Rant and Rave – Spanish Edition

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

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

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

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.

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Bad Ideas

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

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

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

 

No resolutions... yet

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

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

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