some rough times. Not long ago I did not like gifts. I maintained a low overhead lifestyle and the meant not having clutter or large furniture. Everything except the bed and TV fit in the car. It was great. It’s been that way for a while. Most gifts I now receive are either small or experiential. This year, for the birthday, I received a coupon for custom made shirt. I didn’t know in advance, only that I had an appointment that would take a bit of my afternoon. When I opened the envelope I got very excited. Anything custom made is awesome. Dress clothing in particular is difficult for me are weird because of my freakish physique. I am not lizard skinny like most European cuts nor am I fat and sloppy like most off the rack American cuts assume. Getting something that fit was going to rock.

I’m not a building snob. I’ve shopped in some pretty shady places in the name of saving a buck. Despite the questionable attire on display, I knew anything that I picked out would be fine. I met my person, let’s call her Patchouli, and her gaggle of sisters. She took my coupon, set me up with some material to look at and then told me if I bought 2 more shirts I could get a 3^rd for free. The shirts came in two levels, A and B. A was 20% more expensive than B, but since I didn’t know anything about this process I had been looking at the B shirts. As I later found out, the coupon I received was for the A shirt, but this was not specified, thus negating the original bargain of the transaction. I thought about it and decided that an off the rack shirt at a high end men’s clothier was comparably priced to the B shirt, so why not. I was flush with fantasy golf winnings and felt rich. I picked out 4 materials, cuffs, collars, monograms and started getting measured. It took longer than I thought it would, but I was enjoying the experience. Then it came time to pay. I had my coupon for shirt #1, I had to pay for shirts #2 and #3 and I got #4 for free. So I owed 2x Cost of shirt B. I started to pay with a credit card but was told that cash was better. Hmm so it was one of those places. I don’t mind an entrepreneurial spirit, trying to keep the tax man off your stack, so I went along. I got the cash out and paid in full. Normally I do not like paying before goods are received, but I was in a good mood. Afterwards I was told to wait 3 weeks and they would call me. Perfect.

So yesterday was about 3 weeks removed from the shirt fitting. I got an email saying my shirt (singular) was ready and was told to call when I could come by. I tried calling, got a busy signal and decided to walk over. I met the salesman/head of the store and he directed me to Patchouli’s sister, Cardamom. She got my shirts, I tried them on and was feeling pretty good. They looked and fit great. Cardamom asked if I had paid and I said that I had, explained how it all went down and then she tried to get me to look at more shirts. I said I was busy but maybe on Friday, if I had time. I also said that I had a few really tall friends and if I liked the shirts I would refer them over. By the time I got back to the office, I already had a voicemail from Cardamom. I called her back, only to be informed that I owed her quite a bit of money. I’m sort of ticked off now but assured her that something must be wrong and to check with Patchouli and that I had to go to a client and to call me at 4 with good news. 4pm came and went and I figured she felt like a dope and wasn’t going to call. At 4:25 she called and started apologizing for the bad experience and said when I came in on Friday to look at more shirts that I could pay her. Pay her for what? She didn’t want to explain what I owed her for, only that she had the figures in front of her and I owed her for three shirts and she could show it all to me when I came in. In most of my jobs I am the one trying to explain something absurd to an angry person and many times I have wished I could be the angry person, just so I could rant and vent. This was one such opportunity, but I wasn’t going there yet. In my calmest voice I assured her that she sounded like a reasonable person and explained that a) I had a coupon for a free shirt, b) Patchouli said I could buy 2 more and get a third for free and c) I paid Patchouli for two shirts. Cardamom agreed that since she witnessed the whole transaction that I was saying made sense. So my question to her now was why am I being charged for three shirts if I had two for free and paid for two? She apologized again, said she couldn’t read Patchouli’s handwriting and said when I came in to look at more shirts we could work it out. I told her it was unlikely that she would ever see me again and unless she called me back to apologize for the big misunderstanding that I was entering the angry customer zone. On my train ride home I noticed she left me a voicemail, which I have still not listened to. I can only imagine what it says. Not to mention the small detail that the original coupon was for the more expensive A shirt and they started the whole transaction by ripping me off. There are any number of ways this can conclude, but there is no way I’m going back any time soon to check out more shirts.

In another gift-related debacle, I received a number of books for Christmas. I had heard of the author, David Foster Wallace, probably because he recently committed suicide and literary types were very upset by his passing. His magnum opus ‘Infinite Jest’ is about 1200 pages long, with very small font. There are several hundred pages of footnotes, which are required to properly enjoy the work. It is not to be taken lightly. I’ve read long books before. I’ve read complicated books before. I majored in English and did reasonably well in it. I got good verbal SAT scores. Books sort of come naturally. I was excited. I figured anything this long would probably be worth it, since publishers don’t cut down forests unless there is money to be made and Harry Potter aside, getting people to read dictionary-length books is not an easy feat. I got about 200 pages in and gave up. This book makes absolutely no sense. There is no plot. He makes up words. He invents parallel worlds and history. I know it’s fiction, but this goes beyond science fiction in its bizarreness and reliance on suspension of disbelief.

I feel bad when I don’t finish books. Every time I see a book on the shelf that I didn’t finish I imagine a whining puppy asking why he is being ignored. Sure we had a few laughs and spent quality time together, but in the end I didn’t want to keep playing. I took to the internets to see what the big deal was. Message boards all told me the book was ‘totally worth it’. I also saw Infinite Jest appear on a few ‘worst book ever’ lists. I try to avoid immediately agreeing with anything that confirms my opinions, so I filed that information away and sought out more reasons to continue reading. Recently, a coworker mentioned that his book snob friend criticizes his choice of reading material. Book snob? What qualifies her as a book snob? She works for the high-end arm of a major publishing house. I asked this coworker to send a one line email to her asking “Did she like Infinite Jest”. Note that I assume that she has already read this book. Coworker doubted where I was going with this until she replied instantly with the single line reply “I cried when DFW died”. DFW how this man is known in the book world. It’s like saying ‘Scorcese’ or “Hitchcock” to a movie fiend. Single name identifiers signify great reverence and familiarity with their work. I pressed for more information. Infinite Jest is the master work, to be enjoyed by someone already familiar with the man’s portfolio. I was told to read his essays, his smaller books. This started to sound like I had to acquire a taste for the man before I had earned the right to enjoy the masterpiece. I’ve acquired a few tastes. Usually they are for things that are initially repugnant. Coffee, wine, beer, tobacco, hot sauce, strong brown liquor, stinky cheese, raw fish, daily vigorous exercise in the early predawn hour. Usually I eventually like these things, but for others I spit the bit. I do not enjoy burning wet mummy cigars (thank you David Sedaris), peaty campfire scotch, tounge numbing and intestine twisting sauces, unpronounceable sea creature organs or mouth pickling burgundys. I read his commencement speech to Kenyon College. Go ahead, look it up. Search for ‘DFW commencement speech’. It sort of makes sense. Clearly this man is intelligent and has a particular world view and expresses it in a unique way. I still don’t get it. I have a fear that this book may end up being like “Raging Bull”, which always ends up on a ‘best director’ list. Bull one of the most depressing, hardest to watch movies I have ever seen. I don’t think I would ever watch it again. I suppose for someone who gets off on technical displays of mastery of technique it’s a good thing to watch. Maybe I am approaching the book all wrong. Should I be enjoying the aspects that are driving me crazy? Eventually I’ll get back to it. Michael Chabon wrote a chapter in his most recent book about DFW and mentioned how he tried to read Infinite Jest on multiple occasions and failed. That makes me feel a little better. A little.

Tough Enough

2010-08-05T16:29:00.000-07:00

This morning M mentioned that I would be good on a show called ‘Mantracker’. It’s a Canadian with a beard and a horse and a helper (and horse) and they hunt people in the woods. There’s no killing, but the chases are edited to look intense. Generally the horses seem to have good eyes and noses and keep the men at least looking in the right direction. Sometimes the trackers are called on to look at some disturbed dirt or sticks to see where the unwise hunted have left a trail to follow. I haven’t seen an episode yet where anyone even came close to getting away.

How would I do on this show? Not very well. While I am reasonably fit and have some basic sense of the outdoors, I see most of these people fail due to poor planning and execution. Foresight aside, there is an aspect of toughness and sheer will that would eventually take over in a real-life pursuit situation. When I asked myself how I would fare, I had to create a tough-scale and put myself in it. The tough-scale is meant to incorporate mental as well as physical attributes. I’m not trying to guess how well someone would take a punch. It’s more of a gauge of how quickly someone would give up and start crying when dropped into a wilderness and hunted. Physicality is a big part, due to the requirement of being forced to contend with the elements. Basically, I’m trying to find someone who’s willing to live like an animal. I like to think I can run for miles through the woods, over rocks and through rivers, but I live a cushy life and get blisters when I swing the golf clubs too much. In ascending order from baby soft to pioneer tough:

Millionaire CEO, Surgeon (related: trust fund baby, socialite)

I put millionaire here, not billionaire, because B-level richness means you can afford to take trips that require extreme exertion or training. Theoretically you can be Batman if you are a Billionaire. These guys have the softest hands of the gang, owing to the luxe lifestyle and lack of callus-creating workload. A sore neck is enough to put them on the injured list

Professional Gamer (related: software engineer, political talking head)

So pale a flashlight would burn them, reeking of hot pockets, pizza rolls and dr pepper and in love with all things role playing, the toughest these guys get is online, pwning noobs and trolling message boards. A swift backhand slap would get them balling in real life. Gets wInded going #2.

Fashion Designer (related: hotel concierge, party planner)

Probably mentally tougher than I give them credit for, but physically the weakest on the list. Want no part of unpleasant humidity, bugs, dirt, starvation or abrasions. Changes clothes several times a day to accommodate situation. Mean people can ruin their day.

Personal Trainer (related: jersey shore guido, musician)

Gym-strong and proud of it. Only works out to look good in tight clothes. Mentally impaired in all things not related to exercise charts or protein shakes. Live with mom because they cannot retain a real job. Common injuries: fungus.

High School Principal (related: police, auto mechanic)

Tougher than they look. Could have military experience. Lots of practical experience with unpredictable situations and unreasonable personalities. Able to survive on meager rations owing to poor pay and lifestyle. Adept at improvisation.

Cook (related: carnie, longshoreman/stevedore)

Lots of experience in high-heat, high-pressure situations. Excellent with sharpened tools and fire. Extensive interaction with less-than-stellar mentalities. Persistent and willfully obstinate. Good chance of incarceration experience. Lots of scarring.

Fireman (related: fisherman, cowboy)

Starting to get into legitimate toughness here. Courage is unquestionable. Chose career that will probably kill them. Lots of downtime can lead to dulled skills. Good with a team, excellent at staying calm in a crisis. Excellent moustaches.

Lumberjack (related: oil roughneck, miner)

Another deadly work environment, but this is a 40+ hour week of exposure to constant death. Crushing, large airborne sharp metal objects, poor work conditions and a permanent coating of grime are all but guaranteed. Physical strength is absolutely required, as is the willingness to expose one’s self to unpleasantness for years at a time.

MMA fighter (related: outlaw biker, stuntman)

Not many 40+ year olds doing this job. The very act of doing the job means a co-worker is trying to kill you or at least prevent you from doing your job by inflicting physical pain. Constant training and practice is required. A good day on the job means you got into a fight. A bad day means you’re dead or paralyzed.

Salvage Diver (related: NONE)

Really the only job where you are called in because literally everyone else tried and failed. The entire environment around you is so dangerous that a mistake means horrible death. The only less hospitable workplace is space, but astronauts aren’t covered in sweet tattoos or missing fingers. Living like the end is tomorrow is encouraged. By far the coolest and potentially most lucrative on the list.

So where do I rank on this list? Somewhere in the designer-trainer range. I’m not as strong as the musclehead, but definitely smarter and more adaptable. My fighting history is spotty at best and I have started to notice that extremes of temperature are kind of a pain in the ass and I get cranky when I haven’t eaten in a while. I think with some training I could get into the cook-fireman range.

I just noticed that the toughness scale could also be a salary scale, except the least tough people make the most money. Not tough.

Gettin Squirrely

2010-07-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

I have a few things I could get worked up about, but I’m going to calm this one out. Someone tossed a rock through the driver’s side window on my car last night. It was parked at the commuter rail station. Nothing was taken. The local constables were predictably uninterested and useless. I don’t know what I pay $4 a day for, but it definitely isn’t a safe parking area. I only wish the emo freak that did it used a smaller rock. I guess they weren’t very strong because they had to use a cantaloupe sized bolder to get the task done. It dinged up the inside of the car more than I would have liked. I have given thought to cruising town today looking for teenagers to waterboard, but I will pass. Unrelated to broken glass, there is an article in the NYtimes today about the ‘everybody gets a trophy’ generation. Seems someone turned down a ‘dead end’ job paying $40g a year because he thinks he deserves the corner office. This is particularly irritable to me since I have a couple of unnamed and inadvertant connection to this child. I had a dead end insurance job once, it paid $26g a year. I worked nights at a grocery store for bender money. There were bills and loans and all sorts of good stuff to take care of. Eventually I made some connections (friends) and got some jobs that were a little better than the dead end insurance job. After reading about this dingdong’s plight, I have resolved to integrate this into job interview questions I ask. From now on, I am going to inquire about the nitty gritty jobs people leave off the resume and the dead end work they fought through. I work with some people who did some crappy work back in the day and they are by far the best people I have worked with. Anyone who sniffs of ‘deserving it’ is going to get an hour of verbal waterboarding and then a swift gtfo. But I’m not worried about that nonsense. It doesn’t affect me one bit. What I am interested in these days is Sciurus carolinensis, the eastern gray tree squirrel. Gray tree squirrels are able to jump a distance of ten times body length, rotate their ankles 180 degrees, and learn by observation through eyes that see as well peripherally as straight ahead. One of 278 species of squirrel, they outcompete inferior red and black squirrels everywhere they travel to. Why am I thinking about squirrels? Because these days, they give me great mental exercise. You see, M and I have a bird feeder. We’ve had one since we moved out to the woods here. Initially it was a $5 cheapo model, and this lasted a few years. We had a lot of birds. So many that we had to close the windows on weekend mornings because the sounds were too loud for extended sleep. There were chipmunks who scouted the feeder occasionally. I tried eradicating them and their holes with the infamous ‘chipper dipper’. Eventually I realized the rodents would keep coming like the red army at Stalingrad, so I took the dipper out of circulation. The old feeder eventually fell apart so we got another cheapo one this year. By mid april, it was already destroyed, covered in gnaw marks. Whatever was eating the seed also felt the need to eat the feeder itself. Maybe it was the fruit and nut blend that attracted the chipmunks, but it looked good to me so we bought it. In hindsight putting granola in a bird feeder is kind of silly, since it’s basically animal food, but I fell for the marketing. Now that the feeder was destroyed, we escalated. This time it was a metal feeder. It had a cage protecting the feeding posts. It weighed a ton. And food disappeared from it like there was a hole in the bottom. After a few days of this, I saw what was happening to the food. Chipmunks were jumping into the feeder and sitting in the seed tray and leisurely gorging themselves. I could chase them all day, but eventually they stopped being scared and practically did it in front of me. I rigged some extensions to make the feeder farther away from the chipmunk launching point. No luck. They are better jumpers than I realized. We were still getting birds, but they were mostly big jays that weren’t afraid of the chipmunks. None of the smaller colorful birds would go anywhere near the chippers. Several attempts at sealing off the fence into an unclimbable obstruction were useless, especially since I can only control our side of the fence and the neighbor’s side it still eminently climbable. When it came time for new bird seed, I moved over to the high stakes table. Since we were buying the expensive stuff, we needed better security. I remembered some tactics that we used back in L-town – namely smooth plastic obstacles that rendered highly evolved climbing claws useless. I decided on either sheet metal or lexan to cover the fence. M found some plastic ceiling light covers, like those seen in dentist offices all over the world. Perfect and at a fraction of the cost. Expensive seed and plastic sheet in hand we were ready to check out when something caught our eye – an item called a ‘squirrel log’. It’s a cylinder of compressed corn dust that you attach to something via a large screw. I figured I could give them an alternative, maybe broker a peace of sorts. I affixed squirrel log and plastic, loaded up the feeder and sat back to watch. Initially, it was a huge success. I saw the first chipmunk investigate the log. He took a sniff, then a nibble, then attacked with incisors blazing. The cylinder immediately took a bullet shape as more and more corn was removed. I gave it 3 days, tops, before I would need to reload. Eventually he got tired (or full) and moved on. It wasn’t until a few days later when I noticed I had a bigger problem than a little brown chipmunk. It hadn’t occurred to me that squirrels might be behind the attacks. Actually it had, but I just hadn’t seen any. I figured the woods were filled with easy food or better feeders, so why come after ours? This was a terrible miscalculation. While the feeder was far enough away from the fence to make it unobtainable by jumping, the pole the feeder was attached to was unguarded. I observed my enemy closely. It was a young squirrel, not very thick or furry. He would try climbing the fence, notice the obstruction, try to climb the plastic, fail, and then attempt a different route. This worked for a while until he realized he could climb an unprotected section of fence and simply walk across the top to get to the feeder. I planned for this and had erected a plastic bucket on top the feeder, open side up. This achieves two things. One, it is plastic and therefore unclimbable. Second, it is unstable and squirrels do not like climbing on things that feel like they are going to fall over. I howled with delight watching the young fella try and scale the bucket, only to tumble to the ground. I left for work, confident that I had won. It was only when M picked me up at the train that I learned my victory was temporary and the feeder was once again vulnerable. Undeterred, I took up an observation post and learned that he was using his miracle ankles and Olympian abdominal muscles to do some sort of inverted behind the back sit-up move while hanging off a thin metal pole. Since I cannot perform this maneuver, it hadn’t occurred to me that Mr. carolinensis would be able to, but I should have known better. Years ago, back in L-town, I saw some of the best of the breed in action. These were huge, tough monsters. For almost an entire summer I watched my parents apply years of accumulated engineering and renovating experience to the problem, only to find feeders ransacked day after day. I saw squirrel blood on sharp metal in the pursuit of seed. Endlessly flinging themselves off of shutters, trees, other squirrels, anything to get a single claw grip on a feeder to pull themselves up. More recently I observed a feeder that was affixed to glass by suction cups. Theoretically a squirrel cannot climb glass. But that knowledge did not deter the individual I saw. He figured that climbing a house and throwing himself against the glass was only one step closer to the seed and nut motherlode. A few years back there were accounts of a squirrel and tomato conflict down in the Philadelphia area. Reports came in of elaborate defenses and tenacious attacks, terrible interrogations and great atrocities, but the squirrels are never deterred, never discouraged. So today, sitting at home, waiting for the car glass man to call me back, I sit and observe again. I set my desk so I have a prime view of the battlefield. Early in the day there were several successful raids. After chasing them off I watched how the breached the defenses and have erected more. For the last hour the battle has been quiet. Perhaps they are seeking easier quarry, perhaps it is too hot for such games. (edit – I just caught him doing the sit-up thing again.. I missed the attack, but the new defenses are apparently useless... dammit) FYI - here’s the setup (the sock thing is another feeder the squirrels have no interest in):

“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”

The Next American Idol Judge

2010-06-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

I would like to announce that I am in the running to be the next American Idol judge. Replacing Simon Cowell will be a big job, but I think I am up for it. I have a great appetite for terrible music and a chronic addiction to making fun of people for anything and everything that they have no control over. All the travel will be a strain on me, but I think M wil go along with it and we get the summer to prepare for the next round of additions. I’m excited at the prospect of joining the show and working with Randy, Kara and Ellen.

Unrelated to my future employer, M and I just got back from a lengthy stay in the great Canadian Rockies. As one traveler said at the Peyto Lake stop: “Mother nature doesn’t do it any better than this”. I have to agree. I can’t imagine many other places that could consistently fill me with awe and wonder. Great raw natural beauty and abundant wildlife made for an experience that made me happy and sad at the same time. Happy for obvious reasons, but sad because that joker was right – it’s not going to get much better than this. I have set myself up to be disappointed for years to come. This does not mean I regret going – quite the opposite. I am glad we saw it now while we are young and can remember it for years to come. This, as opposed to the hordes of older folks rolling around in motor homes, taking in these sights in their golden years. My eyes are probably better than theirs, so even though we were looking at the same thing I think I saw it better and will remember it for longer. We got to see all the animals from the guidebooks, but the most unexpected one was a porcupine. He was one of the coolest critters I have ever seen. Calgary and Phoenix were just ok as waystops on the trip. Phoenix was filled with people wearing similar outfits and Calgary was kind of a blah town. I’m not going to say much else about it here. Ridiculous, amazing, wonderful.

Our Canada car, a Hyundai Accent hatchback, was pretty cool. It was cheap and slow and rough on bumps, but it had potential. I’m a big fan of the hatchback. If M wanted to get set up in a VW GTI or Mini Cooper S or some other hot hatch, I would not be opposed to that.

There’s a mirror in the kebab house, a café near where I work. This is the greatest mirror on the planet. Most mirrors are pretty sweet because they contain such wonderful subject matter, but this one must have better lighting or something, because I always rock this mirror particularly hard. It’s tough ordering lunch there, so I bring lunch to avoid the awkwardness.

Gumballs

2010-05-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

On my way to work today I saw a BMW with a wierd paint job. It sort of looked like a police car, but with a lot of stickers on it and with a black matte paint scheme. It was pretty ugly, but the tuned exhaust sounded ferocious. It had a GUMBALL3000 logo on it. This was unusual. That's a very specific kind of car rally, usually with the most extreme vehicles in the world driven by a collection of spoiled rich folk reeking of B.O. and cigarettes. I didn't think anything of it until I was in the office and heard the wailing exhaust of exotic motors echoing up and down the street. One look out the window and I had to run downstairs. Veyrons, McLarens, Morgans, GT3s eveywhere. I didn't have my cell phone! Oh noes! I had to run back. By the time to got back most of them were gone. I managed to get a few of the stragglers though.

This is a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640. Roughly $400,000 worth of carbon fiber and unicorn teeth.

This is the front end of said car, held together with duct tape.

Here is the downmarket version of the car above, the Gallardo. It's got a sweet chrome paint job.
This is the owner of the classy Chrome Lambo. He's dressed for an oil drill opening. That's a Ferrai 430? I think?

Here's a convertible version of the chrome Lamborghini.
And I believe this is a Ferrari 599...
For some sad reason, I was the only person at work who found this interesting. Oh well. It made my day.

Check out the Gumball3000 webpage for details of these people and what they are doing.

the latest

2010-04-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

Man oh man.. has it really been over a month? I guess it has. And what a month it has been. I suppose the biggest news is that I'm sort of switching jobs. I'm not leaving my current company, but I will be doing some new stuff on a new team. This is a big change, considering I've been doing the same type of work for over 5 years. It's a little like graduating I suppose. The official date for the switch is as yet undetermined, but it will happen soon. The new role is going to involve a lot less travel, so the days of free Starwood vacations are going away, which makes M sad, but it means I'm home more.

Speaking of travel, I just got back from a trip to Toronto. Three scheduled days became three nights when the flight got cancelled and replacement flights were not obtainable. The airline was nice enough to provide a hotel. Luckily I was with two co-workers, so it was not a totally lonely experience. There happened to be a Nickelback concert in town, which meant a lot of rowdy Nickelback fans. I'm not really a follower of them or their fans, but it was an interesting mix of people. We saw a really incredible moustache on a Gene Simmons look-alike and some generally rowdy and inappropriate behavior. Good times all around. The hotel was part of the Fairmount chain and there were a lot of pictures of the Fairmount hotels in Banff, Jasper and Lake Louise. While M and I are not going to those specific hotels, it was nice to get a little preview of things to come. While I was trying to leave, I dropped my phone underneath the bed and it managed to slide far enough that I had to get on my stomach to reach to get it. Let's just say that hotel beds, even in nice hotels, should never be looked under, much less examined for lost items. I found a peanut and a dozen prehistoric Cheerio-type objects under there. I guess a snack mix party had taken place some time ago.

With that little food segue over, I wanted to share some more tales of train commuting. I spend a lot of time staring out the window, inventing stories for what I pass by every day. One of the things I pass are other, non-commuter train railroad cars. Most of them are standard boxcars, which are probably pretty mundane. Then there are the tanker cars that for some reason are required to say what they contain. Why is this interesting? Because there is some bizarre studff in these cars. Corn Syrup is a popular one. I didn't realize corn syrup was transported in such large quantities, but considering how much of it is consumed, I suppose it's fitting that it gets shipped in 30,000 gallon gulps. Refrigerated carbon dioxide liquid is another boring one. Beef Tallow always piques my curiosity. Why would anyone need so much beef tallow? Where does it come from? I know it comes from cows/processing plants but where? Probably Kansas or some other flyover state. The one that blew my mind was a car that was labeled 'Non-edible meat products'. Say what? What are non-edible meat products? I've never seen a car labeled 'edible meat products'. I guess I assumed that unrefrigerated meat was generally accepted as being non-edible after a point. What does one do with non-edible meat products? Cosmetics? Dog food? What's even stranger is that I don't believe there are any cosmetics or dog food factories nearby. There is a giant Cumberland Farms warehouse/plant just off the rail line, but I can't imagine they use a lot on non-edible meat products. Why are these products in a tanker car? Are they liquified?

You may have noticed the Masters, or as I call it, the toonament (say it with a slow southern accent, it's fantastic) has started. This is my traditional start to the golf season. I've been to the range a couple of times and even played 9 last weekend. The incessant rain has limited the number of courses that are actually open. I think the golf crowd is starting to get cabin fever a little bit. I don't really have an opinion on Eldrick Woods, other than he's a giant asshat. I'll enjoy watching some of the final round as the Jim Nance narrates the action as only he can.

I recently read 'The Book of Basketball' by Bill Simmons. M and I joined the local library and I had a hard time finding something I was interested in reading. Not because I don't find books interesting, but because there were too many of them. I listen to the author's podcast and read his ESPN articles. In general I think he's a funny guy with some tendencies toward dated references and an inexplicable love for bad reality TV. He's also a basketball fanatic, which I am not and I secretly wanted to hate his book. Unfortunately, his book writing is much better than his podcasting and article writing, making The Book of Basketball immensely enjoyable.

Italian Opera and the Windy City

2010-02-27T10:32:00.000-08:00

Many (well, I don’t know how ‘many’ of you there are, I suspect I can count on one hand) of you know that while I work in a techie field, I am not necessarily a tech fiend. I don’t jump on social networking sites (for kids), I don’t worship at the altar of Steve Jobs (the economist begs to differ), and I still insist on keeping a Yellow Pages in the house, because they’re useful dammit (and I think in some instances faster than the internet). However, I do love me some Internet. I get to consume hours of content (of questionable taste and usefulness) every day. I do research, deep dives into esoteric topics, keep on top of whatever political vein I follow, and make attempts to keep tabs of what pop culture I can get my hands on. I can easily see what the top songs in Itunes are, then make a quick listen so the next time I hear new music out in public, I (theoretically) know what it is. M tends to do better at this than I do, but I digress. I’m plugged into a few websites that do a decent job of digesting what’s out there and giving me the easy version of it so I have knowledge a mile wide and an inch deep. This is the way I like it. Last night the internet rose up to meet my expectations once again. There I was, sitting on the train, reading my ink and paper New Yorker, when I came across an article about a dead composer. His life sounded interesting so I decided to hear what his music sounded like. I pulled out the iphone, fired up youtube and searched for him. I found a few samples, took a taste and quickly spat it out. Disgusting (Iannis Xenakis, in case you were wondering). So I had youtube open, classical on the mind, and a longtime question came to mind. What was that music playing as Max Cady was driving around in his Mustang convertible? This is a reference to Martin Scorsese’s 1991 film ‘Cape Fear’. Max Cady (Robert DeNiro) was a generally bad dude, who instantly became somewhat awesome to a 14 year old in the opening scene of a hardened prison character with a gigantic cross tattooed across his shoulders and down his back doing a hard core prison workout and exuding the personality of a rattlesnake. So there’s this one scene where Max is driving around, blasting some opera music and ticking off the checklist of movie madman (psychopathic personality – yes, inexplicable affinity for high culture/art – yes, thinking 5 steps ahead of everyone else – yes, alternately menacing and charming everyone – yes), and this music was really cool sounding. It had this great quality of being triumphant and enlightened and ol Max just looked like he was doing whatever he wanted. This was great 18 years ago and it still is. Except I have no idea what the song was. It’s not on the soundtrack (movie soundtracks never have the good stuff). Movie Credits are really hard to find online. And it sounded too old and Italian to be something created just for the movie. Previous web searches came up empty, but maybe this time I’d get lucky. There was my answer – Gaetano Donizetti’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ – Per te D’immenso Giubilo – I’m not an opera person. Wikipedia says Donizetti was pretty good at it though. This loosely translates to ‘immens jubilation for you’ and it sort of sounds like a celebration, which is what I was having when I found it. I’m sorry it took a character like Max to get me to go searching out classical Italian opera, but if that’s what it takes…

I just got back from a trip to Chicago (work, not pleasure). I love Chicago. Something about it resonates with me. It’s new(er). I guess completely burning down can have a decent effect on your city. San Francisco has a similar feel to it. It’s huge, but not as overwhelming as NYC seems. It doesn’t stink, the people are mostly polite. There’s a whole lot less car honking and crazy driving. For some reason it just seems more civilized. Maybe it was just the parts I see, but that’s the way it is. I was there over the weekend and tried to do a little sightseeing, which is more than I do when I travel for work. Unfortunately I was sort of on call, so I couldn’t wander too far. On a recent trip to Toronto some coworkers and I went on field trips to find great burgers. This is a noble task. Here is almost zero chance of finding a bad burger, and you get to do a little traveling. So why not find the good burger in every town? Chicago had a highly ranked burger about 10 miles from where I was staying, so I jumped in a cab and headed out. Unfortunately, as M and I discovered in an attempt to go to a great pizza place in Brooklyn, when there is a highly regarded establishment in a gigantic city, there is a good chance it will be completely overrun. And this was true in Chicago as well. I took a $25 cab to the middle of nowhere and completely struck out. If I was with a group, there is at least some camaraderie or shared excitement for the endeavor, which can spur people to withstand long outdoor lines in rain/snow/deep freeze. When one is alone, that excitement is considerably lessened. I took a look at the line and crowded bar and said hell no. I crossed the street to get a cab going the other way. As soon as I crossed, I peeked in a bar window and saw people being served truly epic looking burgers. As much as I wanted to flip the whole endeavor the bird, I was starving and these looked amazing. The bar was empty, the Olympics were on, so why not? I sat down, ordered the burger and struck up a conversation with two heavily tattooed and pierced guys who were pounding Pabst Blue Ribbon in between Marlboro breaks. They were cooks at the place I tried to go initially, and they HATED it. They came to where I was sitting now to get burgers. The way I see it, if you want a goo d haircut, don’t go someplace where everyone cutting hair has a good haircut, go to the place they go to get their hair cut. I was eating where the best burger cooks in Chicago go to get burgers. I was not disappointed. I suppose my favorite aspect of the burger was the pretzel bun. This is going to be incorporated into all summer burger cooks from now on. In case you were wondering, the first place I wanted to go can be found here http://www.kumascorner.com/food and the place I ended up at is here http://www.squarechicago.com/square_menu.pdf - I got the ‘Big Square’.

Along by travels, I stumbled across a restaurant called Bice. This is another happy accident with en equally long winded story. On our first vacation together, M and I went to Quebec/Montreal for a long weekend. In Montreal, as we strolled the July streets, we decided to get dinner at a place called Bice. It was a memorable dinner, one of the first meals of truly excellent food we shared. Bice has a few locations around the world and we decided to try them as we traveled to world. Not to travel exclusively to eat at these places, but if we happened to be in town with one, we’d stop in. First we found one in Orlando. I forget what I ate, but M tried the Osso Bucco with saffron risotto. Well, at least we learned that we don’t like saffron. Not the greatest, but a nice little diversion. Next, we learned there might be in Monte Carlo – we looked and it was long gone. I just realized today there is one in Madrid, but can’t find anything else on it. If we had known, maybe we would have looked, but I think we did pretty well for eating in Espana. Of course we could have gotten lost and then had a hungry fight and then regretted it, so best to let that one slide. Well I found one in Chicago, the menu looks good, and I know for certain where it is. There may be a weekend trip in the near future.

Speaking of cooking, look at this stove. For those of you not into hand enameled custom built cast iron French ranges, this is a La Cornue Chateau 120. It starts at around $11,000. This particular model was in the employee kitchen of the office I was in. You’ll notice the granite countertop. They don’t use it for a stove. Towels are currently being stored in the ovens. I offered to take it off their hands if they didn’t want it. My offer was politely declined.

The last picture I’m going to share is of some spray painted silver sticks in a tall glass cylinder with glass beads in the bottom. Oh yeah, I’ve seen these before: at our wedding. M and I were way out in front of that one. Granted the concierge at the W Lakeshore gave me some weird looks, but forget him. This was too good to pass up.

Movies - The Hurt Locker. Watch this movie now. It’s really good. Not quite an action movie, not quite a war movie. Not a tourist film for the middle east. The Ladykillers – kind of weird, even for the Coen brothers. Not particularly recommended. Surrogates – this was better than I expected. Good to see Bruce Willis still has a fastball. And it was shot in Boston. Always nice to see Boston in the movies. Fast and Furious – I don’t know why I like these movies so much. This was another monster addition to the franchise. I’m looking forward to the next one. So good. John Adams – period film by HBO. Long, historical and really entertaining. I wanted to brush everyone’s teeth in it though. Good to see they got 18^th century oral hygiene correct. Not a kindly portrayal of King Louis. Slumdog Millionaire – very watchable.

Fridays rule

2010-02-12T12:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSDkwnAnkfM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMM9O9Ftixg&NR=1

I can't take full credit for these, but I will put them up as examples of people with access to free soda and a small mean streak

Things heard on the commuter train

2010-01-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

The other day I was listening to a podcast with Hollwood director Jason Reitman. He recently won a golden globe for his screenplay for ‘Up in the Air’, which M and I saw and both enjoyed greatly. He also directed ‘Juno’ (we liked that as well) and ‘Thank You For Smoking’ (I have not seen that one yet). He is also the son of famous and mega successful producer/writer/director Ivan Reitman. On the surface it seems like this guy should be a monumental tool. He joked that he was so at ease in the Beverly Hilton because he’d been to so many Bar Mitzvahs there. Boo Hoo. Growing up in Beverly Hills is so hard to do. He talked about how he had every privilege and consideration, never had to worry about where his next dollar was coming from, etc. But he also discussed how difficult it was for him once he decided he wanted to be a director. Being the son of an already successful director, one would think that daddy could pull some strings and get him some easy work. This might work in some slacktastic world like politics or law, where there seems to be a plethora of legacy country club overpaid hacks, but in other professions you have to have some actual talent and being a relation of someone famous can be a hinderance. I am sure Michael Jordan’s sons get guarded extra hard by defenders who want to say they shut down MJ’s kid and he sucks. Being the scion of a great talent means you’re always going to be compared to them and not your actual peers. The point it, Jason Reitman told a very sad tale about how no one wanted to work with him and he got his start with lots of commercials and small Sundance-type films. Now he’s an award winning director, working with A-list stars and his movies and scripts get tons of critical buzz. And he’s 32 years old. WHAT? Come on. When I heard that, I wanted to toss the iphone off the train. 32? (it must run the family – Ivan Reitman’s Animal House came out when he was 32. Since then it’s been Meatballs, Stripes, Ghostbusters - all good ones – ending with My Super ex Girlfriend in 2006 at the ripe ol age of 60). I’m 32 and I have no industry awards to my name. I don’t even know what awards my industry gives out. I know I’m the same age as Tom Brady and he has 3 superbowl rings and an MVP award. But most pro athletes are finished by age 30, and I didn’t exactly live at the gym during my teens and 20s, so I am not feeling any pain there. And at least I won’t limp when I’m 50. Most musicians blow up well before their 30s. If you’re trying to make pop music in your 30s, forget it. I can’t even sing Happy Birthday, so I don’t allocate and shelf space to missing Grammy’s. Plus, the really legendary musicians are dead by 27 and I’m way past that. And John Mayer really is a douche.

I’m not just saying that. Pardon the sidebar, but he was in the NYTimes, talking about his watch collection. I’m a big fan of watches and know a lot about them. From what they showed, I was unimpressed. There’s one pretty boring Patek Phillipe he owns, it has a bunch of diamonds on it, and he’s up there bragging about how unique and spectacular it is. There are a hundred similar looking pieces out there. “I have a Patek Philippe 5971 — platinum perpetual calendar, diamond baguettes on the bezel. I know it to be the most beautiful watch with diamonds”. Patek Phillipe is the Rolls Royce is watches, don’t get me wrong. But it’s expected for a rich guy to own one. I would never expect a ‘car guy’ to actually drive a Rolls or Bentley. Give me something interesting, something rare, exceptional. It’s the default ‘I have a ton of cash’ toy with a shiny label. Everyone knows Rolex and Patek Phillipe, Rolls Royce and Ferrari. Give me a Richard Mille or HD3 for a watch, give a Koenigsegg or Gumpert Apollo for a car. I want something that no one I ever meet will know anything about. Ok Rant over.

Van Gogh was pretty much washed up by 32. Of course he was insane and killed himself at 37, but that’s not an excuse. It’s well documented that math freaks do their best work by their early 20s. If you’re not a certifiable math celebrity by 28, get a new line of work. So here I am, 6 months from being 33 and I don’t have the great lifetime accomplishment anywhere on my horizon. I know everyone thinks, deep down, when that look in that mirror every day, scratching their armpit, that they are above average. I hate to break the news, but that’s mathematically impossible. At least half of us are below average. There are 3 billion people below average. Of course there are 3 billion above average as well. Maybe I am one of them? The comic book industry makes a lot of money off the premise that hidden deep inside ever cellar dwelling pale skinned geek is a super power just waiting to reveal itself. I’m not holding out hope for my flying abilities to one day just appear.

In the middle of a segment about how directors have their most creative period, Reitman had the courtesy to mention that for directors, that creative burst tends to come in their late 30s and early 40s. He’s in his peak now because he started earlier. So maybe my peak is just about to happen? I’m worried that I peaked sometime in 2005, right about the time I was crushing Madden and tearing up the streets of Grand Theft Auto in record style. Playstation2 could have been my big moment and I just let it fly by. Actors have the luxury of having extended peaks, because they get to grow with the roles they are offered. Maybe you can’t pull off the grizzled Army General when you’re 23, but you have the young soldier role. For non-actors, maybe there isn’t a peak? When I think of a peak, I automatically assume that’s when you’re making the most money. From what I can tell, for white men, that’s when you’re 55 with a nice set of silver temples and Seacrest-white teeth. At that point, you’re in charge of something, playing a lot of golf and cashing checks with all sorts of commas. Creatively though, I bet these codgers best days are way behind them. I don’t know what the value of the old guy is, except to get along with the old guys at the top of the other businesses they deal with and call in accumulated favors for their own benefit. They rely on young people who want to work 80 hours a week to do the real work. So maybe I have another 23 years to go until I hit that peak? My great invention hasn’t flickered in the brain yet, the great novel sits cobwebbed and unwritten, the political career ended sometime in 1997; the modeling days at about the same time. On the flip side, street criminal has definitely passed me by. I think the peak age for that is somewhere in the teens or 20s. By 32 you’re dead or in jail. Hipster is also long gone. 32 year olds serving coffee with skinny jeans and Amish beards are straight losers. Good thing, too. Beards and I do not get along.

All new stuff

2010-01-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the ‘10s, or something along those lines. It was a nice little break for the Christmas/New Year. Granted I didn’t take any actual time off (I’d greedily taken all my vacation already), but everyone else took time off, so that was pretty much the same as me taking time off. We got to see the Pops again. This time M managed to get front row seats on the top balcony. Having gone to the Pops for several years in a row now, we’d decided these were the best seats for the money. Way back in March or something M patiently waited for the tickets to go on sale. The day of the sale she logged on a few minutes early (just to see if she could) and bought the tickets. The scheduled time to begin didn’t seem to matter much. Fast forward to the night of the Pops the guy behind us demanded to know if we were season ticket holders. He’d tried to buy the tickets right at the designated start time and was unable to (they were sold already, sucker) and needed an explanation. I can imagine him sitting home and fuming for 9 months waiting for the day he could confront the people who got his seats. Unfortunately he was just a little guy and he ended up with 4 much bigger people sitting in front of him. Merry Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, M and I had done some last minute shopping that day in the Prudential and Copley Malls. During a lull in the shopping, I decided to stop in a jewelry store to look at a watch I’d seen in a magazine. A helpful salesman saw me enter and asked if he could help me and as confidently as I could muster, I said “do you carry the Yachtmaster II?” (I don’t know how you communicate II or III instead of 2 or 3, maybe it’s in the snobby tone) I didn’t need to say the ‘Rolex’ Yachtmaster II, for some reason he just knew what I was looking for. I flipped through The Economist a few weeks back and saw one of these for the first time and I made M take a look because I thought it was a particularly handsome watch. Now I’d done some minimal research to see if this was even a possibility, but at $30k+ this was not the case. Regardless, I gladly took hold of the shiny chunk of Swiss craftsmanship. I mentioned some of the features to show I knew what I was holding and the salesman asked if I would be talking it home today. I laughed and said he’d have to take my car in trade, to which he replied that they offered a sort of ‘sign and drive’ option for people who were expecting big bonus checks or something. Then I casually asked what he charged for the watch, and then threw out a range that I was expecting and he said I was dead on. I took his literature and went back to my shopping, telling him that I’d be back when that check arrived. An hour or so later, M arrived and I wanted to show her what I’d found. The salesman immediately recognized me and waved me right over. M was unimpressed. That was when I noticed the watch didn’t have a date feature. I don’t know what else it did, but for that much cheddar they should include a date. Earlier in the month M and I went to the New England Auto Show. While we looked seriously at cars we could ostensibly one day afford, we spent a good amount of time in the big boys toys, pretending to drive to our various vacation homes. In one such car, the Audi A8, another man was sitting in the driver seat, looking unimpressed. We chatted briefly and I informed him that I much preferred the Lexus LS and again named some things I liked about it. He said he agreed completely and offered me his card and told me to come on down for a good deal on a Lexus LS. He was a salesman and was scouting the competition. While it’s good to know that I can pull off either the “I have so much money, I dry myself in a towel made of $50s” or the “I am ridiculously irresponsible, take money I don’t have” look, I don’t know what I will do with my newfound powers. Christmas weekend was a long one, but in a good way. It was the three days of Christmas, minus the turtle doves and partridges, pear trees etc… M and I did a ton of eating (ok I did a ton of eating, M was very well behaved), including at least an entire pound of nuts (or more). We’d made 3 lbs of spiced nuts to bring to various get-togethers and I ate lots of these nuts at every event and then for days after. I know I abraded my tounge from scraping nuts residue off my teeth. It’s only now healing. We participated in a few yankee swap-type things and ended up with decent kit from these. I have to send the anonymous shout out to the saint who rescued me from the snuggie. The traditional gift giving was also a big hit. One of the more interesting gifts I received was a talking alarm clock. You say hello to the clock and it responds and then you do everything you would normally do with an alarm, but without pressing buttons, only talking. At first this seemed cumbersome and I sort of wanted the old war horse I’d had for 15 years, but now I’m loving it. It’s kind of cool to call out across the room and get the temperature or change the time. I am also now the proud owner of an espresso machine, which changes things considerably. It uses little espresso cartridges, so I am spared the grinding and packing associated with the mess and hassle of espresso machine. Now, armed with my (also new) milk frother, I can make as many triple grande lattes as I deem necessary. I’m not giving up on coffee in any way, but I think I’ll be having a few more afternoon espressos in the future. Soon I can stop shaving regularly and start wearing skinny clothing and forming opinions on everything and gesturing a lot with my hands and driving a little scooter around.

Some movies I’ve seen recently:

Public Enemies - not my favorite Michael Mann film, but very watchable. Starts kind of slow.

Avatar – See this in a 3-D Imax theater if you can. Really cool.

-Someone named Stephen Lang has a pretty significant role in both Avatar and Public Enemies. I’d never seen him before, but he’s apparently a big actor on the stage. I liked him better in PE.

Transformers 2 – This is on a lot of 10 worst lists. I disagree. Bad, but there are many worse. Picking on Michael Bay is too easy. Do some real work, critics…

District 9 – original, gritty, shocking. The more I think about this, the more I like it.

500 Days of Summer – another original, new film. I don’t think I could classify it as a comedy, but it had funny or cringe inducing moments.

Extract – Not as funny as I’d hoped. My least favorite of this bunch.

New Year’s eve was an mostly uneventful night. I avoided exploding pyrex this year, but what would New Year’s Eve be without a kitchen spectacular? This year I made a Stromboli. First, because they are delicious, and second because I made it myself and no one can tell me to save some for the guests, as had been the case many, many years ago. M and I carefully selected the ingredients, then I roasted some garlic and made a special olive oil with the garlic. Carefully I rolled out the dough and twisted up a delicious masterpiece of meats, cheeses and vegetables. Into the oven it went for a nice slow cook. After a while I started to hear some sizzling and went to investigate. A thick orange slick of grease was leaking out of one end and sizzling as it hit the oven rack, so I rotated the Stromboli to make sure that end would no longer droop. Sizzling turned out to be the least of my worries. I started to hear a new noise coming from the oven. Sort of like someone punching a pillow. When I opened the door, I saw bigger drops of grease falling directly on to the heating element and exploding into fireballs. The punching pillow sounds were grease bombs going off in the oven. Of course a huge plume of smoke came pouring out and M and I were forced to open the doors and windows into the 15 degree night. Luckily the Stromboli was not permanently injured. New year’s was not the only night of cooking disaster though. During Christmas dinner I confidently bragged that I hadn’t had a big disaster in a long time because I had such good instincts and knew how to fix most things. Cue the ticking time bomb for Sunday night… M and I decided to host some friends for dinner. We were going to make a roast beef of some kind, asparagus risotto and a banana pudding. The banana pudding was to be a copy of the magnolia bakery recipe that we’d enjoyed so much when we were in NYC. I figured it was just bananas, pudding and banana bread. M strenuously objected to this and suggested we seek a recipe out. We found one that involved mixing pudding with ice cold water and letting it sit overnight, which we did. Come next morning and we still had a giant bowl of runny muck and no pudding. After a little research we figured we could cook the pudding and that did the trick. The banana pudding turned out to be fantastic, by the way. The dinner itself left something to be desired. I defrosted a tri tip roast, which I originally purchased for the grill. And that’s where it should have stayed. This was not suitable for a slow cooker and came out like sliced roofing shingles with only slightly less flavor. This was another online recipe and I am forever swearing off recipes that do not come from trusted sources. The internet is full of talentless hacks who think they can just throw anything up there. See the previous 2 pages for proof.

Christmas Came Early

2009-12-20T10:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, while M and I were fighting through the barbarian hordes at the local Target, I had a strange sense of calmness. This serenity was not brought about any new tea I had been drinking or some meditation course I started, but rather because I had a new toy that I was excited to try out. No, I didn't get that flatscreen TV, PS3, 65 Shelby Cobra or Breitling Superocean Heritage (you listening, Santa?), but rather a snow rake. What is a snow rake, you ask? It's 14 feet of telescoping mayhem, made in New Hampshire and designed to scrape the snow off your roof. We had some ice dams last year that damaged the neighbor's condo and this year I don't want any funny business. M was kind enough to call ahead to the local Home Depot and reserve one for us. I was worried that our roof was too tall to use a snow rake on. The pictures online always showed a lower roof as the example, but when we picked it up, I was not disappointed.

So that's the rake. He's pretty ferocious. I was able to scrape a good 18 inches from the gutter and not kill myself in the process. I am officially an old b*stard now that I get excited about snow removal tools.

Here's the scene that greeted us today before I went out to clean the cars. The wind whipped the snow into some crazy-type drifts on the cars. M's car had the best high top fade I'd seen since the days of Kid N Play and Big Daddy Kane.

M and I also did all the Christmas wrapping yesterday, hence the need to go to Target. We tried to cheap it up and went to a Christmas Tree Shop the night earlier and we scored a ton of wrapping paper, but it turns out what we got was not the kind that's any good for wrapping (some of it was see-through. Seriously?) and not all that useful. So we wandered off to the Target to face the folks who were either stocking up for the coming snowpocalyse or Christmas shopping laggards. We got the paper and largely survived. Damn you Christmas Tree Shops. Well, not completely - you did have one of the more magical wrapping tools ever made. I will not spoil the surprise here though. Now that I am married and have family members expanding their own families through a variety of means, my Christmas list is growing like never before. I guess this is a none-too-subtle way of saying that the days of B going crazy for his peeps are over. Lord Bountiful has too many gifts to buy. Nobody's getting scratch tickets or secondhand rollerblades, but it's good stuff nonetheless.

Everybody's got one

2009-12-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

AN An excuse, that is. Here's a meager list of them for why I haven't been posting:

II h I haven’t been home. I now spend a lot of time in Toronto. It’s not quite as cold as I had been led to believe. There are some funny accents, but nothing worse than what I hear on the train every day when I’m home. It’s a big international city with major sports teams, world famous landmarks and a long history. But they lack a food specialty. No one has a single signature restaurant to recommend. I’ve had some over the top burgers and a solid steak or two, but that’s about it. If you’re going there, eat before you go. When I wasn’t in Toronto, I was in Peurto Rico. That was ridiculously nice. Apparently I suggested going there after M and I got back from Spain. We had been rained/snowed on for a few of the previous trips and we wanted a hot sunny place. I was going to recommend Honduras, but then they had a military coup. Mexico’s gangs were killing everyone in sight, we’d already been on a cruise, so why not a pseudo-state that used the dollar and has direct flights from Boston? A week away from work, right before the winter sets in was a great idea. Unlike Toronto, PR has plenty of national dishes. They’re all fried, come with beans, rice and plantains and are delicious. Car rentals are cheap and the cars are exceptionally crappy so you don’t have to worry about denting them. The beaches were empty to the point that if we saw another person – anywhere in eyesight – we considered moving because the beach was too crowded. I wish I didn’t sound like a giant tool there, but it’s true. San Juan has some wild folks, though. Loud, bold, gold encrusted, flag-waving, craziness. M and I boned up on our reggaeton music before we left just so we’d have a hope of fitting in. Yeahhhh right. When I wasn’t up North or down South, I was in Connecticut wooing my bride for her birthday. I remembered M enjoyed tudor-style architecture and came across a B&B in a giant old Tudor mansion. I called to make a reservation and had a little difficulty understanding the innkeeper, but I was distracted and let it slide. Then when I called to confirm I realized there was something wrong with this fella. I had a really hard time understanding him. I kept picturing a chimp attack-style disfigurement that prevented him from speaking, but I kept this fear away from M, lest she start to have doubts. I mean, an innkeeper is the perfect job for a horribly disfigured person – you’re self employed, your work comes to you, you stay inside all day. I’m not being cruel. When a relatively normal man answered the door you could have heard my relief. A speech impediment is no big deal. Missing faces, sad to say, are an impediment to romantic weekends. In addition to all this there were multiple Thanksgivings, a multi course kosher/vegetarian/gluten Halloween dinner for 12 that actually tasted good and some other good stuff that I am sure I am forgetting.

I’m scared. Look at this mask M and I got in PR:

Add this to the masks we got in Venice and you’ve got a lifetime of terror hanging on the walls of only one room.

I' I’m glad we don’t have kids yet because the therapy bills would already be running. No eyes, unchanging expressions, surreal characters. I got spooked by a few weird pictures on the wall of my grandmother’s apartment. Imagine what these will do to a 3 year old! I just might put one on and chase a youngin around if I get the chance. Put another way though, and it seems like a less murderous version of trophy hunting. Back in the day a man such as myself would have spent a vacation shooting rare animals to make ashtrays, umbrella stands, combs and brush handles from their various appendages. Then I’d hang their heads in my study and swirl brandy in a cloud of cigar smoke while the ladies retired to the conservatory to gossip. There I’d regale my male guests with how I stalked and mortally wounded the great beast and twist my moustache with delight afterwards. Ah the good old days.

I I’m too busy reading. After my post about the great book swap, I realized my hypocrisy about attending a book festival and not being in the middle of an actual book. I took the opportunity of our trip to PR to start reading again. So far it’s been ‘Stupid White Men’ by Michael Moore who happens to be one of what he describes. I’m all for making fun of Dick Cheney, but Moore is advocating borderline anarchy. ‘The Cider House Rules’ by John Irving was one I had been putting off for a while. First of all it was huge – almost 700 pages. Second of all, I still had memories of a sappy Tobey Maguire movie trailer in my head, replete with the heavy voice over and inspirational music and old-timey clothes. I couldn’t imagine this was worth 700 pages, but it was and then some. John Irving writes a damn fine book. ‘The Road’ by Cormac Macarthy was an airport purchase. Cider was getting a little low, so I needed something to top off my tank and this looked suitably short. Plus there’s the movie with Viggo Mortensen (hopefully with less of Viggo’s viggo and more apocalypse horror) out that looks interesting. En route to Boston, the boozed up bunch behind me asked what I thought of the book, which I was really enjoying. I could tell this person didn’t do a lot of book-learnin’ and was fishing for someone to commiserate on her lack o’ unnerstannin of this here book. So I hedged and asked her opinion and sure enough, she’d quit halfway though. I give her credit for trying though. In her defense it was utterly lacking in transitions, names, explanations and continuity. And there was lots of cannibalism. Maybe it was all the human-hunting that put her off? ‘The Last Don’ by Mario Puzo was really frickin good. I carried this book around everywhere I went while I was reading it. Every chance I got , I was there in Vegas comping whales or in Hollywood bedding starlets or in the Bronx giving orders to take out people in the way of the Family. It was all old-school with that vaguely inappropriate accent that old guys speak with. You know, the one where you know they’re capable of saying something so outrageous and politically incorrect that you almost goad them into it because they grew up in another era and can’t help it, just so you can hear how the olden days were.

G G.I. Joe ate my brain. My god was this movie horrible. I love bad action movies. Transformers gave me goose bumps. Armageddon makes me cry. Fast and Furious and XXX made Vin Diesel a legitimate actor in my eyes. But G.I. Joe was just an inexcusable steaming pile of crap. I just deleted 15 sentences I wrote about everything I found wrong with it. Let’s just say I was embarrassed to be seen watching it. ‘The Cooler’ on the other hand was pretty slick. Alec Baldwin needs to be in more stuff. I was sad to see he ‘retired’ this week. Let’s hope this is a boxing champ style retirement and not a real retirement. I can’t get enough of Alec Baldwin making threats in his best monologue snarl. Good stuff. Maria Bello on the other hand – yikes. Between ‘A History of Violence’ and ‘The Cooler’ she’s got a solid 5 minutes of screen time of almost hard-core nudey footage going on. These flicks need a warning on them. Wait.. they do. I just ignore them. Maybe I shouldn’t be watching on the train… ‘House of Games’ – David Mamet’s directorial debut. The man can write the crap out of a screenplay, but this directorial effort was a little shaky. I think it was the actresses’ fault because I haven’t seen her in anything before or since. Big props for young Joe Mantegna and JT Walsh as con men. Since his death a while back, I had forgotten J.T. Walsh died in almost every movie he’s been in, but you can check it out. He’s one of those actors who dies in every movie he’s cast in. Gary Busey is another. Unfortunately neither of them makes movies anymore so we are denied this thrill. ‘Blood Simple’ is the scarily enjoyable original Coen Brothers’ film. These two are in my top 3 favorite director list, along with Michael Mann and Martin Scorcese and this film has all their hallmarks.

I’ve been searching for music. No Kanye this time. Have you ever been watching something and heard a cool snippet of something and wished you knew what it was. I know there’s an ‘app for that’, but how often do you have your Iphone open and ready to fire up that app that tracks down music for you? That’s insane. By the time the stupid phone decides it wants to open and launch your app, that song will be long gone. I was watching Bad Boys 2 the other day and there’s a song that gets played every time Johnny Tapia comes on the screen. It’s not quite Crockett’s Theme, but it’s close. It’s a sort of reggaeton/cubano hip-hop jam. But I don’t speak Spanish so I have no idea what they’re saying. It’s not on the soundtrack, because the good music is rarely on the official soundtrack. I had to scour Youtube looking for the scene and fortunately there’s a whole world of people who agree at the swaggertasticness of this bit of music. Of course ITunes doesn’t have it. If I wanted to download the latest Creed crap I’m sure they’d have it, but I think the last 5 times I went to ITunes looking for something they had it twice and flawlessly let me down the other 3. Not to be outdone, I scoured the flearidden underbelly of the series of tubes and found it. No pirate bay or bittorrent though. All legit here.

200

2009-10-27T18:15:00.001-07:00

According to the nattily attired center panelist at the ‘Thrillers and Killers’ discussion, somewhere around 200 people make a full time living as writers of novels. 200! In the united States, that’s less than a 1 in a million shot. It’s one of those figures that sounds so incredible that it must be true. He didn’t back it up with anything approaching fact or citation, but it passes my sniff test. I am somewhat acquainted with a man who has published several books. One was even turned into a major motion picture. He does not smoke cigars on his yacht in St Tropez. He works a regular job and this book thing probably gets him a nice check every once in a while. By the way ‘Thrillers and Killers’ was a session at the 1^st Annual Boston Book Festival that M and I attended last weekend. This particular gathering matched spy/thriller novelists with a terrorism expert from Harvard. M and I went to a few other sessions, which were overwhelmingly crowded. Maybe it was rain, maybe Boston is a book-learnin type of place. I know I saw a Ken Burns groupie or two (we missed his talk due to overwhelming crowds). The sessions all had their own themes, but for the most part it seemed like the discussion always went back to what it was like to be a writer and to describe each particular writers’ creative process. It seems that professional writing is not an easy thing, despite what I had secretly, deep down believed. I was a somewhat talented ‘english person’ back in the day. I went to schools where teachers saw I could read harder books and they sent me to the big kids’ section on the library. I read a lot of challenging books and I think I did a decent job of regurgitating what I read. Book reports were never something I dreaded. I was given much praise and encouragement (not from 10^th grade Mr. McCarthy though) and the cycle repeated itself. I got nice standardized test scores, got the awards, etc, and off to college I went. In hindsight choosing majors and classes by what time they were scheduled was probably not the best path, but it worked. I took a lot more English classes, albeit of the analytical, not the creative variety. Lots of poetry and dusty Milton ensued. Graduation approached and various older people started asking me if I was going to be an English teacher when school was over. Hell no, I was going to be an investment banker! (I think I covered this somewhere else). Or at least get something to pay the bills while I wrote by manuscript/novel/manifesto. I knew a movie script was 120 pages long – how hard could that be? I made a few hesitant stabs at it and realized I have no mind for dialogue. There’s something else I have no appetite for – revisions. Mr. McCarthy had a real thing for rewrites. He never graded a paper the first time it was turned in. He’d make some notes, hand it back and give you a second chance. What? No way was I doing that again! My first shot was good enough. So I’d hand that sucker right back at him and take my grade. The twist was that you could do this indefinitely. If you didn’t like your C, you could keep rewriting it until it was an A. I couldn’t be bothered. Apparently rewrites and revisions are quite commonplace in the professional writing world. After I’d write a few scenes down, I’d take a look at them and realize how bad they were, but the idea of re-doing all that work was too much. Maybe movies weren’t for me. Books are where I’ll make my fortune. I’m constantly eavesdropping on people, analyzing their situation, noticing interactions – all . with a running dialogue in my mind, connecting them in a grand plot or saving good interactions for scenes the next day or whenever I feel like it. Writing a book would be easy. Or at least, writing a few good scenes would be easy. Once I got a some killer scenes, the plot would take care of itself. I tried that – there are more than a few aborted novels filled with ultra macho action and violence tucked away on every laptop I’ve ever handed over to the IT guys. I really don’t care if anyone reads them. I usually run out of steam after the first 800 words or so. Then the idea of re-writing it? No freakin way. You may notice how long some of these blog posts are and realize they are way past 800 words – that’s dumb luck. And while I may rewrite a sentence or two or change a word, there is consistently zero rewriting done. So back to the 200. Who are these people? I saw three of them on this panel. One of them was a Yale law Professor – sounded like he had a decent day job. One had been recruited to work at the CIA at a young age but realized it wasn’t all spies and guns. The third guy, spouting statistics, seemed to be the only ‘normal’ guy, i.e. not already endowed with super skills/intelligence/determination that would correspond well to crafting a page-turning novel. Dan Brown? John Grisham? Dean Koontz? I know I make fun of these guys, but if that 200 number is correct, these guys are more obscure talents than professional basketball players. They’re rarer than billionaires (and if you’re JK Rowling, you’re both). Luck seems to have little to do with this. I’ve read business case studies that analyzed thousands of years of man-days worked by all sorts of business executives. These studies then asked the executives why they made certain decisions and what resulted from these. The end result was basically luck. You can’t ask someone who flipped a coin on heads 10 times in a row how they did it, nor, so it seems, can you ask many executives what the secret to their success is, since it’s all conjecture and mostly luck. None of the authors had similar stories. Some outlined their arcs, others waded in with the writing. It seems the secret to writing a bestselling novel is to somehow capture the attention of a good agent and editor and publisher who can then propel your book to the most shelves and hope lots of people buy them. Of course the internet makes this all the more difficult. Anyone can publish a book these days. Anyone can fling opinions around in an article and get noticed. Very few get paid and ever fewer make all their money from it. I wonder if this 200 ever get together like the Spartans from 300 and howl and chant to fire themselves up and revel in their virtuosity. That’s probably what these book fairs are, actually. Get a bunch of authors together, let them measure each other up and decide who’s got the most best sellers, who’s a hack, who’s a genius. Wave around a few glasses of Cabernet and quote philosophers and try to look profound. Sounds like fun. Doesn’t mean I don’t have a novel in me, but it definitely means I can’t quit my day job.

slacker

2009-10-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

Wow. What a slacker. This guy needs to update his blog soon or people will forget he's there.. Yes I am aware. I'll get something posted here soon.

How low can you go?

2009-09-13T07:53:00.001-07:00

Back in the day there was a time when I was known to pull off some pretty low moves when I had a lot of free time to myself? Eat mac n cheese for breakfast out of the pot, wearing boxers, sitting on the couch? Check. Stay up all night playing Grand Theft Auto and go to work the next day? Check. Spend an entire day in a movie theater, watching back to back to back movies? Check. Last night, however, was a new low. M was out of town for a bachelorette party. I had tried to play golf earlier in the day and got kicked off the course because it was raining too much (I got a rain check). Wet and bored, I went up to visit brother M and his wife M and baby A. The in-laws were visiting and I was more of an intruder, but it was good to see everyone. Mainly I was trying to kill some time before 8:30, which was the kickoff of the USC/Ohio State game. I like the pro game a little more, but it’s a narrow gap. The energy of the college game is better and the better athletes stand out more, so you see more exciting plays. This was supposed to be a big one. On my way home, I listened to the thrilling Michigan/Notre Dame finish. Once home, I burst through the door, made myself a decent dinner (no mac n cheese in a pot) and headed upstairs to settle in. I started flipping through the channels and started to get a little nervous. No pre-game shows, no recaps of the days games. There was plenty of crap though. Simpsons reruns, Jeopardy, Access Hollywood and The Insider. Ok, maybe it’s on at 8, I thought. 8 came and went and the shows changed, but not for the better. Now I had ‘Law and Order: SVU’ (law and order is still on?), COPS (normally this would be fine, but I’d been waiting to see this game all day), Women’s Tennis (this turned out to be pretty exciting, as I just found out) and Nascar. I’m not going to go on a Nascar tirade here. I sort of like Nascar, It’s somewhere between hockey and basketball but below football, MMA and baseball in my decision tree of ‘will I watch this random sporting event?’. However, on this occasion, it filled me more or less with rage. Golf and Nascar have seasons that are WAAAAY too long, stretching from February-November, ending with interminable and mind boggling points/playoff/shootout (i.e. we can’t have a tournament, so we invented this to artificially generate excitement and try to have a champion of sorts). So this time of year is filled with pseudo-important events that everyone knows don’t mean anything, except to the sponsors who got duped into paying huge amounts of money on the premise that if you tell someone this is important, they will believe it (sorry that was sort of a rant). So there was a race on instead. That would only mean that the football game was on ESPN (the race was on ABC, parent of ESPN – if it weren’t on ESPN, then NBC and CBS should be fired for ignoring this game). This posed a problem – I don’t have cable. No worries, I’ll see if it’s online. It was on something called ESPN 360 – all I had to do was plug in some information about my ISP and we’d be good to go. Except my world-loser cable/isp company doesn’t get along ESPN. So no dice there. I tried telling ESPN 360 that I had a different ISP – no luck. It ws almost 8:30, I could see updates from the game as they were happening online. This was definitely not good. Then I remembered that we sort of get VH-1. I knew my TV had some tuning capabilities, so I looked up what channel ESPN was and went there – static. But I started playing with the tuner and I sort of got a signal I could see the score at the bottom, I could see players when the camera went close up, but the screen was really washed out and the sound was unbearable. Brent Musberger’s dulcet tones were scrambled like he’s been smoking Pall Malls for the last 60 years. Then things got really dark. No, literally. I turned off the lights. Maybe if it were darker, the contrast of the scrambled static with the dark room would make things stand out more. Sitting in a dark room, by myself, watching a static filled screen and believing I was seeing things… I think they made a movie about this. The irony and patheticness of the situation was not lost on me. Hey, at least I had clothes on. There was a time when I figured out that if you flipped back and forth fast enough between certain channels on the cable box, you could get the box to freeze for a few minutes and you’d get a salacious, albeit muted and somewhat shaky piece of cinematography that was particularly interesting to the teenage male, but I digress. Sitting watching static was not a noble end to a day that had thus far been relatively disappointing. I hadn’t really explored the online solution to this adequately. I know that you really can get anything you want online, provided you know where to look. It only took me a few minutes but sure enough, by 8:50, I was watching an ESPN HD broadcast from the LA area on my laptop, wirelessly, lounging on my couch. EPIC EPIC EPIC WIN. So much winsauce I was bouncing like a kid on Christmas. There I sat, until midnight, hoping the stream didn’t go down. I saw all the big plays, all the highlights. I love the internet. Last night, in my mind, the full potential of the internet was realized. Thank you DARPA nerds, thank you Al Gore, thank you anarchist hacker/freedom fight , whoever you are. And yes, it’s 10:50 and I’ve been watching ESPN’s Sunday football broadcast for an hour already. Life is good.

The Red Whale

2009-09-08T06:23:00.000-07:00

Add this to the list of things I didn't know I wanted until I had it. M and I found this creature down in Hyannis this weekend. That's a Queen-size headboard beneath him, so he's not small. I think he's supposed to hang as a sign or weathervane. For now he's in the bedroom.

Fantasy (and real) football season is here. My teams are drafted. Now all that's left is to wait for the money to flow in. I'll spare you any long winded analysis. All I can say is that I'm excited.

The big thing bothering me today is my alarming proclivity towards fantastically crappy music. It seems that almost every time I hear a song and think "hey, this is different, I kind of like it" and then proceed to look it up, it's by someone I can't stand or admit to liking. Case in point Kanye West and Miley Cyrus. I've fallen so low as to purchase two Kanye songs on itunes, affirming his BS and giving him my hard earned cash. 32 year old men do not buy Miley Cyrus songs though. I will have to stick to Youtube for while until the songs are no longer interesting to me.

Growing older, growing up

2009-09-03T11:01:00.001-07:00

Well kiddies, it was Big B’s birthday recently and he took a trip with his little lady up to the green mountain state. Since it’s a little bit of a pain to tote around wrapped gifts, we opened them a few days early and went up sans gifts. The gift for the actual day was a round of golf at the #1 rated course in all of Vermont. I think I did fairly well, despite stumbling out of the gate. I’d like a chance to play it again if only because I’d make sure I practiced a little before the actual tee time. The rest of the trip was excellent, with a fly fishing lesson and some hiking mixed in there. M and I were younger than most of the other people we saw (again) and while we lacked a Range Rover, we did have a Subaru, which lent us some serious Vermont street cred. I think we will definitely be back at some point. After we got back, I received a most excellent gift from M’s family – a Blu-Ray DVD player. Now I know I might have boasted earlier here about not having cable or electricity or something along those lines. The TV we own is 10 years old and was the first big thing I bought with a credit card, which coincidentally was also my first brush with monthly payments that I didn’t enjoy paying and other various scary financial landmines I tiptoes around before the millennium. I am admittedly envious of even luddite family members with high-def and surround sound setups. The thing is, we really needed a DVD player. Since the dvd player we moved to the house with broke, we had been using a Playstation2 as a dvd player. That is, until the controller broke and we were unable to use it. We were really in the dark ages. We even bought a puzzle in Vermont so we’d have something to do when we got back home. (The puzzle is a work in progress). So now we have a Blu-Ray player and an old school TV. Someone pointed out to me that in the past, I might have freaked out about a gift like that. There was a stage in my life where any gift that required me to do something was immediately a crapola gift. Even worse, it would provoke an almost angry response. I liked having no stuff, being able to pack up and go in a moment’s notice. Not that I had any reason to, but anything that required assembly or transport was not likely to make it with me on my next move. So here was a gift that would most likely necessitate a new TV purchase. I say most likely because what’s the point of having this super high def player with a low def TV? And if you get the nice TV, why watch bad programming when there’s HD programming out there, which means… a cable package? I’m not sure about that yet. Until they stop broadcasting NFL games on the old fuzzy pixels, I don’t know if we need to switch. The point is, I got older and I got a gift that might at one time riled me up a bit, but this was a nice surprise. We’ve scoped out a few new TV’s but until the old one has an ‘accident’ I don’t know if there’s a need just yet.

Are you ready?

2009-08-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

For some footballllll!!! yeah the Patriots were on last night. Granted, it was only a preseason game, but it's good to see the season starting again. Unfortunately, this means summer is coming to an end. It's taken a solid 11 years since I stopped having a summer vacation period to realize that the school break for summer isn't really that long. I remember lazing about for what seemed like months and then begrudgingly heading back to see friends that had suddently gotten huge and were full of stories of summer adventures. Now? This summer has flown by. I don't see why kids need a whole new 'back to school' wardrobe for 10 weeks off. The more I think about it, summer vacation is ridiculous. I understand the old school famrers needed their hands to help with the crops, but I see a lot of tubby non-farmers wandering around, forgetting what they learned and trying to look tough. I'm sorry in advance, but M and I have some un-fun plans for our summer kids. Tough nuts sonny.

Summer also means a little bit of cooking outdoors and enjoying the longer days. It stopped raining for the last part of July and first part of August, and while I haven't been able to do any super-long smoke cooking, I have done some nice burgers, corn, and even a steak or two. There's still plenty of time.

Golf - Last weekend I got to play at the local course and hit them pretty well. I got to play with a 14 year old who's dad spent $350 for the summer so he could drop this kid off in the morning and pick him up at night. He played at least 18 holes, sometimes 36 holes a day. This is a great idea! This is a pretty cheap way to ditch the kid for the day, and if they get great at golf, college is paid for. If they're really good, you can cash out the 401k and get a boat and start collecting an allowance. Or something like that. Anyway, this kid was good. Not quite pro material, but he has some growing to do. When I got home, M was not interested in dinner, so I fended for myself. I have this bag of chipotle peppers that I try to incorporate into meals without burning M's mouth out. They have a nice smoky flavor and a little bit of heat. They'd have more heat, but I usually cut out the seeds and ribs since that's where all the heat is. Right in the middle of my cooking, I started to feel a slight burning sensation around my groin area. It started like an itch or something, but gradually gained intensity, finally making it hard to move or breathe. I was standing in the kitchen, food on the stove, and I wanted to tear my clothes off and hose myself down. I'm not a sailor. I don't frequent houses of ill repute. What's with the sudden fire down below? Turns out at some point in the middle of my cooking, I had to use the bathroom. Who thinks to wash their hands BEFORE they go in there? If you're cutting hot peppers, maybe that's a good idea? I wasn't going to touch my eyes or nose, I had enough sense for that. The peppers were a good 20 minutes beforethe bathroom. Who knew they carried on for so long?About 30 minutes later things returned to normal. Not the best way to enjoy your dinner, but it was not dull.

Nuts, Flowers and a Crazy Pink Lady

2009-08-04T12:47:00.001-07:00

HowdareyouignoremewhodoyouthinkyouareLookatmewhenIamtalkingIcannotbeleiveblahblahblah!!!! This is what I heard coming from a car while I was walking through the commuter rail parking lot this morning. As the car got closer, the ranting got louder. People turned and looked. I saw a green Ford Explorer with an indifferent looking man driving and the screamer in a pink shirt sitting next to him. The sound went quiet as I walked away and then got louder as the truck pulled up and let this individual out. She seemed normal enough, but clearly had some anger issues. I don’t know if the guy deserved it or not, but it made my day? Why? Because I knew, whatever else happened, my day was starting better than his was and would probably end better as well. So thank you, O lady in pink, for making my morning a little brighter with your howl at the moon insanity.

I’ve been sort of busy lately. With all my recent book purchases, I started to go back to olden forms of entertainment. So far my selections merit about a B-minus. I have another monster sitting in my bag that I’ve been a little unwilling to start. I haven’t read this much consecutively in a long time, at least since I was being forced to read for school or something. There have been some big family doings as well. Not so much for M and myself, but the extended family counts, too. I am an uncle to a baby girl now. M and I went to visit her and the happy parents last weekend. Seems at this stage it’s a lot of sleeping, eating, crying and diaper changing. Not a bad existence. M and I also headed out to Martha’s Vineyard for the passing of her Grandmother. This of course stirred up feelings about the beginning / end circle of life thing. I guess this is what happens when you’re 30-plus. In another ten years these events will happen more often until I freak out and buy a morotcycle or 1965 Shelby Cobra to soothe my anxieties.

This picture here is of my new bags of nuts. Sick of paying ridiculous per pound prices, even at Trader Joe’s, I went in on a wholesale bundle with a guy here at work. That’s 10 lbs of almonds you’re looking at. I’ve been happily munching them for a few weeks now.

So far it’s been a pretty bad summer for the grill. An extraordinarily wet June and July made extended cookout sessions impossible. We’ve had some nice weekends here and there, but we’ve also been out and about a little bit. The rain has had some upside, though. The plants we put in are growing like crazy. I don’t do anything more than knock bugs off them and sprinkle some miracle-gro on things occasionally and check out these flowers. The front of the condo smells like a florist shop. The added bonus is that since we don’t get the same sun as other people, our flowers are just blooming now, and everyone else’s are long shed and gone. We received a basil plant as a gift not so long ago and it has to be 30 inches tall at this point. We’ve been trying to eat as much basil as possible and this thing only grows faster. Can’t complain about that.

Pick a car, any car

2009-07-21T09:57:00.001-07:00

The Answer is:

Isuzu Truck Needs New Head Gasket.Stick Shift Nice lil truck gets you around from place to plase… 1984 Mazda RX7 - NO TITLE ,CAR IS RUNNING ,IT WAS GIVE IT TO ME AS PART OF DEBT FOR MY MECHANIC ,STANDARD TRANSMISSION NO OIL LEAKS GOOD FOR PARTS … ’87 Lincoln Town Car - Vehicle does have some appearance blemishes such as fading paint, and a few dings here and there. No major cosmectic damage. In good shape for a 87. The final thing that I can think of is that the driver side door does not open from the outside…

The question is: What kind of car can you get in Las Vegas for under a thousand bucks?

These are real life ads from Las Vegas Craigslist. There are many, many more. Shady vans, rusty pickups, leaky convertibles, ‘project cars’ and econoboxes. Come one, come all. Step right up and get them while they’re hot.

Why am I looking at used car ads on Craigslist? We’re considering a driving tour of the American West. Rental car companies no hablas one-way rentals of several thousand miles. Well, they do, but they make it several thousand dollars worth of unpleasant. I considered putting the Subie on a truck and basically mailing it to Las Vegas and then mailing it back from Wyoming. That’s only going to cost a couple thousand, but there aren’t any guarantees about when it will show up, only vague 2 day windows. I’m not too excited about that. In my brainstorm, I remembered some friends from Germany who wanted to do a cross country drive. They bought a beater station wagon and cruised all over the place and ditched it when they got to the west coast. This sounded like a plan to me. Buy a hunk of junk in Vegas (700-1000), register and insure it (~300), drive it for two weeks and then sell it for gas money in Wyoming.. or something like that. Or even drive it to a junkyard and donate it. Who cares what you do with it? These are all possibilities.

Another possibility is breaking down in the middle of the June desert in nowhere Utah and waiting for a part for your 1984 Mazda to appear. While I’m not crazy about that idea, I have to admit it can (and probably would) happen. I’ve been in enough high mileage used car specials to know that the end is always near with these things. Not sure if I’m ready to get back on that horse just yet…

Books

2009-07-15T06:48:00.001-07:00

When I was in elementary school, we used to get these flyers. They were cheapo newsprint in bright colors. It was a book catalogue for kids. It was broken up by genre or interest. It was pseudo mail order. You gave your money to the teacher, who placed the order. A few weeks later, the books were distributed. I was never deprived of books. Yard sales were gold mines of ‘choose your own adventure’, ‘encyclopedia brown’, the golden book encyclopedia, super facts, and other classics. I had more books than I could ever read. But the marketing worked on me. I yearned to get the books advertised in the flyer. I wanted a Garfield book. I wanted an action book. Eventually, sometime around 4th grade, I begged and wheedled enough to get a few books’ worth of cash out of mom and dad and I placed my order. A few weeks later I opened up my books and got a huge dose of disappointment. Garfield wasn’t funny. The ‘action’ book was short and particularly devoid of action. I’d been duped by marketing and the burn still shows scars. For the 4th of July, M and I headed down to the Cape for some Sun and RnR, and maybe get a book or two. The local library does an annual book sale where they give away the previous years’ donations. I shouldn’t say give away, because money changes hands, but it’s basically giving the books away. Last time we were there it was held in a small 2 floor building. It was raining, humid and amazingly crowded. Lusty bookworms stacked armloads of pulp mysteries and nebbish old men pored over technical manuals from 30 years ago. It was a madhouse. I dreaded going back. This year, however, it was outdoors, under tents and sun. There was plenty of room and the old book mildew stench passed with each breezy gust. The tables are loosely sorted by genre or paperback/hardcover. As I pored over the titles, it dawned on me. The flyers from 4th grade. They must still exist somewhere, because these tables were covered in all the same questionable books, albeit geared towards adults. I cannot count the number of books that I loved that I have re-read. Why? Because I never do it. I can, however remember how many books I have loved that I tossed away: zero. So what books are tossed away, literary driftwood to wash ashore in a new shelf and get new life? From the looks of it, every John Grisham book ever written. Ditto Tom Clancy, Jonathan Kellerman, Dick Francis, Clive Cussler and Michael Crichton. I can’t say I’m surprised. I admit, The Firm was decent. A new author, a new genre, a great beach read. Then I read his next book, it was also about a well intentioned lawyer in a bind, with no one to trust, escaping by his wits. The next book seemed like ti was headed that way, and I stopped. Tom Clancy –favorite author of my young adulthood. Writing about the big bad Russians, dashing CIA agents and shady covert operatives. 900 page monsters jammed with ‘sensitive’ information on the latest weapons and tactics. He made spycraft seem interesting. The he started writing about the president shooting down missiles and blowing up the superbowl… his grasp of reality gave way to the need to sell books and I can tell people lost interest. The tables were filled with most of his later works. Fans of early Jack Ryan suckered into buying co-authored Op-center novelettes and snoozy China what-if scenarios. Jonathan Kellerman and Clive Cussler, I can’t say much here. Never read anything by you. Dick Francis supposedly writes ‘funny’ detective stories, always centered around horse racing, or so it seems by the cover art. I tried one of these once and couldn’t deal with it. Michael Crichton, R.I.P, was another great author of my youth. I remember getting Rising Sun from the pay section of the library. You actually had to rent the in-demand titles at one time, maybe you still do. Anyway, I read it in one night. Jurassic Park, Disclosure, Andromeda Strain, even Congo. Excellent. Somewhere around 1994 he lost his fastball and I sort of gave up. I did rip through State of Fear in an airport, to see if he still had it, but not really. Now I know this all sounds harsh. I’m not doing hatchet jobs on anyone here. Maybe I should be giving these guys credit for selling such an insane number of books that people are just giving them away. After all, I would much rather have a table full of my books at a used book sale than none of my books. I vent my frustration here because the books I like weren’t there, or at least as much as I had hoped. Carl Hiassen – I love these airport bookshelf staples. There were a total of three Hiassen books for sale under the tents, and I’d read both titles. I managed to find a Tom Wolfe book, a John Irving, maybe some others. I even found an older Gary Larson collection of Far Side comics. I can’t say I loved The Far Side. I will say that I love The Far Side, present tense. Ten or more years after he retired, it’s still laugh out loud funny. I never realized how sick and demented his humor was. One Gary Larson book tossed in with piles of Garfield collections. I told you that cat was never funny.

Links

2009-06-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

Since I can't seem to write a post without ranting for ten paragraphs, I'll just throw down some links:

Ever know anyone who looks like they're smelling something bad in every picture they're in?

http://happiestpeopleever.tumblr.com/

Ever have the family member who insists on some bizarro phot setup?

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

Ever woke up and weren't sure what happened the night before? (many off color references here - you were warned)

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

From all the helpful moms out there:

http://www.postcardsfromyomomma.com/

Lastly, there is a friend of mine who has a pepper sauce company. I'm not linking directly to his site, since I don't want him to trace back and read all about my secret life saving the world.

Do a search for Bella Pepper and check it out. It's good, not tooo hot and from a local guy.

alive and kicking

2009-06-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

Amid reports of the inevitable downfall of the printed word, I want to take a moment to call out two fine publications. It’s too little too late for these two, but I want my public support on the record. Best Life (by Men’s Health) and Conde Nast Portfolio both appear to be victims of the bad economy and the internets. Best Life was my first adult (not that kind!) magazine. I found it in the airport and it was always filled with articles about the best of everything. There were usually good, better and best options and reasons for why each was selected. It was a much more reasonable and democratic best-of than say, the Robb Report. There were health articles, money advisors and the occasional fashion advice piece. The really interesting pieces to me were about parenting. I know the best laid plans of parents usually fall apart when the tantrums start, but this was the first magazine that I’d read to cover topics like this. I was going to stockpile ideas so that when the day came, I would already be armed and sail across those perilous waters unharmed. I got Best Life for close to two years before they announced, that the issue I was holding would be my last. Bad times. This followed closely on the heels of the announcement of the closing of my newest favorite magazine, Portfolio. I am not a magnate, nor do I aspire to be. I think I would have turned my nose up at Portfolio a few years ago, but I’ve tuned my tastes a little and I started trying to read things that would make me think a little. I read my first issue on the way to Spain. Then I got another issue and heard they were closing. While the body of work I had to examine was small, I liked it very much. There were pages of minutiae and profiles of interesting people. And it covered some of the finer things in life, which I do aspire to sometimes.

It was in my last issue of Portfolio that I read about the founder and CEO of Heartland Express. He’s a self-made billionaire, goes into the office every day and still negotiates the deals. He was diagnosed with cancer too, but that hasn’t seemed to slow him down much. Why am I writing about this? I asked M this weekend if she were a self made billionaire, would she still go to work every day? My take was that if I had worked hard enough and taken the big risks to get myself into the billionaire club, I don’t think I would have a choice but to go to work every day. The sadistic drive it takes to be that successful can’t be turned off suddenly. I don’t see how the rush of sitting on your boat fills that void. I think I understand why these old timey billionaires still burn the midnight oil, long after they need to earn any more.

Which brings me to my point. Prince Harry (Henry Charles Albert David Windsor) recently spent some time in New York City. Instead of tearing up the nightclubs, he did some charity work, paid respects to various memorials and prominent figures and played a little polo. Sponsored by a champagne company and attended by the all the floppy hated people, this polo match even got some national press coverage. During the press coverage, I noticed the winning team was awarded what appeared to be watches as part of the ceremony. At first I thought, why kind of watch do you give a prince? I mean even lesser royalty is usually pretty stacked in the cash department. And even if he weren’t royalty, he’s playing polo. You know, with the horses? There are professional polo players, but I don’t think they make very much. I think it’s one of those sports where you don’t need to pay these guys very much because they don’t need to get paid. You can’t sign up for polo classes down at the local Y. You need stables of animals, caretakers, veterinarians, teachers, safety equipment and lots of open space to run around, not to mention other kids and teams to play against. I don’t recall any pickup polo games starting down at the local park. This is an already wealthy crowd. So for the guys sitting on the horses, what kind of watch DO you wear? Jaeger Le Couture made a watch specifically for polo players, one that could pivot so that the face would face down on your arm, protecting it. A nice feature to be sure, but it was not being handed out at this tournament. After some research, I found my answer… “Adding additional fire to the competitive heat of the Veuve Clicquot Manhattan Classic polo match is the delightful prize that Piaget will bestow upon the victorious team. Winners will leave the podium wearing the Piaget Polo FortyFive.. retailing for.. $11,900” Wow. Just wow. Is that what it takes to add fire to the competitive heat for these guys? I can just picture it now.. “Hey that’s a nice watch”.. “Why thank you. I won it”.. “Oh really, in like a raffle or a poker game or something?”… “Actually it was at the 2009 Veuve Clicquot Manhattan Classic polo match”… “Uhh (searches for guy with champagne tray, hopefully it’s Veuve Clicquot)”.

In other news, I’ve started watching ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ (so far it’s been great). M and I watched ‘Star Trek’ (excellent), and I also just finished ‘Frost/Nixon’ (also highly enjoyable). They have nothing in common and stand in their own spheres. I recommend them all.

Finally, the grilling season has begun. We did a little moo – a couple of fat porterhouses and some self ground steak burgers, a little oink – 6lbs of smokey spicy adobo pork tenderloin, and this weekend we commenced with the cluck – a preposterously good bbq chicken. In past posts, I wrote about sticky ribs that made me feel sorry for all the food that I ever ate afterwards, because it would never live up to those ribs. Every time I think about this chicken, I cry a little inside. I know that no one else (except M) will get to experience this chicken. I know that every chicken I make from here on out will need to be that much juicier, a little smokier, a touch sweeter, a hint spicier and a tad crispier. I made the sauce myself. Not quite the 8 hour cook from fresh tomatoes, but it took an hour or so and a whole lot of dashes and drops to get it right. I think I could get into making different sauces. Too bad they have such a high bar to reach. Even the sweet potatoes I cooked were the best I’d made with a grill. The secret was to double wrap them in foil and put them right in the fire. On Sunday when I went out to the porch to put the cover on the table, I could still smell the chicken from the night before. It made my mouth water then and I’m getting hungry writing this now. Yesterday we ate too much pizza too late in the day to have dinner. Tonight, the fridge will not survive the attempt. I’ll apologize in advance for the pictures I’m about to share. They depict acts that not everyone will be comfortable with. They are definitely NSFW (not safe for work), if only because you will need to leave work immediately and get you some chicken. Only it won’t look like this and you’ll just have to imagine something that tastes good when you eat whatever unfrozen caveman TV dinner you get your hands on to satisfy that delirious craving for smoke, sweet, salt and secret ingredients.

dirty bird...

Junior Criminal Acessory Kit

2009-05-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

While it wasn’t the extreme weekend accomplishments of the one before, M and I managed to pack a lot these past few days. Since we’re hosting a Mother’s Day get together, we had to spruce the place up a bit. Ingredient lists needed to be made, schedules worked out. Then we had a night out on the town to King’s with some friends. Wii bowling skills aside, I stunk the place out. I did manage to throw a big nasty hook for a strike, making it easily near the top of my lifetime athletic accomplishments. We restocked the pantry and fridge with wild and exotic food from around the world. But none of this compares to the excitement of the junior criminal accessory kit I picked up Sunday afternoon.

What is a junior criminal accessory kit? 15 feet of ¾” manila rope, duct tape, 32” of remnant 2x4, 50lbs of sand and several sections of ½” iron pipe. Why did I have this? I had my golf clubs, the chores were done, I was free to hit the range. I barely got outside before I saw the raindrops on the windshield. No golf for me. Instead I headed over to the a big box home store.

I’ve written about the monkey bars routine before. It started with some rope and pipe, then moved to steel cable. The cables spawned a medicine ball. Now we have a climbing rope, sand dummy, balance board and an-as-yet-unnamed horizontal bar thing that I will try not to permanently injure myself with. To her credit, M didn’t protest or laugh or put her foot down and say no. The B home gym is just about complete. There was an obligatory ‘should I be worried?’ and a ‘should I sleep with one eye open?’ comment, but once the plan came together I think I resolved those questions. If something terrible were to happen though, it will look bad for ol’ B here. I can see the security camera footage with my cart full being played and the credit card bill up on a projector for the court to see. This here is my defense. The strangest thing was that the cashier didn’t think twice about ringing me up. Maybe if I had a pickaxe or a wood chipper and a tarp it would have looked more suspicious?

Back Porch = Done (I think)

2009-04-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

Something small, simple. An item that seems too good to pass by. If you think about it, it’s the chance encounters that really get things started. M came up to me in a store one day to show me a big glass bowl and we ended up with a new downstairs bathroom. Not to be outdone, a few months back we were in a home store and we saw a cantilevered patio umbrella for sale. It was early March. Who’s buying patio furniture in March? We had a functioning set. It came with the condo. It was faded and the umbrella was home to several hornet nests, but it was good for a free set. Seating for 4 was alright, but anything more required carting out the living room stuff. Part of me wanted something better, but new gear is pricey. $35 for an umbrella wasn’t a bad start. We’d need to figure out a way to keep it in place. I had a pretty good handle on that one. Then we’d need a new table and some chairs. This umbrella didn’t come up through the middle of the table, so we needed a table with no hole. Last fall M and I were sitting outside in Florence and we noticed that the café used cast iron fencing and basic greenery to separate diners from the road and it was surprising effective. We thought something like this might work for out little space. We had all these ideas, but all we really had was an umbrella.

Over the next few months we acquired more. We’d isolated a few tables from Ikea but they weren’t being delivered to our closest store. Tired of waiting, we drove to Connecticut instead. 3 hours of driving for 10 minutes of shopping. I think we got the support system for the umbrella next. I had it in my mind that I would construct an elaborate wood base and blah blah blah. I’m not great at building things. M heard me out but didn’t jump at the idea. We needed about 100 lbs of weight. Four 37 lb pavers would do the trick. Table, pavers, umbrella – check. Chairs were on deck. Another Ikea run and another and another and we were in business. Turns out I can assemble them fairly quickly when I get into a rhythm.

By now, our living room was holding all of these acquisitions and starting to look like a Building #19 warehouse. Shredded cardboard, packing material, piles of furniture and boxes were everywhere. The railing system was less straightforward. Our first investigations of decorative fencing yielded flimsy plastic pickets and miniature stockades - nothing that would hold a planter box. After an abortive and confusing attempt at mocking up a stone wall in the garden center of a big box home improvement store, we found our fence in the building materials section. A few details about attaching said fence later and it was off to start assembly.

Construction started a week or so ago when I put together the umbrella. Turned out the pavers were a little too thick at the corners and needed a haircut. I don’t own nor did I want to rent a wet saw. I shot a quick text for help to some family members and got the great advice to use a cold chisel and a hammer. I didn’t have a cold chisel either, but I saved the steel punch that came with our granite vanity. I figured, good for breaking granite, good for breaking concrete. Michaelangelo I am not, but I shaped those pavers with a whole lot of aggression and noise. Satisfied, I went on to assemble the railings. We can’t attach the railings to the deck directly, so we decided to use some 2x6’s and make portable railing units. This will help when the condo board has the deck re-stained and when the snow comes. Each railing came with 8 lag bolts that weren’t exactly well fitted to the bases of the newell posts. I had to tighten them ¼ turn at a time with the only tool that would fit. It didn’t get me fired up to turn a wrench for a living.

We decided to do the railings last weekend because it was too cold to oil down our new furniture. That’s right, the table and chairs needs to be oiled every year. We traded indestructible aluminum for high maintenance wood! It does look a lot better and the first year’s oiling wasn’t so bad. We’ll see how I feel 7 years from now. 6 chairs and a (newly assembled) table later, I’d had my fill of oil and mineral spirits. We filled up our planter boxes, added 3 new shrubs and sold off the old furniture. All on a Saturday. Before 6pm. I even hit up the driving range afterwards. The 2x6’s looked a little pale next to the chairs, so I gave them a little George Hamilton style bronzer. It’s a little odd, but the deck stain to match the deck was only sold in gallon buckets and I needed a cup of it. We had so much time left over, we decided to fire up the grill and have some steaks. Didn’t even have to use my AK, gotta say it was a good day…

Drink up

2009-04-21T07:33:00.001-07:00

Last night M and I had to make an unscheduled trip to Ikea. It’s not close to where we live. It rained last night. It was dark. Why did we have to go? Something we bought had an epic design fail and needed to be taken back. The trip was less than satisfying and I was frustrated when we left. Ikea didn’t do anything wrong other than be out of stock for something critical. But this misses my point. As we were leaving, I noticed someone was having a little less fun than I was. Or maybe they were having more fun? Either way, this was piled up against a column.

That’s three 16oz PBR tallboy cans, emptied of their contents. One? I can understand that. Maybe they grabbed a road soda on the way out the door? It’s a long drive to Ikea. Maybe they had a rough day. A 16 oz can is a little excessive for a casual brew, but I’ll let it slide. 2 cans? Maybe they had a really long ride there and wanted some refreshment before a long slog through the cavernous Mecca of fine Swedish home furnishings? Maybe they ate a bag of chips on the road and were really thirsty? 3 pounders? I have no idea why anyone would need 48 ounces of cheap beer all at once, at a furniture store. 48 ounces equals 4 regular 12 ounce cans. So he might be sneaky and think he only had 3 beers but he really had 4. I’ve been reluctant to go some places before, but not “I need to drink 4 beers before I go in there” reluctant. Or maybe I’m being too cynical and they fell out of his recycling bin on the way to the redemption center. He bought a carload of goodies and needed the extra space and the $.15 worth of aluminum didn’t make the cut.

Speaking of recycling, I went out to our recycling dumpster this weekend. Before I got there I could tell I was out of luck. The lid was bulging. I decided to try around the side so I could sneak some stuff in the side. As I opened the slider, something fell and hit me on the head. A big empty plastic bottle of Fleischmann’s Gin. Really? If I remember right that stuff costs about ten bucks, maybe twelve if you’re not in a college town. I know the economy is in a rough patch, but that seems a little extreme. Our condo complex isn’t a big party group, so I have to think that this is teenagers hiding evidence from their parents. I don’t care if you’re making omelettes or gallons of manhattans. Life is too short for crappy ingredients. On the other hand I should be glad it wasn’t one of those big mother Beefeater bottles crashing down on my skull. Keep the dream alive everyone - go with the plastic. For safety.

More fun stuff

2009-04-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

Since I had so much fun with my musical suggestions from yesterday, I remembered one more that had me boppin to myself all morning. Check out Soulja Boy's 'Tell em - crank that (soulja boy)'. I think this guy was born in 1990? This song was huge right around his 17th birthday. Not bad for a young man. I hope he earned (and kept) some money from it. The song itself isn't so entertaining, but the video (find it on youtube) is a little funny. It comes with it's own little dance and everything.
Another youtube gem is Randy Pausch's last lecture. Who is Randy Pausch? Watch the lecture. It's long (over an hour), but reminded me of some of the impressive and interesting professors I met in college. It makes me grateful that I know quite a few of these types of people in my own life and keeps me motivated to meet and cultivate relationships with more of them.
If you like the 'interesting lecture' genre, check out TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conferences. They have some enthralling 20 minute presentations on everything. Captivating. I feel better just having listened to them every day.

Best Omelette Ever

2009-04-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

Behold the deliciousness that M and I created for our Easter brunch #1 this Saturday. Eggs, potato, tomato, red peppers, basil, rosemary, garlic. All fantastic. It took a little longer than a normal omelette, but it tasted much better. Will definitley be making this again.

Unrelated to the omelette. I just watched Lonely Island's "Like a Boss" video. I wasn't familiar with Slim Thug's original version of it. I know only one is meant to be funny, but they both blow it out the box for hilarity. Big plus for extra close-ups of Slim Thug's paltinum and diamond teeth. An honorable mention needs to be made here for Flo Rida's "Low". This is another older song that I only recently became acquainted with. Funny in a different way. I even did a Spanish remix freestyle one day in Madrid that had people staring at me. I had to create a few pandora stations so they could recommend even more of this crunktastic worktime soundtrack.

Last, I had to mention a video I saw this morning of this guy on youtube who does eating challenges. If you've even seen Kobayashi, the hotdog eating champion, you can tell he doesn't eat like this all the time because he's only 140 lbs. A lot of guys think because they're big they can eat a lot and eat it quickly, which tends not to be the case. In some perverse cosmic twist, you have to be a sort of athlete to be able to eat a lot of food quickly. Case in point, this monster who tried to eat 40 Totnino Pizza rolls in 2 minutes. He's out of breath before the first ten are polished off. The rest is a little hard to beleive. He crawls to a halt at around 4 minutes and then, admitting defeat, asks for more challenges and washes it down with some Smirnoff beverage. Stay classy.

Rant and Rave – Spanish Edition

2009-04-09T05:49:00.000-07:00

Rave - #1 has got to be Jamon. What is Jamon? It’s ham, really. But not the watery limp pink stuff from the deli, this is dark red, chewy, fatty deliciousness. Aged 12-36 months and served cured (essentially raw and mummified) with little more than some tomato and olive oil rubbed on bread, it equals amazing eats. There were museums to this stuff. Some of it was remarkably expensive (+$70/lb). Those swine eat acorns in oak forests before they become Jamon. Ruffles makes Jamon flavored chips (not as good, but interesting). It’s hard to describe what it tastes like. It was sort of nutty, and buttery with a wonderful mouth feel and an instant craving for more. Too bad it’s not available here so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Close #2 is manchego cheese. Delicious.

Rave – Tapas. It is well known that I love hors d’ourves. I can have nothing but snacks for dinner, which Tapas are, more or less. Real Spaniards have them for snacks before they go out dancing or drinking, but we had them for dinner. Meatballs, fried cheese pillows, paella, shrimp on a stick, cod ceviche, artichokes, potato quiche, octopi, even a deep fried pigs’ ear were no match for our appetites. Well mine, anyway, M was more adventurous than ever but she abstained from the ear and cod.

Rant – paying for bread and olives. What is this extra 2 Euros on all of our meals? It’s the bread. Turns out the bread basket or olive plate aren’t free in Spain. They must know Americans devour these things without question, so it’s an easy $3 on every meal. I didn’t realize this until very late in the trip and it was still hard to resist. Diner beware. Epically lame.

Rant – hidden taxi charges. The meter reads 10 Euros. Then we stop, the driver mumbles something and mashes the meter’s buttons until it reads 18 Euros. Had I spoke Spanish or Catalan, maybe I would have my answer, instead I’m out big bucks. Even NYC has a sign in the cab explaining what the charges are. Maybe they are legit, maybe not. We got taken for a ride, literally.

Rave – Westin Palace Hotel Madrid. Wow. This had to be the nicest place I’ve stayed in yet. Even though I am not technically platinum level anymore, I still got the platinum level perks and with it came a killer corner suite. We missed out on the opera brunch and the chocolate dinner, but we did see the Turkish national soccer team and got treated to a nightly horn honking battle and even a view of a church doing rapid-fire weddings. I don’t think the pews had even cooled off from one party before another bride showed up for her trip down the aisle. Excellent free entertainment.

Rant – indecipherable menus. I thought ‘taco’ meant a taco. We ordered the low priced sampler menu and pointed at things we thought we wanted. I got overcooked tuna cubes with ketchup on a bed of French fries. I only like my tuna 2 ways – raw and in the can. This was the extra fishy dark stuff. I thought it was slow cooked beef and I was treated to bony fish cubes. Luckily M shared some of hers with me so I didn’t eat the napkin. After considerable difficulty ordering dessert, they brought us the English menu. Thanks a lot fellas.

Rave – Picasso. I have a lot more respect for Mr. Pablo now. We saw his museum in Barcelona, filled with a lot of his earlier works and you get a chance to see how talented his was, even as a young child. It was much later in life that he developed the cubist style most people know, but he could paint almost any style. In our research for this trip I read 2 anecdotes about Picasso. One was that he used to pay everyone with a check, knowing that because of his signature, many of these checks would never be cashed and would instead be framed. Not a bad way to get by. The other was that he was sitting at a bar doodling on a napkin. When the bill came, the waiter offered to waive the bill if Picasso would sign the napkin. Picasso scoffed and said if he signed his doodle he could buy the whole bar with it, much less his meager bill.

Rant – Dali. Every dorm has the kid who buys a bunch of Dali prints from the bookstore. That kid sees all sorts of meaning in the frailty of time in the melting clocks and loves to gaze at the surrealist images, trying to get inside Dali’s head. Snore. We went out of our way to see his museum, which he had a great hand in designing. I think the fact that he helped design his own museum took something away from it. For one it was intentionally confusing, and secondly, he got to choose what works went in and how they were portrayed. The place was a madhouse of large scale loony art. There are a few interesting exhibits that involve a surprise. I will not reveal them here because knowing ahead of time takes something away.

Rave – Dali’s Jewelry. This section of the museum was much more interesting. I think jewelry was a much better medium for his work in general. But what do I know? This was way better than the regular museum.

Rave – Spanish Pastries. XiouXiou (zhoo-zhoo), churros con chocolate, fairy cakes (muffins),napolitanas. I had no idea Spain was big on pastries. Lots of excellent finds in this area.

Rave – La Boqueria Market. M and I got more fruit than we could eat for less than $2. Strawberries, apples, oranges, plums, and things I can’t even name. This market had it every day. They had stalls for fruit, fish, Jamon, normal meat, bizarre animal parts, dried foods, nuts, candy. It was a free for all. If I lived within walking distance to here I’d be 300 lbs.

Rant – rain. Lots of it. Everyone saying how unusual it was. Not for us. You want rain? Book us for a vacation. We can’t miss.

Rave – Another animal statue. Madrid had a pseudo symbol of the city which is a bear reaching up for a berry bush. The royal family used to keep bears and hunt them. The berry bush is some kind of indigenous plant. I like cities that have animal mascot statues.

Rant – pickpockets and scammers. All of our travel information told us to watch out for thieves and to wear our money belts. I hate the GD money belt. It makes it impossible to tuck a shirt in and makes me look like I’m wearing a diaper. It’s hot and causes belly sweat. Not enjoyable. At night I fantasized about catching a pickpocket and thrashing him publically. We’re from the land of guns and ammo. You going to try and rob me without a weapon? I’m 30% larger than most Spanish men and from the looks of it, in better shape. I suppose targeting younger, larger people is a bad way to become a successful pickpocket, but we didn’t see any of it. The constant vigilance did keep me on edge and unusually aggressive.

Rave – free museums. Much like the Louvre being free if you are unemployed, Madrid’s big art museums were free to unemployed, retired people, students and after a certain time of day, everyone. This is the way it should be.

Rave – Cataluña. I think the crummy weather and crowded area we stayed in caused me to like Madrid a little more than Barcelona. Given another chance I think the circumstances would change. Tucked up into the northeast corner of Spain, the Catalan people pay more taxes and tolls than everyone else, they have the most industry and commerce, they are spiritual but not maniacally religious and they sport a donkey as a symbol to poke fun at the bull-obsessed Madrdilleanois. They gripe about the lazy south and don’t really see eye to eye with the rest of their country. Sounds familiar to me.

Rant – Franco. Bad, bad dude. Not enough is taught about this in American schools.

Rave – Small Spanish Feet. You ever go to the clearance section of the store and see all the giant size clothes that never get sold? Guess whose feet qualify for those sizes in Spain? This guy, that’s who. Most of the clothes, too. Large does not quite contain me. If I lived there, cheap clothes for me.

Rant – No orange/pineapple juice blend. On the flight from Barcelona to Madrid, Iberia offered 4 beverage choices. Coke, water, orange, and pineapple juice. I asked for half orange /half pineapple and you’d have thought I had proposed mixing some Clorox in there. Everyone around me gave the American a funny look. The attendant said it sounded weird and almost refused to serve me. But she did. Delicious. They don’t know what they are missing.

Rave – Gaudi and modernisma architecture. We got to see a lot of Gaudi’s work in Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia, Parc Guell, Casa Mila and a few other places were all designed in a psychedelic, twisting, mosaic style that was a little jarring at first, but turned out to be one of my favorite aspects of the trip. I’m not a big art or architecture guy. I like what I like but we don’t have glossy coffee table books of I.M. Pei or Frank Lloyd Wright. I really liked what Gaudi and the modernists were trying. Turn of the century Barcelona had a lot of money for commissioning private houses and these guys came up with buildings that are more interesting than just about anything I’ve seen anywhere else. Highly recommended.

Rave and Rant – Spanish political protesters. I’d read that Spain was in some economic trouble, possibly worse than the U.S., and I was a little concerned that we might run into some rioters or protesters. Turns out I wasn’t disappointed. There was a very loud anti-capitalism protest and then an enormous anti-abortion protest on consecutive days, right outside our hotel in Madrid. Rant because I don’t gave a great deal of affection for protesters, rave because they were both exciting and delivered the bizarreness I look for in a vacation.

Plungers, odds and samples

2009-03-05T07:12:00.000-08:00

Skip the first paragraph if you don’t want to read a detailed bathroom story.

Ok, now that I weeded out those not interested, let’s begin with Sunday morning. We’d just finished off a nice breakfast together. A big storm was coming up and we didn’t have any big plans. It was looking like a pretty uneventful and peaceful day. I finished off my pot of coffee and headed upstairs to take care of some business. I don’t know how else to say it, so there it is. The bathroom off the master bedroom is ‘my’ bathroom. It’s smaller than the main 2nd floor one, so I think that’s how I ended up with it. I have a nice candle and collection of magazines and books. I have the radio tuned to the sports station. It’s even heated, which M’s bathroom is not. It can be a comfortable place sometimes and when I get the chance to, I can linger, especially on weekends. This was one such day. After a little bit, I decided to do a mid-term flush. This serves two purposes. One, it makes everything generally more pleasant. Second it’s a preventative measure against catastrophes, of which there has been one already. Our house is newer, so it is filled with wimpy low flow plumbing and tends to get a little slow when taxed. No worries, I would take an appropriate break and prevent this from happening. Wrong. After the big whoosh and gurgle, I waited to hear the pleasant bubbling noise that means it’s time for round 2. No pleasant bubbling, only a tired and slightly-higher-than-usual level. I decided this could be trouble, so I ceased operations and went into troubleshooting mode. There still needed to be a final flush, so I waited for the water to go down to normal levels and fired away. Big mistake. Not only did the added water not push the rest down, it filled up much faster than I anticipated. I did calculate that the makers of the commode had to plan on the bowl holding enough water for a full tank in addition to whatever the water in the bottom of the bowl is called, so I was reasonably comfortable that it wasn’t going to overflow. Except it was going to. Higher and higher and higher the water rose. My first move was to yank up the bath mat and anything that would absorb copious amounts of overflow. Next was to quickly check if there were any gaps in the baseboards and floor, and it seems like the construction was sound there. Next I had to evaluate what I was going to use as a bailing device. I had 3 options. First was the coffee mug I use to drink out of after I brush my teeth. It’s a souvenir mug from a trip I took to a Buffalo farm back when I first moved to Boston. I really didn’t want to use that. Next was the plastic bowl that I use to mix my shaving cream with. That would have probably worked, except it is shallow and lacked a handle. Last was the trashcan. That looked to be the best, although I needed to dump out the contents of the can first and I was doubtful that the can would even fit in the bowl. Keep in mind I did these mental gymnastics all in 3 seconds while yelling profanities at the bowl, hoping it would stop. To her credit, M did come to check on me and I heard a pleasant “Everything alright in there??” through the door. I assured her I was fine, but only after the water peaked at a level slightly higher than the rim of the bowl. I believe the scientific explanation is that surface tension keeps the meniscus of the water from overflowing, even though it is higher than the lip. If you slowly fill a cup with water you can observe this yourself sometime. So now I have an overfull bowl and no exit strategy. Luckily I could hear the glorious sounds of slow trickling, i.e draining from the bowl. Once I had some room to work with I took out the plunger and suddenly realized it was woefully inadequate to the task. I remember scoffing at the $20 plunger and buying the $6 one instead, thinking that so much money for what you’re using it for was ridiculous. Turns out I was right. Until I needed a $20 plunger. With several failed attempts at resolution, I left the offending plunger in situ and went downstairs to amend our shopping list for the day. Upon our return with the $16 model ($20 is still ridiculous) I was rewarded with several deep glugs as the new soldier stepped into battle brilliantly.

I don’t think anyone has ever told me not to cheap out on a plunger. I already knew you couldn’t cheap out on mayonnaise, toothpaste, T-shirts, shoes, laundry detergent, sushi and plastic surgery. I used to have razor blades in that category, but once I learned the “Gillette uses decommissioned battleships for its razor steel” story was a myth, the extreme price of the Mach XII ultra turbo 6 blade was a little too extreme. I tried some cheapo disposables and I’m happily disposing my way to my 500kg yearly trash allotment. 500kg, that’s right, over 1000 lbs of trash per year, per person in the wealthy west. I read a very interesting article about trash in the next century and that’s what the data show. You know why you see plastic bags blowing everywhere in 3rd world countries? Because that’s the only thing people in those places can’t recycle. There aren’t many municipal trash services, so without mass-scale recycling there would be mountains of rotting trash everywhere. I didn’t see Slumdog Millionaire, but I heard there were some nasty garbage scenes, so I am not claiming that 100% of the trash is actually recycled in these places, only that it could be much much worse. I didn’t believe that I produced half a ton of trash every year, but at the end of the week we have a decent pile to go out to the dumpster. It’s entirely possible. I bet the people with kids bump up this number, so it evens out.

I play the lottery occasionally. But only when it’s over $100 million and only with my own money. I didn’t do so well in math, so the scale of the odds against me actually winning don’t have much of an impact on me. I suppose that’s why lotteries have so much success. I mean 1,000-1 or 1,000,000-1 odds don’t mean a whole lot to most people. A coin toss? That’s 50-50 but I don’t expect to win a coin toss very often. For some reason I always think I’m going to be the one who beats the odds that are way worse than my chances of being hit by lightning or a meteor or crashing in a plane or being eaten by a rabid bobcat. So this past Tuesday a group of 10 workers won a little over $200 million in the Mega Millions drawing. If they take the cash option, after taxes they’ll each take home a little less than $10 million. That’s not quite enough to go out and start buying racing yachts, but if you invest $7m in tax-free municipal bonds, even at an atrocious 3% rate, you get $210,000 a year, tax free. That’s enough to quit your job and live a comfortable existence. Any better rate or more money and you can really do damage. But what happens to that office where these people worked? If my team all quit tomorrow, that would be a catastrophe for my employer. It’s hard enough to find someone new when we have an opening. I’ve been there 4 years and seen about a 50% retention rate on new hires. Granted, I work in a fairly esoteric little niche, but these people worked for Chubb Insurance. Chubb insures works of art, rare cars, athletes’ body parts. This is not your nana’s annuity we’re talking about. There has to be some expertise and on the job experience that goes into underwriting that sort of stuff. I feel bad for their boss, having to replace all those people. Unless they’re halfwit slackers with born to lose tattoos, then good riddance.

Wednesday, I stepped out of the train station and started my daily people-weave to get across the street before traffic plays bowling ball with me. Usually this is an exciting and possibly rewarding event, as there are hawkers out there distributing free samples or political pamphlets. It’s a great spot, with thousands of employed, ostensibly educated people reliably pouring out the station every 15 minutes for several hours. I was more than excited to see a young man standing in the crowd with people eagerly accepting free samples of what he was handing out. It looked like a big sample, too. Sometimes the kids grab handfuls of the gum or mints and stuff them into the awaiting hands. This guy was handing out only single samples, so this had to be good. Even better, it was in a can, so it was possibly fresh or could be eaten with a spoon. I shoved my through and took my sample. What gold did I get?

Science Diet Culinary Creations Roasted Chicken Dinner with Savory Gravy. Seriously? Cat food? Who the &^$%$ wants a can of cat food at 8 in the morning? What are they going to do with it, carry it around all day in case they see a homeless cat? Toss it in the microwave for a quick snack? I was livid. I can only imagine what the guy handing it out felt like when he got that assignment. “Nice. Maybe I get to hand out some candy bars or gum that people will really like. What? Cat Food? This sucks. People are going to hate me. God I wish I’d majored in a science.” I know these people went to college. They’re always bright and clean and eager. They probably all work for a marketing company that gets hired by Science Diet to come up with a way to get buzz about their new Culinary Creations line. They have hopes and dreams of coming up with the next “Just Do It” or “Where’s the Beef”, but instead they get sent out to do street marketing and hand out cans of cat food. Go get ‘em.

Brutal

2009-02-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

bru⋅tal

[broot-l]

–adjective

1.	savage; cruel; inhuman: a brutal attack on the village.

2.	crude; coarse: brutal language.

3.	harsh; ferocious: brutal criticism; brutal weather.

4.	taxing, demanding, or exhausting: They're having a brutal time making ends meet.

5.	irrational; unreasoning.

6.	of or pertaining to lower animals.

At a project a few years ago, I apparently indicated some aspect of the work to be done was ‘brutal’ and someone asked if I watched the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalocalypse The writeup here is pretty accurate, it’s a cartoon show about a fictional scandanavian heavy/death metal band filled with references to everything bad (and good) out there. The band decides to do things more or less based on how brutal they are. Therefore, everytime I come across this show I have to wait for someone to say something is BRUTAL before I can move on to other activities. There is a particular character who says it with a low growl that really sets it aside as a different word altogether. I would have included just a clip, but without context the clips are found are unusual and possibly disturbing. I’ll leave you to your own devices to research this further.

So why brutal?

I was called into a meeting at 8am yesterday. I don’t have a train that gets in anywhere close to 8am. I have one that arrives at 7 though. I get on this train at 5:54. I woke up at 5. It was freezing cold, I skipped the shower. The request and execution were BRUTAL.

I made some braised pork ribs this weekend that taste so good that all of your other meals suddenly taste like crayons. You’re sorry you ever ate these ribs because nothing you’ve ever eaten is as good and nothing you will ever eat will taste better. There is no going back after this. They are BRUTALLY good. Behold the pictures and be happy they are poor quality. If they were any better your eyes would jump out of your head and head over to our house to see the ribs in person, leaving you to wander your world eating whatever small furry objects failed to elude your grasp.

M has already documented our taxman situation. I will not belabor this. Now we have to pay a not insignificant excise tax. What gives, O tax man? What did we do to you? We voted for Obama, we’re willing to pay our share to raise all the boats. Hell, I’m even willing to pay for the nimrod sitting at home with his 52 inch TV in his foreclosed house, because I’m in the right. You jumped on us pretty fast and hard though. BRUTAL.

I watched a truly excellent movie recently, Gone Baby Gone. Ben Affleck directed, so this had the potential to be truly brutal. It had a decent cast and was set in the grittier areas of Boston, near and dear to my heart. The plot revolves around a kidnapped child. All the happy bits are in place. This movie was incredible. Language, violence, characters. All around BRUUUUTAL. Excellent. Watch it.

7 disconnected and rambling paragraphs

2009-02-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

Last night, trying to sleep, M and I heard a faint beeping noise. It was pretty steady and high pitched. We have very thick walls between our home and the neighbors. We never hear babies crying or dogs barking or anything else exciting. This was different. I went outside to see if this was coming from next door or maybe outside. Sure enough it was coming from the empty unit to our left and it sounded like a smoke alarm. I don’t know what these people do, and they seem nice enough. They keep some odd hours. They’re home during the day sometimes and gone at night, taking separate cars. Anyway, last night, while alarms were going off in their house, no one was home. The owner is on the condo board, so I went to ask some board members if they knew how to get in touch with them – no luck there. You’d have thought I was soliciting money for the kegs n legz fund based on their reactions though. So the house next door might be burning up and they’re not home, what should be done? We called the fire department, who arrived promptly and decided to look around and when no visible smoke was available, declined to break down the door to find the cause of the alarm. They asked that we keep an eye open for smoke and go back to whatever we were doing. Ok, I’ll go to sleep with a fire next to my head. Sweet. Turns out it was most likely a dead battery or something similarly lame. Another unnecessary awkward interaction with our fellow homeowners. I guess it’ll be a big laugh at the next block party that we skip. Good to know the town has a decent (sub 5 minute) response time. Sorry we rousted you, fellas.

I ate an ‘Angry Whopper’ recently. I don’t eat a lot of fast food anymore. I eat a lot of what people would consider healthy/hippie/yuppie foods, vegetables, whole grains, low or no sugar, minimally processed stuff. I’m not a zealot. I don’t preach to others. I ate whatever I wanted for years and I was fine. It just happens that I tend to feel better overall when I stick to these kinds of foods. I was excited to eat the Angry Whopper. I love the Whopper Jr. In general, I prefer Burger King to other fast food places. The flamey taste and creative sandwiches keep them in my good graces. The Angry Whopper commercials promised pissed off onions raised on fear and animus. The man on TV ate one and then poured ice in his mouth afterwards. There were jalapenos on the Angry Whopper. I asked for recommendations from the counter staff and a helpful teenager vowed for its feistiness. Another wouldn’t eat it because of his bleeding ulcers. Why a teenager has bleeding ulcers, I have no idea, but no Angry Whoppers for him. I was hungry and wanted to dance with six bucks worth of snorting, Roger Clemens with liniment everywhere, roid raging Angry Whopper. It was fine. The onions were sleep deprived instead of angry. I saw jalapenos, but couldn’t feel their sting. The brown sauce had some snap, but I wasn’t rushing for the ice machine. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. A truly enraged whopper would probably give Daisy Mae a heart attack and the King would be out on the street. It wasn’t as disappointing as the spicier but less biologically friendly spicy baconator, which I didn’t want to finish, but I had high hopes here. I have plans for a truly malevolent burger to be released this summer. To be continued…

I had an existential crisis at work recently. I’ve written about the Wii that they bought for us and the ‘team building’ and camaraderie it’s brought. I have to say that it really does bring people together that normally wouldn’t interact and for that it has served its purpose. The most popular game for it has become the bowling. The guitar heroes were a little too heroic and scared off the less intense players, so most people gravitate to the less intense, but more competitive bowling. It allows for a bit of one up-mans-ship and you can bang out a frame in 20 minutes or less. I’d played at Thanksgiving and then Again at Christmastime at an off-site location and got the hang of the bowling a little earlier than the others and soon I was dominating. I had the coveted ‘pro’ status and the blinged-out ball that comes with it. I rolled through the first few rounds of the company tournament, crushing my opponents and talking tons of trash. Then I lost. My game stopped working. I have no idea what happened. I lost in the finals to a chump, a part time player who can’t break 200. My fans were shocked. Now it’s like I got off the juice and showed up at camp 30 lbs lighter and a step slower. I can’t get the big snap on my break. I’m averaging 140 and my pro status and ball are long gone. Whatever I had, it’s gone. I’m trying to rebuild myself, Steve Austin style, to be bigger, faster, better, but it’s not working. I’m looking like the early 90’s Greg Norman, minus the vineyards and mega yacht and sleek blonde locks. Maybe I can scrape together a few strong sets and catch a break or two along the way, but I fear my Wii bowling championship days are behind me. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ‘lost’ something I had. I don’t know what’s next, but the slow inevitable decline has begun. Get me my lounger, sweatpants and comb-over.

If you have a chance, and didn’t see it, try to check out Lil Wayne on the 2/10 edition of ‘Around the Horn’. ATH is a sports oriented talk show where topics of the day are argued about in a round robin format. The host scores the argument and gradually the 4 sportswriter participants are eliminated and the last man (or woman) standing gets 30 seconds to speak their mind. If you don’t know, Lil Wayne is a New Orleans based rapper with a few Grammys to his name. Born in 1982, he’s been a paid performer since he was 15 and had been arrested multiple times for possessing large quantities of drugs. I mention his youth and criminal record not to disparage the man, but to point out he was going up against several middle aged men who write professionally for major newspapers and have won awards for their reporting. Lil Wayne also recently received an Aston Martin from his father for either being nominated for 8 Grammys or being clean of Lean for 30 days. What’s lean? Lean is a drink consisting of Codeine-laced cough syrup/sizzurp (this is important!), Sprite (or other fruit flavored soda), and a jolly rancher or two, you know, for extra flavor. It’s not a performance enhancer in the A-Rod sense, probably more in the Michael Phelps neighborhood. Anyway, while I was listening to ATH on a podcast, I was curious about Mr. Wayne’s sports commenting abilities. I know he wrote a few blogs for ESPN, so he had to have some credibility, but how would years of touring and lean affect Weezy? I guess they didn’t. Lil Wayne was well thought out and made some excellent points and even though the event was rigged, I enjoyed listening to him more than some of the resident experts on that show. So if you’re reading this and saw a guy in a bright yellow jacket laughing hysterically to himself on the train this morning, it was probably me. As an aside, I read that the owner of the Phelps bong tried to sell it on EBay for $100,000.00! Amazing. The police did end up confiscating it. I guess South Carolina is a little different from Northern California when it comes to this sort of thing…

I’ve seen a few movies recently, although none were really worth commenting about at length. I’ll try for a sentence or two… ‘Appaloosa’ - Entertaining Wild West shoot ‘em up. Renee Zelwegger without the scrunchy face. Vigo Mortensen without any embarrassing steam room fight scenes. Good stuff. ‘Barcelona’ – Two guys in 1980s Barcelona want to get some Spanish girlfriends. Kind of weird. ‘Volver’ – Penelope Cruz and a bunch of other people in Madrid have some family issues and deal with them in their own special way. Entertaining, with subtitles. I do appreciate how foreign movies sometimes deal with subjects that would get an American movie a NC-17 rating, but since there are subtitles, the censors probably fall asleep or assume most Americans can’t read and let all sorts of wildness slide. ‘He’s just not that into you’ – Once again my corollary about girl movies having no men’s room lines came true. This was better than most romantic comedy fare and had a few legitimate laughs in it. There’s a lot of truth in here too, which I appreciated. ‘Half Nelson’ - The guy from ‘The notebook’ decides to teach high school history and smoke some crack along the way. Not uplifting, but thought provoking.

I made a new toy for the monkey bars routine. I had an old deflated basketball that I filled with sand and covered with tape and now serves as a medicine ball of sorts. I was surprised at how much sand went in there, considering that I bought a 50lb bag (which wasn’t very big, but was suitably heavy). Most of the sand ended up in the ball, which was 3-5 times heavier than most regulation medicine balls. Coming in at a hefty 36lbs, this is not appropriate for most medicine ball exercises which consist of throwing the ball to someone else (have you even thrown something weighing close to 40lbs at someone?) or doing athletic movements with the ball. The weight isn’t really a setback though, since the unconventional shape and surface require strength and movements that I hadn’t used previously. I’m very happy with it so far. I say so far because I know I’m going to drop it on my face one of these days and seriously regret the ‘if a little is good, a lot must be better’ approach I took to making it. I know it’s a little old school, but I’m not going to be growing any handlebar mustaches or sporting any single shoulder unitards like a circus strongman anytime soon. Eugene Sandow can rest peacefully. I am considering using another 50lb sack of sand as a heavy bag to pick up and carry around, but I need to construct something that will hold together if and when I drop it. I suspect the paper bag it comes in isn’t up to the task.

Last but not least, I’m going to be an uncle. The younger male sibling has announced his intentions to populate the world with his progeny. I’m happy for him and the rest of the world. We need more stable, intelligent children to compete with the California octobabies. This will mark the 20th!! child whose parents are friends/relatives/coworkers I am on friendly terms with. You want a kid, become my friend by March 1st and chances are you’ll be claiming another dependent for your 2009 taxes. I should start a facebook group and charge admission.

no posts?

2009-02-10T13:39:00.001-08:00

http://www.postcardsfromyomomma.com

I have some interesting things to say, I just can't get them organized. Read this site instead. It's funny.

Bad Ideas

2009-01-23T08:18:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

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.

New Year’s - Almost

2008-12-30T06:16:00.001-08:00

Back to reality, boys and girls. Well sort of. New Year's isn't here yet, but the big holidays are over. I never had much respect for New Year's Day. It just doesn't have the same cache that the other big days have. There aren't any real traditions that I know of. Other than finding an excuse to booze it up too much and stay up late, I'm not sure what makes New Year's much different from a Friday night. But I didn't come here to beat up New Year's eve or day. I used to like New Year's day, back when the family would gather around and watch college football bowl games and devour nachos, chips and dip and other assorted appetizer snacks. This was the one day a year we children were encouraged to eat this stuff and I went at it full force. Now the big bowl games are spread out over a week or so and are all played at 9pm eastern time, so as to not compete with one another. This doesn't do much to keep the kiddies interested. So there Tostitos Fiesta Bowl sponsors. I won't be watching your ads this year because the game isn't on the day I have off to watch such things.

New Year's is also supposed to be about resolutions or things you want to have great effect for the next 365 days and hopefully beyond. Last year M and I put more effort into this, with much better results than normal. I'm not sure if I'll do the same for this year. I probably will, just not with so many unrealistic goals. I like to improve my odds when I can. One of the resolutions I sort of have is to turn this into a forum for more regular types of posts. Originally I envisioned writing this as a series of dispatches from the country, a sort of modern day folk wisdom. Turns out I only had one or two folky posts in me and ran out of steam quickly. I actively try to avoid writing about work. I find work blogs to be just as tedious and full of hot air as the people I come across while working. I shouldn't be surprised at this and I am not. Occasionally I throw in a rant-type post, which is cathartic and hopefully amusing. I try to keep the tone somewhat upbeat. And then there are the mini-recaps of various meals or projects. I'm going to keep up with those as they come along. In addition to this stable of stud post options, I am going to try out a few new prospects in the next few months. If I like them, then that's what you'll get.

Today I'm going to talk about I movie I saw recently, called 'Burn After Reading'. This is a Coen brothers' joint, their first after the Oscar winning 'No Country For Old Men', which I really enjoyed. I've been a fan of Joel and Ethan since I saw 'Miller's Crossing' way back in the day. In subsequent re-views, I realize I had no idea what I was watching as a kid, but the characters in the movie hypnotized me. They made 'Raising Arizona', which I also enjoyed but in later viewing realized it was not a kids movie at all. Raising Arizona was also filled with memorable characters and this turns out to be the hallmark of a Coen brothers' movie. Unusual deaths play a big role too. They've killed people with a wood chipper, cattle gun, fireplace shovel, hatchet and a whole lot of guns. Based on this list, if you hadn't seen anything they'd made, you might think these are action or horror movies, but for the most part there are filled with long scenes of unusual dialogue and nuanced human interaction peppered with flashes of realistic violence. This, to me, seems so much more realistic and interesting than someone getting pumped full or bullets and crashing through windows to save the planet. When you click through the CNN crime section you rarely come across the successful brazen daylight bank heist and much more reliably read about the heat of the moment murder or the poorly conceived criminal plot and amateur cover-up attempt. The Coen brothers write some of their screenplays, and the dialogue is, at first, very strange. It's conversational rather than dramatic. Less hyperbole and more revelatory of the character speaking. Even if you are a spy or world leader, most conversations you have with people are about mundane things. You're not yelling or crying. You're trying to convey a point or win an argument or make a joke. Maybe you're just filling the silence. I understand movies are for escape and entertainment. Hearing about the plot to save the world or win the girl is more interesting than the fool who cut you off in traffic or hearing about your latest toothache. Maybe that's why the Coen brother movies are so unusual and why they stand out for me. Anyway, I learned in the bonus features of the DVD that 'Burn After Reading' was written specifically for the actors and actresses playing the roles. The movie wasn't going to be made unless George Clooney and John Malkovich were available. There was no casting call, no search for someone to play the tough guy or the leading lady. In this regard, I think the movie was successful. I couldn't' picture anyone else playing these roles. The plot was somewhat less successful, but I think that was secondary to the opportunity to show the audience who these people are for 90 minutes. The plot never resolves itself on screen, and I'm fine with that. Some people didn't like 'Burn After Reading' very much, but I did, if only for the scene of a drunken Malkovich slurring his way through a Princeton song with his college cronies. If it sounds bizarre, that's because it is and that's what makes it so wonderful.

Holiday Post

2008-12-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

So I made it back from the final vacation of ’09 in one piece. Germany, it turns out, is an incredible place. Deutschelanders get a bad rap. As time as proven, Mike Meyers is a talentless fool and his Deiter/Sprockets routine isn’t even remotely close to any Germans I met. Indiana Jones has also tainted my image of Germans somewhat, but I wasn’t stealing any antiquities so those guys left me alone. Sure there were some severe mullets being sported, but for the most part the people we met could have been on any civilized street in the US. Notice I said civilized. I’m sure there are some German or Austrian rednecks out there and I’m sure they’re just as embarrassing, but I didn’t see any. It was a really angry salty cold out when we landed and it stayed that way for all but a couple of the days we were there, but we adopted some of the local adaptations. Namely eating as much street sausage and street wine as possible. Turns out Christmas markets are a sort of tailgate for the locals, except substitute ribs for 18 inch sausages and substitute chicken for cheese filled sausage and then swap burgers for curry sausages. Pickles get traded for sauerkraut, and cold beers get trades for steaming hot mugs of wine or kinderpunch. We stayed on the punch since I couldn’t read the signs stone sober and having a fuzzy head filled with steaming wine wasn’t going to help. I even discovered a stall that sold deep fried potato pancakes smothered in applesauce – why why why haven’t these made the trip over the pond yet? These were miles ahead of some dried out waffle fries or chalky steak fires you get at the carnival. Maybe it’s my fault for eating carnival food, but when I do, it needs to be shiny, salty and crispy. And best of all, since all of these things were served standing in a light drizzle or snow, you could eat them as fast as possible without fear of scalding your mouth beyond recognition. I may start wolfing down all my meals sans utensils and ankle deep in snow. (There’s about 2 feet of it right now, maybe I will….)

There were some other things we did on the trip. We saw a few castles, went to Salzburg and walked around Mozart’s old hood. We went on a tour about a movie? Something called ‘The Sound of Music’? I’ve never heard of this, but it’s quite popular. Except Austrians haven’t seen it and don’t know why so many people come to Salzburg to take a tour about the movie. I think there’s a lot of singing and dancing involved too – I’m way too manly to have seen this and even if I had seen it, my extreme manliness and interest in explosions would have blocked it out of my mind forever. Some call it cognitive dissonance. I say it’s physically impossible for someone to have seen something about a singing nun and some dancing singing children and be able to grow a prodigious beard at the same time. But I digress. Austria was excellent. M got us set up in a ridiculously nice hotel that had enormous racks of antlers everywhere. The room key weighed 5 lbs. The bathroom faucet was even heated so there was on-demand hot water. The Munich hotel was good too, but in a modern and minimalist way. I hadn’t been in an elevator with jungle noises before. I can now check that off the bucket list. We saw the Deutsches Muesum, which was by far one of the best museums I have ever visited. This was a museum of all things engineering. What would a true German museum be, anyway? There was mining, shipping, engines, electricity, timekeeping, weaving, manufacturing, metallurgy, bridge building, and a little astronomy. The WWII years were conspicuous in their absence, especially in the Planes/Ships section. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see the whole separate wing dedicated to transportation (cars, trains) that I’m sure would have taken another day to visit. Even though 80% of the museum was in German, there were enough demonstration pieces to make it relevant. Just about anything big, like a bucket excavator or oil tanker, had a corresponding scale model with moving parts that came to life with the push of a button. There was even an entire room dedicated to an enormous model train complete with video feeds from the trains themselves, all orchestrated by a grinning trainmaster. Ordinarily I wouldn’t peg M as one for enjoying a machine museum, but this was an exception. There was one period of fatigue in the airplane engine exhibit, but overall we both had a great time there.

I was also pleased to see that the US does not have the monopoly on tacky crap. There was another market, away from the city center that M and I discovered. This was held in some of the gigantic tents where Oktoberfest takes place. When we investigated, we found an endless procession of incense booths, dreamcatchers, painted stones, magic pillows, wolf art, and super absorbent towels. It wasn’t quite a flea market, but it was definitely similarly bogus stuff. If you’re wondering if you’re getting any of this as a gift soon, you are not.

Shortly after we returned (7 hours to be exact) I got back on a plane to go to NYC for work. This particular project was a short one, so I promptly got on a plane on Monday and went right back home. Normally this would have been fine, but the combination of jet lag and clients calling me at home and denying me recovery time conspired to severely sleep deprive me. I may not look like a celebrity, but I sometimes travel like one. Somewhere in this swirl of re-circulated air, Guantanamo no-sleep torture and public doorknobs I picked up a nasty cold that refuses to leave. Despite my childhood of eating rusty nails and caterpillars, my immune system seems to have failed me here. Or maybe I am getting soft in my new world? Domesticated life took me out of the very grimy places that kept me ferocious and hardy. Or maybe the previous regime of all things bad brought my body into a sort of détente with itself keeping the illnesses balancing each other out in a House-like stasis?

Now for some lists:

Best Movies I have seen this year (in no particular order):
Charlie Wilson’s War
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
The Insider
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Best Meals:
The Father’s Day Smokeout
‘John Travolta’ Pasta at Ristorante El Profeta (technically M’s meal, but I had a bite)
The Birthday Prime Rib

Great Successes:
Cheap Life Insurance
Kitchen Painted
Car Acquired
Bathroom Reno’d

Abject Failures:
Clockmaking
Herb garden
CFA

Projects to be added in the future:
Post and Beam house with wood fired pizza oven
Putting a large engine in a small car and going way too fast
Greenhouse

I’ve also made good progress on reading more. I always have a book that I’m working on and I limited the number of magazines that I receive so as to be able to dedicate the proper time to them. I feel I am getting more out of them now. M may not dance with joy when I start quoting chapter and verse from whatever I am currently reading, but I am the second most entertaining person I know, so how bad can it be?
I’m cutting this a little short now. I’d like to write more but this work thing keeps stealing my free time. Merry Christmas everyone.

Turkey Day, Cars and Trips

2008-12-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

What’s the deal? Why do you post so infrequently?
My acolytes (ok there are none, let’s face it), rather I, have been wondering why I don’t post more often. My defense is that this is a blog of substance. I choose to write about things after they happen and I have had a chance to distill and contemplate, rather than blabber about whatever I happen to have done 10 minutes ago (picked up Joe Flacco as a fantasy keeper next year! sweet!). I’m not trying to make any money with this thing, so I have no incentive to write about the latest and greatest xyz or pontificate about the implications of Henry Waxman (D-CA) getting the chair of the energy and commerce subcommittee from John Dingell (D-MI) . In case you were wondering, it means that Detroit (and the rust belt Midwest) no longer has a big say in energy policy and environmentally friendly California/west does. Bring on the Hemp-powered scooters!! Now everything will smell like a Phish show. But I digress. So what has been interesting to me lately?
Thanksgiving was pretty cool. M and I got our pastured broad-breasted white from the farm and delivered it to my parents’ house in time for a Thanksgiving feast. To my disappointment, there were no 40lb monsters that had been advertised. Turns out that is a good thing, since 40lbs of bird does not fit in most ovens, and that would be quite a disappointment to the gathered masses. So we got the fresh bird, gave it a bath and kept it for a night in nature’s refrigerator – our back porch. I was more worried about dogs, foxes and bears, but the extreme cold was the bigger problem. The next day our fresh turkey was slightly stiff. We were lucky, turns out coolers can keep things warm as well as cold. We dropped off the bird with storage and brining instructions. The brining idea required more explanation, but I think with now 2 successful turkey dunks, it will become more accepted. On the big day M and I got up early so we could make it to a Thanksgiving ‘lunch’ with her family. We gathered the men folk in the TV room for football and the women folk in the kitchen to play with a baby. I played some Wii sports and got a little too competitive. M even got involved and acquitted herself well in the bowling game. After food and desert we headed down to my parents place for Thanksgiving #2. It was good that the meals were 5 hours apart, giving us a chance to digest the first round before jumping in again. It was surprising that even with a relatively standard menu of Thanksgiving day options, that the two sets of food were so different. The staples were the same (turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce), but then were some that made each meal distinct (green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, corn, turnip, acorn squash, brussel sprouts, cauliflower). I think I ate more vegetables than turkey this year. Then on Friday it was off to M’s parents house for another Turkey dinner. Overall I think it was 5 turkeys cooked and 8 plates of food (including leftovers) , probably the greatest eating performance in years. I think Thanksgiving is evolving into my favorite holiday. There’s much less pressure than Christmas, where gifts are involved. Who isn’t happy with a giant pile of delicious food in front of them? Even if you don’t like it, there is pie and cookies to be had afterwards.
M and I have seen a few movies lately. Most recently we watched Body of Lies which was about espionage and terrorists in the Middle East, once again confirming my desires to stay far far away from all things from that area. Russell Crowe plays an excellent bad good guy, although I sometimes can’t tell if he’s acting. I think arrogance is how he rolls. Earlier in November M and I caught the news James Bond movie. The Quantum of Solace turned out to be a very entertaining movie. Not quite a ‘film’, but consistent with the new sociopathic James Bond. The opening chase scene destroyed a quite wonderful Aston Martin. I once read an article that described aspiring owners of Aston Martins to be royalty or close to it. I know Tom Brady owns one and Michael Jordan drives one in a Hanes commercial. They seem to be nice enough cars, but realistically I shouldn’t hold out any hopes for driving one someday. This got me to thinking about why I would spend any time worrying about aspiring to own something so ridiculous. Even in the ‘good’ times, driving around in a car, any car, that costs more than a well appointed house in middle America seems a bit rude. I’m not so sure most owners of cars like that are in touch with reality. It certainly makes it hard to argue your street credentials with one of these as your chariot. Which brings me to my one and only #1 jerk car of all time, the Porsche Cayenne. Normally I ‘like’ Porsches, as in, I do not automatically despise owners of these cars and the cars themselves can be driven daily. There can be an argument made for ownership of a Porsche. SUV’s can be similarly defended. They both have their purposes. But some mad Germans decided to combine the two into a singular offensive automobile. Not only do you get the distinction of driving an incredibly expensive and impractical automobile, but it’s enormous, devours fuel and isn’t particularly good looking. These traits in and of themselves are not enough to make me hate the Cayenne, but it is the sort of people who seek to own a vehicle like this that do. I know several BMW drivers – not at all bad people. I even know a few Mercedes owners – again, nice and wonderful people. But I have had the personal opportunity to become familiar with a proud Cayenne papa and I was not at all surprised to learn what he chose for his personal automobile. The ‘reasons’ for buying the car were probably more absurd than the owner himself. This started me down the road of disliking this car. As I drove, I started to notice more of them on the road, and I stared intently, wondering - is it him?? So far it hasn’t been, but the particular attention I paid caused me to notice how badly these people behave on the road. Racing ahead, tailgating, cutting people off, honking in traffic, parking illegally. Every single one I see has a dweeb behind the wheel. Last night, walking to the train station, a car ran a red light and screeched to a halt in the middle of a crosswalk, not 5 feet from where a group of us were walking. What kind of car was it? A Porsche Cayenne GTS. The driver flailed his hands menacingly at the rush hour traffic. Really? Downtown Boston at 4:55PM? You’re going to part the cars like Moses, just by waving your hands? Maybe you can rev the engine to scare the peons blocking the way. You’re the Jerk Store’s #1 all time best seller there, Mr. Cayenne owner.
Body of Lies marked something of a landmark for M and me. True it was not normally the kind of movie that I could get M to go see, but more than that it was a sort of double date. I’m 31, can I use terms like double date? We watched the movie and went to dinner afterwards with another couple, which turned out to be quite nice. Living where we do has a certain disadvantage of not really being anywhere close to anyone we know. Sure we are friendly with some of the neighbors, but for the most part we leave everyone alone and vice versa. Although we’re proximally close, it’s not a dorm, we don’t have anyone knocking on the door to ask for a blender or band-aids. Our social options have been limited to parties other people throw or convincing people to come out and visit, which is harder than you would imagine. Maybe I smell bad? Recently one of M’s friends moved somewhat closer to our corner of the world and it became much easier to meet up with people because we didn’t have to drive all the way into Boston every time. They have some similar interests and so far we’ve had two outings, the movie and a karaoke-less karaoke night. Maybe down the road we’ll be those friends that the kids make fun of? Parental friends were always kind of strange to me – why did parents need friends when they had these wonderful kids to entertain them? Why did the kids get sent to bed when the friends were over? Why was there always so much laughing ? There wasn’t so much laughing with the kids around… Well now I have friends with kids and hear the stories. Parents need friends, even if it’s to come over for the BBQ or to lose in waffle ball to your 8 year old prodigy. Maybe someday…
But not anytime soon! M and I are going on another trip. This time we’re going to Germany and Austria. I have been told that Christmas to Germans is like Mardi Gras to college students, so I am looking forward to seeing drunken Santa’s helpers and reindeer everywhere. Maybe it’s not quite that way, but it makes the plane rides easier. I did take a year of college German, but most of that was diluted by Jagermeister and Rumple Minze at the time, so any language skills will be shaky at best. So that now will be: Paris, Italy, Greece and Germany (with Spain coming in spring ’09) – I know what you’re thinking. Who is this guy ranting about Porsches when he and the missus are traveling around the world? I hear it from people at work, the ‘what recession?’ jokes, the ‘must be nice with no kids’ remarks. Someone insinuated we have shoeboxes boxes of gold next to our money bin. That’s not the case. M spends exactly 82% of her spare time searching for travel deals. (The other 17% is spent on Anthropologie.com and 1% is spent on scratching my back, in case you were curious) I get a travel proposal sent my way every 4 days and 99% of the time I’m that math-hating moron on ‘Deal or No Deal’, dancing shouting NO DEAL while the crowd erupts and holding out for something cheaper or more exotic, forcing M deeper and darker into the world of airfare searches and hotel availability. Only when I know that either I am going to face physical harm or the deal is too good to pass up do I push that button and hand over the Amex. I have been fortunate (depending on how you look at it) to have traveled quite a bit for work and this goosed up my airline and hotel points (FREE STUFF). The Spain trip will devour the last of those points. Subsequent trips will most likely consist of sleeping in our car or taking the Fung-Wah or Casino buses to the beautiful suburbs of Newark or Parsippany. I bring my lunch to work every day, binge on free coffee from work, keep the house at a snuggly 55 degrees, and I am currently a running joke with my family for refusing the calypso call of HD cable (or cable at all). I even give myself my own haircuts. So easy there, Monks need vacations too.

11/14

2008-11-14T05:53:00.000-08:00

I have to admit, the political events of the past 3 weeks or so have drained me. I am feeling a sort of brain hangover where I have nothing to ponder and rant about other than fantasy football and maybe how I can no longer look at my usual websites because they all foretell of absolute gloom and despair. Good thing M and I have already seen what the dark ages looked like, because we are prepared for the upcoming ones. I have been boning up on my brewing and cheese-making skills just in case. Before the election, I had a daily brawl with a few friends at work that left me mentally drained, not because they were particularly challenging, but because it was hard to get my mind around how someone could think they way they did. Too bad political discussions outside of election years will paint you as some sort of policy wonk and get you at the small table in the lunch room. I’ve been having a hard time remembering what I used to worry about before the world fell off a cliff. That being the case I had a few abortive posts that I bagged, but I’ll try and resuscitate them a little here because I thought they were genuinely funny, or at least about amusing things.

First of all was the rash of office pranks that have been going on at work. It leads me to believe that some people aren’t as busy as they used to be because now they have lots of time to play jokes on one another. They’ve ranged from changing someone’s wallpaper to covering a desk in empty soda cans that were connected to one another by hidden strings and pieces of tape, making it impossible to disassemble without crashing the whole thing. Someone’s cubicle was sealed off by an extra wall section and filled with newspapers from the recycling bin. They’ve been a nice little source of amusement from afar.

In the unrelated to pranks department, I came in to work the other day to find a sealed plastic container that used to hold yogurt swelled up like a football. I guess the weekend of warm office air caused some activity inside. I was sure to seal it up nice and tight before taking it home with me. I could have thrown it out, but I think a part of me wanted to see what had been created in there.

Then there was the week of video games, where we got a Nintendo Wii to entertain ourselves at work and bond with each other. Guitar Hero got passed back and forth between the floors as the nerds among us got a chance to prove that they were dominant in something non work related and I got to see some really scary performances by people who shouldn’t really be rocking out that hard. I’ll admit I got into it a few times and I can see how this would be a very entertaining little toy. I started to think that if I had one in college, my grades would have been worse, but then I realized I spent way too much time playing Madden, Twisted Metal and Command and Conquer anyway. Video game time is fungible.

Which takes us to where we are now. I know the blog title is about being an exurbanite and I feel a little like I am letting the title down a bit. We did do some exurban-y things recently like going to a farmshare and getting a pumpkin and some wild vegetables. We’re probably going to sign up for this next year and end up with tons of squash and turnips when we don’t want to look at them anymore, but I think that’s part of the charm of these places. The other night I picked up a meatshare from an unseen farmer woman just outside a cemetery. Something about picking up a bag of meat from a stranger, in the dark, with headstones nearby – it was a little surreal. To add to this, the light was so bad I couldn’t even see the person I took it from. That would be hard to explain to police, should I need to. This weekend we’re going to see the new James Bond movie, which should be entertaining. There had been some movie missteps recently and I’m looking forward to something good.

Most recently, I started organizing my CD collection. CD’s aren’t totally obsolete yet and they are still way better than an Ipod when it comes to being dropped in a pool or stepped on. I have 3 books of CDs that I’ve been purchasing since sometime in college. I believe I still had mostly cassette tapes in the late 90s, not because I was some sort of Luddite, but because most of the music I listened to was in the form of jam-band concert bootlegs and they always came on tape. I mostly skipped the whole Napster thing so I don’t have a great hoard of stolen MP3’s to fall back on, thus the CD’s. There are a few things that people have that tell a great deal about them. Cars are one potential tell. Some people use clothes – my clothes are mostly gifts so maybe that says something all by itself. I do choose my own shoes, though, and I have a lot of them. I have quite a few watches and ties as well. Judging by those items alone, one would say that I am a vain and frivolous person. I have maybe 5 occasions a year when I wear a tie, and you can only wear one watch or pair of shoes at a time, so why have so many? Is it because I am compensating for not being able to do my hair? Possibly, but I never did anything with it before, so I doubt that. I digress. CDs can say a lot about people as well. I like to believe I’m not really a music person, but I have a couple hundred or so CDs. I know some people have many hundreds if not thousands of CDs, LPs, MP3s - I just don’t happen to be one of them. So what did I find in this collection? I have them broken out into a few categories:
1. Classic Rock (Hendrix, Doors, Zeppelin, Creedence, Steve Miller) That’s about it. Not exactly an anthology, but I’m not that into this music. I know it’s good, but I can’t remember the last time I played any of these. They play this stuff on the oldies station now. ‘Classic Rock’ stations play rock from the 80s these days.
2. Hip-Hop . There are 2 sub genres here, ‘angry ‘ (DMX, Exzibit, 2Pac, NWA) and ‘intellectual’ (the Roots, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Jazzmatazz). This is roughly 1/3 of the entire CD collection. I have no idea how I acquired so many hip hop CDs. Many of them are very good, but the others are really out of left field and I’d look ridiculous blasting this from my Subaru wagon on the way to the driving range.
3. Metal. Mostly Rage against the Machine, Metallica (older stuff), Korn and Limp Bizkit. That’s like saying you own 2 cars, a classic muscle car and a piece of crap Honda with tons of aftermarket parts on it. The Rage and Metallica are respectable and should be in every collection. The others? WTF. I did get them before the bands were all over MTV, but that’s not saying much.
4. Classical. Every once in a while, I try feel intellectual and play some Mozart or Beethoven. I had a fairly extensive classical collection of cassette tapes in high school and even managed to win a medal at an academic decathlon in the fine arts category once. I think I was trying to make myself smarter, like going to the brain gym. I’m mostly sitting on the brain couch these days slamming dingdongs and donut holes. Maybe someday I will go back to this, but for now, it’s a change of pace genre.
5. Pop-Rock. Another huge stack here. Most of these are one hit wonders. Oddly the solitary CD that M and I share comes in this category. A regrettable lot. Could also be categorized as Mom-rock or Minivan rock. Bad times here.
6. Electronica. A surprisingly big pile here. I went through a ‘world music’ phase where I tried to listen to international stuff and went to a few nightclubs in search of culture or something. You might hear some of this shopping at the mall or at a coffee shop. Luckily it’s not 100% techno-bage and I managed to avoid the wardrobe to accompany this genre.
7. Blues/Soul. (John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Muddy Waters) This is good stuff here. I should listen to it more often than I do.
8. Miscellaneous. The rest is movie soundtracks, random foreign language artists and CDs that I have no idea how I acquired. This is also a very large pile, and probably the one that is growing the fastest.
I guess the lesson here is that the Music industry had a good thing going for a while. Pay $18 for a CD that you maybe want one song on. Listen for a while, acquire a taste for 1 or 2 other songs. Repeat. Now I pay $.99 per song and get exactly what I want with no crap. I cannot think of a single CD I own where I love every single song. The closest is Guns N Roses’ Appetite For Destruction – I can sing 11 or 12 of these songs without hearing the music. Even now it gets a lot of play in the rotation.
So what does this collection say about me? I think it says I have questionable judgment when it comes to determining musical quality. It is apparent that I had some rather aggressive periods in the past, but I’m on a John Tesh path now. I see many ‘smooth jazz’ and ‘new age’ purchases down the road.

As part of our little pact back at Bandmeltun to banish the TV, I’ve been trying to read more. And while I haven’t renewed the mountain of magazines that had been drowning me, I have tried to mix in a few actual books now and then. Right now I’m reading a history of whaling in America and I feel better and better about my lot in life every time I pick it up. I understand that life before 1972 was pretty much intolerable. I chose 1972 because it was before I was born, but recent enough that people born in this time are considered my peers and we share a certain frame of reference. This is when electronics really started to have a profound effect on people’s lives and the crazy bunch who remember what it was like before cars started dying off and taking their ranting about horseless carriages with them. Everything seemed to be particularly harsh – no modern medicine, communication was difficult, food came in frozen trays or you had to grow it yourself. The further back you go, the worse it gets – no voting, no civil rights, civil wars, living off the land, no school. There was a fair chance to be killed just walking around. It was like this for hundreds of years. In a climate like this I can see how packing yourself onto a boat for a few years to sail the seas, stabbing to death and then dismembering giant sea creatures, only to boil them down and then settling in for a night’s rest in a tiny room with 20 other guys who had been doing the same thing all day, all seemed like a good idea at the time. Freezing to death, starving to death, drowning, drying of infection, getting killed by a whale and getting killed by another sailor were all possibilities. I read that in an effort to stave off hunger pains and nausea, the whalers were voracious consumers of tobacco. In one year in the middle of the 19th century the average whaler smoked or chewed 30 pounds of tobacco a year. I’ve tried a few tobacco products and can testify to their affects. I can guarantee that 2 ½ pounds of tobacco a month does not do good things to the human body. The sailors were also prodigious drinkers, fighters, marauders and cowards. I doubt they had any sort of retirement plan. I think the plan was to just keep going out until you didn’t come back. Interestingly, the wives of these men had it much better off than most women of the time, inasmuch as they got to run the house and their lives as they saw fit, all without their tobacco devouring, gin swilling better half around. Ye olden dayes seemed like a crazy time. I’m glad I don’t have to live in them.

The Archives

2008-10-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

Signs that your day is not going to go as planned: 1. Your train comes screeching into the station 3 minutes early and you don’t recognize the conductor. Translation: this train is over an hour late and is a local, therefore making every precious stop on its way into town. 2. You just confirmed a date during your train ride. Translation: you just doomed yourself to a 30 minute delay. Keep in mind this one didn’t actually happen to me. The guy behind me made this fatal error. I’ve been receiving email alerts all day that my line is chronically late today. Whoever is meeting this guy at Uno’s on route 9 is in for a wait. 3. You just made a date at Uno’s and used the word ‘healthy’. Admittedly he said he hasn’t been there in ten years. I wanted to turn around and describe the last 3 meals I ate there, but I still have a chunk of potato skin lodged in my carotid artery from when we met our wedding DJ there 18 months ago. I like their food, but only in an ‘I remember when I used to do whatever I wanted to do’ kind of way. It’s a totally irresponsible place to go. 4. Your wife has informed you that you have some fun awaiting you in a room that is not normally associated with fun and you have not already planned fun for that day. Translation: This weekend M and I did our filing/ record cleanup.

You see, I come from a family of hoarders. (Un)fortunately, the house where I spent most of my youth is cavernous and signs of hoarding go unnoticed for great stretches of time, cleverly hidden by unused rooms and ornately carved cabinetry. I shouldn’t use the word ‘hoard’, since the stuff is mostly useful and attractive and the house is decidedly not filled with discarded packs of Salem 100s, pizza boxes and filthy kittens. Rather, one side of my family likes to keep mail. Lots of it. I haven’t seen the mail pile in a while but I heard it was mighty. Apparently it did serve a purpose and said pile should be taken care of at some point. I, too once had a mighty mail pile. It lived in a garbage bag hidden in M’s apartment. I would periodically sort my mail into ‘useful’ and ‘trash’. The useful mail was saved and surreptitiously concealed and brought over when I came to visit. Eventually, M found the pile and this glaring red flag was innocently explained away. Next, I purchased a shredder to contain this problem, but I was not allowed to use it while my roommate, a former Arthur Andersen employee, was home. I thought this was some sort of joke at first but he was adamant. So the shredder did it’s thing and now lives in the loft, where mail periodically migrates first from the 1st floor coffee table to the 1syt floor stairs, then to the 2nd floor stairs, then to the loft and finally into the shredder when the pile is large enough to swallow the shredder. Given this description, you can imagine what my ‘important papers’ pile looks like. In this area I am slightly exaggerating. I did at one point get organized enough to produce documentation proving I was worthy of buying a house. Although given the news lately, being approved to buy a house no longer carries the juice it once did. I even had a box for my files and every few months I would sort the pile and put the statements into their appropriate folder. The box lived in the guest room closet with M’s tidy little box. Lately this wasn’t so successful as M and I took turns stuffing the closet with our important papers like it was a Florida ballot box, and eventually M had enough. So this was the fun task that was created for Saturday. Nearly 10 years of financial and miscellaneous records needed to be sorted out. Given the ease of electronic bill paying, it’s possible that I would go months without opening certain statements. I never had to do the monthly sit down at the living room table with the calculator, checkbook and bills thing. I guess I’m spoiled. So now I have periodic paper binges to deal with instead. I had a folder with nothing but cell phone bills. Another with credit card statements on a card I’ve never used. I had 6 inches of old expense reports. There were electric bills, sewer bills, old leases, cable bills, bank statements, performance reviews, car repair receipts for cars I no longer own, insurance coverage sheets for cars I no longer own, 401k statements for closed accounts and 8 inches of completely random papers stuffed into it’s own folder that defied categorization. That was just the papers that had so far been previously opened and sorted. There was another foot of mail that was in a giant jumble. I am not immune here, however. While not as squirrel like, M’s archives extended back into banks that no longer exist and jobs long gone as well. Slowly, over the course of 4 hours we combined and collated the piles into a unified codex and produced a Himalayan pile of rejected archives. Perhaps I was destroying something valuable (might my cell phone bill from Cellular One appear one day on Antiques Roadshow? I doubt I’ll ever be that famous, but a drug addled boozehound business failure anti-intellectual trust fund Connecticut cowboy became president, so anything is possible). As with any good crime, the evidence is always the hardest part to clean up. The act itself is easy, almost liberating and enjoyable. The leftover and consequences are never appreciated until much later. In this case it was a decent sized snowbank of paper that was covered in account numbers and personal information that needed to be destroyed. Unfortunately, the lower class shredder I purchased wasn’t up to the task. In hindsight a ‘liberal elite’ model would have served me better. The motor kept overheating and the room smelled like paper dust and ozone, but at 6pm yesterday the job was largely finished. 4 stuffed kitchen bags of shredded papers plus a stack of non-important non-shredded papers were sent to the recycler, never to be seen again. The guest room closet is almost reclaimed. M and I purchased some plastic boxes that now hold gift wrapping and bags and are under a bed. I can only hope that this great open space stays open, in the spirit of a national park, and isn’t soon cluttered with the strip-mall of American households: old jackets and other un-throwaway-able items.