Eat First #1 Blog

This Blog Sucks

2006-11-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

This is the first post in over a month. I think it might be time to fold this blog.

The Horror

2006-10-13T09:47:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to blog about this for awhile, but I keep on forgetting to do so. Last week me and Hanna went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show at a Baltimore art museum near her apartment. They were showing it on a screen and simultaneously acting it out on a stage.

I don't know how many of you have ever been to a live showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but this was my first time, and it's very difficult to describe. As you probably know (even if you haven't seen it) it's a huge cult classic. I knew that before I went. What I didn't know was that this movie really earns its "cult" status. And by that, I mean that its devotees are really weird. Start with the fact that the man sitting across the aisle from me claimed to have seen the movie 1,260 times. And he claimed to that all of these experiences occurred in a theater; apparently, seeing it on DVD or VHS doesn't count.

Why, you might ask, do you have to see this movie live? Because going to a live show adds a complicated and highly developed dimension to the experience that basically obviates the need to watch the actual movie. First of all, many theater-goers dress up like the characters in the movie, who (for those of you who don't know) are a bunch of transsexuals. There's also a ceremonial pre-movie ritual that involves identifying everyone who's never seen the movie before, having people come up to the stage to fake orgasms, popping balloons to represent taking people's virginity, etc. It's hard to describe, but it's very strange.

Then there's the actual movie. The plot of the movie is irrelevant, but also still a mystery to me, because the lines of the characters are drowned out by ritualized and heavily choreographed shouts from the audience. You may think I'm making this up, but I'm not. I'd say that around 75% of the dialogue was unintelligible because the audience members were shouting responses/additions to the actual movie dialogue. According to a Wikipedia article on the subject, the cult members study their lines intensively, usually learning from a few CDs that have been released which offer training on what to shout and when to do it. The audience members also throw various objects at various times throughout the movie.

In addition, the movie features both Susan Sarandon and Meat Loaf.

Let me tell you, it's entertaining, but very strange. I don't know how easy it is to convey the experience, but if you ever have a chance to go, I recommend that you do so. It's the kind of thing that everyone should experience once.

The Horror

2006-10-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

My Favorite Song(s)

2006-10-04T16:26:00.000-05:00

#1 - "In My Life" - The Beatles

The rest are alphabetical by artist. Go ahead and (legally) download theses for your aural pleasure:

"Almost Here" - The Academy Is...

"Dammit" - Blink 182

"Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't" - Brand New

"Last Flight Out" - Butch Walker

"All We Ever Needed" - The Early November

"State of the Union" - David Ford

"A Song for Everyone" - Fenix Tx

"Happier" - Guster

"Everything I Once Had" - The Honorary Title

"Fall" - Over It

"Anyone But You" - Rx Bandits

"Hands Open" - Snow Patrol

"Understanding in a Car Crash" - Thursday

I'll add more as I remember...

Voyages to U Street

2006-09-28T17:07:00.000-05:00

I have to go from my home in upper Northwest to the U Street corridor quite frequently, as it is the residence of not only Ben, Ian and Parnes but also some friends of mine from Wesleyan who live half a block away. Formerly, I only went using 13th Street, because it took me right to 12th Street. But there was something about 13th Street I never liked--possibly the stop signs, possibly the excessive lights. In any event, I never felt like I was really reaching my full potential.

So I resolved to try 14th Street two nights ago. This was the first time in awhile that I had been down this extremely important commercial corridor. It's faster in its northbound stretch, which is good, and has a lot of pupuserias, which would be helpful if I ever go during dinner time. However, it has a lot of possibly sketchy commercial establishments. Also, when I crossed over Webster Street, there were 12 police cars on both sides of the block. I don't know what all that was about.

Nonetheless, the police cars probably has to count as a downside. Also, when you get to the heavily gentrified portion atop the Columbia Heights metro, traffic gets a lot slower. On a side note, for some reason there's a Ruby Tuesday's in the Gentrified Zone. Why? Who goes there?

Anyways, overall I would say I prefer 14th Street. It's more interesting and I think it's faster.

Going back from U St last night I took the park, because I had to drop someone off in Dupont first. On Broad Branch road, past the split with Beach Drive, there was a Taurus going 15 mph. There was a line of three cars directly behind him. I didn't know what to do. Clearly, this fool had made the foolish mistake of taking the parkway, at night, without knowing where he was going. But how do you fix it? There's nowhere for him to pull over, and it's very dangerous to try to pass him across the median. Eventually I honked at him out of frustration. I feared that I was being too much of a road jerk, but in fact it got him to stop on a straightaway, allowing the three trailing cars to pass him. So I guess something good came of it.

A Fall Day in Baltimore

2006-09-19T12:42:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, me and Hanna decided to hang out in Mount Vernon Park, which is right next to her house. It's a nice little park, roughly comparable to Dupont Circle for its size and setting (e.g. in a relatively trendy neighborhood with a few sketchballs).

We ran into an interesting cast of characters. The most interesting was a woman who was wearing a fashionable outfit that included a full length coat, warm boots, and a hat. Bear in mind that the temperature was around 75 degrees and no one else was wearing anything but shorts and t-shirts. This woman approached us as we were sitting in a park bench; at that point, we were the only ones sitting in a bench, so she had plenty of other bench options to choose from. Nonetheless, for some reason she liked our bench, and so she asked if she could sit down next to Hanna. Since the benches are partitioned, there is no way that three people can sit on a bench at the same time. Without waiting for Hanna to respond, she sat down, essentially sitting down on Hanna, and causing their bodies to become very squished together. At that point, Hanna got up to lay down on the grass. I waited around a little while. The woman started reading the Johns Hopkins student newspaper and humming to herself. After awhile, I left as well. She was a weirdo. Me and Hanna weren't sure if she was crazy or not, but she probably was.

There was also a guy who was definitely crazy. He was wandering around without a shirt and yelling about medical care at various inanimate objects, including buildings, construction scaffolding, and a nearby statue of George Washington.

There was also a homeless guy with a dog. The dog was well-behaved, but when the dog went up to other people, the homeless guy came over and asked for money. It was unexpected.

On the Road, Volume 3: North and South

2006-09-15T15:18:00.000-05:00

South:

I-95 (North Carolina): Three and a half stars

70 mph speed limit, little traffic, and hilarious signs announcing your entry into various counties and irrelevant economic zones (primarily the Global Transpark Development Zone and Northeastern North Carolina Industrial Development Zone). Very few cops. Only downside is some pavement that could use repair, particularly in the right lane.

I-95 (NC/VA border to Richmond): Two and a half stars

Plenty of road space, but too many cops, and I don't appreciate a 65 mph speed limit.

I-95 (Richmond to DC): Negative Four stars

Everyone hates this road, with good reason. There are cops everywhere when traffic is moving, which is never, because there is always a traffic jam. Obviously, this gets worse the more northern you go, but it's always bad, everywhere. My dad gets so frustrated with it he wanted to loop around through Culpeper to take I-66. Luckily for him, I talked him out of it, because the day we drove back there was a truck fire on 66 which closed the road. This meant that 95 was the "preferred" option even though there was about an hour delay.

North:

I-95 (Maryland): Three and a Half Stars

Nothing to quibble with. Little traffic, high speed limit (at least for the Northeast) and reasonable tolls. Oh, and I like the Chesapeake House--Burger King and Popeye's in the same building. Can't beat that.

I-95 North (Delaware): Negative 8 million Stars

You want to charge me $9 to go through 10 miles of your state? Fine, I'll blog about how Delaware is the shittiest state in the Union. They use that fucking 95 toll to fund the entire state's entire transportation budget. What a bunch of fucking assholes. To add insult to injury, there is construction in the southbound lanes, causing about a 30 minute delay.

New Jersey Turnpike: Three Stars

While this is the road that everyone loves to hate, it has decent food options, cheap gas and is usually ok on traffic, although the area between the Penn Turnpike and Trenton can get dicey. Police enforcement is generally light, although I don't like the double fines in the 65 zone. It makes me nervous that I'll get nailed with a massive fine.

I-278: One Star

It gets you where you need to go--in my case, over the Verazzano bridge into and out of Brooklyn. But traffic is often bad, and do you know how much they charge you? $6 going eastbound, and a whopping $9 heading westbound. All Hudson River crossings have the eastbound toll, but a $9 westbound toll? No fucking way. Next time I am taking Canal Street over the Manhattan Bridge and through the Holland Tunnel. Even if it does take me an hour, my stinginess just will not accept a $9 eastbound toll. I wonder who decided to levy that toll anyways. Well, they're not getting my money next time, that's for sure.

Shuler vs. Bono

2006-09-12T10:55:00.000-05:00

Now I don't usually post anything sports-related, but I thought you Redskins fans might find this interesting.

Wordsearch

2006-09-11T08:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday on the bus, I saw a grown man (probably about 45 years old) doing a wordsearch in a book of wordsearches. I can understand sudoku and crossword puzzles, which require either skills in logic or trivia. But a wordsearch! They're so easy. There's really no skill involved. The only way I could imagine a wordsearch actually being fun is if you're racing someone else. But if there's no opponent, it's stupid and boring. To this guy's credit, he did seem to be finding words at an exceptional rate.

Bus Wars

2006-09-08T08:49:00.000-05:00

According to a New York Times article, the famed Vamoose Bus company has stopped serving Tenleytown and McPherson Square. This is because it trespassed on the rights of a competitor, Washington Deluxe, which had previously received a ruling from a Rabbinical court guaranteeing it the right to serve Washington. Since the owners of both companies are Hasidic Jews, the Rabbinical court thing was important. Nonetheless, it was reinforced by a recent New York court ruling.

We all grew to know and love Vamoose, but now it only goes to Bethesda and Arlington, and I'm definitely not going out to the damned suburbs to get a bus. Washington Deluxe has now started to serve Tenleytown in order to pick up Vamoose's slack, but its schedules are crappier; most of its buses originate from Farragut Square. However, Washington Deluxe is slightly cheaper--unlike Vamoose, it matches the price of the Chinatown buses.

Speaking of the Chinatown buses, the Times also reported that, three days ago, a Fung Wah bus going from NYC to Boston flipped over. Fung Wah is also the company that had two buses explode in the past year, although luckily the passengers were able to evacuate both times.

If I ever take the Chinatown bus to Boston, I'm not going to take Fung Wah.

Also, the Department of Justice is investigating all of these companies for noncompliance with the various Federal bus regulations, meaning that this whole cheap-fare game might soon be endangered. If so, that would be sad. Being forced to pay $60 for Greyhound or $90 for Amtrak would really suck.

Vacation Haiku

2006-09-08T00:44:00.000-05:00

Winter break for jews,
Will we go to Miami?
I sure hope we do.

Poem for the first day of football

2006-09-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

It's football season again
35, 30, 25, 20, 15
Tackled!
No, Barbara Streisand. Not this time.
It'll be first and ten -
Wilson!

Problems All Up in My Grill

2006-09-01T11:05:00.000-05:00

Recently I have seriously begun to hate these damned braces.

My problems started shortly before I left for vacation, which was two Thursdays ago. The wire in my braces started to grow long, poking me in the back of my mouth. This happens fairly frequently; usually, it's no big deal. I went in to the orthodontist and got them clipped, assuming that I had guaranteed myself a problem-free vacation for my mouth.

Wrong.

Within a few days the wire had started to grow long again, poking me again, and causing me all sorts of trouble. I kind of shifted my bite in order to keep the wire from poking me, but ultimately decided to drive some 45 minutes (to "Morehead City") in order to have it fixed by an orthodontist. As I drove away, I figured that now my problems would be solved.

Wrong.

While I had been changing my bite to avoid the wire, the braces had been cutting up my inner lip. This became infected, presumably with dirty ocean water, giving me a giant canker sore. It hurt. A lot. And it sucked. A lot. Its remnants are still around, giving me serious pain every time I brush my teeth, 12 days after I first noticed it developing.

I hate canker sores. In an interesting side note, I started bitching to people about how I had a canker sore, and almost everyone is able to respond with a horrendous canker sore story of their own. It's one of those things, like mosquito bites, that are just seriously annoying in life.

Anyways, the canker sore is almost gone. My wire started cutting me again, but I got it clipped (for the third time in two weeks). The area where my wire has been consistently poking me is now generally sore and tender, but will presumably heal.

Fucking braces, man. They're supposed to come off in 4 to 8 weeks. I can't wait.

RIP Naguib

2006-08-30T12:48:00.000-05:00

Novelist Naguib Mahfouz has died. This is a sad day for the world (Mahfouz was the first Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature), but it is also a sad day for members of this blog. We all had to read Mahfouz's "Palace Walk" in Mrs. Zamoff's 10th grade literature class. I remember it as one of the best books we had to read in that class and one of the best novels I read while at Wilson. Rest in Peace Naguib.

Calling You Out

2006-08-28T09:37:00.000-05:00

No one blogs anymore. Ever. This blog is dead. I think soon I will start my own so that I'm not hogging a nominally shared space.

To Fill the Void

2006-08-16T08:17:00.000-05:00

No one blogs anymore. I'll share a few more things about my recent Michigan vacation just so that this blog's readers don't think we've all died in a freak gasoline fight accident.

- The state of Michigan, or at least the area between Grand Rapids and Ludington, is in love with AC/DC. Without exaggeration, I would say that, by avoiding commercials and bad radio stations, I heard at least two AC/DC songs per 30 minute trip. They love AC/DC. I think I heard 14 different songs, and I heard many of them multiple times. Guns n' Roses, RHCP, and most of rock's other usual suspects were also played very frequently; I heard "Dani California" a solid seven or eight times. Overall, I thought the radio was pretty good, although the selection was just as limited as anywhere else in the US, thanks to the short-sighted assholes who run corporate radio.

- I went dune buggy riding in Michigan. This was sweet, and if anyone else has a chance to do it, I highly recommend it. It's pretty self-explanatory; there are these huge dunes near Lake Michigan, in a town called Silver Lake, and you can rent a dune buggy and go tearing around all over them. It took me awhile to get used to driving the buggy, so I got stuck a few times, but whatever. Also, one time while I was a passenger in a buggy being driven by my brother, we went FLYING over a ridge of one of the particularly tall dunes. While in midair we did some serious rotation, probably45 degrees horizontally and maybe 30 degrees vertically. It was fun, but kind of freaky.

- I also went to Cedar Point, famed home of many, many roller coasters. The two showcases of Cedar Point are the Millenium Force, which was once the tallest, fastest roller coaster in the world, at some 300 feet and 90 mph. The other is Dragway Speedster, which was very recently the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world before being eclipsed by a coaster at Six Flags New Jersey. Dragway Speedster goes 121 mph and over 400 feet. Both of these coasters are excellent, although I think I prefer Millenium Force, which is a much more traditional roller coaster--as in, it goes up, goes down, goes up again, goes around, etc. In particular, it has some sweet hills where you feel like you're rising way out of your seat. In contrast, Dragway Speedster blasts off, then you go straight up 400 feet, then you come back down at a 90 degree angle, then the ride is over. The whole thing lasts 17 seconds. It's fun, but overall it's less fulfilling.
Cedar Point also has many other excellent coasters, but I won't bother to describe them in any detail.

- On a more serious note, during the week that we spent at the small town in western Michigan, a kid from the next town over was killed in Iraq. All of the signs in the town we were in, as well as the surrounding area, had messages commemorating him, telling people driving by to pray for his family, thanking him for his service. Things like that. I don't know if the stereotype about everyone knowing everyone in a small town is true, but it certainly seemed that way, and it seemed like the loss was having a serious impact on this community. The discord with DC really struck me. I mean, I live in a city where all of the important decisions about Iraq are made, and yet me, and virtually all of my friends, are heavily insulated from the consequences of those decisions. Yet out there in the "heartland" that Bush claims as his own--that's where communities unite in grief over dead 19 year olds.

I dunno. It was a pretty cliched reaction on my part, but it was nonetheless thought provoking, that's all.

Road Warrior, Part 2: Westward Ho

2006-08-11T09:49:00.000-05:00

Now for a rundown of the roads that I took in my recent vacation, presented in the easy "star" format.

I-96: One-and-a-Half Star

This road connects Detroit with western Michigan; we took it to get to the lake where we were vacationing. It was under more or less constant construction, particularly the westbound lanes. We avoided trouble by driving westbound from midnight to 2:30 am, and going eastbound wasn't so bad. But while driving eastbound I counted about 15 miles of backups.

Detroit Roads: Zero stars

Most of Detroit is under construction. I'm serious. I-75, Southfield Freeway, Mi-10--we never drove between any two points in Detroit without having to go on a construction-related detour. Moreover, a lot of the roads that arent even receiving a construction upgrade are in desperate need of one, with very large potholes that, when you travel over them at 75 mph, cause your car to go flying.

Ohio Turnpike (I-80/I-76): Four Stars (out of Four)

Wide lanes and excellent rest areas, most of which feature either a Panera or an Einstein Bagels , which are excellent alternatives to the traditionally heavy fast food meal. They also have Sbarro, which is another alternative. But I always think Sbarro is going to be good, then I buy it and it's kind of lame. This happened to me twice on the Ohio Turnpike.

Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76/I-70): One Star

It's hard to be too critical of the Penn Turnpike because it's an old road and, unlike Ohio, it has to wind through mountains. But nonetheless, driving it sucks. The lanes are narrow, and windy, the whole thing is poorly illuminated, and there are trucks everywhere. Add construction, and the fact that I was driving it very late at night, and you have a recipe for unpleasantness.

Maryland highways (I-70 between Frederick and the state line): Three and a half stars

No real complaints here, but I wish the speed limit were higher.

Road Warrior, Part 1: Nebraska Avenue

2006-08-09T08:25:00.000-05:00

Two pieces of news from this major Jewboy thoroughfare:

a) Left turns onto Reno Road are now permitted. I'm not sure if this is good news or not. On the one hand, it will be helpful for those infrequent occasions where I want to take Reno Road southbound. On the other hand, it's easy to get stuck behind drivers making the left turn.

b) There's wildlife around. Yesterday me and my brother nearly made roadkill out of a possum that scurried in front of our car.

Look for a lengthier description of other roads in an upcoming blog post on my recent vacation to our nation's midwestern heartland.

Mitch McLee

2006-08-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

On the subject of anniversaries...

The third of August has much signficance to my life for two reasons. As I pointed out on the blog this time last year, it is the day that I lost my virginity. It is also the five-year anniversary of the last Marvelous 3 concert ever.

I am Carrie Bradshaw

2006-07-31T15:21:00.000-05:00

Everyone neglected to point out that last Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the Eat First #1 Blog. Happy Birthday!

Today is the one-year anniversary of my ex-girlfriend's nineteenth birthday.

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of me being single.

I am thinking about applying to be a dating columnist at amNY. The girl who writes for them now - Julia Allison - is complete garbage, and I feel like it would be interesting to have a male's voice as a counterpoint to her column.

The Commies

2006-07-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

Today a very disheveled looking woman boarded the L4 (Connecticut Avenue) bus. She was wearing a grey sweatshirt that had seen better days, a black skirt, and a pair of jeans. The skirt/jeans combo was sort of trendy at Wesleyan, so I wasnt sure if this woman was an aged hippie or instead mentally unwell. When she sat down in front of me I didn't immediately notice any severe odors, but on the other hand she really did look out of control. So I wasn't sure.

It definitely turned out to be mental issues, because shortly after driving past the Woodley Park/Zoo stop she launched into a long rant about Communists kidnapping someone and taking them to their East Berlin headquarters. She most have been yelling really loudly, because I heard her reasonably well, despite the fact that a) she was facing away from me, and b) I had my Pod on to a nearly full volume.

After we passed the Chinese embassy, she went on another rant about Communists. Occasionally she would turn around and give me a wild-eyed look, like she expected me to respond. Good thing I was wearing my Pod--it allowed me to pretend that I couldn't hear her.

Also, because Jon Co apparently has better things to do than blog, at least for the time being, let me inform any readers that he is the new bowling king of the Jews after a stellar Monday night performance.

Football Fans

2006-07-23T01:40:00.000-05:00

Today I went to Ben's Chili Bowl for lunch with a friend of mine from Michigan. During my trip, I met two football fans. Both were pretty interesting stories.

The first was a guy named Bob Masey, or something like that. He was about 45 and a little drunk, singing while walking up 12th Street toward me (pretty good singer). Bob smiles and sticks out his hand. I shake.

"I'm not sure, but I think someone told me that you're a Redskins fan," he said.

"I am in fact, a Redskins fan."

"Super Bowl this year," Bob said. "Last year, we were 5-6 and made it all the way back. This is our year."

I talked to Bob for a few more minutes, and he told me that during the second week (against Dallas) he would be in his front yard -- a block from my house -- watching the game. I got the invite, and then made my way to Ben's.

When I got to the Chili Bowl, I ordered my half smoke. My order went fine. But my friend, who was wearing a Michigan shirt, had a bit of a problem. One of the head guys there joked that his half smoke was going to cost $12.50 -- since he went to Michigan.

"I went to Ohio State," he said. "And my brother is there now -- with one more year."

Of course, my friend eventually paid normal price for a half smoke, and it was nice to talk to a few football fans. It got me excited.

The One that Got Away

2006-07-21T13:13:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday morning, I was running a little late to work. I hurried from my apartment to the 72nd Street subway stop and waited patiently for the train to come. After a couple minutes, a local train came, but I decided I would take a chance and wait for the express. Turned out to be a bad move because at least five minutes passed, and there were still no other trains. "Fuck," I thought to myself. "I should have just taken the local."

But then, all of a sudden, this absolutely gorgeous girl walks down the stairs onto the platform, and she stands a few yards away from me. She is wearing a stunning green dress, has curly brown hair and a great figure, incredibly pretty. She looks like Natalie Portman, with bigger boobs.

Less than a minute later, an express train comes and I end up getting on the same car as the girl. We exchange a couple of glances, but after a little while I stop really paying attention to her, so as not to stare.

At some point between 59th and 50th Street, I am approached by a middle-aged woman (probably 40-50 years old) wearing a business suit. She tries to hand me a pen and a piece of paper, and she says, "If I were you, I would write your name and number down and give it to that girl right now, because you may never see her again."

I am basically in shock, do not know how to react. I utter something along the lines of "Uhhh...nah, no thanks."

Then the woman pressed on, "She has been looking at you. You guys would make a perfect couple."

But I am still resistant. My heart, however, is beating about twice as fast as it was before I got on the train.

So the train arrives at Times Square, and both me and the girl get off, never to see each other again.

But then, I notice her walking in the same direction as me, towards the Shuttle platform to Grand Central. We both end up standing at the platform, about ten yards apart. We exchange another glance. I think to myself, "What the fuck, I'll just go for it."

I walk over to her. "Hi, I'm Ethan."

She introduces herself. We begin talking. I ask her where she is going. She says to work. I ask her what she does for work? She says she works for a real estate broker.

"Oh really?" I reply. "I am looking for an apartment for September 1."

She hands me her business card. I hand her mine. We end up taking the shuttle to Grand Central together, walk to the 6, and take the 6 downtown - talking the entire time. It was great. Except for one problem: She is only in New York for the summer, because she is about to start her SOPHOMORE year of college in Boston.

Fuck. She is so, so gorgeous. And she does not look nineteen.

The train arrives at 33rd Street. She shakes my hand, "It was good to meet you. Let me know if you need anything."

She walks into the station. The doors close.

I get off at 28th Street. I reach into my back pocket, to examine her business card. But it is not there! I search frantically, figuring I might have put it in another pocket. Alas, it is nowhere to be found. I remember not her last name nor the real estate company she works for. I must have dropped it as soon as she handed it to me, while I was attempting to put it in my pocket. It was probably lying somewhere in the Times Square subway stop, being crushed by the passing feet of straphangers.

As I walked into my offices, sans business card, the whole situation led me to believe one of two things: either, a) It was god's way of telling me to stay away from the nineteen-year-old, or b) I hallucinated the entire thing.

It Gets Worse

2006-07-19T15:54:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I posted a blog entry called "The Swamp" in which I complained about DC's recent wave of heat and humidity.

Oops.

Apparently my carping aroused the gods of weather, because as everyone knows, the weather across the entire U.S. has been miserable as of late. Obviously I don't really need to describe the blast furnace-type sensations that result from walking out into 99 degree heat with oppressive humidity, because everyone is currently experiencing it. But still, it's pretty intense.

Skittlebrau--you don't know how good you have it down there in the wintertime. It sucks up here.

Also, I was able to sell a case of beer to my brother's friends. I sold them some "Tesoro," a Puerto Rican lager that (according to D-Mann) tastes like ham. My brother, on the other hand, says that his friends thought it was ok. I don't know who's right, but I do know that it's off my hands.

I am the best

2006-07-14T14:31:00.000-05:00

Due to the recent success of my new blog, I am now crushing the rest of the EF#1 contributors in number of profile views. Eat my dust!

PS- why does Craig have so many profile views?

Mr. Casual

2006-07-14T10:39:00.000-05:00

Today is "casual" day at the office. In the past, I treated "casual" day pretty respectfully. I'd normally stick to my routine of polo shirts, khakis and reasonably nice shoes. Sometimes I'd go with jeans and boots instead of khakis and nice shirts.

Well, not anymore. It's too hot for all of that clothing, so I decided to go with khaki shorts. That left me a conundrum for my feet. I can't wear boots or nice shoes, because they'd look silly. So the choice was between Reebok flip-flops and black-and-red Nike shoes. I went with the closed-toe shoes, but they are pretty casual. They have a bright red swoop down the side.

I probably should have worn a polo shirt to work to keep things from getting too out of hand, but instead I wore a really old Adidas t-shirt. It's mostly white, except there's a faint, permanent stain, and the Adidas logo is really faded. Also, I recently discovered there's a small hole in the shirt near my right shoulder. I should have looked more closely at this shirt before selecting it. I think it's a little too casual, even for my notoriously laid-back sense of "fashion." Well, next time I'll be more careful.

The Swamp

2006-07-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

The weather in D.C. is truly miserable right now. It's like 88 degrees and humidity is roughly one million percent. The skies are constantly grey, it's often drizzling, and there is a constant threat of heavy rain during the afternoons and evenings. As with before, these rains somehow do not dispel the humidity. I thought that's what rain is supposed to do.

On the plus side, walking around for an hour in the humidity (as I was just doing) does make my hair extremely frizzy, which really helps me develop my Jewfro. And if there's one thing we all love, it's a good Jewfro.

Games People Play

2006-07-11T13:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I went to my mom's gym to work out. While working out I like to have something good on the TV, like ESPN or the Fox 5 comedy hour (Seinfeld/Simpsons). Instead, the TV was tuned to CNN. This is not unusual, because at big, rich, law firms the people like to know what's going on in the world and in the stock market. But at the particular hour that I choose to work out (6 to 7), CNN has Lou Dobbs on.

Have any of you ever watched Lou Dobbs? He is easily one of the most annoying people I've ever seen on TV. He really hates illegal immigrants (who he always calls "illegal aliens" or "felons") and spends roughly 20-40 minutes a day, every day, excoriating them. This may sound like an exaggeration. I assure you it is not. Seriously, whenever I walk in I know that within 3 minutes I will hear a report from one of Lou's hand-puppet reporters, who will send back a report from some place that has something to do with illegal immigrants so that they can talk about how bad illegal immigrants are. Yesterday, for example, was a report from the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza; Lou's angle was big businesses who are "sucking up" to illegal aliens. After the Archbishop of Los Angeles tried to defend illegal migrants, Lou suggested he was a pedophile. He also criticized the Marine Corps General who broke down in tears yesterday when talking about his immigrant father. And so on and so forth. He is seriously an Ann Coulter type when it comes to illegal immigrants, in that his level of blatant bias is unreal, and that he always says the same basic thing over and over and over and over.

Anyways, this Lou Dobbs rant is getting out of hand. The point is that a) Lou is awful, b) you can watch one show and basically know what's going to be on for the rest of eternity, and c) he's unbearable.

Needless to say, when I came out of the changing room I planned to switch from CNN. I normally ask other people in the gym if this is OK, but after taking a quick look around, I noticed that the only two other people in the gym had headphones on. So I decided to switch it myself. But then one of the two guys, a balding middle-aged lawyer, says "Can you turn it back to CNN, please?" in a very put-upon tone. So I did, and went and got my Pod instead.

My question is: why the fuck would he care? He's listening to his Pod. Do people like to listen to two things at once? Does it make sense? No. Maybe he was only listening to his Pod during the commericals.

Either way, Mr. Lou Dobbs Lover, don't make it seem like it should have been obvious to me that you were watching TV, because it wasn't. Also, if you're so concerned with gym etiquette, maybe you shouldn't have removed your shirt after you were done with the treadmill. I understand that your shirt was really sweaty, but it's not like we enjoy seeing your bare, hairy torso soaked in sweat.

On a more positive sports note, yesterday I bowled a 183. By far my highest score. If only I had hit a strike on the last frame I could have broken 200, but I couldn't pull it off. Oh well, I'm still pretty proud of that achievement.

Google (v.) GOO-gle -- to search

2006-07-07T18:41:00.000-05:00

It's a big day today. The word "google," which we all use on a regular basis, is officially a word. Merriam-Webster has made it so.

"The Internet search engine Google also found its way into the dictionary for the first time as a verb, meaning to find information quickly on the world wide web.

New words and phrases from the fields of science, technology, pop culture and industry are chosen each year by Merriam-Webster's team of editors after months of poring over books, magazines and even food labels.

"They are not tracking verbal language. They are looking for evidence that words have become assimilated into the written English language," said Arthur Bicknell, senior publicist with Merriam-Webster."

Congrats to everyone. This is a spectacular day.

Disco Inferno

2006-07-06T10:52:00.000-05:00

According to an AP article in the Washington Post, the unofficial anthem of the French National Team is the disco classic "I Will Survive" by disco legend and occasional actress Gloria Gaynor.

I could make a joke here, but it seems gratuitous.

To be fair to Les Blues, this song is also the anthem of a Dutch team, Feyenoord Rotterdam, and a German team, Schalke 04. Still.

Also, in the course of researching this blog post, I learned that "I Will Survive" received the first and only Grammy Award ever given for Best Disco Song.

I guess you really do learn something new every day.

Tales from the Hood

2006-07-03T11:03:00.001-05:00

So this weekend we had quite a few interesting experiences in out neighborhood. First JP, Kate and I got locked out of our apartment because the silly girls upstairs locked a deadbolt that we dont have a key for. After drunkenly climbing over our back fence and trying to get in there, we eventually called our landlord. It was about 2:30 in the morning. He was in Florida but gave us another number, so we called his son, who let us in downstairs.

Another crazy event was when i was outside with Aaron Pearl and a man in a automatic wheelchair sped down 12th st and hollered at us "what up fellas" as he zoomed on by. It was pretty sweet. More to come.

We tried some of zkgs beer as well. interesting. i look forward to testing out some more.

Tales from the Hood

2006-07-03T11:03:00.000-05:00

Nothing

2006-06-29T15:37:00.000-05:00

Today I called a guy who had one of those things that plays music instead of the ringing sound. I'd heard of this but never actually experienced it. It was cool, I guess. The song was "Oye Como Va."

I'm mainly writing this in order to provoke Jon into writing about going to the draft last night. Who was wearing sweet clothing? What do all of these Europeans look like in person? Do the Ukrainian and the Belarussian player we drafted look sweet?

I don't think I have much else to say. The rain has finally stopped and the weather is pleasant. Apprently the rain is supposed to start up again tonight. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to babysit a 10 year old and I have no idea what to do with him, other than take him to the Mall to see the monuments, which of course will be impossible if it rains. Damn this weather.

So Close, Yet Actually So Far

2006-06-27T14:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I came somewhat close to what would be, for me, an amazing athletic achievement. With 5 frames down, I was on pace to break 200 in bowling. I had gotten a strike, then a spare, then a turkey, good for a 114.

But then, like Joda before me, I choked hard. I didnt get a mark for the rest of the game and ended up with a 147 or something like that.

It was unlimited bowling, so we did like 6 games. Parnes again proved the king, starting off with a 160 and staying in first or second place the entire night. I was probably the worst, although I did win two games, and should have won a third--in the second-to-last game, I just had to pick up 3 pins off a spare roll in the 10th frame to beat Parnes, yet somehow only hit one. It was a huge choking dog performance. After that came my vengeful burst of strikes, but of course, that died out in the end as well.

In other news, this rain is crazy. The Post reported that DC received more rainfall from 7 to 10 pm on Sunday night than it did during the entire month of May. While I was writing this blog post the downpour resumed. They are worried that the Potomac is going to flood. It's like living in a monsoon, in the sense that the threat of heavy rain is constant. Also, it's still disgustingly humid. You always think that rain will make the humidity go away, but that has not been the case. Yuck.

Lesser Known Sports of the United States

2006-06-26T15:49:00.000-05:00

I: Soccer

I've been watching as much of the World Cup as I can, and I'm definitely a convert. It's a pretty cool sporting event. Soccer itself can also be a great fun to watch, as long as it's a free-flowing game; like hockey, it needs movement to be enjoyable.

But to my eyes, there's been a big problem with the World Cup, and that is the whole system of calling fouls. Obviously, as a U.S. fan, this is going to be on my mind, because that call that gave Ghana a penalty kick is now universally seen as absurd. But there have been a lot of games like that. Tunisia lost to the Ukraine because a penalty kick was called on a play when Ukraine's striker tripped over himself. Yesterday, the Netherlands - Portugal match got so out of hand that the head of FIFA himself criticized the ref. Australia just lost to Italy on a penalty kick that many are saying is a bad call, even though I myself didn't see it.

What's the solution? I don't know, but it seems like something should be done. Incorporate more refs, or find a way to integrate instant replay if there's something serious involved (e.g. a penalty kick involved, a handball, or a red card). Penalty kicks are particularly important to get correct--goals are just too rare in soccer to let the refs be giving them away. And the refs seem to get them wrong so often. It's just infuriating.

Moreover, diving is a penalizable offense in soccer. But it's rarely called. Presumably, instant replay would allow refs to catch divers much more easily than is currently the case. Once that started happening, the incentive to dive would be seriously compromised, and we could watch an actual sport rather than the hybrid sport-theater mixture that we occasionally se.

Other thoughts: I don't know if there is a fair way to penalize teams for needlessly delaying the games, but if there is a way, then it ought to be used more often. Obviously refs can give yellow cards for delaying the game, but this tends to be used sparingly, and once a team gets a one goal lead soccer games tend to drag on...and on...and on. I guess that's just the way it has to be.

Also, Argentina - Germany should be pretty fun. And the Netherlands - Portugal game was obviously nuts. I don't think I'll ever see a game like that again.

II: Bowling

Last week I went bowling with JP and Joda. There's not much to report here, except that Josha had one of the most outrageously inconsistent matches I've ever seen. He bowled a 99 through 5 frames, on pace for an astoudning score of 200, only to falter badly in the second half. He ended up the first game with something like 125, then barely broke 100 in his second game. But those first five frames were something--just strike after strike. JP, meanwhile, played extremely well in his second game to end up with a 140 or something like that. Maybe even a 150. I mostly remember my own scores, which were pathetic--in the 80's for the first game and a 101 on the second. I just sucked all night. We might go back tonight. Then I can redeem myself.

III: Pool/Darts

On Friday night me, JP and Kate Dumo went out to Bedrock Billiards, on Columbia Road. Kate was really bad at pool, but I tutored her, and by the end she was actually making her shots. We even won a game against some vastly more talented coworkers of hers. We also won three games when they scratched on the 8 ball. Our overall record was 4-2, which was astounding considering how bad Kate was to start out.

JP was also playing darts against some barflies who were very, very good. JP is no slouch, though, and both times he got them down to bullseyes. But he lost both times. Still, it was a highly respectable performance.

IV: Hauling Beer

We tried to go Saturday to get the beer, but the line was something like 5 hours long. People were getting pretty testy because of the circumstances. It was a mess. So we went back today, early, and I was the third in line. It still took them about 35 minutes to assemble all 28 cases of beer--I was supposed to have 29, but they didn't have one of them. Unfortunately the missing beer is Whitbread Ale, which is supposed to be very good. Oh well, I still have 28 other cases, which is plenty. Some of them are still in my van, the rest are in JP/Ben/Ian's new apartment. All we need to do is play another lesser-known sport, Throwing Jews Down a Well, and we can have a big party.

Update on the Beer Baron

2006-06-22T18:41:00.000-05:00

Say hello to the Beer Baron, while I say hello to a Logistical Nightmare.

Apparently, I seriously overestimated the market for cheap beer. I ended up with 29 cases, or roughly 700 beers. This cost me $193, or around 28 cents per beer. The countries of origin from my beers include England, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the U.S., Puerto Rico, El Salvador and possibly others that I am forgetting.

I guess I won't have to go to a liquor store for a long time. But the more immediate question is: where the hell am I going to put 29 cases of beer? And how am I going to find the time to pick up 29 cases of beer from Chillum Place, which is by Walter Reed? Unfortunately for me, my pickup date is Monday. If I had only ended up with fewer than 20 cases, my pickup date would be Saturday, which would have been so much easier. Instead I'm probably going to have to dip into my vacation time.

I hope enough people have air-conditioned basements. This is going to be tricky.

Poem #2

2006-06-20T13:20:00.000-05:00

"She's Not Pregnant (But I'm Not Getting Laid)"

It's baseball season again
1, 2, 3
Strikes. You're out.
Barbara Streisand. Barbara Streisand.
New York Mets.

The Beer Baron

2006-06-20T13:11:00.000-05:00

In two days, I could have a big logistical problem on my hands.

This is because my dad recently discovered that a local alcohol distributor is going out of business. As a result, the court has ordered all of its stocks to be sold at auction. This auction is occurring online. So I went to the website yesterday and saw a huge bonanza of beer for dirt cheap prices. I let myself get a little bit out of control and ended up bidding on 58 cases of beer. If I end up winning all of them, I'll have to find space for roughly 1,200 bottles. Depending on how things go, this could end up costing me somewhere between $71 and $347 (I put in a minimum bid and a maximum bid, so we'll just have to see how much the beers get bid up).

Now, I don't think that I am likely to win all 58 cases of beer, and in fact I hope I won't. The maximum bid I entered on any one 24-bottle case was $8, so I imagine that most of those bids will be bested by liquor stores or bars, both of which can pay $12 (or more) for a case and still make a killing on the resale.

So far, though, it's impossible to know what's going to happen; about 25% of the cases still have no bids (meaning you could buy it for 1 cent) and about 60% have a single bid for under $1 (meaning that you could buy it for $1.01). Obviously, this is a state of affairs that is not likely to endure; according to my dad, who has done these auctions before, everything is dormant until about 3 hours before the auction ends, at which point the serious bidders swoop in. And, as I said, I imagine that most of these beers will be purchased by serious bidders.

But you never know. It's possible that I'll up winning a lot of these cases. Besides, even if I win only 1/4 of my bids, that still represents 360 bottles of beer that have to be put somewhere. And that would be quite a logistical hassle.

I'm thinking I might just turn to giving beer away to anyone who will take it. Maybe I will even drive up to NYC to give beer to my friends up there. I could also give it away to bums on the street. I'd be like a Beer Fairy. And everyone would love me, and when the bums gathered, they'd say "Hey, remember when that guy gave us free beer? That was pretty sweet." And so for the price of some cheap, auction-bought cases of beer, I would have ensured that my legacy passes into local lore. How sweet would that be?

Also, there are about 800 cases of a Salvadoran beer called "Cerveza Caballero." I did some research on this beer, and most were of the opinion that this beer is pretty terrible, neatly summed up by one person who simply wrote "Horse Beer? They should call it Horse Piss." I only bid $4 for a case of the Caballero, figuring that even terrible beer is worth $1 per six-pack. Anyways, I'm bringing it up because I don't think they're going to be able to move all 800 cases of the Caballero, so if anyone is in the market for some really cheap, really bad beer, I can hook you up with the website info.

A Bridge Too Far

2006-06-20T09:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I tried to continue my whole living-like-normal thing. I went out to dinner for some pupusas, then to the Common Share. The Common Share was fun. I was planning to drink for the first time, but since I hadn't had any alcohol for 5 weeks, I figured I would take it easy.

Well, that plan didn't work, because Sekou the bartender and the owner both bought me free shots. And we ordered a bunch of pitchers. So I ended up fairly drunk. I didn't think I was too out of control, and as I passed out I was planning to write a post about how it was nice to be back at the Common Share and whatnot, and how it was nice to be able to get solidly drunk again without being too crazy.

But then I woke up at 4 am and felt sick, then ended up puking for an hour. In retrospect, I shouldn't have had so much to drink. I think the giant milkshake I had after drinking may have also played a role. I've concluded that drinking and dairy don't mix.

Anyways, I think I'll be going back to the Common Share on Thursday for "Pool Night," which is when they put a baby rubber inflatable pool somewhere in the bar. According to the owner, it's a fun time. But I'm going to make it a goal of mine to be a lot more sober. Even if it means turning down free shots.

Life, Rediscovered

2006-06-19T16:41:00.001-05:00

Now that I can eat again I find that it's a lot easier to live a normal life that involves things like going out and staying awake past 11. Friday I went to play pool with Ian and Paul. There's nothing notable about that, except for the fact that all three of us were playing extremely streak-ily.

Saturday I watched U.S.-Italy. As with Jon, I don't know much about soccer, but from most of the analyses I've seen, the two red cards on the U.S. weren't nearly as unfair as the ABC commentators said they were. They seem somewhat debatable (unlike the Italian red card), but at the same time most of the press, particularly the British press, seems to think that they were justifiable calls. But who knows? Not me.

The main thing that I found utterly unbearable about the game was not the ref, but instead the Italian players' consistent efforts to act like they had just been victims of the most grievous injuries in the history of soccer. I know that there is a lot of diving in soccer, and that's something I can live with; you want to sell the call, so you exaggerate the contact by falling down at the slightest touch. Fine. That's standard practice in the NBA as well. But once you have fallen down, there is no need to make a face like you've just been stabbed. It's so insulting and infuriating to see the Italians call on the stretcher, then get a spray of some sort of icy-hot like substance, then suddenly run back on the field. I hate that, and I decided I'm going to root against the teams that do it. Which certainly includes Italy. Portugal was bad at that too.

The thing is, according to JP, Italians actually are like that in real life. Apparently every time they stub their toes or hit their knees they wail like they've just had surgery without anasthesia. Maybe the players can't help it. Whatever. I still find it unbelivably aggravating.

In other World Cup news, I also watched Ghana annihilate the Czechs and the Koreans pull out a tie with France. Did anyone see that Ghanaian player pull out an Israeli flag during the post-goal celebrations? At first I was confused, but it turns out that he plays for a team in Tel Aviv. Also, this little gesture earned the ire of the Egyptian public, which now is being told that the Ghanaian defender is a Mossad agent.

On Saturday night I went out to the Common Share for the first time. Larry the Bouncer asked me where I'd been, as did one of the bartenders. I was touched. I drank a little bit of beer--probably only about 6 ounces, but still, the first booze I've had in a month.

Today a man came in asking for help because the government implanted tracking devices into his skull. He is from California, but was visiting D.C. for a conference of people who have been afflicted by the government skull implantation program. He also brought along with him a trove of medical documentation, obtained in Puerto Rico because he says that was the only place he could go to flee the government. The documentation, which he appeared to not have understood, said that he looked entirely normal but was suffering from psychological distress. Big shock there.

These situations are pretty tough--we have a switchboard, and normally the receptionist screens out the people who are calling to ask us for help because the FBI is using satellites to control their brain waves or whatever. But this guy was a walk-in, so I had to talk to him. I tried the standard excuses I use whenever I get requests for help from people who clearly don't have it together--primarily, "we don't take these types of cases" and "we only take cases from people who live in the D.C. area." But he kept on pressing me for referrals. Clearly there is no one I can refer him to, except for a psychiatrist, but that wouldn't help anything. So I just said that there wasn't anyone. He was angry and disappointed and said that I was condemning him to a life of pain, or something of that nature. It's sad. But what else can you do?

The Status of My Book(s)

2006-06-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

Things that I did today instead of working on my books (in chronological order, starting from the moment I set foot outside):

-Purchased three pickles for two dollars from a large bucket that had been sitting outside in 90-degree weather on a street fair in Murray Hill.

-Ate spinach-potato-dill pancakes with poached eggs and salmon caviar at brunch.

-Got walked out on at brunch for making fun of the fact that Lindsay didn't know who Ann Coulter was and for (innocently) makign fun of the fact that she incorrectly added the tip when paying the bill.

-Went with a broker to looked at an apartment near Grand Central. The apartment's current tenants were two extremely hot girls.

-Reconciled with Lindsay at the street fair, but only after ordering lemon Italian Ice.

-Got driven around the Upper West Side while listening to the best summer albums from the past four years: Jack's Mannequin's Everything In Transit (2005), Butch Walker's Letters (2004), Yellowcard's Oceans Avenue (2003), Midtown's Living Well is the Best Revenge (2002). A great summer album for 2006 has yet to come out.

-Went on a run through Riverside Park.

-Ordered and consumed a good, but somewhat unsatisfying eight-dollar protein smoothie from the Equinox gym across the street, along with a quarter-pound of tuna salad.

-Watched 3 consecutive episodes of Sex and the City.

-Played guitar on my balcony, attempting to emulate Rhett Miller, who I saw play in Central Park the day before.

-Watched the new Entourage while consuming Ropa Vieja that I ordered from Café con Leche

-Sat by the 72nd street subway station with Lauren, while drinking a chocolate milkshake and talking

-Watched two more episodes of Sex and the City

-Watched another episode of Entourage

-Wrote this blog post

Chili and such

2006-06-16T13:34:00.000-05:00

As some of you (actually all of you other than e) might know, my new apartment with JP and Ben is located just around the corner from Ben's Chili Bowl. Needless to say, it is a wonderful perk, and last weekend, we made sure to grab some drunken chili cheese fries after a night at Local 16.

The place has some good chili, which they put on hot dogs, half smokes, fries, hamburgers, BLT's, etc. It's not dirt cheap, but it's cheap enough -- think Pizza Mart.

So imagine my surprise when I walked down the street this morning and saw a piece of trash indicating that someone last night had apparently eaten a chili dog from 7-11 (also close to our place). 7-11 is good for some things: Slurpees, Gatorade and Slurpees. I would say it's probably not known for its chili dogs.

Ben's Chili Bowl, however, is known for just that. Go figure.

------

In other chili news. WPGC was at Ben's Chili Bowl today for some sort of promotion. People were lined about around the block and there was music blaring. I think WPGC DJ Donnie Simpson was there. It looked like a good time, but I had just eaten.

Book #2

2006-06-15T14:09:00.000-05:00

In anticipation of having to write at least two books to fulfil the contractual obligations of my publishing deal, I have come up with the title to the followup to Do I Listen to Emo Because I'm Depressed, or Am I Depressed Because I Listen to Emo?

The second book will be entitled: How to Masturbate to Ann Coulter (If You Must)

Thank you to fellow EF#1 bloggers Jon, Ben, and Craig for inspiring this title with our lunchtime conversation.

Step by Step

2006-06-14T14:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had my highly anticipated appointment with the surgeon. It was mostly a triumph, although not a complete one.

It started with them taking out the stitches that had previously covered the wounds that had resulted from when they cut open my gums. They took out the stitches because the stitches , which were dissolving more slowly than anticipated, were irritating my mouth. So they removed the stitches. Well, that caused a lot of irritation. Getting stitches removed from a sensitive, fleshy area like your gums is not fun. In fact, it's very painful.

Then it was time to remove the splint, which they also did, and that was nice. It was a really liberating feeling, to have this giant plastic thing removed from your mouth. Now I can talk freely and eat a lot more easily than before. So that's good.

And then came the big conversation about what I can be eating at this stage. As I had anticipated and feared, the surgeon took a pretty conservative bent, and told me that I could eat what I had been eating "plus a level up." Whatever that means. Pizza is definitely banned. Pasta and rice are approved. Meat is kind of in a gray zone. The surgeon was generally opposed to the idea of me eating meat, but I think it's ok for me have ground meat, or meat that I cut up into very small pieces. Fish is also ok. I went to my organization's annual luncheon yesterday and they served chicken, which I cut into small pieces and was able to eat without difficulty.

As you can imagine, pasta, rice, and meat represents a big step up. I've decided, based on observations about how my body reacts to my diet, that the reason I'm constantly tired and exhausted is because the only carbohydrates I ingest are basically sugar--fruit and milkshakes. Occasionally I have some potatoes, but that's it. Otherwise it's all protein (soup, Boost, yogurt) or sugar. And that's not a healthy diet. But yesterday I had Indian again, only this time I added rice, and it helped a lot. Meat helps a lot too. So my diet should improve greatly in the coming weeks, which will in turn help me become a much more functional human being.

Unfortunately, for today and possibly tomorrow, I'm still kind of restricted, because after the luncheon I went to the orthodontist, who did all sorts of things to my teeth, which now feel fairly sore as a result. So I'm still kind of taking it easy on the solid food. Also, the orthodontist told me that I have to put new rubber bands on my teeth twice a day, which promises to be an extremely annoying requirement. But whatever. I'll take it. Because being able to eat food is nice.

I have decided to write a book...

2006-06-13T01:57:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from Do I Listen to Emo Because I Am Depressed, or Am I Depressed Because I Listen to Emo?: A Collection of Narratives on Life, Love, and Lyrics

Prologue

I thought it would be romantic to walk down the block to the neighborhood bar and start writing a book. Not romantic in the sense of falling in love and living happily ever after. Not romantic in the sense of fucking until the wee hours of the morning until you are both inebriated with pleasure and exhaustion. But romantic in a literary sense. Romantic like Hemingway returning to his old stomping grounds in Havana or Madrid to begin production on his next novel. Romantic as in being at peace with oneself and one’s solitude. Romantic as in a cathartic expression of emotion and sentimentality, free from the expectations of the outside world.

But alas, romance was not what I would find at the dive bar at the corner of 75th and Amsterdam. Rather, seconds after I walked passed the bouncer who told me not to worry about showing ID – before I even had the opportunity to order my first drink – I was accosted by a slightly overweight, twenty-something brunette who was carrying a Macintosh laptop and whose face seemed to be a bizarre cross between those of Hilary Clinton and a white Shaquille O’Neal.

“Are you doing homework too?” she bellowed across the bar, inching ever closer to me.

I ordered a Hoegarten from the bartender. “No.”

“Well then,” she persisted, oblivious to my desire not to be involved in this conversation. “What are you doing?”

I noticed a Hunter College sticker on her laptop. Her appearance aside, the fact that she did not go to a Top Ten school meant this relationship could never work. “I am writing a book,” I replied, with a pinch of smugness and a dash of please stop talking to me.

“Wow, that’s really cool,” she smiled. “What’s it about?”

“Well,” I paused, taking my time to figure out how to best structure my response to come off as arrogant and undesirable as possible. “It is non fiction. About me. Basically. I guess it’s about how I hate girls. Oh. And about why my life is more interesting than everyone else’s.”

The bartender handed me my beer.

“Interesting,” the girl said. She raised her half-finished pint glass in a toast. “Here’s to your book.”

As we clanked glasses, some of my beer overflowed, spilling onto my notebook.

“Oh no,” she apologized. “I’m sorry for ruining your book.”

“It’s okay,” I said as I scoured the room for an open table. “I haven’t even started yet.”

------------------------------

"Fall Out Boy, Gay Bars, and Venereal Diseases Associated With Both"

Question: What is sleazier than going to a gay bar to hit on girls?
Answer: Hitting on girls at a gay bar while your girlfriend is in the bathroom.

Question: What is sleazier than the above?
Answer: Blogging about it on your girlfriend’s computer while she is in bed sleeping.

Last Tuesday, after attending a CD release party at CBGB’s, I went across the street to B-Bar for Beige – the East Village spot’s weekly gay night – with Jim and my gay roommate Chris. It was probably the fourth or fifth time I had attended Beige since moving to New York the prior summer, and the demographics were the same as always: about 80 percent male (95 percent of whom were gay) and 20 percent female (20 percent of whom were attractive).

Jim, Chris, and I made our way to the outdoor portion of the bar and – after ordering a round of Bud Light’s (the straightest drink on the menu) – found a table to sit down. I was sitting across from Chris, and behind him, I noticed a group of guys and girls who appeared to be about our age.

“Holy shit,” I exclaimed to my two friends. “That guy is in Brass Bus!”

I had recognized Skip Ireland – the keyboardist/singer from the jam band that I had – six months earlier – proclaimed to be the next Phish. Brass Bus was, for some bizarre reason, locked into a seven-album deal with a pop-punk label that had peaked in 2002 with New Found Glory. Despite appearances at Bonnaroo and other major summer festivals, the band did not seem to be gaining in popularity.

Back in December when I was home in DC for the holidays, I had taken Chris and Sarah – Jim’s current (but not then-) girlfriend, who also happens to be my first girlfriend – to see Brass Buss at the famed 9:30 Club. After the band’s set, I had introduced myself to Skip, chatting briefly about his band and my burgeoning career in the music industry. He was very shy and – at the time – Chris noted that my conversation with Skip was like pulling teeth.

“No way! He is in Brass Bus,” Chris confirmed my identification. “I’m gonna go talk to him.”

“Hey,” Chris said as he tapped Skip on the shoulder. “Are you in a band called Brass Bus?”

More than anything, Skip seemed shocked that someone had recognized him and his band. I wonder if he was afraid that fans – if there were any – would have a negative reaction to learning he was gay. “Um… yeah…” he stuttered. “I am. How do you know us?”

“Oh, I’ve seen you guys a couple of times. My friend Ethan here is a big fan.”

I immediately butted into the conversation. “Hey Skip, I’m Ethan,” I said as I shook his hand. “We met at the 9:30 Club show in December in DC.” Of course, it didn’t cross my mind that he probably didn’t remember the 45-second conversation we had had six months prior to this encounter.

The conversation between me, Skip, and Chris continued for a couple minutes, while Jim sat there quietly. Eventually, Skip said that it was good to meet us (again) before returning to his group of friends.

“I always thought he was gay. And I swear to God I know that guy he’s with,” Chris said about the guy Skip was talking to. “I see him at Therapy all the time.”

Meanwhile, I kept thinking to myself, I just outed one of the members of Brass Bus. I started writing a text message to Vince – Brass Bus’s bass player – whom I consider a friend – that I ran into his bandmate out in the city, but I was afraid that the rest of the band might not know his sexual orientation, so I stopped. “What if I wrote that I saw Skip Ireland to Gawker Stalker or Gothamist or Brooklyn Vegan?” I asked my friends, rattling off the names of New York music and celebrity blogs.

“I don’t think any of them would care,” the ever-cynical Jim replied.

“I guess it makes sense that he’s gay,” I said, delving into the recesses of my knowledge of Brass Bus history. “Before he was in the band, Skip had a role in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway.”

But that wasn’t the first time I had an encounter with a Broadway star at Beige...

Annihilation

2006-06-12T14:21:00.000-05:00

Wow, was that a destruction. I don't think the U.S. can advance, barring an unlikely confluence of events. Not like they deserve to anyways, unless they play waaaaay better than they did that game. I don't know how many people on this blog even care about the game, but oof. That was ugly.

Weakling

2006-06-12T08:28:00.000-05:00

I have recently realized that I am one weak dude nowadays. In addition to the slow walking and tired knees phenomenon identified in my previous blog post, I tried to run a little bit on Friday because it was starting to thunderstorm and I needed to get out of the rain. But after running two blocks, I was wheezing and gasping for air. It's going to take longer for me to get back into shape than I originally realized.

In other news, I hope the U.S. wins today. If they lose, they are probably out of the tournament, unless they can tie Italy and soundly beat Ghana. The Czech team is a hard team to handicap. They could be pretty good.

I also hope I can actually watch the game. I plan on taking an extra-long lunch break to do so, but I need to find a place nearby that is showing the game and has available seats. Lucky Bar and Front Page should be showing the game, but I bet they'll be crowded.

As JonCo knows, I've been watching a lot of the World Cup; I'd say I've seen a solid majority of the minutes played. I was really rooting for Angola yesterday to stick it to Portugal, but it didn't happen. Dang. In general, it's been good watching. It makes me think I should go see more D.C. United games, particularly since United is one of D.C.'s better teams.

What happened to the Heat? Any chance they can come back?

When This Cruel War Is Over

2006-06-09T08:45:00.000-05:00

Tuesday is a potentially big day for me. That's when my splint (mouthguard) is scheduled to be removed, which may open the door for me to eat food again. As someone who is really interested in being able to eat again, as well as someone who is a neurotic Jew, I've mapped out all of the possibilities for Tuesday in my head.

Option A: Splint does not get removed
Option B: Splint gets removed, but the surgeon tells me I still have to stick to soft foods
Option C: Splint gets removed, and I'm allowed to eat slightly harder foods, but not too hard
Option D: Splint gets removed, and I can eat either medium or hard foods, but my teeth are in too much pain to do so
Option E: Splint gets removed, and I can eat whatever I want without any problems

I don't think A is likely, but I also don't think E is that likely. The surgeon is a conservative one--he always wants me to take my recovery very slowly--so I think B or C are more likely. I'm not sure what C would look like--I don't know exactly where the middle ground is between Soft (e.g. eggs, tuna fish) and Hard (e.g. bagels, steak). It might be up to me to figure it out for myself.

Another thing is that I have to go to the orthodontist afterwards to get my brackets replaced, so that might be painful and could exacerbate any pain that comes from removing the splint.

I guess we'll just have to see. I sure hope I can eat, because on Tuesdsay my organization is having its big annual luncheon. I will be attending in between my appointments with the surgeon and the orthodontist, and the food will be good, and I will really want to eat it. So I hope that the surgeon will have given me permission to do so.

In general, I really want to eat food again. It's not making me as frustrated as it did before--the soft food helps a lot with that--but even with more calories I still find myself way more sluggish than I was before the surgery. Every night when I go to sleep my knees feel like jelly, a type of exhaustion that I normally only get from arduous workouts. Now I get it from a standard day's worth of walking. And I don't even do that much walking. Also, I walk really slowly now. It used to take me 40-45 minutes to walk to the Metro and go to work. Now it takes me almost an hour. I just can't move that quickly anymore.

So food will be a welcome boost to my life. As long as the splint comes off--and I think it will--it will become much easier to eat a wider range of soft foods (such as pasta), and that will undoubtedly help. But I'm really looking forward to just not having to worry at all about what I'm eating. Unfortunately, that might still be two weeks away.

One thing is for sure, though: when this cruel war against insufficient caloric intake is over, I am going to start a new and vicious struggle of retribution against food. I am going to stuff my mouth every night. As the Blog is my witness, those 15 pounds are going to come back on.

Musical Revue

2006-06-08T07:54:00.000-05:00

Like Ethan, I am a conoisseur of the local music scene. Unlike Ethan, this means that I watch people who play music and seek change from local passerby going to and from the Dupont Circle metro. Here is a summary of the options available:

Chinese Saw Violin Man
He plays the violin with a saw to make melancholy-style Chinese music. He also has a backup of more classical music, coming from a boombox. He occasionally plays Farragut North, too. Pretty talented. Also, his facial expressions, which are evocatively bittersweet, indicate that he's really into his music.

Blues One Man Band
This is a guy who plays the harmonica, sings, and strums on a guitar. He plays blues music. The music sounds a little ragged, because he can usually only do one of these activities at once, but considering that he's a one-man band, I have to give him props.

Guitar Cover Guy
This is a guy who plays covers of popular mellow songs. His favorite is "Take a Load Off Sally" or whatever that song is called, by the Band, that's also in the Cingular commercials. He has a guitar, and that's it. He's mildly talented, but the more you listen to him the more you realize that he's not actually that talented.

Native American Flute Band
This is a band with three people. Yes, three. There's a guy playing the Native American flute and two others playing guitar and bass. I've only seen them once, but they were pretty good.

Go-Go Trash Can Drum Troupe
These guys are great. They hang out and play go-go style beats on large empty plastic jugs. Everyone loves them, and whenever they play a crowd generally gathers (unlike the others, who generally don't have such devoted followings). Unfortunately I have not seen them yet this summer at Dupont, although in previous summers they have been popular fixtures. I hope they will return soon.

Bum Who Yells Things
This is not all that musical, but entertaining in its own way. This is the guy who "knows his place in America" and frequently chants this mantra to passerby to remind them of this fact. Not to be confused with Announcement Man, who also yells things, but in a less musical way.

There are probably others, but that's all I can think of for now. In summary, if I was Ethan I would come down here quickly to scout these fine performers and sign them before they get picked up by a major record label.

Pluses and Minuses

2006-06-05T15:34:00.000-05:00

My weekend was a little more sour than it should have been.

In the "good news" department, I am slowly making my way back into the land of food. It started last week, when I had some heavily mashed potatoes made by my Dad, which proved edible. Then when I went up to Baltimore, Hanna had wisely bought me some Indian food from Trader Joe's consisting of heavily stewed (and spicy) vegetables. These were also edible. On Friday, I ate a yam, as well as some tuna fish; on Saturday, I actually went out to a restaurant (for the first time) and ate some more Indian food, this time ordering mushy stewed eggplant (Baigan Bhartha, for those who know their Indian food). On Sunday I had eggs and some really soggy Cinnamon Life cereal.

Obviously this is not going to be interesting to most people, but it's pretty damned exciting to me. I think it should allow me to halt my weight loss, and it's nice to have options other than soup. Of course it's still pretty restricting, but it's a lot better than before.

Next Tuesday they're going to remove my splint, which currently makes it fairly cumbersome to eat and also makes it more difficult for me to speak. At that point, eating soft foods should be very easy. They may also give me permission to start eating slightly more differently textured food. We'll see. In any event, I am hopeful. Eating is still kind of tough, thanks to the splint. Also, my teeth are pretty sore, presumably from all the movement they've been doing, and once the splint comes off my teeth will probably get even more sore, thus restricting my return to food. But at last I have been able to leave the soup zone, and my progress should only accelerate from here.

Another good thing about this weekend was that I had the chance to visit the new pad of Ian, Ben and JP. It's pretty sweet. I didn't realize how developed U Street had become--it's like a second 18th Street. I urge everyone to come visit this new abode for themselves.

Now, onto the less good parts of the weekend. For one thing, I barely got to see Sam at all before he left for el mundo down under. Friday night would have been the night, but I was super tired and had to wake up at 7 am to take a friend to BWI. So I didn't go out, and therefore missed a big party with Sam, the rest of the Jews, all of the younger Wilson kids, and some of my Wesleyan friends. It would have been an excellent night to go out, but I couldn't. Damn. Then on Saturday night, I couldn't go out until late because my grandfather was in town, and by the time I was free Sam was already going to sleep. Damn.

The other highly annoying event occurred on Saturday, when I went to see Al Gore's new movie, An Inconvenient Truth. It was playing at Bethesda Row, and the theater was packed, so when I went in (it was a group of four people) we split up. I saw a row with three empty seats on the end. The innermost seat was being held for someone, but the outer two were empty. So I took the middle of these three seats, but then I had to go to the bathroom. I got up and had nothing to put down to mark my seat, so I asked the woman to hold my seat for me.

When I got back, someone had taken the two seats. I told them that I had been sitting there, but this super bitch who was in my seat simply refused to leave. The woman who was supposed to hold my seat confirmed that I had been there, and said that she had been looking away when this woman sat down, but this woman refused to budge. She simply said "I'm sorry, it's hard to find two seats together in this theater, you're just going to have to move." I didn't know what to do. I wanted to slug her, but the movie was starting. So what could I do? I just sat down in a seat in another row and spent much of the movie stewing over this bitch. I wanted to tell her off but decided not to, because I figured she'd just ignore me. But her sense of entitlement to this seat was so galling.

It really put me in a bad mood. I hate jerks. Even retelling the story made me pissed off, although now that I've retold it a few times I'm a little more calm about it.

It reminded me of a story that Paul told me about a time that he was parking in Adams-Morgan. It was one of the side streets and it was too narrow for the car behind him to get by, so after the car honked at him, Paul pulled up a little bit. Then the driver behind him went and took his spot. If that had been me, I seriously would have considered keying this guy's car. I like to think of myself as a calm, rational person, but people like that just set me off. I wish we could torture them.

Anyways.

The last minus about my life is that the shift to soft food, while overwhelmingly beneficial, does have one major downside in that there is now constantly food stuck in my teeth. You know how it can be hard to get food out of your mouth when it's stuck in your braces? Well, now imagine food getting stuck in your teeth behind a maze of braces, surgical wires, surgical hooks and a mouthguard when you are unable to open your mouth beyond the distance permitted by two rubber bands connecting your jaws.

Trust me, it's tricky. Yesterday it took me 15 minutes to clean the six or so teeth that I was actually able to reach. I don't know if 15 minutes sounds like a long time, but if you're spending it in front of the mirror trying to get food out of your teeth, it feels like an eternity. Also, my breath isn't quite as nice as I'd like it to be. Also, my gums bleed easily because I haven't flossed in three weeks, and I've barely been able to brush my teeth. I did, however, get the green light to start using Listerine, so hopefully that will help somewhat with the breath, if not with the food getting stuck.

In closing, I'd like to talk to Skittlebrow: if you have some sort of reliable internet access, you had better give us constant, entertaining updates on life in Buenos Aires. If you do not at least triple the number of posts from Ben's pathetic blog, I will consider you a failure.

Some interesting tidbits...

2006-06-05T10:03:00.000-05:00

In the category of whatever happened to my ex-girlfriends, I received some new information shedding some light on the whereabouts of Pamcake. Yesterday afternoon, I was playing basketball with some people, one of whom goes to Duke and will be a senior next year (Pam's year). Last week, he apparently was at dinner with a large group of people, one of whom was 'cake. Apparently Pam is currently interning at Merril Lynch (which I'm not surprised about, as she does love money), and living in the same NYU law apartment building that I lived in when I interned in New York the summer before my senior year. So it all comes full circle, as she is living in the same building where she spent one-to-two tumultuous nights per week for ten weeks, two summers ago.

In the category of black people singing extremely white music, I was wandering around the Filene's Basement in Chelsea Sunday afternoon, searching for the pair of Sacred Blue's in my size that has been eluding me for the past several months. There was a pretty ghetto dude browsing the Nautica rack, wearing one of those puffy Northface parkas (it was 71 degrees yesterday), and listening to headphones. Every now and then, he would sing along to the music. The first song I caught him joining in on - "Beautiful" by James Blunt. The second song - "In the End" by Linkin Park.

In the category of why I hate emo/scene kids, I was in a Jamba Juice near Union Square on Saturday afternoon so Lindsay could go to the bathroom. There were a group of seven or eight kids (I would guess 14-16 years old). The boys were wearing girls jeans, had lip piercings, and sportled black eyeliner. The girls were overweight, had tatoos on their shoulders, and sported black nailpolish. As we were leaving the smoothie bar, I overheard one of the guys say,"Panic! At the Disco sucks. When I get home, I am going to curse them out all over their MySpace page."

In the category of New York social circles being very small, I responded to a Craig's List posting for two open bedrooms in a 5-bedroom apartment a couple blocks from my current pad. When I went over last night to meet my potential future roomates, I learned that the guys are really good friends with Jeff Curtin and Andrew Baxt and apparently hang out with them regularly at the apartment.

What's Up?

2006-06-02T15:56:00.000-05:00

Why does this blog suck so bad as of late? I feel like me whining about recovering from surgery has grown to become an unhealthy majority of the posts. Jon occasionally contributes, but he has been greatly weakened. Sam, Ian, and Ethan have all apparently quit. Is this blog dead?

In particular, Jon's latest post should have drawn howls of outrage from people. Most of us like Ethiopian food; Ethan and Craig like Family Guy; and above all, disparaging Frisco's on a Jewboys forum is a heretical act, tantamount to ordering a Reuben in Riyadh. Yet we have not moved to disparage Jon's post. Why?

Are we all just tired of this, or what?

I know that I've been feeling tired lately. I've been consuming more calories, at least I think I have, but I've felt worn down for no good reason. Maybe it's because I've been coming back into work and therefore waking up earlier. Or maybe it's because I don't have the excitement of human contact to perk me up. Other than a chance encounter with Blunts in the Metro yesterday, I haven't seen anyone since everyone left after Memorial Day. I don't even know if Sam is still here. Or if Ian and Ben have been going out. Or anything. Paul got a job, and I didn't know that either, until David Mann sent around an e-mail about it.

Anyways, I'm beginning to ramble. In closing, I would like to urge everyone to start blogging more.

Also, who was that random person who talked about being a Ghost of the Past on one of my posts? He or she is now living in New York and apparently their parent saw me in the Post. I now realize that I am curious about who you are. So if you're reading this blog post, identify yourself.

Metro Strangeness

2006-06-01T15:05:00.000-05:00

Today I took the Metro with a strange passenger. I got on at Fort Totten, where I had been sent to do some research on whether the station was wheelchair-accessible. Then a guy got on right before the "doors closing" chime and asked me if he could sit down next to me. I was surprised by this, because no one ever asks permission to sit down next to someone on a Metro train; you just do it.

Anyways, I said he could sit next to me, since I was planning to go to sleep anyways, which I promptly did.

When I woke up, shortly after pulling in to Metro Center, the train was really crowded and you could hear a beat coming from someone's audio device. My seatmate began asking fellow riders where it was coming from. Again, I found this very strange; normally, no one on the Metro cares that there is a little bit of noise coming from someone's Pod, particularly because on this crowded, Pod-filled train, it could have been coming from a lot of people. But he asked around until someone pointed out the passenger in question. My seatmate didnt sound angry, but instead just seemed interested in trying to figure it out.

Weird. Also, his toenails were painted bright red.

Two Weeks

2006-05-30T13:26:00.000-05:00

This is the second week since the surgery. I should have had my second checkup today, but instead I went in on Friday, because one of the two rubber bands connecting my jaws snapped, so I had to get it replaced. The new one snapped today--meaning it only survived four days. So I had to go to the orthodontist to get another replacement.

Apparently part of the reason that they keep snapping is because I am able to move my jaw more than most post-surgical patients. That's a good thing, and the orthodontist echoed the surgeon by saying that I am doing extremely well for someone who is only two weeks out of surgery.

So I should mostly be thankful for this, and I am, but the whole time I was at the orthodontists, the main thought on my mind was: I am soooooo hungry. I have been hungry most of the day, even though I have had two smoothies, five cups of soup, and a Boost, and even though my sole physical activity has been walking and typing. It's just hard to get enough liquid calories.

And the desire for food isn't helping. It's continued to spike in recent days; I think this is partially because as I continue to return to relative normalcy, the one thing about my life that remains highly abnormal sticks out all the more. So my desire for food has been growing, fueled every time I see a hamburger or some fried chicken or a roast beef sandwich or smell something cooking. I'm pretty sure I had a dream about being able to eat the other night.

Alas, I won't be able to eat for a little while, possibly up to another month. Since there's not much I can do to change this, I think my only realistic option is to try not to complain about it too much. Recently I've been pretty irritable about my lack of solid food, but I guess I should try to stop being crabby and just count my blessings that I am physically fine.

That, and have some more soup.

One Week

2006-05-23T12:19:00.000-05:00

I had my first weekly checkup today with the surgeon. It went well. He said everything is going smoothly. So that's good. I might even go back to work tomorrow, although I'd only go in for a few hours.

Today I will be receiving Philadelphia and the 40 Year Old Virgin from Netflix. Yay, movies.

The biggest news from my life is that for some odd reason yesterday and today I've been doing a ton of research on teaching English abroad. It's an idea that's been sort of sitting in my head for awhile, and it just exploded so I've been reading a lot about it on various websites. Sometimes things like this happen--when I start to seriously think about some Big Step in my life, my mind just gets addicted to researching and considering all of the possibilities. The previous two times I really remember this happening was when I first thought about where I'd go to college and when I first thought about the possibility of studying abroad. Now it's happening again.

I don't really like this phase of thinking. For one thing, I think about it too much, and that's exhausting. For another thing, I find that if I think about things a lot, they begin to acquire a momentum in my head and then it becomes almost like a foregone conclusion. Then again, maybe the fact that I'm thinking about it so much is a sign that it's something I really want to do. But I don't feel like this is something I really want to do--beecause people seem to have really mixed experiences, and I don't want to have a shitty time. On the other hand, I am concerned about not taking an opportunity that I might never have again. Plus it might be a worthwhile way to take another year off before starting my life.

Although I also need to think about starting my life, because the question of whether or not I'd teach English abroad is tied into the whole question of what I want to do with my life in general, another question that's been worming its way into my head. That question is too big to deal with on a blog post. But the whole thread of thoughts is none too pleasant. Mostly, it's scary. It doesn't help that I have nothing else to do/think about, so my introspection tends to sit in my brain more than it should. And going to work won't even change that, since I have nothing to do at work either. Oh well, I have to start thinking about this junk at some point, I guess now is as good a time as any.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

2006-05-20T23:01:00.000-05:00

Don't worry, I'm not actually dying. But it does feel a little bit like that, seeing as how it's Saturday night, about to turn midnight, and I am sitting at home, alone in my basement, watching Saturday Night Live for the first time in as long as I can remember.

Let's see. Yesterday I shaved for the first time and shat for the first time. Today I ate with a spoon for the first time, which felt like a particularly important triumph. It's a little bit strange to regard eating with a spoon as a step foward, particularly because I was only eating Yoplait, but there you go. Tomorrow I'll be allowed to blow my nose for the first time--I was originally banned from doing so because some of the many screws that have been inserted into my face are near the base of my nose, so blowing hard could dislodge them. But I guess after 5 days, the screws aren't going anywhere, so you can blow your nose. Also, tomorrow I can stop taking the antibiotics. And I've gone the whole day without any codeine, so that's a triumph, although I'll probably take some tonight before I go to bed.

What else? Today I had very thick, blenderized chicken soup (or as my mom delicately referred to it, "chicken goop"). It tasted fine, but now the idea of it is making me slightly nauseous. When I started this, I made it a personal goal of mine to have the willpower to avoid blenderized versions of foods that should not be put into a blender (such as pizza). But today I bended that rule to mix chicken with chicken soup. It's not that big of a deal, I guess. But I don't want to have it again. I'll stick with the foods that are designed to be made into creamy soups, such as broccoli, mushroom and seafood.

Luckily, my other attempts at food blenderization have been going fine. There have only been two: brownies and peanut butter. I mixed some brownies with milk and the result was very good, like slightly warm molten chocolate.

Ha. SNL just did a funny parody of The Usual Suspects. I'm not going to bother explaining it because the explanation wouldn't be funny.

Anyways, the other food I put into the blender was peanut butter, mixed up with milk and chocolate syrup. The reuslt was good, but not as awesome as I was thinking it might be.

I've also watched Ray (very good, especially Jamie Foxx, but not ultra-spectacular), Control Room (a documentary about Al Jazeera--interesting and worthwhile) and The Ice Harvest (featuring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton--decent, but not particuarly good or memorable). I also saw Dave Chappelle's second standup special, For What Its Worth, with Ian. It was solid, but nowhere near as good as Killing Them Softly. Granted, that's a high bar to set, but it wasn't all that funny.

Speaking of movies, Netflix is kind of letting me down. I mailed back Control Room on Thursday, and they still haven't gotten it. They should have, though--the mailing facility is in Gaithersburg. It should have made it there by Friday, let alone today. Whatever. I can wait. As long as the postal service didn't lose it.

I also started to watch The Critic because my friend got me all of the episodes on DVD. Remember that show? I really liked it. So I started to watch it today, but then I stopped, because it kind of hurts for me to laugh, which is unfortunate. It also overturns the long-standing wisdom that laughter is the best medicine. In this case, apparently it isn't.

Hope everyone's having a fun Saturday night! "Weekend Update" just came on, so I'm going to go watch that.

Through the Wire

2006-05-18T19:01:00.000-05:00

I think today is the first day I've really missed food. Which is unfortunate, because it's only Day 3, or 4, depending on how you're calculating it. I think I'll be upgraded to soft food relatively quickly, which will undoubtedly be a big step up, but so far I've stuck with the soup. The soup is tasty, and I could create more variety in taste if I wanted to, but variety in texture is actually a big part of the eating experience. And that's something I'm lacking. And it's something that hit home today--I've been feeling more normal, which makes me feel hungrier, and its not always easy to satisfy your hunger with soup alone. Plus my mom is cooking jambalaya, which I can smell. I wish I could eat it too.

Also, today I've been having some trouble actually getting the liquid into my stomach--in the morning I was having trouble operating straws, for some reason. I think it's that the variation in the swelling made it hard for me to really get my lips around the straw. Since then I've figured it out. For awhile I was just drinking it from the cup, which was effective but unfortunately messy.
Yes, I'm quite a joy to be around. Luckily the pain is mostly gone, as is most of the swelling. My ability to talk is improving, although it's still a little spotty, not to mention somehwat physically unpleasant.

Whatever. Life goes on. I'm going to go eat some more soup.

Unexpected

2006-05-17T21:53:00.000-05:00

Are the Cavs going to beat the Pistons? I would have previously said that there was a 0% chance of this happening. Now it appears that the odds are much higher than that. What's going on?

Some Liquid Food Reviews

2006-05-17T15:56:00.000-05:00

Boost Plus (chocolate): Surprisingly good chocolate flavor, plus lots of protein.

Milkshake (various flavors): Yummy.

Ketan (some sort of yogurt/strawberry drink): Good, although kind of thick. Could use more sugary flavor.

Lobster bisque (Whole Foods): Doesn't really taste like lobster bisque, with a slightly off aftertaste. Disappointing.

Roasted Red Pepper soup (Trader Joe's): Tasty. Spicier than expected.

Mix of two above soups: Good. Better than you'd think. The spiciness of the red pepper soup takes away the strange aftertaste of the bisque, while the bisque adds richness to the red pepper soup.

Creamy Portobello Mushroom soup (Whole Foods): Yummy. Strongly recommended.

More soup reviews to come.

Other points:
- I have been awake for maybe 3 hours out of the last 17.
- Why is there dried blood in my ear?
- My nose has mostly stopped bleeding, and breathing through it is pretty effective.
- Tylenol with codeine is effective, but it tastes very bad and it makes me sleepy.
- My facial swelling has gone down by a good 33 to 50%, but it's still pretty immense.
- Talking is still very difficult. And one of my teeth often hurts.
- I still haven't been able to watch any of the Netflix movies because I've been too tired and I fear I'll fall asleep while watching them. So far I've only watched movies I've already seen.
- Daytime TV is of low quality, but luckily I've mostly been asleep.

Notes From Underground

2006-05-16T17:49:00.000-05:00

It begins underground, at least at the Washington Hopsital Center--that's where you go into your changing room, remove all of your clothing, and put on two hospital issued gowns. Then you are put into a gurney and a nurse comes by and asks you all sorts of questions, then puts you onto an IV. The IV going into your skin hurts a little bit, but its not horrible. Then you sign the papers. Then your guests (in my case, my parents) come into the room and wish you good luck as a nurse wheels your gurney into the hallway near the OR. The hallway is kind of cold, but they give you blankets. The anastheseologist comes over and gives you something to make your heart beat faster--I'm not really sure why. Meanwhile, another nurse warns you that theyre going to have to shave some of your legs, probably underneath your butt. I'm not sure why they had to do that, but I guess they did.

Then it's into the operating room--an imposing sight, because there are a ton of doctors and surgical interns in there, all wearing masks. They all talk to you and make some jokes, in my case about my alcohol intake (apparently, they all saw the article I wrote about the Common Share). Then they you roll you off of your gurney and onto a very narrow bench, about the width of a diving board. Then the anastheseologist tels you you're about to fall asleep. You gradually feel it coursing through your bloodstream, then it's bye-bye time.

When you wake up you're in yet another room, a very unfamiliar one. You're back on the gurney and there's yet another nurse talking to you. This part is very fuzzy. Everything comes in and out of focus. Your parents come and visit you again, but when you try to talk to them, you cant really get the words out; your jaw won't really move. Luckily there isn't any pain--the painkillers took care of that.

The recovery room was the worst part for me. I was really thirsty, but they wouldn't let me drink, and I had to stay there for a long time because my oxygen levels weren't as high as they wanted them to be; after taking chest x-rays, they determined that this was because there was fluid in my lungs. So they gave me something to force me to urinate, but it didn't work. I kept on trying to pee into this bottle that they gave me but it just wasn't coming, presumably because of the lingering effects of the anasthesia. So then they had to give me a catheter, which is an extremely unpleasant experience.

Anyways, at least the catheter worked, so then they were able to wheel me up to my room. They brought me up some food, which was pureed and therefore basically inedible, except the split pea soup, so I had a tiny bit of that. I couldn't fit it into my mouth, though--my mom had to sort of pour it in to my mouth. Luckily, I didn't feel too much like eating anyways. I also had some water and some tylenol with codeine, which by that point had become very necessary. The catheter wasnt working either, so I had to pee, but then they managed to work out the problems with the catheter. They also took out the catheter, which was none too pleasant either but was better in the long run.

As my mom and dad stared at me I sort of drifted in and out of consciousness, alternatively watching the NBA playoffs and dozing off. It was hard to doze because my face was covered in a surgical mask, and an ice pack, and an oxygen mask, plus I still had the IV. Also, my nose was seriously stuffed and both nostrils were emitting substantial amounts of blood at fairly regular intervals, and my efforts to mop up the blood with tissues met with only limited success. Still, I was prety tired. So I was sort of in and out.

My parents left at 10 pm. The rest of the night is kind of a blur of dozing in and out, but mostly staying awake because of the aforementioned problems sleeping. One memory is getting up for the first time to go to the bathroom. The nurse had to walk me there. It was a humbling moment. So was looking in the mirror for the first time, where I saw a face that I didn't recognize because it was so heavily swollen and covered in blood.

Anyways, I spent most of the night mostly awake. At 8 am the doctor and all of the interns came in and visited me, then a burly attendant put me into a wheelchair and took me down to the oral surgery clinic. On the way there we talked about the basketball playoffs. My talking still wasnt that successful.

Then they put some rubber bands on my teeth, making it yet more difficult to open my mouth, took some x-rays, and made some more jokes about my drinking--apparently, I bled more than I was supposed to, and they were joking that this was because I drank too much. Anyways, they gave me all of these instructions on what to do in the week to come, then put me back on a wheelchair. Then I was wheeled back upstairs, and I put on my clothes, then got back into the wheelchair and they sent me back downstairs and into my mom's car.

And that's how it begins.

Surgery Sucks

2006-05-16T10:28:00.000-05:00

I just got back from the hospital. My face has swollen to three times its normal size. I'm trying to remember everything that happened. I think that blog post about my experiences will have to wait for another day however. For now I am too zonked out...

Overheard in New York

2006-05-15T10:21:00.000-05:00

My Coffee Guy: So are you wearing your Duke jacket to try to get the ladies who want a smart guy?
Me: Haha, sure.
MCG: Did you go to Duke?
Me: Yeah, I graduated last May.
MCG: So I guess you didn't rape anyone?

The End Is Near

2006-05-14T23:35:00.000-05:00

I've eaten my Last Supper (steak and risotto) and in 7 hours my surgery begins. Luckily they decided they were only going to operate solely on my upper jaw and leave my lower jaw alone, whereas before they were planning on slicing up both, so my recovery almost certainly won't be as apocalyptic as it was portrayed in my earlier blog post. It will still be unpleasant however.

Since I will be confined to my house with nothing to do, expect a torrent of blog postings from me, one that will erase the drought identified by Ian. First post: an angry rant about how the fact that they are only operating on half of my jaw means the insurance company wants me to pay an extra $2000 for the procedure. That story will have to wait for another day. Get excited.

Also, if anyone has any movie suggestions, please e-mail them to me (or post them as comments to this blog). I have a free two-week subscription to Netflix and I have plenty of time to burn so I am looking for some good movies to watch.

Pathetic

2006-05-12T11:12:00.000-05:00

This is the most pathetic drought in Eat First #1 Blog history.

If I wanted to, I could make this a really long title about Gilbert Arenas and shooting free throws (extra points for rhyming)

2006-05-09T14:00:00.000-05:00

After the Wizards season-ending loss to Cleveland on Friday, I turned to Zack and Krista and said something to the effect of, "I wonder how many free throws Gilbert is going to shoot over the next 24 hours." My guess was between 1,000 and 2,000. I was way off.

Gilbert did cancel vacation plans in order to go back to the gym on Saturday and shoot all day. But according to an AP article by Joe White, he didn't shoot a single free throw. Gilbert related it to detoxicing, but he said when you miss free throws like that, it makes you question your jumpshot, which is why he wanted to shoot all day instead of taking a week off.

Ahhhh.... bread and butter sports post.

can i just be here one more day, until my sunburn fades away?

2006-05-08T11:55:00.000-05:00

My face is currently burnt to a crisp after being out in the sun all day Sunday at the Bamboozle Festival in New Jersey. The annual punk rawk festival, which is like a miniature version of Warped Tour, took place at the Giants Stadium parking lot and was - for the most part - 8 hours of pure hell. Here are some hi(or, in most cases, lo)lights...

-Four out of every five bands was a screamo or hardcore act. Nine out of every ten of these screamo or hardcore acts sounded exactly like every other screamo or hardcore act on the bill. If you do the math, that leaves approximately eight acts that did not sound like everyone else (Zox, State Radio, Nightmare of You, Bedouin Soundclash, Saves the Day, Panic! At The Disco, Method Man, and Men Women & Children).

-Method Man played one of the day's most enertaining sets, save a three minute period where he repeated "ODB RIP" 47 times.

-There were an unusually number (at least two dozen) of fat (at least 200 pounds) girls walking around holding signs that said "FREE HUGS!!" On at least six of the signs, "...For Cute Boys Only" was listed as an addendum.

-The audience was about 98 percent white. There was, however, a black girl wearing a shirt that said "I'M BLACK" in capital letters.

-Following their set, popular hardcore/screamo act Underoath proclaimed from the stage, "None of our music would be possible if it were not for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

-As I was walking with some people to bum a ride back to Manhattan, we saw Method Man smoking a blunt outide of Giants Stadium.

Happy Monday

2006-05-08T07:49:00.000-05:00

I got to work early today, and no one's here and (as usual) I have very little to do, so I thought I'd tell everyone that me, Ian, JP and Krista were at Game 6 of the Wizards' series on Friday and it was horrible. Luckily I waited three days to blog about this, otherwise this would be a rant, but that was the most deflating thing ever. How does Gil miss two FTs in OT? I mean, he nails a 33-foot jumper to send the game into OT, then chokes on two FTs? Dammit. It was horrible.

But, you know, you just try to move past it. Saturday night was better. We played shuffleboard. I also went to Kate P's going away barbeque, where I spent most of my time talking to EJ, Paul and Alina and trying to avoid Thomas Chen. Just kidding, I wasn't actually trying to avoid him. But I didn't have much to say to him so I just stuck with the people I (sort of) knew. K-Don was there too.

And now begins the last week that my jaw is in one piece. I better make the most of it.

A Few Things

2006-05-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

1) I heard the new Metro woman today. For those who don't know, they replaced the "Doors Opening" and "Doors Closing" announcements. The new one has a more urgent voice and a more urgent chime.

2) The Nationals are horrible. All of them will be traded.

3) Wilbon still thinks the Wizards are going to win the series. A very brave prediction, in my book. I am pretty confident they will win tonight. I'm pretty pessimistic about any Game 7, however.

Cheated

2006-05-04T12:05:00.000-05:00

Wesleyan's spring fling lineup was just announced, and it has both Andrew W.K. and Talib Kweli. I feel fucking cheated. My last three years at Wesleyan featured horrible acts. Sophomore year was the Beatnuts. Remember them? No? Yeah, they were one hit wonders. And they pretty much sucked. Junior year was Ghostface Killah. I don't dislike Ghostface, but he was way too hard-core for a crowd full of drunk and/or high hippies. Senior year was Cee-Lo. He wasn't that great either. I mean, basically for our last two years we got one member of a good group (Wu-Tang and Goodie Mob, respectively), and the result wasn't that great.

Luckily for all three of these years I was way too messed up to really care that the music wasn't very good. But good music would have seriously enhanced the intoxication--such as occurred freshman year, when we had the Roots.

I guess I shouldnt complain too much, because the class of '06 will have one good spring fling for their whole career, and that's how many I had too (Roots vs. Talib). Still, if I could have spent my last spring fling listening to Andrew W.K. and Talib, rather than Cee-Lo, that sure would have been nice.

More proof

2006-05-04T11:10:00.000-05:00

More proof that Gilbert is just crazy. Take a look at this article in the New York Times. This one only briefly mentions the long nights practicing and stuff like that. It's more about his habits.

Actually, some of this stuff makes him sound a lot like Sammy. at least in the way he jumps from hobby to hobby and gets really into whatever he's into.

And the glass basketball court sounds like a kick ass idea.

So Painful

2006-05-04T09:18:00.000-05:00

Watching the Wizards game last night was agonizing. Such an incredible comeback, followed by such an incredible letdown. Gilbert was doing so well, and they managed to give it away. Plus, as analysts have pointed out (although I didnt notice it at the time) the Wizards could have called timeout after LeBron scored with .9 seconds left and at least gotten a decent shot, rather than having Arenas heave it across the floor. The Wizards defense is pretty awful. How do they let LeBron get to the baseline. How do they even let him get the ball in the first place. This is just a rant but oh god, a loss like that is just brutal. Two one point, last second losses in one series. Damn. And it's not like I'm even a huge Wizards nut, but when you watch a game that close you can't help but get caught up in it, only to get let down at the end. Shit. They will win Game 6 and then lose Game 7. Damn you Wizards.

In a side sports note, my former office building was owned by the new Nats owner, Ted Lerner.

Rambo Granny

2006-05-03T14:05:00.000-05:00

I don't know if this is true, but someone sent me this story about this grandmother in Australia. My guess is that it's untrue, but I still think it's hilarious.

The Rambo Granny of Melbourne, Australia

Gun-toting granny Ava Estelle, 81, was so ticked-off when two thugs raped her 18-year-old granddaughter that she tracked the unsuspecting ex-cons down - - and shot off their testicles.

The old lady spent a week hunting those men down -- and when she found them, she took revenge on them in her own special way, said Melbourne police investigator Evan Delp. Then she took a taxi to the nearest police station, laid the gun on the sergeant's desk and told him as calm as could be:

'Those bastards will never rape anybody again, by God.' Cops say convicted rapist and robber Davis Furth, 33, lost both his penis and his testicles when outraged Ava opened fire with a 9-mm pistol in the hotel room where he and former prison cellmate Stanley Thomas, 29, were holed up.

The wrinkled avenger also blew Thomas' testicles to kingdom come, but doctors managed to save his mangled penis, police said. The one guy, Thomas, didn't lose his manhood, but the doctor I talked to said he won't be using it the way he used to, Detective Delp told reporters. Both men are still in pretty bad shape, but I think they're just happy to be alive after what they've been through.

The Rambo Granny swung into action August 21 after her granddaughter Debbie was carjacked and raped in broad daylight by two knife-wielding creeps in a section of town bordering on skid row. "When I saw the look on my Debbie's face that night in the hospital, I decided I was going to go out and get those bastards myself 'cause I figured the Law would go easy on them," recalled the retired library worker. "And I wasn't scared of them, either-- because I've got me a gun and I've been shootin' all my life. And I wasn't dumb enough to turn it in when the law changed about owning one."

So, using a police artist's sketch of the suspects and Debbie's description of the sickos', tough-as-nails Ava spent seven days prowling the wino-infested neighborhood where the crime took place till she spotted the ill fated rapists entering their flophouse hotel.

I knew it was them the minute I saw 'em, but I shot a picture of 'em anyway and took it back to Debbie and she said sure as hell, it was them, the oldster recalled.

So I went back to that hotel and found their room and knocked on the door and the minute the big one, Furth, opened the door, I shot 'em right square between the leg! s, right where it would really hurt 'em most, you know.

Then I went in and shot the other one as he backed up pleading to me to spare him. Then I went down to the police station and turned myself in.

Now, baffled lawmen are trying to figure out exactly how to deal with the vigilante granny. What she did was wrong, and she broke the law, but it is difficult to throw an 81-year-old woman in prison, Det. Delp said, especially when 3 million people in the city want to nominate her for sainthood and a medal.

Fin du Monde

2006-05-03T13:44:00.000-05:00

In 12 days, I will die.

Not literally.

But I'm really not looking forward to May 15, because that's when I'm getting my jaw sliced open. At 7:30 am, they will put me under serious anasthesia and operate on me for 8 to 9 hours. When I wake up I will have an IV in my arm and an ice pack on my grotesquely swollen face. Heavy rubber bands will connect my upper and lower teeth, which will also be encased in some sort of mouthguard. Two major nerves will have been cut, so my upper and lower lips, chin and parts of my nose will be numb. For the following four to six weeks I will be on a liquid diet, and on a soft food diet for several weeks thereafter. The swelling will take between two weeks and two months to subside. The nerve endings regenerate slowly; the full process can take a year, and sometimes they never regenerate at all.

Despite this melodramatic account, at times I have thought of this process like it won't be that big of a deal. You know, I'll try interesting new soups and milkshakes for four weeks, then hopefully I'll be upgraded to pasta, rice and mashed potatoes. The first two weeks, I'll be out from work, watching movies, reading books, and wasting time online. Of course, it's hard to comprehend what it means to live without solid food, but I had negotiated myself to the point where that alone wasn't making me panic. Instead, it felt kind of like right before I went to Cape Town: I was nervous, yes, but not scared, and not really thinking about it, because I couldn't comprehend exactly what it would mean, and I had faith that it wouldn't be all that bad.

But that's changed over the past few days, because I've been talking to Leah, who has told me numerous horror stories, the most important being that she couldnt talk for two or three weeks after the surgery. That's something that's really hard for me to imagine. I mean, if I can't talk and can't eat, then I'll really feel like a corpse. Leah has lots of other horror stories too, and hearing them has seriously freaked me out.

I don't know if I actually should be freaking out. My surgeon, who I saw yesterday, was basically telling me that after the first two weeks life returns to more or less normal (except for the absence of solid food). Obviously, I'd like to trust the surgeon, rather than Leah, which is probably the rational thing to do because a) he is a surgeon and b) my case is undoubtedly different from Leah's. Nonetheless, just hearing Leah elucidate the details of just how bad it can be is pretty scary. And not knowing which experience I will have is very difficult, and makes me very anxious. So the surgery is on my mind a lot nowadays, and I find myself constantly wondering whether my recovery will be unbearable or merely unpleasant.

Yesterday was my final workup before the surgery; I guess that question will be answered soon enough.

Wiz Notes

2006-05-01T14:14:00.000-05:00

1) The game on Friday night was miserable. Obviously, the Wizards should have won, and to lose at the last second by having Gilbert Arenas miss an open shot was excruciating.

2) Gilbert Arenas is weird. The Post article today reported that, in yesterday's game, he decided that his horrendous first half was attributable to his outfit, so at halftime he stripped down and changed every single piece of clothing, down to his underoos. It appears to have worked, but, uh...yeah.

3) As someone (I'm pretty sure Michael Lee, writing in the Post) pointed out, the fate of the Wizards has been completely dependent on Antawn Jamison this series. Caron and Gilbert have both gotten their points, but Antawn has fluctuated wildly. He played well in Games 2 and 4, and not well in Games 1 and 3.

4) It looked to me like the Wizards got the benefit of some good calls yesterday. They are not going to get those calls in Cleveland, particularly in any Game 7 that occurs in Cleveland. The league would love to see Bron-Bron against Detroit and does not care to see the Wizards against Detroit, plus Cleveland will be playing in front of a hometown crowd, etc. So in my opinion the Wizards are going to have to play the games of their lives either Wednesday or in Game 7 if they are going to steal one in Cleveland and escape the first round.

5) I wonder if Eddie Jordan's comments about the refs actually worked. I wonder if they would work again.

6) Yesterday, in the second half, Eddie Jordan didn't call any plays. I thought that was interesting.

Notes from the Weekend

2006-05-01T08:11:00.000-05:00

1) Friday night went to the Wizards game with Aaron Pearl. Had pretty sweet seats which offered us views of Usher, Cadillac Williams, Carlos Rodgers, MC Hammer, and Warren Sapp. Upon leaving Ian, Zack (who were also at the game) Aaron and I went down to the events floor on the way to Aarons car. Here we ran into Peter John Ramos, who is not only massive, but for sure one of the ugliest NBA players of all time (note Jon's post). We also rode the elevator with Coach (John Thompson) who is also incredibly big. His head was the size of a watermelon.

2) Last night I called Ian to get his take on the sweet Wizards win. Here is how the conversation went with the new Washington Post Express Sports Editor

Call #1
Me: YO
Ian: Shhhh, let me call you back, i'm watching Grey's (Anatomy)

Call #2- 5 min later clearly during a commercial break
Me: hello
Ian: Whats up
Me: how about the Wiz tonight
Ian: the Wiz played....oh man...thats right....damn i forgot with Grey's and all.
Me: Wow

I have had misdirected text messages end relationships

2006-04-28T09:37:00.000-05:00

This is my public apology to Zack for the text message I sent him last night that was supposed to go to Lindsay.

Also, this is a public, belated happy birthday to Zack, since no one blogged about it yesterday.

Eating the placenta

2006-04-27T14:34:00.000-05:00

While walking around New York in the 70-degree weather of the past couple days, I have noticed an abundance of extremely attractive pregnant women.

Which Pod?

2006-04-27T08:57:00.000-05:00

If I was going to get an IPod, which Pod should I get, the 4 GB Nano or the 30 GB?

On the one hand, the 4 GB is supposed to be better for certain types of movement, such as running, and I do want to be able to move extensively with any IPod I eventually acquire. On the other hand, I've heard that the difference between the two in this manner is pretty miniscule.

The 30 GB, of course, has a lot of space. But I'm not sure if I'll really need the space anyways. 4 GB is over 1000 songs, which covers the vast majority of my album collection. So I'm not sure if the extra space will really be that valuable anyways.

Most of you guys have Pods. Help me out here. Which one should I get?

People Thinking MC Is Shorthand for Misconception

2006-04-26T14:58:00.000-05:00

Recently a friend* of mine a class to eighth graders on the subject of "Definition," the excellent hip-hop song by Black Star (aka Mos Def and Talib Kweli). She did research on what all of the lyrics meant and passed out handouts to the kids about it. I realized that the song is actually pretty deep. For those who know the lyrics (I'm not sure if anyone else does), the line about the "Zulu Gestapo" is a reference to the early days of NYC hip hop groups/gangs, one of whom was named the Zulus and the other of which was named the Gestapos. "Black Star" was the name of Marcus Garvey's shipping line. There's a reference to Cyrano, as in Cyrano de Bergerac. I think those are the only examples I can think of right now, but the point is that it's a very intelligent song.

I'm always amazed when I learn about how elegant some hip-hop lyrics are. For example, a Fugees song ("Zealots," track #4 on The Score, for those who know) features a couplet (the end of one line and the beginning of another) that goes "measure planets by parallax / check out the retrograde motion" and then goes on. I always thought that this lyric was just full of words that sounded cool and rhymed, but in fact they are astronomical references, something that I didn't learn until my senior year of college, when I took an introduction to astronomy course.

This blog post doesn't have much of a point, but if it did, it would be that hip-hop lyrics can be very deep, rather than just a string of semi-random words chosen primarily because they rhyme. Of course, not all hip-hop lyrics are deep. Paul is fond of quoting a song by the 3-6 Mafia that describes one member's desire for a woman who will "slob on my knob like corn on the cob." But oh well.

Appreciated

2006-04-26T14:27:00.000-05:00

Today is Administrative Professional Appreciation Day. Formerly known as Administrative Assistant Appreciation Day. Formerly known as Secretaries Appreciation Day. How do I know this? I, along with my fellow paralegals, was honored by our office with some free cheap Chinese food. Yes, it's true: although my job title is paralegal, I am basically viewed as a secretary.

And, as I found out yesterday, a very poorly paid one. I was standing in line with my friend Alex from Wesleyan to get our free cone at Ben & Jerry's. He was talking about his roommate, who is about to go on unemployment. You know how much he makes on unemployment? $315 a week. You know how much I make for my job? $401 a week.

This was very disspiriting. I mean, I know the difference is slightly wider than it appears--for one thing, my income is after taxes, and I don't know if the same is true for unemployment. I also get benefits, and unemployment is subject to all sorts of terms and restrictions and conditions and blah blah blah. Lastly, I don't do very much work, so it's not like I can really complain that I don't get paid very much. Nonetheless, to learn that your monthly income is only $340 more than someone on unemployment is not very uplifting.

Cool stuff in blogs

2006-04-26T14:12:00.000-05:00

Jon's recent point is a perfect example of something I wanted to bring up:
I think we need more interactive posts. Very fewer bloggers on the Eat First #1 Blog use all the features provided by blogger.com.

For example, it would be nice to see more pictures. Like these two on the right. These pictures were found by doing a simple google image search of "cool guy." I would like it if blog posts have lots of photos in them.

Also, it is imporant to include lots of links. Jon and I are the only ones who take advantage of this technology, and even we only started doing this recently.

So next time you write about the Wizards or the Redskins or Duke Lacrosse, please use links so we know what you are talking about.

Pigs must be flying somewhere...

2006-04-25T19:46:00.000-05:00

I doubt anyone is watching the Wizards-Cavaliers game right now except for me, but LeBron James just missed a dunk in open space. Granted, he tried to do a reverse, but I don't think LeBron has ever been even close to being rejected by the rim. Usually he's more like two feet above the rim.

He just made up for it with a dunk and a foul, but I thought it was worth noting that LeBron made at least one mistake.

The Birds Are Back in Town

2006-04-23T23:20:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year, and the birds have migrated back north to my fair city of Chicago. In recent days, I've had some scary encounters with bird. It's seems that these birds lost their fear of humans while they were chilling in South Florida over the winter. A number of have swooped very close to my head — I've flinched in reaction to these death swoops more than a few times. These birds seem to look meaner too, or rather all of the birds I've seen have been crows, which are scary looking birds. I hope some friendly-looking birds replace these mean ones soon. Anyway, watch out for the birds.

Columnist on Columnists

2006-04-21T09:34:00.000-05:00

Do you like reading columns about other columnist. Today in the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley wrote one of the funniest columns in recent memory. That is, if you enjoy reading columnists on columnists.

I know people don't like it -- and probably don't read it -- when I link articles to the blog and tell you to read them. But Kinsley just rips on a bunch of Post's columnists. More specifically, the Post's conservative columnists.

And who wouldn't want to read a column titled "Win a Date with E.J. Dionne"?

Two Nights In April

2006-04-20T13:38:00.000-05:00

Tuesday: Me and Paul went to the Common Share. That's not that exciting. What was somewhat interesting was that by the time I got there Paul was chatting it up with a young Ethiopian fellow named Mesfin. I don't know if they met at the bar, or if they had previously known each other, but we hung out, along with Mesfin's quieter friend, BD (or something like that). Our group was later joined by a guy named Isiah who has a very gaunt-looking face who was friends with Raphael Satter and has sort of gotten to know Paul. Isiah had another friend, whose name I've forgotten. So for awhile it was me, Paul, Mesfin, BD, Isiah and Isiah's friend--a very strange little grouping. Isiah and his friend left quickly, and Mesfin and BD sort of drifted away. Later Ben and Kate came by, so me and Paul hung out with them, then they left, so it was back to the Ethiopians. Mesfin gave Kate an unexpected and probably unappreciated kiss as she was leaving. BD and Paul also had a heated discussion about Ethiopian colonial history, but I wasn't paying too much attention. As I left, BD and Paul were heartily agreeing that the U.S. is a great country.

Wednesday: A group of us went to Nooshi for happy hour, then to Buffalo to play shuffleboard. Included in this group was Alex Okrent, who I described in my last shuffleboard-related blog post as the "second-best player" on the shuffleboard table. Although this was a justified description, he found this entry through Googling his name, and it gave him great motivation to beat me at shuffleboard the second time around. And indeed he did, although it was close--the series was 3-2, and for at least one of those games I don't think he beat me as much as I was let down by my partner, Julie. Also, me and Julie can take some solace in the fact that one of our two victories was an unprecedented 11-0 shutout. Nonetheless, Alex was the best player on the winning team, so I have to tip my hat to him. At least for now, because this is not the final word on our epic shuffleboard struggles.

Also, we didn't have to pay for the shuffleboard because we crashed a private party. The party also had food, which we ate (Alex got us permission by fessing up that we were crashers to one of the party attendees, who I guess didn't care). We were even in a variety of photos being taken by some sort of official photographer. Presumably someone is going to see them later, and realize that they dont know who we are and that we were crashing the party, but by that time it will be too late. Suckers.

Odd day for sports news

2006-04-19T16:53:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of weird sports stories today. All of these are amusing, I think.

- Gilbert Arenas apparently plays online poker at halftime. First, this is why I don't play online anymore. It's so addicting that you have to do it whenever you have a free minute. There was a time when same and I would play tournaments in the 30 minutes before class. Second, read the entire article if you get a chance (It's an AP article written by Joe White, but I took the article off the Houston Chronicle website thanks to google news). There's a lot of good info in the article about how competitive Gilbert is... he used to do individual workouts at 2 a.m., and last year he came to the MCI Center to practice 12 hours after the season ended with a playoff loss to Miami. I remember hearing about him running with his dogs on the treadmills at 5 a.m. when he was in Golden State. Anyway, it's a good article.

- The Clippers lost last night and were rewarded with home court advantage. This is bizarre, but it's because of the way the NBA works. By losing, the Clippers got the sixth seed, which means they play Denver (three seed) and not Dallas (the four seed). Dallas is the second-best team in the conference, but they get the four seed because they play in the same division as the Spurs, the best team in the West. Since the Clippers have a better record than the Nuggets, they get home court. So obviously the Clippers played their reserves. I think people are giving them shit, but you can't really blame them. Who would want to play Dallas when you can play Denver, at home. The silliness of the NBA playoff structure also has it set up for Dallas and San Antonio (probably the best series) to play in the second round.

There's danger everywhere

2006-04-19T13:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, in my lunch, along with a turkey and swiss sandwich and some red peppers, I had a yogurt -- Safeway Lucerne brand, strawberry flavored. When I went to open the yogurt, I sliced my index finger open on the aluminum top. The cut was pretty deep and bled a ton, although it didn't hurt. I have been wearing a bandaid ever since because it hurts to type without one and I do a lot of typing.

That story would be pathetic enough, but then last night I had dinner with my dad. I went to open the dumplings container and again cut my finger, this time my thumb, on the tin container. This cut wasn't bad at all, just a little prick that has already healed. But two attacks by food containers in one day is scary.

Collected Stories

2006-04-18T14:33:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in awhile. Snap.

1. I have seen my boss once in the past 10 days. She is constantly attending either depositions or settlement talks for two cases that I am not involved in. Since she is not here and I have nothing to do, I spend about 1 or 2 hours a day doing work and spend the rest of the time reading the NY Times. I am extraordinarily well informed about world events, at least for the time being.

2. I tried to cook another dish, again based on a recipe I used to make in South Africa. Again, it didn't work that well; again, it was fine but not particularly tasty. A big problem was that I replaced ostrich meat (somewhat fatty and therefore tasty) with 99% fat-free turkey meat (not tasty at all). I should have compensated for this by adding more spices, but I didn't. Someday I will get this cooking thing straightened out.

3. This weekend I left my belt buckle lying on the floor and stepped on the metal thing that goes through the holes, which was sticking up. It gouged a small but deep hole in my foot, which now hurts whenever I walk. Dammit.

4. You know how me doing my own tax return was supposed to be a Step Towards Reality? Well, it turns out my mom is still going to claim me as a dependent. So that got shot down. It turns out that I'm just not independent, no matter how hard I try.

5. Today I went to the Circle to meet up with David Mann for lunch. We chatted for awhile, then I started to go back to my office. But then I saw this girl Allison who I know, so we started talking briefly, and then I noticed that my friend Alex was sitting right next to her. It was one of those impromptu get-togethers that I thought only really happened at college. But it turns out that the Circle is the new Quad.

6. The Nationals are bad, so it's going to be a long summer.

7. Both my orthodontist and the head resident of the oral surgery department at the Washington Hospital Center (the woman who will be doing my jaw surgery) read my article about the Common Share. On the one hand it's mildly flattering to know that people read it, on the other hand it's kind of weird to have medical people joking with you about how you're a drunkard. My former boss also told me that she was "not at all surprised" to see that I got in the paper for recommending a bar. I do not think that's a good testament to my tenure there.

Disaffection News

2006-04-17T15:40:00.000-05:00

Disaffection will be playing a reunion show in June in New York. Stay tuned for forthcoming details.

In other news, the track listing has been revealed for Disaffection's new, as-yet untitled digital only EP, set to be released mid-Summer 2006.

1. Grrr... Michelle Nolan
2. I Can Reference Chuck Palahniuk in My Songs Too
3. FSU Blackout on a Saturday in February, Thank God
4. By the way, in case you weren't sure, I thought last night was great.
5. The Emotional and Penile Exposition of Pete Wentz
6. A Variety of Simple Tasks

Nats Mishap

2006-04-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

In the seventh inning of the Nats-Mets game I went to this week, the Nats were trailing by just one run. Nick Johnson was at the plate and hit a long fly ball to straight away centerfield. It looked like it was heading over the wall -- which is impressive at RFK. But Beltran jumped up and apparently grabbed the ball. From my seats, however, it looked like the ball made it over Beltran's glove. Naturally, since the home run would have tied the game, I was excited. I jumped up and started cheering. People got a big kick out of it.

Naturally, my friends laughed at me, but the strange part was that people really far away were getting a huge kick out of it too. One dude kept looking at me for the next few innings. I mean, it was funny, but not that funny.

multimedia in the news

2006-04-14T13:59:00.000-05:00

One of our esteemed readers wrote me an e-mail inquiring into my thoughts on nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com, etc., using multimedia on their websites.

This brings up an interesting issue about the way journalism is changing, and I have an interesting story from just last week to illustrate it. In my mind, the invention of the internet has changed journalism in one major way and one other way. The major way is that everything is pressing. Everything must be done right away. There's no time to wait on a story because someone else will beat you to a story. Deadline is no longer 10 p.m. every night, it's all the time. It has essentially turned newspaper businesses into mini-wire services, where stories are constantly being revised.

Then multimedia is right up there. I talked with someone at the AP about a week ago who works with investigative reporting. He said it is no longer good enough to have an investigative story that you can write. In order to start working on it, he has to have an idea for a story, for a video, for radio, etc. It has to be far-reaching. I think this is what the reader is wondering about -- why is that the case? Why can't we just write the story.

I think the answer is because it will get lost. If you write a great investigative story, and then don't have a video to follow it up, don't have an interview scheduled, don't have whatever, the people who read your article will read it, enjoy it, and move on. If you have multimedia on the web, then they'll watch the video, they'll listen to interview, they'll get engulfed in the story. And on the flip side, those who are too lazy to read the article might see the video and get hooked.

Especially with investigative journalism, it would be a shame to lose readers or have it just go over their heads. And I can't say for sure, but I would guess that's why it's important to have all that stuff nowadays.

Do I wish that weren't the case? Maybe. But it's become an important part of what we do now.

Screw the IRS and Other Tales

2006-04-13T13:37:00.001-05:00

So my tax return, which I so carefully prepared, has now been rejected by the IRS twice; both times they've said that my information (i.e. name, SSN and date of birth) don't match their records. I finally called the Social Security Administration, and it should be fixed. Let's pray that this one gets accepted. Otherwise my goose is going to be cooked.

Other news: yesterday I went to the Nats game. Paid $7 for cheap tickets way in the outfield then moved to some up-high seats above third base. It was a frustrating game, because the Nats had the bases loaded with no outs against Pedro and couldn't score a run. They ended up losing. I fear they are going to be really bad this year. Vidro is already complaining about how RFK is such a terrible park, and indeed the Nats likely would have had an additional home run (or a few) last night if the fences weren't so far away. Then again, given the abysmal state of the Nats' pitching, some extra space might be helpful.

On my way to the Nats' game, I stumbled across Announcement Man in his familiar Dupont Circle haunt. He was no longer wearing his button-down shirt, instead he had donned a bright yellow number. His announcement of the day was hard to understand, but it was something about politicians being shit-eaters.

Random People News: Someone who I believe was Gabe Podesta was standing in line behind me, D-Mann and Joda in the line to get tickets yesterday. No one said hi, but I think he recognized us.

Also, I talked to Mr. Martel today. He called my office while I was sitting at the front desk, filling in for the receptionist, and he called to talk to one of the attorneys. So, as I always do, I asked who was calling, and he identified himself. I didn't do the same. I just transferred the call and thought to myself, huh, life is strange.

The Circle

2006-04-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

Whenever I go to work out, which is semi-often (two-three times a week), I have to pass through Dupont Circle. Several times now, this has caused me to be late to working out or to not work out at all, because I get caught up at the Circle talking to someone I know. This has become an increasing problem as the weather has grown nicer and the crowds in the Circle have continued to grow.

In fact, the Circle's crowds are growing so much that I'm inclined to liken it to a college quad. Like a college quad, when I walk by I frequently someone who I know (most frequently Leah Winn-Ritzenberg, who I've seen in the circle three or four times now). There's always a bunch of hippies playing games. There's often someone playing music, either on a boombox or on sort of instrument (steel drums and guitar seem to be the most popular). There's almost always a bunch of people sunning themselves on the grass. There's often protesters.

There are, however, some differences between Dupont Circle and college quads. For one thing, the protesters are not like the ones on most college quads; the protesters I've seen most frequently are from a virulently anti-abortion group. For another thing, a majority of the people are wearing nice clothing (even though, as I said above, there is a solid minority of hippies).

I'd say the biggest difference, however, is the widespread presence of crazy people. There are quite a few of these around Dupont Circle. Me and Leah have begun to come up with names for them. I'd say the one I've encountered most frequently is Announcement Man, who wanders around in a button down shirt, khakis and shoes, then stops and announces something. One time he repeatedly yelled "Check your transmission!" to me. There's also Rant Man and Talking-to-Herself Woman, but I haven't seen them--Leah told me about them. If you go a little bit farther up Connecticut, there's Racism Man, who constantly stands in one place and repetitively yells that, as a black man, he knows his place in America. Leah also told me about Bad-Smelling Man, who she saw in the Dupont Circle Starbucks. She says that he dresses nicely and smells like urine.

Yesterday we saw someone that neither of us had ever seen before. He was quite a sight. He came striding into the circle wearing a shirt and tie, khakis and nice black shoes with an attache case slung over his shoulder. He also had a flower halo over his bald head. Me and Leah had some trouble making out what he was yelling, but the gist of it was that he hated himself because he was gay, thanks to the Christians, who finally won, and that they don't actually love their enemy, who is Lucifer, and Lucifer is the sweetest angel of them all. It was hard to follow. Maybe I'll see him again and then I'll have a better idea of what he's talking about.

The Wiz

2006-04-12T13:17:00.000-05:00

If the NBA playoffs started today, the Wizards would be the fifth seed. They would be going to Cleveland to face the Cavs.

Unfortunately, the playoffs don't start today. And the Wizards have no where to go but down. They have five games left and are eight games behind the Cavs. To make matters worse, they have by far the hardest schedule of any of the teams directly below them. Three of their five games are on the road and all five of them are against teams that are currently in the playoffs.

Here's a quick look at the remaining games:
-at Milwaukee
-at Chicago
-vs. Cleveland
-vs. Milwaukee
-at Detroit

These are all tough games, and it's theoretically possible that the Wiz will be out of the playoffs. A bigger worry is probably that they would fall into seventh or eighth place and have to face the Heat or Pistons. They're currently two games ahead of Indiana and Milwaukee, so they really need at least one of the games against the Bucks.

I personally think it will end up:
1. Pistons
2. Heat
3. Nets
4. Cavs
5. Pacers
6. Wizards
7. Bucks
8. Sixers

Meaning we play at the Nets in the first round. That sucks for me because I have two tickets to the first home playoff game, and I want to see LeBron -- plus, I think the Wiz match up better with the Cavs... But what do I know.

Opening Day

2006-04-12T13:04:00.000-05:00

As everyone knows by now, the Nats had their home opener yesterday -- and they were creamed by the Mets.

My point is this: It takes a lot of the luster out of opening day when your team is 2-5.

Mr. Responsibility, Part 2

2006-04-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I tried to cook for a big group of people for the first time in awhile. I decided it would be a nice thing to do for my family, seeing as how I live at home and whatnot. So we went to Whole Foods and brought a bunch of broccoli, mushrooms, and chicken. I tried to whip up this very simple sauce that involves sesame oil, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, garlic and ginger. It's pretty tasty and way back when I lived in Cape Town and cooked almost every day, I perfected the recipe and made it a staple of my dinners.

Well, this go-round wasn't as successful. For one thing, I never wrote down the right proportions of the recipe--a problem that has hampered many of my post-Cape Town efforts to make this dish. Also, it took much longer than I realized--chopping up two pounds of chicken and a pound of broccoli and mushrooms is fairly time-consuming, and then waiting for the chicken to cook is even more time consuming. And I was kind of in a rush because I had to get to the Common Share to meet up with Paul.

Dinner wasn't a total disaster; it tasted ok, not particularly good, but no one complained. Still, it was definitely vastly inferior to, say, Ian's cooking. The main thing was that it definitely made me remember how much of a pain it is to cook a whole big meal. I'm sure this will come as no surprise to all of the many people reading this Blog who are responsible adults who cook for themselves frequently, but I had kind of forgotten, since all I ever do for dinner is eat what my parents are eating or eat things that don't require preparation, such as Chipotle, microwavable food, cereal, eggs, etc. The last time I really did a lot of time-consuming cooking was in South Africa, and since it was too unsafe to venture out after dark, I had all the time in the world. Cooking was a welcome way to pass the time there.

But here, I have places to go and people to see. Not really. But I sort of do. So I don't think I'll be doing too much more cooking for the whole family. Or if I do, I will start earlier, or pick something even easier to prepare. Like eggs.

On a side note, the bartender and bouncer who I know at the Common Share (Larry and Sekou) hadn't seen the article. Oh well. Also, there was this really strange looking guy there who looked like Snoop Dogg, only his neck was extremely long and skinny. I would say that he looked like Snoop Dogg's head had been superimposed on top of the body of a small giraffe, or a victim of severe malnutrition.

P.S. Sam, I usually eat frosted mini-wheats for breakfast along with microwavable food. This supplies my fiber and carboyhydrates while the microwavable food supplies low-fat protein. It's my (strange) version of a balanced breakfast.

MLB Is Stupid

2006-04-11T10:28:00.000-05:00

I want to go to the Nats game tomorrow, so I look online to try to buy tickets. You know how much the service fee is? $3.50 per ticket! How stupid is that? For tickets that cost $7 it makes no sense at all--like I'm going to pay 50% more to buy my tickets online. Instead I'm just going to go down there to try to pick up tickets, or not go at all.

Seeing as how they have to pay people to man the ticket booths, and how people dont like to stand in line at ticket booths...I mean, every other industry in the world (most notably the airlines) is trying to shove people onto buying things online, because it's cheaper for them, and baseball is going the opposite direction by charging people to buy tickets online. Why on earth would they do that? Perhaps there is some sort of justification that I am not thinking of, but I cant think of a single good reason that this policy exists.

Mr. Responsibility

2006-04-10T09:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had the most productive day since moving back to DC. Or one of them, anyways.

I woke up and ate some dumplings and cereal for breakfast.

Then I opened a new bank account, one that gets a higher interest rate, so I can invest the savings I derive from being a loser who lives at home.

Then I went to the gym with Ian.

Then I came back home and ate some bagels for lunch.

Then I did my taxes. This took a long time--my taxes seemed unusually complicated for someone of my age and income. Part of this was because I had to pay two state income taxes (CT and DC). Part of this was because some of my income from Vital Voices was paid to me as a "consultant," meaning it wasn't taxed, meaning I had to fill out Form 1099 Schedule C, registering myself as a business. I had to come up with a business name, a business address, and list the primary purpose of my business. Fun stuff. But I got it all done. Eventually. I also had to pay TurboTax $40 to do it, but oh well.

Then I cleaned the bathroom. I never clean anything. As a result, I didn't do a great job, but the point is: I tried.

Anyways, that's it. After that I spent the rest of the night eating dinner and watching TV. But after 10 months of being a complete waste of human life, it felt like a pretty productive day.

Also, I was in the paper yesterday--something that I wrote about the Common Share was featured in the Sunday Source. It's here if you want to check it out. There was also a picture of me and some other Wilson kids in the article which isn't on the website, but I'm going to try to PDF it and send it around later this week.

Rudy Giuliani

2006-04-06T17:30:00.000-05:00

Today, Rudy Giuliani testified for the prosecution in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. On the stand, the former mayor of New York described the horrors of the attacks against his city. This seems pretty strange to me. It's propaganda, as far as I'm concerned. The atrociousness of the attacks should not play into whether or not Moussaoui was involved in plotting them. Either he did or he didn't do something horrible, but whether or not what he's being accused of was horrible is not even in question. I don't think anyone in the US would look back on the attacks and not think they were that big a deal. They were awful — that is not an issue. And why does it make a difference if Giuliani is saying that, " It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life." It doesn't matter. Yes, that makes finding who committed these crimes more urgent — but it doesn't affect due process or the ability to get a fair trial. Moussaoui either did something horrible or didn't do something horrible. Based on his involvement in al qaeda, he's probably done a lot of other horrible things — but that issue's not on trial. I know describing the gory details of the crime is a common tactic of the prosecution, but to bring the former mayor of New York on the stand to describe what he thought about 9/11, just in case the jury didn't yet know, is bush league.

Clutch

2006-04-06T09:07:00.000-05:00

Last night we went back to Buffalo and played more shuffleboard. I had a monster run. My teams were overall 5-1, and for most of the games I scored seven or more of the points by my team. The only game I lost was a tough one. I was up against the second-best player on the table, Alex Okrent, my friend from Wesleyan--he was on the other side of the table from me, so we weren't going head to head; instead we were both matched up against weaker opponents. After two rounds, I had put up 9 points by myself, and he had put up 3. Then he had an 8 point outburst to win the game before I could respond. The next time we faced off, we were on the same side of the table, head-to-head. I pitched a shutout and scored something like 7 points en route to an 11-10 victory. I was down 10-9 in the final round but scored the two points to win it.

It was nice to finally played a game that I'm sort of good at. I'm horrible at darts. I'm ok at pool, but too streaky to really be good. But last night, I was en fuego. And shuffleboard is an outstandingly fun game. I think I'm going to try to start playing it more often.

Also, in the random department: I went to Buffalo with three friends from Wesleyan, Julie and JP. Who should we meet up with but EJ and Alina, on a double date with two unfamiliar dudes. It was kind of awkward because they were sitting at a table for 4, and after the shuffleboard ended, everyone left except for me and JP--we wanted to watch the end of the Nats game. Which, by the way, was sweet. But anyways, so we go to the couch in front of the huge TV, and EJ/Alina/Dudes table was only like 10 feet away. But we didn't talk because me and JP were watching the game and they were doing their thing. It's strange to be so close to people who you know but not talk to them at all. Oh well.