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?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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...
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...
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
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...
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...
Monday, January 7, 2008
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.
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!
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!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
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...
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
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'...
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'...
Thursday, January 3, 2008
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...
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...
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
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...)
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!
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!
Sunday, December 30, 2007
BMFRTE Day 2: Auburn, Maine
Sat 8/18, noon, Auburn, Maine
We get up, and work on rustling up some grub. Naturally, this occurs at our Mecca of eating establishments: Denny's. Years ago I achieved a personal goal of seeing all 50 states, leaving me to move on to my next goal: eating at a Denny's in all 50 states. Eating at this one in Maine means I'm certainly more than half way there. Sure, it's not the noblest of goals, but it's going to be easier to achieve than becoming Pope.
Ed has to start getting ready for the wedding late this afternoon. Apparently a space has opened up at the reception, so the bride offers to Ed that he can bring me. As attractive an option as being Ed's date is, I find that I have little desire to go to a wedding where I know a grand total of one person. A part of me wants to go just on the principle that weddings = a place to dance, and turning down an opportunity to dance is a grave matter indeed, but the rest of me would rather spend the afternoon and evening doing something a lot more fun: repacking the car and trailer.
In our haste to get everything out of the apartment and into the trailer, we really did not do a great job of loading, and I ended up having to leave a bunch of stuff behind. In Keiko's office. Plus, our travel bags are wedged in in exceedingly difficult places to get out of, so extracting stuff this morning when we checked in was a nightmare. But I like the challenge of making amounts of stuff that seem impossible to fit somewhere actually do so (JOC calls me 'a savant' when it comes to that), so I tell Ed that that's my plan for the evening.
Ed, projecting Swarthy Latin Machismo.
His buddy, a nice guy whose name I don't remember, projecting Painfully Goofy White Dude.
So, as he heads off to the wedding, I head to the parking lot, where I proceed to unload everything from the trailer and the car, and organize it into piles based on relative size, weight, and probability of needing access before reaching our final destination. Then, I systematically repack everything, which results in the trailer being much better loaded, with better weight distribution, and a lot more space in the car. It only takes me about 6 hours to pull that off.
After it's all done, I shower and head for the nearest pub, to get some food. Ed texts me much earlier than I thought, so I invite him out, but it turns out that he's contacted me so early because he is suffering. This from Ed [my commentary in brackets]:
"It was a gorgeous day for a wedding... I talked with Lenny, the groom, for a while, and then got to see Jen's [the bride's] parents. Of course, I had to apologize profusely for missing lobsters the night before. [First two casualties of the BMFRTE- our leaving more than a day late caused us to miss Acadia National Park, and caused Ed to miss the rehearsal dinner, and fresh Maine lobsters.] Then back onto the trolley- and now the crazy old ladies have a few drinks in them- for more good times. I have a great conversation with the crazy old ladies... Our table is probably the only one with an average age of around 30. [~30 yr old bride + ~60 yr old groom = geriatric wedding fun. Too bad I decided to skip it.]
After some dancing and some cake, the wedding is over and we take off back to the hotel. My stomach is killing me by this time, and I don't know if it's the food, the pants that barely fit me, or the Alleve I took earlier for my shoulder (oh yeah, my left shoulder has been in excruciating pain since before we left NYC, and it's getting worse). Either way, by the time I get back to the hotel I'm doubled over in pain by these stomach cramps. So no going out for me."
So when I finally get back to our room, Ed is curled up in his bed (looking a bit worse for the wear) watching Sportscenter. [Watching Sportscenter is for Ed a lot like breathing, both in (a) how critical it is to his ability to actually survive a given day, and (b) how much time he spends doing it.] As a benefit of my perestroika of the car, I was able to extract my Mac, so I set to work burning the rest of the road trip CDs. Although I had roughly designed them, I didn't get a chance to review them or burn them past the first couple before we left NYC. That project was yet another casualty of my moving debacle.
Sunday 8/19, 2 a.m.:
To bed... CDs are burned for the next several days, and we have a big day tomorrow- the first baseball game of the trip, in Fenway!
We get up, and work on rustling up some grub. Naturally, this occurs at our Mecca of eating establishments: Denny's. Years ago I achieved a personal goal of seeing all 50 states, leaving me to move on to my next goal: eating at a Denny's in all 50 states. Eating at this one in Maine means I'm certainly more than half way there. Sure, it's not the noblest of goals, but it's going to be easier to achieve than becoming Pope.Ed has to start getting ready for the wedding late this afternoon. Apparently a space has opened up at the reception, so the bride offers to Ed that he can bring me. As attractive an option as being Ed's date is, I find that I have little desire to go to a wedding where I know a grand total of one person. A part of me wants to go just on the principle that weddings = a place to dance, and turning down an opportunity to dance is a grave matter indeed, but the rest of me would rather spend the afternoon and evening doing something a lot more fun: repacking the car and trailer.
In our haste to get everything out of the apartment and into the trailer, we really did not do a great job of loading, and I ended up having to leave a bunch of stuff behind. In Keiko's office. Plus, our travel bags are wedged in in exceedingly difficult places to get out of, so extracting stuff this morning when we checked in was a nightmare. But I like the challenge of making amounts of stuff that seem impossible to fit somewhere actually do so (JOC calls me 'a savant' when it comes to that), so I tell Ed that that's my plan for the evening.
Ed, projecting Swarthy Latin Machismo.His buddy, a nice guy whose name I don't remember, projecting Painfully Goofy White Dude.
So, as he heads off to the wedding, I head to the parking lot, where I proceed to unload everything from the trailer and the car, and organize it into piles based on relative size, weight, and probability of needing access before reaching our final destination. Then, I systematically repack everything, which results in the trailer being much better loaded, with better weight distribution, and a lot more space in the car. It only takes me about 6 hours to pull that off.
After it's all done, I shower and head for the nearest pub, to get some food. Ed texts me much earlier than I thought, so I invite him out, but it turns out that he's contacted me so early because he is suffering. This from Ed [my commentary in brackets]:
"It was a gorgeous day for a wedding... I talked with Lenny, the groom, for a while, and then got to see Jen's [the bride's] parents. Of course, I had to apologize profusely for missing lobsters the night before. [First two casualties of the BMFRTE- our leaving more than a day late caused us to miss Acadia National Park, and caused Ed to miss the rehearsal dinner, and fresh Maine lobsters.] Then back onto the trolley- and now the crazy old ladies have a few drinks in them- for more good times. I have a great conversation with the crazy old ladies... Our table is probably the only one with an average age of around 30. [~30 yr old bride + ~60 yr old groom = geriatric wedding fun. Too bad I decided to skip it.]
After some dancing and some cake, the wedding is over and we take off back to the hotel. My stomach is killing me by this time, and I don't know if it's the food, the pants that barely fit me, or the Alleve I took earlier for my shoulder (oh yeah, my left shoulder has been in excruciating pain since before we left NYC, and it's getting worse). Either way, by the time I get back to the hotel I'm doubled over in pain by these stomach cramps. So no going out for me."
So when I finally get back to our room, Ed is curled up in his bed (looking a bit worse for the wear) watching Sportscenter. [Watching Sportscenter is for Ed a lot like breathing, both in (a) how critical it is to his ability to actually survive a given day, and (b) how much time he spends doing it.] As a benefit of my perestroika of the car, I was able to extract my Mac, so I set to work burning the rest of the road trip CDs. Although I had roughly designed them, I didn't get a chance to review them or burn them past the first couple before we left NYC. That project was yet another casualty of my moving debacle.
Sunday 8/19, 2 a.m.:
To bed... CDs are burned for the next several days, and we have a big day tomorrow- the first baseball game of the trip, in Fenway!
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