CERTAIN BLOGS

Happy Belabor Day!

2010-10-04T20:18:00.003-04:00

You should call your mom today. And if you've already called your mom today, by all means, do it again.

Pretty, pretty, pretty Toney

2010-06-14T20:57:00.003-04:00

If you could only take advice from one person for the rest of your life, that person really ought to be Ghostface Killah. Some time ago, MTV2 had the good sense to give him his own advice forum, and the world has been an immeasurably better place ever since. Most of the videos aren't available on YouTube, but some enterprising youngsters have posted the audio clips over some other bullshit. Every one of these clips is crucial to living a fulfilling life, but there's one in particular I'd like to talk about:

In case you're one of those assholes who doesn't actually watch the clips I post, the gist of it is this: when you're in the shower, wash your face before you wash your balls. Most people wash their balls and then wash their face, and when you think about it, that shit is disgusting. (Trust me that Ghost makes this point far more convincingly than I do.)

So essentially, I've been walking out the door every morning with balls on my face. Now that I think about it, this probably explains why I've been such an ineffectual loser my whole life.

The most interesting man in the world

2010-04-05T18:08:00.016-04:00

With the coming of spring, a young man's thoughts turn naturally to romance. Roughly two weeks later, they turn to baseball, where they remain for the next seven months. In honor of Major League Baseball's opening day, I thought I'd say a few words about Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs.

The other day I made the case to my good friend Ms. Brick Johnson that Wade is the most interesting baseball player of all time. Ms. Johnson didn't believe me, but Ms. Johnson is wrong. How many things is Wade famous for? Let's see:

1) During every home game when Wade played for the Red Sox, a mysterious fan would always yell out "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaade" after the first pitch of his first at-bat.

2) Incidentally, Wade never swung at the first pitch of any at-bat.

3) In perhaps the funniest rumor of all time, Wade is said to have once consumed 64 beers on a cross-country flight.

4) Wade reportedly kept a mistress in every major league city. In fairness, he was probably not the only ballplayer to do this.

5) Wade has never been photographed with The Most Interesting Man in the World. Why? Maybe because Wade is The Most Interesting Man in the World. You be the judge:

"I don't always drink 64 beers on a cross-country flight. But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis."

6)Wade famously ate chicken before every game. In fact, his only lasting nickname (who needs a nickname when your name is already Wade?) was Chicken Man. There's even a baseball card where Wade is holding a rubber chicken instead of a bat.

7) Wade's 3000th hit was a home run. No one else has ever done this.

Wade Anthony Boggs, I think I love you.

Bad Advice

2010-03-31T18:42:00.005-04:00

Certain Blogs have been getting an awful lot of bad advice lately (and I don't just mean "keep writing").

So I think it's time to set a few things straight. I humbly submit retorts to the following adages:

1. "Don't go to the grocery store hungry." Bullshit. In what other walk of life would you hear something so ridiculous? Don't go to the dealership if you need a car? Don't go to the music store when you want to buy a CD? Don't go to the movies when you want to see a fucking movie? I mean, if there's a better place to go when you're hungry than A HUGE STORE FULL OF FOOD, I've yet to find it.

2. "Dogs' mouths are cleaner than humans'." Seriously, have you ever met one dog?

3. "Snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them." This bothers me for two reasons. Number one: as a threshold matter, I don't like people telling me how afraid I am of things. The only way you could possibly know how afraid I am of snakes is if you heard me say, "I'm more afraid of snakes than anyone has ever been afraid of anything."

Which brings me to number two: it is literally impossible for snakes to be more afraid of me than I am of them. The absolute best they could hope for is a tie. And frankly that'd have to be one timid fucking snake.

Poppycock and bollocks, all of it.

Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Blogs

2010-03-16T21:38:00.003-04:00

I haven't given up on this blog quite yet. I've been awfully busy the last few months moving to an old city and adjusting to a new job. But rest assured, I've got a few half-baked ideas in the hopper. Working titles: "Inside Jokes (I don't get them)", "Petty Complaints About Service Providers", and "[god dammit i forgot the only funny one]".

But for now, I'm off to Vegas for my annual sports gambling vacation. I'll try my darnedest not to make these common mistakes.

Wish me luck.

Otiose post

2009-12-11T16:58:00.003-05:00

The late David Foster Wallace once wondered if the owners of the Super 8 motel chain might have named their business something else if they had any idea what "suppurate" meant.

I thought of this today at the grocery store, when I came across a Cheerios knock-off calling itself Oatios. Call me crazy, but I'm not sure anybody wants a health food that connotes otiose.

ok, sam

2009-11-19T11:09:00.004-05:00

I'm notoriously hot-natured. Literally, not figuratively. (Figuratively I'm cool as a cucumber.) One time when I was 10 or so, I got heat exhaustion while I was playing first base in a little league game. As in, yes, I was just standing there. The heat index was in triple figures; Dad had arrived early and installed tarps over both teams' dugouts for shade. Back on the field, my vision started to blur and I could only see the batter intermittently. I yelled feebly to the umpire that I was sick, but he told me to wait for the next pitch, which I did. As soon as it crossed the plate, I crossed the first base line and puked into foul territory. (I especially like this detail about not desecrating the field of play.)

The epilogue is I laid down on the bench and drank a bunch of gatorade while everyone looked on in horror. The umpires conferred and dictated that I still had to make an appearance at the plate, lest we violate LL's everybody gets to bat rule. Dad told me not to swing, so of course the pitcher walked me. Except in those days, a coach would come in to pitch to you after a "walk", instead of you just taking first base like God intended. So on the coach's first pitch, I bunted. Which apparently no one in the history of LL had ever done before. I beat the throw to first. But the umps caucused again and decided you're not allowed to bunt when the coach is pitching. They allowed me one more pitch to hit. The coach's pitch was well over my head, but I managed to chop it into center field. I later came around to score.

another how-to

2009-11-16T01:55:00.007-05:00

Here's something I drunkenly submitted to my law school's weekly newspaper in 2005. The editors politely declined to run it:

A lot of people around here are fond of comparing law school to high school. And they're right to do so. But the sad thing is, as Ferris Bueller aptly pointed out, high school is childish and stupid. So let’s all follow these simple steps towards eliminating our embarrassing predicament.

STEP ONE: Stop trying to sleep with everyone you know. Cripes, man. There’s an unlimited number of undergrads out there, all of whom are younger, prettier, and dumber than we are. Remember: the only people who aren’t impressed that you’re a law student are other law students.

STEP TWO: Stop hanging out at the law school all day. No one makes you hang out at school when you’re not in class. You’re not waiting on a bus. There’s no reason to spend $19 on a lettuce wrap at Bob Scott Commons when you own a car.

STEP THREE: Don’t get a locker. What’s the point? Ever since Sir Isaac Newton invented the backpack, people have enjoyed a more convenient way to store their books. Honor him.

STEP FOUR: Learn to hold your liquor. Wow. The youngest of you is, what, twenty-two? That means you’ve been drinking for at least five years. So act like you’ve been there before. A little bit of self-respect will go a long way in the outside world. The first time your promotion hinges on taking six boozebags from Lehman Brothers out for drinks, you’ll thank me.

STEP FIVE: Stop wearing so much Abercrombie and Fitch. When Jody Kraus is making fun of you, it’s time to reevaluate.

STEP SIX: Don’t pose for a yearbook photo. Actually, we’re doing pretty damn well on this one. Keep up the good work.

STEP SEVEN: Don’t join a journal. I can’t emphasize this one enough. If law school is like high school, then stretch the analogy out a little further: in high school, everyone is concerned about doing as much pointless bullshit as possible because they think it will help them get into the best colleges. In law school, someone tricked you into thinking you have to do a bunch of pointless bullshit if you want to get hired by a good law firm. Spearheading your neighborhood’s recycling efforts didn’t get you into Harvard, and spending your entire second year cite-checking some blowhard from Vanderbilt isn’t going to impress any interviewers. Take it from someone too stupid to get elected to even the most frivolous journal: you’re going to get a job no matter what.

STEP EIGHT: Don’t watch The OC. There’s a reason people compare it to Beverly Hills 90210: they both suck.

STEP NINE: Stop pretending you’re going to marry your current love interest. I swear, if I have to hear “I have a boyfriend” (or--worse yet--“you have a girlfriend”) one more time, I’m going to start listening to Pearl Jam again. Let’s not sugarcoat things: as future lawyers, we all have at least two unhappy marriages in our future. The sooner we own up to this, the sooner we can get on with our miserable lives.

STEP TEN: Smoke cigarettes. Hunton & Williams encourages it. And I promise Principal Jeffries won’t give you detention.

It's amazing how dated this already seems. Everyone gets a job? And what the hell are Lehman Brothers? What planet was this guy living on??

Audio/Visual Blog

2009-11-02T00:41:00.000-05:00

Here's a picture I took right across the street from my new apartment. I submitted it to one of those stupid failblog websites, but they chose not to run it (I'm not linking to them out of spite).

Oddly enough, the misspelling could be of 'distinction' or 'destination'. I looked up the slogan and apparently the intended word was, as I'd hoped, 'distinction'. Irony doesn't get more delicious than this.

In unrelated news, here's a video you may have already seen:

9TH INNING

2009-10-29T23:18:00.003-04:00

On cue, Howard strikes out looking. Werth, looking like Prince Valiant, bloops out to second.

Ibanez doubles to keep the game alive. Future World Series MVP Matt Stairs steps to the plate.

If he fails, this will be my last entry.

PRE 9TH INNING

2009-10-29T23:13:00.004-04:00

I have to say, blogging games that don't involve the Red Sox is difficult, boring work. Not sure this is going to happen again.

The 9th sets up beautifully for the Yanks. With no one on base, they can pitch to Howard, who will almost certainly strike out. Werth is terrible. And Ibanez, former Mariner or no, probably won't tie the game by himself...

BOTTOM OF THE 8TH

2009-10-29T23:02:00.002-04:00

3-1 Yankees. Replay shows Utley was safe at 1st on the double play ball. Oh well; the Phils got the benefit of a shitty call in the last inning.

Ryan Madson drills Teixeira in the kneecap on the first pitch. Hopefully this will bother Teixeira for the rest of the series. Another moral victory. Madson strikes out the side.

I wonder if McCarver would've started the runners...

TOP OF THE 8TH

2009-10-29T22:37:00.003-04:00

The weirdest part about that double play was that Ryan Howard obviously thought he didn't catch the line drive. If he thought he had caught it in the air, he would have tagged first rather than thrown to second. Weird call by the umps.

Final line on Pedro:

6 innings, 6 hits, 2 walks, 3 earned runs, 8 strike outs. Definitely better than my prediction (5 1/3, 7 hits, 2 walks, 5 ER), but not that far off.

Meanwhile, Rivera is in to protect a 2 run lead. The last time Girardi brought him in for a 2 inning save was last Sunday against the Angels, also with a 2 run lead. He gave up a run in the 8th, but the Yanks blew the game open in the bottom of the inning.

Alright alright alright. Rollins works a one out walk and Victorino singles sharply to right. Future World Series MVP Chase Utley steps to the plate.

McCarver: "Now if you're Charlie Manuel, you almost have to send the runners. It's almost an ideal situation. Well, you're down by two runs; that's not ideal."

Amazingly enough, Manuel doesn't send the runners and Utley grounds into an inning-ending double play.

BOTTOM OF THE 7TH

2009-10-29T22:22:00.002-04:00

Buck and McCarver tell us Rivera will pitch the 8th and 9th tonight. The only good news is the Phils will have the heart of the order up in the 9th.

I should mention, for the record, that I really hate the Phillies. Yesterday was the first day I ever rooted for them. I'm still figuring out how it works. Are soul patches cool in Philadelphia?

A well executed hit-and-run by Cabrera puts runners at 1st and 3rd with nobody out, and Posada is pinch-hitting for Molina. This is where things get ugly. Chan Ho Park enters the game for Pedro.

Odd as this sounds, if Park allows the inherited runners to score, Pedro's final line will look a lot like my prediction.

Hahahahaha. Jeter the Bitch just struck out trying to bunt with two strikes. A moral victory if ever there was one. Eyre in to pitch to Damon.

Damon lines into a controversial double play. What does the peanut gallery think about that one?

TOP OF THE 7TH

2009-10-29T22:15:00.002-04:00

Burnett shows no signs of slowing down, striking out Ibanez and Stairs.

Does anyone else think Invictus, the new Clint Eastwood movie starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, will be a glossy, overwrought piece of Oscar-baiting shit?

Feliz grounds out to Jeter. Things aren't looking good for the Phillies. Mariano Rivera looms...

6TH INNING

2009-10-29T21:55:00.002-04:00

Big inning for the Phillies--Utley, Howard and Ibanez are due up, plus Burnett's pitch count is creeping towards 100. The sooner the Phils can get to the Yankees awful bullpen, the better.

Phillies go down in order.
___

Pedro whiffs Teixeira and A-Rod for his 7th and 8th strike outs. My prediction sure was dumb. I'll never doubt Pedro again.

Aaaand we have our first comment of the night. Welcome, Cunado.

Aaaaaaaaaaand Matsui homers to right. I'll always doubt Pedro again.

Robinson Cano just flew out to left field, and boy are his arms tired.

5TH INNING

2009-10-29T21:36:00.002-04:00

As any beer drinker knows, the inning after the beer inning is the nachos inning.

The Phillies strand Carlos Ruiz at second. Burnett is mowing the Phillies down.
____

Pedro records two quick outs, then Jeter doubles to left. He's still a bitch. Fortunately Damon pops out, ending the boringest yet of my many boring blogs.

Blame the nachos.

4TH INNING

2009-10-29T21:16:00.002-04:00

As any baseball fan knows, the fourth inning is the beer inning.

Jayson Werth [amazingly enough, not sic] singles then gets picked off 1st base. Strike out, fly out. Solid inning for Burnett.
____

After my last live blogging effort, longtime reader Cunado wrote, "Any [Blogadier General] live blogging event is not to be missed." Goes to show you can't trust a North Carolina pump salesman.

While I'm complaining, Teixeira blasts a changeup over the right-center field wall to tie the game.

Fox on-field commentator Ken Rosenthal just called Pedro's pregame press conference a "tour de force". Josh thinks "tour de force" is overused these days. I think Ken Rosenthal is overused these days.

Hairston, Jr. strikes out to end the inning. 1-1 after 4 innings.

3RD INNING

2009-10-29T20:50:00.002-04:00

I'm fully expecting my roommate to make nachos for dinner, but right now he's asleep on the couch. This doesn't look good.

The camera finds some jackass in the stands wearing a Halloween costume, leading to the following exchange:

Joe Buck: "it's that time of year"
McCarver: "tomorrow night!"

Josh is awake and laughing his ass off.

Meanwhile, with a runner on second, Burnett intentionally walk Chase Utley to pitch to Ryan Howard, who had 45 home runs and 141 RBI this season. A curious move, but it works: he strikes out to end the threat.
____

Pedro issues a one-out walk to the #9 hitter, Miguel Cabrera, then strikes out Jeter for the second time. Have I mentioned that Jeter is a complete bitch? Damon flies out and the inning is over.

BOTTOM OF THE 2ND

2009-10-29T20:32:00.003-04:00

As Buck and McCarver keep pointing out, the Yankee crowd is really quiet. Maybe Yankees fans are the new Red Sox fans, easily intimidated and expecting things to go wrong. Probably not.

Pedro freezes A-Rod on a 72 mph yakker for his third strikeout. One of my favorite things about my new roommate is he laughs every time I say yakker instead of curveball. I've probably said it 50 times and it's still working. Matsui singles to right.

Fox just showed a montage of famous Pedro outings against the Yankees. I'm delighted that they opened with Pedro's god-like performance in September 1999: 17 strikeouts, 1 hit, 0 walks. How great was it? The Yankees hit exactly one ball into the field of play (a flyout to left) after the 4th inning.

Ibanez makes an incredible diving catch in left-center for the second out. I just made a strange, animal noise that unfortunately could never be blogged. Jerry Hairston, Jr., filling in for Swisher, flies out to right to end the inning.

TOP OF THE 2ND

2009-10-29T20:17:00.003-04:00

The most beguiling thing about this year's playoffs--besides the unprecedentedly shitty umpiring--has been Joe Buck and Tim McCarver's competent work in the booth. Buck has been unremarkable. And McCarver, bless his heart, has actually had a number of insightful things to say. I've kept my ears open for asinine commentary, but so far I haven't found anything worth ridiculing.

Yankee starter AJ Burnett also looks sharp. When I point out that the movement on Burnett's pitches looks a lot like Pedro's, Josh wonders if Burnett might be the Yankees' croupier.

Ah. Ibanez hits a ground rule double that bounces off the left field foul line into the stands. McCarver aptly notes, "there are only seven players behind the pitcher, and they can't be everywhere." Thanks, Tim.

Matt Stairs then grounds a sharp single past A-Rod, scoring Ibanez, who takes advantage of Damon's impossibly weak arm. 1-0 Phillies.

1ST INNING

2009-10-29T19:59:00.004-04:00

The Phillies go down quietly in the 1st.

Meanwhile, there's some mildly surprising news from the Yankees dugout. Regular starters Nick Swisher and Jorge Posada are on the bench tonight, Swisher because he sucks, and Posada because Burnett tends to pitch better to the backup catcher, Jose Molina. Some thought Yanks manager Joe Girardi would dispense with the personal catcher thing, since Posada is a good hitter and Molina couldn't hit water if he was in a fucking boat.

Pedro's fastball is hovering around 86 mph. Fortunately his changeup and curveball arrive in the low-to-mid 70s. Jeter strikes out on a fastball, then Damon goes down on a changeup.

Fox's Keys to the Game graphic just read, "Phillies are playing with house money. Pedro is the croupier." My roommate Josh eloquently addresses the elephant in the room: "Who comes up with this shit?"

Teixeira pops out to end the inning. So far, Pedro looks great.

PREGAME

2009-10-29T19:28:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the ridiculous live blog. 20 minutes until the first pitch, and all anyone can talk about, rightly enough, is Pedro Martinez's return to the Bronx. The consensus all week has been that pitching Martinez in Game 2, at Yankee Stadium, is a savvy move by the Phillies.

With all due respect to Pedro--my favorite player of all time--this will not end well.

Pedro's postseason record at Yankee Stadium is dubious at best: 0-1, with a 6.28 ERA in 14 1/3 innings. In his last showing, an inexplicable relief appearance in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, he immediately gave up 2 doubles and a single, threatening to let the Yankees back into the game. I missed the rest of the inning because my friends, as superstitious as I am, sent me out of the room until Pedro was out of the game. Looking back at the play-by-play, it looks like Pedro settled down and finished the inning without any further damage.

But Pedro was already on the decline in 2004. This is 5 years later, and he barely hits 90 mph on the radar gun these days. He was almost unhittable last week against the Dodgers, but the Yankees are no Dodgers. I want to get my prediction out of the way before the game begins: Pedro goes 5 1/3 innings, 7 hits, 2 walks, 5 earned runs.

I hope I'm wrong.

this, that, and the third

2009-10-26T19:27:00.006-04:00

THIS: For part of his upcoming book, food author Michael Pollan has been asking readers to submit their personal "food rules", pithy nuggets of wisdom about what and how to eat. Reading over the ones Pollan posted online, I tried to remember if I'd been raised with any such advice. Unfortunately my parents didn't cultivate much of a food culture; I once embarrassed my mom by declaring, at a school assembly in front of all my classmates' parents, that her best homemade meal was Rice-A-Roni.

So instead of remembering any food rules, I remembered an embarrassing moment of my own from when I was in college. A friend was cleaning up after dinner, and I told her she didn't need to put the butter back in the fridge. She looked concerned, and noted tentatively that dairy products tend to go bad if they're not refrigerated. I told her that my family kept the butter out all the time, so it would be easier to spread, and it never went bad or made us sick.

I can't remember how that incident ended, but later I double-checked my advice and learned, obviously, that I was wrong. The root of the problem was that my family saw no cause for distinguishing between butter and margarine; we called everything butter. Thus, when we took science's shitty advice and switched to margarine, we kept right on saying butter. I'm not sure I knew the difference until I was 19 years old.

THAT: Have you ever noticed how people only say "that's not funny" after they hear an offensive joke? Like if you make fun of retards (or whatever), someone'll say "dude, that's not funny". But what about when something just isn't funny? Nobody ever says "that's not funny" in response to a shitty but inoffensive joke. Maybe this is why Dane Cook is still popular.

THE THIRD: Game 2 of the World Series is this Thursday at 8:00 eastern, televised by Fox. Like it or not, I'm blogging it. If you're available to follow me in real time, I'd be flattered if you did.

Sunday again

2009-10-26T00:42:00.004-04:00

I've written before about how much I don't like Sunday nights. But a short while ago I was reading a Faulkner novel, Light in August, and found this lovely passage:

Sunday evening prayer meeting. It has seemed to him always that at that hour man approaches nearest of all to God, nearer than at any other hour of all the seven days. Then alone, of all church gatherings, is there something of that peace which is the promise and the end of the Church. The mind and the heart purged then, if it is ever to be; the week and its whatever disasters finished and summed and expiated by the stern and formal fury of the morning service; the next week and its whatever disasters not yet born, the heart quiet now for a little while beneath the cool soft blowing of faith and hope.

My praise would sound trite. But I'll say this: "Whatever Disasters" would be an excellent name for a blog, or maybe even a novel.

It's difficult to imagine stumbling upon a nicer message on a quiet Sunday evening in October, 2009.

Administerial Blog

2009-09-30T02:03:00.000-04:00

I'm moving to a new apartment this week, but I was too stupid to schedule an appointment with the cable installer ahead of time. So without internet access, I probably won't be blogging much for a while. The good news is I'm getting a pretty interesting roommate, so maybe he'll spark a bunch of funny stories or become a running character or something.

Also, the baseball playoffs are fast approaching, and I'm planning another LIVE BLOGGING EVENT for one of the ALCS games. I thought I'd give some advance notice in case anyone wants to follow along in real time. Once my internet situation is resolved, I'll post again to let you know which game I plan on sullying.

Finally, by way of apology for the boring entry above, please enjoy this with my warmest regards:

Something about my apartment

2009-09-26T19:03:00.009-04:00

I came to New York in September to look for an apartment. I stayed with an old friend for a few days, a former lover, a law student at Columbia University. I'd hoped moving to the city would rekindle our friendship, if nothing else, but my time with her had been disquieting. ______ was busy with classes, and her own life, which hadn't had much to do with me in 5 years. Plus, really, what was I doing there? Letting someone crash in your tiny Manhattan apartment is a favor everyone but me knew better than to ask.

By the second day it had become clear that I was not welcome. For the remainder of my visit, I strove to stay out until she was home for the night, lest ensue another passive-aggressive argument about which rainy streetcorner we should meet at to transfer her housekeys.

I'd only arranged three apartment showings for the next day; two in the morning--suitably early for my disappearing act--and a third at 6:00. By noon, I was exhausted and uninspired by the apartments I'd seen, a blurry collection of dim corridors, keening elevators, and cracked wainscoting. I was convinced, in my beleaguered state, that I wasn't going to find anything appreciably better. I longed to sign a lease, whichever lease, and I'd have done just that if the prospect of a Friday afternoon with ______ held any appeal for either of us.

Instead I grudgingly ground away the hours until my last appointment, slouching fitfully through the Strand bookstore and finally succumbing to a nearby matinée. I arrived at 517 East 13th Street a few minutes ahead of 6:00, and the broker buzzed me up to apartment 4A. The first thing I noticed, obviously, was the hallway and stairwell: bright lights, freshly painted walls, sanded marble floors. It turned out the owner still lived in the building, which explained these flourishes; an absentee landlord would deem them unnecessarily expensive.

The apartment was also nice, though I barely noticed the craftsmanship. I was drawn first to a series of framed photographs depicting the Red Sox in the aftermath of their 2004 World Series victory. The broker noticed my interest and said the current tenant was a Credit Suisse banker originally from Boston, who'd been granted a transfer to be closer to his ailing father.

But what I really remember was a pair of shoes. Casually strewn inside the doorway lay a pair of black, women's pumps. I can still picture them: the right shoe upright, the left toppled, canting slightly away from its mate.

I was moving to New York in less than a month, and I wasn't in the healthiest frame of mind. I'd spent the better part of my summer lamenting two failed relationships. The first I regretted, with the familiar clarity of hindsight, ever having ended; the second I still wince at having ever begun. And my time with ______ had only made things worse; it seemed clear that her presence in New York would not be a point in the city's favor.

I was tired and alone and feeling bad about myself and while I stood staring at those two shoes I suddenly felt crushed. In those pumps I could see this couple's entire relationship: She came home last night after work, a professional like him, and kicked them off as soon as she got in the door. They watched TV, ordered in, and went to bed. Today she wore a different pair to match a different ensemble. They didn't technically live together--the broker only mentioned one tenant--but they were at that stage where she kept multiple pairs of shoes at his place.

The tenant and I were about the same age. I was a finance lawyer; Credit Suisse would soon be a major client. We were even both Red Sox fans. But a seemingly unbridgeable gap separated us. He had this robust life, fully-formed; I could conjure its outline but didn't seem capable of attaining it for myself. He had what I wanted. What I wanted was those shoes.
_____

I took the apartment, and was soon too busy traveling, moving, and learning my new job to worry much about anything else. Then, eventually, ______ came around again. We had dinner somewhere. She was graduating and her workload had lightened. We saw a movie, sometime later a concert. She started coming over on Sundays to watch HBO. All this unfolded slowly, unexpectedly; 60 hour weeks at the office had numbed my sense of things. One night she came down with a fever and stayed for three days. We knew she had a fever because I threw on a jacket at 1:00am and went down to the corner for a thermometer.

Then one Friday I came home to a messy apartment. ______ was visiting her folks that weekend, but she said she'd be back in time for the Sopranos. I picked up clothes, sorted a week's worth of mail, and started towards the kitchen with an armload of dirty dishes.

It was then, crossing the living room, that I stumbled over a pair of her running shoes.

I left them there all weekend, two grey New Balances conspicuous as Easter Island statues in my sparse apartment. She saw them as soon as she got in--I saw her see them--but she didn't mention them until we were in bed. She listened, rapt, as I told her the story. She remembered my visit, how difficult it had been for both of us. She knew how troubled I'd been. "You know," she said quietly, after I'd finished. "There's an essay in there somewhere."

Blogs on Film, part deux

2009-09-21T16:02:00.007-04:00

My friend Cunado's wildly misleading blog post got me thinking about Ferris Bueller's Day Off again. It's been on my mind quite a bit lately. I caught it on cable early this summer. Then John Hughes died. Then ESPN's Bill Simmons discussed the movie in a recent mailbag (near the bottom, if you're actually interested). After cataloging everything Ferris & Co. manage to squeeze into their day, Mr. Simmons concludes:

clipped from sports.espn.go.com

Seems improbable, right? No way all of that stuff happens in less than 10 hours unless they basically made a two-inning cameo at the Cubs game and left. (Conceivable, by the way. How can you top catching a foul ball? And if Sloane hated baseball and pushed for them to leave after 2-3 innings, wouldn't the logical next stop for them -- if a girl who hated sports was running the show -- be that art museum?)

Not conceivable. Let's not forget a tiny detail, one that escaped my attention until this summer: at the Cubs game, Sloane Peterson is keeping score. Don't underestimate this. You'll find ten leopard-spotted teenagers lip-syncing atop hijacked parade floats in downtown Chicago before you'll find someone who bothers keeping a scorecard leaving the game after three innings.

But you know, maybe verisimilitude isn't what exactly Hughes was aiming for. Hard as it is to believe the guy who directed Weird Science would ever ask his audience to suspend disbelief, I guess we'll just have to try.

Not Quite Blogworthy, Part Four

2009-09-14T01:04:00.007-04:00

Unless you're Jewish, there's a pretty long stretch of non-holiday time between Labor Day and Halloween (and let's face it: you're probably not Jewish). I assume our forefathers--gentiles all--had this boring stretch of calendar in mind when they invented Columbus Day out of thin air.

But we need something good.

I envision a day where you go home to spend some quality time with your parents. First you listen to your dad complain about local newscasters, stoplights, and companies who outsource customer service hotlines to India. Then he reminds you to shut the refrigerator door all the way. Later your mom chimes in about what a good speller you were in third grade and wonders aloud if she'll ever get to meet a single god damned grandkid. The festivities culminate in a relaxing dinner at a Mexican restaurant, where the whole family takes turns questioning Virginia Tech's offensive play calling.

We'll call it Belabor Day. The first Monday in October after the last Sunday in September sounds about right.

There's something new in the fridge!

2009-09-12T02:28:00.005-04:00

Today marks one year since David Foster Wallace passed away. I wanted to write something nice about him but it's just not going to happen today.

Instead, here's something about Bull Durham, the greatest baseball movie of all time:

(1) Danny Gans, the legendary, recently deceased Las Vegas entertainer, plays the Bulls' 3rd baseman. It was the only big screen movie he was ever in.

(2) You get to see one of Susan Sarandon's boobs near the end. It's a really quick shot, as she's cleaning the kitchen after a long night of lovemaking and pauses to light a cigarette butt she finds on the floor.

Now I've probably watched Bull Durham 30 times over the last 21 years, and I'd never once noticed this before. Every single time I've wished I could see her boobs, and now, after countless viewings, I finally get to see one of them. It's kind of like that thing about people opening the refrigerator over and over again and hoping something new has magically appeared since the last time they checked. Except this time, THERE'S ACTUALLY SOMETHING NEW IN THE FRIDGE! A great big bucket of fried chicken!

There's no way to describe how much this discovery pleases me.

Odd words

2009-08-26T01:28:00.006-04:00

A friend mentioned recently that he hates Cingular--the old cell phone company--because their ads blanketed every flat surface in the United States for so long that "singular"--an actual word--now looks wrong to him. He added that "ludicrous" also looks weird, thanks to the success of the rapper/actor Ludacris (though obviously it's impossible to hate Ludacris).

I think this is an interesting phenomenon. Knowing full well that asking for audience participation is the fool's errand to end all fools' errands, I ask the audience: can you think of any other words like this?

Car names, maybe? Pharmaceuticals? I think I'll take a sleeping pill and noodle on it.

Please Retire This Joke

2009-08-24T16:02:00.002-04:00

Another thing I'm fucking tired of is that trend where people give someone with an alliterative name the nickname "[Initial] Squared". For example, a guy on my high school tennis team was named Johnny John, so he was quickly nicknamed "J-Squared".

I was recently reminded of this phenomenon as I was reading something about Mad Men (yes, Mad Men again) on Slate (yes, Slate again):

clipped from www.slate.com

But given who Draper is, my bet is that Sal's secret is safe, just as Peggy's was last season. And this commitment to double lives and discretion—indeed, the fact that their secret lives almost endear Peggy and Sal to Don—is part of what makes Draper (or D-Squared, as we call him at my house) the most mystifying, satisfying character currently on television.

What's so fucking stupid about this is that squaring a quantity rarely results in that quantity being doubled (Squaring the number 2 is the only time it does). If you had two number 4's, for example, you wouldn't say "Four squared", you'd say "Four times two". So, saying "D-Squared" doesn't make any sense. If you wanted some pithy, quasi-clever nickname for someone with an alliterative name, you should say "Two-D" or whatever. Which is admittedly a stupid name, but at least it's coherent.

Am I the only one who's noticed this trend? I can't think of any other examples but I swear I hear it pretty often. Why why why?

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad blog

2009-08-18T01:10:00.007-04:00

Remember that detail in Fahrenheit 451 about how billboards along interstates are long as hell because traditional billboards can't be seen and read from inside the really fast, futuristic cars? So the billboards' pictures and messages had to be stretched out so far that they looked absurd and basically illegible to anyone standing still?

I was thinking maybe TV advertisers should start doing that. I recorded a Mad Men marathon on AMC last week (if Mad Men isn't an American Movie Classic, I guess I don't know what is). When I watch an episode, I obviously fast-forward the commercials, which behavior of course has caused all kinds of hand-wringing and brow-mopping in the ad world.

So maybe advertisers should start running ads that are really distended and weird and only make sense when viewed at fast-forward. I imagine the fast-forwarding crowd also skews younger and tech-savvier than the average viewer, which I think makes them prime targets for advertisers anyway. Or maybe some really clever companies could make ads that can be understood at both speeds: telling a fuller story in the real-time version and a pithier one in fast-forward. Kind of like those zany Mad magazine fold-ins.

Of course, no one seemed that impressed by my last advertising idea, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Blog Days of August

2009-08-10T17:01:00.006-04:00

As a freshman, I had some female friends who lived together in a nearby dorm. Their suite's bathroom, like all dormitory restrooms, was adorned with wipe-off messages and magazine clippings and PSA's about binge drinking and date rape and bulimia. I remember one of the stalls featured a printed copy of a forwarded email, taped right above the toilet paper dispenser. It contained an alphabetized list of boys' names, along with a pithy description of the person bearing that name. The tone of the descriptions could maybe be described as vaguely empowering, in that curious way that making fun of someone who hurt you can feel empowering.

Adams have weak handshakes. Bobbys only want you for your body. Calebs wet the bed.

I just made those up. The only one I remember for sure is D, and my memory is that D garnered the only positive description in the list: Daves are impossible to get over.

As an 18 year old with blossoming self-esteem issues, I found this extremely validating.

Another Baseball Post

2009-08-09T18:08:00.001-04:00

One of the weird things about blogging about baseball is I never really know how much my audience can take. Should I feel comfortable using baseball's weird vernacular? Or should I slow down and explain things like double plays and sacrifices? Baseball has such an extensive and precise idiom that you never know how much knowledge to presume. Everyone knows what a strike is, right? An out? It's a difficult line to walk.

This problem reminds me of a pretty good story. In summer 2005, when I was interning at my former law firm, I went to 3 baseball games on the firm's dime. The first was an Arizona Diamondbacks game in June, when the firm flew us down to Scottsdale for a long weekend of drinking and carousing. At the game, I sat next to a nice girl who didn't know shit about baseball. Feeling compelled to ingratiate myself to my new peers, I happily and patiently spent the entire game explaining baseball to her.

If you've ever had to do this, you realize how difficult it is.

A few weeks later, I sat with 3 other interns in the firm's plush box seats at Yankee Stadium. One of the interns grew up in India and also knew nothing about baseball. Patiently--if not happily--I tried my best to explain the basic rules, followed by the subtleties, to my new friend.

Finally, at the end of July, my firm sent the entire summer class to Yankee Stadium to watch a game from the right field bleachers. Having had virtually all the pleasure of my last 2 baseball games removed by the task of explaining its byzantine rules to the uninitiated, I was intent on watching this game surrounded by friendly, knowledgeable baseball fans.

I finally settled on two guys, both smart, longtime fans. I told them about my experience at the previous two games, and the guys, fully appreciating my pain, agreed not to leave my side.

So we're at the game, enjoying the hell out of it. We're talking baseball and I'm feeling good. Around the third inning, one of my buddies says he's got to take a leak. By this time everyone has shown up and settled into their seats. But just to be safe, I scooch halfway into the empty seat to my left and spread my knees, trying to take up as much room as possible.

Almost immediately I hear a thick accent calling my name. Reluctantly, I look over my shoulder and see one of our German exchange interns, five rows behind me, literally climbing over everyone between us. He hurdles the last row and lands his right foot in the space my small-bladdered friend had just abandoned.

"David," he says excitedly, "you know all about baseball. Please tell me what I am watching!"

It was a long game.

Baseball blog

2009-08-08T21:35:00.006-04:00

[NB: Here's the complete set of live posts I blogged during this afternoon's Red Sox-Yankees game. Scroll down to the previous post, LIVE BLOGGING EVENT, for some background.]

PREGAME:

Jason Bay's hamstring is still acting up, so Kevin Youkilis is again playing out of position in left field, with backup Casey Kotchman filling in at 1st. Kotchman is a journeyman, an adept fielder without much power. The Sox acquired him last week from the Braves for Adam LaRoche, whom they had acquired a couple of weeks earlier from the Pirates. The Red Sox said they felt compelled to trade LaRoche because, after acquiring Victor Martinez from the Indians, they had nowhere for LaRoche to play. But the curious thing is, they traded LaRoche for another first baseman, meaning they would presumably have the same problem playing Kotchman that they would have had with LaRoche.

And now, one injury later, Kotchman is forced to play seriously intense games while LaRoche--a far more dangerous hitter--is toiling with the Braves. I don't understand this at all.

1ST INNING:

Bottom of the 1st. Boston's pitcher is Clay Buchholz, a youngster who came to fame in 2007 when he threw a September no-hitter against the Orioles. I watched that game with my mom. Since then he's been a disaster in the big leagues. The Red Sox refuse to trade him because he has great stuff and he's been lights out in the minors. But for whatever reason, he can't get major leaguers out with any consistency. My dad called a few games ago to complain about Buchholz's delivery: it looks like he falls off the mound to his left on his follow through, which tends to leave his pitches out over the plate against right handed hitters.

Second batter of the game and Youkilis drops an easy fly ball in left field. Did I mention he's playing out of position?

A look at Buchholz's stats against right and left handed hitters backs up Dad's theory. Ordinarily, a right-handed pitcher will perform better against right-handed hitters and worse against lefties. Granted, the sample size is small, but Buchholz has performed far worse against righties: in roughly the same number of innings, he's allowed 4 more baserunners, 3 more home runs, and 7 more earned runs against righties.

0-0 after 1.

2ND INNING:

Ortiz gets booed again by the Yankees fans, presumably on account of the steroid accusations. Joe Buck speculates that the fans are booing "more out of a sense of gamesmanship than disgust". I'm not sure how many Yankee fans know what gamesmanship means.

Another perfect inning for C.C. Sabathia.

3RD INNING:

Kotchman strikes out. Sabathia, who looked horrible in April after signing a huge contract in the offseason, has been phenomenal ever since. The Red Sox haven't scored a run in 18 straight innings.

Boston shortstop Nick Green played for the Yankees in 2006. Interestingly enough, he scored the winning run against the Sox in the 5th game of that brutal August series I just wrote about when Keith Foulke uncorked a wild pitch in the 8th inning, permitting Green to score from 3rd.
______

Yanks have 2 men on with nobody out in the bottom of the 3rd, with good old Jeter at the plate. I foresee bad things.
______

Wrong. Jeter grounds weakly into a double play, third-to-second-to-first. Of course Buchholz then walks Damon on 4 pitches. Yowzers. Teixeira drives in Cabrera on a sharp single to right. Yankees 1, Sox 0.

4TH INNING:

[NB: I'll probably go back and paste all these things into a single post, so people don't have to read them in reverse. One interesting thing about blogging is: if you have any sort of serial narrative going on, the reader has to read from bottom to top. Doesn't everything else in the English language read top left to bottom right?]

Sabathia has a perfect game through 4 innings. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver have been boring, but not as dumb as I had hoped.

Back in 2007, I blogged game one of the World Series between the Red Sox and the Rockies. It didn't go well, but at least I got some choice quotes from McCarver and Ken Rosenthal.

Long inning for Buchholz. No damage yet, but 2 on with 2 out. Joe Buck points out, astutely, that all the hits off Buchholz today have been by left-handed batters. This doesn't exactly jive with my analysis from back in the first inning, but I'm sticking to my guns.

Cabrera, a rightie, strikes out to end the inning.

TOP OF THE 5TH:

Tim McCarver inveighs against the well-known tradition that announcers don't mention a no-hitter (or a perfect game) while it's in progress. He's right, of course, that superstition is stupid. But it's surprising to hear from a former ballplayer (and a catcher, no less). I love silly baseball superstitions and I wouldn't dare talk about a perfect game while it's in progress. Unless the pitcher is a Yankee.

Sabathia walks Ortiz, who's hitting .047 in his last 5 games, on a borderline inside curveball. No more perfect game. Sabathia quickly retires Lowell and Drew. The no-hitter is intact.

BONUS: here's some funny analysis of a classic Tim McCarver quote, also from the 2007 playoffs.

BOTTOM OF THE 5TH:

Youkilis misplays another fly ball, although this was a more difficult play than the other one. Just like in the 1st inning, Damon finds himself on 2nd with one out. The Yankee fans are really laying it on good old Youk.

I think this is the inning where Buchholz falls apart.

Teixeira walks, A-Rod grounds out but moves the runners over to 2nd and 3rd. Fortunately Matsui grounds out to the pitcher; crisis averted.

6TH INNING:

Ellsbury, Boston's center fielder, singles to center with 2 outs, breaking up the no-hitter. I remember a game back in 2001, when the Yankees were in Boston and Mike Mussina took a perfect game into the 9th inning. Finally, with 2 outs and 2 strikes, Carl Everett singled cleanly to left field. The Red Sox were still losing, but the fans cheered like they had just won the pennant. It was thrilling and surreal, even on TV. Yankees first baseman Clay Bellinger said afterwards, "it felt like we lost the game."

Back to 2009. Pedroia strikes out on 3 pitches to end the inning. Sabathia has thrown 92 pitches through 6 innings; the Sox' only hope is that he tires himself out before the 9th.
______

Bottom 6. Leadoff double for Cano. Buchholz has allowed 10 baserunners in 5+ innings. He's been really lucky so far, but it can't last forever.

Swisher sacrifices Cano to third, then Buchholz intentionally walks Cabrera to set up the double play. Molina, New York's slow-footed catcher, is up to bat.

Molina promptly flies out deep to center field, scoring Cano easily. Jeter flies out to right. 2-0 Yanks.

7TH INNING:

It's hard to tell how this live blogging is going. It certainly doesn't help that no one is actually reading this in real time. If anything, the game goes a lot faster when you're constantly trying to think of interesting things to say.

Meanwhile, Martinez walks and Youkilis singles, both with nobody out. Ortiz, former Boston folk hero, recent steroid casualty, steps in looking nothing like the clutch hitter he was two long years ago...

...And promptly strikes out on a shitty call by the home plate ump. Mike Lowell, perhaps the slowest runner in the American League, then grounds into a double play. Still 2-0 Yankees.
________

Ramon Ramirez relieves Buchholz to start the 7th. You could say Buchholz pitched bravely, but mostly he got lucky. Still one of his best performances since the no-hitter in 2007.

With a man on first and one out, Ramirez hits A-Rod with the first pitch. The umpire immediately ejects Ramirez from the game, and the Red Sox are understandably furious.

A couple of batters later, the new pitcher, Gonzalez , gives up a two out, bases loaded walk to plate another run. 3-0 Yanks.

8TH INNING:

Sabathia strikes out Kotchman for the 3rd time, then gets lifted for a relief pitcher. Final line on Sabathia: 7 2/3 innings, 0 runs, 2 hits, 2 walks, 9 strikeouts. Not a bad day's work.

Phil Hughes comes on and strikes out poor Nick Green on 4 pitches. The Red Sox haven't scored in 23 innings, and they're about to lose their 5th game in a row.
______

Bottom 8. Two run homer for Jeter. 5-0 Yanks. I can't believe the announcers haven't compared this bloodbath to the 2006 series yet.

9TH INNING:

Well this sucks. I'm supposed to see a friend's band tonight at 8:00. The only suspense is whether David Robertson can shut down the Red Sox fast enough for me to make the show.

He cannot. Not that the Red Sox come back to win, but they manage to hang around long enough to make me late. A moral victory, I suppose.

LIVE BLOGGING EVENT

2009-08-08T13:47:00.007-04:00

For the Boston Red Sox, the 2009 season is shaping up to be a lot like 2006. In both seasons, they start out hot and enjoy a small lead over the Yankees throughout most of the first half. But sometime around end the of July, things start to turn, and by mid-August the Yankees are comfortably out in front.

In both seasons, the Yankees begin to play really well in July for a variety of reasons: a key player returns from injury, new teammates finally get used to the tense media environment, or maybe just a simple regression to the mean: as the season wears on and the sample size increases, the most talented and highest-paid team naturally rises to the top. The Red Sox, meanwhile, suffer a handful of mid-season injuries and media distractions and the season unravels. Varitek breaks his elbow, Wakefield hurts his back. Manny complains about an aching knee, then forgets which one to limp on. Ortiz finds his name on the steroid list and helplessly denies any wrongdoing. Boston's reliance on aging, broken-down pitchers--Schilling, Smoltz--ultimately backfires.

Three years ago New York came into Boston to play 5 games in 4 days over a very long weekend, with the Yankees leading the East by, I think, two games. [Editor's note: it was 1.5 games.] I was in Argentina on my post-Bar trip, so I barely managed to follow the series. The first day, Friday, held a double-header which the Yankees swept. Saturday afternoon saw another Yankee win; the Sox were now down by [4.5] games and their season was quickly going belly up.

That Sunday, I traveled alone to a small town in central Argentina, where I checked into a little hotel (the same hotel where I set my tepid Hemingway piece). For the first time on my trip, my room had cable TV. That evening after dinner, too exhausted by the day's travel to explore the town, I switched on the TV and found, of all things, ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball. That game was probably the best the Yanks and Sox had played since the 2004 playoffs. I think Schilling pitched. The Sox were up 1 in the 9th, with Papelbon on the mound to close things out. With two outs, he threw an outside fastball to Jeter that the smarmy Yankee shortstop punched weakly to the opposite field to score Cabrera and tie the game. New York beat up on rookie Hansen in the 10th and the game was over. Watching this game, alone in Argentina, is one of my fondest baseball memories.

David Wells--erstwhile Yankee--pitched well the next day, but no one was surprised when Boston fell 2-1. The Sox continued to flounder afterwards, failing to make the playoffs for the only time since 2002.

And so anyway, the same thing is happening to the Red Sox right now. This time it's a four game series played in New York, but otherwise the setup is eerily similar. The Yanks destroyed the Sox on Thursday, then played an historic game last night, finally winning 2-0 in the 15th inning on an A-Rod home run. I have a feeling last night was the game, like the Sunday night contest in 2006, that marked the end of Boston's season.

Of course I'm happy to be wrong. Today's game is on Fox and starts in about an hour. I'm going to live blog it. But I wanted to post this first, so people won't think I'm piggybacking on Joe Buck and Tim McCarver when they talk incessantly about the "Boston Massacre" of August 2006.

Probably this will suck. But whenever McCarver is involved, entertainment stands a fighting chance. Wish me well.

tee hee

2009-08-06T02:16:00.005-04:00

Rare, like Mr. Clean with hair

2009-08-05T22:43:00.011-04:00

A few weeks ago I was in my grandmother's basement helping my dad move an 11-ton marble coffee table. Good old Gran, six years dead, kept a lifetime of books down there in the damp and the mildew and the cobwebs. Upon cursory inspection, most of the books seemed rather pedestrian. Many of them were children's texts Granny used as a schoolteacher way back when. Others--judging from the multiple copies--were probably leftovers from the bookstore my grandfather used to run.

But a couple of books immediately caught my eye. One is a simple green hardback called Contemporary Essays. It was published in 1928 and includes essays by Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, H.L. Mencken, George Santayana, and Virginia Woolf. I haven't read much of it yet, but the Eliot essay, about the tension between an artist's individuality and the lush traditions of his medium, is pretty damned interesting.

The other book is called Race Relations and the Race Problem: A Symposium on a Growing National and International Problem with Special Reference to the South. It was published by Duke University Press in 1939. Scanning the insides of its dust jacket, I noticed one of the contributors was a zoologist from Berkeley. My curiosity was piqued: any essay about race by a Jim Crow-era zoologist had to be good.

I wasn't disappointed. I couldn't bear to read the whole thing, but I picked out the central thesis easily enough: whenever two races find themselves in close proximity (thus forced to compete for a finite set of resources), the races will naturally remain at odds until one eventually marginalizes the other following a sustained period of superior fertility and/or mortality. The author compares the birth rates, death rates, and age compositions of whites and blacks in both rural and urban environments, then goes on to consider other factors, such as birth control and immigration policy. Ominous conclusion: "Since our cities will doubtless continue to be potent destroyers of Negroes for many years, the fate of the Negroes will be decided on the farms and in the small villages of the Southern states."

Yikes.

Also compelling were a couple of papers I found tucked inside the front cover. One is a copy of a letter written in July 1956 by a partner at a D.C. law firm criticizing the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and advising local school boards on how best to circumvent the decision's mandate. The other is a transcript of a speech given by a fellow segregationist, also in July 1956, to a group called The Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties.

Your dead grandmother's musty basement: where history comes queasily alive!

the leg hair problem

2009-07-29T21:53:00.005-04:00

I've been struggling with an identity problem for the last few years. The problem is about women's leg hair.

I've been a feminist ever since I bothered thinking about it. I believe women should enjoy the same rights and opportunities that men do. Accordingly, I don't think it's fair to ask women to do things that we wouldn't ask of a man. For example, if I ever have a kid, I won't expect my partner to quit her job and stay home. Or if I ever get married, I won't expect my wife to change her name. (Now if she wants to be a stay-at-home mom or take my last name, I'm open to it. But the point is I wouldn't want someone to demand those things of me, so I'm not demanding them of my future wife.)

Which is where leg hair comes in. For whatever reason, women with leg hair have been incredibly marginalized in this country. I don't think I'm any different from the overwhelming majority of men when I say I'm not sure I could be attracted to a woman who doesn't shave. Sure, there are hairy women living in communes in New Mexico or whatever, but for the most part, you just don't see any women with leg hair. I don't know a single woman who doesn't shave her legs regularly.

Of course it's also true that many women like their hairless legs. Maybe shaving is a minor pain in the ass, but they like the way it makes their legs look and feel. It's become such a normal part of their grooming routine that it doesn't bother them.

Which is fortunate, because I think their lives would be a lot different if it did bother them. Either they would continue to shave in spite of the bother, in which case every morning (or every 3 days or whatever) would be a reminder of this stupid, sexist thing they feel compelled to do. Or they would quit shaving their legs. But if they did this, it seems pretty clear--and please tell me if I'm wrong in believing this--that their romantic and professional lives would be very, very different from what they are now. Imagine a college girl, single and soon to be looking for a job. How many potential employers would immediately write her off? What percentage of single guys would do the same?

I did know a girl in high school who didn't shave her legs, although no one knew about it because she wore jeans everyday. But wearing jeans to hide the hair is every bit the acknowledgment that it's not okay for women to have leg hair that shaving is. So the college girl could just wear a pantsuit or dark pantyhose to her job interviews, but she'd be doing so precisely because she's aware of the taboo and fears the consequences of breaking it.

Anyway, the social requirement that women shave their legs is inherently sexist. There's no such requirement, or even anything analogous, that men have to deal with. And the fact that I consider myself a feminist is where the identity crisis comes in. As I mentioned earlier, if I'm honest with myself, I'm not sure I could be attracted to a woman with leg hair. So if having leg hair is a deal-breaker for me, then I'm asking something of my date that I wouldn't want her to ask of me.

Fortunately, this is a pretty minor identity crisis. The rule against women's leg hair is so powerfully followed that it hasn't cost me anything. None of my girlfriends has ever approached the leg hair issue with me, and I've been happy to let them keep right on shaving. I even told one of them about my qualms; she understood my point, but she still chooses to shave.

__________

All these things were bothering me, in a very low intensity sort of way, until last weekend. I was walking down St. Mark's Place with my sister one afternoon and we passed a very pretty girl tying her shoe. And she had leg hair. As we kept walking, I kept thinking about her legs. The hair was immediately noticeable, but it didn't look gross at all. It wasn't very long and it wasn't as thick as men's leg hair usually is. It looked kind of silky. I was surprised by how little it bothered me. The hair didn't make me more attracted to her, but it didn't make me less attracted either.

So maybe I don't have an identity crisis after all. Maybe I just assumed I wasn't attracted to women with leg hair because I'd never seen one before. Or because everyone talks so casually about how gross it is. The closest I'd ever come to seeing a woman with leg hair was when a girlfriend hadn't shaved for a few days. And yeah, that early growth part where the hair is stiff and prickly: that is kind of gross.

But anyway, crisis averted. Now that the leg hair problem isn't weighing on me anymore, I can go back to focusing all my energies on being a jobless schmuck.

Daaaaaaaaavid Lettermaaaaan

2009-07-28T20:37:00.006-04:00

My sister took me to a taping of the Late Show with David Letterman this afternoon. It was a lot of fun, but also really bizarre. Why?

--The whole experience seems a lot more real on TV than it does live. Maybe this isn't such a profound observation; after all, it's obviously made for a TV audience, and the final show is carefully edited. But for some reason I thought seeing something live would seem more real than seeing it on TV. Not so.

--For example, Letterman sits right on top of his guests. On TV, it doesn't seem that weird, but in person, it's jarring. I tried to imagine having a normal conversation that way, but I think it's impossible. While the stage itself is deceptively small (Paul and the Orchestra are way closer to the desk than I had imagined), there's plenty of space around Dave's desk and the two guest chairs. But the first chair is right next to the desk, and Dave sits at that end of the desk, and then he leans forward pretty much the entire time. The two conversants are often no more than 12 inches apart. Try having a conversation like that sometime. Find an empty room, then sit a foot away from someone. Then lean forward and try to talk like normal people. Tonight's guest, Katie Couric, is obviously used to this kind of thing and handled it all with aplomb. But it's easy to imagine a minor celebrity, like a burgeoning stand-up comedian or one of those dads who saved 11 kids from drowning or whatever, being really really freaked out by how close Dave sits.

--We were told to laugh at every joke like it's the funniest thing we've ever heard. The Late Show employee in charge of telling us this acknowledged that this is a weird and awkward thing to do, but hearing him acknowledge it didn't take away from the weirdness and awkwardness of actually having to do it for an entire hour. Hearing the quick banter between Dave and Paul is really funny, but it's not rolling in the aisles with tears pouring down your cheeks funny. You have to remind yourself, every time something amusing happened, to laugh like hell. It's hard. It was actually hard to appreciate the jokes because we were so busy trying to remember to laugh like hell.

--Harder still: the same staffer told us that we're not allowed to make the ubiquitous "WOOOO!" noise when we're cheering for something. Apparently the microphones pick up the frequency (am I using that word correctly?) too easily and it damages the sound quality. "WOOOO!", of course, along with its cousin, the similarly disallowed "WOO-HOO!" is the default cheering noise for everyone in the world. We were actually told that anyone caught saying "WOOO!" would be ejected.

So you're excited as hell about seeing Letterman, then you start seeing Biff, Allen Coulter, and Paul Fucking Shaffer walk on stage, and all of a sudden you realize you have to invent a brand new cheering noise. This is really, really hard to do. I just laughed and clapped through the monologue, trying to buy myself some time. Finally I settled on "YEEEEEEAH!" as my cheer noise. But holy christ does it start to sound stupid after the 5th time or so. My sister kept looking at me like I was an idiot, but she must have sympathized with me. I think she settled on "HEYYYYYY!".

--The sound for the musical act is pretty awful. I don't blame them for this, since it's a weird theater with low-hanging balconies and, again, it's obviously being performed for the TV cameras. But it was still weird.

I've got one more story about the show, but I want to watch the TV version before I write it because I'm not sure how the scene will be edited. I guess I'll post this story in the comments section or something.

Froot Loops

2009-07-27T15:43:00.010-04:00

A friend of mine was in town this weekend. One night, intoxicated and exasperated with Alphabet City's 4:00am vegan snacking options, he impulsively bought a box of Froot Loops at the bodega around the corner.

What's curious about Froot Loops these days is the inclusion of a new unit called the "Fruity Golden Bar". I'll admit I've been out of the loop on kids' cereals for some time, so maybe there's a reasonable explanation for this. But I just can't imagine what Kellogg's's rationale could have been when they decided to add "Fruity Golden Bars" to their time-tested formula.

I like to imagine the focus groups that huge companies like Kellogg's presumably use before launching a new product like this.

CONTROL, 0930 hrs 3/13/06, Bttl Crk MI, grp 14-038-A. Synopsis ERM(3/15):

Grp continues to love FL taste/texture. Egs, "Fruity", "Stays crunchy", "Loopy", etc. 14/15 sbjs fnsh bowl; 8/14 rqst more. All within expected range. Complaints center around quantity of serving, also in keeping w forcast (sic). 1 excptn: 9/15 sbjs lament absence of "fruity golden bars". Egs, "You know what this cereal needs, Ernest? Some bars. Loops are great and all, and golly I'm sure not asking you to get rid of them, but maybe mix it up a little, you know? I've always loved a good bar, myself. Maybe color it something a little less exciting. A little contrast could make all those insane neon loops really pop", "If you could just throw in some fruity golden bars, I'd eat this cereal every day", "I like the loopiness of the loops, but I can't help but think there's something missing. I can't really put it into words, but the idea is right on the tip of my tongue. I don't know what to call it; Bar-iness?".

Recommend farther (sic) inqry asap. ERM/DRH

.......................

FRTY GOLD BAR, 1400 hrs, 4/29/06, Btl Crk MI, grp 08-395-C. Synopsis PCA(4/29):

#s off charts. Perfect grp scores. Rants, raves, etc. 4 bx consumed in 13 min. Unprecedented. Sbj 4 begs to see chart; insists quote be taken verbatem (sic): "This shit is the best fucking shit I've ever fucking tasted! I had no idea Fruity Golden Bars could be so good!!! All my life I thought I was happy but I wasn't! Until today!!!! Thank you Froot Loops. Thank you Kellogg's. Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!"

Recmnd immediate mass prdction. Halt existing line. Refit mchns for bar production. Explore futures mrkt for gld coloring; invest heavily at any price. Sign-off all overtime as nec. 5/15 launch could rescue Q2. PCA/DRH. CC Corporate, BD, Legal.

That's probably how it went down.

______

But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if maybe the Fruity Golden Bar is a huge step forward. I think Kellogg's just broke the 4th wall of cereal. A Froot Loop that isn't a loop? Can you imagine a Rice Krispie that isn't krispie? A Corn Pop that doesn't pop?

Every morning, Kellogg's fortifies our children with Vitamin D, Riboflavin, and one of the most vexing ontological problems of our age. I, for one, applaud their noble work.

Certain Postcards

2009-07-22T01:41:00.005-04:00

Long before there were certain blogs, there were certain sisters' unrelenting demands for postcards. I tried to send her something whenever I traveled, at least back when she lived at home. Recently she found a handful of them in her bedroom and was gracious enough to let me photograph the fronts and reprint the messages here.

Thanks, Amelia.

SPRING TRAINING UPDATE:
March 10- Red Sox 4, Cards 3
March 11- Cards 13, Dodgers 8
March 12- Blue Jays 7, Reds 2
March 13- Cardinals vs. Mets

13 March 2004
Amelia,

When I saw this postcard, I was reminded of the time you and I were in Hyde Park and we took all those dumb photographs and sold 4 of them to this guy who said he worked for a postcard company, and at the time we thought he was lying, but at the same time we needed the money to buy something that we've since either used up or lost, and at any rate, well, I guess he wasn't lying after all. What can I say? That was a long time ago; I hope our intuition is better now. But that's not important. What's important is: you have to promise NOT TO TELL MOM (or Lilo--I think they're in cahoots), but I wanted you to know that, a few days ago, Jocelyn told me that [more later] Love, Dave

____

21 August 2004
Amelia,

Here we are in beautiful downtown Phoenix. The weather here is amazing! Pete, Emily and I are having a great time, but we can't seem to find the Bellagio anywhere.

Love, Dave

____

13 March 2006

Amelia-

I found the most delightful recipe for Key Lime Pie-- locals call it "Florida's State Pie", but I call it delicious! All you need is: 4 eggs; 1 can sweetened, condensed milk; 1/2 cup lime juice; 6 tbls sugar; and 1/2 tsp cream of tartar. I'm not sure how to cook it, but I'm sure you can find out on the internet or something.

Love, Dave

____

30 June 2009

Greetings from South Dakota! Did you know the state broadcasts a Wi-Fi signal from the tip of Lincoln's nose? It's so powerful it covers all of SD and parts of Wyoming. Why did I waste a stamp to tell you this when I could be emailing you instead? I'll give you one guess.

Love,
Dave

Baked beans

2009-07-19T02:33:00.005-04:00

I feel scatterbrained. Scattershot? I feel scattered. Activities I thought of as one fluid task now feel like multiple tiny ordeals. Like putting on one sock, then having to remember to put on the other one. Or my nighttime bathroom routine, once so easy, now hopelessly fragmented. A shattered bathroom mirror on the tile floor.

Other times I find myself standing still, unable to decide which of countless things to do first. I don't have time to count the number of things on the list. I need to wash the dishes, I need to hide the liquor from my brother, I need to sort the laundry, to make sure I brought everything in off the porch. I can't forget to pull my iPod from the sound dock before I leave and I must remember to pack my running shoes. I'll be thinking of all these things and I won't know what to do first because as soon as I start doing one of them I might forget the other ones.

I think I should do the most important one first. But which one is most important?

And shit, wait: I probably won't forget the most important ones anyway. So I should do one of the other ones. Get the stupid ones out of the way while I'm thinking about them. No way I'd forget the important stuff. Do that later.

This is how you find yourself sorting baseball cards at 1:00am, baked beans congealing in the base of a yellow pot.

badlands

2009-07-01T00:46:00.003-04:00

We were gobbling up miles like ephedrine tablets. When the sun came up we found ourselves in the Badlands, foggy and green. To the north a flock of sheep stood motionless, like a cemetery right there in the middle of nothing.

We stopped for breakfast. I don't remember anything about the waiter except that he would look at me and then he would blink and when his eyes came open again they'd be looking at Eric. Words cannot describe how unsettling it was to watch him do this.

We ate up and drove on.

windsor, wisconsin

2009-06-29T15:54:00.007-04:00

Hard floors and white sheets
Linen curtains and a ceiling fan
murmuring on low

She lies on her stomach with
sweat pooling slowly in the small of her back,
brow knotted,
while I fix something simple at the stove

more crap

2009-06-19T02:16:00.002-04:00

so i've been meaning to rant for some time now about how unbelievably furious i get when people misuse the word "actually". as in: you play them some awesome song that no one could possibly dislike and they say "that's really good actually!"

but then some upstart blogger beat me to it. so anyway i'm going to shit out a couple of other word-use phenomena that've been making me increasingly angry before someone beats me to it:

(1) "Random"-- i don't feel like fully exploring how badly most people my age butcher the meaning of random. I'll just say this: those 25 Random Things i read About You on Facebook last January were NOT random. pretty much the exact opposite actually.

(2) "Literally"-- So I guess it's become vogue to point out/make fun when people misuse "literally". As in, "I literally shit a brick" or whatever. But like, isn't this just hyperbole? And really clever hyperbole at that?

I read something recently (Slate?) about how this use of "literally" bothers people, but no one ever cares when people use "really" in exactly the same way. As in, "the UVa baseball team really fucked the dog last night". No one is like, "really? they REALLY fucked the dog last night??" But it's the same shit.

It's the same shit.

Not Quite Blogworthy, Part Three

2009-06-11T17:15:00.003-04:00

Ironies:

Liking Peyton Manning more since he won the Super Bowl

Everybody loves robots, but everybody hates the Fox NFL robot

Hate karaoke, love singing in Rock Band (not sure this is irony)

I love watching TV more than anything in the world, but I hate TVs in taxicabs. I've got nothing better to do when I'm in a cab, but I still fly into a blind rage every time the TV comes on.

Really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

Not Quite Blogworthy, Part Two

2009-06-11T00:52:00.003-04:00

I was too big of a pussy to have a rebellious streak. The one thing I can remember doing was lighting a fire in a metal trashcan in my basement as a fourteen year old. It quickly set off the fire alarm upstairs and the last thing I remember about it was crying to my parents.

I was burning pages out of an old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Weeks earlier I had cut out all the pages with models on them and thrown the rest of the magazine away. One day I came home and decided I couldn't bear the risk of embarrassment if someone found the pictures so I decided to burn them.

I didn't want to do it outside for fear of torching the whole neighborhood like my brother almost did with some fireworks a few years earlier. Eventually I decided the Donald Duck wastebasket in my bedroom was safe enough because it was metal, but I also brought a bucket of water down from the garage just in case. Then I lit a match.

So anyway I'm on the white couch upstairs with my mom and my stepdad and I'm crying. But the thing is I didn't actually want to cry; the whole thing was kind of a charade. After the alarm went off and I knew I'd be in trouble, I calculated that crying would make my parents think something Serious or Important had just happened and I'd be better off in the long run if I were shown some compassion instead of being punished for almost burning down their fucking house.

And I guess it worked. I'm sure I got some nominal punishment, but I don't remember it. What I do remember was Mom asking if I was burning something important and that she would show me how to use the shredder in her office if I needed to get rid of anything sensitive. But I just lied and said I wasn't burning anything in particular, that I just wanted to see what it looked like.

Apparently I was more afraid of being exposed as a masturbator than I was of my parents thinking I was one of those dead-eyed pale kids who light shit on fire for no reason.

Not Quite Blogworthy, Part One

2009-06-09T22:35:00.002-04:00

[NB: Here's the first of a few entries I worked on recently but eventually gave up on. The lack of blogworthiness should be readily apparent.]

So you know that part in The Omnivore's Dilemma where he tries being a vegetarian for a while, and the first objection he has is how awkward it is to attend a dinner party because either you tell the hosts ahead of time and you feel guilty about making them go out of their way to make you something special or you don't tell them ahead of time and then THEY feel guilty because you don't eat anything all night?

Fine. But remember all this comes from a guy who advocates eating locally- and organically-produced food. Which anyone with an asshole can tell you is way harder for the average host to accommodate than a simple fucking pasta salad.

Seriously:

2009-02-17T15:34:00.002-05:00

what's the point of having a blog if you don't use it to pass along links like this?

Scenes from a kitchen

2009-02-15T21:51:00.008-05:00

Step 1. One time we decided to cook something that called for sauteed mushrooms. I took them out of the fridge and wiped them off with a paper towel while she peeled some garlic on the coffee table. She looked up as I started slicing.

"Uh, did you wash those?"

"Nah," I replied. "I was reading where you're not supposed to wash mushrooms before you cook them. They act like sponges and soak up the water, so when you cook them they end up steaming instead of sauteing and you lose most of the flavor. You're supposed to brush them off instead."

"Umm, well, mushrooms are dirty. You definitely need to wash them off first."

"Yeah, I was skeptical too. But you can look it up. The heat from the stove will kill any germs."

She walked into my tiny kitchen and looked at the cutting board. "You at least need to rinse them."

"We can rinse them if you want, but then we'd have to wait for them to dry." I looked at her and smiled. "I promise it's okay if we don't wash them."

"I don't fucking care, David. I don't care what you read." She swept the mushrooms into a colander and dropped it in the sink. "We're not making dinner without washing the mushrooms."
____

Step 2. Another time I asked her to hand me the salt. Instead of my usual box of coarse kosher Morton's, she passed me a small plastic container. The lid said 'SEA SALT' in her unmistakable handwriting.

"What?" I teased. "My salt isn't good enough for you?"

"Um, no. I had this at the old apartment. I didn't feel like packing it when I moved, so I thought I'd leave it with you. Jesus."
____

Step 3. A few weeks later we made a salad while we waited on our pizza. She told me to peel a cucumber while she chopped tomatoes.

Right as I was finishing up, she let out a sigh. "Oh Dave. You didn't need to peel the whole thing. We don't need that much."

I laid the cucumber naked on the counter.

"You know what's funny? I thought about only peeling half of it. But then I realized there was an equal chance I'd be wrong about that too. So I figured, you know, fuck it. I'll just do the whole thing."
___

Step 4. Combine mushrooms, cucumber and salt in a small apartment. Add bitterroot.

Serves two people right.

it's two things

2009-02-08T17:31:00.004-05:00

I went for a walk in the East Village last night around 2:00am. It's always fun to walk sober around a neighborhood full of dive bars that late on a Saturday. Hordes of drunken dudes in jeans and black shoes, hysterical women in patent heels screaming into cell phones, couples hovering on the corner waving frantically for a cab, shivering: they make for some pretty great people watching. A visibly drunk driver careened through an intersection, blasting his horn the entire way. A Latina in a red dress crawled along the ground, searching for something tiny, while a cop aimed his flashlight at the sidewalk and chatted with her boyfriend.

Last night reminded me of a walk I took a couple of years ago, soon after I moved to New York. I wrote this email to a friend on January 6, 2007:

It was 72 degrees in New York City this afternoon. I woke up late, watched Tech upset Duke, then went for a walk, south, towards Tompkins Square Park.

The park has two enclosed areas called dog runs, where dogs can shoot the breeze without wearing a leash. One is for big dogs, over 30 pounds, and the other is for little ones. In the little run, I watched one dog fuck another dog while one of the owners took pictures on his camera phone. The photographer was wearing shorts.

As I meandered through the park, the wind shifted and I smelled a pine tree 20 feet away. Two twentysomething girls walked by and one of them said "what I'd like to do is stick it up his little punk rock butt."

I went over to Avenue C, aka Avenida Loisaida, and continued south, warm. As I crossed 5th street, two boys, probably 10 years old, overtook me. As they passed, one of them said "he's a asshole."

"Yeah," the other agreed. "A real ASS hole."

Down in the Lower East Side, I ate a bagel and read your text message. Moments later I heard two kids yelling from their 4th story window at a third kid down on the street. They were trying to convince him to go down some stairs into a bodega's underground storage room. In the alley across the street, an ancient woman carefully hung laundry over the railing of her wrought iron balcony.

So I went home, made some penne a la vodka, and watched football all night on my 99 foot TV.

Simpleton Fails Yet Again To Think Before He Acts

2008-11-22T15:05:00.003-05:00

My law firm sometimes serves free breakfast on Fridays, from 8 to 10:00 am. These meals generate more enthusiasm than you might expect. It's usually just orange juice and doughy bagels and single servings of Kellogg's cereal, but free shit is free shit, and by 10:00 the cafeteria is pretty well cleaned out.

One Friday I got to work late and got in the elevator around 9:55. On the way to my floor, the elevator stopped at the cafeteria and picked up a woman carrying a plate of food.

We smiled and said hello to each other. Then, gesturing towards her plate, I said: "Is there anything left down there?"

What I'd meant to ask was whether it was worth it to go downstairs and get some breakfast or if everything was already gone. But for SOME reason this poor woman thought I was calling her out for taking too much food. A quick glance at her face confirmed that she totally mortified.

She got off at the next floor, and I awkwardly stepped into the doorway of the elevator to hold it open. "I'm sorry," I stammered. She turned and looked at me impatiently. "I just meant...is there, you know, am I too late to go down and get some breakfast?" I tried laughing a little. "I didn't mean to suggest, you know, that you were umm. I mean..."

This wasn't helping. I stepped backwards into the elevator. "I really didn't mean it like that!" I yelped, desperately, as the doors drew shut.

I can not feel what to say

2008-10-14T00:13:00.001-04:00

After I graduated college, some buddies and I took a road trip around the country, and I decided to keep a journal along the way. Another thing I did along the way was leave all my luggage in a parking lot in Albuquerque NM, where it was forthrightly stolen by local jerks. Strangely, though, my journal contains no mention of this incident. When I look at it these days, I'm struck by how absurd it is that I never included-- among all the incredibly boring shit-- an account of how I lost something so important.

I'm only mentioning this because I wondered today how I would feel in a few years if I looked back at this blog and realized I never wrote anything about the passing of David Foster Wallace.

So, reluctantly:

I feel sure Wallace has had a greater impact on my life than any other person I've never actually met. When I was in college, my brother sent me a used copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Wallace's first essay collection. I don't really know why he did it. I was never a reader growing up: I'm embarrassed to say I could count on one hand the number of books I'd ever read for pleasure. But I read it all, very slowly, the summer before my senior year, and I've been reading ever since. I'm not sure how I'd look at the world, what I'd talk about at cocktail parties, what my sense of humor would be like, even who many of my friends would be, if Jack never sent me that book.

(At the very least, I feel sure, certain blogs would not exist.)

Of course I read Wallace's other stuff too. There are boatloads of moving Wallace obituaries scattered all over the web, many of which mention-- with due praise-- his most well-known works: A Supposedly Fun Thing..., Infinite Jest, the Roger Federer piece for the New York Times, the McCain piece for Rolling Stone. Since I don't have anything else to add to the growing chorus of loving memories and tributes out there, I thought I'd put in a plug for some of Wallace's less famous, though no less brilliant, contributions.

The story "Everything is Green" from Girl with Curious Hair. I think this is usually written off for what it probably was: a grad student coming to grips with Raymond Carver. But it's also one of the most evocative things I've ever read. Plus it's only 2 pages long and you can read it here for free.
The intro to his pop math book, Everything and More. Intelligence, articulation, wit and humility in spades. In a non-fiction "booklet" about infinity, no less.
"Octet", from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. What seems at first like a lame ploy ends up being a fascinating insight into the craft of fiction writing.
The part near the end of his first novel, The Broom of the System, where one of the characters tells the main character about how he used to visit his grandmother in the nursing home every Sunday when he was little. Besides the punch-bowl scene near the end of Nabokov's Pnin, probably my favorite moment in all of literature.

Go read David Foster Wallace. He will make your life better.

garfield minus garfield

2008-08-19T23:56:00.000-04:00

Again thanks to my brother, here's another modified comic strip that qualifies as the funniest thing I've seen in a long fucking time.

And as long as you're here, go ahead and take another gander at the Nietzsche Family Circus.

a commercial to hate

2008-08-04T15:34:00.003-04:00

Here's a new commercial to hate, as well as a compelling reason to dust off the ol' boycott of things I'd never buy anyway:

This commercial represents a bold shift in the faux-masculine marketing strategy that initially prompted my boycott. Rather than use crude stereotypes and homophobia to sell traditionally male products (like beer and fast food), the Mike's guys are betting these same tools can be used to sell something no male I know has ever purchased. My hunch is that market research found no demographic interested in buying an overly sweet, fruit-flavored malt beverage, so their last-ditch effort to turn things around was simply to tell people that Mike's Hard Lemonade is manly, then hope no one notices that the underlying product has always been about the wussiest thing on earth.

The optimist in me hopes this commercial represents nothing more than the death knell sounding on a really shitty product, rather than the beginning of another depressing cycle of commercials trafficking in tired gender clichés.

The optimist in me is small.

latest entry: 3 Ghostface Killah albums

2008-06-15T02:09:00.006-04:00

I woke up this afternoon with exactly one thing on my to-do list: buy every Ghostface Killah album ever made. After brunch, I set out with my bemused but ultimately sympathetic companion (let's call her "BBUSC") for the Virgin Megastore at Union Square and was disappointed to find they only had four of Ghostface's seven records. I snatched them up and began to plot my next move.

BBUSC suggested we try the Barnes & Noble across the way. To her credit, she wasn't optimistic about B&N stocking any Ghostface albums, but it was nearby and seemed like a risk worth taking. (The embarrassing, unspoken subtext of this conversation was that neither of us could think of a nearby independent music store in downtown fucking Manhattan.) Of course those bitches at B&N didn't sell any Ghostface records, but the trip wasn't a total loss because it gave me the opportunity to try to convince BBUSC that Ghostface was also an accomplished novelist who published under the name Richard Russo. (Again to her credit, I failed.)

Fortunately, as the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of remembering where the hell an actual record store is. Sure enough, my pressing need to own every Ghostface Killah album stoked my memory of a store over on 2nd Avenue down past St. Mark's Place. This place only had two Ghostface albums, but-- amazingly, when you think about it-- both happened to be among the three I still needed.

I was exhausted and decided to go home. Actually I couldn't remember for sure if Ghostface had six albums or seven, and I didn't want to waste valuable Ghostface listening time walking around NYC looking for a seventh album that maybe didn't even exist. (If anybody knows where I can find The Pretty Toney Album, do let me know.)

Anyhoo, all this is a pretty long way of getting to my point. Looking back at my search, I realized that the number of Ghostface albums for sale is a pretty good measure of how good a record store is. Think about it: in an ideal world, you could decide you finally want to own every Ghostface Killah album ever made, go to one store, then have nothing to worry about for the rest of your life. Conversely, what the fuck is the point of even calling yourself a fucking record store if your fucking customers always walk out with exactly the same fucking number of Ghostface albums they walked in with?

So yeah. Virgin Megastore? 4 Ghostface albums. B&N? 0 Ghostface Albums. Independent record store on 2nd Ave? 2 Ghostface albums. Seems about right.

I also thought it'd be fun to rate the rest of my day on this scale:

brunch at Westville East: 6 Ghostface Killah albums
Wet Hot American Summer: 4.5 Ghostface Killah albums
afternoon thunderstorm: 7 Ghostface Killah albums
attendant humidity: 0 Ghostface Killah albums
midnight showing of Eraserhead: (pass)
Ghostface Killah's last album: 5 Ghostface Killah albums

All fucking day

2008-05-21T22:01:00.005-04:00

My bottle of Olay face lotion says, right there on the front, "all day moisture lotion SPF 15".

Great. But this morning I read the back for the first time: "Directions: For all day SPF 15 protection, apply liberally on face and neck as often as necessary." Kind of changes the tenor of the claim on the front, eh? Why not just call it lifetime moisture lotion?

It reminded me of one time in college when I tried to buy a bottle of Pert Plus. I was looking for "Normal", but apparently they'd abandoned that label in favor of "Classically Clean". It was right there next to "Oily" and "Dry and Damaged". I remember thinking, "what the fuck kind of a way to promote a product is that? This hair cleaning product is meant for people with hair that's...already clean?"

I also remember coming back to the apartment that day and finding my roommate with this girl he'd been trying to date. I thought a good idea would be to sit down and explain to them why I thought labeling a shampoo bottle "Classically Clean" was a stupid fucking idea. I wanted the girl to think his roommates were funny and interesting, but maybe I was trying too hard.

Live and learn, I guess.

Kindly also retire these jokes

2008-05-08T22:31:00.005-04:00

(5) The word "ginormous". Sure, this is just another example of my general proscription on mashing words together to make fake words, but this one deserves special mention. You know what I'll do? I'll take TWO FUCKING SYNONYMS and mash them together to make...ANOTHER FUCKING SYNONYM!!! Fuck me.

(6) Thinking clowns are scary and/or creepy. This is the most predictable thing on Earth. When was the last time you heard an adult talk about clowns without using this joke? And what's more, it's a stupid joke anyway. What's so scary about some asshole who dresses funny and talks to strangers? Are you afraid of the Pope, too?

i'll try not to be so selfish

2008-04-07T01:00:00.002-04:00

My cousins are visiting from Charlotte this week. When I met them this afternoon, eight-year-old Lucy handed me a story she had written:

Once upon a time there were four mice who were in a family there names were David, Lucy, Nana Pat, and Grand dad. David was so lazy he only gatherd food for himself he played all day when Lucy, Nana pat, and Grandad worked all day. We worked so hard one day that david said we were lazy and he did all the work. Then one day david scarfed down the food at dinner time and didn't leav us any at all. so one day all of us but not david were so angry we said to david "We are tired of you eating are dinner every night look how skinny we are we have not eaten in ages because you are hoging every thing." Then Daivd said "Okay i'll try not to be so selfish." So then the four mice lived happliy ever after.

Huh.

I've got a new attitude

2008-04-01T20:24:00.005-04:00

I've decided to start taking this blog much more seriously. Starting today, I'm going to start writing every day, hopefully contributing something more substantive than a link or a Youtube clip. I realized on the subway this morning that I have plenty to say; I've just been too lazy to get it out. I'd like to thank my readers for their patience during this dry spell, and I promise your loyalty will be rewarded in short order.

Today I'd like to talk about the economy.

APRIL FOOL'S MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!

I still don't have shit to say, but I'd be remiss not to pass along this link. It's the least I can do.

Get a load of this

2008-03-14T01:11:00.009-04:00

Great as Full Metal Jacket is, I must admit I never really appreciated the ol' gun-as-penis metaphor. But now that I'm the owner of a huge fucking shotgun, it's starting to make sense.

Here's something interesting

2008-03-13T10:46:00.002-04:00

The full story can be read here.

Isn't that interesting?

thing

2008-03-10T01:23:00.003-04:00

We slept later than we'd meant to; it was a Sunday. Eventually we got up and put ourselves together for a run. We ran a while but I pulled up with a bad knee and we had to walk back. We needed milk for the pancakes but she'd remembered to slip a $5 bill in her sock before we left so we stopped at a gas station and bought some milk and a bottle of water that we shared in the sun.

The pancakes were buckwheat and not much by themselves but they were alright with fruit on them. We ate in front of the tv with the Redskins game on and read the Times intermittently. I gathered up the dishes when we were done and took them to the kitchen then she came over and we washed them together in silence. She told me later she thought about having sex then, which would have been alright but instead we went back to the couch and the game and she put her legs and her purple toenails over my lap which was alright too.

At some point my friend called and by the time I hung up the phone the Jets had tied the score and we got to watch overtime while I packed. She took some grapes and some Halloween-sized Kit Kats and another bottle of water and put it all in a brownbag for my flight and she did all of this without ceremony.

Then we went down to the corner and got me in a cab. We looked at each other as I drove away but the car was pointed in the wrong direction when I got in it and when it made a u-turn we had to look at each other some more. Finally it made a left, out of sight, and I went back to where I came from.

holy moly this is awesome

2008-03-01T00:10:00.004-05:00

Happy March, assholes.

Things in my apartment that got ashed on last weekend (partial list):

2008-02-27T23:42:00.002-05:00

(1) brand new ottoman
(2) my only plant (deceased)
(3) two full beers
(4) Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
(5) the floor

Please retire the following jokes

2008-02-26T23:01:00.007-05:00

Okay, it's long past time to retire some fucking jokes. I don't think I've heard anyone who reads this use any of these, but in case I'm calling you out, whatever. You should know better and one day you'll thank me:

(1) The phrase "not so much".

(2) Blending words together to make fake words. I got some mileage out of this joke in AP History class when I suggested that Abraham Lincoln's postwar reconstruction plan should be called "Lincolnstruction". But that was over a decade ago. Fortunately, I have a feeling the always stupid and increasingly unavoidable Obama words (Obamamentum, Barackstar, et cetera) is going to suck the life right out of this joke.

(2)(part 2) Those AT&T ads where they smash multiple cities into one fake word like Chilondoscow or New San Frakota have been pissing me off for weeks. If you happened to work on these ads, please retire.

(3) "Best. [Something]. Ever." Just stop it. Please please please please please stop it. Obviously this goes for "Worst..." as well.

(4) That joke where you say "If by '[x]', you mean '[the opposite of x]', then yeah, [x]." As in, "If by 'studied for my test' you mean 'ate chocolate ice cream and watched Gossip Girl all day', then yeah, I studied for my test." It's time we turned the tables on this tired ploy. Start saying things like, "If by 'hungover', you mean 'dehydrated and fatigued with a pounding headache because I drank 12 beers and passed out in the stairwell last night', then yeah, I'm hungover." This is a much better joke.

That's all I can think of. But I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be revisiting this topic.

Watch him as he goes

2008-02-13T22:49:00.008-05:00

Roger Clemens and I share a last name. Pretty much solely on account of this coincidence, he was my hero growing up. Clemens first made a splash in 1986, as a member of the ill-fated Red Sox team that lost a heartbreaking World Series to the Mets. The following year, my dad decided it was time to introduce me to baseball, and the first person he told me about was Clemens, indisputably the best pitcher in the American League. Dad didn't know if we were related to Roger, but the relative obscurity of our last name enabled me to hold out hope for years that I shared some of those incredible genes.

He's the reason I became a Red Sox fan. By the time he devastated most of New England by signing with the Blue Jays (and soon after accepting a trade to the Yankees), my loyalties had long since shifted from player to team; Clemens left, but I stayed with the Sox.

He's the reason I skipped class to drive to Boston for their historic victory parade in 2004. He's the reason I dressed up as Manny Ramirez for a costume party, ridiculously wearing a black pom-pom on my head to simulate dreadlocks. He's the reason I love Pedro Martinez in embarrassing and inarticulable ways.

Still, Clemens was always my idol. I remember listening to Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on the car radio in October 2000, on the way back from visiting my girlfriend in Massachusetts. He struck out 15 batters while throwing a complete game one-hitter against the Mariners, probably the greatest postseason performance of the last 50 years. He was with the Yankees at the time-- and god I hate the Yankees-- but I was there for him on every pitch.

_______________

I found out we weren't related when I read a fawning Sports Illustrated piece on Roger in the early 1990s. The article mentioned in passing that he wasn't related to Mark Twain-- aka Samuel Clemens-- to whom I knew I was related thanks to my grandmother's extensive genealogy a decade prior.

When people would ask how to spell my last name, I would always tell them "it's spelled like Roger Clemens." A major turning point in my life came as a salesman for a travel agency after college, when, having made thousands of cold calls to assholes all over the country, I realized more of them recognized Samuel Clemens than they did Roger. As a naive 21 year old, it was hard to believe anyone didn't know who Roger was (much less that anyone DID know Mark Twain's real name). It took me 15 years of hero worship before I realized that (a) Sam Clemens was far more famous than Roger could ever hope to be, and (b) it's far, far, far more interesting to be related to Sam than to Roger.

Another Roger Clemens-inspired watershed moment occurred this afternoon, during Clemens's testimony before the Congressional oversight committee investigating illegal drug use in baseball. When asked if he was a vegan-- part of a series of questions relating to why he accepted injections of Vitamin B-12-- Clemens explained that he doesn't know what a vegan is. (A fuller explanation of the questioning can be found here.)

I was startled by how sharply this statement drew into contrast the life I lead and the one I thought I wanted as a kid. Being a vegetarian is really important to me. So is having a working knowledge of lifestyles and cultures besides my own. And so is knowing the meanings of common words.

Over and out, Roger.

Nietzsche Family Circus

2007-12-22T12:44:00.000-05:00

For anyone still reading, here's the funniest thing I've seen this month, if not ever:

"Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species."

Click here for more randomized pairings of Nietzsche quotes and Family Circus images. Thanks to my brother for bringing this to my attention.

Man it's a trip how the world keeps turnin'

2007-11-24T23:06:00.000-05:00

If someone would have told me ten years ago-- as a high school senior-- that I'd be making well over a hundred thousand dollars a year as a 26 year old, I'd have been a little dubious.

And if someone would have told me one year ago-- as a Manhattan lawyer-- that I'd spend the lion's share of 2007 living in a shopping mall in Charlotte, North Carolina (and driving a Chevy Impala), I'd have been outright incredulous.

But if someone would have told me one week ago-- as a self-respecting human being-- that I'd spend the night before Thanksgiving backstage at an Evanescence concert?

Shit.

God fucking god dammit

2007-11-14T23:00:00.000-05:00

Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo is publishing a book of poetry based on email spam. Well, bunghole, you're a little late to the game. Ever hear of...CERTAIN FUCKING BLOGS???

But as long as he's stealing my awesome ideas, I think he should promote his book by hosting a series of Poetry Spams all over the country.

That's just what I think.

No country for chinamen

2007-11-12T16:21:00.000-05:00

While I've been working in Charlotte, my employer has generously put me up in a shopping mall. More precisely, a corporate housing park adjoining a shopping mall.

My neighborhood's centerpiece is a P.F. Chang's restaurant. In my 6+ months in Charlotte (no shit), I've run, walked, or driven by this restaurant hundreds of times. But last weekend was the first time I paid any attention to its full name: P.F. Chang's China Bistro.

Now, China is a noun. Bistro is a noun. Juxtaposed, the two words don't make any sense. Presumably, what Paul Fleming (P.F.) and Phillip Chiang (Chang; rather obviously sic) wanted to connote was the idea of a Chinese bistro. Why they didn't just use "Chinese Bistro" is anybody's guess.

(Not that "P.F. Chang's Chinese Bistro" would be totally accurate, either. But at least it's coherent. And I'm willing to admit that "P.F. Chang's Bistro Serving Food that One Might Charitably-- in a Moment of Postprandial Narcosis, Perhaps-- Call 'Chinese-Inspired'" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.)

These days, every time I look at the sign, I can't help but think of the word "Chinaman". Am I the only person to make this connection? I won't go so far as to accuse P.F. Chang's of racism, but isn't it amazingly stupid to name your restaurant after something that evokes a well-known racial epithet? Especially when you have to butcher the English language to do so?

That's all for tonight. Please join me next time for another episode of Painful and Turgid Discourses on Stupid Shit that Nobody Else Could Possibly Care About.

An old fashioned rant

2007-11-02T15:54:00.000-04:00

(1) I sure hate the internet. The latest thing to piss me off is user-generated content. Web 2.0 or whatever you assholes call it. You know who has consistently dumb ideas and opinions? Users. It reminds me of those asinine discussion sections from college and the Socratic Method in law school, where lazy professors decide that letting their ignorant students discuss complicated issues is a better use of everyone’s time than actually bothering to teach anything. I realize I sound like a stuffy old ivory tower pedant, but fuck it: I’m a stuffy old ivory tower pedant.

I suppose I don’t care that these comments features exist per se; I certainly don’t bother reading them. What really worries me is how ESPN.com has begun posting user comments on the front page of its site, as if these uninformed, barely intelligible opinions are somehow their own form of news. Appending these comments to the end of an article is one thing, but advertising the comments as an independent reason to view the site is something else. What’s most depressing is ESPN’s tacit admission that its only goal is ad revenue. It’s only a news organization to the extent that news reporting attracts advertisers. If hosting a forum for amateur teenagers who can’t spell to discuss their thoughts on Human Growth Hormone and call each other douchebags turns out to attract more revenue, then I guess that’s what sports fans can look forward to. Fuck me.

(2) I think the makers of my Sony Ericsson W810 cell phone are anti-Semitic. My auto-text feature doesn’t recognize the word “bagel”. On the other hand, “Hitler rules” always pops right up.

(3) I’m the only heterosexual male vegetarian I know (unless my brother is a vegetarian again. And still heterosexual).

I don’t know what to make of this.

(4) Speaking of the internet, the OTHER most infuriating thing of all time is how pretty much every site now features video content of stuff that has no need for video. Slate.com recently introduced Slate V, some bullshit video feature that includes a weekly animated Dear Prudence letter and response. The video adds absolutely nothing to the feature: the columnist simply reads the letter over an animated dramatization of the letter’s content, then stares at the camera and gives her answer. It’s just like the print version, except it takes longer and I have to worry about having the right flash drivers and pissing off my colleagues in the next office. Isn’t that awesome? ESPN, Yahoo and CNN, to name 3 of my least favorite daily sites, all do the same thing. Now if I’m browsing the web for FILTHY INTERRACIAL BUKKAKE FACIALS, then obviously I wouldn’t mind a video or two. But if I want to know which of my decrepit running backs to start in my fantasy league, I don’t want to wait for a stream of some ugly nutsack being interviewed by some other nutsack. Just feed me the fucking information.

Balls.

How to Be a Lawyer, Part Three: Getting the Damn Thing Over With

2007-10-29T00:24:00.002-04:00

(Part One)

(Part Two)

STEP NINE, I THINK: Summer internships are so easy a caveman could do it. Them. In fact there's only one thing you need to know: the word "right". Because you come from a prestigious law school (assuming you followed my advice), your supervisors will expect you to know something about the law. Fortunately for you, a properly inflected "right" coupled with a terse nod of the head will convince every partner you understand what they're talking about.

"All this is is a pretty simple amendment to the credit facilities. You probably saw there's a first and second lien, but they're both pretty straightforward."
"Right."
"Anyway the hard part is gonna be obtaining the two-thirds consent needed to adjust the debt coverage ratios in order for the company to avoid a default."
"Right."
"Because obviously the lenders are gonna make them pay through the nose for this."
"Right."

I swear to God, somehow this works. I don't think I said anything besides "right", "thanks", and "Glenlivet" for the first three weeks of my internship.

Nine weeks later, the law firm will offer you a job.

STEP TEN: One smart thing to do after you get a job is to set about alienating every person you've ever been close to. This is a little harder than it sounds, but now that you're gainfully employed, law school isn't exactly taxing; you should have plenty of time to focus. One way to start is to hardly pay attention when your best friend starts dating someone who will eventually become his fianceé. If you're dating someone yourself, now is a good time to start disregarding his/her feelings and doing whatever you please all day long. By all means: ramp up the drinking. And it's not a bad idea to remind everyone you know that you'll soon make more money in one year than all of their lowly ancestors' lifetime earnings put together. It's pretty fun once you get into it.

STEP ELEVEN: By now, you're so close to being a blowhard corporate lawyer you can taste it. All you've got to do is pass the Bar. Unfortunately, the Bar presents an interesting challenge to a slacker like yourself: try as you might, there's pretty much no way to pass this thing without actually studying for it all summer. So if you want to bumble your way through this, you're going to have to be creative. Here are a few quick and easy tips:

(a) When your law school's records department says they mailed all your relevant information to the NY Bar Association, it's a good idea to believe them and not-- under any circumstances-- check with the Bar to make sure they received everything.

(b) Start a blog.

(c) When you run into a classmate sitting by himself at the bar at your local Outback steakhouse and you tell him nervously that you haven't booked a hotel in Albany yet and he laughs and says you're probably already fucked but he'll make some calls on your behalf RIGHT NOW, RIGHT FUCKIN NOW AT THE BAR AT OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE while you sit down and eat your stupid vegetarian pasta primavera alfredo bullshit, it's not a bad idea to believe him. Go ahead and nurture this incredibly insane delusion until a week before the Bar, without ever once bothering to ask him if he actually booked you a room or if he was just blowing smoke.

(d) When it's exactly one week before the Bar and you all of a sudden realize in a panic that you haven't received a seating assignment for the exam because the Bar never got your law school information, and finally come around to the idea that your drunken acquaintance at Outback probably didn't actually book you a hotel room because it occurs to you he doesn't even know your last name, and then also try booting up your computer to search for a last-minute hotel and find your computer is deader than a god damned doornail and all of a sudden it hits you flush that you can't access your notes and outlines for the Bar exam and hell apparently you're not even signed up for the fucking Bar anyway and even if you were you still don't have a place to stay; when this happens and you can honestly say you've treated the most important test of your entire life with the same crippling-fear-disguised-as-nonchalance that's confounded everyone you ever used to be close to since that time in kindergarten when your teacher had to tell your parents to stop letting you do your homework in fucking crayon, and when you look this realization square in the eye (so to speak) and tell it honestly "yes, this is the way i've chosen to live my life", now's when you know you're ready to pick up and move to a huge city 400 miles away from anyone who ever loved you and start working a 70 hour a week job that you can make a pretty strong case you're ghastlily unqualified for.

By comparison, the Bar exam is a trip to the zoo.

STEP TWELVE: Congratulations. You're a corporate lawyer. Everything you've ever dreamed of is now yours for the taking.

But just in case you wake up alone one morning in your sparsely-appointed efficiency and realize you've never had especially vivid or creative dreams, or if one day you're sitting in an airport playing BrickBreaker on your BlackBerry and decide all at once that putzing your way through college and law school is one thing but faking your way through the next 50 years is a whole other kettle of fish, just in case this ever happens to you, probably the best thing to do right then is to close your eyes and take one deep breath.

After that, you're on your own.

The Big Obvious Ripoff World Series Running Diary

2007-10-25T16:07:00.001-04:00

Living in a city where you know zero people doesn't exactly make watching the baseball playoffs a lot of fun. Rather than sit around watching game one of the World Series by myself in my underwear, I thought I'd sit around watching game one of the World Series by myself in my underwear while keeping a running diary of the game. Sure, I'm ripping off The Sports Guy, but fuck it: who doesn't these days?

Bottom 1st, one out: With Youkilis on second, Ortiz squares around to bunt. Tim McCarver is so apoplectic he doesn't make any sense: "Here's a guy who DISDAINS on base percentage! And he's trying to bunt?!" Uh, Tim? Maybe you meant "reveres"? "Venerates"? "Lives and dies by"? Because you definitely didn't mean "disdains".

End of the 1st: One of those stupid iPhone commercials. You know the one where the pilot says his flight was delayed so he gets on his iPhone and checks weather.com and tells the dispatcher the weather system is passing? What the hell?? That's so obviously fake. What? The fucking dispatchers aren't monitoring the fucking weather? Plus: what did the pilot do that he couldn't have done on a Blackberry five years ago? Jesus.

Another commercial: Dane Cook, official spokesperson for October/Rocktober/Actober: "Someone...will do SOMETHING...that will SYMBOLIZE THEIR CAREER!" No, Dane. That barely even makes sense.

Bottom 2nd, two out: McCarver points out that the Rockies are defending Ortiz straight up the middle, rather than shifting the infield towards right field. Every other team would have the third baseman playing at shortstop, ready to cover second on a double play. Either the Rockies know something nobody else does, or Ortiz is going to make them pay.

Still Ortiz: Ortiz doubles to left field on a line drive that barely clears a perfectly positioned Tulowitzki at shortstop. Huh.

Top 3rd, one out: It's raining steadily in Boston and the groundskeeper just told the home plate umpire it's about to get worse. I admire the fans for staying so fired up: Boston in the rain is an incredibly depressing place. It rained when I was in Boston in 2004 for the Red Sox' victory parade. We drove all night to get there, but the rain was so depressing we actually thought about skipping the parade. So.

Top 4th, one out: You know what I've been meaning to rant about forever? Those fucking in-game managerial interviews. It's obvious the managers hate doing them; they're managing a fucking playoff game, for crying out loud. No manager with a brain stem would ever say anything interesting during the middle of a game. And worst of all, THE GAME IS GOING ON OFF CAMERA WHILE THEY TALK. As if on cue, Helton doubles off the Green Monster while Francona is busy telling the audience what a bad cribbage player Dustin Pedroia is.

Bottom 4th, 2 out: The Rockies MUST know something about Ortiz. There's no one on base, yet they still play him straight up, defensively. Lo and behold, he hits it to left field again, this time for a single. The Sox are catching tons of breaks, but the Rockies are obviously a brilliant defensive team.

Top 5th, one out: This is getting boring. The umpire is squeezing Beckett's strike zone something fierce, presumably trying to keep the game close any way he can.

Bottom 5th, two out: Ortiz up again, and damned if Colorado's outfield isn't actually shading towards left field. They've gone beyond playing him straight and are actually playing him to go the other way. Ortiz lines a double to dead center, where any sane centerfielder would have been standing, for an easy double. Maybe I spoke too soon about Colorado's defensive genius.

Bottom 5th, two out: Field reporter extraordinaire Ken Rosenthal just said the Rockies defeated the Cubs and the Diamondbacks in the National League playoffs. WRONG. Way to be prepared, Ken.

The rest of the damn game: It's like 837 -1 at this point, and I'm fresh out of things to say. As much as I love the Red Sox, I wouldn't mind a competitive game or two before they wrap this thing up.

Thanks for indulging this horribly failed experiment. I promise I'll get back to never blogging again shortly.

More Sports

2007-10-02T10:46:00.001-04:00

Last night's one game playoff between the Rockies and the Padres to determine the National League's Wild Card recipient was exciting as hell.

All well and good. But more importantly, doesn't Matt Holliday look like Darth Vader after he takes his helmet off in Return of the Jedi? I say yes:

ps. I wonder who taught Holliday to slide head first into home. You can bet it wasn't Rockies manager Casey Stengel.

2007-10-01T09:14:00.001-04:00

In NFL news, the NY Giants humiliated the Philadelphia Eagles 16-3 last night, sacking the Eagles' Donovan McNabb an NFL record 12 times. Defensive end Usi Umenyiora led the charge, registering six of those sacks by himself.

None of this is especially interesting, except that "Umenyiora" sounds uncannily like "human urine". And this made for some fun imaginary commentary between Al Michaels and John Madden in the NBC booth:

Michaels: "John, it looks like New York's defensive game plan is gonna be Umenyiora, Umenyiora, and more Umenyiora!"

Madden: "You said it, Al. I was talking to coach Fassel before the game, and he told me they were gonna throw Umenyiora at McNabb from all directions. He wasn't kidding!"

Michaels: "So far the plan has worked flawlessly. McNabb has had Umenyiora in his face all night long!"

Madden: "I really thought the Eagles' offensive line would dominate tonight. But Umenyiora has really changed the flow of this football game!"

Banner August Begets Barren September

2007-09-24T19:12:00.000-04:00

As the headline suggests, I don't have much to say these days.

But I feel obligated to put in a fervent plug for the NBC drama Friday Night Lights. I just spent the last week watching all of the first season on DVD, and it's easily the best non-HBO drama I've ever watched.

Hell, it's probably the best non-The Wire drama I've ever watched. It's better written and acted than The Sopranos, and the casting is just as good. And unlike The Sopranos, there are no wasted episodes (I'm looking at YOU, entire first half of season six).

The bizarre thing is, for a show about high school football, the worst part of the show-- by far-- is the football. Fortunately the ridiculously overdramatic games only show up for a few minutes every other episode. Everything else is A+.

And don't be deterred by the subject matter. FNL is about football only in the same way that Cheers was about drinking.

NBC has made the entire first season available for free online. You can watch the first 3 episodes in about 2 hours. Treat it like a free movie rental; watch them and tell me you're not hooked.

ESPN.com's The Sports Guy has also recently begged his readers to give FNL a fair shake. For all you ladies out there (ladies?), here's the best part of Simmons's article:

"Quite simply, FNL is the best date show ever, an improbable cross between The O.C. and every sports show you ever wanted Hollywood to make. It's the first show my wife and I have loved equally."

I'm tired of typing. Just watch the damn show and you won't be disappointed.

Good Morning

2007-09-12T10:05:00.001-04:00

Anecdotal reports suggest that Kanye West outsold 50 Cent yesterday. It's hard to believe 50 will actually retire, but it's still pretty fun to think about.

My early favorite line: "I'm like a fly Malcolm X: buy any jeans necessary".

----------------
Currently playing: Kanye West - Good Morning [Intro]

Can't Tell Me Nothin

2007-08-29T11:50:00.001-04:00

I'm painfully aware that this blog is degenerating into a lazy series of YouTube clips. That said, for lack of time (and inspiration), here's a lazy, albeit incredibly hilarious, YouTube clip:

Kanye's new album drops September 11th, the same day as 50 Cent's. In case you needed extra motivation, there's a rumor going around that 50 will retire if Kanye outsells him.

yet another story about oral hygiene

2007-08-19T11:04:00.001-04:00

one of my friends is french. indelibly so. the other day he had a dental appointment that made him late to an afternoon meeting. as he walked in, i asked him how everything went.

"let me ask you a question," he said, by way of reply. "do you guys floss?"

"fuck no," i explained. "of course not," someone chimed in.

"oh, okay," he said, looking visibly relieved. "the dental hygienist asked me if i flossed. i wasn't sure, so i had to ask her: 'what is flossing?'"
______________________

Death to the encore!

2007-08-17T09:43:00.001-04:00

Certain brothers sent me a link to a good article about how much encores suck. I won't bother rehashing all the reasons, but man do they (the encores) usually suck. What was (presumably) designed as an honest way for an audience to show their appreciation for a really kick-ass show has devolved into a mandatory feature of virtually every performance. Playing an encore is like leaving a tip at a restaurant. The only time you don't is when something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Interestingly, last month's Pitchfork Music Festival afforded an opportunity to experience the thrill of a not-totally-expected encore. The first night of the festival was kind of gimmicky: it featured 3 bands each playing their most famous album from start to finish. Slint played first (some album I've never heard of), then the Wu Tang Clan's GZA (Liquid Swords), then Sonic Youth capped off the night with Daydream Nation.

Playing an entire album at a live event has some serious drawbacks. There's no anticipation of what song the band will play next or what they'll end with. Often the best songs come near the beginning. Between-song banter feels out of place, destroying the integrity of the album rather than being interesting or (in the case of The New Pornographers) hilarious.

But as Sonic Youth was finished up their album-ending "Trilogy", the one cool thing about an album feature came to light: no one knew if they would play an encore. They were the last show of the evening. A handful of people left. As the rest of us stayed and cheered, there was a real sense of excitement because we really didn't know if they would come back out. And if they did come out, we had no idea what they would play because they had already performed their most famous song as a part of Daydream Nation.

The encore was the best part of the show, by far. I can't speak for the rest of the audience, but I felt like we earned the encore we were enjoying, rather than getting something we all felt entitled to.

This is what all encores should feel like. Let's put an end to the tomfoolery and save encores for the transcendent shows that really deserve one. And eat some toast every once in a while, too.

----------------
Right click and save: The New Pornographers - Myriad Harbour

Yea Yeah!

2007-08-15T09:10:00.001-04:00

Kill some time on a Wednesday:

Quite a musing

2007-08-14T20:48:00.000-04:00

Here's a memory.

I remember in high school having an argument with my then-friend Jenny. I told her she didn't really love her boyfriend because she was a smoker. I explained that no one who was capable of treating herself so irresponsibly could be capable of truly loving someone. That if she really loved him, she would want to live as long as she could.

As you can probably imagine even if you've never met Jenny-- and certainly if you have-- this made her incredibly pissed off.

I remember remembering this story one night in college, sitting on my back porch in the dark. I was smoking a cigarette, watching its lit end light up my spectral face in a window every time I took a drag. I had been out there, alone, trying to figure out what I could do to get my ex-girlfriend back when the fight with Jenny came back to me instead.

As the cherry burned towards the filter, I could see myself more and more clearly in the dark window. I leaned back in my chair, quietly amused at how little I had known in high school, loudly naïve to how little I had learned since.

----------------
Currently playing: Of Montreal - The Past Is A Grotesque Animal

An Actual Mailbag

2007-08-06T12:47:00.002-04:00

Here's an email I didn't make up:

Man, I had a dream last night that you had taken flying lessons and you and I were flying around in a little, single engine Cessna with you at the controls. I was in the copilot's seat but I wasn't really doing anything except being amazed at how deftly you handled that plane. I'm not sure if it was the first time you'd flown by yourself or not but I thought it was one of the first times and was a little nervous. But you seemed really confident and relaxed about it. I'm not sure from where we started but we planned to land in c'ville and, it being my first time flying with you, naturally I had some trepidation about the approach and landing. Not you, though. We came down steadily and landed smoothly and you parked somewhere and we got out and went into the terminal. I remember complaining to you in the terminal that I was extremely thirsty – also true in real life as I consumed many beers during and after kickball yesterday. Anyway, you told me of your plans to buy a/the plane so you could just fly yourself wherever you needed to go. You explained to me that since you didn't have a car payment or car insurance to pay for, buying your own Cessna seemed like a logical move. The plane sat 5 comfortably so you told me to start thinking of places you could fly me and Emily. Then you suggested we get back in the plane and fly to Key West for some margaritas but I had to decline because I had to get home.

Man it seemed so reasonable and everything made sense. We were both really excited about the newfound freedom your learning to fly and owning your own plane would afford us. Anyway, you might want to look into it.

Adventures in Vegetarianism, Part Two

2007-08-03T20:19:00.001-04:00

One time when I was in law school some buddies and I rolled down to Florida for Spring Break to watch some preseason baseball. We were tooling down I-95 in South Carolina when we decided to stop for lunch. My friends were sensitive to my absurd dietary needs, and I was sensitive to their desire to get the hell out of South Carolina as quickly as possible, so we compromised and decided to go to Burger King, where I could get one of their disgusting veggie burgers.

We decided to park and go in rather than use the drive-thru so we could all take a leak. I took care of business then sauntered up to the counter, preparing myself for the worst meal of my life. I smiled pathetically at the teenage sales clerk and told her I wanted a veggie burger combo.

She looked at me suspiciously. "You want a vegetable hamburger?"

"Yeah, a veggie burger combo. It's right there on the board."

I should mention this was a pretty rural part of South Carolina. I honestly think I was the first person to ever order a veggie burger at this branch.

The girl turned around and looked quizzically at the board. "You want a veggie burger hamburger?"

I stifled a laugh. "Please. To go." I told myself the ordeal was almost over.

I moved down the line and waited for my 10% post-consumer-content recycled bag of 100% post-consumer-content veggie burger.

Eventually another teenager maundered up and held out a bag: "Veggie burger hamburger?" he asked.

That's me. We get back in the car and I unpack my lunch. The fries come out first, which is reassuring; at least they know how to pack a to-go bag properly. Then I realize there are two packages at the bottom of the bag. I take out the first one, and sure enough it's my veggie burger.

The other one is a good old-fashioned, charbroiled hamburger.

Veggie burger hamburger, indeed. My best guess is the girl was so confused about what I wanted that she gave me one of each to be safe. Which makes some sense: who the hell would actually WANT a veggie burger?

----------------
CERTAIN CLASSIC BLOG: Adventures in Vegetarianism, Part One

This is awesome:

2007-08-01T09:58:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.slate.com

A survey in New Zealand identified "vegansexuals." Definition: No sex with carnivores. Sample quotes from respondents: 1) "I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance. Non-vegetarian bodies smell different to me—they are, after all, literally sustained through carcasses." 2) "I believe we are what we consume so I really struggle with bodily fluids, especially sexually." 3) "I couldn't think of kissing lips that allow dead animal pieces to pass between them." 4) "When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals." (Related columns: the case against eating animals; the case against sex with animals. To comment, click here.)

My only question: shouldn't these weirdos call themselves "vegetariansexuals" instead? Or do they not fuck anyone who eats dairy products and honey either?

The Breakfast Club

2007-07-31T22:23:00.001-04:00

In my former life, I worked as the world's stodgiest waiter at the world's gayest diner. One Sunday morning, I found myself hungover and hiding from my stupid customers in the kitchen. I stood indolently in the way of the cooks as they slung breakfast after slimy, reheated breakfast.

Eventually I told one of those cooks-- John-- to make me a pancake breakfast with scrambled eggs and bacon. Then I layered the bacon and eggs, along with some cheddar cheese, in between the three pancakes. I gave it to John, who said it was pretty good but awfully dry.

So John did what any hungover math major-cum-short order cook would do when presented with a ridiculous triple-decker pancake sandwich during the middle of his shift at the world's gayest diner: he doused the fucking thing in imitation maple syrup.

And it was delicious as hell. We gave some to the manager, who agreed to promote it as the daily special if we agreed to start putting the syrup on the inside, like ketchup.

"Call it 'The Breakfast Club'," I said.

We gave it a shot, but no one would order the damn thing unless I was there to promote it. It wasn't long before The Breakfast Club was a thing of the past. Adding insult to injury, that very same month saw the introduction of McDonald's's McGriddles breakfast sandwich to our neighborhood. The McGriddles was a hit in spite of its dunderheaded name, and I'm still a nobody. Bullshit.
______________

If my friend and former co-waiter at the world's gayest diner ever reads this, he'll undoubtedly point out that I'm telling the story all wrong. In advance of these protestations, I submit the following: Fuck you, you home-owning, dog-having, married-getting asshole.

It's my fucking blog.

Infinite Toast

2007-07-27T16:09:00.001-04:00

Last week, my brother and I decided to read Infinite Jest together. Kind of like a book club.

So far we've had zero meetings.

Anyway, in my excitement over forming our dumb little club, I went on Amazon.com from my office computer to read the first few pages. I guess this is a neat feature. What really amused me, though, was Amazon's weird list of "Statistically Improbable Phrases" that appear in the book. More than the opening pages, this list really got me excited to read all 1000+ pages of IJ again:

Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
annular fusion, medical attaché, entertainment cartridge, improbably deformed, howling fantods, feral hamsters, dawn drills, tough nun, prochain train, professional conversationalist, new bong, ceiling bulged, metro boston, tennis academy, red leather coat, soupe aux pois, red beanie, addicted man, magnetic video, littler kids, little rotter, technical interview, police lock, oral narcotics, sober time

My favorites are probably your favorites, too: Improbably deformed. Feral hamsters. Tough nun. New bong. Sober time.

Was this blogworthy? No. But maybe a string of unsatisfying entries will motivate you to turn your computer off and finally get around to watching R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet.

One day you'll thank me.

Trapped in the Closet returns!

2007-07-26T10:50:00.000-04:00

HOLY SHIT! This is the best news I've heard all summer.

Chapters 13-22 of R. Kelly's indescribable epic Trapped in the Closet will be released on August 21. If you haven't seen chapters 1-12 yet, drop everything and go rent the DVD.

I've never been more serious about anything in my life.

update

2007-07-17T17:40:00.000-04:00

Writing a blog sure is hard. Perhaps I just haven't been pissed off enough lately. Here's a quick update on my boring life:

(1) I was recently shipped to North Carolina on a 4 month work assignment for a client.

(2) I was at the Pitchfork Music Festival last weekend. I stayed at the same hotel as De La Soul.

That's pretty much it.

Anyhoo, here's a good article about law firms. Maybe this will inspire me to finish my treatise on How To Become A Lawyer.

But probably not.

what's the deal...with zippers?

2007-07-09T00:25:00.000-04:00

I walked into a public restroom the other day and looked at myself in the mirror. My fly was down again.

For a second I was embarrassed. Then I thought, "you know, fuck everyone else. For all they know I knew my fly was down and I wanted it that way."

Of course that wasn't the case and I quickly went back to being embarrassed.

But it got me thinking. Pretty much everything you can think of has been made into a fashion statement at some point. Popping your collar? Fashion statement. Jelly shoes? Fashion statement. Uggs? Stupid fashion statement. Wearing your clothes backwards? Fashion statement. Disgruntled Investor t-shirts? Theoretical fashion statement. Wearing your underwear outside your clothes? Bizarre fashion statement. Not wearing underwear? Not a bad fashion statement.

Wearing a giant clock on a necklace. Leaving the tags on your hat. Wearing flip flops to the White House. Whitewashed jeans. No Fear apparel.

The list goes on and on. But as far as I know, no one's ever made a fashion statement out of leaving their zipper unzipped.

I just wonder why is all.

EXCLUSIVE! Certain Blogger revealed!

2007-06-22T23:48:00.001-04:00

BLOGTOWN-- After months of wide-ranging speculation, it appears the mystery of the man behind Certain Blogs is close to being solved. Last Thursday, an off-duty cameraman working for the Charlotte, North Carolina CBS affiliate WNOG snapped the clearest known picture of the reclusive blogger, known pseudononymously as "Blogadier General".

After taking the picture on his cell phone, the photographer-- N. McCracken of Boonesboro-- was pursued and eventually overtaken by the irate General. During the ensuing scuffle, the celebrity blogger wrestled the phone from McCracken and demolished it, but not before McCracken managed to send a copy of the sought-after photograph to his friend Ete Packley via text message.

While the issue of Blogadier General's true identity is still a matter of dispute, authorities believe the photograph depicts one Thomas Lennon, an actor and comedian who recently starred in the box-office flop Reno 911!: Miami!

Lennon's possible involvement in Certain Blogs may come as little surprise to those familiar with his work. Certain Blogs's wildly erratic humor, half-baked social commentary, and utter dearth of critical and public acclaim evoke memories of Lennon's former television series, the 1990's MTV sketch comedy show The State.

Blogadier General, who isn't a real general, has been blogging since June 2006.

Certain Birthdays

2007-06-01T17:40:00.000-04:00

Certain Blogs turned 1 today. It's hard to believe this fucking thing lasted past August and harder to believe I didn't have the decency to pull the plug around November.

What does the future hold for Certain Blogs? Probably 3-4 snarky, hastily written paragraphs per month. Everything else remains to be seen.

Plagiarized Poetry

2007-05-31T20:13:00.000-04:00

I recently read this George Saunders story in the New Yorker. I was cataloguing some of the story's imagery for a friend (don't ask) and she pointed out it made for some pretty good poetry.

Maybe this will motivate you to read the story and maybe it won't:

dry aquarium holding the single encyclopedia volume
pasta pot on the bookshelf with an inflatable candy cane inexplicably sticking out
spare tire on the dining-room table
the sink had a basketball in it
crankshaft on a cookie sheet
partial red pepper afloat in a can of green paint

Elvis Presley ain't got no soul

2007-05-16T23:13:00.000-04:00

The other day at work, some friends and I had a fun discussion about rap music. Having recently been listening to A Tribe Called Quest, we began pondering who the Tribe's rock 'n' roll analog might be.

My friends disagreed with me, and I admit it's not a perfect fit, but I like The Beatles. No group has influenced rap as much as ATCQ did; virtually every underground rapper from coast to coast owes his success to the Tribe. Their lyrics were totally unpretentious but their music was often complex. It's hard to imagine what rap would sound like without them.

Of course, you can compare The Beatles to just about anyone. Outkast often gets the nod (what with the Speakerboxx/The Love Below double album-- with each songwriter responsible for one disc-- resembling The Beatles' white album). Or maybe Jay-Z is The Beatles, because at the end of the day, he's #1 on everybody's list. Perhaps Eminem; white teenage girls love him, he sold 999,999,999,999,999 records, and he has a shitty haircut.

As unsatisfying as the Tribe/Beatles comparison is, we had a hell of a lot of fun thinking of other rap/rock analogies. Here's a short list:

Ice Cube: Elvis Presley. Parents didn't want you listening to these guys. They were the ones who brought their genres into the public eye with some much needed controversy. Plus they got rich, got fat, and eventually grew into sad parodies of themselves.

Wu-Tang Clan:Led Zeppelin. Still the awesomest rap group of all time, even if they weren't the best. Pretty much everyone goes through a Wu-Tang phase. And you can bet Wu Tang fucked up some hotel rooms in their day.

Nas:Bob Dylan. Both geniuses. Both were looked upon by their fans as some kind of savior, then disappointed everyone by deviating from the formula of their early success and moving into more introspective territory. Both are now curmudgeons.

The Roots:The Grateful Dead. Whatever.

Del Tha Funky Homosapien:Elvis Costello. Critically acclaimed. Dorky wordsmiths. Concept albums. Deserve to be more popular.

Of course, if I were any kind of blogger, I'd post some songs here.

But I'm not. Instead, I thought I'd open up some questions to the peanut gallery: what to do with Biggie and Tupac? And what about The Rolling Stones, for crying out loud? Has rap found its Radiohead yet? Why is Everybody Loves Raymond so popular??? Help!

good old east village

2007-05-06T23:06:00.000-04:00

I was just walking down 13th street towards Avenue A when a huge stretch Escalade limo passed by on my left. At the same time, I heard what sounded like rustling leaves on my right. I turned my head to find some dude pissing behind a trash can.

"That's funny," I thought. "What's a limo doing at 13th and A?"

Emergency Mailbag

2007-05-05T13:42:00.000-04:00

Dear New Pornographers,

I wonder if you could answer a couple of things for me.

(1) You know that scene at the beginning of Manhattan where Isaac and Tracy and Yale and Emily are having dinner at Elaine's and Isaac tells them his ex-wife is writing a book about their divorce and Emily says "that's really tacky" and Isaac says "it's really depressing" and Yale says "gossip is the new pornography"? Is that where you got your name?

(2) Recently I've had kind of a problem. I was sitting around with my buddy a few weeks ago and one of us said "I wonder if The New Pornographers will ever write a bad song." Ever since then it's been killing me. COULD you write a bad song? I'm having trouble eating and sleeping and my work has really suffered. Maybe you all could go out of your way to write a bad song on purpose, just so I can put it behind me? If you'd just go out there and write a bad song (I'd even settle for mediocre), I think I could get on with my life.

Maybe you could eat some bad clams before you start writing. Or get soused the night before and throw something together on a raging hangover. Or perhaps a cover. That Justin Timberlake song "My Love" kind of sucks-- would you mind giving it a shot?

ps. If you think this qualifies as a bad song and/or video, I'm afraid you're going to have to try harder.

How To Be A Lawyer, Part Two: Navigating Law School And Interviewing

2007-04-30T01:00:00.003-04:00

STEP SIX: If you want to survive law school, you've got to treat it like a job. So go ahead and cut out early on your first day to see Radiohead in Maryland. Someone will cover for you.

STEP SEVEN: Law school can be pretty hard. You'll need a network of smart friends willing to share their notes, give you their outlines, and explain all the shit you're too dumb to figure out by yourself. The good news is, this isn't med school: as long as you bring something to the table, most people are willing to help you out.

STILL SEVEN: What do you bring to the table? It sure as hell isn't keen analytical insight, a yeomanlike work ethic, or oral hygiene. I recommend a steadfast commitment to always being the drunkest guy in the room. If you're always the drunkest guy in the room, then everyone else will feel free to let their hair down and drink as much as they want, knowing they'll never do anything as embarrassing as the guy wearing a black pom-pom on his head like a Jheri-curl. Your fellow law students will appreciate the social freedom your antics guarantee, and they'll reward you with six semesters of law review-caliber outlines. Trust me.

STEP EIGHT: Before you know it, it's time to start looking for a job. The secret to a successful interview is to remember that law is the absolute dead-on boringest subject known to man, and no one in their right mind would ever ever ever ever ever choose to talk about it of their own free will. Find something more interesting to discuss and you'll have a job in no time. For example, if your favorite baseball team recently staged an historic comeback from a three-games-to-none deficit against its arch rival to win the pennant then swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win its first world championship in 86 years, you could talk about that.

But honestly, even Harry Potter is more interesting than the résumé blather your interviewer has been listening to all day. Don't fuck this up.
___________________________________________

Be on the lookout for Part Three, sometime between tomorrow and mid-July.