Happy New Year!

2009 feels like a year of big changes... here's hoping they're all good ones!

A Weekend in Japantown...

A post I started a month ago and never finished...

A few weeks ago I finally got around to reading "Of Mice and Men", which I enjoyed quite a bit, even if it was depressing as hell. I mention that b/c Keiko came out this past weekend, and we had big plans in store: go clubbing, maybe take a dinner cruise on the Bay, etc. Sadly, all our big plans came to naught...

It started Saturday morning. I had to work 830-130, so after flying cross-country Keiko had to wake up at 7am to go into the office with me, so we could head up to the city from there. I had to give an SAT at 830, and then a GRE at 10. The GRE was going to be my very first meeting with the student, and since the SAT kid was in the office, I figured I would set up the GRE student down at the end of the hallway. This office is an empty wasteland on weekends, so I figured she'd be undisturbed. I've done this same thing before on several occasions with my other GRE student and not had a problem.

So the GRE student shows up, I set her up at the end of the hall, and start her on the first section, which goes fine. About 5 minutes into the second section, a small army of cleaning guys shows up. I've never seen them before; the usual weekend cleaning happens on Sunday afternoon.

Upon questioning them, it turns out that they're here to steam vacuum the carpets. In the hallways. And, this building is just one of several they have to do on a pretty tight schedule, so they have to do it now. Apparently this happens monthly, and of course today is the day. After some discussion, they agree to start at the opposite end of the floor. Whereupon, they begin steam cleaning the carpets using a cleaner apparently powered by a Saturn IV liquid-oxygen booster rocket. It is, in a word, deafening.

Not good.

Never one to surrender to adversity, [side note: I first typed this sentence: "Never one to surrender to diversity". It was almost worth leaving it.] I quickly cast about for a solution. There's a 3rd floor to the building, which I had never gone to, so I went up there and discovered that although most of it was controlled-access, there was a single long corridor that had a quiet nook at the end of it.

Now, the building is in the middle of having the elevators replaced, and the 3rd-floor lobby had a ton of construction equipment, but there were no people and the construction seems to happen during the week, so I figured I had my solution.

When the GRE student finished the section she was working on, I apologized for the presence of the 3 million decibel cleaning crew, and said I'd move her up to the 3rd floor, where I assured her it would be quiet. Keiko helped me execute the maneuver, and in no time we had her working in a nice, quiet, somewhat creepily dark empty hallway.

Problem solved.

Having solved this problem, I now moved to solve another problem. Since Keiko and I were going to be up in the city the next 2 days, I wasn't going to be around to let my Bio tutor in the next day to teach the lesson he needed to teach. My tutor attends Stanford business school, which is only 10 minutes away, so I left Keiko with the timers for the GRE student and the SAT student in my office, figuring at worst she would have to give the 5 minute warnings, and then dashed out to go drop off the office key to my bio tutor. Round trip: 20 minutes tops.

Well, despite missing my turn on the way to drop off the key, with some aggressive driving I managed to make it back in precisely 20 minutes, only to discover the following:

Apparently, the reason I hadn't seen anyone when I went up to check the 3rd floor was that the elevator construction crew just happened to be on lunch break. They came back approximately 5 minutes after I left, and proceeded to begin running compressed air machinery, banging on things, and yelling at each other in Spanish. Which, it turns out, was more distracting for the GRE student than the constant drone of the 747 engine that the cleaning crew on the 2nd floor was using.

So, the GRE student had come down to ask to be moved back to the 2nd floor. So Keiko did an emergency search and found an office on the floor that had its door unlocked, and put her in there. But, in the transfer of the mobile table with the GRE student's test and stuff, Keiko had put the student's chair upside down on the table, covering the scratch paper I'd left her.

So, when the student started up her section again in the office, she was now without scratch paper for the math sections, causing her to come back out and ask Keiko for scratch paper. Since Keiko didn't have any, she told the student to just write on the test. A simple solution, except it contradicted what I'd gone out of my way to instruct the student before she began the test. Of course, there was no way Keiko would have known that, but it annoyed the student. Keiko ended up finding my physics notebook in the kitchen and ripping pages out of that. So the GRE student finally got her situation straightened out, but in the course of dealing with all this, Keiko neglected to give the SAT student her 5 minute warning, which made her run out of time on one of her sections.

And all of this happened in the 20 minutes I was away. Poor Keiko was stressed out when I got back. Not a good morning.

Eventually both students finished their tests, and the GRE student I had a long talk with. I told her I wouldn't charge her for the test, and after talking a while she seemed fine. But we ended up leaving the office at nearly 4, versus at 1, so by the time we got to SF we were exhausted, and our big plans for hitting the town became dinner and "Pineapple Express". Which, it must be said, was pretty funny.

Dinner was at a restaurant called Kappa. It's virtually impossible to find- it's a tiny place that seats only ten at a wooden bar. There's no sign outside at all; when you find the outer door, on the upper level of an outdoor shopping area, which primarily leads to a much larger restaurant that has lots of big, obvious signage, there is a secret side inner side door that has a tiny (palm-sized) sign that says Kappa on it.

Going through that door you pass through a narrow curtain into a space barely big enough for me and Keiko to stand in simultaneously, and are immediately faced with two other curtains right next to each other at a V-shaped angle. Pass through the one on the left and you end up in a tiny kitchen. Pass through the one on the right and you find the tiny eating area.

There's one cook, and one waitress. She's dressed in a formal kimono, and she'll warn you right off the bat that they don't serve sushi here, and ask if you're OK with that. What they serve is very traditional Japanese cooking, like what you might find in someone's house. Some of the stuff we had Keiko said her mom makes. The food was quite good overall; I even tried a bunch of new stuff, and enjoyed it. If anyone's ever thinking about going, let me know and I'll explain how to find the secret door.

We stayed at the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown, which is quite nice. I got a deal on a suite which was, well, sweet. A huge room- tatami mats, a japanese futon, a japanese soaking tub, a rock garden with bamboo. In the room. Very nice.

Sunday began as you might expect- by the time we emerged into the light of day it was already afternoon. After a light lunch, we handed the car off to Joel, who met us in the city, and then went for a lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng walk. We went down through Cow Hollow, went into an open house of a condo with a spectacular view of the Bay, continued down into the Marina, Municipal pier, Fisherman's Wharf, Ghiradelli square, then Columbus Ave, Lombard St, Russian Hill, and then back into Japantown.

When you factor in all the hills, plus a stop for margaritas (don't get drinks on the Wharf- they suck ass), our walk turned out to be about 5 hours long, up and down a lot of steep hills. So, by the time we got back we were exhausted and starving, and another night in which we had big plans to hit the town became dinner, crepes, crazy Japanese photo booth, and then long bath in the soaking tub.

There is nothing more Japanese than the crazy photo booth. It is a riot of bright colors, Japanese pop, and high-pitched Japanese girl voices shrieking instructions at you. Also, all the directions on the screen are in Japanese. It really helps to have a Japanese person with you when you use the booth. The pictures get taken inside the booth, and then you come back outside and around to the side of the thing where there is a screen where you pick which photos you like, pick a background, and decorate the living shit out of the pictures.

Being a Japanese creation, the picture-taking happens with ruthless efficiency, whether you're ready or not, and each booth has a decorating screen on each side of it, so the total machine can be processing 3 different groups of people simultaneously: the people inside doing the picture-taking, and 1 group of people on each side of the booth doing the manic decorating. And all the while crazy Japan-pop is playing and Japanese schoolgirls are shrieking instructions at you.

Here is the result of our turn in the machine:





Monday, we managed to get out of the room by check-out time, and then went and had breakfast at New Minny's Restaurant. A bit risky, ordering my favorite trailer-park breakfast items from an Asian restaurant, but I was satisfied. And, while I'll eat Asian food for lunch and dinner every day, I can't eat Asian food for breakfast. The white half of me dominates until lunchtime.

After that, we just went for a walk (a much shorter one). It was a beautiful weekend in SF- 75 degrees and totally sunny. I'm coming to the conclusion that the best times to visit SF are mid April-mid June, and mid September-mid November. Which just happen to be the busiest times of the year for tutoring. Sigh.

For dinner, we picked up super-fancy cupcakes from Sprinkles (highly recommended to those who like cupcakes), and headed over to Laura and Dmitri's. Kate and Max, my godchildren, get really excited to see Keiko. Well, technically, Kate gets really excited to see Keiko, and Max gets really excited about anything Kate gets really excited about, but either way it means a wild time of running, throwing, catching, and then watching Thomas the Train. We take Thomas the Train VERY seriously. And woe betide the godfather who mistakes James (the red one, I think) for Percy (the green one, I think). Such gauche behavior merits the sternest admonishment a 2 year old can give.

After dinner, it was off to the airport, after a weekend both more, and less, whirlwind than planned. Best laid plans, and all that. BTW, I never knew "Of Mice and Men" was so depressing. I loved it, and highly recommend it to everyone else who never had to read it in high school...

Making Christmas cards

Random Thoughts...

1) In certain ways, I am very much not the stereotypical guy, but in certain ways I am.

For instance, take clothes. I am deeply, profoundly apathetic about clothing. I have a few things I feel comfortable wearing, and my preference is to wear those things over and over until they eventually become rags that actually fall off my body.

Once, when Keiko was visiting, she was helping me fold my laundry and she lifted out a couple of wifebeaters that, I admit, may have had a few small holes in them. I mean, nothing serious- they were holes still too small to accidentally put my arm through...

Keiko [holding up the 2 wifebeaters]: "Babe, seriously?"

Me: "What? What's wrong with them?"

Keiko: "Why don't you consider retiring just _these_ two? Baby steps..."

Me: "Why??? They're still wearable!"

Keiko: "I know baby- we use all parts of the buffalo. But still."

Me [sighing]: "Fine. But just those two."

So I allowed those 2 to be retired. As I was packing Wed morning to come here to Houston for Thanksgiving, I was putting away laundry and grudgingly decided to retire a pair of underwear that was pretty close to being a rag. I felt quite proud of myself, and bragged about it to Keiko later.

It was raining when I left HMB; the first real rain we've had since a freak thunderstorm early in the summer. As I got out of the car at the airport, and stepped into a puddle, I realized that the lack of rain makes me wear shoes a lot longer than I used to; within seconds, my socks were damp because there are large cracks through the soles of both of my favorite shoes. Damn. That means I have to find new shoes. That leads me to my second thought:

2) I hate shopping. I've always hated it. Hated it a lot. I put my sister on one of my credit cards so that I wouldn't have to ever go shopping; she knows my pants and shirt sizes, and roughly what styles I like, so when I need stuff I just ask her to look for me. "I need some shirts for work," I'll say, and like magic, a couple of weeks later shirts arrive. It's a symbiotic relationship- she gets to shop but not spend any of her money, and I get clothes without shopping. It works beautifully.

So tomorrow we go to look for shoes. Winter comes to HMB in January, so I'll need shoes that don't leak by then.

3) I read that someone got trampled to death by people stampeding to get into a WalMart Friday morning. Seriously, I don't care if they're selling Electrolux refrigerators for $3.99 in there, if you can't wait calmly to walk into the store like a sane person, you're lamer than a 3-legged horse. Actually, you're lamer than a 3-legged horse whose 3 legs are all broken. What kind of person does that?

Actually, I know what kind of person does that. Once, I went to the San Diego zoo, and there was a tiger enclosure with a glass wall. The tiger liked sleeping up against the glass, and right next to his favorite sleeping spot was a sign on the glass saying "Please do not tap on the glass. It disturbs the tiger."

While I was standing there, a guy came up next to me, looked at the tiger, read the sign, looked at the tiger again, and then tapped on the glass, right above the sleeping tiger's head. It was at that point that I imagined a hinged glass panel, which, when tapped like that, would flip over, dumping the idiot who tapped on the glass right on top of the tiger. Such an arrangement would both cut down on the feeding cost of the tiger, and make the average human marginally smarter and less annoying, all through a process of natural selection.

Anyway, that guy would have been one of the people stampeding to get into WalMart.

4) Being a Missouri football fan is depressing, and watching them lose so many close, heartbreaking games over the last 10-15 years gives me a small glimpse of what it's like to be a Cubs fan.

This weekend's result: Kansas 40, Mizzou 37. [Bite me, Chris]

5) I have spent 3 days in a row doing nothing but sleeping, eating, reading, and watching TV. Although I could never live this way all the time, doing it once a year for 3 days is _awesome_.

6) I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Why I Love Half Moon Bay, Pt 5

It was sunny this morning by the house, the fog having retreated about half a mile offshore, but you could see that a couple miles south, down by the state beach, the fog was still ashore. I decided to go for a bike ride, to get my one cardio point for the day.

[Laszlo and I are in the middle of cardio month, in which 30 minutes of cardio activity constitutes 1 point, and you can earn up to 1 point per day. We're in a friendly contest to see who gets the most points by the end of November. Right now I'm up 11-10, unless he runs tonight.]

Once down by the state beach, where the path starts going up along the cliff, the view became awesome- there was fog everywhere, I was biking right along the edge of the cliff, and it was high tide, so the waves were coming in at about 8-10 feet. Really spectacular.

And then I noticed a fin in the water. Slowing down to look, I saw that it seemed very dolphin-like. I've heard down at the harbor that there are dolphins in the area, but I'd never seen any. And although it looked dolphin-like, I always thought dolphins were not solitary creatures, so I was trying to figure out what else it could be when I looked to my left at a particularly big wave beginning to break and saw that there was not just 1 fin, but 2....3...4..5.6.7.8 fins.

Oh.

A whole pod of dolphins, coming in to ride the big waves. They looked like they were having fun.

I watched them for a while, and then I started hatching a plan whereby I would tie my sweatshirt to the brush on the edge of the cliff, bike like crazy the 1/4 mile down to the beach trail, ride down to the sand, abandon the bike, run back the 1/4 mile until I saw the sweatshirt hanging, then shuck my shirt and shoes and go in to swim among the dolphins. At exactly the point I got all this worked out, the dolphins all turned around and started swimming straight out to sea.

Damn.

My dream of swimming with the dolphins will have to wait for another day. Well, that's OK- the sea teaches you to be patient, and it was a bit chilly anyway. But still, it was awesome to see dolphins. As JJM would say, it warms the soul.

I love HMB.

Science is AWESOME!

I decided I'm going to make a list of awesome science headlines for my office, so I can get kids more interested in learning about it. First on the list is going to be this headline:

"Scientists turn tequila into diamonds"

http://www.physorg.com/news145255770.html

Imagine... now you'll be able to say to a woman, "Hey baby, I've got a bottle of tequila here... why don't we go back to my place and I'll make you margaritas and diamonds."

Science _rocks_.

Of course, most students will still end up being turned off from science by the thoroughly incompetent, interest-crushing manner in which it is typically taught, but perhaps now a few more will be drawn in...

If I were a conservative...

I'd still have voted for Obama, but I'd've been incensed at the modern Republican party for so utterly abandoning conservatism for the weird ideological hodgepodge that they've evolved to over the last 20 years or so. The modern Republican party seems to have abandoned a number of core principles:

1) Limited government power

The Bush administration in particular has vastly expanded government power. Warrentless wiretapping? Seriously? In THIS country? There's nothing conservative about that.

2) Maximizing individual freedom of choice

A prime example: the abortion issue. If abortion is legal, then everyone can make a choice consistent with their principles- if you think abortion is wrong, you don't have one. If you think it's acceptable, you do. Individual freedom is maximized. Sure, some compromise like no 3rd-trimester abortions is probably sensible, to account for the fact that by that time the developing fetus is capable of surviving outside the mother, is clearly human, etc. But promoting an outright ban is not consistent with conservative princples.

Or, you can do what the Republican party has done, and make Sarah Palin, whose philosophy seems to be "if your father rapes you, I'm going to make you pay for the rape kit and keep the baby", the face of the party.

3) Promoting "American exceptionalism"

I like the idea of American exceptionalism. But it's a really hard sell when you're torturing prisoners (Abu Ghraib), holding people without charges (Guantanamo), and secretly shipping people to other countries for torture sessions that violate the Geneva conventions and our own internal laws. That's not conservatism, that's despotism.

4) Fiscal responsibility

President Bush and his congressional allies have done a marvelous job of turning hundreds of millions of dollars of surplus into hundreds of millions of dollars of deficit. There's nothing conservative about that. Instead, the party has become a party of cutting taxes at all times, whether it makes any conceivable sense to do so or not. Conservatism would be about doing the thing that makes fiscal sense.

5) Government efficiency

Conservatism should be about making sure government agencies are as lean as they can be, while accomplishing whatever tasks are needed. Instead, for the last 8 years we've had nothing but incompetence from the people appointed to run government agencies. Showcase example: FEMA during Katrina. That kind of performance is not conservatism. And Katrina brings me to:

6) Promoting a meritocracy

Conservatism should be about individuals working hard and getting rewarded as a result. Instead, since the Reagan Revolution we've seen a pretty steady decline in social mobility, which has led to tremendous empowerment of the very well-off, while holding down everyone else. There's nothing conservative about that. And don't even get me started on President Bush and the nincompoops he appointed to key positions within the federal government. Heckuva job there, Mr. President.

On all of these issues, the Republican party has completely ceded the ground to the Democrats. And lo and behold, the Republicans got their asses kicked. They were only able to pull off the 2000 election because people were so frustrated with President Clinton's shenanigans, and they were only able to pull off 2004 because enough people were still residually scared from the 9/11 experience. And that's without factoring in any election-day cheating. It's been a long time since they've won on ideas; fear/anger is pretty much all they've got. And it's not working anymore. People are less afraid of terrorism, less afraid of gay people (and getting less afraid all the time- in another generation no one will care anymore), and generally less likely to respond to a message like Senator McCain's, which basically boiled down to: "Elect me because you're afraid of life under the other guy."

So at this point, any true conservative has to vote Dem or abstain completely. But I'd be hopping mad, and I'd want to spend the next 4 years re-writing the Republican platform. And if the Grover Norquists and James Dobsons of the world didn't like the new platform, I'd tell them to kiss my ass and stay home on election day. Because the party that pushes the ideals above will be extremely attractive to the middle 60% of voters.

Election '08 proved it.

Oh (mostly) happy day!

At so many times, and in so many ways, this country has done dumb stuff. And yet, there have been times when this country has really gotten it right. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, emancipation, suffrage, civil rights, saying we'd send a man to the moon, and doing it. But no moment like that has occurred in my lifetime.

Until yesterday.

It was so awesome to finally feel like I'm living in one of those moments where America really gets it right. Thanks to everyone who helped make that possible.

I heard on the news today that Israel and the Palestinians are shelling each other again. Congratulations, President-Elect Obama. You had about 6 hours or so to bask in the warm glow of an historic victory. Now you start paying the price of victory.

Good luck, my man.

The only terribly disappointing thing was the passage of Proposition 8, to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. I didn't do enough to fight this. I didn't donate money. I thought about making a sign and pasting it to my car, but I opted not to because the only ideas I had were ideas like:

NO on Prop 8 - Seriously people, it's the 21st century.

Prop 8 - The Last Refuge for Bigots

NO on Prop 8 - It's "Liberty and Justice for all", NOT "bigotry and injustice for all"!!

and so on. Probably not going to change any minds with signs like that.

And, I was mostly obsessed with the presidential election. But I want to see a proposition in 2010 to repeal that stinking piece of crap from my state constitution, and if there is one, I'm definitely getting on board early.

Still, it's a good day today. Morning in America, at last.

Why I'm not cut out for a life of crime...

There are many illustrations. One of the early instances of my realizing this important fact was in high school, in Russian class with my friend Foma. We had a game we used to play -and by 'we', I mean 'Foma'- that, well, rather than try to explain it I'll just lay out a typical instance of the game...

Foma's Game

Game Clock (min:sec)....Event

00:00Mr. Morris turns to the board to illustrate Russian grammar, signaling the start of the game

00:01Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:01.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:02Gus mutters under his breath, "quit it."

00:03Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:03.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:04Gus mutters a little more loudly, "quit it."

00:05Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:05.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:06Gus mutters a little more insistently, "quit it."

00:07Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:07.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:08Gus mutters very annoyedly, "quit it, goddammit."

00:09Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:09.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:10Gus mutters angrily, "quit IT!"

00:11Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:11.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:12Gus mutters furiously, "QUIT IT!!"

00:13Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:13.5Foma flashes evil grin
00:14Gus mutters murderously, "QUIT IT GODDAMMIT!!"

00:15Foma leans over to his right and slugs Gus in the shoulder
00:15.5Foma flashes evil grin

00:16Gus leans over to his left, reaching across his body to slug Foma
00:16.2Gus's arm is hanging in the empty space in the aisle, fist clenched, on a clear trajectory to hit Foma

00:16.3Mr. Morris turns around from the board, and sees Gus about to slug Foma

00:16.5Mr. Morris: "Gus, give me your card."

00:16.6Foma flashes evil grin

00:17Gus gets up to hand Mr. Morris his demerit card. Game ends. Winner: Foma

I don't recall ever winning this game, btw.

For those of you who are not veterans of Jesuit education, we all had demerit cards. On the back was a pattern of characters: 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 J 1 2 3 J...

Teachers gave you demerits for breaking any of the various and sundry rules. When you got to a "J", that meant you got a "JUG", which stands for "Justice Under God", which is an hour of hard labor after school. Mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, whatever.

If you really fucked up, you got a Saturday jug, which was 8 hours hard labor on a saturday. I only got one of those, senior year. I spent 6 hours mowing grass in the heat, and 2 hours weeding Brother Thornton's rose garden. Without gloves. I'd grab a handful of weeds, and pull, only to discover a dead branch of rose bush had fallen in there. So basically, I spent 2 hours cursing and pulling thorns out of my hand. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever felt more Catholic.

But the Foma game illustrates how merciless fate is about keeping me on the straight and narrow. Here's another illustration...

Fast forward to October 1994. I graduated from Pomona in May, my dad gave me our second car, a little Plymouth Sundance that I called Mr. Perkins, because it was an average, nondescript car that needed an average, nondescript name. I piled all my things into it in June and moved back to LA, to move in with my girlfriend Tasha. Now that it's October, Mr. Perkins' Missouri registration has just expired. I've researched what it would cost to register the car in CA, and I can't afford it. I'm in my third month at Katz Communications, where my salary is $15,600. That's not a lot to live on in LA, with student loans, rent, gas, insurance, etc.

The basic registration is only about $100, and that part I can cobble together using my strategy of gratefully accepting any time one of the account executives offers to take me to lunch, then getting half of whatever I order in a to-go box, so I can have it for dinner. But, since my car is from out-of-state, CA also wants me to pay a $300 "smog impact fee", and I just don't have it.

My strategy: the sticker won't show as expired until 11/1. At that point, all I have to do is stay off the radar until 12/20, when I fly home to StL. I'll take all the money I get from Christmas, and save until then, and I should be able to cobble together the payment. Note here that my intent is to comply with the law as best I can given my economic circumstances.

Fast forward to December 15th or so...

I've been in the habit of running my gas tank as low as it can go, to delay having to spend money on gas as long as possible. As a risk mitigation measure, I keep a small gas can in the trunk, in case I run out.

At about 1am, coming back from dance rehearsal in Claremont, I run out of gas on the 10 freeway. No problem- I'll just dump the emergency gas in there and be on my way.

At about 105am, the California Highway Patrol pulls up behind me, and shines the light on me, dumping gas into the car. The officers get out and slowly approach.

Officer 1: "Is this your vehicle?"

Me: "Uh, yes."

Officer 2: "What are you doing?"

Me: "Uh, well, I ran out of gas but I keep some emergency gas in the trunk, so I'm just putting that in."

Officer 1: "Can we see some ID?"

Me: "Sure." I hand over my driver's license. Officer 1 takes it and goes back to the car. Officer 2 watches me while we wait.

After a while, Officer 1 comes back.

Officer 1: "This car is not registered to you. I thought you said it was your car."

Me: "Well, it's registered to my dad, but he gave it to me, and I'm going to get it registered here in CA. You can see our last names are the same."

This seems to satisfy CHP. They say they'll watch to make sure I get going OK.

I finish putting gas in the car, get back in, start up Mr. Perkins, and pull onto the freeway. CHP pulls onto the freeway behind me. 10 yards down the road, they flip on their lights and pull me back over. I pull onto the shoulder and wait while the officer approaches.

Officer 1: "We noticed your registration is expired. You've been driving on expired registration. License please."

I hand over my license, giving him the whole sob story about how I'm leaving at the end of the week to go home, where I'll finally be able to get the money to afford the registration. Officer 1 doesn't give a shit. He just let me drive 10 yards down the highway so he could officially give me a ticket for driving on expired registration.

He writes me the ticket. I curse my star-crossed fate, and remember Foma, and note once again that I'll never succeed as a criminal.

As a special ironic postscript, some years later the "smog impact fee" was ruled unconstitutional, and I got a check in the mail for $300 plus some nominal interest.

In case you're wondering why I'm writing about all this today, let's start with last night. Joel borrowed the car to go drive to Berkeley so he could go to a Halloween party with his Female Of Interest (FOI). I was content to hang at the beach house with Kona and catch up on episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert, and maybe take a short evening beach walk. It's a little rainy, which is extremely unusual for HMB outside of Jan-Mar, but the beach is nice even in the rain.

I told Joel the curfew was 10am Sat morning, since I needed the car at that point to drive to work to tutor. At 830 this morning, Joel called...

Joel: "So, I'm up, and I went outside to drive back from Berkeley, and the front right tire is totally flat."

Me: "Shit."

Joel: "Yeah, I'm going to get working on that."

So I push back my tutoring meeting, and get out of bed. I realize that Kona hasn't been walked since early evening yesterday, so I leash her up and we go outside. Kona wants to run a bit, so I run with her, and she leads me straight to the sandy beach path.

Now, technically, HMB state beach is no-dogs-allowed. You have to walk up a bit to where the state beach ends. But it's 9am on a rainy Saturday morning, and there's absolutely no one around, and Kona _really_ wants to go down that path, so we walk down the sandy beach path about 20 feet, and Kona does her #2 thing. I stop to pick up after her, and unclip her leash figuring I'll give her like 2 minutes of freedom before taking her back. In spite of the gentle rain, it's quite warm, and the beach is beautiful. The waves are really coming in, and crashing noisily onto the sand.

So noisily that I didn't hear the HMB state park ranger pull into the parking lot behind us.

Kona is 20 feet onto the sandy path, and has been unleashed for a grand total of 45 seconds. I turn around and see the ranger approaching.

Yes, it's going to be one of those days. It's like 9am and already I just want it to be over. I clip Kona up again and wait for the ranger.

In the end, I get a break because I'm a local. I get a long lecture, the ranger takes down all my information and puts me into the computer and gives me a warning, saying that if they catch me again I'll get _two_ tickets.

The thing is, locals take their dogs on the beach all the time. They just don't do it on weekends. Weekends are when all the outsiders come, and that's when they patrol the beaches. And me, not normally dealing with dog issues, I forgot that the unwritten rule is that you only take the dogs down there during the week, when there are no outsiders.

Sigh.

So, this is why I decided long ago that I'm just not cut out for a life of crime. The universe punishes me swiftly and mercilessly.

Nacole singing a Pro-Obama video...

If you're interested in hearing Nacole sing in a pro-Obama video, doing an election version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", check out the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBSW1WuoJTA

Election '08 by Gus, Part 12: My endorsements

Here are my endorsements for the CA general election on 11/4:

National:

President: Barack Obama

Thoughtful, intellectually curious, intelligent, compassionate, and potentially transformational. In short, what we need more of in our leadership at all levels.


State:

Proposition 1, High Speed Rail Bonds: YES

SF to LA in 2.5 hrs at $50 a person? Sign me up. That shit can't happen quickly enough.


Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals: NO

Redundant- CA law already protects animal welfare and safety. Enforce the existing regulations as the supply side strategy. The rest of it can be handled by demand side consumer preferences (i.e., buying cage-free eggs, etc.)


Proposition 3, Children's Hospital Bond Act: NO

Redundant- only $400M of the $750M that was authorized in Proposition 61 in November 2004 has been awarded. Spend the other $350M you already have, and once that's spent, if there's really an argument for more I'll be happy to consider it.


Proposition 4, Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy: NO

Raise your kids well, and they won't get pregnant as minors, thus obviating the need for this law.

Failing that, raise your kids semi-competently, and they'll involve you in the decision-making, thus obviating the need for this law.

Or, just raise your kids like you don't know what the hell you're doing. Sorry, but I don't feel like changing the legal code to bail you out of the consequences of your incompetent parenting.


Proposition 5, Nonviolent Drug Offenses: YES

Drug use is primarily a public health problem, not a law enforcement problem. I have no problem throwing violent drug cartel members in jail, but your average idiot walking around with a little bag of weed is hardly a major threat to society.


Proposition 6, Police and Law Enforcement Funding: NO

After Proposition 8, which I will get to shortly, this one is the most offensive to me. It isn't even the usual shitty proposition that increases already stiff sentencing rules in a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts:

Politician 1: I think we should have mandatory sentences for all people convicted of jaywalking of 100 years in prison, after which time their rotting corpses will be pissed on, then cremated, and then the ashes locked up for the next 10,000 years in the Yucca Mountain facility with all the leaking nuclear waste.

Politician 2: I don't know, I kind of think our current policy of 25 years in prison, including daily raging anal fistula, is sufficient.

Politician 1: WHAT? How DARE you insult decent, hardworking folks. SOFT ON CRIME! SOFT ON CRIME! Why do you love criminals and hate America???

Politician 2: NO! NO! I'm NOT soft on crime!! I... I... I think we should take the jaywalkers, and put them, still alive, in barrels full of spent nuclear fuel and put them in Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years!

And that, friends, is how sentencing laws are developed in this country. But this proposition isn't even really that. No, it's an attempt to legislate that a fixed amount of the general budget gets spent on law enforcement. Screw budget negotiations! Screw schools! Screw all the other stuff that needs money! Yes, we'll make a naked grab for dollars, but embed it WITHIN a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts.

Crap. Crap crap crap. Seriously, who writes this shit?


Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Generation: NO

Another favorite strategy of mine- naming your proposition the opposite of what it actually does.

This one creates thresholds for renewable energy sourcing, but establishes a minimum power requirement for getting a permit at 30 megawatts, which is more than what 60% of renewable energy providers can produce (since most renewable energy providers are pretty small). That will wipe out a hefty fraction of the renewable power suppliers. Also, the permitting authority is transferred from local government, where it currently resides, to the state Energy Commission. Then, the measure raises the targets for renewable sourcing, while simultaneously removing the provision that requires utilities that fail to meet the target in a given year to make up for that loss by procuring additional renewable energy in later years.

In short, wipe out a new industry of small providers so that the large energy suppliers of old can get around someday to providing what the smaller providers already do. Oh, and we'll make sure there's no real penalty for failing to get around to doing it.


Proposition 8, Amending the State Constitution to Eliminate the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry: NO

I regret that I have but one vote to cast against this stinking piece of bigoted, pseudo-legislative crap.

Seriously, people, this is the 21st fucking century. What I love about America is that if you want to hate gay people, you're totally welcome to do within the confines of your own exceedingly small mind. In fact, you're even free to shout out your bigotry from the very rooftops. And I would go to the mat to protect your right to do so.

But do not touch the Constitution. Keep your angry, close-minded, bigoted hands off.


Proposition 9, Constitutional Amendment of Victims' Rights, Parole for Criminals, etc.: NO

This one is like a hybrid of Props 6 and 8: a constitutional amendment to enshrine forever a blatant, shameless effort to pander to people's baser instincts. I have nothing new to add- this thing is crap.


Proposition 10, Alternative Fuel Vehicles Bonds: NO

I went back and forth on this one a little. It appears to be a move to get more trucks on natural gas, which is supplied by a company that is owned by the author of the proposition.

Thing is, the U.S. has a reasonable amount of natural gas. It doesn't have a lot of oil. So although it wouldn't necessarily help much on the renewable fuels front, I was willing to entertain the idea just on the basis of being able to rely more on domestic energy production.

That said, this proposition boils down to borrowing $10B to hand out $50K subsidies per truck to anyone willing to trade their crappy gasoline-powered truck for a slightly less crappy natural gas truck. In the end, I think the marginal benefit of this scheme is less than the marginal cost.


Proposition 11, Redistricting Constitutional Amendment: YES

Much as I hate constitutional amendments, the current system is definitely rigged for incumbents, so having a defined process that incumbent legislators don't have direct control over sounds like a nice try. If it doesn't work, another state can figure out a better way.


Proposition 12, Veterans' Bonds: YES

This appears to be a straightforward continuance of a reasonably well-run, reasonably low-impact program fiscally.


Get out and vote on Tuesday, folks!

Sleepy time in Half Moon Bay

Election '08 by Gus, Part 11

Watching the 2008 presidential election is feeling for me a lot like watching the 2008 Cardinals playing the Pirates, up by 9 runs going into the 7th inning. The team I'm rooting for is playing a team that's obviously weaker, and has fallen behind by a huge margin late in the game. In theory, all that should happen is that the game plays itself out and my team wins handily.

Thing is, the 2008 Cardinals proceeded to collapse in that game, surrendering 10 runs over the last 3 innings to find their way to an improbable loss.

So the question that keeps me up at nights is: are the 2008 Democrats like the 2008 Cardinals? It's a legitimate worry, because both the 2004 and the 2000 Dems were.

I figure that Obama needs a 7-9 point edge going into the election because 3 points will disappear due to the Bradley effect, as some people at the end decide that they just can't handle voting for a black man, and then another 3 points will disappear due to voter intimidation and improper elimination of voters from the rolls, as part of the typical Republican suppress-the-vote strategy.

On a different note, it's been sad to watch John McCain become so many of the things he previously has denounced. I mean, I don't feel sorry for him personally; he made his decisions. But on at least some issues he used to be moderate and reasonable, and it's always tragic when a moderate and reasonable politician passes from the scene. Once upon a time, social conservatives hated him because he was willing to make a compromise on supreme court justices, and because he labelled the extreme social conservative right as "agents of intolerance"; now, he has Sarah Palin as his running mate. That's Sarah if-you-get-raped-by-a-relative-I'll-make-you-keep-the-baby-AND-make-you-pay-for-your-rape-kit Palin. Once upon a time, Club-for-Growth conservatives hated him because he opposed the Bush tax cuts. Now, he'll make them permanent at a time we're bleeding red ink and mortgaging the future of the next few generations. Once upon a time, he wanted to run a responsible campaign, and now he's caved to whatever consultants told him he should go totally negative.

I can't remember if I've said this before, and I'm too lazy to read my own posts, but I met John McCain in 2000 when he was running. He came and spoke at Yale, and I hung around after to shake hands and introduce myself. He gave an interesting talk, and seemed energetic and a reasonable guy. I wouldn't have voted for him over Gore, but I at least respected him then. And I was irritated that he got waxed by Bush and Rove and the hardcore Republican attack machine.

I guess over the last 8 years he realized that this would be his last chance, and he wanted the nomination so bad that he made every compromise he felt he needed to in order to get it. That's what happens when you want it too much. And the irony is that Bush is going to indirectly be the cause of his defeat again, since his governance has been so bad that people are desperate for change. That desperation for change led to the Obama phenomenon, which swamped another candidate who waited a long time for a nomination she wanted so bad she was willing to make any compromise to get it: Hillary Clinton.

Fortunately for Obama, he was so new to the scene and such a long shot initially that he will ascend to the presidency without having made too many compromises along the way (though he has made some, especially over the last couple months). He hasn't had a long political career to spend wanting the presidency and systematically compromising his values in order to better position himself for a future run. There is evidence that he has thought about it; for instance, he has avoided taking positions on issues in the past, particularly with regard to expressing an opinion on controversial legal issues, most likely in order to prevent anyone from dredging up those opinions later. But still, for a major candidate he's coming in pretty clean, and it will be interesting to see if that helps him be effective in the presidency.

And to be sure, he'll need every advantage he can get. He will assume the presidency with 2 wars going, a serious recession in progress, a sea of red budget ink, and all kinds of potential crises, foreign and domestic, looming. I don't think he's the answer to every problem, but I'm hoping he's the answer to at least _some_ of the problems. And that's why he'll have my vote come Nov 4th.

Get out and vote, everyone!

Why I love Half Moon Bay, Pt 4

Because you can, on a whim, decide to take a walk on the beach at midnight under the full moon, and when you do, you discover a whole new side to HMB's beauty.

Stirring the Pot, Chapter 4: National Public Service

So, I took the GMAT yesterday. I hadn't taken it since 1998, when it first went on the computer. I took it to keep my student Jose company- he was also taking it in the same room. He suffers from the most extreme case of test anxiety I've ever seen, and so I thought it might help him to have me nearby, as psychological support. He did end up getting his highest score ever, though it did still fall a little short of what we hoped.

The GMAT begins with a pair of essays, one of which is an "issue" essay where you give your opinion on some issue they provide. The issue I was given was: All Americans should be required to perform a period of public service." And that got me to thinking...

As it stands, I disagree with that statement. We have built this country in part on the principle that people should be, to the extent possible, allowed to make their own decisions about their lives. Forcing people to perform public service runs counter to this founding principle. So I don't think it's a good idea to actually implement, even though it is well-intentioned, and would presumably accomplish a lot of good.

But a more interesting thought experiment is to think about a more fundamental question, which is: starting from an assumption that more public service would be a good thing, is there any non-coercive way to increase the amount of public service performed in America?

To answer that question, I started by thinking about public service as a positive externality. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of sitting through a class in economics, a positive externality occurs whenever somebody gets the benefit of a good or service without paying for it. Here's a fun and simple example: fireworks on the 4th of July.

If you think about it, all the fireworks shows on the 4th of July are put on by governments. You might wonder: "Gee, how come nobody puts on a private fireworks show and charges admission?" The answer is that no one would pay- the vast majority of people would simply watch from outside the paying area, thereby receiving all the benefit of the fireworks show without incurring any of the cost. And so, no private party has any incentive to put on a fireworks show, and absent any government action, there wouldn't be any 4th of July fireworks.

Of course, fireworks shows on the 4th are a lot of fun, and it would be nice if there were some, so the government steps in and uses tax dollars to fund the show. That spreads the cost over a nice wide population, and then everyone can come down to the river or the park or whatever and watch fireworks, ostensibly for free.

Positive externalities are like that- something good that you'd want to happen, but isn't going to unless someone, almost always a government, steps in to absorb the cost of making it happen. Put another way, in the absence of intervention, less of something good is going to happen. I'd argue public service is like that.

So, if we accept public service as a positive externality, then the question becomes: how to we remove the externality, and make more public service happen? In my little essay I kicked around a couple of ideas, one of has definitely been implemented, and the other of which has not (to the best of my knowledge).

The first idea centers around the fact that many of our most productive citizens invest heavily in higher education, and as a result of that investment leave school with a significant student loan debt. So one way to increase public service would be to compensate such folks with loan forgiveness based on hours of public service worked. There already exists a program for this specifically for med school graduates, and Americorps allows you to work full-time and earn a $4725 amount that you can use to pay for school or to pay off student loans.

The issue I have with these programs is that they require a significant time investment. What if I only want to contribute 3 hours a week to public service? There's still good work that could be done, and I bet a LOT more people would participate if they could do so at a level more like this. Compensate people hourly with funds that can only be used to pay for education or educational loan foregiveness. With hourly compensation, people who only had small amounts of time could participate, which would likely drive up significantly the number of public service hours worked.

But here's another idea, related in a certain way, but not one I've seen before (though I'm sure if I thought of it, 20 other people already have also): set up a 401(k) for every citizen (honestly, this should be done anyway), and then allow government-approved public service to be compensated at the federal minimum wage on an hourly basis, with the entire proceeds (no taxes) directed to the 401(k).

The people with the most spare time for public service tend to be younger people, since they are less likely to have families or more advanced (and therefore demanding) careers. Young people also tend not to have as much disposable income to put toward saving for retirement. We could divert the energy of youth toward public service, while at the same time building a good habit in saving, and setting them up to be better off economically late in life. There is a lot of wasted human potential that we could harness through public service, and doing so would help grow the economy, which in turn would help set up the government to be able to make the necessary payouts in the future when people were ready to draw on the 401(k)'s. And it's not as if old folks couldn't participate too; I'm just thinking younger folks are the primary target here.

If I'd worked 3 hours a week for the 4 years between college and business school at the current minimum wage of $6.55, I'd have somewhere between $4000 to $5000 dollars plus 10 years of compounding more saved for retirement, plus I'd presumably have accomplished more good in this world than I regret to admit that I have to date.

It's not the hugest difference in the world, but scaled up to a couple million people, it could be a huge force for good. That's all I'm sayin'...

Sitrring the Pot, Chapter 3: The Death Penalty

As part of my continuing exercise in publishing all my positions that make my totally unelectable, let me now comment on the death penalty:

I'm totally against it.

It occurred to me to write about it today because the Supreme Court refused to re-hear a case which banned the death penalty in child rape cases where the child survived. The original case spurred a lot of strong reactions because part of the logic of the 5-4 majority was that there was an evolving consensus against the use of the death penalty.

Now, it's not exactly clear to me how evolved that consensus is, but I certainly agree with the end result. There are a lot of arguments against capital punishment, including that there's not a clear body of statistical evidence to suggest it functions as a deterrent to crime, that the amount of appeals process you have to put in place to make sure you don't end up executing an innocent person makes the cost of the capital punishment process greater than the cost of simply imprisoning the person for life, and that even with those processes in place, innocent people end up getting executed anyway, as demonstrated in recent years by the impact of DNA testing on previously tried and adjudicated cases.

Whew. That's a lot of argument against, but these are all utilitarian arguments and to me they obscure the truly important reason:

We are our judicial system, and when our judicial system makes a judgment to take a person's life, we as a society have made a collective, premeditated decision to commit murder, and I believe that decision diminishes us. We as people have to make choices about what kind of society we want to live in, and I believe we should choose wherever we can to live in a society with less violence.

In the past, when I've argued with folks about capital punishment, there is usually a point where someone says, "Well, what if there were a nuclear bomb ticking in Grand Central, and you found the guy who had the shutoff switch, and he swallowed it, and there were only 30 seconds left until it was about to blow, and so the only way you had to get the kill switch was to shoot the guy, rip open his gut, and pull the kill switch out? That's a premeditated act of murder. Are you saying you wouldn't do that??"

This kind of example is lame on so many levels. Among them are:

1) The premise is lame. By that I mean, if we as a society actually wound up in that situation, we just had a massive, systemic failure of our intelligence services, and a lot of people should lose their jobs.

This is akin to the 9/11 situation: since then, the government has massively expanded its powers using the logic that it needs to do so in order to keep us safe. But the problem with 9/11 was not that the govt did not have enough power to do its keeping-us-safe job properly, the problem was that it didn't have enough competence to do it properly. That lack of competence is largely, though not entirely, due to the Bush administration's total lack of interest or ability to find people capable of governing competently. Competent governance would, of course, be evidence against the neoconservative belief that government is always the problem. And neocons don't want to see any evidence they're wrong. And that's why electing neocons to any office is counterproductive. But I digress. Back to reasons why the bomb example is lame.

2) Obviously, if I'm put in a situation where I have a binary choice between an option where one person is killed, and an option where thousands of people are killed, I'll take the option where one person is killed. But that option is still consistent with my original principle of living in a society with less violence. I took the path of least violence.

"Aha!", they usually say, "You're willing to commit murder in order to protect society. That's all we're doing with capital punishment- protecting society from known dangers."

The problem with that perspective is- in real life there's always the option to imprison someone for life without parole, which serves the same purpose of protecting society from future acts by this individual, punishes them for previous acts, and doesn't involve an act of violence. Plus, if evidence is discovered later on that exonerates the person, you can at least partially undo what is now an obviously unjust act, which is having imprisoned the person for something they didn't do. That option is off the table if you executed the person.

Of course, the other major argument people use for capital punishment is that it provides "closure" for the victims and/or their loved ones. Capital punishment cannot possibly provide "closure" to people who have suffered from crimes of the severity that we normally reserve capital punishment for. All capital punishment can provide is sanctioned revenge. And I think it's unhealthy for us as a society to be organized around revenge. There's no answer to the pain of victims, least of all revenge.

This is one of those rare issues on which I agree totally with the Catholic Church's position, so from time to time I think about the issue just to remind myself that they aren't wrong about everything. Their position is consistent with their culture-of-life philosophy.

Last point: one of the single most intellectually irritating strains of people is the strain which simultaneously is militantly pro-life, sanctimoniously lecturing everyone on the importance of not killing fetuses because they're human beings, while in the same breath being militantly pro-capital punishment. That's so inherently contradictory it gives me a headache. For the record, I'm pro-choice, as I noted in a previous installment of Stirring the Pot, but want people to choose to have fewer abortions (choose less violence), primarily by not having unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

So there you have it- another personal opinion that makes me totally unelectable. Ah well...

The Princess Diaries, Chapter 3

RIght now I'm babysitting for Li and Em, since it's GA's birthday today and Laszlo took her out to dinner.

Li informed me upon arrival that she is henceforth and forthwith to be referred to as "The Seashell Princess", and Em is to be referred to as "The Flower Princess".

By the time I got there and Laszlo and GA left for dinner, it was basically already bedtime for the two of them. They weren't giving off much of a I'm-ready-for-bed vibe, so I busted out a favorite game of mine: "Let's see how fast we can run around the entire house!"

It's a great game, because I only have to do it twice, and then I can say I'm too tired, but I'll count while they make the next lap. Then, I can say: "Try it again and let's see if you can go faster!!" It helps that Seashell Princess is competitive like her daddy. Because after about a dozen iterations of the game, they don't protest when I say it's time to go to bed.

Yup, I'm totally daddy material.

Laszlo and GA had done all the various pre-bedtime rituals except for The Reading of the Stories, so I had us all race upstairs to Flower Princess's room for Story #1. Flower Princess picked "If You Feed a Mouse a Cookie..." which isn't half bad, and at least isn't about princesses. Come to think of it, this may be the first bedtime story we've ever done that didn't involve a princess.

After her story, we all trooped over to Seashell Princess's room for Story #2, which was "There's a New Kid in School" (or something like that- I already can't remember). It's by Katie Couric, and the reason I can't remember it already is that it's not very good. Seriously, Katie should stick to TV news. Though, these days it's not even clear she should stick to that.

The storyline itself was fine, and the new kid, who is basically shunned and taunted by the other kids, is named Lazlo. The story ends with all the girls deciding to be friends with Lazlo. No word on what the other boys decided. Though, the book does teach an important lesson that gradeschool soft power is concentrated entirely with the girls. The boys are just helpless pawns. I was in a daily fight for existence through most of 7th grade, but in 8th grade, when Andrea, the cutest girl in school, decided she liked me (not enough to want to "go with" me, which would have squandered too much social capital, but enough to not want to see me with a permanent bullseye on me), all the predator boys instantly backed off. 8th grade wound up being the most peaceful year I had from 5th-10th grade, when I finally went into the skater punk orbit. For whatever reason, rejecting the conformist social culture of my high school made people leave me alone more.

Anyway, we read Story #2. The storyline, as I said, is fine- it's the hamhanded attempt to make the lines rhyme in couplets that makes the story suck. First of all, rhyming in couplets makes anything sound retarded, but if you're going to do it, for God's sake find a rhythm and stick to it.

After Story #2, I said goodnight to Seashell Princess and took Flower Princess back to her room to say goodnight to her...

Flower Princess: "Will you sing me a song?"

Me: "Uh, well, um..."

Flower Princess: "'Cause mommy always sings me a song. And daddy does too."

And then she fixes me with that Look- the same Look that Puss-in-Boots uses in the Shrek movies. It's uncanny. So, I blundered my way through Annie's Song, and said goodnight. Fortunately, the point at which they'll be old enough to tell that I'm haphazardly lurching through 3 different keys per word is also the time at which they'll start to think it's pretty lame to ask grownups to sing them songs.

About 0.0003 seconds after I left Flower Princess's room, I hear:

Flower Princess: "Uncle Gus?"

Me: "Yes sweetie what is it?"

Flower Princess: "Can I have a cup of water?"

Me (out loud): "Yes of course sweetheart."
Me (internally): "Seriously? Are we going to use every cliched bedtime delaying tactic ever?"

So I got her water, watched her drink it, tucked her back in, and switched off the light. Again.

Downstairs, I scrounged around the refrigerator to put together a sandwich for dinner. I had just enough time to find bread, meat, and cheese, and then I heard the pitter patter of tiny Princess feet approaching...

Flower Princess: "Can I ask you a question?"

Me: "Sure."

Flower Princess: "Why aren't _you_ going to bed now?"

Me: "Well, it's Princess bedtime, not Involved Uncle bedtime. And somebody's got to be awake when mommy and daddy get home. Besides, the broader question is: Why aren't you going to bed now?"

Flower Princess: "Can I ask another question?"

Me: "Ye-e-e-e-e-s..."

Flower Princess: "I... came downstairs to ask you... can I stay up with you?" (insert Puss-in-Boots look here)

Me: "Aw, that's so-o-o-o-o sweet honey... but no. It's Princess bedtime, and you, my dear, are a Princess, so off we go."

And so I walked her upstairs to her room, tucked her back in, and switched off the light. Again.

Fortunately, third time seems to be the charm. No Princess foot patter since then. I think the running game finally caught up to them...

Election '08 by Gus, Part 10

My thoughts on recent developments:

The Bailout

Personally, I wouldn't have done the bailing out that's been done so far, much less do the $700 billion super duper deluxe bailout, for the following reason:

Live by the market, die by the market.

For oh so many years now, we have been subjected to shrill conservative complaints that government is always the problem, that regulation is always bad, etc. etc. Well, here is a great example of what happens when you don't have smart regulation. And by the way, I don't much blame the i-bankers. They do what they do, which is make as much money as possible within whatever set of rules are enforced on them. So, if we have a decent set of rules that are reasonably enforced, the i-bankers cause minimal harm, and we the people reap a non-trivial benefit of having a lot of freely flowing, pretty efficiently allocated capital.

Of course, without rules, or with rules but without enforcement, i-bankers will still make as much money as possible, but now they'll invent crazy ways to do it, and then we the people will bear the consequences when the crazier ideas start wrecking the financial system. I-bankers are like corgis- I don't know if you've ever spent significant time around a corgi, but if a dump truck dumped a metric ton of dog food in front of a corgi, the corgi would try and eat literally the entire pile. Long after its stomach had burst, the poor corgi would, with its last few breaths, keep eating. They just don't have an off swtich. I-bankers are like that- they'll just keep making deals, or selling crazy derivatives, or whatever, even if it means that they're endangering the health of the whole financial system, which includes themselves. So you have to have smart, enforced regulation in place to productively channel their impulses and to protect them from themselves, and by extension, to protect the rest of us from them.

But, with conservatism in ascendance at least since Reagan, we've seen a systematic dismantling of a lot of sensible regulation. Not all of it is sensible, but a lot of sensible things were trashed, typically under Republican leadership, with Democrats either powerless to stop, or too scared and weak to put up a decent fight. So now I say, let it all burn. Let all the banks that are going to collapse as a result of all this subprime nonsense collapse, and let the domino effects happen. For one, it'll speed up the process of economically readjusting everything that needs to be readjusted (i.e., ripping the bandaid off all at once instead of trying to pull it off little by little, which just increases the total amount of pain you end up experiencing), and two, it will help to underscore to more people the total failure of that extreme brand of economic conservatism that got us into this mess. Extremism in anything is to be looked at with great suspicion, in my opinion.

BTW, I'm a huge, huge believer in the power of capitalism and markets. Most of the world's innovation has come since the development of the joint-stock corporation, and over the last 20 years or so, globalization and the spread of capitalism to places like China and India have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The problem is the people with black-and-white views about it: people, typically on the right, who think capitalism is somehow inherently good, and people, typically on the left, who think globalization/capitalism is somehow inherently bad.

Folks, it's neither. Capitalism is just a force, neither inherently good nor bad, but which, like any force, can be harnessed and made to produce a lot of good things when done with skill and foresight. So, I'd like to see the bailout never get passed, and then let all the fallout happen, and then rebuild the system with smarter regulation. Hopefully, by the time most of the effects worked themselves out, and it was time to start rebuilding, we'd have an Obama presidency. Which brings me to:

The Debates

Joel and I watched the debate from the Obama campaign office in Palo Alto. It was a lot of fun. It was nice to be in a place with a lot of other people who think the prospect of a McCain-Palin administration is just as terrifying as I think it is. I agree with what seems to be a general sentiment that the debate was pretty much a draw, but all that really matters is what the undecided people in about 10 states thought, and I hope they thought, as I did, that Obama looked more thoughtful, and had a more compelling long-run vision.

This Thursday I'll be in New Haven, so I won't get to watch the Biden-Palin debate live, but thankfully we have the magic of the internet to catch up on it later. Palin is doing her best to lower the bar for herself, managing expectations, saying Biden's such a great debater, he's so confident, blah blah blah. Lord knows, she desperately needs the expectations to be low.

All I can say is, I hope that whoever is prepping Biden stands over him every night while he sleeps whispering "Less is more" into his ear all night. He only has to speak a little to demonstrate that he has command of all the issues. Aside from that, let Palin talk, because the more she talks, the more it is apparent that she's totally clueless. Not stupid, but another George W. Bush- someone who isn't stupid, but has no intellectual curiosity and has made a life out of intellectual laziness. And I think it ought to be pretty clear that the world is complex enough that you can't have intellectually lazy people running the show. That will buy us another 4-8 years of what we've just experienced for the last 8. So don't go after her too hard, Joe, or everyone will start feeling sorry for her. And she doesn't deserve that- she could've said "no" when John McCain called and asked her to be his running mate.

As for us, if we as a country do end up electing McCain and Palin, we will absolutely deserve the 4-8 years worth of crap we're going to get. But I'm still optimistic that people do get it, and that in the end we will see an Obama victory. A smaller one than it ought to be, but a victory nonetheless.

Yes we can.

3 trips to the city: part 3

6 days later, I once again got on a plane to NYC, this time for the annual Director's meeting for work.

I flew in early Sunday morning, and spent the day hanging out with Keiko's family in Jersey. Her family is remarkably chill, especially given that in less than one year's time Keiko has jumped out of a plane at 13.5 thousand feet, and nearly drowned in the Pacific as a result of dating me. Contrast this with the families of previous girlfriends, which have featured family members going to church every sunday to pray for a breakup so that my GF of the time could "find a nice white boy to date", family members comparing my looks to those of Middle Eastern terrorists, and family members refusing to stay under my roof or at a hotel at which I got them the employee rate by calling in a favor from a friend, because they didn't "need any of [my] charity." That's 3 different examples from 3 different GFs, by the way.

After a day of hanging out in Jersey, we headed back to the city. The next day began the 2 full days of Director's meetings. Mostly, that's a lot of super glamorous stuff like presentations and going over memos and stuff, but it's nice to meet all the other Directors. And, my first 2 quarters were the 2nd best first 2 quarters in company history, so my results were decent. But we always go out to a nice dinner, and we did this time too. And at the end of the second day there's always a dinner and party with the administrative staff in NY, which coincidentally includes Keiko.

This year it was in one of Manhattan's few bowling alleys. We had pre-assigned teams and did a whole tournament. Since some teams had 4 people and some had 5, games were decided on average score. As luck would have it, our team won it all! We rolled through the tourney obliterating all comers by sticking to failsafe strategy: consistent, unwavering mediocrity. I had the individual high score on our team by bowling a 118. I also had the second lowest individual score, in a different game, by bowling a 92. Everyone else bounced around between 95 and 105. Other teams had individual higher scores, but also had terrible scores- 40's and the like, which kept their averages down. Consistent, unwavering mediocrity won the day for us; it's like we were running a political campaign.


Me and Keiko. She's had a few too many at the company picnic, if you know what I mean...








The next day, I hung out with Keiko on her lunch break, and then had to high-tail it to the airport. Somehow, I'm not really sure how, I ended up missing the bus I needed, so I had to catch the next bus, and hold my breath to see if we would make it in traffic in time for me to make my flight. Fortunately, this time the bus driver did not get lost, but with all the traffic I barely made it, and had to run for my gate. And sure enough, I made it on the plane, and the plane took off and landed on time, with no problems. Yet another data point proving that I'm meant to go to the airport this way.

It's science- I can't help it that the universe works this way...

3 trips to NYC, Part 2

Four days after arriving back in CA, I got back on a flight to NYC. This time the primary purpose was to see my original student-Alex- whom I'd been tutoring for nearly 5 years, graduate from the United Nations school.

The festivities started on Friday night, when we attended Shabbat dinner with Alex and her whole extended family and friends, at a family friend's apartment on Central Park West. It was a gorgeous apartment, with an amazing panoramic view of the park. I was a little nervous, because my record with Jewish meals is not good.

My all-time low with Jewish meals is the first time I ever attended a Seder dinner, at Laszlo's mom's house during college. There was no guide or anything, and if you've ever experienced a Seder dinner, there's all this praying and stuff that has to happen before you can eat or drink anything. Coming from a background where we struggle at family dinner to pass things to each other, rather than reach over each other (which drives my mother nuts), I wasn't accustomed to having so much awesome food sitting right in front of me, with no one actually eating it.

I held out as long as I could, and then thought perhaps I could surreptitiously pinch a small piece of bread without interrupting anything. I was wrong.

"What are you DOING?" asked Laszlo's mom.

"Uh, I was just nibbling" I said.

"You can't eat that until we say the [insert named Hebrew prayer here] prayer!" Laszlo said.

"Oh."

So I tried to wait it out. The praying went on. I decided I could mitigate the suffering by taking a sip of water.

"What are you DOING?" asked Laszlo's mom.

"Uh, I was thirsty" I said.

"You can't drink that until we say the [insert named Hebrew prayer here] prayer!" Laszlo said.

Now totally frustrated, I put my chin in my hand and plopped my elbow on the table, right on top of my napkin.

CRUNCH!

All praying stopped, and everyone turned to look at me.

"What was that?" I asked, and llifted up my napkin. Underneath were a bunch of cracker crumbs.

"YOU CRUSHED THE HIDDEN MATZO!!!" exclaimed Laszlo.

"WHAT'S THE HIDDEN MATZO?!?" I asked, "And why is it hidden under the Goyim's napkin??"

So, apparently Elijah or whoever wasn't going to have anything to eat when he came around, thanks to yours truly. I'll be the first to admit I'm a pretty lousy Catholic, but it turns out I'm an even worse Jew.

Given this checkered history, I was a little nervous about Shabbat dinner, but it went pretty well, and anyway I stayed hidden at the back as much as possible. People gave little speeches, and Alex's dad gave a very nice speech in which he devoted a small piece to thanking me for being pretty much all of Alex's science and math education in high school. The UN school, in my experience, is very good at teaching languages, history, and to some extent art. But it's in pretty sad shape when it comes to math and science. Not that that distinguishes it from most other schools.

The next day we went to the U.N. for the actual ceremony. Part of the fun of seeing the UN school's graduation is that they actually conduct the ceremony in the main hall of the United Nations, and they have the reception on the back roof of the building overlooking the East River. I heard one of the most affecting speeches ever, by Ishmael Beah, a young man who had come to the UN school after being a child soldier in Sierra Leone. He has since written a book about his experiences.


The General Assembly room of the U.N., from my seat way in the back, presumably where Tonga sits.







Although it was not rhetorically the best speech I ever heard, it really touched me. He spoke with great honesty and passion about the importance of education, and the impact it can have on a person's life. Hearing Alex's dad's words the night before, and hearing that speech that day, reminded me anew of why being a tutor has been so much more rewarding than any other work I've ever done.


Me and Alex














Me and Alex at the reception overlooking the East River.











After dinner with the usual NYC crew, we called it a night, since I was once again determined to get myself to the airport at a responsible hour. After all, surely this time it would pay off.

Wrong.

I took the usual 540am bus, got to the airport, and within 15 minutes of arrival our flight was canceled due to "weather". I don't know where the "weather" in question was, but it wasn't in NYC and it wasn't in CA. The woman behind the counter had the look on her face that I would have if I were hiding behind a convenient, unassailable excuse and just wanted you to shut the fuck up and deal with it.

Sadly, the evening flight was all full, so I ended up booked on the Monday evening flight. That meant having to cancel all my Sunday and Monday meetings, which was annoying. Plus, I'd gotten up super early _and_ avoided hanging out the night before in an effort to be responsible.

The lesson is clear: folks, don't try to be someone you're not.

3 trips to NYC: Part 1

I'm five trips behind in my chronicles, so I'll handle 3 of them now: 3 weeks in a row I went back and forth from HMB to NYC.

The first trip, Thu 6/5 to Sun 6/8, was for my birthday and 1 year anniversary of dating Keiko. 6/5 was the anniversary of our first date, so I took Keiko to the same restaurant that we went to that day: Sette Mezzo, at 70th and Lex. It's a great restaurant owned and operated by the father of one of my former students, who now attends NYU business school. Last year, he had just finished working with me when we went, and his father recognized both me and Keiko and gave us free desserts. Extremely yummy, homemade Italian desserts, I feel obliged to add.

The reason he recognized Keiko, who normally does not interact with too many parents, and if she does, it's almost exclusively via phone or email, is that he would actually come each month to the office to pay personally. In cash. The reason he paid for his not insignificant bills in cash is that his restaurant is a cash-only place.

Funny thing is, I'd forgotten to look that up before we went out last year, and I, thinking I'd be putting it all on Mr. Visa, happily rang up a non-trivial bill. In NYC, my friends, that is a rookie mistake. A LOT of restaurants are cash-only, because it's such tight margins and credit card fees are outrageous, as I'm here to tell you (I actually accept payment ONLY by credit card in my office). So Keiko wound up having to pitch in for our meal. Yes, I am 100% class.

After dinner I took her on a walk down 5th ave, to see a building which my NYC walking guidebook was owned by my student Alix's family back in the day, and which apparently still had their family crest on it. I thought it was pretty cool that their family had a family crest, and I was pretty excited to go see it. And it seemed like a good excuse for a nice nighttime walk in the city. So we headed down 5th ave.

Along the way, we passed the southeast corner of Central Park, where the Armory is located. It's actually a pretty interesting building, with an interesting history, which is comprehensively detailed in a large sign in front of it. I stopped us in front of the sign and we began reading. About a minute later, we had the following conversation:

Keiko: "Wait, are you reading the entire sign?"

Me: "Uh, yeah, I was planning to. Why?"

Keiko: "coughcoughnerdcoughcough"

Me: "GEEK, not NERD. That's an important distinction, I'll have you know."

Keiko: "Uh huh."

So I read the entire sign. As I said, the building has an interesting history- it was built to house munitions, but has also been a police station, an art museum, and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember anymore. Then we continued on our walk down 5th until we got to the building I wanted to see, several blocks farther down.

Along the way, I had explained to Keiko about the crest, and how it would probably look pretty cool, and so when we got to the corner we crossed the street from the building and began looking for a large stone crest, which the guidebook had assured me was right on the front of the building. However, despite looking at the thing from every conceivable angle, there was nary a crest to be found. I kept us there a solid 15 minutes circling the building again and again, determined to find that damned crest, and increasingly humiliated that it wasn't turning up. Keiko was remarkably patient about the whole thing, but I imagined she was probably thinking "How the hell do I get away from this crazy person."

Desperate to salvage some respectability from all this, I fell back on my failsafe secret weapon: my sense of humor.

Me: "Well, that's pretty disappointing. I'm totally, well, crest-fallen." [insert boyish grin]

Keiko: "... ... ... wow."

[awkward pause]

Me: "Uh, yeah, so, uh, why don't I walk you home then..."

And that was our first date: Keiko more or less unexpectedly paid for her own dinner, I empirically proved my geekhood, I took her on a 20 block walk to see something that didn't exist, and then I tried to rescue the evening with puns. As I walked home from Keiko's, I figured that

(a) there would probably not be a second date, and

(b) this was solid evidence in favor of my hypothesis that I am fated to die cold and alone in a refrigerator box under the FDR, with no one to notice my passing until a few days later when joggers notice the smell. Though, on the bright side, there will eventually be a Law & Order episode based on my story.

As an important footnote to the story, the crest DOES exist; it's just made out of dark stone on a dark stone background, and it turns out that it's hard to see a dark stone carving on a dark stone background at night. But it's very clearly there in the daytime.

Anyway, a week later we were seated at the same table at a work function, and (unbeknownst to me) Keiko rearranged the name plates so that I was next to her, and so we chatted the entire evening, and then there was dancing afterward, and that's home court advantage for yours truly, so we got together that night and have been dating ever since.

So on Thursday 6/5, precisely one year after that eventful first date, I took us back to Sette Mezzo. And right about when it was time to order desserts (the father wasn't working that night, so no free desserts- damn!), I realized something Important:

I'd forgotten to go to the ATM.

Now, I did have some cash on me, since I had just arrived that day, and I almost always remember to take out cash when I travel. But I was frantically trying to tally up the meal so far to see if I'd be able to cover it. In the end, I opted not to say anything at first; I just let us order our desserts and then 'fessed up:

Me: "Uh, so this is kinda funny..."

Keiko: "oh no." [One year later, Keiko knows me pretty well.]

Me: "...yeah, uh, I forgot to go to the ATM."

Keiko: "You don't have enough cash AGAIN?"

Me: "Well, I'm not SURE I don't have enough cash. I won't know until the bill comes."

Keiko: "You really know how to sweep a girl off her feet. Are you going to take me on another walk to see the crest that doesn't exist?"

Me: "The crest EXISTS. I saw it a couple weeks later in the daytime. It's visible only in the daytime."

Keiko: "I'm sure it is, baby."

At that point, the bill came. I quickly determined that if I threw in every last dollar I had, I could cover the bill plus a 17% tip. Less than I like to tip, but enough not to hang my head in shame.

Me, in my best Dick Vitale voice, "YES!"

Keiko: "My baby has so much class."

Me: "I paid the bi-ill ... I had the muh-ney..."

And so went our anniversary dinner. Since I had caused Keiko to miss the opening of Sex & the City the previous weekend when all her friends went by asking her to come to the LA wedding, I promised to take her and so we went. As we waited outside the theatre, I surveyed the super long line we were waiting in...

Me: "There's like 5 guys in this line, and all of them are with their girlfriends. The entire rest of this line is female."

Keiko: "No, look, there's two guys waiting together."

Me: "Those guys are gay, baby. They count toward the women statistics."

Keiko: "You don't know for sure they're gay."

Me: "No, of course not, they just were hanging out having some beers down at Molly's and one of them said, 'Dude, let's bag SportsCenter and go watch Sex & the City.' And the other one said, 'Fuckin' hell yeah, man, I'm down for that.'"

Keiko: "grrr."

The movie was, I must say, mostly watchable, which was a big surprise for me. The dialogue only made me want to actually vomit once. A best-case scenario, really.

The next night we saw Kung Fu Panda, which we both enjoyed, and we had dinner with Ed and Alison.

The next morning, I woke up a newly minted 36-year-old. I don't get terribly excited about birthdays [especially as I get older] but I was excited to try my birthday luck at the Belmont Stakes. I figured it would be a good day to win some money, and maybe see Big Brown make history by becoming the first horse in 30 years to win the Triple Crown.

Of course, about 10 million other people had the same idea, so we had to get up somewhat early and take the train out to the racetrack on a super hot day. Ed and his buddy Matty have been going every year for a long time, so Keiko and I joined up with Ed and Alison and we took the 1130am train. Matty and his wife were already there; they had staked out some sweet seats.

We got there around 1230, and it was 95 degrees, with 300% humidity, and no shade. We'd brought plenty of water and provisions, including several large containers of Motts Apple Juice, which Ed had dumped out and replaced with beer, in order to get it through security. He was just praying they wouldn't notice the head on the top of the "apple juice".


Ed and Allison. And the rest of NY. In the heat. But hey, there's "apple juice".










So we began a 6 hour wait until Big Brown's race. His race was the 11th of 13 races that day, so there was a lot of time. Time which we had to spend defending our absolutely-no-shade-whatsoever area against encroachment. I whiled away part of the time learning about different horse betting strategies, and decided to try out the most compelling one, which is the wheel bet.

WARNING: The next bit is tutoring in horse racing betting strategy, so if that doesn't seem like an interesting topic to you, skip ahead to THE RESULTS.

Terminology:

Exacta: you pick the first-place and second place horses
Exacta box: you pick two horses, and are betting on both combinations of first and second place

Trifecta: you pick the first, second, and third-place horses
Trifecta box: you pick three horses, and are betting on all 6 combinations of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

Superfecta: you pick the first, second, third, and fourth-place horses
Superfecta box: you pick 4 horses, and are betting on all 24 combinations of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

Betting to win: you pick the horse you think will win
Betting to place: you pick a single horse you think will finish either 1st or 2nd
Betting to show: you pick a single horse you think will finish 1st, 2nd, or 3rd

Examples:

Suppose we have 3 horses:

#5 horse is MKisGAY
#7 horse is EDlicksMYballs
#9 horse is HotKeik

The standard bet is $2, and all the winning amounts are posted assuming you're making a $2 bet. Of course, only cheap bastards make $2 bets, so naturally Ed and I made $2 bets all day. When you make a bet, you use this format:

"on the #10 race, give me a $2 exacta box with numbers 5 and 7"

In this case, you've just bet on the 10th race, and you've made TWO different bets at once: you've bet $2 on the #5 horse finishing first, and the #7 horse finishing second, and you've bet $2 on the #7 horse finishing first, and the #5 horse finishing second. So you cough up $4.

Another example:

"On the #8 race, give me a $2 trifecta with #9, #7, and #5."

Here, you've bet on the 8th race, and you've made only one $2 bet: that the #9 horse will finish first, the #7 horse will finish second, and the #5 horse will finish 3rd. Contrast this with:

"On the #8 race, give me a $2 trifecta BOX with #9, #7, and #5."

Here, you've made 6 different $2 bets:

9,7,5
9,5,7
7,9,5
7,5,9
5,7,9
5,9,7

Same kind of thing with the superfecta va. superfecta box.

So here's the thing- most people either make one bet, or bet in bulk using the box methodology. Thing is, any one bet doesn't have great odds, and there's a huge problem with the box, which is that it weights all combinations the same, regardless of probability.

Suppose you think that either #7 EDlicksMYballs and #9 HotKeik could finish first or second, but #5 MKisGAY is sure to finish 3rd. Then you don't want to bet a trifecta box, because 4 of the 6 bets have #5 finishing either first or second, and you're certain MKisGAY is going to finish 3rd. Instead, you use the magic of the wheel bet:

"On the #8 race, give me a $2 trifecta WHEEL with a 7,9; a 7,9; and a 5."

Here, you've made just the 2 bets you're interested in: 7,9,5 and 9,7,5. What the person behind the window hears is: I want to bet on all combinations that have either the 7 or 9 horse winning, the 7 or 9 horse finishing second, and the 5 horse finishing third. Wheel betting is pretty clearly superior from a purely mathematical perspective.

THE RESULTS...

It's a pretty flexible strategy. I used it in the first race I bet on, the fifth race, and that race finished with the top four horses as 7,8,4,2. That was almost the only combination of those four horses that didn't win me a trifecta, dammit. So close to winning like $300...

I had bet 6 combinations, for a total of $12, and I put down a similar strategy on 3 more races, including the Big Brown race. Having spent $48, I decided to take a super longshot and bet _against_ Big Brown by taking a straight $2 superfecta. With the odds so overwhelmingly favoring Big Brown, if i won it'd be huge.

The next race didn't come close to winning for me. But then the #10 race, the one right before Big Brown's came up. In that race, as I'd looked through the odds, I noticed that the 3rd highest odds horse was named "Dancing Forever".

How could I not bet on Dancing Forever?

So I bet a $2 trifecta wheel, with a 10; a 1,5,8; and a 1,5,8. Again, that was effectively 6 different bets:

10,1,5
10,1,8
10,5,1
10,5,8
10,8,1
10,8,5

And wouldn't you know it, but Dancing Forever won. And #5 finished second, and #8 finished third.

TRIFECTA!!!!!


Oh yeah. Winning big on my birthday...


















My winning horses splashed all over the leaderboard. And the bottom row shows my $382 trifecta.









And like magic, the $2 I put on 10,5,8 turned into $382. Enough to cover my $50 of betting, the $20 of entrance fees for me and Keiko, our LIRR tickets, our provisions, and still nearly $300 profit. Now I see how people get addicted to the races.


Flush with victory, and heatstroke.












Next up was Big Brown. After 6 hours of sweating in the sun, we were ready to see him make history. Or, for me, to finish 3rd while the #7 horse won, thus winning me a fortune.



Big Brown. The small one. (#1)












Nearly 100,000 people came out that afternoon, and it seemed like all of them were crowded into our little area. We were standing on our bench, watching as they paraded the horses out. Horse races have varying lengths, and the Belmont Stakes is the longest at 1.5 miles. The starting gate is moved to different points on the track over the course of the day, depending on the length of the race, and presumably on giving each part of the grandstand a decent view of the starting gate at some point during the day.



Lining up in the starting gate...












Matty and his wife had done great work staking out a place close to the front near the center of the grandstand, so we got a great look at the horses, and the start of the race. There was electricity in the air.

AND THEY'RE OFF!

The crowd went nuts. We were all yelling, as Big Brown started off a little slow, but quickly got into third place. "The jockey always does this," said Ed, "He hangs back a little bit, and then at the end he makes a move." We were leaning forward as far as we could go without falling off our bench onto someone's head, breath held, as Big Brown headed for the final turn, still in third. There wasn't much time left to make a move...

And then the jockey pulled him up, and slowed him to a trot. He finished dead last. The audience collectively groaned. People were in shock.

For the record, the #6 horse won. I had the 3rd place horse correct (the #8 horse), though technically, #8 and #9 finished in a dead heat, tying for third. Aside from that, my superfecta got killed. But if you had bet the winning superfecta of 6-4-8-9 or 6-4-9-8, your $2 would have turned into $48,000. Why, oh why, couldn't I have picked those numbers???


Damn. So close to $48,000. OK, not really, but still.











We stuck around for the second to last race, but bailed out after that. Ed and Allison were headed to Brooklyn for sushi, but as someone with no particular affection for either Brooklyn or sushi, I was content to head back to the city with Keiko. But hey, a trifecta on my birthday- not so bad.

Sunday morning I got up super early and took the 540am bus to JFK, and got myself to the gate in a responsibly early fashion. As is typical, getting there early was a big waste, as the flight was way late taking off, and I ended up having to push back my tutoring that day. Although it wasn't a big deal, I want the record to note that once again, being early for a flight does NOT pay off.

Not for me, anyway...