BMFRTE Day 11: Hope, and New Orleans

Monday, 8/27: somewhere in rural Oklahoma:

We head out, east through Oklahoma and into southeastern Arkansas. This is the fourth day of our trip from NYC to CA that has us traveling either north, east, or both. But whatever- this is the BMFRTE. This is how we roll.

Upon careful study of the atlas over our usual greasy-spoon diner breakfast, we realize that our trip diagonally across Arkansas to Memphis will take us right through Hope, where the Bill Clinton Presidential Library is. It's a race against time to see if we can make it to Graceland before it closes, especially since we were not good about getting up this morning, and stopping somewhere seriously imperils that goal, but we both figure we're more likely to be in Memphis someday than Hope, so we opt to stop for Hope.


I got nuthin' for this one. I mean, what is there really to say about Arkansas? Like Texas, but without all the charm?




We get to the library at about 2pm, and figure we can spend maybe half an hour before we have to high-tail it out of there. The Clinton library seems very, well, Clinton-like: very grand, very interesting, a little over the top...



The Clinton Library. [Insert own intern joke here]








Although we initially intend to spend only half an hour, we wind up getting sucked in [Insert own intern joke here] and spend over an hour. Interesting bits include an actual presidential limo, a replica of the Oval Office, a short film narrated by President Clinton, and a replica of the Cabinet room, where you can sit in the President's chair.


I have a dream- that someday even short brown men with bad hair can be President...






We had a good time, but as much as we enjoyed ourselves at the Clinton Library, we were in and out in under an hour [Insert own intern joke here]. And though we couldn't stay as long as we would have liked, it's a spot the two of us will remember forever. [Insert own intern joke here]

We jump back in the car and head out to Memphis. We're not sure what time Graceland closes, so we call Keiko and use the magic of the internet to discover that Graceland closes at 5. That's two hours from now, and we're over 200 miles away. Even with our driving, we're not going to make it, and I don't intend to show up at Graceland half an hour after closing on 2 consecutive tries.

The last time I tried to see Graceland, I was on a road trip with Jeffrey, and we showed up at what must have been 530, and were forced to observe Graceland from outside the gate. Fortunately, there was plenty of Elvis/Graceland memorabilia at the shop across the street, and we had a nice dinner on Beale street, so it was still a good night. And I did once actually get to see Graceland, on a road trip with Zhian, which was a 5000 mile trip from LA to StL immediately after graduating from Pomona. My dad gave me as a graduation gift a big coffee can he had been dumping change into for ten years. The can had over $400 in change, and that's what I lived off of for 2 weeks on the road trip. Gas station attendants and waitresses hated me.

Anyway, with Graceland joining Acadia, Bryce, and Canyonlands on the cutting room floor of the BMFRTE, we arced southeast and headed for Mississippi, to catch I-55 down toward New Orleans...

Mississippi- it's like coming home. If home is an oppressively hot, humid land characterized by a legacy of widespread poverty and entrenched racism.


Since we're on the way to New Orleans, I pop in today's road trip CD- 8/27/07: A Heckuva Mix

1) What You Gonna Do - Buckwheat Zydeco
2) Graceland - Paul Simon
3) Walking in Memphis - Mark Cohen
4) Tennessee - Arrested Development
5) Movin' to Virginia - Split Lip Rayfield
6) Carolina in My Mind - James Taylor
7) Midnight Train to Georgia -
8) Georgia on My Mind - Ray Charles
9) Woke Up This Morning - Alabama 3
10) Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd
11) Welcome to Paradise - Front 242
12) Rainy Days and Mondays - The Carpenters
13) House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
14) Waiting for the Miracle - Leonard Cohen
15) History Repeating - The Propellerheads
16) Your Racist Friend - They Might Be Giants
17) Red Right Hand - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
18) Send in the Clowns - Judy Collins

We drive the rest of the afternoon, and into the evening, stopping only once, in a little roadside town, to get gas and food. The food is in a lean-to attached to the gas station. It's definitely one of the sketchiest places I've eaten in a long, long time (and that's saying something), but the food is surprisingly good. The place is staffed by a gigantic black woman, and we immediately decide that we'd better be good to Mama, or Mama'll beat us to within an inch of our lives. She serves us up some fried chicken that was both extremely greasy, and extremely good, as were the mashed potatoes, and the corn nuggets (deep fried corn- here in the Deep South, there ain't nuthin' that kain't be deep fried).

We get back on the road, and roll into New Orleans around 10pm. We head straight to the French Quarter, and drive around looking for a hotel. We finally find the Hotel Monteleone, which turns out to be a really sweet hotel, but perhaps due to a combination of post-Katrina blues plus a Monday night in a quiet time of the year, is super cheap. It's also only a block from Bourbon St., which could be convenient later if we're going to be stumbling home drunk.


The French Quarter from the hotel room window.







This from Ed: "We check in, change, and head out to Bourbon St. This place is obviously debauchery central, even on a Monday night. Cool bars... live music... I love Bourbon St and the French Quarter immediately.

We walk up and down the entire street, and the only disappointing thing is that we can't find food (we're both starving). So we walk over a couple blocks to a 24-hr food place where we are immediately welcomed by the friendliest -and pretty odd- waitress. She's got a southern accent that both Gus and I think is fake, she's about 6'3", she's dressed like a midwest farmer's daughter with the short shorts and cowboy boots, she's got painted eyebrows, and she's super friendly and talkative... oh, and she calls everyone 'honey'.

Over the course of the meal, she has some choice phrases: her wrist is bandaged up, and when Gus asks what happened she replies that 'a boy's face ran into my hand.' Later, while telling us about some good local stripclubs, she tells us how one of her friends 'dropped $1000 on lapdances and didn't even bust a nut.' This is good stuff."

Yeah, although we'll never know for sure, and, speaking for both of us, we don't ever want to know for sure, I'm pretty sure we were talking to Mangelina, if you know what I mean. We left a nice tip and got the hell out there, because we were already getting the story about how she had just moved back there and was living in a crappy situation and didn't even have a bed yet. Uh, yeah, whew, look at the time...

So we head back to Bourbon St., and after stopping a bit to watch some filming taking place on the streetcorner of what was either a very low-budget porn movie or yet another installment of Girls Gone Wild, we started aggressively bar-hopping. There was good music, and drinks were two-for-one everywhere, and after a while we started adopting a policy of hanging out until the place we were in closed and kicked us out.

Sometime after 3 a.m., we found ourselves in a bar that was still going strong, and filled with drunk trashy girls making spectacles of themselves on the dance floor. Between that entertainment and just grooving out off toward the side of the dance floor, I was happy. Yep, happy. Just minding my own business. At one point, I turn to the side to see what's going on with Ed, and I see him talking to one of the waitresses, and pointing my way. I look away quickly, hoping that Ed's not trying to cause some kind of trouble.

Two seconds later, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to look, and there is the waitress standing right in front of me. I have just enough time to register that it's her before she puts her hand on my forehead, shoves me down to my knees, takes 2 test tubes of liquor from this rack she's been carrying around all night, more or less deep throats the test tubes from the bottom, so that only a fraction of the tops are protruding from her mouth, and then mimes french kissing me, which has the effect of dumping 2 test tubes full of liquor down my throat.

Now, she would not have been able to get away with this normally, but having the element of surprise, as well as the additional advantage of being sober, versus my having spent the last 4 hours drinking with Ed (which has historically led to a lot of pain and suffering on my part), she was able to bushwhack me. It all happened with blinding speed- I had only enough time to think "OMG, am I being assaulted right now? Why couldn't I be assaulted by a cute waitress?" and then it was over. Of course, the next thing that happened was my trying to figure out what had just been put down my throat, and in a moment I realized what it was- Jagermeister. BLECH! I can do vodka shots all night long and been fine, but all I need to do is sniff Jager and I want to puke. I look over at Ed, and he is doubled over in laughter, slapping his knee. He is very pleased with himself. I want to kill him, but I'm afraid any sudden moves may make me vomit.

This from Ed: "One of the highlights of the evening, at least for me, was when one of those girls whose job is to sell shots out of test tubes, comes up to me at about 3 a.m. and says 'Help me out. If I get rid of these last few shots, I can get out of here.' So I ask her what's in the test tubes and she says 'Jager.' Knowing how fond Gus is of Jager, I immediately point at him and say 'My friend would love a shot.' Without hesitation this girl walks over to Gus, who can't hear any of this over the music, puts two test tubes in her own mouth, grabs Gus's head, and pours the shots from her mouth into his. It was hilarious; I think he almost threw up right back into her mouth. Of course, while I'm cracking up, she comes over and does the same to me, so I end up buying 4 shots... worth every penny. So the night was good- we closed down Bourbon Street."

Yeah, that's pretty fucking hilarious.

Vengeance shall be mine...

BMFRTE Day 10: Dallas

Sun 8/26, 7 a.m., outskirts of Salt Lake City:

It is said that Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So, after the fiasco getting to the airport in St. Louis, Ed and I have decided to be Responsible Adults- we have set up a plan that will get us to the airport a full hour before our flight is scheduled to take off. We are eager to feel the glorious feeling of walking slowly through the airport, not caring if they want to open our bags at security, and arriving at the gate so early that the boredom eventually builds up to such a maddening level that we finally break down, and, out of sheer desperation, buy Dean Koontz books. We are looking forward to this.

730 a.m.: the plan is working perfectly. We are like Special Ops soldiers, ruthlessly executing the mission plan. We are bathed, packed, and in the car. We are on the correct freeway, heading in the correct direction. All we have to do now is watch for the airport signs.

Since we've still got a bit of a drive (we're on the southernmost outskirts of Salt Lake City), I pop in today's road trip mix. Called 'Wistfulness', it continues the theme of the past few days, of reflection and self-examination, today with a 'path not taken' flavor. It's funny how much difference a year can make- one year ago today I was in LA, serving as a groomsman in JOC's wedding, certain I would be in NYC for another few years, and wondering if I'd ever get back to CA. And now I'm moving to CA to build a business. Oh, and the other groomsman at JOC's wedding: Grossman, whom we'll be seeing tonight in Dallas.

8/26/07: Wistfulness

1) The Fall Guy - Original TV Theme
2) Different Drum - Linda Ronstadt
3) I'm Like a Bird - Nelly Furtado
4) What Have I Done to Deserve This? - The Pet Shop Boys
5) How to Save a Life - The Fray
6) California Dream - Dream Warriors
7) Lost Cause - Beck
8) The Trapeze Swinger - Iron & Wine
9) 1972 - Josh Rouse
10) Eye of the Hurricane - David Wilcox
11) Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
12) Losing My Way - Justin Timberlake
13) The Reason - Hoobastank
14) Trenches - Caitlin Canty
15) Mercury - Counting Crows
16) Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
17) The Last Farewell - Roger Whitaker
18) Aubrey - Bread
19) That Day (Cinema Paradiso) - Karyn Allison

815 a.m.: The signs seem to be indicating that we're on our way to Provo, which is north of Salt Lake. In fact, the downtown is behind us. I ask Ed to consult the atlas and verify the exit number we just passed is still before the airport.

It isn't.

In fact, we seem to have overshot it by a hefty margin. But we were watching the signs the whole way! I get off at the first available exit, and commence doubling back. This time Ed and I are both watching exit numbers, using the atlas as a guide. We get off at the exit that the map seems to indicate will lead us to the airport. We still haven't seen a SINGLE sign for the airport on the highway.

[Flashback:

Salt Lake City airport has always been something of an unexpected headache for me to get to. The summer after sophomore year in college, I attended a ballroom dance camp at BYU, in Provo, Utah. Now, for all you readers out there who are sniggering right now, especially the male ones, especially MK, at the thought of attending a dance camp, let me just say that competitive ballroom dancing requires an incredible level of fitness, and in the case of the Latin dances, an incredibly minuscule amount of clothing. There were hot women all over the place. It was like heaven- only run by Mormons, so you're not allowed to have any of what normal people would consider fun, and you have to be really happy all the time. Only the Jews have more complicated rules for how to live day-to-day than the Mormons do. But, as compensation, Jews are allowed to be miserable.

Anyway, I was in St. Louis for the summer, so I asked my dad, for my birthday, to buy my ticket to and from Salt Lake, which he did. It so happened that Laszlo had come out to St. Louis for a visit, and we were flying out at almost the same time, so my mom dropped us off at the airport in St. Louis together.

Now, I had never been to Salt Lake City before, so that morning when I looked at my ticket closely for the first time, to verify my departure time, and it said "St. Paul" on it, I just assumed that's what they called the airport in Salt Lake. Like we call ours Lambert St. Louis International Airport, maybe they call theirs St. Paul airport in Salt Lake. I mean, who knows what kooky things those Mormons do.

So when Laszlo and I walked up to the ticket counter to check in, I had the following exchange with the ticket agent:

Agent: "Hi. Where are you headed today?"
Me (handing ticket): "Salt Lake City."
Agent (frowning): "Your ticket says you're going to St. Paul."
Me: "Yeah. Uh, that's not what they call the airport in Salt Lake City, Utah?"
Agent: "No, that's what they call the airport in St. Paul, Minnesota."
Me: "Uh oh."

At this point, I'm thinking, WTF?!?! I mean, why the hell did my dad buy me a ticket to St. Paul? WHO GOES TO ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA????? Answer: NO ONE. I bet half the population of Minneapolis has never been to St. Paul. And it's not like "St. Paul" and "Salt Lake" sound that much alike. (Oh, you wanted to go to Columbia? I thought you said, Colombia!)

This being 1991, it was still 4 years before I would have my first credit card, and 12 years before I would have my first cell phone, so I was screwed. Fortunately, Laszlo was there and had a credit card, so he bought me a ticket right there at the counter, at whatever price they were asking, presumably somewhere between 2 and 3 million dollars. It was pre-9/11, so brown people like me could still buy a same-day ticket while looking nervous and stressed out, all without having to undergo a body cavity search and preemptive waterboarding.

In the end, thanks to Laszlo, I did manage to make a flight, and arrive safely into Salt Lake City airport. But not without a lot of stress. So I probably should have seen all this coming...]

The exit puts us on a road which seems to be circumnavigating the airport. But we can at least see the airport now, so we figure the road should get us in eventually. We continue to follow the road around the perimeter of the airport.

845 a.m.: The road has terminated at a checkpoint with an armed guard. He informs us that we cannot enter the airport complex from here; in fact, we must backtrack ALL THE WAY back to the highway, and then take a different exit.

846 a.m.: I am doing 95 mph on the surface streets back to the highway. Our flight takes off in 44 minutes.

900 a.m.: we have dropped off the rental car and are hightailing it for the terminal.

910 a.m.: we are in the line for security.

912 a.m.: they have stopped Ed and are searching his bag. Really, I should not be surprised by this at this point.

918 a.m.: We are at the gate. The last few people are still filing onto the plane, so although we're going to be last to board _again_, we won't be noticeably last, and there's still 12 minutes until takeoff, so Ed and I congratulate each other on improving our airport arrival performance over St. Louis.

Baby steps, people. It's all about baby steps.

922 a.m.: this just in! Two other people just got on the plane, so we're _not_ the last ones after all. This prompts an additional round of high-fiving and mutual congratulations.

We are scheduled to fly to Denver, and then catch a connecting flight into Dallas. The flight to Denver goes smoothly, but then the connecting flight to Dallas is delayed an hour. We had a pretty long layover as it was, and it's looking like we will be damned to another Dean Koontz hell, but then we are granted a reprieve, in the form of the UCLA women's volleyball team. You know how they put mirrors by elevators, so that you're distracted and don't notice how much time the elevator is taking? Placing a women's volleyball team at the adjacent gate in the airport accomplishes a similar effect.

Well, okay, it accomplishes a slightly different effect...

But we do finally get to Dallas, get our rental car, and head off to see Chris and Grossman. We have a good time chatting with them for a couple hours, before heading out to the Rangers game. Originally, they were scheduled to come with us, but in the intervening time Chris has developed a case of pregnancy that has rendered her unable to drink any beer, which for her is a key component of enjoying baseball. And Grossman, in an act of stunning empathy that I make a mental note to mock him for mercilessly at some point in the future when there aren't any women around, decides to stay home with his pregnant wife rather than come to the game with us.

[And that, friends, is why Grossman, who is the same age as I am, has a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, and a (presumably) beautiful baby girl on the way, while I will later tonight go downstairs to sleep alone on my air mattress (borrowed from Laura), that sits on box springs (donated by Laszlo). But not until I finish writing this post, on the glass tabletop (given to me by Cara), while sitting in the comfy leather chair (borrowed from JOC) wrapped in my nifty Geometric Blanket (knit by Chris), and also not until I eat my dinner on this dining table (that belongs to my landlord). And by "dinner", what I mean is, whatever I can concoct using the current contents of my refrigerator, which are, in no particular order, water, slowly curdling milk, margarine, 3 limes, a handful of shallots, bacon, raspberry jam, half a jar of maraschino cherries, and a coconut. Oh, and in an unexpected surprise, at the back of the bottom shelf a little to-go box with two pieces of beer-battered fried fish- from two weeks ago. But back to the story...]

It is, once again, a beautiful day for a ballgame, and the Rangers do win, though not before the Mariners score in the top of the ninth, to make it interesting...


The view from outside...













...and inside.










Our seats are once again awesome- we're right behind the first base dugout. That gives us some great views of:



Ichiro! He's so good. And they named a sushi restaurant after him, right around the corner from my old apt. in NYC.









Sammy Sosa! He hit career homer #605 tonight, 430 ft. into the left field stands.






It was an enjoyable game. Chris and Grossman offered to let us crash with them tonight, but I've got an Idea. This from Ed: "After the game, we head north to Oklahoma even though our next destination is New Orleans.


Rejected ideas for the state sign include: "Oklahoma- Your Trail of Tears Ends Here."





You see, Gus has agreed to go through Oklahoma, to Arkansas, and down through Mississippi because I haven't been to any of those states (nor have I been to Louisiana). The plan is to get to Graceland in Memphis tomorrow, and then drive hard to get to New Orleans by nightfall so we can go out. We stop in Oklahoma for the night."

Stirring the Pot: Chapter 1: Legalizing Prostitution

I got an email from JJM the other day, describing a PA proposal to tax the entrance fees to strip clubs, and use at least some of the proceeds to help fund programs for sexually abused kids. Obviously, any tax will be opposed by the people on whom it is levied, but the argument the opposition is using is interesting: that it's a violation of the strip clubs' 1st amendment free speech rights.

Now, I can't imagine that argument holding up in court; it's not as if anyone is being prevented from going into the strip club, and if a court were to allow the argument to stand, then everyone would be arguing that every tax they pay is some kind of infringement of their rights. But thinking about this particular issue inspired a new thread of blog posts, which I'll call "Stirring the Pot", in which I will throw out there my most controversial positions on issues, and see what (if anything) happens.

So, I'll kick off this thread of discussion with the topic of prostitution. Here's my position on prostitution: legalize it. Legalize it everywhere, and then tax and regulate the living crap out of it. I'm talking big government style taxation and regulation, the kind that makes movement conservatives wake up screaming at 4 a.m., nauseous and in a cold sweat. Off the top of my head, here are some examples of the regulations I would require:

- zoning: obviously, you don't want bordellos anywhere close to schools. I'm sure there are many other zoning issues to consider

- regular inspections of the facilities, at most monthly, by inspectors who would work in pairs, which would be regularly changed up, and who would rotate through areas, to minimize the probability of inspector misbehavior

- regular health checkups for all workers

- mandated levels of internal security to protect workers from any violence

- heavy taxation of bordello revenue, with the additional stipulation that tax revenues from bordellos can only go to fund programs that promote things like women's health. You don't want government to be in the position of funding its infrastructure budgets or law enforcement budgets out of bordello revenue, because then the incentive is for government to encourage bordello patronage.

- mandated training for any workers, including education on toll-free hotlines to report any employer non-compliance.

- strong privacy safeguards for both workers and patrons. Although prostitution is something that as a society we should try to minimize, attacking individuals isn't the way to do it; rather, a long-term shift in values is required.

That's what jumps to mind immediately, though I'm sure that an afternoon of pondering the issue more would generate a lot more.

But why, you ask. Why make it legal? Doesn't that do the opposite of minimizing prostitution?

In my mind, there are a number of reasons to do this. The most abstract argument, I think, is that if two adults wish to conduct a sex-for-money transaction, that does not in the abstract pose any obvious immediate harm to them or anyone else, and so in a free society they should be allowed to conduct that transaction. And, although this is a much more cynical position, it nevertheless remains true that a whole lot of human relationships are just a very small step away from that anyway. Further, sex-for-money is not even close to being the most socially detrimental kind of transaction that people conduct.

On a much more pragmatic level, no society in history, no matter how totalitarian, is known to have ever managed to eliminate prostitution. Prostitution exists, has existed, and will exist, until some day in the far future when we've either all given up bodies in order to merge our consciousnesses in cyberspace, or we've managed to instill a completely different social value set than the one we have. Either way, that world is a long way off from the world we live in, and in the world we live there is going to be prostitution, whether any individual one of us likes it or not. The only question is, will we control it or not?

Legalizing prostitution, I argue, is the most effective way of controlling it, and will yield many ancillary benefits. First, it will severely damage the black market for prostitution, which will greatly lower the number of women trafficked in this country. The trafficking of women in this world is a problem that doesn't get nearly enough attention. It will also lower the probability that a woman working as a prostitute suffers violence.

Second, it will allow us to make a sizable dent in the public health impact of prostitution. Since legal bordellos can have regular health inspections, it will reduce the spread of STD's. The third world in particular has suffered mightily from this aspect of prostitution, though it does affect us here in America as well.

Third, it will generate tax revenue to fund women's health initiatives. Again, transactions are going to happen whether we like it or not; we might as well tax them and put the money to a good use, which will at least partially offset the negative social impact of having prostitution at all.

Bob Herbert wrote a good editorial in the New York Times about the legal prostitution business in Nevada, in which he exposed a lot of crappy conditions and behavior, and then from that concluded that legalized prostitution was by its nature an assault on women. I understand and sympathize with his point, but ultimately disagree. The Nevada situation to me represents a total failure to regulate properly. I think the mindset out there is "pretty much anything goes", not "let's try to contain a problem we can't eliminate, and along the way try to limit the negative effects on people." Legalized prostitution of the kind I'm describing above has not yet been tried, at least in this country.

So there you have it. Obviously, this is going to be a tough position to have taken if I ever run for President, but then again, I wouldn't want to be President if it meant having to cave on tough issues. Not that it's going to come up- I don't have good enough hair.

BMFRTE Day 9: Angel's Landing & Capitol Reef NP

Sat 8/25, 730 a.m., Zion National Park:

Today's goal: Angel's Landing. Although it means scrapping Bryce National Park, Angel's Landing is my favorite hike, and I'm determined that we should do it before we go. I've been up 5 times already, with Tasha, Laszlo, Sarah, Nacole, and Jeffrey. It's always worth it. If you haven't been, you should go, before too many people fall and kill themselves (approx 1-2 people per year) and they either close it or neuter it.

This from Ed: "So we're up before 8 a.m., out, and we start the hike up Angel's Landing just before 9 a.m. This was a tough hike- 2.5 miles up extremely steep switchbacks climbing almost 2,000 ft. by the end. While the beginning and middle are very steep and stenuous, the last 1/2 mile is, well, treacherous. You're walking along this sliprock that is not just smooth but also slanted.... and you're on a cliff. If you slip and fall, you plummet a couple thousand feet to your death. They have these chains you can hold onto to help you out, but it's still pretty scary. And there is also a stretch that is flat but only a few feet wide with cliffs on either side of you; it's a great feeling to walk that. When we reach the top the views were indescribable. It's difficult to describe things of such physical beauty with words- you just have to go and see it to really understand."

The views are indescribable, and even pictures have a hard time capturing the grandness and sheer scale of the place. But here's a few pics anyway...

The view from our hotel












Looking back at where we've hiked from...















Standing on Angel's Landing. Sadly, no actual angels in sight...











...but at least there are a couple of handsome devils.












Time to head back down. The tree in this picture...











...is the tree on the top just to the left of Ed's finger. The little ledge just above his finger is Angel's Landing.





We get down around noon, and jump in the car to head out to Capitol Reef State Park. We need a place we can spend half a day, and Bryce is too big/awesome for that, and Canyonlands is too far out of the way. But Capitol Reef is at least sort of on the way (to Salt Lake City, where we fly out tomorrow morning), and neither of us has ever been there, so off we go.

Since we're on the road again, it's time to catch us up on mixes. First I pop in yesterday's mix:

8/24/07: Wide Open Spaces

1) Morning Has Broken - Cat Stevens
2) February Morning Drive - David Francey
3) Into the Great Wide Open - Tom Petty
4) Don't Fence Me In - Bing Crosby
5) Ramblin' Man - The Allman Brothers
6) Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan
7) Desperado - The Eagles
8) Dust in the Wind - Kansas
9) The Wind - Cat Stevens
10) Gun Sale at the Church - The Beatfarmers
11) Cowtown - They Might Be Giants
12) Back in the Saddle Again - Gene Autry
13) American Girl - Tom Petty
14) Jingle Jangle Jingle - Kay Kyser
15) Theme from Rawhide - Blues Brothers Soundtrack
16) Me Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys - Willie Nelson
17) I Wanna Be a Cowboy - Boys Don't Cry
18) Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? - Paula Cole
19) A Cowboy Needs a Horse - Gonzo & Plaid
20) Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy) - Big & Rich
21) A Horse with No Name - America
22) Wanted Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi

This from Ed: "The drive from Zion to Capitol Reef, most of it along Utah State Road 12, is easily the most beautiful drive I've ever done... and again, I can't tell you about nearly well enough, but everyone should do it- it's gorgeous. At one point, we were coming over a ridge and just as we get to the top and start heading down, with all this gorgeous, wide-open desert in front of us, 'Into the Great Wide Open' by Tom Petty gets to the chorus, and it was just one of those truly great moments... okay, enough of the gay shit."

A few pics from that leg:


Lunchtime! Fortunately, we've found the best home cookin' in the West.











More beautiful canyon country.












More beautiful country. And more Gus looking retarded.







Today's mix- 8/25/07: Reflections on life

1) Hello (Turn Your Radio on) - Shakespeare's Sister
2) Galileo - Indigo Girls
3) Little Conversations - Concrete Blonde
4) Slip Slidin' Away - Paul Simon
5) Only Time - Enya
6) The Long and Winding Road - The Beatles
7) Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
8) Carry on Wayward Son - Kansas
9) Gus the Theatre Cat - Cats Soundtrack
10) Superman (It's Not Easy) - Five for Fighting
11) Mrs. Potter's Lullaby - Counting Crows
12) Let's Get Together - The Youngbloods
13) People Get Ready - Eva Cassidy
14) Where Have All the Flowers Gone? - Kingston Trio
15) Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot
16) Marching Song of the Covert Battalions - Billy Bragg
17) King of Spain - Moxy Fruvous
18) Dallas - TV Themes
19) Rainbow Connection - Kermit

More from Ed: "I should say a bit about the driving- on the entire trip in general. We're having a pretty good time in the car, jamming to some sweet music, and making friends with other drivers s we go. There is a lot of shit-talking, me acting crazy (as usual) and Gus wondering if I've completely lost it. And for some reason, a ton of farting by both parties (must be those roadside diners). Those food places, by the way, are also awesome. Yes, we're getting pretty fat, but we've met some interesting people. Gus insists that people like me better because I'm friendlier, but I think he has a complex."

OK, I do not have a complex. But Ed, perhaps because of his inherently Cuban joie de vivre (or however you say that in Spanish), radiates a certain genial approachability that makes strangers want to talk to him. I've seen it at work in Manhattan bars, where more often than not we would be having a drink and chatting, and random women would come up and start talking to him. This almost never happens to me.

Now, I'm willing to grant that he has a certain Latin handsomeness that I don't have, but the staggering difference between how often that happens to him versus me cannot, I think, be explained solely by a handsomeness differential between us. At least some of it is due, I think, to what Laszlo calls an "attitude of openness" that Ed unconsciously projects. I think I have more of an "attitude of suspicion/hostility" toward strangers, which is why I perform so dismally in bars and at cocktail parties. On the second of our road trips back and forth between New Haven and St. Louis, at one point Laura said to me, almost totally out of the blue "you know, you're really kind of a snob. I mean, snob isn't exactly the right word, you're just ... extremely choosy ... about who you let in."

I suppose so. But it has been instructive on this trip, to see how stark the difference is, as we encounter waitresses, drivers, people in ballparks, etc. And it's the sort of thing I think about when driving in the wide open spaces of the West. That's why the themes of the road trip mixes for yesterday, today, and tomorrow are things like introspection, reflection, and nostalgia. If you ever need some time to think, take a drive through the big empty spaces in the West. You'll be surprised what bubbles up from the hidden places in your mind.

Anyway, we reach Capitol Reef at 615pm, 15 minutes after the visitor center closed. Fortunately, there's a little stack of maps accessible, so we grab one and find a hike we can do in the limited time before dark. We decide to walk the Grand Wash, which is a 1.5 hour hike through a totally dry river canyon. Then, when we reach the end of the Grand Wash, if it looks like there's time before dark, we'll hike up a 1.5 mile, 600 ft vertical rise trail to Cassidy's Arch.

This from Ed: "We get to the end around 730pm, and even though the sun is setting -rapidly- we thought 'Fuck it, we can get up to Cassidy's Arch and back down before it gets completely dark.' So we go... fast. It's steep at first and then levels out, so it's not too bad, but it keeps going and going all the way around the mountain until the trail ends and you have to keep walking out onto these huge rocks/boulders; it feels like you're walking on the surface of another planet."

The trickiest part is that with the trail ended, the only way to know if you're going in the right direction is that every so often there's a little stack of rocks, obviously not natural. And the tricky part about that is that it's rapidly getting dark, and we're climbing along the ridge of a mountain. And we have no flashlight.


Cassidy's Arch. It looks so small, and so close. Except that it's huge, and, it turns out, really far away.











The freaks come out at night...












Daylight fading- the landscape becomes otherworldly...










Cassidy's Arch. Let's play with perspective- two pictures taken from the same spot. This one...











...and this one. The sheer size of things around here can mess with your head.






For the record, Cassidy's Arch is very sturdy. I jumped up and down on it several times to test it. I figured if it started to collapse I would have enough time to make it to one side before plunging to my death. Of course, now the thing is probably going to collapse a couple hundred years sooner, but hopefully by then humans will have all become cyborgs and moved offplanet.

More from Ed: "We make it right at sunset (the moon is already up), and the arch is huge and awesome and we're really high up and the hike was definitely worth it. We soak it all in for a few minutes, and then we decide that we have to haul ass all the way back down. So we get started. We're moving fast, but not fast enough, and by the time we find the trail again, it is dark... completely dark. The only positive was that the moon was full, so we had the moonlight, but that was it. We couldn't really see where we were walking, but Gus led us down with his mountain man sense.

It took us 30-40 minutes to get back down to the canyon safely, and although we were happy to reach the bottom, now we had to walk 45 min back to the car through the canyon. That was a long, dark walk- darker than the hike down from the arch because the hgh canyon walls blocked a lot of the moonlight. I have to say, night hiking is pretty cool but pretty spooky. You can barely see anything, and the only way we knew where we going was that the canyon walls forced you to walk only in one direction."

Yeah, so it turns out that a flashlight is a good idea for evening/night hiking. On the other hand, it was fun telling scary stories in the dark, surrounded by long dark shadows and areas of pitch black, while walking through a deep canyon affording no clear escape route from anything. It gives you a new perspective on life.

We did make it back to the car around 945pm, and headed out for Salt Lake City, though not before stopping for some water (oh yeah, taking water with you is also a good idea on a hike, even if you think it's going to be short). By that time, all the stores in the area were closed, but at the second one we tried, Ed's natural geniality prompted the girl closing up shop to let us fill two giant cups with ice water. From there, we drove like mad for Salt Lake, and got to the outskirts a few hours later, where we promptly passed out.

BMFRTE Day 8: The Narrows

Fri 8/24 530 a.m., Zion National Park:

My phone alarm goes off. I fumble for it, and briefly flirt with the idea of pretending I didn't hear it, and then going back to sleep. Ed won't wake up unless I make him, and this 530 a.m. shit that seemed so doable yesterday now feels like sadomasochism.

Strangely, I was able to get up at 510 a.m. without a problem for 4 years in high school. I had to be out the door at 630 a.m., which is when my grandpa, who lived in our basement, went to work. My options were: (1) leave at 630 a.m. with him and get a ride to school, arriving at 645 a.m., with 15 minutes to do homework before the rec room (with 33 pool tables!) in the basement of SLU High opened, or (2) leave at 645 a.m. and walk 4 blocks, take two buses, and then walk 3 more blocks, arriving barely in time for homeroom. Obviously, I took option (1), primarily so that I could play pool. I typically played for an hour before school, 30-45 min during lunch, depending on how much homework was due in the afternoon classes, and an hour after school. By the time I graduated, I was pretty good.

But given that our little household had 4 men and 2 women, all of whom had to be out the door by 7, and exactly 1 bathroom, I had the option of a 5 minute cold shower at 610 a.m., or a 20 minute hot shower at 510 a.m. There aren't a lot of things that would make me choose waking up at 510 a.m. over 610 a.m., especially after going to bed at 1 a.m., which was my usual bedtime, but the early bird gets the hot water. BTW, with 1 bathroom, there was no concept of bathroom privacy in our household. People would wander in and out while you were showering, to go to the bathroom or use the sink or whatever, the whole time. I had to go to college and endure some early awkward moments before I realized that our household did not follow customary bathroom mores.

But once in college, I was a lot more likely to be going to bed at 530 a.m. than getting up at that time, and ever since, getting up before 8 a.m. is painful. And 530 a.m. is like death. So we almost don't make it.

But after sulking for a few minutes, I get up, and begin the hateful task of rousting Ed out of bed. This from Ed:

"We wake up at 530 a.m. That's not the asscrack of dawn; that's before dawn. There is no dawn yet. We get out of bed by 550, get our shit together, and head to Zion Adventure Company to catch the shuttle. We wait in the parking lot for the shuttle to arrive, and it's fucking cold. The sun is still not up."

(You can probably tell from the tenor of this what hanging out with Ed is like at 6 a.m.)

Eventually a beat-up white van driven by what Ed describes as "a hilarious fat dude" shows up to pick us up. It's nearly two hours' drive to the put-in point for our hike, a substantial portion of which is on what the driver calls "caca road". Ah yes, caca road. Thankfully, neither Ed nor I are the type to get car-sick. We both have lots of experience with caca road- Ed in South America, and me in Egypt, Kenya, India, and any non-interstate road in Texas.

When we finally do get to the top, it's still pretty early in the morning, so it's kinda cold, but we put on our gear and head out.


All dressed up and 16 miles to go...
















We start off along the river in the background of this picture of Ed. Soon the rising sun is high enough in the sky for us to be hiking in sunshine, and at that point it gets much hotter. Along the way, we find some neat stuff...











Wouldja lookitthat, I caught me a frawg!













Water break. I'm not the most photogenic person in the world, but this is the most retarded picture taken of me since the 4th grade.




Each year we had to have our pictures taken individually, for a "class composite" photo sheet. That year, my mom decided it would be "cute" to make me wear the most retarded shirt ever conceived- it was a light blue shirt that had a little pattern of dark blue cowboys on bucking broncos. What I tried - and failed - to impress upon my mother was that I wasn't 5 anymore, and that at my current age, and size relative to the other boys, "cute" was roughly equivalent to "deadly". But she wrestled it onto me, and then had to drag me, quite literally, kicking and screaming to the car. Once there, I splayed my arms and legs as wide as possible and grabbed onto anything I could to try and prevent my mom from being able to get me into the car. But eventually she was able to pry my hands off the edge of the car and stuff me inside. Once we got to school, she again had to fight me, as I did everything I could to stay in the car. She ended up pulling me out by the ankle and dumping me out on the sidewalk, then jumped back into the car and drove off before I could get back in. By that point, I had been spotted by the nuns, so I had no chance to make a break for home on foot, which I was entirely ready to do, even though it was a solid mile through not a great neighborhood.

My only revenge, in my 10 year old mind at least, was to sabotage the picture. So, the 4th grade class composite for Notre Dame Elementary in 1982 is a sheet of a bunch of good little Catholic boys and girls, in their pious little poses... and then there's me, hair messed up as much as possible (which was a lot- although this may be hard for you to picture, back then I had thick, wavy, bushy Asian hair), and literally snarling at the camera.

So I had my vengeance. Mom flipped out. And ever since then she has had hers- she happily shows that picture whenever friends come over. That one, and the one of when I was a baby and shat on myself so bad, she just dumped me in a bucket. "Look, here's one of naked, shitty, Gus-in-a-bucket." My mom is one of the funniest people you'll ever meet, in her own special way.

Anyway, back to the hike, where it is continuing to heat up, and we are continuing to find cool shit...

Lookit! Lookit! Now I caught me a lizzard...












Not long after this, as we are walking, I hear a weird shrieking noise coming from some rocks to the side of us. I eventually pinpoint the noise as coming from underneath a small pile of rocks...


A bat! Although you probably can't see it, he's shrieking because a bee is trying to land on his nose.






Yes folks, today is a Grand Day. For today, Ed and I have at last discovered, The Bat Cave.

This is the Best MutherFucking Road Trip _Ever_.

From this point, the river started seriously carving Zion Canyon:

So many nifty side canyons to explore...


















Waterfalls to have to find a way down...

















It's getting pretty hot in here, and Ed is taking off a distressing amount of clothes...

















From this point on, we're hiking pretty much entirely in the river...
















It eventually gets waist deep...


















Nearing the end of our journey...














This from Ed: "As we go on, the river is flowing down into the canyon that it has carved out over millions of years, so the canyon walls around us are getting taller and narrower. plus, there is less river bank, so eventually we are just walking in the river, with water up to our waists in some places, trying our damndest not to fall because it's almost entirely rocs- wet rocks. Needless to say, we learned that the walking sticks were indeed, as we were told they would be, our most important pieces of equipment. There is no way to navigate some parts of that river without holding yourself up with that stick. Those sticks certainly saved our asses a couple of times.

The hike is long- 16 miles that took us 10.5 hours- and exhausting, but unlike anything I'd ever done before and well worth it. Along the way, BTW, we ran into 3 dudes who were also from New York. Small world. Not only that, one of the guys lives just a few blocks from me in Manhattan, and another of the guys went to college with me, graduated the year after I did, and lived in my dorm. I still had no idea who he was. Still, what are the chances of meeting those guys in the middle of a fucking canyon in Utah?"

The first time I ever came to Zion National Park, I was a freshman at Pomona. It was the first road trip my girlfriend Tasha and I took together. In college I tended to, as they say, burn the candle at both ends. I regularly went to bed around 4 a.m. and got up at 730. I was stretched pretty thin, and by the time spring break came around, all I wanted was to get far away from Pomona. So I found Zion on a map, figured we could go there and camp, and do some backcountry hiking. I'd be hundreds of miles away and totally able to put my hectic Pomona life out of my mind.

Upon arriving, the first hike we did was the Hidden Canyon hike, which winds along a cliff several hundred feet above the canyon floor, at points literally going around the edge of the cliff face on a ledge barely wider than your feet, hanging on by a chain drilled into the side of the cliff. After you get around that, there a steep climb, and then it lets you into a canyon carved up in the cliff that is, in fact, completely hidden from the canyon floor.

You can probably guess where this story is heading- so after driving for several hours, across hundreds of miles, and hanging from the side of the cliff, and climbing up to the top, to finally at last stand in the Hidden Canyon, and revel in staggering beauty and sheer Pomonalessness of the place, what do find up there? Our dorm RA's. I was incensed, and about to shout "IS THERE NO PLACE ON THIS GOD'S EARTH I CAN GO TO GET AWAY FROM THIS DAMNED SCHOOL????" but Tasha, who was perceptive in many ways and probably saw that coming, shoved me aside and expressed our great surprise and joy at seeing them there. So I just stayed quiet and sullen until they left.

Point being, it didn't surprise me quite as much to run into these guys. It's a small world after all.

We did, after many hours, eventually reach the end of the hike, and straggled out of the river to catch the park shuttle back to town.



We live!











So, after a fine dinner of local pizza, local beer (Ed) and local fruit juice (Me), we headed back to the hotel and passed out. Ed didn't even watch SportsCenter. That's how tired we were...

BMFRTE Day 7: Vegas/Zion

Thu, 8/23, 645 a.m., mom's basement:

I wake Ed up.

Despite Ed's somewhat petite stature, waking him up at 645 a.m. is like waking up a premenstrual grizzly bear by poking it in the ass with a hot iron. Although it's difficult to be sure, given the speed at which Ed spewed outraged expletives upon being told he had to get up, using the 1-2-3 point framework [see BMFRTE Day 3] I am confident I scored over a million points this morning.

We quickly get ready, because we have to leave by 7 to have a prayer of getting to the airport on time for our 8:20 flight. We get all our stuff together and head up the stairs, Ed sullenly pointing out the whole time that he hates, in no particular order, me, everyone, me, the world, me, and life.


Me and mom












Given that it's approaching rush hour, and there's construction on the main highway leading to the airport, our plan is for my mom to drive us to the train station in Forest Park, where we will catch the train to the airport. A simple, reliable plan that should get us there with very little margin for error, given that we are already ten minutes late (7:10 a.m.), but nevertheless OK provided we hit no major disasters.

7:15 a.m.- Major Disaster #1:

My mom, who has been picking me up and dropping me off at this very train station more or less every time I've visited home in the last ten years, gets lost driving across the park, in broad daylight. At 1300 acres (versus 850 acres for Central Park in NYC), and laced with curving roads that go nowhere, Forest Park is not a trivial thing to get lost in. By the time we get unlost, and get to the train station, it's 7:40 a.m. We are now 25 min behind schedule, but there's still an outside chance we'll make it, provided we get a train quickly...

7:42 a.m.- Major Disaster #2:

This from Ed: "We're already running a bit behind, but we catch a train pretty quickly, so it all looks good... until we realize that we're on the wrong train. That's right, this is Gus's hometown, and we got on the wrong fucking train."

OK, I want to say a word in my defense. The Forest Park station was long ago planned to be the starting point of a new rail spur into the county. For the last 6 years or so, that new line has been under construction, and every time in those six years that I've used that station, it's been fine, because the new line wasn't finished and until it was, only one type of train ever came through the Forest Park station. So excuse me for not knowing that a couple of months ago, the new line was finally completed, and now two types of trains go through the station. But hey, you say, with only two options, you still only had a 50% chance of getting on the wrong train, right?

Wrong.

A little known statistical effect, which I call the Gus Factor, takes a simple 50-50 favorable/unfavorable binary outcome distribution and transforms the favorable outcome into a 3-sigma normal distribution event. Put another way, the odds of my getting on the wrong train were actually closer to 99.7%. I have no mathematical explanation for the Gus Factor, only a vague ontological one that involves a deity with a sense of humor that is both deeply ironic and fundamentally retributive in nature.

Anyway, by the time we identify we're on the wrong train, get off of it, run up the stairs and over the tracks to the other side, wait for a train back to the Forest Park station, and get back there, it is 7:57. Fortunately, a correct train shows up at 7:58. We arrive at the airport at 8:08 a.m., with only 12 min remaining until our flight is scheduled to take off. I am praying for it to be delayed. We run from the train through the East terminal to Southwest's self-check-in area, and I print our boarding passes. We run for security. There are only 6 min left until departure, and we need a miracle now. Instead, we get:

Major Disaster #3 (8:15 a.m.):

Ed, who is inexplicably carrying the entire contents of the Travel Size Lotions/Shampoos aisle from Bed, Bath and Beyond in his carry-on luggage, gets stopped in the security line and pulled aside for the intensive baggage inspection. I have already gotten through the line when I notice this, and Ed hands me his boarding pass and says to run to the gate, which is fortunately right across from security. So I hit the gate right as they are about to close the door. I explain that Ed is over there in security getting his bag inspected, and the Southwest agent takes both our boarding passes, puts me on the plane, and promises he'll get Ed on the plane before letting it take off. I'm a little worried that Ed doesn't have his boarding pass anymore, but i explained to the gate agent what he looks like, and it's all out of my hands now.

A few minutes later, Ed comes running on the plane. He gets the last seat, not too far away, and when the seatbelt light goes off in flight tells me his experience in security. This from Ed: "As they still go through my bag, they find a bottle of suntan lotion and confiscate it. Okay, great. But now they have to put my bag back through the x-ray. At that moment, for the first time in my life, they page me over the loudspeaker: 'Eduardo Perez, please report to your gate for immediate boarding." So I run out from the security area, leaving my bags behind, and yell at the guy that my bags are going through the machine. He says, into the loudspeaker, 'Eduardo, we need you on this plane right now!" I run back to security and practically crawl onto the conveyor belt to grab my bags and haul ass onto this plane. Incredibly, we make the flight- the last two people on the plane."

So we did make it, thanks to a friendly gate agent at Southwest who as near as I can tell violated about 8,000 security rules in our post-9/11 world.

The flight was good- we had the Comedy Flight Crew, which made the trip more enjoyable. And finally we got to Vegas, where we picked up our rental car, ran a couple quick errands, and then took Ed for his first meal at:


Ambrosia- the food of the gods












From there, we drove around the strip...



Downtown Las Vegas. It's 'Fabulous'. Either this sign is 50 years old or the LV Chamber of Commerce is staffed entirely by gay people.



... and Ed took a picture of every casino. Every last one of them. Right now my computer has 3 million pictures of casinos on it. But I notice he did take one other:

Because really- is there anything more quintessentially American than topless cheerleaders?








From Vegas, we headed north, toward Zion National Park, which is a nice drive that goes through the Virgin River gorge.


AZ State motto: "We have a giant hole in the ground that's crawling with cars, old people, & cheap hotels. And when you get tired of Phoenix, you can visit the Grand Canyon!"






Clever, putting a skier on the sign. Only about .00000001% of Utah is actually ski-able. The other 99.99999999% of it is an empty fucking desert populated only by sagebrush and creepily happy Mormons.


The Virgin River Gorge is beautiful and I recommend you do this drive at some point in your life. Since today is the day we technically will cover the most ground traveling, via one form or another, today's mix is:

8/23/07: Covering Ground

1) Like a Prayer - John Wesley Harding
2) Personal Jesus - Johnny Cash
3) The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum - Collide
4) Folsom Prison Blues - Keb' Mo
5) Across the Universe - Rufus Wainwright
6) Land of Confusion - Disturbed
7) When Doves Cry - Patti Smith
8) Boyz in the Hood - Dynamite Hack
9) Bitches Ain't Shit - Ben Folds
10) Sucker MC's - Lordz of Brooklyn
11) Gin & Juice - Phish
12) Hot in Heere - Jenny Owen Youngs
13) Baby Got Back - Jonathan Coulton
14) Paul Revere - Asylum Street Spankers
15) Get Your Freak On - KT Tunstall
16) Crazy - Shawn Colvin
17) Volare - Gypsy Kings
18) Wonderwall - The Mike Flowers Pop
19) Hallelujah - John Cale

We got to the park around 630, and booked a hotel just outside the park. This from Ed:

"Our plan was this: do the hike to Angel's Landing in Zion that evening, drive to Bryce Canyon the next day for more hiking, and then go to Canyonlands and Arches the day after that. However, that plan was quickly amended when, while checking in at the hotel, Rachel -so nice- told us about hiking The Narrows. Basically, it's a 16 mile, 12 hour hike along (and in) the Virgin River through its canyon and through the canyon's narrowest point. Immediately this sounds cool to us, so we head into Zion to get passes to do the hike the next day. You need passes because they only let 80 people per day do the hike.

We get the passes, and the ranger tells us all about the dangers of flash flooding, how we should take enough food for a couple days in case we get stuck in the canyon waiting out a flood, and how we can rent special waterproof shoes and socks because we will be walking through the river itself. We then call the place to reserve space on the shuttle bus -the 630 a.m. shuttle bus- that takes us to the start of the river and the hike. We also find out that we need to go to a special fitting for the shoes tonight at 730, so that means we won't be hiking to Angel's Landing tonight."

So we head off to the fitting. The "fitting" consists primarily of watching a 30 minute video presentation whose primary content is a thorough and detailed explanation of every way that people have died on this hike. It's awesome. Danger! Ha! Ed and I scoff at danger! But we do end up renting the special shoes, and special socks, and waterproof bags for food and the camera. On the way out, one of the people working there tries to hand us special walking sticks, about shoulder high, which she says are free. Now, laden down as we are with all this special safety stuff, Ed and I are feeling a lot less manly. I mean, you never see Indiana Jones watching safety videos or renting special shoes and socks. But at this point who gives a shit, and they're free, so we take them.

We drop the stuff off at the hotel, and decide to walk the mile into town to a place called Blondie's to get some dinner. More from Ed:

"The walk is cool because it's dusk, the road is dark, and the sun is setting behind these mountains that surround the town. There are also an assload of bats zipping around our heads; Gus assures me that the bats will use their sonar to echolocate us and thus not slam into our faces.

As he says this, a bat grazes his head."

You know, with millions of bats zipping around, it's statistically likely that one of them drives like Tom. And given what Jonathan calls my "little black karma cloud", almost a statistical certainty that this bat would eventually crash into me. Sigh.

"We both order elk burgers at Blondie's; we figure the elk is fresh since we just walked by an elk farm which is, literally, right next to the diner."

This is an Elk. A dark Elk. Photographed at night, against a dark background. Ansel Adams we are not.





For the record, Elk burgers are delish. I highly recommend them.

From Blondie's we head back to the hotel, pack up our gear, and go to bed. Tomorrow will be another day getting up "at the asscrack of dawn"...

The Princess Diaries, Chapter 1

I have 3 official godchildren. In order of seniority, they are: my little brother Mikie, Laszlo and GA's older child Li (4 years old), and Laura and Dima's younger child Max (1 y.o.). Li has a younger sister, Em (2 y.o.), and Max has an older sister, Kate (3 y.o.). I refer to all of them as godchildren, 'cause it's just easier that way, even though not all of them are official. I figure I'll just provide spiritual guidance for all of them.

And lest you think otherwise, yes, I am acutely aware of the tremendous irony inherent in my providing spiritual guidance to anyone. [Holy blind-leading-the-blind, Batman!]

Anyway, one of the most interesting things to me about little kids is how quickly they develop distinct, identifiable personality traits. For instance, Em has developed a very strong trait which I call Princess Obsession. She is all princesses all the time. She likes to watch TV shows about princesses, be read stories about princesses, and at all other times, play with her princesses. And let me tell you, she has at least one, and sometimes more than one, of every princess that has ever lived. Except, I suppose, for Ed. If I had a little Ed doll made for her, then she'd actually have one of every princess ever.

And so, on those occasions when I babysit Li and Em, sooner or later we end up having a conversation that goes something like this:

Em, looking up at me with big wide eyes: "Do you, want to play princesses, wifth me?"

Me (internally): "Must... think.. of something..."
Me (to Em): "Gee Em, that sure does sound like a lot of fun... but I've got an even better idea. What if we play, one princess doesn't want to go to bed, so she jumps in her sports car and drives like crazy to avoid having to go to bed, so the other princess jumps in her sports car and drives like crazy after her, and they both chase each other around in their sports cars until they fall asleep at the wheel and crash. (You know you should never drive when you're tired, right Em?) That sounds like a fun game, right? Why don't we play that instead??"

[3 second pause while Em's two-year-old brain processes what I just said]

Em (handing me a princess): "You can be, Ariel, and I'll be Sleeping Beauty!"

Me (sighing): "Hokay. I'll be Ariel, and you be Sleeping Beauty."

And so, we play princesses together. That's right, I said it, we play princesses together. Because, despite a 33 year age difference, and an enormous size/weight advantage, in the end I'm a male, and she's a female, albeit a small one, and so we pretty much do whatever she wants, because life is just simpler that way. And for all of you out there in the readerverse who are mocking me right now, I'm tempted to say "Lick my balls", but instead, I'll just take the high road, and silently wish that the karmic circle of life shall bestow upon you too a little girl just like Em, smart, cute, and precocious, who wants to play princesses with you _all_ _the_ _time_.

It so happens that last night I babysat the girls, and when I arrived they were ensconced on the sofa, watching Em's favorite princess story of all: Cinderella- A Twist in Time. Right now you might be thinking, "Jeez, all I remember is 'Cinderella'- what's all this about a twist in time?", but if you are thinking that, it's clear that you're not spending time hanging out with any girls under the age of 5. Because let me tell you, the Cinderella story is an extremely fertile field, throwing off spinoffs faster than Law & Order.

In this exciting episode, the evil stepmother gets hold of the fairy godmother's wand, and uses it to turn back time to just before the prince arrives at Cinderella's house, in order to make the prince fall in love with one of the stepsisters. Now, I won't spoil the ending for you, but I will add that part of the bedtime ritual in the house is that Li and Em each get read a story of their choosing. Thus far, Em has chosen the same story every time I've ever babysat for her: Cinderella- A Twist in Time. So I am now to the point where I almost don't have to read it- a few more times and I'll have it memorized completely. But this was the first time I'd ever seen it on video. For the record, the movie's much better than the book.

The movie ended at 715, and bedtime's not 'til 730, so I said they could play for 15 minutes. This led to:

Em, looking up at me with big wide eyes: "Do you, want to play princesses, wifth me?"

Me: uh....

Em (handing me a princess): "You can be, Ariel, and I'll be Cinderella!"

Me: "Gee Em, that sure does sound like a lot of fun... but I've got an even better idea. What if we play, Ariel takes a three step drop, and Cinderella runs a slant, and then Ariel throws her a good ball over the left shoulder, and then Cinderella cuts back inside to freeze up the safety, and then runs 40 yards into the end zone for a last-second score. Then, the crowd goes WILD, and Cinderella does her touchdown dance and is a big hero! Wouldn't that be fun? Why don't we play that?"

[3 second pause while Em's two-year-old brain processes what I just said]

Em: "You can be, Ariel, and I'll be Cinderella!"

Me (sighing): "Hokay, I had to at least try. I'll be Ariel, and you be Cinderella. Why do I always have to be Ariel..."

And so there passed one of the longest 15 minute intervals of my life, due to a bizarre relativistic time effect whereby a critical mass of princesses creates a distortion in the local fabric of spacetime that makes the outside world experience 15 minutes, while you personally experience 100 million years. So after 100 million years of being The Little Mermaid, I was ready to go upstairs and read some stories. In particular, I was excited to finally read something new, since after all we had only just finished watching Cinderella- A Twist in Time...

Me: "So Em, what story do you want to read tonight?"

Em: "Let's read, Cinderella- Twist in Time!"

Oh God. I failed to anticipate two-year-old logic, in which it makes perfect sense that immediately after watching Cinderella- A Twist in Time, you would read Cinderella- A Twist in Time. But doggonnit, I'm not taking this one lying down. It's not too soon to start learning to reason like an adult...

Me: "Yes, but, honey, you just saw that. I've got an idea- what if we read ANYTHING ELSE other than Cinderella- A Twist in Time? That could be really fun too!"

Em (suddenly looking very distressed): "No, Cinderella- Twist in Time!"

Me (capitulating): "OK, OK, Cinderella- A Twist in Time. Help me find it."

So, we go over to the book bin and begin looking for the book. Magically, we are unable to find it amongst the gazillions of books about little girl things, like dogs and horses and princesses. Em is beginning to get upset, but I find another princess book, and after some coaxing, I get her to agree to read that instead. Yes, it's still a princess story, but it's a different princess story, and that, my friends, is victory! Unh! I win! Count it! I start to climb onto the bed to read her the story.

And that's when Li, who has been waiting in her room next door for me to finish reading to Em and who can hear everything, comes in and says "I know where it is!" and reaches into the bin and immediately pulls out, sure enough, Cinderella- A Twist in Time.

Em: "Yay!!!"

Me: "Wow, look at that Em, just when we thought all hope was lost, big sis comes to the rescue."

Em: "Big sis, come for res-cue."

And so, we read, for the umpteen millionth time, Cinderella- A Twist in Time. GA says she's learned to let her mind go someplace else, even while she's reading to them. I don't do it often enough to have developed that skill, so I just stoically suffer through it. That said, they're precious little girls, and it's fun to hang out with them. And sooner or later she'll surely find a new Obsession. I'm rooting for either baseball or physics. I mean, it could happen, right?

The War on Pudge, Chapter 1

As previously stated in this blog, 2008 marks for me the renewal of The War on Pudge, in which I will attempt to eliminate all parts of my body that were not created with the ability to jiggle, but which have since acquired it.

Now, I've studied a little history. Not a lot, mind you, that's part of the cost of being a physics and math double major- no time to study much else. But I've studied enough to know that you don't start a war without a clear definition of victory and a well-thought out, flexible Grand Strategy for achieving it. Otherwise, you end up fighting a prolonged, directionless war with no end in sight. Fortunately, history is littered with enough examples of that kind of foolishness that no one does that kind of thing anym-

oh wait.

Well, anyway, here's my definition of victory:

Victory in the War on Pudge shall be defined as my being able to put on my black suit pants without any evidence of muffintop-ness. Comfortable fit, no overhang.

The Grand Strategy for achieving this victory shall consist of three parts:

1) Exercise strategy: I joined the YMCA today, and will get back to 3-5 times per week workouts. In addition, I ordered a mountain bike from amazon that I will use to take a ride on the strand along the beach in the mornings, also 3-5 times per week. On inclement weather days, I will substitute swimming or stationary bike in the Y.

2) Communications strategy: by publicly stating my goals, I become more accountable for achieving them, especially because I am blessed with a wide circle of friends who will, as a show of support, mock me incessantly for being (a) pudgy, and (b) a big pussy for failing to achieve a stated goal.

3) Dietary strategy: here is where the real suffering happens, since aside from most fruits, I don't like anything that is actually good for me from a dietary perspective.

Just think, with the trillion dollars we've blown in Iraq, we could have invested in genetic engineering that could possibly have produced something really useful, like a powder that looked, felt, and tasted like powdered sugar but which actually had the RDA of all the major vitamins. Then, eating powdered sugared doughnuts would be more like popping vitamins, and less like stapling blubber to your waist. Or enzyme-sized nanobots that would live in your digestive tract and break down all the fat, sugar, and grease you ate so that your body didn't absorb any of it. Then you could have a meal of pizza, french fries, and bacon, finished off with a sticky bun, and the nanobots would protect you from any adverse effects.

But instead, I'm staring at the next several months of eating raw spinach and drinking water, until either I achieve victory or go to jail for killing someone for their Big Mac...

Lamentations, Chapter 3

I think I pulled a muscle in my butt today.

It happened while I was on my way from my office to the bathroom. I was walking quite briskly because, you know, I had to go pretty bad. Nothing serious- just a twinge, right there in the ol' right ass cheek. But it briefly put a little hitch in my giddyup, if you know what I mean.

I'm fortunate that it was not more serious, not so much because of the extraordinary inconvenience having a seriously pulled gluteus maximus would be, but rather because it occurred right in front of the door to the women's bathroom, which is just before the men's, and it would be just my karmic luck that I would be struck down by a failed butt muscle and forced to writhe on the floor, clutching my ass cheek, pissing on myself (I had to go really bad), right at the moment the entire female population of the floor decided they needed to visit the ladies' room.

Thankfully, I don't have to lament about that. Instead, I'd like to focus on the bigger picture, which is, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Dammit! I used to have days where I would work out for a couple hours in the gym, then play volleyball at lunch, then dance for 6 hours, and then go from there straight back to the gym to play full court basketball. And now I can't even go to the bathroom without injuring myself?

When I first started playing indoor league volleyball, I was 22 and living in LA. I would get to the games right before they started, change into my shorts, and start playing. I would see the old guys doing all their stretching, and warming up, and putting on the ankle and knee braces, and I would laugh at them inside my head. "Thank God I don't have to do all that!", I'd think.

Eventually I switched to beach volleyball, and didn't find myself playing indoor league volleyball again until I was living in Richmond, VA, which has no beaches. I was 31 then. And one day I'm going through my pregame ritual and one of the other guys on the team, who happened to be just out of college, shows up just before gametime. "Aren't you going to warm up?", asks the guy next to me. "Naw, I'm ready to play!" he says, and goes off to the hitting line.

And that's when I look down and see that, having just finished all my stretches, I'm pulling on my brand-new ankle brace, which I got to compensate for a soccer injury from the previous year. I was becoming one of those old dudes, and I hadn't even really realized it until just then. It's like in Return of the Jedi, where Luke looks down at his black Darthy hand prosthesis and realizes for the first time that he's on his way to becoming something he never ever thought he would.

After 35.5 years now, I have sprained my right ankle multiple times, dislocated both shoulders multiple times, broken both thumbs multiple times (try going through a whole day without using your dominant thumb. You will be hating life in about 8 minutes), fractured my jaw (hit by a Buick), broken my big toe, severely strained my right ACL (took a soccer cleat right on the side of the knee), and now apparently I may be in need of a new right ass cheek. My question is: what will it take to advance medical science to the point where they can grow new ones of those for me?

The answer is, probably like a trillion dollars in research money. But hey, we're the richest country on earth. We can afford a trillion dollars, right?

Oh no, no, wait, we took our trillion dollars and spent it on Iraq. Awesome. I guess I'll just spend the rest of the night massaging my ass and pondering what a great deal THAT was. I don't know why we couldn't have just used the Fidel Castro strategy and just ignored Saddam until he was dead. It would have been just as, if not more, effective at enhancing our national security as our current 'strategy' is, and it would have been, I dunno, about a trillion dollars cheaper. So instead of having a fancy new bionic ass, I have to watch my little brothers get sent over to Iraq to get shot at.

Damn.

In other news, my understanding of computers is so limited. Here I thought that when I selected "Yes" on the "Allow readers of this blog to post comments" item, it was going to allow readers of this blog to post comments. Shows you how little I know about how computers actually work. But after hearing reports of troubles posting comments, I changed who can post comments to "anyone", and so now even your dead (or undead) grandma can post comments.

And Lord knows, I wouldn't want to deprive anyone of the right to post comments about my sprained ass cheek...

Election '08 by Gus, Part 3

As promised, my thoughts on the 4 biggest Democratic candidates...

Governor Bill Richardson:

Pluses: Uh, he's not a grumpy old white guy. Seems nice, articulate, reasonable. I'll stop pretending like I have anything specific here.

Minuses: It seems pretty clear to me that he's in the race at this point solely to try and land the vice-presidential nomination. 'Look at me- Hispanic, swing state governor, what's not to like?'. He has to know that his only chance of being elected president in 2008 is if Hillary gets caught shtupping one of her interns, Barack and John Edwards run away to be a gay couple together, and at the next Republican debate, in a spectacular coincidence, at the moment Rudy Giuliani utters the phrase 9/11 for the 911,911,911th time on the campaign trail, a previously unknown asteroid in near earth orbit falls from the sky and wipes out the entire Republican field except for Ron Paul, who had gotten lost and was waiting in a diner on the other side of the state wondering where everyone else was, thereby leading to Richardson beating Paul in a 48-state landslide, Paul only winning New Hampshire, where they are actually kooky enough to vote for him, and Florida, where the vote count is 3,453,765,468.72 votes for Ron Paul, against the 23 votes for Bill Richardson from the Pensacola Sewing Club.

Now, don't get me wrong- I'm open to the possibility that this is, in fact, America's best case scenario. I'm just saying I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

Senator John Edwards:

Pluses: Appears to give a two-penny damn about the poor. Was the first to throw a real health care reform plan out there. And I think it's the best one.

Minuses: Already lost once. Campaign gaffes: if you're running as a guy who is in touch with the concerns of regular people, in what universe do you think it's going to be a good idea to get a $400 haircut? Go to Supercuts like the rest of the guys in America (who have hair). This is the kind of stupid shit that shouldn't make a difference in a just universe, but does make a difference because we live in this universe, and leads to the Republican party winning elections despite being run primarily by people who openly don't give a shit about the concerns of regular people.

Also, he's too protectionist on trade. I know labor unions are a big constituency, but it's time to figure out how to live in a 21st century world of mobile capital and changing jobs, and not a 19th century world of manufacturing jobs that you hold pretty much for life. Show some leadership and start talking about that.

Senator Barack Obama:

Pluses: He draws people out who might otherwise not participate, especially in swing states, and that's crucial for a Democratic victory in 2008. Electing him would send an important signal of change to the rest of the world, and more importantly, would do a lot to heal some of the scars we still bear in this country from our legacy of slavery. Finally, people like my mom, who historically has voted Republican, are willing to vote for him. That's huge; my mom lives in a swing state.

Minuses: I think too much is made of "experience" or lack thereof, without a good idea of what that means. There's no job like the American presidency. There's nothing you'll ever do in life that will somehow provide "experience" for it. That said, if you're going to be effective in the presidency, the number and quality of the personal relationships you have with senators, congressmen, business leaders, foreign leaders, and the range of personal life experience you have will determine how effective you are at actually getting anything done. Sometimes I think that Senator Obama has been around for such a short amount of time on the national political stage that if he does get elected, with people hungry for change, there will be a huge danger of his not getting anything done, and people having their hopes for change crushed. I mean, does the Senator have the ability to cut deals where possible, and browbeat the opposition when he has to? I just don't know.

Senator Hillary Clinton:

Pluses: She's tough. Smart. Understands politicking. And, it would also be a good thing for the country to at some point elect a woman president, so sure, why not now.

Minuses: She's been so stage-managed from day 1, always trying to triangulate and say just the right thing, instead of just saying what she thinks. People sense that. I think she probably was against the war at the beginning, but felt she couldn't afford politically to look weak on homeland security. And that would have been the case for a while, but if she had come out against it, she'd have a more powerful case now. And it would show leadership.

Another problem with her is that at a time when Republicans are deeply divided and demoralized, the one thing that they can all agree on and get excited about is Hillary-hating. Even my mom, who is pretty mellow, refuses to consider even for a second voting for her, even though she is otherwise at least open in this election to voting Democrat because she is so deeply dissatisfied with President Bush. I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's fair, but the reality is that there are a lot of people like my mom out there, especially in swing states. And so I think that if she runs against Governor Huckabee, she will lose. Narrowly, but she'll lose. And that's why I'm rooting for some kind of Obama/Edwards/Richardson combination.

But my biggest problem with her is that her candidacy seems to be founded on a couple of philosophical assumptions that I don't approve of. First, a certain sense of entitlement, as though she's implying that she's owed this, after all the suffering she endured in the Clinton years of the '90's, both from the Republican attack machine and from her husband's philandering.

Second, I feel like Bill Clinton and George Bush reflect the psyche of the Baby Boomer generation. Bill Clinton represents the optimistic, idealistic, '60's as an era of progressive change and striving to make this place a better place. He also represents the wild side of the Boomers: Woodstock, rock 'n roll, smokin' out, sexual revolution. George W. Bush represents the more cynical side of that generation, the side that eventually decided to abandon all those dreams of making this place a better place, and instead decided to just settle for making a little money.

The 16 years we will have endured of Clinton-Bush, by the time it's all over, to me represent the apex of the Boomer generation's political power, and also represent the war in the soul of that generation between those two forces of idealism-optimism and cynicism, played out for all to see. In the end, the primary reason I'm rooting against Hillary Clinton in this race is that I'm tired of watching the Boomers fight with themselves over who they really are and want to be.

It's time to start thinking about passing the torch to the next generation. Boomers, whatever you've still got to figure out, do it at home, in private, and let us take the country forward so we can make the hard choices and deal with all the 21st century issues we have.

Peace.

BMFRTE Day 6: St. Louis

Wednesday, 8/22, 830 a.m., Holiday Inn parking lot somewhere south of Chicago on I-55:

From Ed: "We wake up (in the car, mind you) shortly before 830 a.m., after about 1.5 hours sleep. I am a mess. We get back on the road, and I pass out again. We have to stop every hour or so b/c if not, Gus will fall asleep. We get hungry at about 11 a.m., so we pull off into this little town. The town seems nice, but there is literally no one on the streets- Gus and I both think that this is very Stephen King-ish. We stop to eat at Bearden's Family Restaurant, which is just a trailer on a corner; the restaurant/diner is the trailer. Awesome."


If you're ever in Divernon, IL, check out Bearden's...











My thoughts on the matter: I'm nearly unconsciousness, and definitely starving. I am fantasizing about eggs and bacon. We sit down and look at the menus, and create personalized breakfast heavens. By the time the waiter comes to us, it's 11:07. So when we start to order breakfast, he points out that breakfast is only served until 11. We are devastated. I in particular am flirting with getting up and trying to make it to the next town to try and find breakfast, even if it means risking dying in a fiery wreck. Ed, who has been asleep since we got back on the road, is more calm about it.

A few minutes later, a large guy comes out of the kitchen, and says he's the cook, and asks us if we really want breakfast. I explain that I want breakfast in the same way that a man dying in the desert wants water. He says that although it's past time, since we're the only people in the restaurant, he'll cook breakfast if that's what we really want. I resist a sudden urge to kiss this man full on the mouth, partly because it's really not that much of an urge, and partly because I don't think they like that kind around these parts.

Soon enough, we're eating a breakfast that couldn't be beat: scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, hashbrowns covered in cheese, toast, juice, coffee (for Ed). We ate like there was no tomorrow. Total bill, for both of us: $12.50. God, I love small-town America. I left $20 because paying less seemed like a crime.

Behold the Bearden family. The dude in the gray shirt earned our undying affection by cooking for us.









After our glorious meal, we gassed up and headed back on the road toward my grandpa's house.
Central Illinois. You can tell it's not Nebraska (later in the trip) because there's corn and trees.









Since we're back on the road, I pop in today's road trip mix- 8/22/07: Always Coming Home

1) Your Children - Pomona College Blue & White
2) Homeward Bound - Simon & Garfunkel
3) On My way Home - Enya
4) Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
5) Cheers - Original TV Theme
6) Home - Michael Buble
7) Down in the Boondocks - Billy Joe Royal
8) Popular - Nada Surf
9) Reunion - Indigo Girls
10) St. Louis Blues - Etta James
11) Happy Home - Paula Cole
12) Silent All These Years - Tori Amos
13) Fast Car - Tracy Chapman
14) Red Dirt Girl - Emmylou Harris
15) White Trash - Southern Culture on the Skids
16) A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall - Edie Brickell
17) House That We Used to Live in - The Smithereens
18) Losing My Religion - REM
19) Show Me the Way - Styx
20) The Whiffenpoof Sons - The Whiffenpoofs

We get to my grandpa's in the mid afternoon, and hang out with him while my mom drives out to pick us up. We're leaving the trailer here for a week while we do the second stage of the BMFRTE. While we're visiting, my grandpa does what he does, which is, tell bizarre but entertaining stories. He's been all over the world. For some reason, he's telling us about winters in Buffalo, NY, where the snowdrifts were so high, they had to use augurs to dig out the roads.

At this point, I'm like "What's an augur?" Ed doesn't know either. My grandpa's explanation: "Well, you know, an augur, you know, it augurs. That's what they do. They augur. It's an augur you see. It just... augurs." He looks at us helplessly.

Now, I'm not the best tutor in the world, but I'm pretty good, and sometimes I wonder why I'm any good at all at it. I mean, that explanation of augur is pretty middle-of-the-road in terms of clarity in my family. And then I think that perhaps it's precisely because of this that I'm any good. You have to work so hard to understand what the hell anyone in my family is trying to say that you learn to break things down into bite sized pieces and then re-assemble them into a coherent picture.

From Ed: "Gus's grandfather is awesome- he's 90 years old and can't walk very well, but he's sharp and hilarious. He loves the Cardinals, and every now and then he let's out a "damn" or "shit" or "sons of guns". The guy is great. Then Gus's mom shows up to give us a ride back to her house where we're staying tonight."

The sign...















... and the river













Back in the home country!










"She is nothing like what I expected, but she is nice. We all sit around for a while, and then we leave for Gus's mom's house. When we get there, I head down to the basement where I'll be staying, and the basement (as I was warned it would) smells like shit- literally, cat shit."

OK, time for an explanation. Cat shit, well, there's a cat. And it shits. Cats shit. That's what they do. 'Cause they're cats. And they... shit.

Sorry. Let me try again. Growing up, my dad hated animals. Really hated them. In his defense, bear in mind that he grew up in the jungle in southern India, in a house that had "doors" in the sense of doorways, and "windows" in the sense of square apertures in the walls, but there were no physical doors or windows, and anything could wander on in at any time. As of 1989, when I was there last, this was still the case (although there was electricity by then, an improvement over our visit in 1979). Consequently, there's always wildlife in the house: lizards roam freely and in large numbers, insects as big as lizards have to be regularly killed or evicted. I think my dad, by the time he had come to America, viewed anything alive and non-human as a plague to be eliminated from the home.

Consequently, we didn't have pets in the house. Fortunately, my grandma had a farm, and I got to have nice childhood experiences running around with cats and dogs, catching frogs, lizards, preying mantises, etc. on the farm. But my mom, who had spent a chunk of her childhood on that farm, I think always had a desire to have a pet. So, when my dad had his stroke in 1996, he lost not just the ability to speak, use the right side of his body, etc., he also lost the ability to veto shit like pets. So my mom got herself a cat, a female cat named Hobbes.

As you probably already know, cats are all a little crazy. Your average cat has a certain level of craziness to it. Using that average craziness as a baseline, "normal" if you will, my mom's cat is fucking nuts. I mean, totally sociopathic. Sometimes you'll just be lying on the sofa reading, and she'll come into the room, come over to you, stare at you a while, then start to make little purring noises and arch her back like she wants to be petted, and then, without warning, suddenly throw herself to the floor and look up at you hissing, with all her hair standing on end. So far you've done nothing at all, possibly not even acknowledged her at all. Naturally, she has interpreted this indifference as an act of overt hostility, and will stalk off, giving you a murderous stare and growling loudly.

"But Gus," you say, "why not just acknowledge her? Cats just want attention." Oh, you naive thing. My mother's cat, like all neocons, has an aggressive doctrine of pre-emptive military action, and acknowledging her, or worse yet, making any move toward her, identifies you as a clear and present danger that will be met with her full feline might.

But the real drama occurs between the cat, and my dad. They hate each other. I mean, they really hate each other. Their mutual hatred is so passionate and deep that it makes Zionist-Jihadist hatred seem no more serious than when Nacole and I would argue about whether we were going to watch Desperate Housewives or Law&Order. (Just to be clear, I was arguing for Law&Order). As long as my mom is home, they settle for murderous glances at each other and occasional hissing. But as soon as my mom leaves, they settle into their most cherished pattern:

The game begins when the cat comes into the dining room and jumps up on the dining room table, in clear view of the chair and table where my dad sits either watching TV or doing puzzles. Immediately, my dad notices and waves his cane at her and hisses. She ignores him. He does it again. She ignores him. So my dad starts to get out of his chair. Since my dad has almost no ability to use the right half of his body, he accomplishes this by slowly rocking back and forth on the edge of the chair, until he has enough momentum to use his left hand to give the final push to a vertical position, leaning heavily on the cane (one of those canes with the 4 feet on it). This process takes more than a full minute.

Now vertical, my dad turns toward her and hisses again. She ignores him. So my dad starts heading over her way, quickly reaching his top speed of about 6 inches per minute. She ignores him. Slowly my dad approaches, bearing inexorably down on her like a murderous glacier. She calmly starts to wash her fur. Eventually he gets close enough to whack her with the cane. To do this, though, he has to achieve the balance necessary to use the cane as a blunt instrument. Which, by the way, is extremely dangerous for him to be doing, since if he falls over and no one is there, he will be stuck there on the floor until someone comes home and finds him. But whatever, he'll risk an ignominious death on the dining room floor if it means a chance to finally kill that damned cat.

But sadly for him, in the time it takes him to achieve balance and start to lift the cane, she will look up from her washing and pretend to notice him for the first time, and then jump down off the table and take up a position about 4 feet away. And so begins a cycle where she will ignore him again until he can almost whack her, and then move off again.

Unfortunately for my dad, he's too slow to ever catch her. Unfortunately for her, she's a cat, which means sooner or later she gets tired and needs to take a nap. But there's no place safe on the upper floor of the house. If she naps anywhere, my dad will close in and whack her. So eventually, she's forced to retreat to the basement (my dad can't do stairs) to find a safe place to nap. That's when my dad will shuffle over to the basement door and close it, leaving her trapped down there for the rest of the day, until my mom comes home and liberates her.

The problem for me, and Ed, and anyone else who's ever stayed in the guest room, which is downstairs off the basement, is that the cat bitterly resents being imprisoned every day by my ogre of a father. And she expresses that resentment by pissing and shitting on everything in the basement that she can. Except, of course, for the litterbox. And that's why our basement smells like cat shit.

Cousin Anne comes over, and we all have homemade chicken curry, and then it's off to the Cardinals game.

Busch stadium- the finest Busch you'll ever have the pleasure of getting inside.











Tonight's game is the St. Louis Cardinals versus the Florida Marlins. Or, put another way, my team against Ed's team. On my home field. One of us is definitely going home tonight seriously bummed out. And one of us is going home rubbing the other one's face in it.

My old friend Kate and her husband Jimmy meet us at the stadium, and we make our way to our seats...

It's a beautiful night for a ball game. And look, the scoreboard shows us up 2-0 in the first, on Albert Pujols' home run.











It's an exciting game, up and down the whole way, but in the end, the good guys prevail, 6-4, as you can see here:


Note Ed's chagrin. But it's OK; I am a gracious winner. I probably won't rub it in for the entire trip...










After the game, we walked around downtown for a bit, and then off to Ted Drewes, for the best frozen custard on earth. In Ed's words, "fucking delicious".


Ah, the hometown...












Important note: seeing the Adams Mark Hotel in the background of this pic reminds me to remind you never to use hotel ice machines unless they're dispensing freshly made ice. When Kev and I were 16 and bored, we would roam around the city doing stupid shit, including going to the Adams Mark and getting into trouble. One of our favorite pastimes was pissing in the ice machines. Whatever reaction you're having right now, all I can say is: certain things make sense when you're 16 and bored that make a lot less sense when you suddenly think of them again 19 years later.

Finally, to bed, in the cat-shit-smelling basement. But it's nicer than sleeping in the car. We have to get up early tomorrow, for our morning flight to... Vegas!

Election '08 by Gus, Part 2

As promised, my take on the second half of the Republican field...

Senator John McCain:

Pluses: Clearly has firm convictions about things. Has lots of experience. Actually has served in the military, which I don't think is necessarily a prerequisite, but which sure does beat pretending to serve (current president) or having "other priorities" (current vice-president). That makes me feel better about his ability to accurately gauge when it's necessary to send our troops into harm's way.

Minuses: I met him in 2000, when he came to Yale to speak, and I even shook his hand. He had a real energy about him, and I liked the way he projected. I rooted for him on the Republican side, even though I knew I'd vote Democrat. But 8 years later, he's getting on in years and lacks the energy he once had (or seems to anyway). If he were in for 8 years, he'd be in his 80's when he got out, and maybe it's just closed-minded of me but I think we need someone a bit younger.

Governor Mitt Romney:

Pluses: He's certainly articulate, more so than any of the others on the Republican side, I think. Being led by someone articulate is only a distant pleasant memory anymore, like budget surpluses and Pearl Jam. He has a track record of running a state in a reasonable way. A Republican governor in a pretty blue state implies a level of moderation and ability to work with people from the other party.

Minuses: He's working himself into all kinds of contortions trying to say whatever he's got to say to get himself the nomination. He's a half step away from saying "I voted for it before I voted against it." As a moderate Republican, he really had an opportunity to try and drive the Republican party to a happier middle place, and wrest some control back from the rigidly ideological wings of the party. That would be a great example of leadership.

Instead, he's chosen to pander like a stone-broke bimbo looking for a new sugardaddy. Not very inspiring.

Governor Mike Huckabee:

Pluses: I think he is genuinely a likable guy. As opposed to President Bush, who when he campaigned in 2000 was portrayed as being oh-so-likable, when in fact he seemed to me to be rather blatantly spoiled and petulant. He has a strong sense that part of what it means to be Christian is that he should be worried about and doing something about poverty, education, and the environment. Even if you yourself are not Christian, it's useful to know that his actions are intellectually consistent with his professed beliefs.

Minuses: He is way, way on the right on social issues. Currently, I don't get the sense from him that he's the kind of guy who'd try to force his positions on those issues down everyone else's throats, but if he became President, he'd be the leader of a party that is composed of a non-trivial number of people who _do_ want to force their positions down everyone else's throats, and that worries me.

Also, I really want the Democrats to win this one. And because of that, Governor Huckabee is the only potential Republican nominee who really scares me. Like all the recent elections, 40 or so of the states are going to go to the same parties they always do, so it will come down to the 10 or so swing states. He's socially conservative enough to get those social conservatives out to the polls in those states, likable enough to peel off some of the independents and moderate Republicans that I think will otherwise actually vote Democratic in this round, and when you couple those facts with a proven Democratic ability to find a way to lose against seemingly impossible odds, there's a recipe for another electoral nightmare (for me).

That's my analysis of the Republican field. Dems tomorrow...

Lamentations, Chapter 2

I just cut my hair this morning.

Over the years, many different people have cut my hair. My mom, until I got to middle school. Some nice old men in the barber shop, until I got to high school. Kev, in high school and college. After college, whichever girl I was dating, up through Nacole. Since I started losing hair basically right after I got out of college, each girl had an easier job of it than the previous one. Nacole could do the whole thing in under 10 minutes. So when she and I broke up, I figured there was so little left I might as well do the job myself. At this point, I don't even use a mirror, except at the end to verify I didn't miss a spot.

The thing is, I can trace over time the amount of hair loss by the attachment I use to do the job. So it's always depressing when I reach a point where it's time to reduce the attachment number. For instance, there once was a time when my hair was thick and wavy, and required a #4 attachment. I mourned when I had to downgrade to the #3, around when I was dating Sarah. I wailed and gnashed my teeth when it came time to downgrade to the #2, when I was dating Nacole.

Today, I finally had to downgrade to the #1 attachment. This is it- The End of the Line. The Final Attachment. There's no turning back. My hair is now military grade length; after this, it's shaving my head.

I need a sackcloth and ashes.

Election '08 by Gus, Part 1

I know that you, dear reader, face a problem. You're a concerned voter, there's a lot going on out there on the political landscape that you want to understand, and you've searched far and wide in vain for a source of detailed political commentary provided by someone with little or no apparent qualification for providing it. Well, look no further, I am ready to step in and fill that gaping analytical hole.

My thoughts on the first half of the Republican field:

Mayor Rudy Giuliani:

Pluses: He should get credit for managing New York City through a terrible crisis. And, NYC was definitely better off after him in many ways than it was before him. And at least he's not a total wacko on social issues.

Minuses: First, Mayor Giuliani has a strong streak of dictatorial megalomania running through him. Now, if you're going to be mayor of NYC, that's almost a requirement, otherwise this city will just run over you like that poor Chinese dude in Tiananmen Square. Fine. But I don't think dictatorial megalomania is such a good personality attribute for the Presidency.

Second, he was the first to throw out "socialized medicine" as a blanket term for all Democratic proposals in the debate on health care last night. No other industrialized country gets less for or spends more on health care than we do. So a great big New York fuck you, Mayor Giuliani, for having nothing better to add to the debate than scaremongering and flaccid appeals to "markets", as if that by itself means anything.

Finally, I lost all respect for him as a politician at the 2004 Republican National convention. I was in a cab going to a student's house, and we were listening to him give an opening speech. In it, he was talking about -you guessed it- 9/11, and he described arriving at ground zero and standing next to the city fire chief as the towers were burning. He described seeing the bodies begin to fall from the tower, as people chose to jump to their deaths rather than be burned alive. He then said, "And I turned to [whatever the fire chief's name was] and said, 'Thank God George W. Bush is our president!'"

Huh?

You mean to tell me, that as your citizens are plunging to their deaths and the city is burning down around you, THAT'S what you had to say? From this, there are only 2 realistic possible conclusions I can draw:

1) Mayor Giuliani is a moron, since there were about 10 trillion things more useful he could have been saying at that point to his fire chief, or

2) Mayor Giuliani is a political whore.

I have made up my mind on that one, and watching last night's debate didn't change my mind: Mayor Giuliani is a smart streetwalker, and not a dumb straight-talker.

Senator Fred Thompson:

Pluses: Hmm. He's tall. Familiar, from watching marathons of Law & Order on the Jetblue flight back and forth between San Jose and NYC.

Minuses: He sure is a dour fellow. And he does much better with short dialogue (a la L & O) than he does trying to explain in detail his policies or beliefs about anything. Apparently some of his people have tried to argue that he'd be great at the actual job of being president, but just hates the political campaigning, and finds that tiresome.

Huh?

With all due respect to the rest of the world, at this point in history the American presidency is the most important job in history, and yes, Senator Thompson, you're going to have to campaign for it. What you need to do, in the words of my cousin Anne, is pull up your big-girl panties and shut the fuck up about what a pain it is to campaign. Do you have any idea how painful it is watching any of you guys do it? What we need is a Commander-in-Chief, not a Complainer-in-Chief.

Congressman Ron Paul:

Huh?

Pluses: He's never trying to bullshit you. He's sincere- he really believes everything he says.

Minuses: He's sincere- he really believes everything he says.

In watching the debate last night with Laszlo and GA, we agreed that listening to Senator Paul talk is like panning for gold: there are little golden nuggets of some truly important ideas in there, but it's almost impossible to filter them out of the mighty flowing river of kookiness that they're buried in.

Also, his posture when he sits is just like Mr. Burns.

I'll do Senator McCain, Governor Romney, and Governor Huckabee tomorrow.

BMFRTE Day 5: Chicago

Tuesday, 8/21, 9 .a.m., Elmira NY:

Gus: "We are 600 miles away from Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a Power Bar, it's dark [it was raining heavily] and we're wearing baseball caps."

Ed: "Hit it."

I take first shift, and we set out for Chicago. We are scheduled to meet Ed's friends at the ballpark in time for the 7pm start of the White Sox vs. the Royals. 10 hours to get 600 miles is doable, but only if we minimize stops and don't hit any major traffic issues. Of course, we get as far as Friendship, NY, before we realize that we're both starving, and we pull over at a greasy spoon diner called the Iron Kettle.


Spoiler Alert: this photo has significance that will only become apparent much much later in the trip...











This from Ed: "We walk into this diner, and it's pretty clear that this is not a 'please wait to be seated' kind of place. But Gus stops as we walk in, looks at the waitress behind the counter, and says 'Two.' She replies with 'Two what?' So then I just grab Gus and say 'Let's just grab this booth right here.' It was pretty funny how out of it he was."

Yeah, that's pretty funny. Excuse me for trying to be polite.

"We finish eating and get back on the road at 1130 a.m. We gotta make good time now, and it's still raining. It's my turn to drive again b/c Gus can't drive after he eats; it's pretty amazing how his fatigue is automatic after a meal."

Listen, people. We've all got our little quirks. I've got 'em, you've got 'em. One of my little quirks is, immediately after eating food in any non-trivial quantity, I want to sleep. Like a python. What's happening here is that my body chooses to focus on digesting the food in as quick and efficient a manner as possible. 'Cause that's what I'm about: employing a laserbeam-like focus to achieve goals as quickly and efficiently as possible. So, I sleep after I eat.

Since it's a long drive, there's plenty of time for mixes again. So I pop in today's mix:

BMFRTE: 08-21: Chicago

1) Take Me Out to the Ballgame - Unknown
2) (Love is Like a) Baseball Game - Unknown
3) A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request - Unknown
4) Gamblin' With My Love - Dan Bern
5) Route 66 -
6) Mr. and Mississippi - Tennessee Ernie Ford
7) Traveling Riverside Blues - Eric Clapton
8) If You Leave Me Now - Chicago
9) When You're Good to Mama - Chicago soundtrack
10) Minnie the Moocher - Blues Brothers soundtrack
11) Hard to Say I'm Sorry - Chicago
12) Cell Block Tango - Chicago soundtrack
13) Hill Street Blues - Original TV Theme
14) Hard Habit to Break - Chicago
15) All That Jazz - Chicago soundtrack
16) Chicago - Frank Sinatra
17) You're the Inspiration - Chicago
18) Sweet Home Chicago - Blues Brothers soundtrack






Holy Toledo, Batman!








And, the last of the guest mixes:

Guest Mix: 80's Revival, by Jill

1) Here I Go Again - Whitesnake
2) Some Like It Hot - Robert Palmer
3) Venus - Bananarama
4) Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
5) Midnight Blue - Lou Gramm
6) Talk Dirty to Me - Poison
7) Perfect Way - Scritti Politti
8) Lay Your Hands on Me - Thompson Twins
9) Kyrie - Mr. Mister
10) Tell It to My Heart - Taylor Dane
11) Invisible Touch - Genesis
12) Heaven is a Place on Earth - Belinda Carlisle
13) New Blue Moon - The Traveling Wilburys
14) Poison - Alice Cooper
15) Heat of the Moment - Asia
16) Love Shack - B-52's
17) New Sensation - INXS
18) Holiday - Madonna
19) California Girls

You know you're pretty hard up as a state when you're sitting around at the State Motto Idea Generation Meeting, and after a long, awkward silence, someone says: "Well, a lot of roads go through here."









More from Ed: "We are a little worried about making it to the game on time. But we actually make good time through New York, a small stretch of Pennsylvania, and into Ohio. I drive us past Cleveland, and then Gus takes over. As we cross into Indiana, I call Jud to tell him we think we'll be getting to Chicago at about 6:30 p.m. (we're meeting Jud and Chris for the game). Jud says there is no way we'll make it by 6:30; we take that as a challenge."

One thing Ed and I have in common is that one of the most effective ways to motivate either of us to do something is to tell us we can't or aren't allowed to do it. My response to this challenge was "Oh yeah baby, it's on now!"

So, after driving as fast as humanly possible all the way into Chicago, where we thankfully avoided any rush hour nightmares, we get to the new Comiskey park and (eventually) find a place to stow the trailer. And, more pleasingly, we beat Jud and Chris to the gate by several minutes. Most pleasingly, we make it to our seats in time for the first pitch...





A beautiful evening in the Windy City...









"We do see the 1st pitch, but not before a drunken Sox fan stops Gus to ask him why he's wearing a Cardinals jersey. She explains that she just broke up with a guy who was a Cardinals fan; immediately I think that this jersey will be a coup for the ladies."


Ed & Jud, taken from our actual seats. We had _awesome_ fucking seats. Thx Jud!











"After the game, we grabbed a drink at the Bullpen bar- it's actually a bar behind the bullpen in right field. After the drink, we're off to park the car at Chris's building and drop our stuff off at Jud's place, where we're staying. But we don't leave the bullpen bar until we're again stopped by a pack of drunk chicks b/c of Gus's jersey and my Red Sox hat. The proceed to tell us how much they love the Sox and hate the Cubs, and they insist on taking a picture with us."

Yes folks, it turns out that my Ozzie Smith Cardinals jersey is like a giant electromagnet for drunk hoosier chicks. It is one of the special ironies of my life that I am accosted only by women I have less than zero interest in.

"After dropping our stuff off at Jud's, we go out. First we hit the bar where Jud works for more drinks and delicious pizza and wings. We meet Jud's girlfriend Cassie and a few of her friends. For whatever reason, these chicks love to rub my head/short hair (and I don't mind it too much). There was also this arcade boxing game at the bar so you could punch the shit out of this bag, and it would tell you how hard you punch. Cassie punches harder than most of the guys in the bar, and almost as hard as Jud- Gus and I are scared (and impressed).

We leave that bar around 130 a.m. and head to another place that stays open until 4 and has trivia. We drink and play until the place closes and we're all pretty wasted (except Gus who has been pretty subdued the whole night- boo!). We part ways [Jud is staying at Cassie's since his apartment is pretty small] and Gus and I go back to Jud's to try to get at least a few hours sleep."

You're probably thinking- wow, what a shitty picture. Gus must've taken it. Wrong! This is what downtown Chicago looks like at 4 a.m. when you're totally souced, as Ed was when he took it.















"Here's where things get interesting- Jud keeps calling and calling my cell, and I figure he's just fucking around so I don't answer. ut then at 5 a.m., just as we're about to fall asleep, he comes into the apartment and says, 'Hey, you guys have to move the car.' Apparently there was a new security guy on duty at Chris's building who was calling a tow truck to take our car away. So Jud and Gus head over to Chris's to move the car (to where? we have no idea) and find Chris belligerently protecting the car and screaming at the security guy.

So Jud calms Chris down, and Gus decides that, since it's almost 6 a.m. and it's going to be really hard to find a place to park our monstrosity of a vehicle, we should just get on the road to St. Louis now (we had planned to sleep and leave at about 11 a.m.) Keep in mind that I'm wasted, and we're both dead tired after driving all day and being up all night. So I disagree with this decision (which, in retrospect, turned out to be a good decision) and I just tell Gus, who is clearly tired, to not be a hero and pull over if he's tired (he only had two drinks the entire night, so I'm not worried about that, but i'm way too drunk to take over the driving)."

Yes, I was pretty mellow that night, a combination of having a lot on my mind, and a general tendency to drink in proportion to how well I know the people around me. Since the only person I knew was Ed, I nursed a drink at each place we went.

"So we leave Chicago and head south to St. Louis. Gus insists he's fine, ready to go, not tired at all.

45 min later we pull off the highway b/c he's falling asleep, and in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn at about 645 a.m. we just passed out in the car."

OK, so we didn't get very far. You know, when Ed and I first discussed the possibility of the BMFRTE, and we had it fleshed out conceptually, we had a lively discussion about whether we would actually survive it. All I can say is, 5 days and still livin'...

BMFRTE Day 4: Cooperstown

Monday 8/20, noon, Cooperstown NY:

We wake up way late. Whatever- way late is rapidly becoming a theme on this trip. We check out of the hotel and complete the final leg of our hajj, our sacred journey, and walk over to our Mecca- the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The BHoF has its own field behind it, and we watch an inning of an old-timers game between the Mets and Dodgers. I am bitterly jealous of these old dudes- all I want is to be playing baseball right now. We head into the BHoF, which is both bigger than it appears to be when you're looking at it and smaller than you think it would be before you get there.

We wander through exhibits spanning all of baseball history, and attend a lecture by a guy who just finished a book explaining how the Yankees dynasty of the 1950's was built by putting their people in other organizations and using those people to engineer trades for all those other teams' good players, in very lopsided trades. What they did was equivalent to the St. Louis Cardinals getting a buddy of theirs to buy the Philadelphia Phillies, and then having that guy announce, "yeah, our three best players, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and future Hall of Famer Ryan Howard- what if we traded them to the St. Louis Cardinals for their batboy and a few cases of Bud Light? It's really a good deal for us because we're weak at the batboy position, and we're so tired of getting wasted on the expensive local microbrews." It was a really interesting lecture, and it proved 2 things: (1) that the Phillies should trade Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and future Hall of Famer Ryan Howard to the St. Louis Cardinals for their batboy and a few cases of Bud Light, and (2) that the Yankees really are the dirty filthy cheating scum that everyone outside of New York, (and in their heart of hearts, everyone inside New York), thinks they are.

Some pics from the BHoF:



Clang clang clang goes the trolley...
















Ed paying homage to his lame Florida Marlins...















And me paying homage to Ozzie Smith and the glorious St. Louis Cardinals. (Wow- it turns out that it really does matter who writes the history...)













After a few hours of wandering around learning about baseball, we head outside for lunch at the Cooperstown Diner. It is pouring rain out by now, and is freezing cold. Since this road trip features a lot of baseball, I silently pray that this trip will not be like the one with Laszlo, where it rained for 80% of the entire trip.

The Cooperstown Diner, which is about the size of a telephone booth, is nevertheless full of yummy things like sloppy joes, tater tots, and hush puppies. I haven't had a sloppy joe in years. Jesus, they're good. And this highlights yet another emerging trend on the trip: we are discovering that even though Ed and I are only collectively 25% white, we have the white-trashiest, most trailerpark taste in food ever. Unless an outside force intervenes, we'll be eating at greasy spoon diners for 3 solid weeks.

From there, we head back to the BHoF for more learning, and for the obligatory souvenir buying. This from Ed:

"I, of course, got a Red Sox hat- they didn't have any Marlins shit that I liked, and I had just come to the realization 24 hours earlier that I actually am a Red Sox fan."

I'm sad that I had to witness such a tragic realization. Watching someone realize they're a Red Sox fan for the first time is like watching someone realize that the ambulance isn't going to get there in time, and they're about to bleed to death. Red Sox motto: "We'll never be half the dirty, filthy, cheating scum the Yankees are, but that won't stop us from trying!"

So it's time to hit the road again. It's a long way to Chicago, our next stop, and we're leaving half a day later than originally planned (but dammit, there was SO much cool stuff to see in the BHoF!), so the goal is just to get as far as possible. But, at least that gives us time to catch up on road trip mixes. First we pop in today's mix:

BMFRTE: 8-20: Songs of Friendship

1) The Dukes of Hazzard - Original TV Theme
2) Stuck in the Middle With You - Stealers Wheel
3) When You Got a Good Friend - Eric Clapton
4) You've Got a Friend in Me - Toy Story soundtrack
5) With a Little Help from My Friends - The Beatles
6) The Monkees - Original TV Theme
7) You've Got a Friend - James Taylor
8) Kryptonite - 3 Doors Down
9) Hablemos de Mismo Idioma - Gloria Estefan
10) Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel
11) Hakuna Matata - Lion King soundtrack
12) Laverne & Shirley - Original TV Theme
13) Closer to Fine - Indigo Girls
14) You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon
15) Mr. Jones - Counting Crows
16) "For He is an Englishman" - Gilbert & Sullivan
17) If I Had a $1,000,000 - Barenaked Ladies
18) Old Friends-Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel
19) Trust Me - AnnMarie Montade
20) Friend Like Me - Aladdin soundtrack
21) Side by Side - Hudson Hawk soundtrack

Too bad we ate in Cooperstown and are running late. I coulda used me some Redneck Bar-B-Que. Lord knows, there's no shortage of rednecks around here to barbeque...










Ed and I switch somewhere in NY, and I pop in a new mix. MK was not the only person who donated mixes to this trip:

Guest Mix: Road Trip '07, by Jill

1) Malibu - Hole
2) beautiful Day - U2
3) This Old Heart of Mine - The Isley Brothers
4) Forever Man - Eric Clapton
5) Do Ya - Frehley's Comet
6) Girl - Beck
7) Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
8) Cruel Summer - Bananarama
9) Daytripper - The Beatles
10) Fire Woman - The Cult
11) Where the Streets Have No Name - U2
12) Sufragette City - Alice in Chains
13) Anything - Buckcherry
14) All Right Now - Paul Rodgers
15) Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
16) Big - Peter Gabriel
17) Steve McQueen - Sheryl Crow
18) Baba O'Riley - The Who
19) Hotel California - The Gypsy Kings

We're committed to pushing it as far as we can tonight, but it turns out that that's not so far. This from Ed:

"Looking at the road atlas, I discover there is a town in western New York called Cuba. But we're pretty tired, so we don't make it that far. Instead we stop for the night in Elmira after eating our cold slices of day-old pizza- that's right... and they were still delicious."

So there's the outside force- we got into Elmira late enough that everywhere to eat was closed. So instead of eating in a greasy spoon diner, we ate leftover greasy pizza joint food that had been sitting in the car for 24 hours. Mmmm good. Next time you're in Harvard square, pick up some slices from Pinocchio's (or 'Nokes, as the hip young Harvard kids call it). They keep.

So, check into a dingy motel, and since we're still a long way from Chicago, quickly to bed. But not before burning the last few mixes, which Ed took a picture of for some reason...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you, dear readers!

I hope that 2008 brings you much peace, joy, and love!

(now back to sleeping off the last of 2007...)

BMFRTE Day 3: Boston

Sunday 8/19, 8 a.m., Auburn, Maine:

I wake up and start burning more mixes. Around 930 a.m., Ed wakes up. This from Ed:

"I wake up feeling better, but not perfect. But who gives a shit? Today is Fenway Park, my old town of Boston, and our first baseball game! Gus, of course, is already up; I feel like this is a pattern that will continue throughout the trip. Speaking of Gus and sleeping and waking: so there is only one bed in our room, but it's a king and you could seriously fit 4 or 5 people in it. I mean, when I went to sleep I couldn't even tell there was someone else in the bed- it's that big. Anyway, I wake up in the middle of the night to find myself all the way on the right edge of the bed and Gus lying very close to me with his arm sticking out and his hand hanging over my face. So I'm like, 'Uh, dude, you need to move over.' He lets out a couple of grunts, and rolls over back to his side."

OK, let me explain something here. I need space. Especially when I sleep. In the first apartment I ever had entirely on my own, in Culver City, CA in 1995, I slept on the floor for the first 10 months until I could afford to buy a California King size bed. It was barely big enough. I like to sleep diagonally, with all my limbs splayed out like George of the Jungle, after he hits the tree. So it was inevitable that something like this would happen.

When two hetero men are tragically forced by circumstances to have to share a bed, section 803 (b) of the Guy Code states that there should immediately be established "an invisible wall of lead-plated concrete with a reinforced steel core, topped with electrified uranium-tipped barbed wire, running down the center of the bed." This is an important safety regulation put in place to help protect the mental health of the two men, which is obviously at risk in a situation so utterly fraught with peril.

Regrettably, in my unconscious quest for adequate sleeping space, I committed a gross violation of section 803(c) of the Guy Code, which states that "under no circumstances, including life-threatening ones, shall the invisible wall be breached." What happened was not unlike a situation in March, when 170 Swiss soldiers on a routine training exercise accidentally crossed over the border into Liechtenstein. As soon as they realized their mistake, they got back over to their side of the border in a hurry. It could have been a big diplomatic incident, but both parties realized it was an accident and left it at that. Fortunately, since I immediately removed the offending arm to my side of the bed, Ed took the Liechtenstein approach and didn't have a major freakout about it.

After brunch in the hotel with the wedding party, which featured Ed and the bride's baby causing a scene when Ed held her in his lap and took his eye off of her for two seconds- long enough for her to grab his placemat, yank it, and deposit a sizable portion of his sizable breakfast into his and her not-so-sizable laps. The bride, the baby, and Ed all seemed a little freaked out, but it was kinda funny for me.

After a hearty breakfast, we say our goodbyes to the wedding folks and hit the road. We're running about an hour late, but that's much better performance than we had leaving NYC, and we should have enough time to make it to Fenway in time for the first pitch. As long as there are no major traffic issues, things will be fine. This from Ed:

"We know we've left a bit late, but we're making great time on the road, so we've got a good shot at making it to Fenway by the first pitch. And then, in a cruel twist of fate, just as we say we can make it, we hit the longest traffic jam ever- it started in very southern Maine, just before the New Hampshire border... and went into Massachusetts. Bumper to bumper the whole way. It was while pissed off in this traffic jam that Gus and I realized that, because we both drive aggressively [skillfully, as far as I'm concerned] and get pissed at traffic and bad drivers, neither one of us is going to be good at calming the other one down when we're behind the wheel."



Maine- worth a visit. Not worth the lifetime you'll spend waiting on I-95 trying to leave it.












New Hampshire- Live Free or Die in traffic on I-95












Massachusetts welcomes you. You and your damned cah. Clahgging up our roads.










During this traffic jam, I put in the day's mix, which turned out to be exquisitely well suited for being stuck in traffic:

BMFRTE: 8-19: Hard Rock for the Road

1) Intro - Bad Brains
2) Miami Vice - Original TV Theme
3) Rockstar - Nickelback
4) Sex on Wheelz - My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult
5) Regulate - Warren G
6) Wiggle Stick - The Reverend Horton Heat
7) Satan is My Motor - Cake
8) Iron Man - Black Sabbath
9) Road Rage - Catatonia
10) Shitlist - L7
11) Die MF Die - Dope
12) Argh F**k Kill - The Dayglo Abortions
13) Raining Blood - Metallica
14) Army of Me - Bjork
15) Fight for Your Right - Beastie Boys
16) New World Order - Ministry
17) God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols
18) Enter the Sandman - Metallica
19) Head Like a Hole - Nine Inch Nails
20) Institutionalized - Suicidal Tendencies

After a few hours of fuming, we finally pull into Boston. It takes an ungodly amount of time to find a parking spot which can accommodate our SUV+trailer combo, and we end up so far away we have to get a cab to Fenway. We arrive at our seats just at the end of the 3rd inning. But although we are late, it is a gorgeous day for a ballgame, and I cheer the Angels on to victory, a victory made a little bit sweeter by the fact that Ed cheers for the Red Sox.


Fenway! I took this picture. You can tell because there's a large object in the way of what I'm trying to take a picture of.












The Green Monster. And Manny Ramirez in left field.










It's a beautiful day for a game at Fenway.















Who are these handsome young devils?











After the game, we walk back to the car, which takes some time since it's a long way off and we don't really know where we're going. At the car, we get out our gloves and play catch in the parking lot for a while. For me, there is nothing so Zen as playing catch. I can do it for hours and not get bored. But we eventually get hungry, so Ed leads us over to the Harvard Square area...

Boston- kinda beautiful place. Pity it's freezing ass cold half the time, and populated by people who are deeply depressed that no one is ever going to think they're as cool as New York.










where we eat at a great Thai place called Spice, after deciding to pass on this gem:


Next time you're in Boston, try the Pu Pu Hot Pot. Comes complete with spray-painted Chinese graffiti on the windows.










Ed shows me around the Harvard campus, regaling me with stories of his misspent youth there. Here's a pic of Ed and a famous statue on Harvard's campus:

Apparently the custom is to piss on this statue at exam time for good luck. Yes folks, Harvard certainly draws the best and the brightest of us.















Here's a picture of me in the science building, getting as close as I'll ever get to teaching at Harvard:














Since there was existing graffiti on the board in Russian, I added some of my own, which you can see in the picture. It's from my favorite Russian pin that I picked up when I went to the Soviet Union on exchange. Translated, it says:

"Lenin lived
Lenin is alive
Lenin will always be alive"

Catchy, if you're a hardcore Bolshevik.

Naturally, I take this opportunity to accuse Ed of being a commie sympathizer. Teasing Ed about being a communist is fun on a number of levels, because (a) it impugns his patriotism, (b) his family had to evacuate Cuba when Castro took over, so like most of the Miami Cuban community he's pretty anti-Castro/anti-Communist, and (c) he gets all worked up about it. Mainly, it's (c) that makes me do it.

Although we've only been on the road a couple of days, we're already settling into certain patterns together. One of those patterns is that Ed really only has three basic responses to anything I say to him:

1) Lick my balls
2) Shut the fuck up
3) Don't fucking tell me what to do

You can shorthand his responses using those numbers as code. For instance, here he responded to my McCarthyite insinuations of communist sympathizing with a "21" response. That is, a "2" (Shut the fuck up) followed by a "1" (Lick my balls). Internally, I give myself 21 points for this round of teasing. I'm pretty good at scoring a "23", and I've even scored a "231" trifecta already on the trip. The numbers help my judge/improve the efficacy of my teasing. I've made it my personal goal to try and hit 3 trillion cumulative points before the end of the trip.

After much carousing on the Harvard campus, we walk back to the car, and Ed drives us out of Massachusetts and on to Cooperstown.















We cross into New York late at night, and finally arrive in Cooperstown at 2 a.m. Unfortunately, Cooperstown is not very big, and it takes us an hour of driving around to finally find a place that has vacancy. And so, sometime after 3 a.m., we bed down for the night. The Baseball Hall of Fame is tomorrow!