128 Hours

2007-06-19T22:58:00.000-04:00

Wow. What a difference a day makes.

But, then again, it's reggae.

Yes. Wyclef Jean, Jimmy Cliff, Shaggy, opening acts, and all FREE.

D.C. can seriously rock sometimes.

The best was Cliff - during "I Can See Clearly Now" was magical just looking across the audience, but even better was the song that closed it - something that featured a lot of a cappella and drumming.

Wyclef yelled out for everyone to raise their hands if they wanted "Bush to stop the war", but he closed with a riff of the Star-Spangled Banner on a guitar.

It's hard to put into words (especially hard to put into words was this one attractive girl - nothing really special (yes, I'm aware of the irony of me writing these words) - who could dance. Really, the hips moved of their own accord and they did it exactly to the music). But it was a special evening.

2007-06-18T22:37:00.000-04:00

Ever had a time when everything went really wrong, and you felt a massive pit in your stomach?

I do. Well, I did. Well, I sort of still do.

Let's back up. I showed up at 89 Millimeters, a story about a few young people in Belarus. The movie's pretty disjointed - basically, the director shot 130 hours without a specific goal in mind. So there's one person that got political asylum in Germany, one girl that tries to win a dance competition, one guy that paints ... you get the idea.

The overarching idea of the film - especially given the Goethe Institut's series - is freedom. Very early, on the director makes the stark assertion that Belarus is the last dictatorship in Europe, and many of the young people whose stories he tells have a role to play in the democratization movement. What I found the most moving moments were one guy who quotes JFK's "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" while the filmmaker shows him in front of an old American flag, and one point during a pro-democracy rally where people just start chanting "Freedom!" (what can I say - I'm a sucker for this stuff). Perhaps even better is a girl who dyes her hair red, worked as a journalist, and who absolutely skewers this guy and his colleagues as people with their head in the clouds.

Now, Belarus isn't on the level of tyranny of North Korea, but they do pretty well in the minor leagues. Their president since 1994 is Alexander Lukashenko, who comes straight out of Balding Soviet Bureaucrat central casting. People appeared to suffer no repercussions for talking to the filmmaker, but newspapers and universities get shut down and people get sent to prison if they get too uppity.

Ok. Scene set. Discussion question time. After a few innocuous ones (including one by me on the filmmaker's opinion with regards to international involvement, to which the rep indicated that he really didn't have one, which stunned me), one person came and gave a diatribe on how, yes, Belarus isn't free, but the United States isn't free either because Verizon's a multibillion dollar corporation (and that the 2001 election - not a typo - was stolen).

He wasn't particularly lucid. Fine. The moderator finally shot him down by saying "unfortunately for you, the filmmaker made a movie about Belarus".

Then another guy did the same thing, claiming a mile and half from here in Southeast the infant mortality rate was on par with Rwanda's (actually, a mile and a half is closer to the near baseball stadium, where most the people living there are DINKs). And that you needed a permit to protest. And that foreigners couldn't say certain things.

I couldn't take it anymore. I asked them what country they'd prefer - Belarus or here.

Then a Ukrainian - who had said that she saw bits of the Orange Revolution in Belarus - came back at me and asked why the divorce rate was so high (I still don't get this one).

There was one last question - that jokingly compared Lukashenko to Bush (the moderator responded that Lukashenko saying that the Germans had the right idea in the 1940s really wasn't the same thing) before the discussion died.

I left with the feeling I described above. I wanted to vomit, and I'm not kidding.

The way I see it, there are two potential explanations. One is that I'm wrong, and that the U.S. is one step away - if that - from becoming little more than a one-party state.

The second idea is that the rancor in this country has made people unable to make viable comparisons. I find that infinitely more troubling.

Look. Bush won a close election in 2000. Ever since, he has done some debatable things, some of which were very questionable in terms of their legality. Fine. Democracy isn't perfect. Democracy is messy and it's never perfect. Reagan had his scandals. So did Bush, Carter, Clinton, and basically every president in recent memory.

But these people really thought that present-day America was comparable to Belarus.

It made me sick to my stomach. It still enrages and saddens me now.

I remember something I wrote on September 15, 2001 to a message board - "... the United States is the best option and the only persistent beacon of freedom and hope...".

I still believe that. The U.S. has its problems, but I still can't believe what I heard tonight.

2007-05-29T22:48:00.000-04:00

Those of you who read this (when I post, that is) know that I like to have a point when I blog about longer things. Not necessarily a point - more of a specific unifying theme.

Well. The theme of this post is "life". How's that for specific?

More specifically, it's about how things don't always turn out the way you imagine - the source for thought when you're with friends and someone asks if you ever thought about this being your life when you were younger. These conversations can be very dangerous.

This one is about the length of an hour and a half. And twenty minutes. But not 140 minutes.

You see, the original point of this post was going to be about art, and how I, personally, am not an artist. It was going to start out talking about a nighttime exhibit opening/drinking party at the Hirshorn on Wolfgang Tillmans and an unjuried art exhibition called Artomatic - both of which, coincidentally, I saw on the same night (I'd actually seen Artomatic a few times, but it was interesting to see what was an amateur exhibition right before a professional one at the part of the Smithsonian that deals with modern art - like going to a Little League game before heading to a major league one).

The Tillmans exhibit was underwhelming, but what was fun was walking around the galleries (most of which were open and had very few people, as long as you weren't in the room that had the drinks) and looking at things that were truly beautiful - and that I, even if I tried for a million years, could never paint.

That gets me. Stuff like a gorgeous sunset or Uluru - no human could have ever made that, so it's folly even to try. Things like the Empire State Building or the Great Wall or the Parthenon - they took hundreds, if not thousands, of people, so you can always fault your lack of a bank account.

But art. Grab a brush and a canvas. Try to beat Van Gogh.

A conversation at Artomatic with one of the artists at the entry - it's very socialist, in that it's not juried and everyone has to volunteer - sort of clinched it. I was talking to her - her name is Jan Sherfy - and asking generic questions about her art. She said that, for one of the pieces (or maybe both), someone had made a comment about "vertical lines that never meet", which stuck with her for a long time - and she eventually painted something that she thought talked to that. I think that it's "Meeting at the Edge".

Dude, I don't see it. I don't think I'll ever see it. But she wasn't putting me on - she saw it. Some of us are artists and some of us aren't.

this artist's work

Now back to the life switching point. The other part - very similar to the above tete-a-tete with Van Gogh - is music. Given that last week an entire competition devoted to this concept was concluded, this isn't a radical claim.

But the music I had heard earlier tonight was really good.

I mean really good. So good I had one of the songs stuck in my head from the time I left to the time I went into the bookstore to find something for the ride home to my walk back from the Metro to the store, to picking up some orange juice, bread, and bananas and standing in line.

Then I got stuck. Behind someone who was filling out a check and whose pen didn't work and who was taking eons (I don't understand why people use checks - if you have a checking account, you can get a check card with no cost to use). I finally switched to the self checkout, but it was too late - by the time I was out the door on my walk back, I had forgotten the song.

Maybe it's because I'm cynical, but loss always seems to me to be more lasting than gain - sort of the "Progress Paradox". If someone does something hurtful, I'll usually remember that much longer than if they do something nice.

So I'm walking home from the store - it's a 5-10 minute walk, not far at all - and I, who had been in a positively happy mood before - pulled a 180. Not only did I not have this beautiful song in my head, but I had this annoying one from the store that replaced it - and every time I tried to remember the original song, the one from the store beat it out. It was like trying to find two commercials - one a Canada Dry one from the early 90s showing penguins falling down like dominoes, and the other a Diet Coke ad featuring people saying words into the screen (one woman who said "pounce" struck me as remarkably sexy) earlier - on YouTube, being unable to, and being annoyed despite being able to find almost anything else I ever look for there.

By the time I had walked ten steps into my condo, I had finally remembered the song - "Falling Slowly" - but even after this, I was in a bad mood. So this was going to be a story about how things get really depressing.

But I went on YouTube and found the trailer for Once. And, after listening to the full song of "Falling Slowly", I just can't do it. I tried to describe the movie below, but I can't. It's not a great, life-changing movie, but it's a fun one - and until I stood in that grocery store line, it put a smile in my soul. There are parts that are fantastical, and there are parts that have happened to me.

So that's the twenty minutes. Between walking out the supermarket door and midway through this post, I switched again.

That's life.

2006-09-18T21:30:00.000-04:00

In an entirely unrelated note, GoFB is now FoFB (and has been for about a month).

Like I said, the blog is on life support.

2006-09-18T21:27:00.000-04:00

It's been a while. Let's see how much longer this lasts.

This is a story about a lot of things. But mostly, it's a story about two movies.

As always, if you're looking for discussions on Socratic discourse, you've come to the wrong place.

I first saw The Shawshank Redemption on the VCR in my family's computer room a few years after it had come out. I don't know why I decided to watch it. I do remember being completely entranced - usually, when I'm watching a movie at home, I get bored relatively easily and pause it for a few minutes. Not here. Entranced.

I knew nothing about it, and, in the end, I assumed that Andy Dufresne had been consumed by Shawshank. Was well-nigh positive about it. The fact that he hadn't been was one of the times that an ending truly surprised me.

As an aside, I usually have blog entries written in my mind before I write them. This one isn't being cooperative. Like me wanting to mention the second movie until much later. Doesn't want to write that way.

The second movie that matters here is Invincible. More on it later, but, for now, let's just say that I enjoyed the movie. So did other people in the theater. In fact, they enjoyed it so much, that, in the climactic scene, they stood up and cheered.

Now, objectively, they're idiots. It's a Disney movie. There's going to be an ending, and it's going to be a happy one. Surprise really isn't much in currency here. This is Patton rolling through France.

But they weren't idiots. In this one, even though you knew what was coming (probably), you still were happy - really happy - that it happened.

Anyway. More on Invincible later. Back to Shawshank.

There are quite a few great lines in that movie, but the best, and what I think is the crux of the movie, is Andy's letter to Red, at the end. As lifted from IMDB, it's "Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."

I like this line. It encapsulates the movie. But it's not the whole story. Because earlier in the movie (where I don't know), Red (Morgan Freeman's character) says "Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."

So, which is it?

When I was young - middle school, maybe earlier, my family had this book on Greek mythology. Lots of interesting color line drawings - "interesting" not in some negative sense, but interesting in the sense that they weren't really for kids, and some were designed to be a little scary.

Another aside - also in our possession was some great book about kids who found a big closet that did something like grant wishes. I specifically remember a polka-dotted elephant and some kid driving a race car. Funny what the mind remembers. The book wasn't beautifully illustrated, the way that some books, especially for kids today, are. But I damn sure remember that elephant and race car, even sharper than when I held the book.

Anyway. The thing that I remember most about that book - really the only story I remember - was the story of Pandora. If you rememeber the drawings that were scary, they came from the nasty things that Pandora unleashed upon the world - I don't remember the specific drawings, but I see them in a general sense, and they're a little scary even now.

But the part that always got me was the payoff (or The Prestige, which, along with Happy Feet, were easily the two best previews before Invincible - like I said, more coming soon!). The thing that stayed was hope. Not an AK-47 to mow down Pestilence or Fear. Just Hope.

I always felt like somebody got cheated when all they got was hope.

Now to Invincible. If you get a chance, see it. It's not Rocky or Hoosiers, but it's entertaining and a hell of a lot better than I expected. I thought that the Bill Simmons review was spot-on: especially since the attractive female character doesn't say stuff like "Stop! You're going to get hurt!" and provides some witty banter and sex appeal.

It's improbable, but it's (mostly) a true story. And it's important, because, if it weren't a movie, you wouldn't believe it.

Scratch that. You wouldn't bet on it. You might believe it. One of the best parts of the movie comes when Philadelphia is beset by rampaging Ottomans, plagues of locusts, and six or seven direct warhead hits, along with basically everyone striking. If there was a word for this part of the movie, it's "depressing". So, naturally, everyone comes to the bar where Papale worked, and they all basically cheer like raving lunatics at every mention of Papale's name. One of Simmons' "chill scenes" involves a talk he has with his father on this subject (remember the ladies in the theater? They gasped "Oh!" when his dad said what he did - it was that powerful).

So, in this case, hope (and sweat and dedication) pays off with some luck. He doesn't win a Super Bowl (it's the Eagles! ha!) but he fulfills his dream.

So now we come to Sunday (after a great sushi dinner and some kvetching from me at Sequoia's - thanks, Cheese Boy!). I go to Rhino, on the assumption that I can be a raving lunatic here (and ideally find a female who tolerates men swearing at the TV and clapping their hands when they're not even in the same area code as Philadelphia - more on this later).

The Eagles are playing the Giants. It's the same two teams that meet in the climax of Invincible. And, for three quarters, it's great. The Eagles are playing great defense, they're scoring, and it's a fun crowd - lots of E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES! and "Ryan Howard *clap clap clapclapclap*". Even better, the two obnoxious Giants fans - including one who sort of looks like J.J. Redick - just suffer.

By the way, this violates a massive principle I have about sports bars. If you go into a sports bar that's affiliated with a particular team in a neutral city (i.e., a Steelers bar in Dallas), under no circumstances should you root for the opposing team. The exceptions are if you're in the city in question (rooting for a Cowboys opponent in Dallas), or if you're a fan of some dinky little college team with a nickname like the Fighting Scrod and the only bar that shows your team is the one that's also the unofficial gathering place for Massive State A&M. This rule becomes even more stringent when the local team is playing the away team, especially if the away team is expected to lose (Rams fans going to a Falcons bar in St. Louis to watch the game).

Why? As things began to go downhill, I began doing the traditional things that any person who is borderline crazy would - I started clapping to pump up the bar, which was located in Washington. Three girls sitting next to me (one of whom was wearing an Akers jersey) made a comment basically insinuating that I was insane. I replied that, yes, I was, but it made me feel better.

That's why you should never intrude on someone else's location to watch the game. I have very serious mental issues when it comes to the Eagles and Hoyas, and it's better for all concerned if I'm with other people who have the same problem I do. Only it's the absolute opposite of group therapy. It's like a group of alcoholics meeting at a bar for a drinking binge.

As things got worse, it was like watching something in slow motion - I could remember all the Eagles fans chanting "Scoreboard" at the Giants fans, which was tempting bad karma something fierce, and I could remember the guy who led the fight song every time Philly scored telling me after Philadelphia had returned a kick in overtime close to midfield that the game was over.

Hope was good for those associated with the Giants who never quit believing that their team could do it. Hope was great for those associated with Georgetown before the team upset Duke.

Hope can also be tortuous. The Eagles tanking in numerous NFC title games. The Hoyas during most of the Escherick era. The Orioles in 1989 - one of the best examples, where they were picked to finish dead last, and stayed in contention until they lost to the eventual Eastern Division champs (the Blue Jays) on the last day of the regular season. They wouldn't have made a movie about Papale if he lasted until the last cut. Moral victories mean little. Lots of Red Sox fans died without the team winning a championship in their lifetime.

Yes, I know that I'm using sports analogies to describe hope. I know that there are many other cases where hope is more real and more critical. In a related story, I find this guy to be a major fraud.

So the question's still there. Is hope good or bad? If your favorite team is never going to win the Super Bowl, is it better to reconcile yourself to that fact and accept fate? Or is it better to hold out the glimmer of hope that maybe they'll win, only to be disappointed time and time again?

I assume Yankees blogs never deal with this question.

2006-07-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

Yes, I'm back. I don't know if this blog is destined to die or not, but it lives for the time being.

Anyway. Yesterday, I headed to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (I also killed some time early by checking out the Freer and Sackler's exhibitions (I respond once again that including Freer's works in a museum of Asian art is twelve kinds of wrong - the "Idea of Feminine Beauty" exhibit dedicated to part of his collection basically made him look like a pervert).

I also got a quick bite from a BBQ place, on the theory that eating pork or chicken or beef or (grudgingly) soy that's been smoked for twelve hours is a very American thing to do. And don't whine that I did this at the Folklife Festival - Alberta's main option was bison burgers, which the one Albertan I know told me he had never had before going to Quebec. Food is international.

The exhibits, as usual, were geared to younger kids, but they were nice (also, during the presentations, they had one guy in the Canadian pavilion doing a fast-paced fiddle version of "O, Canada") - the only one that sort of disturbed me was Nuestra Musica, which seemed quite divisive when it described Latino Chicago and included a banner describing the marches for illegal immigrants - and why just Latino Chicago, rather than all of Chicago. There's enough Midwestern spirit to fill a few tents rather than relying on interpretive Peruvian folk groups who take the El every day.

At least they were better than Native Basketry.

But I didn't come there to see Alberta's contribution to ice hockey - I came to see Corb Lund, whose videos I had seen last week on CMT Canada (they also have a "Sportscentre" that focuses on Canadian football, third-string Orioles pitchers from Moose Jaw, and the Blue Jays), and Corb was headlining a Canada Day concert.

Anyway. I got there around 5 - the concert started at 5:30 - and got a front-row seat. A few minutes later, a guy who pretty much looked like Canada's version of Garrison Keillor sat down next to me - he was a curator of one of the exhibits, and I mentioned that I might go to Medicine Hat in the near future. So for the next ten-twenty minutes, I got a thorough overview of everything to do in the area, as well as enough for five or six day trips. The only negative was that he mentioned this place enthusiastically, which led to me referencing the columns Dave Barry wrote about it, especially the highlight of his life where he called the "interpretive centre" and someone responded with "Head Smashed In", may I help you?". He didn't like that.

It's probably best that I didn't become a diplomat.

Anyhoo. The concert.

It opened with Blackfoot Medicine Speaks, a Blackfoot music/dance group. Not really my cup of tea, though one of the guys looked disturbingly liked John Cusack.
Then came Maria Dunn, who was accompanied by fiddler Fiona Coll.
Oh, and Fiona was pretty damn hot. I was debating yelling her name a la Eurotrip (whose Fiona is played by a Canadian - and I've never seen them in the same place!), but this was a primarily Canadian crowd - they applauded when they were told to do so - so I refrained.

Anyway. Maria Dunn is your traditional lefty granola singer-songwriter (we'll get back to this topic later), but she can sing (and Fiona can fiddle to beat all hell). Her experience is with the Great Depression and turn-of-the-century Alberta, and she started with a paean to a labor organizer called "Do You Know Slim Evans?" that was pitch-perfect and would have been a perfect addition to the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack (we'll get back to this topic later, too). A variety of other songs, included a few that got people out onto the dance floor (but, once again, songs about Albertans riding trains through Alberta who are freezing even in July since they just came through a mountain pass don't really inspire a Virginia Reel). I mostly focused on Fiona.
After them came Cowboy Celtic, featuring a harpist (she didn't like it when people laughed at her website name). They sort of annoyed me when their second song was "Custer Died A-Runnin'" (apparently, they've been banned from Montana), but most of the rest of their songs were more upbeat and filled the floor (they included "Shenandoah").
For the group's last song, the harp chick did something slow and mournful, then the fiddler jumped in as they slowly speeded things up, then everybody joined in, then the fiddler solo'd.

Wow. The fiddler should have gotten much more time than the mandolin or guitar player.
The next performer was John Wort Hannam, who got really snitty about mikes and sound. It's probably worth mentioning that, after JWH's performance, the guy sitting next to me asked if the numbers of people were representative - he mentioned that a concert like this in Alberta would draw 10,000. I diplomatically didn't mention that there was a lot more to do in D.C. and instead mentioned that this was an extension of the festival and wasn't billed as a separate event. At some point, JWH, just shut up and play.

The problem is that, as I'm listening to his songs (try "Pier 21" from Pocket Full of Holes, which has this great soaring ballad feel (I see it as a great movie trailer song), and "Church of the Long Grass" from Dynamite and 'Dozers, which makes him sound like a double of some other artist - almost pitch-perfect - that drives me crazy because I don't know it is), I think I like his work the best. My favorite song of the night was "Slim Evans", but his stuff is good (and, while he was tuning his guitar, he got his fiddler to play an intermezzo that earned a lot of applause). Really good.
Which brings me to my next point. Missouri needs to go to the Big 10, and we need to invade Alberta and make the University of Alberta Golden Bears part of the Big XII. This is because, as the night moved forward, I wasn't listening to a Canadian concert - I was listening to a country concert. When acts from Alberta make it big in U.S. country music, they have as much bona fides as guys from Austin or Murfreesboro or Broken Bow (if somebody from Toronto makes it, that's cool, too, but we have country music acts in the U.S. that came from Ohio). It's roots music - the stuff of the O Brother soundtrack. Some people came to experience Canadian music as a cultural experience. I came to have a great time.

Really. Just close your eyes and listen to "Pier 21". As I was metroing home, I added this to my list of Robert Fulghum moments - events where, for lack of a better word, you can lean back and close your eyes (favorite frosty beverage optional) and think that the point of life is not forever tied to human pain and suffering, and that people may, at their core, be good. There aren't a lot of these events, but they're great when they come.
Before Corb Lund (or before JWH - I forget) came this woman who gave Joe's Rant (go to the bottom and follow the link to the QuickTime video - it doesn't really make sense reading it until you see a Canadian do this in Full Insane Rant Mode). This is really funny, by the way, since Coors just bought Molson (even better are these other versions).

Eh. Let them have their fun. We still have the nukes (and the Stanley Cup - and the people guarding it now have fast cars and believe very strongly in the right to keep and bear arms!).
Finally. Corb Lund, who asked for a few quick mods to the mike system and then let it be, then proceeded to play a few meditative songs before switching over, in order (I think), to "Always Keep an Edge on Your Knife", "(Gonna) Shine Up My Boots" (I really like this one), "The Truck Got Stuck", and "Time to Switch to Whiskey" (check here for clips).

All that you need to know about this performance is that, midway through, Corb (by the way, his parents were in the audience, too - how cool is that?) indicated that he had to sign something that said he wouldn't drink onstage, but he still had to represent Alberat faithfully. People danced, but it wasn't to the vaguely-depressing songs that had come earlier - like people waltzing to Bruce Springsteen's "49 Shots" or doing a first dance to "I Will Always Love You" - but to fun music.
So, they finished - actually, Corb replayed the chorus of "Time to Switch to Whiskey" once more, then finished.
I walked out of the tent into the night, enjoying the lighted Capitol on the night sky, then caught a Blue Line at just the right time. As we passed from National to Braddock Road, the conductor let us know that Alexandria was having its fireworks display that night - so I pressed my nose to the glass and caught a little bit of it.

Nice end to the night.

2006-05-29T12:41:00.000-04:00

My original weekend plans changed, so I had to decide what to do yesterday - play Xbox all day, or go out and get some culture.

I compromised. Half day of Xbox, and a half-day of culture.

The half-day was deliberate. The day was planned around the National Memorial Day Concert, which started at 8. Since I'm not as young as I once was, a full day of wandering around sightseeing would kill me.

The day started with a quick walk around the Navy Memorial before I headed to the National Building Museum, where I had heard of a cool exhibit on architect's plans for New Orleans - NBM did something similar a few years back with plans for the September 11th memorial for the Pentagon as well as for innovative low-income housing ideas.

Well, it was probably a great exhibit, but it was closed for that day only. No explanation.

Day off to a ROUSING start.

After that came a quick stint at National Gallery of Art (I had seen an advertisement on Titian, but that didn't open until mid-June) and Natural History, which had absolutely nothing new. So I headed over to American History.

Oops, almost forgot. As I walked to Natural History, I followed the lead of a few other people and walked so that I could get drenched by a sprinkler (today was a "hot day" in Washington - for those of you reading in Florida, this is the type of day where you rejoice that the temperature's dropped to a reasonable level and put on a wool suit). There's a sculpture garden in between NGA and Natural History that had lots of people wading in it. A few walks around was enjoyable to evaporate some of the water.

American History did have an exhibition that did exist - one on Jim Henson and the Muppets that had really intrigued me - but it was very, very small (and right in the middle was Lance Armstrong's bike - talk about America's Attic). After a little time spent wandering around the polio exhibit (again) and seeing one on Celia Cruz (that was mainly valuable for the salsa), I cut bait and headed out.

I now had around forty minutes before the Smithsonian closed, so I headed to the Ripley Center to see what they had. Not much - something called "Amazon Voyages - Vicious Fishes and Other Riches" that was focused on kids (though it did have salsa steps and instructions on doing something called "The Stingray Shuffle" at the end of the exhibit) and Singgalot, which focused on Filipino-American relations.

Now I had three hours until the concert began. And it was Memorial Day. So. Off in the direction of the Washington Monument.

First stop, World War Two Memorial. The more I see it, the more I like it - except for those godawful Triumph of the Will-inspired eagles on the left and right sides. Memorial Day had led to people putting photographs and letters in some of the state nooks, and the view to the Lincoln Memorial seems enhanced by the gold stars and the fountain.

Ah, yes. The fountain. Despite six or seven signs that said "Do Not Wade In The Fountain", lots of people were doing it - and not just putting their feet in, but walking around and splashing. One day before Memorial Day. One Rolling Thunder attendee finally took one of the signs and placed it dead-center.

Then, the Vietnam memorial, which I've always enjoyed visiting on Memorial Day because of the variety of different items that are left (someone left a paper on someone who was killed by an IED in Iraq, and another left a Sago mine shirt, which made me wonder if they were for one of the fallen - or if the Wall had just become America's spot for mourning.

Then, wonder of wonders, some guy's cell phone rang and he answered it. While looking at the Wall (one person did it at the American History museum too, saying "I'm at a polio exhibit right now". And people ask why I don't have a cell phone and why I favor the death penalty). One day before Memorial Day. Unbelievable.

Then came the Korean War Veterans Memorial , which I like. A lot. It has the memorial for the UN participants, it shows some people walking through the brush, and it has the iconic "Freedom is Not Free", which, of all the memorials in Washington, is the one that usually gives me the most goosebumps.

I've also come to like the black granite wall, which has evolved my thinking from "another Vietnam Veterans Memorial" to something with a more ethereal quality. Vietnam was a very well-known war, and the names are etched and have a large degree of permanence and space.

Korea was less well-known, and the memorial reflects that - unlike "Mark J Hansen", which stands out clear as day, you need to look and focus at the pictures here.

Well. Time for a walk back to the Capitol. As I walked, I saw a few people dressed in costumes, sitting down around various people. Fortunately, they didn't choose me.

Anyway. Found a space (everywhere was pretty much blocked off due to TV cameras, so I chose a space with room to stretch out), took off my shoes, and just enjoyed the hour wait. Some people behind me had been victims of the costumed people, and found out that they were advertising a movie (no, I'm not going to tell you which one - no one who advertises before a Memorial Day concert with people who have so little self-respect that they dress up looking like idiots deserves free publicity).

Sitting behind me on my right was a young couple with a baby - Dad had on a Marine shirt. On my left were four women in their late 30s/early 40s, who had apparently planned for this more than Patton did the Normandy invasion - there was an extra-large blanket, a spare, smaller blanket, crackers, spinach salad, chicken, and sangria (which I was offered midway through). They seemed fun. Right in front of me was a couple who should be on a public-service announcement for making sure that you don't wear low-rise pants along with too-short shirts.

Anyway. The concert.

Today's emcee for the night is Joe "I Don't Get Mad, I Get Stabby" Mantegna. Good job overall (with one exception - see below).
Welcome to the first song of the night, the Star-Spangled Banner, sung by a mezzo-soprano (no, I don't know who - why don't you go to the concert next time). As you're standing and looking at the flag on the stage (some others look at the Capitol flag), it's pretty amazing to see the Washington Monument out of the corner of your eye).
Quick cut to Colin Powell, who introduces veterans and their families sitting behind him (including some people from Walter Reed and Bethesda).
Up next is Lee Ann Womack, who sings a really strange version of "I Hope You Dance" that's speeded up and isn't nearly as good as the original.
Next introduced is today's co-host, Gary Sinise. Gary is introduced as the star of CSI: New York - it's strange, he's never been the star of an iconic movie or a really popular TV show. I remember him for a really great role in Ransom, as well as being on The Stand - the "Lieutenant Dan" role never registers, since that movie was so much about Tom Hanks.
Gary talks to Big and Rich, who will apparently not be playing "Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy". Instead, they're doing a song called "8th of November", about a Vietnam veteran from South Dakota. It begins with the two of them singing a cappella - great, great harmony - before it becomes generic Muzik Mafia. But that a cappella start was great.
Now it's time for a salute to the upcoming 60th anniversary of the U.S. Air Force, which has its origins in the Army Air Corps, where almost one in every two planes was shot down. After a vignette on the dangers of combat flying over Germany (notably antiaircraft guns), we're introduced to someone who's going to read a story of one of them.
No more fun anymore. The story is of a pilot who was shot down over Germany and taken to Stalag Luft Three (he escaped being mauled by farmers by being resuced being a German pilot - the farmers attacked him since the RAF had been bombing Cologne nearby pretty heavily. After being forced to march a hundred miles to another brutally overcrowded camp, he is rescued when Patton liberates the camp.

Only, after he returns home, he finds out that his wife, assuming he was dead, has remarried and is now pregnant with her new husband's child. He describes it as the worst moment - even worse than being shot down and dropping fifty pounds - so much weight that his hips were bone.
Next comes an honoring of the National Guard, who have accounted for about a quarter of all U.S. casualties in Iraq. Some stories of various different Guard detachments follow (include some Pennsylvania Guard members whose work helped get Saddam Hussein - despite the request not to clap until the end, some people clap here).
Then comes the story of Houma, Louisiana - the "Black Sheep" and its National Guard patrol in Iraq. As Joe Mantegna goes down to a specific day, and turns things over to Gary Sinise to read a participant's recounting of events in his own words, you know it's not going to be good.

And it's not. A patrol in Iraq that goes wrong when the lead tank is blown 150 feet into the air by an IED. The person in question calls for support, who helps to put out the fire before they find out that all seven people have been killed.

After some discussions on his life since the event and the dreams he's had, we turn things over to Dianne Wiest, who reads the recollections of the mother of one of those killed in action. It's brutal. Absolutely and totally brutal.
After that comes "Taps". Everyone stands, and there's no talking.
The mood changes after that, as they recognize all veterans in the audience by playing the various "official songs" of each - the Marines are called out by Joe for both the Navy and Marine Corps songs (this may or may not mean that Marines count twice).
Time to head out. I miraculously make it into the first train that gets there with remarkably little pushing.

Ok, I still have one more memorial to visit. Iwo Jima. I walk out of Rosslyn (ran up 2/3 of the non-working staircase before my legs gave out - dumb, dumb idea). It's now 10, and dark.

I walk over to the entrance to the park, which is strwen with orange construction thingees blocking walking on the grass - apparently they planted new grass and are trying to allow it to survive.

So. Picture this. It's close to pitch black and the direct way to walk to the memorial is blocked. I walk around for a little and find a way to enter. There's one other couple there - it wouldn't be right if it was deserted - and I walk around while they're debating how many people are on the statue. I then head over to the Carillon, hoping that I can see some flags next to the graves - something that I've always been impressed by - but it's too dark. I do, however, see one guy relieving himself in the grass by the Carillon.

It's been a full day. I head back to Rosslyn and metro home.

2006-05-17T19:39:00.000-04:00

On Good Morning America tomorrow, Diane Sawyer will be interviewing celebrities like Hilary Duff, Will Smith, and Tom Cruise on dance moves you can do in front of your kids that won't embarass both of you.

I'm curious as to what Tom will say. I'm particularly curious if the move where you jump up and down on the couch is a "do" or a "do not do".

Even better in terms of overall humor value, however, is this page, specifically the unanswered question of how many people claimed fluency in "Nigerian".

Anyway. Today's rant is about medicine. You my have heard my rants about City Slickers' speech on getting old when you go in to the hospital to have a "procedure", but Dave Barry made a similar comment about knowing that you were getting old when you started discussing health problems with friends. So, since I'm old, let's let this start. I also know that none of this is really new, but indulge me.

My experience with doctors when I was younger was pretty simple - you went in for a yearly checkup, and if you were sick, you went to the doctor, got a prescription, drank lots of Sprite and plain noodles, and were better. I liked this system, notably because my parents paid for it (including the Sprite!).

As I've gotten older, this process has gradually changed. Rather than "diseases" in the sense of something that makes you stay home and watch The Price is Right for a predetermined period of time, we now have "diseases" where the body's defense system, is basically fighting the War on Drugs (see above) - progress is measured in remarkably small increments, with the actual final victory of the War on Drugs in approximately 2040, a point at which I will either a) be dead or b) wish I was when I'm still alone and blogging.

So, anyway, I have a few of these items. They're not going to kill me (unless I try really hard), but they are going to, in the immortal (edited) words of The Simpsons, require me to see my pharmacist once a month for many years. I still have whatever annoying problems in question, and medical science in the form of various doctors have told me that I'm stuck with it.

So, anyway, Rite-Aid, in a move designed to draw my ire, tried to enroll me in some "living with your disease" (which annoys me even further since "disease" strikes me as something that eventually gets fixed, whereas "condition"s (see City Slickers note above on medical terminology) don't) mail spam list, without my permission. Even worse, they required me to deal with the same evil voice that does Verizon's answering machine to get out of it - it was the same "if you like your first album/wine/wheel of cheese, simply do nothing and another will be sent to your home every month". VERY. NOT. COOL.

That's the evil one. Now here's the strange one. Remember my love for the Tuscana? Part of the reason I'm so enamored of them is that I have to buy a pair every six months. This is because my feet sweat. A lot. It's annoying since it destroys my shoes, and whenever it's humid and I have to walk a lot, I feel like I'm walking in a swamp.

Ha! Take that, TMI!

So I go to the doctor and complain, and, as always, get a solution. The solution, however, is one of those "potentially worse than the cure itself" thingees.

Well, sort of.

The way it works is, you put it on your feet at night before sleeping.

Normal so far.

But, for it to work, you have to ensure that it's not touching anything, particularly since it stains. So you need to wear socks to sleep.

Ok, that's fine.

I started this blog for a variety of reasons. One of them is most assuredly the need to occasionally discuss the parts of this world that, no matter how much you analyze them, make no sense whatsoever. Sort of the "when you can't understand the world, laugh at it" approach, so that I can pull a Dylan Thomas and rage against that which does not make sense without getting committed.

This is one of those times.

To get it to work, before you put on the sock and after you put on the medicine, and I swear I'm not making this up, you have to wrap your feet in saran wrap.

2006-05-13T18:41:00.000-04:00

Blogging today with sharp, nasty, and annoying upper back pain.

This matters because I spent yesterday afternoon at the Sackler and Hirshhorn galleries, pledging that I would get culture even if it kills me.

So, if you find me in a bloody heap outside of the National Gallery of Art one day, don't be totally surprised.

The idea started based on the fact that the Hirshhorn had another art after hours event (see my previous experience on it here). Of course, that event didn't start until 8, so I had two hours to kill. Fortunately, I found out that the Hokusai exhibit at the Sackler, three buildings over, was also going to be open until 9.

So. Hokusai first. Big Japanese artist from the 19th century, who worked in a variety of media, but who switched to painting pretty much full-time at around forty. He died at 89, and thus spent seventy years as an artist (apparently he also had trouble paying the bills, so, if he had talked to Chuck, he might have retired to the Japanese equivalent of Miami when he turned 60 and started playing the Japanese equivalent of shuffleboard, and the exhibit would have been much shorter. Even better, he, like me, was a year of the Dragon.

I hadn't seen this exhibit yet, and so mentioned to Cheese Boy that I was planning on seeing it at lunch yesterday, after which I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I had to see it. That, and the fact that as a Georgetown student, my experience with culture was limited to the Wave House and falling and skinning my knee really badly right before meeting the rest of my French class at the National Gallery of Art for a French-only tour - a critical mistake in terms of finding female companionship, since all of my other classes were focused on people of both sexes who wanted to be the next director of the CIA, and didn't care who they had to kill to do it.

Those of you who didn't go there think I'm kidding. Those of you who did are nodding your heads and laughing.

Oh, the Wave House - a rowhouse in Georgetown with a knockoff of "Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji: Beneath the Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa", aka The Great Wave, on an exposed exterior wall. Usually owned by lacrosse or soccer players, each of whom apparently threw great bacchanalian get-togethers that I unfortunately missed because I was surfing the internet in the computer lab.

Not that I regret anything, of course.

Anyway. The exhibit was big and varied - Hokusai (he actually went by other names, but is popularly known as Hokusai) ran the gamut, depicting men, women, children, peasants, warriors, priests, flowers, demons, water, lightning, landscapes, and ten or fifteen things that I'm forgetting. Perfect date (except, of course, for it closing tomorrow) - she can look at the adorable cat, and he can look at the warrior stringing his bow. My obvious favorite was the more fantastical stuff - things like an octopus god, demons, or warriors whose depictions are so clearly the inspiration for what Westerners think of when they think of "Asian myth" - but others were checking out the flowers or geisha paintings with similar focus. My favorite image was from a painting of a few images that some suggest may have been an advertisement for his school - it includes a dragon with a bizarre, very human expression that I can't describe. Very cool.

So. Hokusai ranks third in terms of all-time Sackler exhibits that I've seen. Arts of the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas ranks second, with The Adventures of Hamza continuing to keep the trophy (Fourth and fifth, respectively, are Caravan Kingdoms: Yemen and the Ancient Incense Trade and Asian Games: The Art of Contest (Caravan Kingdoms had a lot of ancient undeciphered writing - I so have to go back to the British museum.

Since I still had some time to kill, I also joined a tour of the exhibit, which was given by a very nice old lady who had an interesting sense of humor, notably in her remarking that she saw "The Great Wave" coming out of a washing machine and thinking that was the funniest thing ever (I had to help her find one of the paintings - it was an interesting tour). Regrettably, one of the other attendees in the group was a guy who had on an Under Armour shirt and bike spandex.

Now let's all say this together - there's a time for spandex and there's a time for no spandex. Being aerodynamic won't move you through the exhibit any further.

After that, it was time for the Hirshhorn event. The specific focus of the "After hours" was twofold - first, the Suggimoto work that I saw the opening of last time was closing, and, second, this was opening.

Ok. Let's describe this. You remember the end of the Simpsons episode where Homer develops outsider art? How do you describe what Homer did? You don't - it's just there, and it's just cool. So it doesn't really do it justice to say that an artist covered the main floor of the Hirshhorn in multicolored tape. You have to see it - and you're either going to like it or not.

I liked it. Notably fun was going down the escalator to see the entire floor. Like I said, it's tough to describe.

I also had some fun earlier in the evening exploring the Sugimoto exhibit again, which was much better when it wasn't crowded - there was one set of paintings that had both light and dark portions that were designed to evoke looking out over the horizon at either night or right before dawn. Walking around early in the night, with minimal light, was amazing - later on, when it became crowded and noisy, you couldn't look at the painting and imagine what it was trying to do.

The other point of note for the night were the attendees. Two words - "meet market". As opposed to the previous art night, when most people dressed in the popular style of very hoity toity wannabe hipster art critic (and I stuck out like a sore thumb in a suit), last night's wardrobe was "Well, if this sucks, we can still head over to Georgetown for a few hours".

I, of course, didn't find anyone who did a happy dance at Zobop, but, at least I can take some consolation.

2006-05-07T23:29:00.000-04:00

Ok, isn't there a problem with the series featuring this topic?

And I saw this today while walking around Borders, which surprisingly mocked Georgetown (and you wonder why every single entertainment firm isn't nice to your favorite music group). Even more fun was this. I really hate to say it, but I'm curious if one of the tips is "If you take a trip to the Caribbean to rejuvenate your routine, don't fall in love with a guy and write a novel loosely based on your life that makes you remarkably famous and leads to a movie if it happens that the guy's gay".

Anyway. Inappropriate book jokes aside, I'm going to go Memento on you and do the weekend backward. Today was "Why I Need A Cellphone Even Though I'll Be Dead In The Cold, Cold Ground Before I Get One" Day, as I missed Tricia and Dan at the Brain Tumor 5K, which led to me starting late, then alternating walking and running to look for them. On the bright side, I saw the ubiquitous bagpiper (required at every 5K, 10K, and marathon), and a T-Shirt for a group called "Operation Mitch Must Die". The race was sort of interesting since I was focused on finding Trish and Dan, but it still made you stop every so often when you saw four or five people walking together, with nametags like "BLANK's Husband", "BLANK's Dad", "BLANK's Younger Brother", and "BLANK's Older Brother". After that came tooling around Friendship Heights (see Borders comments above) before heading to finally meet up with Tricia, Dan, and others for lunch at Benihana (interesting point - when your server isn't Japanese, and makes the comment that Kikkoman is Japanese Coca-Cola, which is the same joke that the guy at Sakura made (see previous discussions on Sakura here and here), it's not as funny - and shouldn't somebody be suing somebody over this? And that last remark is what happens when you've lived in Fairfax for over a year).

Yesterday was devoted to Flag Boy's housewarming party (official note: I have more than a year on him, and yet he had his housewarming party before me - speed isn't my best suit), and can be summed up with the following - Ikea, "come on, you stupid horse!", my plan to become a multimillionaire and buy a horse in the Kentucky Derby so I can snag a blonde in a sundress, the Reno Bar-B-Que fest (and the winner's from Martinsville - road trip!) Iron Chef America, kinda sorta Philly Cheesesteaks (American doesn't work!), why Carrie Bradshaw is insane and not attractive in any way, shape, or form, why certain tours in Mexico offer free beer, and the proliferation of the "80s Saturday Night" concept and the potential for counterprogramming (discussed on a dark road with very few cars that was the same place where the headless hitchhiker killed the five sexy teens twenty years ago last night.

Which leads us to the good stuff. Friday Night. It ended with Flag Boy, GoFB, and I going to the Pizzeria Uno near me, and being served by someone who described cheddar cheese as "yellow" and who giggled just a tad too much when pushing strawberry-banana frozen yogurt milkshake thingees (I, showing my total lack of imagination, ordered the same "Chicken with Cheese and Spicy Pasta that Chili's, Friday's, and Ruby Tuesday all have, despite the fact that it's only enjoyable at Ruby Tuesday), and saw the end of regulation of the Wizards/Cavaliers game where Gilbert Arenas hit a 40-footer to tie it before they lost in overtime. We all remarked that our luck had run out much earlier.

And we were right. But what a run it was.

Background. During a discussion here, someone mentioned a Phil Vassar CD release party at Rosecroft Raceway. Since Flag Boy plans to use "American Child" as his campaign theme song when he runs for governor in ten years (I plan to be the campaign manager that creates numerous scandals!) and I've debated putting the lyrics to "Carlene" in a personal ad under "What Type of Person Are You Looking For?" (see more below), the three of us decided to go. The price was $10, which seemed so low as to be sketchy.

Getting in was pretty simple - the line moved relatively quickly. I eventually passed inside, picked up our free greatest hits CD (yes, the $10 included a free copy), and paid $10 for a second copy, and went up to an open area at the top (we originally thought it was going to be inside). It was remarkably depressing walking through the raceway, which was open and had lots of depressed-looking people staring at simulcast video screens. This is the type of place where, if you went there to die, the regulars would probably watch for pointers.

The place we were in was the top floor, and overlooked the previous two floors, with a view of the raceway, and had an elementary school cafeteria vibe - this was very much not the CD release party in High Fidelity. So maybe the $10 was justified based on supply and demand. Even the food was reasonable - $4 for barbeque, and $3 for a hot dog and fries. There were about 120 people total.

But I'll back up for non-country fans. Phil Vassar got his start as a songwriter, writing a few top ten hits before starting out on his own with a few more successes. He's the Georgetown Hoyas lacrosse team of country music - he's been successful for many years, but he's never had a really popular song that's moved him into the top tier of country acts (Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith). But he's consistent.

The crowd was not exactly outlaw Southern rock and was remarkably light on EHWWBJWTaCHs - it was more of a minivan-driving Shania fan crowd whose idea of a wild night, to ape Dave Barry, was not telling the babysitter when they'd be home. Lots of kids. This made the inclusion of the two police officers a total hoot - people weren't going to riot unless Kitchen-Aid mixers were going on sale for $20.

Anyway. To our left, a remarkably stunning blonde started a conversation with GoFB (yes,
she's mentioned because she becomes important later). In front of me was a couple in their
mid to late 30s that were absolutely pawing each other - they were so affectionate that you sort of begin to wonder if they're remarkably insecure and just making out in public to justify a shell of a relationship (this led to GoFB making yet another comment that I was the most cynical and cold-hearted person that she had ever known).

The pre-show music was quite strange - it opened with Aerosmith and other early 80s rock, before finally switching over to country - notably the execrable "Somebody's Hero (so bad that Richard Marx likes it), which is all about moms being amazing and was OK the first seven hundred times it was played. I made the comment that they were finally playing to their key demographic.

Bad move, since Ms. Paw stopped running her hands through her boyfriend's hair (each one would eventually take each other into their arms and place their lover's head precariously close to their armpit - have I mentioned that there are some times I'm glad to be single?) to begin conversation, whereupon we found out that she's from New Jersey (really. go figure. not that there's anything wrong with that state, of course) and she attended this one Catholic church for years, after which I needed to walk over to the other end of the room to check out a loose ceiling tile. Her boyfriend/chew toy never talked. I cannot begin to explain how weird they were.

Eventually came the pre-show countdown, hosted by WMZQ's morning show team of Ben and Brian (one of whom looks like one of the sidekicks in the Drew Carey show, and the other of whom does funny voices - I know that they sound like every other morning show team, but they're different for reasons that I can't recall right now). Their first item involved bringing up a guy who had won a free tan on Friday morning based on his ability to belly-dance with a relatively significant belly (he becomes important, too).

But most of their schtick was based on voices. Particularly notable was bringing up a woman and having her close her eyes while Toby Keith was impersonated - there's nothing for the old self-esteem like finding out that no woman has responded to you like this woman responded to a fake Toby Keith that she knew was fake. Also notable was a slightly-modified "Those Were The Days" that showed how many kids had no idea what All In The Family was, a John Malkovich line about killing the president that just sucked all the air out of the room, and loud boos when Al Gore and Bill Clinton were impersonated (gotta love country music fans). Even more bizarre was a Dr. Phil impression with the question of whether or not anyone was having love problems that led to one guy two or three rows ahead of us yelling us that he was here with his best friend's wife and some really frightening questions that I'm really hoping were a joke (again, gotta love country music fans). Perhaps the best impression was of the lead singer of Rascal Flatts doing "These Days", which is a shade away from whining. Pitch perfect.

Then it was time for the main event. Phil Vassar and one tall bald guy came out - Phil sat next to the piano, while the bald guy picked up a guitar. That was it - acoustic. Very, very cool. Oh, and Phil looks like Kiefer Sutherland - I kept on waiting for him to yell "there's a bomb on the racetrack!" and then shoot the guy selling souvenir T-shirts.

Phil asked for requests (a guy beat me to yelling "Freebird!", and Phil heard him and played a few bars. Flag Boy, who had been incensed that "This Is God" wasn't on the CD, started yelling for it - I tried to help. After a few times, the hot blonde (forgot about her, didn't you) got sick of us and said we should yell it the same time on three - which we did, and Phil heard and said he'd play.

It goes without saying that she was married.

The easiest way to do the set list is to go down to the tracks of the CD, which I heavily recommend you purchase or steal or receive as a gift from your significant other as payback for allowing them to fool around with you in public.

Oh - Phil specifically told people to sing, so no one gave me dirty looks.

Bye Bye - Originally done by Jo Dee Messina, famous as the only New Englander (Massachusetts) in country music, who always seemed sort of crazy and who would probably sing this while drizzling your Camaro with fuel oil. Phil's version is much less insane, although people sang along pretty lustily.
In A Real Love: Eh, not my favorite.
Carlene: As discussed, I've liked this song for a while, notably due to the reference to "horn-rimmed glasses", which, excepting "In A Different Light", is a theme that is sadly underrepresented in country music.

You know the thing that always gets me? Carlene, who apparently got a Ph.D. and is now modeling for one of the top magazines in the fashion industry, still sounds really insecure and desperate.
I'm Alright: This one was originally done by Jo Dee Messina, and her version is much different - the history between the two sounds like a failed relationship, and "just send a fax or send me letter, or give me a call; that'd even be better" sounds desperate. When Phil does it, it just sounds like two people meeting up. Really strange.

And "I'm above the below and below the upper" is a great line.
Last Day Of My Life: Hadn't heard this one before, and missed the first few lines, which were basically the "after she died, he killed himself" story line that immediately segues into a really romantic song (The Pawskis in front of me had fun here). I'd still feel weird about listening to this as a first dance song for a couple.

It should be mentioned that there was another hot blonde in a sundress who was singing along to every song. Before I walked over to ask her if she believed in love at first sight, and, if not, to look again, I noticed another ring.

It is now official. God is toying with me.
My Next Thirty Years: Originally done by Tim McGraw, who gave it a more rocking sound. Nonetheless enjoyable to Flag Boy and myself, as I look to boldly go where he has gone a few months before.
Little Red Rodeo: I honestly don't remember if he played this (see above comments on personal attachment to "My Next Thirty Years) - I don't think so. Originally done by another artist (Collin Raye).
American Child: Flag Boy's favorite song, due to the "Nowhere, Virginia" line. Fun song. Phil was quite insistent that the audience do the "woe-oh-oh" line in the chorus, and stopped midway through until we were doing it to his liking.
Twenty-One: I'm almost positive he didn't play this one - a new song. "My Next Thirty Years" covers the same material and is a better song.
Just Another Day In Paradise: This was running through my head for most of the day on Friday morning. After hearing my brother discuss free time, this seems to me like it's probably a good description of being married and having kids. I love the "Domino's Pizza in the candlelight" line.
For a Little While: Also done by Tim McGraw. He didn't play this one. Didn't do anything for me.
The Woman In My Life: I took a bathroom break here, and noticed how many people were watching transfixed. This should be popular next week. Nice song, but I like "A Song for Mama" better (quick question if you follow the link - what type of format is "quiet storm"?
Six-Pack Summer: First time I heard this one. Apparently, it was a contender for "summer song" last year, but got thumped. Maybe it'll get a second chance this year. So fun - just take your significant other in one arm and a frosty beverage in the other and sway slowly to the music.

Even better was the tall bald guy taking a minute or two to segue into "Stay", complete with high-pitched voice.

Did I mention that this entire experience was $10? The only better concert value I've experienced was Brooks and Dunn and Toby Keith for free (thanks, Cheese Boy!).
That's When I Love You: He played it. It's nice. Not my favorite. I don't remember much else - I was watching the blonde's lips move as she was singing.
I'll Take That As A Yes (The Hot Tub Song): A charter member of the So Cool Song Title Hall of Fame, this was the first time I'd heard it. Just cool and sexy and fun.

That wasn't it. He closed with "Piano Man" as everyone sang along, before shaking lots of hands (Flag Boy complained about him not playing "This Is God"). Great guy, and a great night.

2006-04-16T07:58:00.000-04:00

Well, allergies are back with a vengeance. They're not at the "Wow, I wish I had a spork so I could carve out my eyes and end this horrid torment" phase, but they are at the "sneezes that sound like Divine Strake" phase.

The spork phase is Very Not Fun. Having dealt with it for most of the past eight years, the Divine Strake phase is very liveable by comparison.

Yesterday afternoon was devoted to art. Second on my trip list (there's a reason for switching them) was the Phillips. This weekend, the Phillips is free (usually it's $12 - as a consequence, I had never been).

The Phillips was free because they were celebrating the return of a variety of their big-ticket items, notably Luncheon of the Boating Party, all of which had been returned without salsa stains. To celebrate the return of the paintings, they had a chalking of Luncheon, various people dressed up in whimsical period dress, and the making of period white hats with further decorations so whimsical that they would get you beaten up even if you entered an eating club at Princeton. Basically, they were trying to recreate the whimsical feeling of being in Paris, and pretty much succeeded, except that there weren't any riots.

An aside. This is what happens when you have a blog - I decided on this line five minutes into getting into line (I was in line behind an annoying New Yawk foursome - take that, capital of art society pretension!), and experienced a giddy little thrill upon writing it down. This is the mentality behind those shirts that say "I'm blogging this".

After a quick move through the line, we were in.

Short note - when you sidle up to one of the many attractive female Phillips staffers (really, it's like a plague) and try to make conversation by asking how many people usually show up, it's best to have your hand near your shirt pocket so you can catch your jaw when she says that they've smashed their previous one-day attendance record by double. It was an absolute and total mob scene - packed and loud. No time to just stand and reflect on a painting, and lots of people with a tendency to stand in doors and other key choke points (the one potential exception was a gallery of nudes with a comment that all of the paintings were like being a voyeur that was really creepy and made we want to leave quickly).

What was worse was that the Phillips is not designed as a people mover, like the National Gallery of Art with its huge halls - it's designed as a faux-New York studio, with lots of nooks and crannies. And the Phillips is sort of like an art all-star team: there's stuff here from O'Keefe, Klee, el Greco, Mondrian, Monet, Renoir, Degas, and on and on and on. So there's not one place where everyone gathers, it's impossible to avoid the crowds since there's so much good art. I may head here in the future, but the crowds made my visit well-nigh unbearable.

Let's contrast this to the Renwick, which was featuring Grant Wood (aka Mr. American Gothic). The exhibition was a pretty solid history of Wood's work (there was even a mural done with his students when he was an art teacher), with Gothic presented in its proper time period.

And that painting was great (you know what's strange? The man's eyes follow you, like the Mona Lisa's. But no matter how far to the right you move, you never meet the woman's gaze. Creepy.). But Wood did so much else - sculptures and different painting styles - including a few that really reminded me of the one Jewish painter that the Philadelphia Museum of Art (I think) did a few years ago that was very well-attended. Sort of like Van Gogh's style, with more rounded figures (please help. I'm trying to remember this and can't. I'm begging you. And I'm almost positive it's not Chagall). Walking through was like exploring a small museum full of different types of artwork, rather than seventy paintings of Picasso's "blue" period.

And it wasn't crowded! Except for the security guard, I was the only person near America Gothic for thirty seconds. So much more fun than a mobbed Phillips.

Well, after the Renwick, I took a quick detour to the Corcoran, to see if they had any exhibits worth a quick stop (uh, no - what happened to 2004, when they had Norman Rockwell and Frank Gehry?) before arriving at the Phillips.

After the Phillips came a little walk around Dupont Circle, including a stint in Kramerbooks that involved a discussion of some of the songs being played in the store with the staff - a slightly older staffer made a disparaging remark about a late 70s song, while I countered that I had to listen to Bette Midler's god-awful "Wind Beneath My Wings", which led to a slightly-younger staffer bemoaning having to listen to Boyz II Men, which led to me questioning her taste in music, which led to her qualifying that her issue was being thirteen and dancing to "End of the Road", which does sound pretty depressing. But then Kramers played "Don't Stop Believin'", and all was right with the world.

Then it was a walk to Georgetown that involved passing a house with a "NO EXAMINER" sign on the gate. I also got a chance to sit down right outside of Dahlgren Chapel on Georgetown's campus and read a little bit as blossom after blossom after blossom shot past me in the wind. Dahlgren in the spring is, for my money, one of the most beautiful spots in all of Washington.

A little later I met up with Cheese Boy (who, if he continues to mock me about my lack of a cell phone, will have his nickname changed to Leash Boy) for dinner. Dinner was Old Glory, where I had a pulled pork sandwich and a gallon of sweet tea (our waitress was nice, but seemed stressed to the point where something might set her off, so I didn't ask her to bring out a pitcher. After a nice walk around the waterfront and Georgetown (during which Cheese Boy made numerous pitches for Waiting, which apparently should have, according to him, beaten out Crash, Brokeback Mountain and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit for Best Picture), we made it to Holy Trinity for the Easter Vigil Mass.

I don't attend Mass nearly as much as I should. But there are some people who usually attend Mass once or twice a year - usually at Christmas and Easter. At Christmas, all the Masses are pretty much the same - you can attend on either the night of the 24th, midnight Mass, or on Christmas Day, and you're pretty much going to get the same Mass.

Not true for Easter. If you attend on Easter Sunday, you get to see lots of hats and sundresses and kids in cute outfits. However, if you attend the Easter Vigil with the plan of being able to wake up on Sunday morning and doing whatever it is that you gave up for Lent, you need to be aware of something.

That something is that the Church welcomes adult converts in via Confirmation, Baptism, and First Communion, during the Easter Vigil Mass, which makes for a much longer service (then again, all three services this week that I've attended - Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil - all ran to an hour and a half or more). So what I'm saying is, if you're a twice a year Catholic, bear in mind that all the services aren't like this.

Anyway. My initial perusal of the music list was not positive. The first church that I regularly attended featured a regular guy with a guitar, which sort of spoiled me since the songs that were done didn't require six years of study in a conservatory - basically Catholic pop. When I lived in Hockessin, my church was of the Other Type, often choosing stuff that would make the attendees not feel guilt for not singing, because only the soprano at the front of the church had any clue what all the markings meant.

But Cheese Boy noted two things - one was that one of the songs was a variation of Ode To Joy (always a personal favorite to walk out of a church after having belted that out), and "I Am The Bread of Life", which has an a cappella verse that, in his words, blew the roof of Holy Trinity before (check out Disk 2, Track 4 here and listen to the first few seconds for that refrain - when enough people sing it with passion, it's a sight to behold).

Anyway. The service began with the lighting of the candles, which was a nice touch as the lights dimmed (I was worried that some wax might slip down and fall on my fingers, so naturally I accidentally propelled some wax onto my fingers as I blew my candle out, which caused Cheese Boy to allege that I jumped a foot off the ground).

After four readings (including one from the Book of Baruch, which I had no idea was even in the Bible) and a Gospel (with lots of incense, natch) with a homily that focused on Art Buchwald, it was time for the baptisms.

So they bring out around twelve people. And they apparently have them stand in a kiddie pool. And then each one is doused with a pitcherfull of water. It sort of had to be seen to be believed.

More people were confirmed and received into Full Communion. Then all the congregants got splashed with a little bit of holy water (fortunately, my candle did not go out).

Apparently, they were running a little late, so they skipped the Ninth Symphony song (though Mass ran for two and a half hours, so an additional five minutes wouldn't have mattered much). During Communion, I prayed very hard for "Bread of Life" to be included. Fortunately, I was not disappointed. People didn't blow the roof off the place, but it was still an enjoyable song.

And with that, and with one more song (also good for belting out), Mass was finished and we walked out into the Georgetown nightlife - which is sort of like stepping out of church into Sodom. After a quick stop into CVS to get some essentials, I walked with Cheese Boy back to Rosslyn and prepared for the long journey back.

At the last stop, I noticed three people dressed up with Kennedy Center programs and asked them what they had seen. Their response was that they had seen this.

I asked them if it was any good. One of the men replied that it was only the best piece of music ever written.

A nice way to end the day.

2006-04-15T09:02:00.000-04:00

This post is made in the honor of a friend who saw a recent travel report and told me that I had real talent, although I really need to stop being so goshdarn negative.

Total non sequitur today.

In the early 90s, my family used to go to a July 4th party hosted by some friends of my parents. This party is possibly why I consider the Fourth of July easily the best holiday of the year - it was on a large suburban/rural plot that had horses and cool cars and crabs and burgers and tractor rides (complete with someone in a gorilla suit jumping out of the woods to scare kids).

And the fireworks. At dusk, the adults (mainly the men - the women, in what may have been the best decision of the night, stayed on the enclosed porch) would take a homemade mortar and launch fireworks off into the night (there was the one time when the organizer, whose hobby/obsession was 20th century warfare, recreated the Battle of the Bulge on a tabletop with little tanks that really fired when lit). Seeing your dad help to launch fireworks always made you feel pretty cool.

Well, anyway. There was one time right after we had returned from Taiwan that I especially remembered - I was in high school and was thus a little too old for the "kiddie stuff", but I found a few other people and we spent a fun time throwing around a frisbee. It was a nice warm summer night - I don't remember a lot of the other details, but I do remember just enjoying myself a lot.

Well, that and the car ride home. This one song came on that I had never heard before. I would get a chance to tape it from the radio a little while later. But it never got much airplay and thus disappeared.

Well, long story short - today, for no apparent reason, I got it in my head again and decided to search for it. The song is "You Don't Treat Me No Good", aka "Lover", and it's by a group called Sonia Dada (listen to a clip off the original album Hhere, or listen to a clip of a live version here).

I like the song - it's catchy, it's got a great chorus, and a great beat - all despite being a song about a guy who's leaving his girlfriend because she treats him like dirt. And it's funny that the obvious pain and sorrow - although I can see them there - never register because I so closely associated it with being a little sweaty, a little tired, and a lot happy.

2006-04-13T19:22:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! Frank is dead!

In other news, check out yet another mock trailer; this one's a sequel to Titanic (thanks to the Celebritology blog for the info). I'd comment, but nothing really does it justice.

More info rather than just links coming, hopefully soon.

2006-04-12T21:16:00.000-04:00

A variety of things today.

First, take a look here. The point of interest isn't the article - it's the picture of the quarter, which, to me, looks exactly like a cartoonish drawing of Bobby the Boeing 747 with a massive leak right next to the cockpit.

USA Today provides even more fun by linking to this site, which is just about the coolest thing on the internet. It's so evil, but it feels so right.

Anyway. Book review - and this one isn't even available in the U.S. yet! It's Attila, which I bought in the Heathrow airport.

This one's frustrating. I'd heavily recommend reading half of the book - up to the recreation of the messenger's work - and then leave it somewhere for someone else to find. It's difficult because the beginning is so engrossing - there's speculation on where the Huns came from, and there's this awesome digression on this one guy that's try to resurrect mounted archery - but the second half just degenerates into a straight historical chronology with none of the spark or fire of the first half. But that first half is just so good...

2006-04-09T20:32:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to post about this. But I sort of feel I have to. As a warning. Like those places people walk by in a horror movie that have a warning that the place is a home to an unspeakable evil.

Yes, dear readers, I have stepped into the abyss. And it wasn't pretty.

Let's back up. Jeopardy Guy warned us of the dangers of Kidz Bop, which led to me finding a version of "Follow Me" that sounded like it was sung by Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

So, anyway. I saw an ad for this, and let's just say that if it's not being used by a clandestine intelligence service to torture people for key pieces of information, well, it should.

Trusty bullet point time...

First, click on the part on the top right that says "Music". You have five seconds before you have to hear tweens singing "Hollaback Girl".
The songs themselves. This site has tolerable little snippets of them for ease of use. Enjoy a "Hollaback Girl" totally deprived of any sort of irony, find out that someone sings worse than Madonna, listen to the amusing lyrics changes in "Get This Party Started", get creeped out by young kids singing "Breakaway" and "Pon de Replay" and thrill to the utter horror of "Shop Around".
Of course, there's more on the site - notably, the singer bios. If you'll notice, each of the bios describes the singer as her persona.

If you've seen the "Simpsons", this becomes important when they get a new Sparkle.
Particularly notable is Urban Girl, whose favorite subject is "Spanish" and is described as independent.

I leave you to your own devices on this one.
And let's not forget the intro, notably the part about the "whispering secrets".

And we wonder why we have a problem with the intentional and unintentional release of classified information at all levels of government. I hate to bring in the idea of a North Korean front group, but all the pieces seem to fit here.
Of course, you can also buy the CD, assuming that you've had a mini-stroke or are suffering an acid flashback. If you do click on the above site, you will note that it's listed under "Rock/Pop/Alternative".

It's not really popular, and it's not rock. So that must leave Girl Authority as the next Nirvana.
The "Games and Stuff" link includes a link to a picture of a lime, with the tagline "This My Lime!".

I've tried it a few times, and have never gotten "This My Tequila!".

So, in conclusion, flee. Just flee.

2006-04-09T19:22:00.000-04:00

Today was interesting - did a few things, and rather than lots of little victories, there were lots of little annoyances. Nothing worth blogging about, just stuff like consistently missing Metro trains.

There was one highlight (aside from lunch with Cheese Boy, fresh off of seeing his Wisconsin Badgers beat Boston College to win the NCAA hockey title and thus avoiding the cataclysm that would occur if an ACC school won a hockey championship) - right before an interminable 9AM Palm Sunday Mass that had oodles upon oodles of Arlingtonian rugrats making a sound almost as loud as a Boeing 767, two boys picked up their palm fronds and started using them as swords.

It was a desultory day, but, if you were there, it was pretty funny.

2006-04-08T09:07:00.000-04:00

Today's topic is one I've wanted to blog about for a little while. The topic is ads. And lobbying.

Backstory. I'm not sure if these ads exist anywhere else. Since I'm in the Washington area, however, there are lots of commercials designed to influence staffers on various public policy topics (nothing like having your kid's Little League team sponsored by the General Dynamics E-670 communications system). Some are good, and some are bad.

A few months ago, there was a big push by something called the United States Telecom Association (USTA) for the reform of telecommunications laws. These fell into the "bad" category - the lanuage of the ads was always something like "Twenty years ago, PDA meant 'public display of affection'", featuring some couple necking in the background. The point of the ad was to get people to lobby their representatives for "updated" telecommunications laws, all because we should feel sorry that the telecom industry had to work under these outdated laws.

Whenever I saw this, I immediately became very scared, because I wasn't sure if some of the laws they wanted "updated" included the prohibition on electrocuting customers twice a day just for the heck of it. The vagueness of both the ads and the name "US Telecom Association" made me unsure if the money behind the ads was some North Korean front group.

So, about a month ago, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) came out with a separate set of ads called Cable Innovates. These ads basically indicated that the only reason the United States had won the Cold War was that the cable industry - the ones who continuously went on our house in the mid-90s to indicate that we couldn't get ESPN2 yet, but that the age of a thousand channels was just around the corner - had been innovating in some manner that involved lots of massive radar dishes. Maybe the giant radar dishes were surreptitiously beaming MTV to Siberia. Or maybe they were redirecting beams of light to prematurely age Lenin's corpse. I don't know.

Armed by this ad, the US Telecom Association struck back. This time, the ads were pretty basic - they identified who they were, and they identified the cable industry as being on the other side.

These ads really struck a chord with me, mainly since I place the cable industry, in terms of its respect for the public, as slightly better than Idi Amin and slightly below the Russian mafia (the mafia provides services at inflated rates, too, but if there's a problem with the protection, the mafia will usually make someone else suffer, whereas cable will put you on hold for an hour and then dispute that service was actually out in your area). Even though the cable industry struck back with some ads featuring something called the Phoneys, they'd pretty much lost the battle.

You know what the real frightening part is? The USTA represents companies that include Verizon, who longtime readers may remember has been sort of my own personal white whale of condo ownership (check here on the recap of the 24th).

And yet, when compared to cable, it's not even close.

Sort of the Capitalism of the Least Despicable Option.

2006-04-02T22:11:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know, I travelled overseas a little more than a week ago. One of my destinations was London, which has a direct train from its main airports to the city center. I was just paging through the guide and noticed references to these two locales...

Deliverance: This makes the Name Hall of Fame. I have this secret fantasy that Americans order from here occasionally, and make jokes about the duck having a real pretty crust.

Nothing like naming your hoity-toity delivery service about a Heart of Darkness-inspired trip through the American South.
Ascot Park Polo Club - Corporate Events: PriceWaterhouseCoopers described it as "the best corporate day that we have ever attended".

PriceWaterhouseCoopers is never, ever laying their hands on my money.

That's it. Go on about your daily business.

2006-04-02T20:35:00.000-04:00

Ok, Saturday.

Saturday began with an early-morning taxi cab ride to meet some fellow Hoya alums to pick up some stuff for a volunteer event later this month.

In a completely unrelated comment, if your address is in Bethesda, and the address has a street above 50, get exact directions.

Thanks to the cabbie, though.

After that came a Metro ride to the Smithsonian to pick up tickets for the Cherry Blossom Anime Marathon. I had already seen the first movie (My Neighbor Totoro, which is highly recommended as the stuff that Disney did in the first half of the 20th Century, but wanted tickets to the last three.

As with anything anime-related, stuff like this creeps into the conversation, whether you want it there or not. In our case, right behind me was a guy with a sweater vest, shirt and dress pants who seemed to be about forty and who engaged a kid right behind him in conversation for about thirty minutes. He asked the parents of the kid (dad was wearing a dress shirt, khakis and sneakers, was smiling despite something that indicated that he'd much rather be playing golf - he also indicated that he had been to a few anime conventions at the request of his son) if they had seen anything on "the bill of fare", then went right back to talking to the kid, making various recommendations. I was waiting for him to invite the kid back to his apartment. Very creepy. I felt compelled to make conversation with the parents to indicate that not everyone who was there was, well, different.

After that, I had a few hours to kill. While I spent a little time in the Natural History museum (now open on Fridays until 7:30, so I can spend time with actual neanderthals rather than proto-neanderthals wearing Syracuse jerseys at Rhino), most of the time was spent at the National Gallery looking at the Dada exhibit.

You remember how Lisa was worried about calling in to an NPR show to try to win tickets to a film by a Yugoslavian? That's how I felt about the Dada exhibit. It wasn't deserted, but they weren't limiting admission, either.

Anyway. Very cool exhibit, and certainly worth another visit. I can't really explain it, since it was, well a Dada exhibit. But it was thorough, and there were many interesting works.

Now. On to the movies.

Steamboy: All of the movies were introduced by a guy named Patrick Drazen, who wrote this. The problem is that Drazen is very comfortable with people who are very familiar with anime, and he didn't seem comfortable introducing anime to a broader audience. To be honest, even though he had apparently lectured elsewhere before, he didn't seem comfortable in front of people. I was hoping that there would be questions, so he could answer "A wizard did it", but it was not to be.

The overall mood wasn't helped by the D.C. Anime Club, who dressed up in costume and got up on stage to introduce who their characters were, complete with inside jokes (none of which were funny). If you're trying to open anime to a broader audience, this was not the way to go about it. I'm positive that every single parent who went with their kid went into each movie with a negative impression of the field.

Anyway. Steamboy. Beautiful in its graphics, with a well-constructed fantasy world. But the plot.

Oh, the plot. The basic plot involves defense contractors fihgting each other during an exhibition, and lots of complicated political maneuvering and alliances. It is, in a word, awful. The first third is fine and has lots of potential, the second third devolves into the insipid Lockheed versus Boeing of the 1860s-era plot, and during the last third, they basically abandon all shreds of a plot and just have things blow up. So not worth your time.

Oh, before the movie started, a guy who looked to be about thirty-five who had journeyed out of his parents' basement specifically for this struck up a conversation with a girl in a kimono. As we all filed out, he told her haltingly that she had very pretty eyes. She didn't say another word and left very quickly.

Very, very creepy.
Howl's Moving Castle: See above for the introduction. The only addition was that Drazen gave an incoherent anti-war screed that involved headlines from the day of the Academy Awards the year that Spirited Away won Best Animated Feature. Very annoying.

The movie, however, was a total hoot. Hilarious, especially since Billy Crystal did one of the voices and totally knocked it out of the park. Miyazaki films have similar problems - they always amaze at the beginning with a fantastical world, thensort of collapse under the weight of such a beautiful world, and kinda sorta limp to an end that amazingly solves every single problem but that came out of nowhere - but the problems here don't distract too much from the humor (though sitting for so long did start to make my posterior hurt). Heavily recommended.
Akira: I skipped out on the George Mason game on the logic that, since I was now rooting for them, they would receive bad luck if I saw them. I met Dave Vacca and gabbed with him before the movie started.

The intros were the same as before (with the exception of the curator warning us that the movie was rated R (there were a fair amount of kids there, which still stuns me) and Drazen doing this long digression that included some USA Today article referencing some quotes that indicated that anime was pretty much violent and degrading (it was obviously designed to get a visceral reaction - I wanted to yell out "hang the blasphemer!", but kept quiet).

Anyway. The movie. I'd seen it before. If you haven't, it's basically every single Blade Runner-esque dystopian future stereotype. Very kinetic, with lots and lots and lots of action, and worth seeing at least once. It's like 2001 in its imagery, except that what's trying to kill people isn't a rogue computer but instead just your traditional psychics who were trained as part of a military conspiracy and whose predecessors caused a massive nuclear explosion that obliterated Tokyo.

So, Dada and anime. I love living here.

2006-04-02T20:20:00.000-04:00

Now, Friday night.

Friday night was the ultimate in a crazy evening out with Flag Boy and GoFB... Kingstowne style. That meant a quick dinner at Panera Bread (featuring Kettle Chips, whose special cooking process ensures that they taste like cardboard) and a showing of Ice Age: The Meltdown. This is the perfect night out, since you don't even have to pay the babysitter.

Yes, living in Kingstowne rather than U Street, Clarendon, or Bethesda has its tradeoffs.

But we do have a Wal-Mart.

Anyway. After a remarkably annoying "commercial" featuring a brand of water that will make me, if I am dying of thirst, seriously consider having a drink of this particular (no! I'm not going to name it and give it the notoriety it so richly does not deserve), came the previews.

The Wild: Some funny moments, but let's just say that I'm glad Pixar is running Disney's animation department and leave it at that.
The Simpsons: Mental note - don't get married in July 2007.

Not that it would, like, be an issue.
Just My Luck: Aagh! My eyes! The goggles do nothing!

Interestingly enough, Ms. Lohan is also in this movie, where all the girls are apparently above-average.
Over The Hedge: Preview seen before. Some funny scenes.
See No Evil: Juuuuuuuust kidding.

After that, Consolidated Theatres (possibly the most pathetic name for a movie theater ever) did its opening thing. This was remarkably bizarre, as all of the different candy options filed into a Roman coliseum, like they were going to battle to the death or something.

Now. The movie. There were actually two movies. One of them, the much shorter one, consisted of Scrat (a small mammal) wordlessly trying to grab an acorn that always is tantalizingly out of reach. It's hilarious, focusing on failure as comedy in the same way as Wile E. Coyote and this blogger's love life.

The other part of the movie has a plot in that there's something to motivate action (in the first few minutes, Sid the sloth, who's apparently been running a water park in the interval, is visited by his friends from the first movie and warmly welcomes them - no other explanation). There are lots of funny gags - so funny that everyone (even the kids, who stayed vewwy, vewwy quiet throughout) laughed at the same time. Most reviews didn't like the movie - I found it really enjoyable. Not as good as the first, and probably not worth owning on DVD, but fun nonetheless.

2006-04-02T19:44:00.000-04:00

Yes, I'm back. Apparently, all that giving up the Xbox for Lent hasn't led to more free time. Oh, well.

So, Thursday night. The Hirshhorn decided to hold an art after-hours event. I went given that I was able to cram it into my ridiculously full social schedule, I had missed the previous one due to a massive rainstorm, I find it hard to get down to museums unless I take a full day, and hoping that some remarkably attractive female might show up (ok, if you've read my travelling travails, this was almost guaranteed not to happen, but the chances were probably better than going to a sports bar to watch Georgetown play. But it did. Sort of).

Anyway. The Hirshhorn. I don't like it. Actually, that's too harsh. I don't like it as much as the National Gallery of Art, even bringing the East Building in to stand alone (For those of you who aren't familiar with D.C. museums, the National Gallery is divided into two wings - the East Wing is for modern art, and the West Wing is for ... well, not-modern art (the West Wing's big exhibit now is Cezanne; the East Wing has a great Dada exhibit that will get blogged about if I ever make it to blogging about Saturday)). This may be personal preference; the Hirshhorn seems more focused on art imposing on you, while the East Wing just focuses on "cool" art. I know it's hard to explain, but there's a difference.

And, despite all of the above, I still like it, partially since it's free. Of course, my own personal representative in Congress (whom I've had since 2000 despite one move to escape his clutches), who is not content to make various anti-Semitic remarks, accept questionable loans, and bring in Representative Murtha to harangue his constituents, is now proposing that admission be charged.

Really, honestly - if the Republicans don't put up a good candidate to challenge him, I will. My campaign will be based on the premise that I am eminently unqualified to serve in Congress, based on my minimal knowledge of successfully navigating the legislative process and sincere lack of likeability. However, despite this absolute and total lack of qualifications, I'll do at least a good a job as Representative Moran does, and I'll even pledge to donate $100 of my salary to a non-profit organization. People in my district will thus get the same poor service, but at least some of the cost to pay me will be passed on to a worthy cause that won't actively make our lives miserable.

Not that I'm bitter at all.

Back to the Hirshhorn. The crowd was your sorta fake New York art gallery crowd - lots of hipsters in jackets and jeans, getting hammered on cocktails (I couldn't bring myself to pay $3 for a Dasani, so I just went downstairs to the bottom floor and drank out of the water fountain). Lots and lots of pickup action going on within the hipster subculture (did I mention that I came from work? and that I have to wear a suit to work? and that I blended in like a pelican in the Arctic?). I saw a friend there early on, leading to Cheese Boy to question which was more surprising: me meeting said person at a cultural event, or him meeting me at a pickup joint.

But even better were two "concerts" that were held in one of the Hirshhorn's most beautiful rooms - one that looks out onto the Washington skyline. Of course, we couldn't just walk around and revel in the skyline's beauty - we had to listen to two guys who looked exactly like Michael Stipe, each of whom had a Serious Expression that indicated he was performing Really Serious Art, play something out of their Macintoshes (natch) that was apparently some remarkably complicated piece of experimental musical art but that, to me, sounded exactly like someone blowing a blade of grass over a PA loudspeaker. For forty minutes. I walked around to see various parts of the collection, and unfortunately had to listen to it; if I had heard this at a party at Flag Boy's home, I swear that all of the men would get concerned, because we'd think that there was a gas leak. But, at the Hirshhorn, of course, people applauded.

I so wanted to yell "Play some Skynyrd!" midway through, but actually like the Smithsonian, and didn't want to be summarily banned from their museums for a year, so I didn't.

But I was honestly debating it. It was so pretentious, it needed it.

What else. I was remarkably disappointed that "General Nuke" is no longer in the general collection; the Hirshhorn, due to a program called Gyroscope, has rotated out many different pieces of art to highlight other items in their collection (Gyroscope is apparently Greek for "thing done to annoy you").

But the picture doesn't do "General Nuke" justice; it's the ultimate whiney California hippie liberal sculpture, full of anger and stereotyping about the military. It's so angry, of course, that I find it amazingly entertaining, and look for it every time I visit. But it, regretfully, was gone (a work on the bottom floor, titled "Freedom" or somesuch, that prominently featured an asthma inhaler, has also been Gyroscoped. All of the nudes that I remember from the mid-90s, however, remain there. Draw your own conclusions from this).

The actual night out involved a new exhibit by someone named Hiroshi Sugimoto (don't feel bad; I'd never heard of him, either). Most of his exhibits were photography-based, and included some pictures taken of wildlife that were quite enjoyable. He also intentionally screwed up the focus on some picture of architecture; the effect is a photo that only focuses on the key facets of the building rather than a sharp image - the effect is quite interesting. Even better was a set of pictures of drive-in theaters, with the theater just showing a white screen. Very, very cool.

Of course, the most entertaining part for me was an exhibit on some different pictures of wax figures from the sixteenth century, including Henry VIII (didn't think I'd get a Ghost reference in here, did you?). The photos were remarkably in focus, making the people look remarkably realistic. Of course, the part that I enjoyed was the writing introducing the work, where he made some comment about thinking that, if wax figures could be made to look so real, what that meant for humanity or somesuch.

I really, honestly, don't know. Maybe that those great people at Madame Tussaud's are really earning their money? Or that skin looks like wax?

Oh, almost forgot - during the night, I picked up something that explained what this was. The Hirshhorn has what's almost has a huge billboard on one side with lots of different languages, thoughtfully exempting English and French, showing the words for "Don't Be Afraid". I had seen this about a month ago, and was quite annoyed that I couldn't figure it out. Glad I saw the brochure.

The other item I spent some time with was a set of short films. One was a really cool backwards-playing item that showed paper money falling down on a person and then leaping up into a basket. Another showed different trucks driving around an arena to the strains of classical music - also very cool. The one that disturbed me, however, showed a boy continuously bracing the fall of an older woman who was fainting, all being done to dance music. It's difficult to explain why, so just be aware of it if you ever head to the Hirshhorn and see it. The only negative of the night (sort of) came when I tried to get tickets to The Water Magician, a movie which I had absolutely no interest in seeing until finding out that the female handing out tickets was really really cute. Regretfully, she was only handing out reserved ones and didn't have any extra, even when I tried my famous charm (upon further consideration, my famous charm never works, thus making it my infamous charm).

Sigh.

Oh, well. For the rest of the night, I decided to take a look at the cherry blossoms, aka The Only Two Weeks When Living In The Mid-Atlantic Region Is Tolerable. While I had gone after work last year, when crowds were manageable, I decided to hit it this time at night.

Great decision. At night, with minimal light, all the cherry blossoms look white and ghostly. A new perspective; not as nice as going during the day, but the different look of the blossoms was very worth it.

The only negative was that my walk ended at the Jefferson Memorial (no! I'm not going to link to a picture of it! go to Google if you need to!), where there were legions of Bus Kids - middle schoolers on bus trips to D.C. - and they were all acting like hoodlums. It made it difficult to stand around in quiet contemplation when kids were treating the rotunda like it was a football field. I've been there during the day, and it's loud with people talking. But here, kids were just running around with adults not even trying to control them.

And I don't think that this is me getting older. I remember bus trips to various places, including Washington and New York, and I remember various members of the class (including one or two who, if there is justice in the world, are stuck pumping gas in New Jersey), but we never ran around and yelled. Soured me for the walk back.

On the way back, I read a little bit of Attila The Hun (ignore the "not available yet" comment - I got it in the UK). Great, with lots of dry humor.

So, that was my Thursday. Pretentious Michael Stipe types, cherry blossoms, and Asiatic conquerors from the steppe.

2006-03-06T20:52:00.000-05:00

Academy Awards thoughts...

Nothing says high comedy like people castigating the conservative Hollywood establishment based on their Best Picture choice. The sublime irony in this, of course, is that had Crash lost, many commentators would be taking Hollywood to task for its refusal to let a film win that addresses subtle and overt racism.

The thing that really worries me? That the Best Picture category will turn into trhe documentary category, where automatic nominations are ensured if your movie deals with genocide, massive poverty, or the failure of either a) the world capitalist system, or just b) the system in the United States (When We Were Kings is a notable exception, though March of the Penguins gets a pass since, while it does deal with the cruel and crushing death of creatures whose love for each other knows no bounds, the inevitable result of this tragedy is penguin burgers). On the bright side, North Country tried the same thing and got called on it.

As a plus, it's worth mentioning that this movie, which dealt with a program memorializing the Allies' triumph over fascism, beat the genocide movie, the Hiroshima movie, and the apartheid movie for Best Short Subject Documentary. Even better was that the introduction from Terrence Howard indicated that these were movies that demanded attention - the idea of movies as brussels sprouts.

Despite the above, my favorite movie in 2005 was Murderball, although King Kong was fun, too. The absolute worst movie I saw was Fantastic Four, which should have resulte in Jessica Alba being able to present no Oscars for five years.
I was approximately one of the six people who liked Jon Stewart's performance, notably his "your vote counts!" joke (not to mention the Sodom one). I especially liked his routines poking fun at Hollywood, where he chose a star, made a comment, watched the star applaud with a forced grin, and then skewered the star mercilessly (see Spielberg, Steven).

This was billions of times better than the people that treat the Academy Awards as some sort of pseudo shrine, aka the Dustin Hoffman approach. The apex of the Dustin Hoffman treatment is his speech where he talks about working in a restaurant while memorizing lines and make rent payments, all the while sounding like he's going to cry like he just lost his best friend from high school. Even worse is the "Dustin Hoffman Clap", where he stands, eye moistener recently applied, and claps like he's going to save Tinkerbell all by himself.

The opposite of this, of course, is Jack Nicholson, who looked like he was going to head out five minutes after giving the Oscar to one of Matt Leinart's parties.
Ben Stiller should be buried alive near a red ant colony.

Either that, or he should be contractually required to appear in movies like Dodgeball! where it is his stated job to be annoying.
Scratch the above. This was the worst movie I saw last year. You do not wait twenty-two years, leaving the audience that saw the original movie to discuss numerous rumors of nine-movie behemoths, where C-3P0 and R2-D2 will be the only characters to be in all nine, and then come out with absolute total dreck, starring someone who has my name, acting with an abysmal script that was better directed, including the birth scene, on a Lego XBox game, with absolutely no soul whatsoever.

Bad George. Very, very, very bad George.
Why do people refer to Oscar like the statute is a living, breathing thing? Every time I hear someone say "We never know what Oscar has in store for us tonight!" , I think that either Hollywood still has a vast supply of cocaine, Chucky has gone upscale, or both.
Confidential to Cheese Boy - did you see that this was nominated?
I turned in to the Oscars every so often to see if Tom Hanks was going to wrestle John Travolta for the most frightening hairstyle award (if you want to talk the perfect example of counterprogramming, UPN-20 showed Look Who's Talking). I had the luck to turn in right as the musical number "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp", which rocked a heck of a lot more than "Let The River Run" (theme of Working Girl, which was actually nominated for Best Picture along with Dangerous Liaisons, Mississippi Burning, The Accidental Tourist, and Rain Man which won - Best Actor had Tom Hanks for Big! Why can't we go back to these simplistic times with fun movies?)

Anyway. "Pimp" rocked, which I think is the first time I've ever been able to say something positive about an Oscar music choice. Even better was its win and the awesome acceptance speech (amazingly, the Oscars have chosen two hip-hop songs as best original song, which is two more hip-hop works that have won Grammys for best album.

Sidebar. Go here and search for the Best Original Song nominees. With very few exceptions, this has been one category that the Academy has usually nailed - almost every single winner is an enjoyable song (yes, even "My Heart Will Go On", which was vaguely enjoyable the first seven hundred thousand times it was played). Impressive track record.

Anyway redux. You may have heard that Jon Stewart came back later with the comment: "For those of you scoring at home: Martin Scorsese, zero Oscars. Three 6 Mafia, one."

What you may not have seen was him doing a little dance and singing immediately afterwards. If you saw it, you know that that moment was priceless.

Well. Enough of that. Expect some more basketball commentary tomorrow. On Wednesday, prepare to thrill to my tales of drinking bikers under the table and of running with the bulls in Pamplona.

2006-03-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

More Town Hall lack of fun. This one was a desultory Hoyas loss (number eleven in a row, but who's counting?) to UConn at UConn. GUHoyas.com and Washington Post coverage here.

If I ever get a chance to finish my Big East tournament coverage from last year, you will realize my depths of dislike of UConn fans. UConn fans, for those of you who are not familiar with them, are a distinctive breed. They don't have the "everyone roots for them because they're successful" that Dallas Cowboys fans have. And they don't really have that "they're annoyingly positive that they've got a better team" mentality that Yankees fans have.

No, UConn fans are closer to the Stormtroopers in Star Wars: there's some intelligence and capacity for rational thought there, but it's fleeting and is traditionally subservient to the herd. Mostly what distinguishes them is their sheer numbers; they will overwhelm the Garden in a few days with mind-numbingly repetitive chants (to say nothing of "Let's go, UConn!" ClapClapCLAPCLAPCLAP).

So, no, I don't like UConn fans.

Anyway. The atmosphere was pretty much the same as the West Virginia game, with about ten-twenty diehards at Town Hall on a Saturday afternoon (Flag Boy was otherwise engaged in New York and watched it in a sports bar there, which was apparently worse since it included UConn fans (see above).

The game. Georgetown actually played their offense quite well, but never could get a three-point shot - a key facet of their offense - to drop, which led to massive UConn runs. The Hoyas kept on making runs to stay in the game, and got very close, but UConn led for basically the entire game.

Not fun. With a two-game losing streak, hopefully a win over South Florida would be in the cards. Especially since Duke loomed in a week.

2006-03-05T14:38:00.000-05:00

My Lenten resolution involved not playing Xbox or computer games. Given that, I have more free time. Given that, I can start updating this blog with things that happened in January. And given that I am getting ever-older, you might want to treat these two-month-old entries with a grain of salt.

Anyway. Georgetown versus West Virginia at West Virginia (this is compared to the game at the Phone Booth, which involved tasteless signage that Clyde's helped us with, thus ensuring their place in the Hoya Hall o' Fame).

GUHoyas.com and Washington Post stories of the game are attached.

I met Flag Boy at the game watch party at Town Hall, a preppy bar that gained some notoriety when Jenna Bush showed up one night. Basically, lots of people wear Polo dress shirts and khakis and drinking imported beer (men) or wearing LBDs and drinking chick drinks (women). Basically, they're the type of people who feel no compunction whatsoever about hitting on your date at a party. So it's probably good that they're in one location.

So that's the traditional clientele. The Georgetown crowd was primarily clustered in the room upstairs, which was probably best; the Hoya fanatics skewed older and had that crazed gleam in their eyes of people who spend moeny for a team that hasn't made the NCAAs for a few years and who really really hope that this is the year that things change.

Not a particularly crowded event - a few more people than chairs available. Munchies (quesadillas) were provided. I won the trivia contest (a gray III shirt), but elected to pass it on to someone else since I already had mine.

Ok, enough stalling. The game was frustrating. Georgetown took an early lead and was ahead midway through the first half. Then the roof caved in and West Virginia Pittsnogled the Hoyas. Lots of threes as what had been a lead turned in to a big deficit.

If you've never seen West Virginia play their brand of basketball, it is eerily beautiful. Shots that no sane team would throw up go in - lots of them. It's not traditional basketball, but it's effective basketball.

Georgetown got close at the end, but a few questionable fouls did them in. So Flag Boy and I walked out, annoyed, past the J. Crew models and into the January night.

2006-03-01T21:12:00.000-05:00

Oh.

Dear.

Lord.

I think that this is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

"That's why we're here. GeorgetownSingles.com is about bringing people together. Not just people who happen to be single, but people who already have something in common: their affiliation with or affinity for Georgetown University."

"Affinity for" sort of scares me. Do they like people who paint their faces blue and gray or those who think they're hot stuff since they know who Bolivia's new president is (Evo Morales)?

Oh, but it gets better. I did some internet searching, and came up with this.

I don't know which is better: USD's website being called CoyoteSingles.com or the Unversity of Washington's being called HuskySingles.com.

To say nothing of UW-Stout's StoutSingles.com.

Or Wazzu's SingleCougars.com.

Or Missouri State's BearSingles.com.

Or GMU's GMDating.com, where Isiah Thomas may or may not have offered $6 million and draft picks for someone whose profile began "So I've decided to settle...."

I think that the time may be once again right to launch an IPO with no prospect in hell of ever earning any money.

2006-03-01T19:22:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed this "virtual" tournament for men's college basketball in the D.C. area. I find it interesting, although I would probably replace 2001 Catholic with the 1996 Georgetown Hoyas, the 1982 UDC squad with the 1985 Georgetown Hoyas, and the 2006 George Washington Squad with the 2002 Escherick-coached squad that lost approximately seven hundred games in the final minute.

Mark my words when they lose in the second round.

Anyway. Venting aside. For the record, I ate a chicken burrito at Chipotle for lunch today, thus causing me to unwittingly break the Lenten no-meat rule a mere twelve hours into its 960 total hours, a new personal record (last year, it took a few more weeks). I'm going to Hell, but any of you who know me knew that anyway.

So let's get to what I did last weekend (as opposed to what I did from then until now, which was hack and sneeze a lot).

Well, I didn't do this for the first time in six years.

And I didn't go to watch this, either (which was a shame, since Cheese Boy, who attended in my stead, had a great time).

The story of what I did do involves my nephew, the perfect cheesesteak place, space suits, men's gift-wrapping abilities, and dog slobber. Lots and LOTS of dog slobber. And you can all distill them down to love.

But we'll get to that.

So I went up with some relatives for my new nephew's baptism. On the way there, we stopped by a Burger King in the Annapolis area (I noticed a Five Guys as we pulled out, sigh). The Burger King story is only being mentioned because the franchise had five clocks. I immediately assumed that it was the traditional "London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Annapolis" getup, but it wasn't. One was for servers (ten minutes early), one was for managers (ten minutes late), and one was for district managers (no one had any clue) (I forget the last one). Bizarre, and heartily hilarious.

We also stopped for gas in Elkton. While there, one of my relatives (who is continually amused by my detesting of the lottery and my continual rehashing of the time when Cheese Boy told me that, when he won the lottery, the first thing he would do would be to buy nice new cars to all the people who didn't mock him (he remembers just telling me that he would be exceptionally nice - I remember cars, and the story sounds better that way) bought me a lottery ticket. After hearing our discussion, the employee at the 7-11 remarked that when I won, I should remember who sold it.

Well, sorry, Lisa. Didn't happen.

Side note. Cheese Boy mentioned this to me last night, which, if it works, would be the greatest invention ever since penicillin, especially since it costs only $39.99 (I still remember my ex-girlfriend telling me that she was impressed that my bathroom was relatively clean (this, of course, being the second bathroom that I never use). He has ordered one and promised to test it and report back on its effectiveness, which I will duly report back on this blog for the benefit of my three daily readers and the occasional person looking for the lyrics to the Zales diamond song and/or pictures of Lindsay Czarniak.

Anyway. We get to my parent's house in Delaware, where we are immediately greeted by my already-in-town sister and her lab-basset hound mix (the face looks very lupine, while the body remains low to the ground and resembles a Sherman tank). Apparently my sister and my parents kept the dog down in the cellar in an old abandoned heat pump, because this dog went absolutely INSANE at seeing other people. The paws, the jumping up (she wasn't too big, so she only reached my midsection), and the doggie slobber. My relatives also have a dog, but that one apparently reacts very shyly to company; my sister later related that, if someone came to rob the house, the dog would probably want to go home with him.

So. Lots of time sitting around and catching up, as Wonder Dog goes from person to person getting petted and slobbering like it's the first time anyone's been nice to her. It takes her two hours to calm down, but she finally does.

Eventually, it's time to order dinner. Since my relatives are huge cheesesteak and sub fans, the obvious choice is Capriotti's (I preferred a competitor named Casapulla's, but Capriotti's drove them out of business).

Now. Take a look at their menu. Notice what's listed under "Vegetarian Sandwiches".

Only a real cheesesteak place would take turkey, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, and a hot dog, and call it "vegetarian".

Anyway. Dinner and conversation were enjoyable. I then went to bed.

The next morning I awoke to find (guess who) WONDER DOG upstairs, which is apparently a big no-no. So I escort Wonder Dog back downstairs and spend the next 3.5 hours intermittently talking with other early risers and petting Wonder Dog. It always disappoints me that the place I live in and the work I do make owning a dog difficult, and Wonder Dog was so incredibly loveable, so I'd like to apologize in advance to my sister if I wore off any of Wonder Dog's hair while petting the dog.

And every so often, Wonder Dog would doggie slobber me. I considered it nice - disgusting in its own right, but also an expression of love. Very cute dog that reminded me of the dog we had before leaving for Taiwan (well nigh sixteen years ago) - a black lab/golden retriever that had a similar love for people.

Oh, one last thing. Wonder Dog has the true basset hound trait of a hang-dog expression - when she was put in a spare room to calm her down, she eventually walked back looking like she had commited a crime. You cannot stay mad at that dog.

Anyway. On to Pottstown, where the baptism was held. We eventually arrived at the church and proceeded to the downstairs room to wait for everyone else.

If you've ever been in an older church, the downstairs room looked like every other church meeting area; you can see where the bingo caller would sit and where the 1st grade's table selling their handpainted crafts for the Christmas bazaar would be located. I think that the Vatican has architectural designs that requires them all to be the same - apparently one church in Ghana was off by a few feet and it wasn't pretty.

In come the other attendees; my brother and his wife and her family, as well as my niece and the guest of honor, who is all decked out in what looks like a silver space suit that I later find out is a silver baby tux, which, by baby standards, isn't that bad (I always feel sorry for male babies, since the women in their lives always try to dress them up in outfits that they always say are "adorable" while looking like they're about to laugh but will in fact be used to torture the boy when he is trying to be confirmed by Congress in later years).

Anyway. I get to hold my nephew. He was originally sleeping, but has woken up now. My niece last year was a major struggle, and didn't like to be held by anybody but her mom. For most of the time that he has been awake, my nephew has looked away from me (really, if you've never had kids or seen a niece or nephew for the first time, this stuff can be devastating).

But when I held him, he looked straight at me. Transfixed, almost. Not your traditional happy baby making lots of sounds - very quiet. Very weird. But I liked that he was getting to know me.

The priest arrives. He's the same priest from my niece's baptism, and most of the same things apply (I wasn't the godfather this time, though, which was good and bad - good in that I didn't have to worry about dropping a candle and burning down the church, but bad in that the ceremony we were reading along to kept on getting changed by the priest, so there were parts where we couldn't follow along). It was also interesting since, my niece and nephew excepted, the other baptisms I've attended have been assembly-line affairs with numerous other children; not quite spraying them with a water spriter and making the sign of the cross in their general dirction, but close. These two were smaller and more intimate.

Ok. Baptism over. Lots and lots and lots and and lots and lots of pictures. Like a wedding, except that here the guest of honor may or may not fall asleep during the pictures, whereas this is only a major concern in the wedding during the later pictures - and only if the bride has enjoyed some of the punch which was spiked by the best man (yes, the bride's the guest of honor, no one cares about Rental Boy).

We then drive to my sister-in-law's parents' house for the afterparty. Since it's now fifteen minutes since the Syracuse game ended, I am close to hyperventilating; the SIL's father graciously agrees to check on his BlackBerry - no luck, so my brother, who is vaguely annoyed but who realized that he got shafted in the Big Brother lottery long before today, brings out his laptop and checks.

Woo Hoo! Hoyas win! I do a little happy dance.

At this point, one of my relatives makes the comment that "wow, you really are a fan", which sounded like a positive comment but which seemed to be code for "you need some professional help and/or large tranquilizers".

Food. My SIL's grandma made both to-die-for pierogi (I pigged out) and incredible cake. The spread also includes meats, cheeses, champagne for a toast, cream puffs - on and on and on. Very cool.

Presents. One person got my niece and nephew a stackable set of pots - the gimmick was that each pot included something like a mirror or flashing lights or a song that played (batteries were included, though I'm not sure that I want to say "thankfully" - amazingly, the people that gave that gift have children: maybe it's a shared misery thing?) that took my brother, an engineer, and his wife, a college graduate, about ten minutes to remove from the box with a pair of scissors.

My present was a book (go ahead, say awww!), a mini-bear with a Georgetown T-shirt (regrettably not a III one), and a mini-Georgetown baseball cap that will keep my nephew out of the sun. They were included in a Georgetown bookshop bag. My brother complimented me on my fine packing job.

Sidebar. My niece loves books to the point where her parents hide them and only bring them out when they have a chance to read - otherwise, she will beg to be read to constantly.

Did I mention how cool she is?

Final item before the uneventful trip home. With both children asleep and their parents sitting down, my SIL's mother asked for a photo with something close to the words "you've got some time with both children asleep".

My brother immediately responded by having his head fall back on the sofa.

Second try. "Just pretend that you don't have them".

My brother: "Look at this! My wallet is full of money! And we've got lots of free time!"

It's worth noting that my brother, approximately fifteen years ago, developed a skit called "the hand", whereupon he would sneak one of his hands up his shirt past the neck, scream "Ahhh! The Hand!", and mimic it attacking him. The highest of physical comedy.

We had a debate during the afterparty, where I mocked him for choosing to have kids and thereby give up any semblance of a social life until 2024 (When you're eighteen, you're out the door!"), and razzed him about college costs as well. He responded, yes, but when his daughter looks into his eyes, he knows it's worth it.

I don't understand that fully, and don't think I ever will, but I think I sort of know what he means even still.

Thanks for inviting me, bro. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

(But you're crazy. You may see love in her eyes, but you're still crazy.)

2006-02-20T23:25:00.000-05:00

So, today I helped Flag Boy and GoFB move down to Spotsylvania (aka "West Virginia in Virginia"). The below is being recorded for its potential future use in legal depositions.

The plan was for Flag Boy to give me a call a little after 10:15 this morning to indicate when he was heading over. At 10:30, I call him - apparently, due to a massive oil spill, the movers are late and haven't arrived yet.

I take this in stride, of course. As Risotto Boy so elegantly put it once, Flag Boy will be late to his own funeral.

On the bright side, there are movers this time. Longtime readers of this blog may remember the last Flag Boy move, which occurred in the first incarnation of this blog, and which can be summed up as "if a friend asks you to move, give him $500 to hire movers and ignore any guilt trips or promises of beer and pizza". It also included the story behind the quote "What type of sick, twisted woman takes the batteries out of the remote control?", which I think about whenever I'm depressed at my lack of female companionship.
At 1:30 (don't ask), Flag Boy and GoFB arrive and we zip own down (zip being relative) to Spotsylvania.

The delay enables me to watch some Olympic coverage, including an interview with Lindsay Jacobellis, who everyone is treating like she lost her puppy since she only won silver. This seems really really weird - she finished second in the world (winning a medal), she made a boatload of money off her Visa commercial, and she's remarkably cute.

Anyway. Even more bizarre were the happy little montages showing ice dancing mishaps (and that's all they showed) to recent pop standards (I found it ironic when turning on the TV on Friday or Saturday - think it was Friday - that the montage was "In Your Eyes".

But what seemed the strangest was a quick switch to hip-hop for Shani Davis. To quote City Slickers yet again, yes, he's black AND he's a speed skater. Let's not make that big an issue of it, OK?
Back to the house. Very very impressive. Difficult to put into words. A little bit of moving assistance, but nothing of the type that causes ulcers and lacerations.
After some moving in, Flag Boy heads out of his front door (all of the previous entrances and exits had been done by the garage entrance. He then made a strange noise - I came out and saw lots of plastic cutlery stuck in the ground outside, with the notice "You have officially been FORKED! Welcome to Spotsylvania!" placed up on a sign.

I made the comment that, in Fairfax County, the equivalent to this would be a neighbor making a list of all the new home's code violations, then getting someone to serve the new homeowner with them and a warning to fix it within a week before legal action would be taken by the homeowner's association.
A little later, in comes the Kinda Sorta Girlfriend of Risotto Boy (aka KSGoRB), and one of her friends from college (and her four-year old (?) daughter) with welcoming gifts for Flag Boy and GoFB - toilet paper, microwaveable soup, grezt brownies (with either butterscotch or caramel in them), wine, and other valuables. Very cool.
More unpacking and putting things together. And a lot more sharing in Flag Boy and GoFB's exultation in a place that will be really cool if the commute doesn't kill them (you can't say Sean didn't warn them), including a cool finished basement and a large, well-lighted family room with some funky red couches.
After that came dinner. Dinner was at Sakura, which was obliquely referenced in this blog entry (see the part about catching shrimp in your mouth, and those scallops really are excellent). In addition to the abovemention people and the husband of the friend of KSGoRB (the three of whom, by the way, were the ones responsible for the "forking", which really had to be seen to be believed), we were seated next to a nice couple (he was originally from Lynchburg, she from Cherlottesville).

The conversation there segued from the Olympics (and the idea, put forth by the guy and which I IN NO WAY ENDORSE, that the curling women were popular because they obviously do housework well) to why March of the Penguins was overrated. It hit a slight lull when some air conditioning fluid dropped down on the couple (Sakura kindly comped their meal). I went a regrettable 0 for 3 on the catching food challenge (the guy was 3 for 3 and caught the last one in his hand).
After that, it was time to head back (Flag Boy and GoFB needed to get a few last things, including both of their cats - oh, obligatory digression - when the husband of the friend of KSGoRB asked what the Russian name of Flag Boy and GoFB's cat was (it means "Potato"), I responded "Hand of Death", which was really funny if you were there). We stopped at a Wal-Mart (natch) for a precision targeted strike that included toilet paper dispensers (and I got a watch to use while my band is being repaired!), and, after some unpleasantness that was readily solved with Pepto-Bismol, I made it back home.

So, Flag Boy, and GoFB, that's it. Enjoy your first night at your new estate.

2006-02-20T00:50:00.000-05:00

In other news, my crush on Lindsay Czarniak has regrettably ended. I simply can't respect anyone who refers to Turin as Torino, ends blog entries with "Ciao!", and spends valuable time gallivanting around the Winter Olympics leaving us Wally Bruckner to explain why the Hoyas have a nasty three-game losing skid.

Applications for a new crush are now being taken in the comments page.

2006-02-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

Actually, eventually means now.

I got a version of LASIK done on Thursday. I was originally planning on titling my experience "Less Yappin', More Zappin'", but ... well, you'll see.

If you don't know, I've had glasses since the third or fourth grade. For a significant period of time, they were large monstrosities. A few years ago, however, I got smaller lenses and nicer frames and was relatively happy.

Well, relatively. My vision was so exceptionally bad that, if I lost a pair of glasses, I needed to find another pair to find the other pair. Swimming was annoying - indistinct blobs unless something was right in front of me. And my vision, even after getting a new pair of glasses, still wasn't satisfactory - and even the "reduced-size" lenses were getting big.

Plus, I had known a variety of friends and coworkers who had undergone LASIK, and all were remarkably positive. So I went in to a site recommended by a coworker, did my research, and decided to take the plunge.

The first thing I did before the appointment was get the various medications that were required - I read somewhere that someone didn't do this, had the surgery, came home, went to sleep - and woke up a few hours later in massive pain that could have been alleviated by drugs they didn't have. Very. Not. Cool.

I zipped into the center the day after the surgery, paid my money, and waited. I headed into a prep room, where my eyes got checked one last time and I got a few eye drops (as well as a hair net and shoe coverings to wear in the operating area (since this is a surgery, not a "procedure"). I decide against Xanax as a relaxant, on the logic that the worry I would get from taking Xanax and its potential aftereffects would be markedly worse than not taking it.

Into the operating area, and I'm reclined down on the gurney. One of the assistants starts playing a CD (Peter Gabriel and some other stuff) - I had an option to bring some music to listen to (I'm not sure if they would have declined Nine Inch Nails), but forgot.

Now it's time for the laser. It looks exactly like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am having something that looks like a vengeful robot operate on my eye.

I'll be honest. I had two major fears about LASIK. One was that the surgery would go wrong, and my eyes would be scarred forever. The other was that, while in the chair, I would flinch, and I would instantly have a nice hole for a diamond stud in my left ear.

But the surgeon had a very nice, calming manner, walking me through things and indicating what she was going to do. Most of my time was spent listening to the technician counting time off, and being stunned that five second intervals passed by so incredibly slowly. Had I had a lump of coal in between my hands, I could have made a diamond. And, yes, I could feel the laser's heat. Disconcerting.

Well, anyway. Surgery over. I stand up, and walk back to the ready room a little unsteadily. My vision is better, but I'm disappointed - I don't have perfect vision (the literature and the consultation indicated that my best results would take a few months to materialize, but it's still disappointing). One or two techs say "Congratulations" like I just found the Lindbergh baby.

Back to the ready room. My vision isn't as good as it was with glasses, but better than without (this isn't saying much - anything without glasses was a total blur). After a little bit, an assisting doctor comes in and tells me I'm good to go. She also tells me "Congratulations", and I call her on it - she comes back with a noncommital response.

Anyway. Cab ride home (in large, Robocop-style sunglasses). My vision's pretty blurry - I can make out signs right before I pass them, but that's about it. I finally get home, and take a quick nap. I wake up and head out to make the Metro - Georgetown's playing Marquette at 9.

I head to Hoya's, which is absolutely filled with Georgetown students - standing room only (Flag Boy is teaching dance for the first half of the game, and will be headed here rather than to Town Hall - the place where I've gone to watch most of the games that I haven't blogged about yet - and, since watching GU is as much about camraderie as about beating the infidels from yet another school, I decide to meet him here.

Even though the place is SRO, I get a pretty choice seat - right in between seats taken by Hoya Blue (the Georgetown student fan group whose members are even more nuts than I am), and the Hoya dance team (whose members are pretty much all attractive and who have been drinking domestic beer for about an hour and a half). I have to stand closer than I normally would since my distance vision isn't as good as it was with glasses.

After a desultory loss (Georgetown comes back to take the lead, only to run out of gas and lose - one person in the men's room starts cursing and saying that the Hoyas are never going to make an NCAA tourney in his time here), Flag Boy and GoFB are nice enough to take me back home. I put in my eye drops and head to sleep.

I've taken off from work Friday, partially since I have a follow-up appointment. I get into the taxi that I've called for (still in Robocop sunglasses, only to find out something surprising - my eyes have welded shut. I can open them for a half-second, but that's about it.

Eh, it's just the sunlight. I'll get used to it.

I head to the follow-up appointment, and am examined by the same supporting doctor who I called on for telling me "Congratulations". She asks me how my eyes are, and I mention the welding shut, which she mentions is normal light-sensitivity - I also mention that the eyes weren't doing too well since the Hoyas lost to Marquette - she mentions that she was at the West Virginia game (I mention that I had the "You Got III'd sign, and Flag Boy had the "Brokeback Mountaineers" one - which she said she found funny), and that Georgetown took too many threes and should drive to the hoop more.

Smart woman. No wonder she's a doctor.

Anyway, my vision gets tested and I'm at 20/25 - better than expected for a day after.

Ok. My plan is now to head back via Metro to Springfield and catch the bus to Potomac Mills for some new shoes. My eyes clenching problem improved as I walked into the office building for my appointment, and it stays pretty consistent as I head to the Vienna Metro (Metro map if you need it). As I get out of the taxi into the open air, the pain begins again - I'm lucky that there's a car there, and I enter immediately. I keep my eyes shut and my head down, but the pain starts getting bad - its sort of like waking up in a room filled with blinding light (of course, there was a wait to get into Ballston - the first underground station). I finally transfer at Rosslyn, where my pain subsides and I put in some drops.

Train back to Springfield. The pain starts once we get into the light, but it's not that bad. Once at Springfield, I check the next bus to Potomac Mills - half an hour. The temperature is rapidly dropping, and I'm not sure about "the pain" returning. I bail and get a taxi home. When I get there, I play a little Xbox, then, since I'm little tired, take a nap.

When I wake up, "the pain" is back. With a vengeance. In my condo, with its blinds, I. Can't. See.

Perhaps that's a tad harsh. Remember the white light analogy above? It's like that. I can open my eyes for a half-second, but that's it. No TV (the alpine skiing, with its white vistas, is particularly harsh). No computer. No reading. Even walking around is torture, with headaches and my eyes tearing up. I make some dinner, then take an Ambien (one of the optional medications prescribed for cases like this) to sleep. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Saturday is the same thing. Lots and lots and lots of pain. I finally decide that This Is Not Normal and call the center - the surgeon/optometrist listens to my symptoms, diagnoses excessive light sensitivity, and asks me to check if any pharmacies in my area carry a specific eye medication. I check about seven (nothing like trying to read the white pages when you're half-blind) - none have it. She offers to meet me back at her clinic, where she has a supply - since she indicates it will go away by tomorrow at the latest, I decide to tough it out.

As I'm waiting that day, I finally take a sheet and drape it over the blinds in my bedroom - it keeps a little more light from coming in (I seriously debate trying to rest for a little bit in my closet, which has no windows and thus no light). I curse my skylight, which is basically making my living room a living hell. I head to the grocery store in my RoboCop sunglasses, walking carefully and purchasing a few essentials. Once home, I eat some dinner, and wait (in RoboCop sunglasses) for the next time to put in my eyedrops.

Aping Dave Barry, there is a part of my brain - "the rational part, the part that took the SAT tests" - that trusts the optometrist, and that believes that this will get fixed in a few hours. But there's another part - the part that told me that there was a rabid dog that was coming to get me when I was a kid (right after I read a book on Louis Pasteur - really) - that tells me that this is never going to get any better.

And that I'm going to go blind.

Since this is me we're talking about, I keep on interspersing that thought with the realization that some of my last images were going to be of the Hoyas losing to Marquette (and of hot, vaguely drunk, Hoya Dance Team members).

I use my drops, then take another Ambien.

I woke up this morning with no pain, and eventually walked to the Metro, enduring some direct sunlight in the RoboCop sunglasses with minimal pain, watched Georgetown lose to Villanova, then tooled around Georgetown before heading home to watch TV.

Sorry. The story ends with a whimper. I'll keep you informed on my progress.

By the way, you can see why I decided not to go with the "Zappin'" title.

2006-02-19T22:36:00.000-05:00

Deal with it, you pathetic little Arlington twerp.

More coming eventually.

2006-02-11T11:21:00.000-05:00

My logic has been not to post stories that are a month old, so that I finally can absolve myself of writing about a party of twelve people trying to divide three Philly cheesesteaks between them as I watched the Eagles lose to the Patriots in last year's Superbowl. And the commercial with the thing about the product that everybody liked.

But I'll make an exception for Hoya games (only nine more to blog about!).

So Georgetown thumped St. John's at the Garden. GUHoyas.com recap is here, while the Washington Post story is here.

First. Some backstory. My first time to the Garden was during the 2003 season, when Georgetown lost to St. John's in the final. Very very primal atmosphere - MSG was full of Johnnies fans, they were loud, and they were obnoxious. Georgetown lost a close game, but I was still impressed with the Garden.

Last year, Georgetown was doing pretty well, and a victory over St. John's would make an NCAA berth a good probability (particularly since Providence would be coming to the MCI Center for the season-ender - and the Hoyas had to win that one, right?). I saw a professor from my junior there, a friend from Georgetown College Bowl who was then at St. John's law school, and lots of Hoya fans from the MCI Center who were expecting a coronation.

Oops. Didn't happen. Georgetown played lethargically and the Johnnies won. Probably the beginning of the death spiral that got the Hoyas knocked out of NCAA contention. Not fun.

But this season, things felt different, and I wanted to see the Hoyas get a little vengeance. Flag Boy declined on spurious reasons (something to do with "work" and "sleep"), so I was solo this time. Since I didn't want to blow $160 on a hotel room and don't know any friends in NYC, I decided to make this trip a surgical strike - take the train in, spend some quality time with alumni at a happy hour, watch a Hoya win, and then get home.

So mid-Sunday morning (I got up late since I did this the day before, I decided to check the Ticketmaster site. I found tickets for $40, plus a $10 surcharge. Eh, what are you going to do. I put in my credit card information.

Of course, Ticketmaster didn't take my card.

Even worse, not only did Amtrak not take my card, but I found that the return train ran at around 9:30 (the game was scheduled to start at 7), and the next - and last - left at 11:30. If Georgetown was in a close game, or, heaven forbid, overtime, I would be hitting my pillow at 4 in the morning. And imagine a trip home dead-tired and dejected from a loss.

The risks from not having the tickets, however, seemed manageable - if I didn't get a ticket at Union Station, I could sightsee around D.C. And St. John's was so awful, there was no way that I couldn't get a ticket at the Garden.

Right?

For once, Metro worked fine and I got to Union Station and bought my ticket with lots of time to spare (I did forget to get the location or name of the happy hour location, so I was going to have some free time). Since my only previous nourishment for the day was some broccoli and cheese eaten while I was swearing at Ticketmaster, I decided to head down to Great Wraps in the food court. While standing in line, I noticed a woman in front of me holding some cookies - in response to my inquiries, she said that "They're for the Epiphany - would you like one?".

This story gets weirder. A LOT weirder.

As we were waiting for the train to board, the conductor made the traditional comment about parents with young children or the elderly being allowed to board early. Someone next to me who belonged in the second group made an offhanded comment about it to me; I paused for a second, and deadpanned "Our time will come", with a little bit of a grin.

Despite the crush, I plunked down in a sparse car and found Arrive. Once again, they weren't mentioning anything about Wilmington; perhaps they've wised up. I did, however, find an ad for this, a workout machine that costs upwards of $10,000, promises a workout in less than four minutes, and has a web page that looks like it was designed by Miss Sparkman's fifth grade class.

I also spent some time reading The Coffee Trader, which GoFB had nicely gotten me for New Year's. You may remember my screed on books a little while ago (interestingly enough, I decided against Lost since I was so close to finishing), but this was a good choice. Not complicated (really! I'm almost finished it! I swear!), and good travel reading.

Around New Carrollton, things got a little more full, and I helped out a cute female in a Carson Palmer jersey (for some reason, probably including the fact that there aren't a lot of examples, any female that I've seen with a Bengals jersey has scored at least a 6 on the classic 1-10 Hotness Scale) putting her bag above the seat. I remarked that I had a friend who was a big Bengals fan, and was hoping that they'd beat the Steelers - comments with which she enthusiastically agreed. Around Baltimore, I helped another woman, leading to an older woman behind me to loudly remark that I was the nicest man she had ever seen.

See? I told you it got weirder.

Most people bailed at Philly, so things weren't particularly crowded afterwards. Unfortunately, we stopped in the middle of New Jersey for about twenty-thirty minutes (apparently, there was some track construction). While we were waiting, I sneaked a peak at the laptop of the guy in front of me - he was watching Simpsons episodes (this one and this one) - which kept my mind off a potential two-hour delay that would leave me with little choice but to head right back home. VERY. NOT. COOL.

Fortunately, the delay finally stopped and we arrived at Penn Station. I headed over to the ticket booth and found that the best ticket they had was much better than the "best available" ticket that Ticketmaster had (lousy little weasels), and had no surcharge. With that, I headed to New Town Pizza II for the pizza with ziti on it. As I headed back to the Garden, I noticed on a TV screen in a bar that I passed that Kitna was playing for the Bengals. Either Palmer was injured, or he had been playing really poorly. Since the Bengals were leading, I had to assume the first. Not fun.

I got to my seat very early and sat down. Great seats - three rows from the court at and close to center court. Watched warmups (including St. John's managers try trick shots - none fell), and saw Rich Chvoktin as I headed back from the restroom - I acknowledged him, but was too surprised to say anything (he said "hi").

As the teams came out, it became clear - while there were a lot of fans here last year, this was just a Hoya home game at the Garden. My section had lots of former lacrosse players (probably now bond traders). Behind one of the baskets was a huge turnout of former Hoyas. St. John's was dominated in the arena.

Next to me was a Johnnie fan - he was from Long Island, and pointed out that two rows ahead of me were Spike Lee's seats, which went for an obscene amount of money a game. He was remarkably nice for both a Long Islander and a St. John's fan, especially since I was pretty into it (I didn't bring the death mask, but I did wear the "We Are Georgetown" shirt). He and I pointed out various developments in the Duke-Wake game that night as well as in the Bengals-Steelers game (the Bengals finally lost the lead and the game, making the pretty Bengal fan unhappy - sigh).

More on the fans. Johnnies cheerleaders threw out lots of St. John's T-shirts, many of which got picked up by the Hoya fans and thrown back on the court. To their credit, the cheerleaders smiled and shrugged it off.

The game. Georgetown took an early lead, but couldn't blow it open. St. John's kept on making runs, but finally didn't have the oomph. I headed out with two or three minutes left and the Hoyas comfortably up by about ten.

I then ran down to exit the Garden and find the Amtrak booth - my new tickets were for a later departure that cost less, so I wanted to change them. People were quite nice in letting me get ahead of them; I also brushed past one nice lady who headed over to use the automatic checkin.

I indicated my problem and the need for speed, and the Amtrak guy indulged me, working pretty quickly to get me my ticket. I found out that I had a few minutes to wait. As I collected myself, I struck up a conversation with the nice lady who had passed me to check in - she was a naturalized American (originally from Ontario) who lived in Bucks County and a big Flyers fan who had seen a friend for the weekend and had dinner (she was planning on making coworkers jealous with her curry). As boarding sounded, we decided to stick together and find a place on a very crowded train.

We finally found one of the facing seats - we were facing a mom and her daughter (two other daughters were on the other facing seats). I and the Flyers fan continued conversation (she worked at a for-profit mental health facility training people - while she didn't do any hands-on therapy anymore, she did enjoy being able to help a larger number of people) and didn't read (The Coffee Trader was mocked since the blurb on the back cover referred to a mysterious attractive woman - she was reading The Nanny Diaries). Eventually we involved the mom and her daughter in the conversation - they lived in Allen Iverson's development in Philly (I asked her to say "hi" for me) and decided to go into New York City to have lunch and see a play. The daughter used to play softball at GW before leaving and spending some time at a community college - she wanted to transfer to an Orthodox Jewish school in California, and eventually come back to D.C. (possibly to lobby). The daughter also did a great job of making the rest of us feel old by her being dismissive of VCRs.

You thought that the Epiphany cookies were weird, didn't you?

Eventually, Philly came and I got feeling in my legs back. Since I wanted nothing to do with reading anything complicated, I thumbed through Arrive and tried (unsuccessfully) to nap. After arriving at Union Station, I got a cab home, checked washingtonpost.com to make sure that the Hoyas won, and then slept.

2006-02-11T10:54:00.000-05:00

A few more Super Bowl wrapups. I'm doing these first since they are by far the most critical and since there is a very real chance that I will lose electricity sometime soon during the MASSIVE KILLER STORM that is the first that the region is expecting, complete with reports from salt trucks depots and Home Depots and the weather announcer making a little frowny face. Of course, the MASSIVE KILLER STORM, if you want to get technical about it, has yet to actually happen. I'm curious - if it just continues with icy drizzle outside and the MASSIVE KILLER STORM never materializes, will it still be the first major storm in our region?

Anyway. I made an error by representing the Alabama-Auburn commercial as being the best that ESPNU has to offer - Cheese Boy made the very correct observation that the best is the one that shows two twenty-somethings cuddling on the couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, then pans to show that one is wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt, while the other is wearing a Michigan sweatshirt - the tagline is something like "Without Sports, we wouldn't find this so disturbing". Absolute total gold.

Four more ads that I probably should have mentioned.

Oh, no! It's snow, and it's inside the condo! The MASSIVE KILLER STORM HAS ARRIVE! RUN! SAVE YOURSELVES!

Oh, wait - that was a piece of dandruff. I probably need to get a shower. Please ignore that above digression.

Anyway. The Shaggy Dog. The general consensus here was that this movie was absolutely and totally unnecessary. Chris Berman announcing like it was a football game didn't help.

Lots of people didn't get the United Airlines one. It was ok, but United's done many better ones - I like the one with the guy who goes to the interview with two different-colored socks.

The Hummer ad - no one knew what this was for. Very very disturbing.

The Budweiser "Wave" - underrated. It was CGI, but it was still a cool one.

By the way, the link I used for the post today came from here. You have to respect a site that includes links to GoDaddy.com's spots with the words "Steamy Car Wash", "Window Washer", "Can't Refuse", "Kissing Booth", and, the kicker, "Approved Super Bowl ad".

2006-02-07T20:13:00.000-05:00

A few things about the Super Bowl I forgot (thanks to the Simmons diary for jogging my memory).

The Dr. Seuss thing. This was perhaps some of the most frightening minutes on television. Harrison Ford in beard looked to be in full Fugitive mode - you half-expected him to take Horton by his neck and yell "I didn't kill my wife! it was the Cat in the Hat!" midway through.
Other average commercials - the Burger King one didn't draw many laughs, and the FedEx one was too drawn out (but the payoff was funny).

As for the ESPN Mobile one -just imagine if Nike had done the ad. ESPN doesn't have those chops yet and tried to make it way too cool - their ads are always better when they're amateurish (see the ESPNU ad with the Alabama and Auburn fans in the nursing home).
I saw what the "Code Black" was on Grey's Anatomy - the show seems like a more realistic version of E.R. - not that that's saying a lot.

I have no idea why people keep on selling this show as the Golden Age of television.
On ABC ads - the first one for Desperate Housewives with Shaq was great - the rest overemphasized the point. Once would have been better.
And Sons and Daughters looked awful.

Oooh, an unscripted sitcom about a family that's just as crazy as mine is! Wheeeeeeeee. Did you stay up until 3 in the morning thinking about that one?

2006-02-06T19:38:00.000-05:00

So I hosted a Super Bowl party for some friends yesterday. Welcome to my recap of the event, entitled

So, Does Anyone Want Thirty Cajun Appetizer Shrimp?

No, seriously.

Saturday was prep day, and involved making a lot of different types of food. I started with the previously-mentioned Cajun shrimp, which were given by Archie Manning's wife in an official NFL recipe book that includes Manu Tuiasosopo's recipe for a Kalua Pig Roast (and, no, that's not a misspelling and there's no alcohol involved - which is good since instruction number 8 reads "The next step is very dangerous. Extreme caution should be taken for everyone's safety. When all the river rocks have heated to a reddish glow, as quickly as possible remove all the remaining wood. Set aside an area beside the umu (but away from the staging area) to place the charred wood and stumps").

I have mixed feelings about this book. I did get it for around $4 since it was on clearance, and it provides lots of entertainment value, but I've been burned on two of the recipes - a coffee torte didn't wow me, and a caramel cake recipe was an absolute, unmitigated disaster. However, since retreating in the face of sudden, inevitable defeat never fazes me (see "Cheney, Lisa Marie, Failed Campaign Of"), I decided to go for the gusto and try it (I didn't even know that there were such things as celery seed and creole mustard). More peanut butter temptations, but my attempt at fudge never turned quasi-liquid (I'm guessing it's because I kept the temperature low), and my spanikopeta failed when I forgot to defrost the phyllo dough (nothing like spelling spinach and onion mixing with cheese, taking out the phyllo ready to work like a maniac, and have the phyllo dough put a dent in the kitchen counterpart when you let it drop). So I made some baked ziti, refrigerated it, and collapsed.

Sunday morning, I woke up early and did my best to make chili con carne con queso in my brand-spanking new slow cooker. A former coworker, on her first attempt, made prize-winning chili. My first-ever attempt would eventually turn out as OK - not prize-winning, but edible.

Then I watched the Hoyas come back to beat Pitt (one of their assistants was in Glengarry Glen Ross - I wonder if he told the players postgame that "coffee is for closers!" ) - more entry coming later if I can ever get enough time to blog about the previous games. Upon returning, it was time to prep the shells (with both alfredo and tomato sauce - I catered to the Pittsburgh tradition of food that, when prepared properly, can kill you).

Then came Risotto Boy (originally named Cuisine Boy, but renamed after he didn't even watch the Duke game, having no idea who won upon being called by Flag Boy - I assume it had something to do with him preparing risotto). Risotto Boy brought salmon, cocktail wienies with barbeque sauce, and a few more items. Eventually, Flag Boy, GoFB, and others showed up for a total crowd of around nine.

Ok. The game. Highlights and lowlights...

There are few better things than prepping for a Super Bowl with live Motown playing in the background.

I can't believe that the Super Bowl wasn't going to include Detroit music. And that doesn't even include Madonna or Eminem or Kid Rock or ....
I didn't know until a minute or two in that Aaron Neville was singing the national anthem. Very incomprehensible - Aaron Neville is a near-unanimous first-ballot induction into the I'm So Whipped Hall of Fame since he always sounds like he's going to cry. Aretha was Aretha - no complaints - and the choir was nice, but they could have gotten someone better. How about Harry Connick on piano, Wynton Marsalis on sax, and some Motown legends each singing a line or two?
My personal favorite moment was Brady getting booed.
The game. Eh. Not as bad as the Ravens' win, which was three and PUNT, three and PUNT, and commercials so bad that I wanted to jump out of Dinan's apartment and aim for the brick sidewalk, but not great. This reminded me of an early start Week Five matchup (OR REGIONAL COVERAGE - Check Local Listings). No real great plays (save the one long touchdown run) - this would have been a better game if you could have flipped to the Dolphins-Bengals game with an eye on the Giants-Bears score. But, as the finale, meh.

There have been about thirty articles on the game and the absolutely awful reffing, so I won't add to them. I will say that I rooted for the Steelers (despite chanting "Let's Go Seahawks!" with Flag Boy at the Pitt game), and that a lot of the calls seemed to be "home team" ones.

But you've heard all of this.
Yes, I rooted for the Steelers. I did it because people like Dwight and Victoria (just call me Shady Hunter) are from the area, and the Steelers have a classy organization and hard-core fans who are more insane than I am. PLUS the Seahawks' uniform makes them look like a USFL team

Flag Boy, an ardent Bengals fan, rooted for the Seahawks since the Steelers had crushed the Pumpkin Pies - along with Carson Palmer's leg - in the playoffs. Side note - when a team is winning the Super Bowl, and they beat a friend's team in the playoffs, feel free to tell the friend that, had their quarterback not been Palmered, that his long-suffering franchise might be winning a poorly-reffed game.
I have sick friends. Which helps, since I'm a sick person.

Which also helps when the game's a snoozer.
Commercials. An OK lot. I liked the Ameriquest ones (I don't think I've ever laughed harder than I did when I saw the look on daughter and mother's face - see above comment about me being sick). The female members of our party (yes! there were some!) oohed at the baby horse trying to pull the wagon thingy - I felt creeped out that parents would push a kid into backbreaking work that involved wearing what amounts to a noose around your neck. I also was disappointed that someone sold Kermit out. Everyone did like the Bud Light ads - I preferred the office havoc one, though the magic fridge was cool, too.

No one liked the Outback ads or the Gillette ads. Diet Pepsi's ads were just weird (Jay Mohr didn't help). Special contempt was reserved for the Cadillac runway ad.

The Macgyver ad was cool. But is it just me, or has Mastercard run its course? I think it may be time for a new ad campaign besides "Priceless.".

In the aftermath, I got left with a lot of food (we didn't make much of a dent in an impressive spread - I'll be knocking down cocktail wienies for most of this week - it's probably better to plan when you have lots of foodies). But a good time was had by all.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the Taco Bell ad office.

2006-01-30T21:21:00.000-05:00

Ok. One more to go tonight. I still have St. John's, West Virginia, UConn, Underworld: Evolution, the Caps game, the Notre Dame game, Red Hot and Blue, the Cincinnati game, and The Matador to blog so I can catch up, and DePaul's coming tomorrow, so it's either post or get posted.

You know, for someone with no life, I do an awful lot of stuff.

Ok. On the 6th, I headed over to Georgetown for PostSecret, a kinda sorta art exhibition that was supposed to be relatively sparsely crowded.

Ha ha ha.

Anyway. "Kinda sorta". If you don't know what PostSecret is, people take postcards, send them in, and this guy posts them on his blog (see! blogs are valuable! Just not this one). It caught enough fire that it eventually resulted in a book and an exhibition in Georgetown. The idea sounded interesting enough, and I was particularly intrigued by the idea of the social possibilities of people looking at various secrets - apparently some people have broken down crying due to the emotional power. Even better, I could go see if the Georgetown ticket office had tickets for the St. John's game.

Anyway. Got there on a nice day for January (well a nice day for most Januaries - the weather here has been gorgeous) and found (surprise!) another line (a Washington Post entertainment chat indicated that the line wouldn't be that bad - ha!). I, has been discussed, am the line maestro, but the group in front of me was quiet and the group behind me was sort of inane, so it was just a lot of waiting.

The quick lesson of PostSecret is that there are a lots of people who have very significant emotional problems, most of which are sexual in nature. I don't know if it's self-selection - someone who is, for example, a kleptomaniac may not feel the same compunction to get release by sending in a postcard that someone who likes to wear ladies' lingerie does - but the differential is strange.

The other notable thing was the carnival freak show atmosphere of it. Assuming that people are telling the truth in their mailings, then you have this line of people gawking at other people's pain - of abuse, and depression, and fear. There's a part of you that feels disgusted after doing it.

With that said, I had two "favorite" "secrets". One was a screed to an ex-lover that was enjoyable since it included a warning not to choose the name of a treasured pet for an email password. The other, however, said that their significant other knew them when the SO volunteered to dance, even though the SO didn't know how and didn't like it. A few more lines painted a more complete picture with some more details describing the dancing. I'm not doing it justice.

Assuming that the secret is true, the obvious question is why the SO hasn't been told. My theory is that the writer felt that he or she could never explain it "right", so it had to be written down. Nothing about feeling guilty or a soul-sucking work environment or feeling that you're a failure - just a nice one saying something that a loved one won't know.

This sort of explains the issue I've got with the truth. One of the confessions was that someone had sent in was that he or she had sent in some fake secrets. The above confession impacted me since it seemed so sweet and innocent - I'd be pretty ticked if it hadn't actually happened.

Anyway. Due to the line, I left after the Georgetown ticket office had closed. Even more importantly, the Redsksins were now playing. Since Washington had won every time I'd gone to a sports bar this year (opening day when they beat the Bears, a midseason thwomping of the 49ers while I watched the Eagles struggle against the Chargers at Chammps, Flag Boy watched the Bengals lose to the Steelers, and Cuisine Boy watched the Browns lose to the Lions - easily one of the worst times I've ever had in a sports bar - and the Unpleasantness on the 1st), I decided to avoid even watching them to enhance their chances of losing.

Yes, I'm weird.

By the way, I asked Cheese Boy midway through whether it was OK, from a fan's persepctive, to root for the Eagles even though a Redskins loss might mean a Cowboy playoff appearance. His logic, which I respect, is that that game hadn't happened yet, so I was fully within my rights hoping that both Washington would lose. I felt better after this.

After this came dinner. I decided to head to Rosslyn and experience Pho 75 for the first time. I'd heard great things, but this would be my first attempt.

Wow. Absolutely great food. As the day grew colder, it was nice having beef and broth and noodles and MSG to keep me warm. Well worth the money.

I then walked a little further down towards the Courthouse Metro station, and became very, very frightened. What was usually a vaguely bustling place - the occasional jogger, drunken louts heading out of Gua-Rapo - was deserted. Apparently, the Redskins had taken over. I told myself that, if the Redskins made it to the NFC championship, I would debate streaking on Wilson Boulevard during the game, on the assumption that no one would see me.

After I headed home, I joined up with Flag Boy, Cuisine Boy, et al for some pool at Bungalow Billiards which, basically, never happened (I was even worse than I usually am). The only interesting thing for the night was watching the New England/Jacksonville game - by the end of the first quarter, you knew the Jaguars didn't have a chance in hell. Talk about outmatched.

More coming later this week.

2006-01-30T20:21:00.000-05:00

Ok. Back to Hoyas games. This one is Providence.

Providence was the same day as Murtha/Moran town hall, which I was originally plnning to attend. Flag Boy finally talked me out of it, on the logic that attending would make me mad and nothing productive would occur and I'd just get another peptic ulcer lecturing a pompous blowhard who, regardless of his party affiliation, has comnmited so many gaffes that he is absolutely worthless as a representative.

Not that I'm bitter. But if there's no Republican candidate to challenge him next time, I'm throwing my hat into the ring.

So. The game. Here are the stories from ESPN.com, GUHoyas.com, The Washington Times, and The Washington Post.

Good Points

Georgetown didn't lose
Georgetown played much better in the second half

Bad Points

Almost everything else

Talk about a game that no one wanted to play. Providence had to play a game against a better team and then go back to Rhode Island. School had just resumed, so there were very few students there. While it was the opening of the Big East season, it was against the Friars, a school whose best player last year graduated and who has, at last count, sixteen alumni (honestly, name five people who went to Providence. Failing that, name one person you know from your college dorm who had a friend visit from Providence. The more I think about it, the more I think that Providence is really that SNL college that didn't exist - the one where the parents paid tuition and the school kept 10% and gave the rest to the students). Just a total bore of a game.

So, after an indifferent start by Georgetown (Providence didn't even need "active hands" - the type of defense that's always ready to capitalize on missed passes) and some questionable officiating (yes, I'm biased), Georgetown finally turned it on in the second half. They finally had the game in hand at the end, but yuck. Everyone came out with a "Thank God that's over with" attitude.

It's going to get better. I promise.

2006-01-30T19:23:00.000-05:00

More recaps coming.

But first, a little roo roo.

No, I'm kidding.

I don't know if you get Cox in your area, so you may not follow the below. If you don't know who they are, Cox is a cable company that's recently branched out into voice and data services. Apparently, Cox got in a lot of trouble in Fairfax a few years ago for being even worse than your typical cable company in terms of outages and people showing up when they said they would.

So Cox debuted a new slogan - "Your friend in the Digital Age" - and unveiled lots of commercials featuring people talking about how Cox basically made their lives easier. Not particularly interesting - your typical "We're an evil, heartless corporation, but here are real people who like us".

Cox changed their strategy in the past few months, introducing a character named "Digital Max": a jut-jawed technowizard who lives life on the edge and who consistently exhorts men to live life "on the edge" (the overweight guy who gets one hot dog with everything, only to have Digital Max say "Amateur" and order three, the soccer dad who hears "You can't be a player in a minivan", and the guy who has dial-up getting steered towards a Speak and Spell in an electronics store.

It's amazing: this character is so incredibly annoying and goes so incredibly against Cox's slogan that it's actually making me less likely to choose them - getting some bonehead to bully their products. It may be a product of the type of the competition (Verizon is promoting broadband, which is slower but markedly cheaper), but it leaves a hugely awful taste in my mouth.
A few weeks ago, I picked up Lost, since I had heard good things about Wicked and it got great reviews. I just finished it, and my review can be summed up in one word.

Ick.

Ick ick ick ick ick. Do not buy this book as a gift. Do not buy it, period. Do not read it if it is given to you. Do not donate it to a worthy cause. Use it for kindling so that no one else can suffer through a book that makes you want to take a shower.

Ick.

I'll get into this more later, but some people consider clothes the worst gift you can receive. I disagree and say that it's books - while you can wear an ugly sweater once to appease the relative before "losing" it, or suffer the indignity of that "special" Valentine's Day gift only with the two of you, reading actually takes up your time and concentration. And, if that time is spent reading tripe - particularly reading tripe on the assumption that it's going to get better - you feel a combination of betrayal and annoyance. This gets even worse for popular books; I decided against getting Life of Pi or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - both books that I absolutely devoured - for office events since the recipient might not like it. CDs can be played as background music; DVDs take up two hours at the most. Books are serious - I'd say that one of the best possible presents you can get someone as a Valentine's Day present is a book that your relationship with him or her has led you to know that they'll love it, but that decision is fraught with peril.

And none of that, "I know, he likes to read, so I'll get him The Kite Runner or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for his birthday because lots of people read it". Anybody can do that. This is the tough stuff - the "wow, s/he got me a perfect book". You can spend time listening to a CD and thinking of your significant other, but reading requires concentration - effort that is proportional to the reward. Is the giftee a guy who would love Hemingway? A gal who would love Hemingway? Someone who might like Truman or Wicked or a Shakespeare play or The Stand or War and Peace? Woe unto the man who carelessly buys The Nanny Diaries or the lass who assumes her lad will love Nick Hornby (or, even worse, who gets her man Milton when she knows he'll hate him). Looking at her eyes and seeing a purple scarf is one thing; looking in her soul and seeing The Devil Wears Prada is a much more dangerous game.

Of course, the fact that I'm saying this may have a lot to do with the fact that I don't have to worry about it. But, really, I feel strongly about this.
Today I ate lunch at Potbelly, only the second time I'd eaten there.

The first time, they had someone in there doing acoustic music. The setup was disturbing since there was a stepladder he had to climb and sit down on - the effect of seeing him up there, unable to leave easily, made me think of those various go-go clubs where you have people dancing in cages. Very disturbing.

But this wasn't the worst part. The worst part was this guy - who reminded me of the folk rat playing the guitar at Delta House - was playing "Another Saturday Night".

Sidebar. I like this song. I like the calliope at the beginning. I like the peppiness associated with the depression. No surprise, I also like this song, but the Cat Stevens version takes the loneliness and celebrates it - to the point where, at the end, everyone's cheering and there's a party going on. Nichols' song has some of it, but it lacks the over-the-top party atmosphere.

So it's not the song. It's the way he did it - sad and soulless, just like a Coldplay hit. It tears the heart out of it, and makes it depressing rather than subtly ironic. I viscerally hated this impression and was debating asking for money back after being annoyed so.

However, the manager there was very nice when I received a different order for a sandwich, quickly mollifying me with an unasked-for cookie without me complaining, so I decided not to complain on the music. Very nice. So I tried again today. This time, Flower Boy wasn't playing, but they did have on music.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember me discussing the simple joys of shopping for canned vegetables while listening to "Satisfaction". I've got a second add: eating a sandwich for lunch while listening to "You Might Think".

The people sitting next to me looked at me like I was strange as I not-so-subtly sang bits while grooving along as I ate.

But it was worth it.

2006-01-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

Today's lesson on why statistics can lie:

"Most Public School Funding: Washington, D.C. The nation's capital spent $13,187 per student in the 2001-02 school year -- that's nearly triple the expenditure per pupil in list-low Mississippi."

They say this like it's a good thing. Amazing.

Anyway. Let's go back to recounting most of January. My apologies, but I've spent most of my free time on such noble pursuits as Star Wars products that actually have plots and lots and lots of Hoya games. More on the latter later.

But back to where we were on January 1st. After watching a few more hours of watching various people ogling Mariah Carey and hearing more of the Bangles, it was time to sleep. About six hours later, I got up.

Important stuff. Last Eagles game of the season.

For this, I decided to go to Rhino. I had made a few early-season pilgrimages here - the Eagles had always won and the atmosphere was always enjoyable, since everyone else was just as crazy as I was.

For the last game, though, the atmosphere was just a little different. The atmosphere was about 50/50 Eagles fans (I guess everyone else was in Philly at the Mummers parade) and, regretfully, Washington NFL Franchise fans.

Let's stop for a minute. My aunt and uncle lived in the Washington area when I was growing up, and so I sort of adopted them as my second-favorite team growing up (I actually got excited enough to wear a Redskins sweatshirt and some face paint during their last Super Bowl when I was going to class here (due to the time difference, our parents allowed us to wait for a little bit in the morning to watch the kickoff)). I rationalized it by still rooting for the Eagles whenever they played the Redskins, and (more importantly) Washington fans despised Dallas just as much as Eagles fans did.

Other people use their blogs to confess their own personal feelings on relationships and hot-button issues. I use this to confess my confused leanings towards certain sports teams.

Anyway. When I got to college at Georgetown, the Redskins were mired in mediocrity. This didn't turn me off. What DID turn me off was what I referred to as the "Two and Three" column. Every year, the Redskins would start off unimpressively - Dallas would usually blow them out, they'd beat the Cardinals by a touchdown or two. In other words, they weren't awful, but they weren't challenging for Best Team Ever status.

Then the Redskins would beat someone average - the Chiefs, for example, or the Dolphins - by a touchdown and either Kornheiser or Wilbon or both would write a column about how a) the Redskins had turned the corner and b) that playoff qualification was a mere formality and they were going to win the Super Bowl in a rout. After about six or seven of these columns, I began actively rooting for Washington to tank early in the season to see if Tony Kornheiser would actually write something saying that the 2-7 Redskins were going to give the Lombardi-era Packers a run for their money after they beat the Bengals in overtime.

The best of the Two and Three columns actually came before the start of the 2000 season - the one after the Redskins lost to Tampa Bay in the second round of the playoffs. The new owner opened up his wallet, signing numerous high-priced free agents (including Deion Sanders). Numerous columns and news features indicated that the entire NFL season was unnecessary, and that, when all was said and done, the Redskins would win it all.

For those who didn't keep track, this plan didn't work as advertised - the Redskins didn't make the playoffs. The Eagles finished second to the Giants in the NFC East, eventually losing to them in the playoffs.

So. Back to Rhino and lots of obnoxious Redskins fans, harassing the waitress, yelling at Eagles fans who cheered, and generally acting drunk. In a total role reversal, the Eagles fans there were nice and well-behaved. Had the Eagles won, I told Cheese Boy (who accompanied me as backup), there would have been a riot.

I really, really didn't like this. There are certain rules of guydom, and one of them is that you just don't go to a sports bar known to host fans of one specific team if you're rooting for the other team (during the soon-to-be-blogged about Georgetown-Notre Dame game, a fan wearing a Notre Dame cap walked in during the last four minutes of regulation. VERY NOT COOL). This is not a challenge to masculinity - it's a recognition that certain people have their own certain peculiarities, and that they should all be allowed to congregate together, ignoring the outside world. Going to a game is one thing - it's a road trip, filled with its own attendant fun and chaos. But, really, there are hundreds of bars in the area showing the game - coming to home turf in enemy territory is not cool.

So the Eagles obviously lost and my streak ended - my only hope is that, based on the Eagles losing, they will get a markedly better draft pick than had they not - making the streak continue based on the "greater good" theory.

Most of you think I'm kidding.

Some of you know better.

2006-01-22T15:44:00.000-05:00

With the 30th out of the way, it was time for New Year's. I got hosting duties for a nice party of the people from the 30th plus Cuisine Boy and his then-girlfriend ((HTG for short).

Backstory. Every time I've celebrated New Year's, I've always had a lot more fun when I didn't go to a club or hotel, but instead just spent time with friends or family. Much less stress and more fun.

Anyway. Food. It was potluck, so I prepared Peanut Butter Temptations and puerco pibil (yes! My best dishes either come from the special features of an action DVD, the back of a San Giorgio box, or from a recipes book illustrated with Roy Lichtenstein-esque art!).

Cuisine Boy and HTG showed up first, leading to some enjoyment as Cuisine Boy tried From Russia With Love (he did about as well as I did my first time, perhaps even better considering that I didn't have lots of people saying "Shoot that! he's coming from over there!" when I was playing).

After everyone had arrived and we had eaten, it was time for party games. Fortunately for all concerned, we didn't play Attack! ("If you still want a ride home, you won't move your troops into Buryat", "I'd like to finish a turn of this game before 2006 starts", "Defend that! she's coming from over there!"). We did decide to play Cranium.

If you've never played Cranium, it's kind of like Trivial Pursuit in that there are different questions you have to answer. It differs in that only some of the questions are trivia - for some, you have to unscramble words or spell things backwards or play charades or pictionary.

For last year's New Year's Eve, I and my then-girlfriend spent a few of the early hours of 2005 absolutely torching people on Trivial Pursuit. That didn't happen here. While the team of Flag Boy and I did quite well on the trivia, and pretty well on the word scrambles and spelling, we got torched on the pictionary and charades stuff. I accept that, sometime during college, my left brain ordered a mob hit on my right brain. When I see someone jumping up and down, I see someone jumping up and down rather than someone looking like a volcano exploding. It was disheartening, but then I realized that I have no creative aspirations whatsoever and got over it.

Then there was the Elmer Fudd impersonation. But since you weren't there, it doesn't make much sense for me to try to describe it.

After Cranium (won by the dancing fiend couple), we moved on to Taboo. After a few rounds, it was time to turn on ABC.

Anyone who prefers anything else other than Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve is a Communist.

Anyway. Dick Clark. The general consensus was that, while it was great to see him there, it was kind of depressing, too - someone who was held up for years as someone who would never grow old seemed to finally be showing his age. I enjoyed it and was glad he did it, but it was just jarring.

After the ball dropped came more Taboo, with the occasional pause for good acts (Sugarland! Though since the one who wrote all the songs just left, methinks that this will probably be their high-water mark. Sad). Some people saw "Don't Cha" and why it works so much better as a music video than a radio single for the first time. The other major artist we saw was the Bangles, which led to some interesting discussions about why they made the lead singer out of leather (Don't worry - Rolling Stones, I'm coming for you next).

After a few more rounds of Taboo, everyone said their goodbyes and headed home. 2006 began on a fun note.

2006-01-22T15:05:00.000-05:00

Ok, let's see how many of these posts we can knock off.

Let's go back to December 30th - went out with Flag Boy, GoFB, and some of their dancing fiend friends. We started at Georgetown Billiards, where things began to go south pretty quickly - eons to sink one shot in Cutthroat, and just an all-around non-fun time.

On the bright(?) side, I did get my first glimpse of HD TV with the Peach Bowl between Miami and LSU. I'm not necessarily sure I would consider the picture quality better - my first impression seeing everything was that it looked like a Madden game. Very very very weird - almost so real as to feel more fake.

After the friends showed up, we decamped to bowl (For those on the D.C. Alcohol and Control Board who may be reading this, one of the members of the group was underage and the manager didn't budge (which surprised us, since we remembered them allowing people of any age in)). The place of choosing turned out to be the bowl location where the pins laugh at you (see entry #3 of this blog, version 2.0).

More bad luck - midway through, I just gave up, throwing the ball and not even caring what happened. Even worse, what was usually a great place for a variety of different types of music had switched to a club sound - lots of hip hop played very very loud. Not the best way to end 2005.

2006-01-22T00:49:00.000-05:00

Remember my last entry, when I indicated that I had just had the best experience of my twenties when Dave Barry signed my book "to my idol"? In less than a week, we have a new champ.

Georgetown took out Duke at the MCI Center, 87-84.

In other words, Duke got nuked.

First part. Take a look at a variety of different writeups.

Anyway. Flag Boy and GoFB started the day by picking me up. We then headed over to Rite Aid to get some markers - GoFB had, at my request, made a posterboard sign with one word - "Exorcism" - that I wanted to bring to the game (I have no artistic skill whatsover and therefore outsourced it). When we got to MCI Center, Flag Boy parked the car while I headed with GoFB to get her a place in line (student season ticket holders don't get reserved seats, and get places based on when they appear - apparently, some had even camped out the night before). On the way, I find a heads-up penny, pick it up, and tell GoFB that it's an omen. I go in with GoFB, forgetting that I'm supposed to meet Flag Boy at Will Call.

So we head around to the part of Will Call after GoFB goes and puts her jacket down on a seat. She then starts using the markers to color in the sign while I look for Flag Boy. Eventually, I find him and we all decamp.

While walking to our seats, Flag Boy and I find a Geico booth. I pick up a wristband, while Flag Boy tries his hand at a mini-basketball shooting game - after some early misses, he finishes with a respectable score.

We notice some Duke fans - there are a fair amount of them, but they're not overwhelming like the last time.

Ah, yes. Last time. The final score of 85-66 wasn't a fair reflection. The Hoyas got stomped. Duke led by around 30 at the half and basically delivered a mercy killing in the second half. With an arena that was more than half Duke fans, it was probably the nadir of Georgetown basketball in the last twenty-five years. Georgetown would go on to win only two more games the entire season. And after a planned march partially organized by Flag Boy, an irrational Escherick finally resigned.

I haven't finished last year's blog, but let's just say that the basic theme was Georgetown coming into their own - it was a joy to watch since initial expectations were so low. Even after they ran out of gas at the end of the season, the wins were still great and you could tell that progress was being made.

Now, I realize that I haven't been good about updating Hoya games since January. In two of them (Providence and South Florida), Georgetown screwed around for a long time before finally putting away teams that were beneath them - they continuously made questionable shots and lackadaisical passes, and nearly lost both times. In two other games (at West Virginia and at Connecticut), they played tough against two top fifteen opponents on the road before being unable to be in a position to win. Only in a win against St. John's at Madison Square Garden (yes, I was there, and yes, it was a blast) did Georgetown play well. My book on them so far is that they play to the level of their competition - I expected them to play well against Duke, losing in overtime. I think that it's possible for them to win, but they almost certainly won't.

Ah, yes. Duke. I don't like Duke. I believe that they're given numerous calls and that ESPN has an unhealthy affection for them. Every single year, I root against them. In 1999, I even rooted for UConn to beat them in the national final.

As last season's blog will make clear, I really don't like UConn.

Anyway. People start filing in, and I get a lot of positive feedback on the sign. Eventually, two students show up in the seats in front of us. The traditional occupants of the seat - a husband and wife, traditionally don't act like insane lunatics and are usually remarkably quiet (the husband last time pulled out his BlackBerry during the game and gave me a few dirty looks after a few risque cheers).

But the students are markedly different - they're related to the couple (the two of them are cousins) , and are pretty loquacious and interesting to talk to (they find my sign and my death mask hilarious beyond all means). I find out that they're both freshmen and that they've both been drinking since 10.

Ah, Georgetown. Nothing ever changes.

With that said, they see this guy in a skybox. He is without a gray Georgetown shirt. So one of the girls goes outside, buys him a shirt, and gives it to him, which he puts on.

Anyway. More people fill in. The student section at this point is entirely full fifty minutes before the start of the game - and the student section hasn't been full all year. Eventually, the place is full of more than 20,000. And it's loud. Really loud. The Georgetown Hoya, one of the student papers, included a "BEAT DUKE" insert, and most of the students have them.

Now comes the anthem.

Backstory. Georgetown marks Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at one game a year by presenting an award to someone who has made a significant contribution to civil rights. Last year's presentation was this game, which was one of the top five highlights of last year.

Now, this is important because, every year, the national anthem and some halftime entertainment come from the Georgetown Gospel Choir.

Backstory. Georgetown's traditional national anthhem default has been one elderly gentleman accompanied by the Georgetown Pep Band. His last few outings left me underwhelmed. A second major singer has been one guy who's done it with a soul tinge - he's been quite impressive.

The Gospel Choir blew them away.

Midway through, a few members of an up-till-then quiet student section started singing. After a few moments, more joined in. Then more. And more. Pretty much, almost everyone is singing. Great moment.

The only problem is that the student section sings faster than the Gospel Choir, so there's this strange disconnect of hearing students sing at one pace and the Gospel Choir - which eventually couldn't be heard due to the number of students singing - at another. The students finish, and people cheer, and then the Gospel Choir finishes, and people cheer louder.

The game starts (thanks to this page for helping to recreate my memory). MCI gets really loud - louder than I've ever heard it before.

Georgetown scores the first two baskets, and the place gets louder and louder. For almost four minutes, Duke can't score - then they hit a three. Until the eight-minute mark, the game is a seesaw and neither team can take real control. Georgetown has a 16-8 lead, but Duke eventually leads 22-20.

Then the Hoyas take control, and take a 14 point lead into the second half at 42-28. More loudness. More chaos. I'm impressed and think that they can do it, but Duke is still Duke. Twenty more minutes.

Unrelated factoid/tidbit being included to be closer to completeness. Sometime during the game, there was a Geico-sponsored race featuring three students on tricycles - pedal to one end of the court, take a basketball, and make a shot at the original end. The first two people to pedal both miss their shots - the last guy is more careful and makes it.

At the half, Rosa Parks is honored as the recipient of the Georgetown civil rights award before the Gospl Choir launches into "We Shall Overcome" (regrettably, they weren't close enough to the mikes, which limited their range).

The stats are insane. Georgetown is shooting sixty percent (I've seen every game but three this year - this stat is stunning) and is outrebounding Duke 16-10. Redick has 17, but I don't care - let him have fifty if Georgetown wins. Georgetown is finally running the Princeton offense to perfection - lots of backdoor cuts and smart three-pointers (no more Kama Sutra shots!).

Second half. I divide it into three parts - keep Duke from establishing the rightful pecking order in the first five, trade baskets in the middle ten, and then close Duke out in the last five minutes. The first five minutes aren't a problem - Duke gains a point. Duke starts to claw back in the next ten. With 4:47 to go, the Hoyas lead by nine, 72-63.

By this point, Shelden Williams (probably the second-best Duke player after Redick) is entirely ineffective with four points and four fouls. Redick remains a beast, but he's missing enough to keep the Hoyas up. Most of the rest of Duke isn't a factor.

For Georgetown, people are getting in foul trouble like mad - Duke was in the bonus with about eleven minutes left, and Jonathan Wallace plays the last five minutes with four fouls (Jeff Green will quickly join him). Scoring is remarkably spread out (cf Duke), as all four starters plus DJ Owens will end up with double figures (Hibbert was subbed out pretty quickly as John Thompson III preferred a quicker lineup).

Oh, a word on the two girls in front of us. Both have a tendency to stand during much of the game. I feel bad for the people behind us, so I don't stand up unless it's a great play or if a fair amount of other people are. I ask the guy behind me if it's OK if I stand - he's quite cool with it.

So. Where were we. 4:47, Brandon Bowman got an "and one". He misses the free throw and Redick makes the three at the other end.

Hoyas, 72-66.

Then Redick steals the ball - however, he misses. But Duke gets the rebound and puts it in.

Hoyas, 72-68.

Georgetown scores (Bowman on a nice dunk). Then Duke scores. Then Duke scores again

Hoyas, 74-72.

Oh, forgot to mention. At the five minute mark, everyone is standing. No sitting down, even during timeouts.

I start to feel acceptance crashing down. They might lose. It may have been a fun ride, but maybe Duke is too good.

Then Georgetown scores.

Hoyas, 76-72.

After a few possessions, Redick takes a three to try to put Duke down by one. He misses. DJ gets a dunk off the rebound.

Hoyas, 78-72. 2:11 left.

Green steals it and Duke fouls, out of options now.

Green misses the first, but makes the second.

Hoyas, 79-72. 1:45 left. Three possession game.

Dumb foul on Brandon, who now has three. Redick makes both.

Hoyas, 79-74. 1:35 left. Two possession game.

Duke fouls quickly again. Jeff can't put them away, but he makes one.

Hoyas, 80-74. 1:29 left. Still a two possession game.

Redick misses again. Bowman gets the rebound and later gets a dunk.

Hoyas, 82-74. 1:15 left. Three possession game.

Two quick scores by Duke.

Hoyas, 82-78. 47 seconds left. Two possesion game.

Ashanti gets two shots with a chance to ice it. He misses the first, but makes the second.

Hoyas, 83-78. 44 seconds left. Two possession game.

Two big misses by Duke, including a three by Redick. Bowman gets the ball and is fouled. He makes both.

Hoyas, 85-78. 28 seconds left. Three possesion game.

A quick Duke score, then a steal and a score. Damn.

Hoyas, 85-82. 18 seconds left. One possession game.

More chances for Brandon to ice it as he gets fouled. He misses one, but makes the second.

Hoyas, 86-82. 16 seconds left. Two possession game.

Make that a one-possession game, since Duke just scored. Seven seconds left. Wallace goes to the line to ice it. He makes the first, but makes the second.

Hoyas, 87-84. Six seconds left. Duke ball.

Duke goes to Redick at the end, who misses. Duke's time runs out.

Hoyas win, 87-84.

Pandemonium. Hugging, high fiving, yelling. Students rush the court. I and Flag Boy stay where we are, yelling and screaming and high-fiving everyone in our section. I hold up my sign, and start yelling "Down goes Duke!" over and over.

Eventually, someone (Flag Boy?) suggests that I write down the score of the game. I get Flag Boy to do the honors. Then he signs it. Then most of the people in our section sign it - including the two girls below me, the guy next to me, and a professor and her husband below Flag Boy. Then I go over to Tenet and ask him to sign it, which he graciously does (with around three minutes, he saw the sign and loved it). He agrees to do so, commenting that he hopes it won't end up on eBay.

Never in a million years.

We meet up with GoFB and go outside, chanting and singing all the way. I start holding up the sign, leading to more and more cheers from Hoyas (and eventually find a Jesuit priest who lived on my floor when I was a student there who also signs it).

We try to head to Clyde's, which is the location of the official afterparty.

Fat chance. It's a mob scene. I do get two other alumni to sign the poster.

So we decide to walk to the car to head back to Georgetown. As we are doing this, Flag Boy talks with his brother, who tells him that the main page of ESPN.com says Duke Nuked.

More people. More cheering. More chanting. More fight song and "Jesus Christ, Superstar" singing. More joy. High-fiving half the people I meet as we walk past, all of whom love the sign and most of whom saw it (there are one or two nasty Duke fans, but most of them are classy, if depressed).

Drive back to Georgetown. More cheering and honking of horns. When we get to Georgetown, there are more people just cheering. Our first option is The Tombs, which is completely and totally mobbed. We pass and head to Wisemiller's next door for fast food (when we head back up, some people ask us if the Tombs is crowded; I respond yes, to which they respond "Good").

While waiting for food, there's some gabbing with other students about the game. After we get our food and pay, we head to GoFB's residence to eat. While walking there, we notice that some of the "BEAT DUKE" signs have been posted up with a "WE" on them.

Eventually, we head to the Caps game to meet Cuisine Boy.

But that's a blog entry for another time.

You may think that this story is pretty amazing, and you may doubt some parts of it. Fine. Just take a look at the photo.

It's me.

And just in case you still doubt me, I have the sign to prove it.

HOYA!
SAXA!

2006-01-18T22:27:00.000-05:00

I'm posting today out of order because I'd like not to get even further behind. Topics that I still have to blog about include why my left brain murdered my right brain in cold blood, Georgetown playing the worst half I've seen all year, the Night That Shall Not Be Mentioned, standing in line to see something I could have seen at a Borders, running naked down Wilson Boulevard, pizza with ziti on it, Georgetown raising up my hopes before letting me down again, Georgetown raising up my hopes before letting me down again again, insane rituals related to freeing Lindsay Czarniak from making a Happy Face when referring to Clinton Portis' latest costume and instead make a Frowny Face when referring to utter lack of offensive production, and the South Florida Secret Naming Police Who Won't Like This Blog Entry. I'll also try to throw in why Potbelly is doing a homage to go-go dancing while simultaneously sullying the good name of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam.

But tonight was devoted to hearing Dave Barry (yes, I saw him with the thong on his head, and if that doesn't get you to click on the link, I don't know what will) discuss his new book at Olsson's. Incidentally, I have to direct your attention to the entry below Dave's - this guy's book arguing that the Baby Boomers were in fact the Greater Generation.

Really, I'm halfway through Dave's book, and, while it's a great read, it's nowhere near as funny as the premise of this book. Although I understand that Steinhorn is serious.

Anyway. Beforehand came dinner with Cheese Boy at the Santa Fe Cafe in Rosslyn - New Mexican cuisine in the sense that it has a signed photo of Gov. Richardson next to the restrooms rather than quesadillas topped with caviar and soy sauce. The meal was enjoyable, with the only surprise being that the music they played was almost exclusively romantic ("It's All Coming Back to Me Now", "In Your Eyes"), which is strange since Santa Fe Cafe isn't a romantic restaurant (it's more of a Long-term Date Restaurant, which usually occurs when your significant other is at your place in Rosslyn, where your only non-expired food items are Cheez-Its, a Hickory Farms Beef Stick, and domestic beer endorsed by that Bud Light Daredevil guy).

Yes, I'm sorry, I just went to a Dave Barry book signing and am doing a third-rate imitation. If you don't like it, go to another blog.

Even worse, one of the songs that they played had that "tip of the tongue" feel to it - it sounded really neat and interesting, but I couldn't remember for the life of me who did it or what the title was. I hate it when that happens. Last night, before the Georgetown near-debacle, at a pre-game dinner at Five Guys, the same thing happened. This drives me nuts. Life needs a pause button where you can instantly find out who did what song. I didn't even remember lyrics or a beat - all I have is this elusive memory of the mood the song evoked. This is perfect if you're trying to write the next Oprah's book club selection about how music touched your soul yadda yadda yadda, but it is a worthless and annoying memory to me.

Anyway. Back to the book. This is a great book since a) it's written by Dave Barry, b) is dedicated "to all the people of the world, on the theory that they will respond by thinking: 'Wow! A book dedicated to me. I should buy a copy'" and c) contains a chapter entitled "Teaching Your Children About Money: Let The Little Bastards Starve".

I'll be honest: when I saw c) in a review, I laughed for a long time.

If you didn't know, I'm evil.

Anyway. The actual event was packed: all the seats were taken, and people were scrunched together pretty tightly (on the bright side, this relatively cute girl was next to me). Dave (I gave him $26.95 plus tax indirectly for a book, so for the next twenty-four hours, I get to call him Dave) gave a relatively quick introduction with a nicely-polished standup routine that included a brief read-through of a section on Trap Questions (Wrong Answers to specific questions included "Heroin" and "The arson investigation was getting too close").

I was there the last time he was here in 2004, as well as for the Weingarten introduction to Jef Mallett, and it's always interesting to watch humorists speak, mainly because you have a few people who are thinking to themselves: "Wow, is what he just said funny? Maybe I better laugh." I think when he introduced himself, a few people chuckled. Very very bizarre behavior.

Anyway. Time for questions. One person mentioned that she was from North Dakota, leeading to Dave bringing up this story again (he also viciously skewered her, commenting that, despite her "North Dakota pride", she was still in Virginia). Another question dealt with the now-on-DVD Guide to Guys, and its section with Dan Marino using a Telestrator to indicate which urinals men can use (read the IMDB page, notably the comment that says "The pleasure was enhanced by the constant sound of laughter, snickers, giggles, and yes, some outright guffaws, from the opening scenes to the final credits. This is a good sign when watching a comedy, and the film did not disappoint", which is almost as prescient as the Examiner headline that said "Study: Build housing around jobs, transit").

Anyway. Another question came from the cute girl next to me, who had early been talking about something written by Al Franken, and who dropped about four points in the handy-dandy 10 Point Scale as soon as she asked Dave what his favorite "Bushism" was (after a response, he did mention that Bush did win and slammed Kerry :-)).

And you thought that the "cute girl" remark was a throwaway.

After that, I had some time to kill (though not in a Grisham sense) and wandered around with Cheese Boy (who noticed a Washingtonian article where the owner of Olsson's remarked on Evil Corporations like Borders and B&N thumping people like the small independent bookseller who had no idea what their inventory was, as well as the bestseller list, which had this as the top-selling non-fiction book). I walked around and noticed this, which was too gruesome and evil even for my tastes, as well as this, which I'm positive some unsuspecting parent got for their kid on Christmas, thus ensuring some therapist many years of uninterrupted income.

Anyway, it was finally time to get in line (everyone who wanted a book signed got a number - mine was 92 - and they called people about twenty at a time). I and Cheese Boy got in line behind a teacher grading papers - turns out she was an Arlington high school teacher teaching a history/English class for freshmen on philosophy, which led to an interesting discussion of learning and how to deal with insufferable Arlingtonian snots who are positive that their children are tortured, misunderstood geniuses, when in fact they're hanging around Ballston Common Mall wearing jeans that reach halfway between their knees and their stomach (boys) or that reveal significant amounts of midriff (girls). And they play their damn music too loud.

Anyway. I love doing this. When it comes to being trapped in a slow-moving line, I am the absolute best at starting conversations. If the Catholic Church doesn't get rid of Purgatory, make sure to see me if you get sent there - it'll make those millenia feel like a decade, two tops.

I will say that, on the walk back, Cheese Boy mentioned that giving Northern Virginia high school freshmen Kant is a bad idea - this only leads to guys like me going to colleges like Georgetown, talking about the reading list with other people, and having them say "yeah, I read that freshman year in high school - I can't believe I have to read it again". They're insufferable snots. I know who these people are - I used to be them.

Sidebar. When I transferred in to Georgetown, I scared the bejeezus out of people by taking notes when everyone introduced themselves on the first night. I also put up a quote on our whiteboard that said "They're not classmates; they're fellow competitors for law school".

I was as popular then as I am now.

Anyway. Back to the blog.

After the thong incident (see above), it was a minute or two before I was up. I was hoping that Dave would sign on the "Let the Little Bastards Starve" chapter page, but he quickly switched it to the traditional page before I had a chance to object, signing it "For Hayden, my idol", which looks like it will be the highlight of my twenties (barely edging out the Eagles making the Super Bowl - God, I'm so pathetic). During his previous visit to Olsson's, I thanked him for the increase in celebrations of my birthday - this time, I just did the "I was here last time, always glad to see you out here" mayor-of-a-small-town thing before Cheese Boy snapped a picture.

After that, it was time to head home. I did duck into the Shopper's for some groceries, and, finally, music was on my side - as I stood in line to pay, the over-air music played "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours". Much like shopping for canned vegetables to the strains of Big 100 playing "Satisfaction", "Signed"'s langorous pace was just what I needed after a long day.

Much more to come. Unless I accidentally get hit by a bus tomorrow morning, in which case you'll reflect that my last communication with you involved me whining about not being able to remember a song.

It's not a hilarious world, but it's a funny one.

2006-01-10T19:39:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been a whole year since I've blogged.

And if you think that the jokes are going to get better, well, you don't read this site very often. Which is fair since I haven't posted recently.

But, to be honest, lots has happened that I haven't blogged. Stuff like standing in line for an hour at the post office so bored that I found out that it's legal to send scorpions through the mail and listening to more country music songs about alcohol (this one, surprisingly, does not involve double suicides).

Anyway. Old basketball games that I didn't see. Georgetown beat Colgate by 16 (see the GUHoyas.com recap, ESPN recap, Washington Post and USA Today recaps) in the first game of the Sun Bowl Classic, then beat UTEP by 12 (See the GUHoyas.com recap, ESPN recap, Washington Post and USA Today recaps).

I saw neither. I read the capsules the next morning. I know nothink.

Oh, on the Sun Bowl note, I saw some of it after getting home from work. The best part was probably the halftime, which featured (I think) Diamond Rio (really, I checked to confirm and came up empty, though I did find out that "ploitical campaigning" is forbidden at the Sun Bowl and that there's something called "Helen of Troy Charm Camp").

Longtime (ha!) readers of this blog may remember my invective that had been hurled at numerous bands which are members of the I'm So Whipped Hall of Fame (charter members are Lionel Richie and Lonestar). Diamond Rio squeaked in to this hallowed group based on "One More Day", a song which has been known to cause cancer in lab mice.

Anyway, they played the halftime show. It stunned me, but they seemd even lamer than usual. Lots of pretty women in cowboy hats dancing to a slow version of "Meet Me In The Middle" is something I never want to see again.

Ok, time to move on to the drunken debauchery that was New Year's.

2005-12-28T19:47:00.000-05:00

It takes a lot to annoy me politically, but Rep. Moran has done it again. On January 5th, he's going to hold a forum on Iraq, featuring Rep. Murtha. Methinks this isn't going to be a town hall meeting and more of a polemic.

And it's one that I've never understood. Al Qaeda currently considers Iraq a major battleground in their war on the United States. Withdrawing would allow for them or the Iranians (remember? the country whose leader said the Holocaust never happened and who keeps on saying that no one controls their nukes but them?) the best chance to take control.

What's interesting is that the situation would seem to parallel that in Afghanistan in 2001 - a case where there's near-total agreement that knocking out the Taliban did major damage to al Qaeda's organizational structure. Iraq under Saddam Hussein might not have been a terrorist threat (they just tortured a lot of people and gassed Kurds), but, if the U.S. were to leave and the government were to fall, I'd wager that the new government would. And al Qaeda would have a new home.

The reasons for going into Iraq don't factor in here. What matters is the situation right now. And leaving seems like it would put us right back at square one. And square one increases the chances of Washington getting hit by another terrorist attack and me dying, and I don't want that to happen.

Despite what looks like a setup, I still plan on going - I hope that this isn't going to be an anti-war love-in and that both sides will be represented. I'll let you know.

Oh, I found out about this by a mailing prepared, published and mailed at my expense. In addition to a page that blames the federal deficit on Bush tax cuts that sort of skips over the looming elephant that is Social Security (though there's a nice page on the Medicare prescription drug plan), there's also a survey! That, if I want my voice to be counted, I can fill out and return by affixing a stamp! Apparently, franking privileges don't extend to finding out what constituents think.

Not that I'd want to. Let's check the questions.

What course of action should the United States pursue in Iraq? (choose one)
- Bring our troops home now
- Bring most of our troops home now and redeploy the remainder to a nearby nation, from which they could respond to any buildup of foreign terrorist forces
- Leave our troops in Iraq for now, but withdraw them over time based on the ability of the Iraqi military to wage the war effectively against the insurgency
- Leave our troops in Iraq until the insurgency is defeated and a stable democracy and economy are established
I love option #2. What country are we going to pick and drop a few thousand troops in? Elbonia?

And I love the "respond to any buildup of foreign terrorist forces" - they're the military, not a combination of G.I. Joe and the A Team. "General, we've just received word that foreign terrorist forces are building up in Yemen! Recommend we deploy Gold Team to respond to them!"
What approach should the United States take to balance the federal budget (choose one or more)
- Increase revenue by eliminating the income tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003
- Limit tax cuts for incomes in excess of $1 million per year (which accounts for a majority of lost federal revenue)
- Decrease spending on national defense and homeland security
- Decrease spending on entitlement programs (for Medicaid, food stamps, childcare programs, and student loans)
- All of the above
- None of the above
On the bright side, we get the partisanship issue out of the way early. Things would have been slightly more obvious if there had been a big Stickee next to option #2 saying "PICK THIS!". Even better is the option #4, which reminds the elderly, students, and people with kids that they get money and better not complain. Once again, nothing about raising the age limit on Social Security.
Which of the following national issues are, for you, the most serious and in need of immediate action (Choose three)
- Federal deficits and the size of the federal debt
- The energy situation: high gas prices and heavy dependence on foreign oil
- The Iraq war
- The nation's readiness to respond to natural and man-made emergencies
- The lack of access to health care by millions of Americans
- The inadequacies of our public education system
- The future viability of the Social Security system
Social Security finally gets mentioned, although it's in the context of "we're still going to get our money, right?".

The fun part is that all of these issues can't be fixed in the short term and, when Congress tries to do something quickly, they usually get it wrong.
Which of the following regional issues are, for you, the most important and in need of immediate attention? (Choose up to two)
- Traffic Congestion
- Insufficient public transit
- High cost of housing
- Decreasing supply of affordable housing
- Poor air quality
- Readiness of federal, state, and local governments to respond to natural and man-made emergencies
Had I actually decided to spend a stamp, I would have made option #2 Inefficient public transit - when your Metro board doesn't ride Metrorail on a regular basis or even know when they last used the bus system, you have a problem. And I still can't get the difference between options #3 and #4 - in either case, you're complaining that 80% of your money is going to rent or your mortgage. Get in line. What's Congress going to do, get federal agents to storm Toll Brothers with pistols drawn and force them to build houses twice as fast?

So I'm depressed a lot.

2005-12-24T23:04:00.000-05:00

Four entries to make tonight, done so that you see them in (relatively) chronological order. In other words, this happened earlier.

A few days after I had gone to Olsson's for the Frazz/Gene thing, I was back - I forgot that I needed to get a gift. I picked up Songbook, after hearing that Hornby was a great writer, and since the subject matter was remarkably similar to Fargo Rock City, which was one of the best books I read this year.

Upon reading it, though, I was remarkably disappointed. Fargo Rock City spends 80% of its time on "popular" heavy metal music - Klosterman doesn't spend lots of time justifying his theory that a group from Chicago that released one album that sold thirty copies before vanishing into obscurity is by far the best example of heavy metal by far - he spends a lot of time on GnR and Poison.

One of Hornby's earlier essays is on "I'm Like A Bird", but most of his essays are on "pop" music that's not really popular - either songs that have specific relevance to him (Klosterman does a few of these, too) or ones that he says never sold well (comments like this make me pretty sure that this is not a case of disposable Britpop versus disposable Ameripop) but, in his view, are still great. Klosterman's book is like talking in a college common room at 2AM - Hornby's is like going to a friend's dinner party and getting drawn into a conversation with a hipster who harangues you about his favorite band - the guy's annoying, but there's no diplomatic way to tell him to shove it. He also makes some references to his fame and his stunning stature as a music critic that seem like crowing.

I read this, but I felt glad to be rid of it. I wanted Klosterman's book to go on for a few more hundred pages.

2005-12-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

Second post. Georgetown thumped Savannah State - along with Stetson, two of the worst teams in the country in something called the Hispanic Fund College Basketball Classic, which has no website (and probably for a good reason). Here's the GUHoyas.com recap, USA Today story, and ESPN box score. Comments...

Flag Boy and I ate at Fuddrucker's before the game, where GoFB eventually joined us. It was my first time going there, and while the fries were enjoyable, I was cheesed off about paying $10.84 for fries, a shake, and a hamburger (the last two of which weren't anything to write home about) - especially when Five Guys was just a block or two further down.
The attendance wasn't that bad, relatively speaking. At the Norfolk State game (getting blogged about soon, I promise!), things were so slow that a Young Alum season ticket holder who was a fellow Great American yelled things at one of the Spartan players when he was shooting foul shots - the only sound in the arena. This time, it seemed like a few hundred tickets had been given out. One person mentioned that, at one school, kids who were good got a ticket to the game.

I don't know if bad kids got two tickets.
Broadnax got a good cheer and a nice Post writeup on game day. This is the sort of game where you almost feel bad about the loyal opposition.
Savannah State inexplicably won the tip, then even more inexplicably called a timeout ten seconds later - GU didn't even have two players around the ballhandler. Just bizarre.
The Tigers stayed with Georgetown for the first ten minutes - JTIII then sat most of the starters (save Hibbert - see below), and GU finally picked up momentum. Whenever Ashanti Cook left the game, a third were clapping for his replacement, a third were clapping for his effort, and a third were clapping out of thanks that he left the court - Ashanti's man kept on burning him. Not fun.
The entire game was depressing. After the first dicey minutes, Georgetown played Name the Score, but they did it with a plodding style - not many threes and very few dunks. Georgetown seemed to be going through the motions - probably not surprising due to exams and the crowd. The Tigers had one very good player (I tried to get a chant of "Sign Him Up!" going), but they were going to get overhwhelmed.
The Georgetown band can miss one more game before I propose that the Hoyas just steal Eastern High's band. Energy, passion, superior playing ability - and they even did "Deeee-Fense!" chants! More vocal spirit than the actual band.
Halftime included the same game as the Stetson one - kids trying to dunk a basketball - but this time they had a prize and didn't usually give kids multiple chances (there was one kid that didn't get the principle at the Stetson game - lots of students began cheering his name in sort of the joy of the moment). The winner, in one of those annoying sisterhood things, was the only girl.
At halftime, FB and I snuck over to the student section (only one behind-the-basket section was used due to minimal numbers of students) to meet GoFB (and get right next to the Eastern band - regrettably, they couldn't hear my requests for "Jesus Christ, Superstar" (for those new to Georgetown fandom, this is the song the Georgetown band plays traditionally after a win, which says a lot about when the Hoyas were last really good ).
Second half. Sead and Izzo - the traditional indicators that Georgetown is thumping the opposition - made late appearances, but SSU made the occasional annoying run.
Midway through the second half my Nazgul mask made its first appearance - on the bright side, it caused an annoying Villanova fan sitting in the student section to do a double-take.
Oh - almost forgot. Right in front of us was an older woman with a shirt that said "JACK - Jack's Advocate, Custodian, and Keeper.

Yes - we were sitting next to the person responsible for Jack! I decided not to ask her for her autograph, but I did get a few chances to rub Jack's head.
There was one guy next to us - your typical Hoya - that tried to win the Chevy Chase challenge - unfortunately, neither my nor FB's karma helped him despite his violent gyrations.

Then came the Fan of the Game. The same guy was one of the three options, and we did our best to help him win. But the winner was an impossibly adorable girl who, along with her brother, attends all the home games and brings cute and cheery multicolored signs with sayings like "This is Hoya Country!". Totally retro, and fun. I think that one of them wins Fan of the Game once a season. Hard not to root for them.
Quote of the Game comes from one of the Villanova fans - when Sead got into the game, the guy urged Sead to get physical in the low post - he then said, in a thick Russian accent, "If he dies, he dies".

You had to have been there, but just great fun.

Thus ends the cupcakes. Up next is Providence and hopeful vengeance for last year's debacle.

2005-12-24T23:02:00.000-05:00

So I went to bed on Friday morning around 1 and woke up at 4:15 (I felt this later on when I finally got home, went to sleep at 6, woke up around 9:30 to do some grovery shopping, and then slept for about four more hours after I came home), with the goal of getting tickets to see Tai Shan.

Sidebar. If you're not a Washingtonian, you may not know that the two giant pandas in the National Zoo had a baby in July. This news has basically captivated everyone here (The Washington Post has apparently has a disturbingly high never of cover photos on the baby panda), for a simple reason - the baby panda is really, really cute. The baby was quickly dubbed "Butterstick" by fans since an article indicated he was as big as a stick of butter. This is a major development at the National Zoo, which has usually been better known for accidentally killing animals than bringing them in the world. Anyway, the baby was named "Tai Shan", or "Peaceful Mountain", by the zoo in conjunction with Chinese officials (who apparently weren't going to let it get named "Free Tibet" or "Democracy Now!"). "Butterstick", lamentably, wasn't a name option.

Further sidebar. A few weeks ago, the zoo gave out free tickets to see the panda. Of course, their website was inaccessible for ten minutes after the scheduled time, and, when you finally got to the page, it didn't tell you which times were taken. So I missed my chance to get free timed tickets (they added additional viewing times in January - all of those are now taken, too) - of course, tickets have shown up on Ebay.

But. There's always a "but". Every day, the zoo gives out 60 free tickets, first-come, first-served. Since I took today off and since Metro doesn't open until much later on the weekends, this was my one shot to get tickets. I, and I hate to say this as a guy - found Tai Shan amazingly cute, particularly his face, which looked amazingly world-weary.

Back to my morning. The Metro ride up was enjoyable - loads of people on their way to National who were relatively chatty. When I finally got to my stop, I walked up Connecticut, taking in the remarkably quiet night - it wasn't even light yet.

I made my way into the zoo, which was deserted and dark save a few lights, and eventually found my way to the kiosk where they were giving away tickets, getting in line behind a guy who arrived a few seconds before me. After some conversation that basically established that this was where they were handing out tickets, we were joined by a couple from Norfolk and began the Line Conversation, which I'm getting pretty good at. Anyway, the woman was a Major Baby Panda Fan - she apparently put up the Baby Panda Cam at work, as did a coworker, and they'd yell to each other when the baby panda did things like spit up.

Thus the obvious and terrible link between the decline of bandwidth and America's art museums. Damn you, China!

Anyway, the conversation segued to various topics, including the Redskins/Cowboys/Eagles (the couple were major Cowboys fans), the price of housing (I didn't bring it up! They did!), Zoo workers and volunteers who were laughing at us, and commute times. We were eventually joined by a guy who plowed snow whose gift for his girlfriend for Christmas was getting up at an ungodly hour to get tickets (he still lucked out), a mom from Stafford with her teenaged daughter and her daughter's friend (both of whom promptly sat down on a bench, with the daughter returning to complain and ask her mom if she could borrow her socks), and another, younger couple (the female half of which was bundled up securely in a coat with a long scarf wrapped several times around her neck - when her husband plopped down a hat on her head, I remarked that she looked like an Imperial Stormtrooper).

The conversation segued into more topics, including the best way to put the fear of God into
prospective dates (the woman just behind me had a dad who was a Navy seal, while the plow guy said that his friend took his daughter's dates outside to see his woodchipper), the incompetence of the D.C. city council, National Zoo advertising strategies ("Just remember, people, we have many more animals besides giant pandas!") and more Panda Mania (the female Imperial Stormtrooper had the same obsessiveness with the Panda Cam open constantly - when she mentioned that she was worried about her supervisor finding out, I recommended that she indicate that she was doing research and analysis on international holdings) - the lady behind me called Tai Shan a national treasure, after which I corrected her that Tai Shan was China's.

That's me - always bringing people up.

The best exchange came with the Stafford mom - after the lady behind me mentioned that, even though the girl was complaining, she'd still be able to say when she got back to school that she saw Tai Shan. I of course asked if anyone had seen South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, referencing Cartman's quote of "Yes, I saw the Terrence and Phillip movie! Now who wants to touch me!". Amazingly enough, the Stafford mom was a huge South Park fan.

A few minutes beforehand, the line wasn't even close to sixty people long (you could get a ticket for up to six people), and plow boy said that he had been told that you could get a ticket if you just showed up at the opening time.

So I could have waited an hour before getting up. Did I mention that my big right toe is frozen now?

Anyway. A woman comes over to the kiosk and laments that she doesn't have the key to open it up. A zoo spokesman comes over and makes what is basically the same statement. A few minutes later, though, a man shows up, all smiles, with the key, and proceeds to open up. I ask him if this is the line for Bon Jovi tickets - he says no, but that he's got a good deal on George Clinton tickets (being linked to because neither Flag Boy nor GoFB, in an egregious stain on both of their cultural educations, have never heard of him).

Anyway. His assistant writes a number with wax pencil (this becomes important later. Guess why.) and I get my ticket for 11.

So now I've got a ticket and three hours to kill. Let's try to walk over the Elephant House and warm up.

As I begin walking over, I notice a massive pain in my feet - apparently, the cold (not bad, since there was no wind, all things considered) of two hours did a number on me and it takes some time to get circulation back.

The elephant house is closed. Darnit. Ok, there's a Starbucks right outside the zoo entrance where I can use the facilities and warm up in general. Let's try that.

As I'm walking back, I notice that the visitor's center building has a door ajar - I enter and find no one at the desk. I don't care, of course - it's warm here. I spent a few minutes warming up, then head outside.

At Starbucks, I get a hot chocolate and a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich, and spend some time enjoying the laid-back atmosphere. I also get a small stain on my shirt - I really hate those coffee lids that make sipping without drips well-nigh impossible.

I've still got two hours. I decide to head over to the Uptown to check what's playing - if it's Narnia, I might have found my post-panda entertainment. Unfortunately, it's King Kong, and I don't want to kill three hours. So I pick up an Express and head back to the Zoo.

I go back to the visitor center, once again cold, and find out that it hasn't officially opened yet - when I ask what options do exist, I'm told that the Small Mammal House, one of my perennial favorites, is open, and decide to head there. It was interesting to see the animals earlier in the day - some were much more active, so it was pretty interesting. One of the most interesting things was seeing an armadillo that kept on running about 1.5 meters in one direction, then turned around and ran back (upon asking one of the curators, I was told that he did it in other, larger spaces, and was just basically neurotic).

With about an hour left, it was time for the elephant bath, which sounded interesting. The elephant in question was Kandula, a four-year old male elephant. As the keeper explained, the males are much much more dangerous - they constantly need to show dominance, and as such, the keepers never get into the cage with him (despite this, the keeper said that she had as many pictures of him as her nieces and nephews on her fridge at home and said she had tons of stories about him being mischievious). Kandula was good during the bath - apparently one out of a hundred times, he makes up for the other ninety-nine times when he was good.

With about twenty minutes to go before 11, I wandered over to the line to see the baby panda and got in line. I then took out my ticket and found out that the time had been rubbed off while in my coat. The person taking tickets didn't care, though.

In the new line specifically for people with tickets for 11, the P-funk guy that gave out the tickets announced that Tai Shan had rejected an overture to go outside, so we were going to just see him sleeping.

Whee. Two hours in line for tickets, three hours of sleep, and I get to see him sleeping. He takes after his dad.

Well, we still file in, and he's as cute as ever, albeit sleeping. Then, with about three minutes left before we get kicked out, he wakes up. Mom comes over and wraps him in a bear hug before feeding him. Near the absolute peak of cuteness. Everyone's "oohing" and "aahing" in unison.

With that, I bid farewell and thanks to the P-funk guy (monitoring everything with a big game-show smile and friendly manner) and head out.

Hmmmm. No movie. Let's head over to U Street - I feel like a chili dog.

As I'm on the Metro, looking at the stops, I decide on a better idea - heading to the Basilica. I walk around, enjoying the Christmas decorations (lots of wreaths, but pretty restrained), take in the various versions of Mary around the world (Mary Queen of Ireland is decked out with three Christmas trees behind her). After a few prayers, I head out. On to U Street.

For those who aren't familiar with Washington, U Street used to rival Harlem and was the center of black culture in Washington - it still has a great collection of jazz clubs. Unfortunately, during the reign of He Who Must Not Be Named, U Street declined until it became very dangerous. However, after the opening of a Metro station and some development efforts, U Street has become a hip location.

The problem for me was the hipness. Urban yuppie hardware stores, a California Tortilla - everything reeked of newness and pretension. They're trying to turn the place into Clarendon.

Anyway, on the way there, I decided to take a pass on Ben's. I had heard a lot about Cakelove, which got pretty famous after a guy quit his job as a lawyer to run a bakery. The Post's food critic hates their cakes, while some people swear by them. I wanted to give them an honest shot. I got a slice of Toffee Crunch and sat down with a CityPaper, waiting for it to warm up.

Sidebar. The cakes are refrigerated, and the argument has always been that the philistines who don't like the Cakelove cakes simply haven't waited for them to warm up (you think I'm kidding, don't you? People apparently take this stuff seriously). After a few minutes, I took a bite.

Eh. It was really really rich, but it didn't hold a candle to the best cakes I've had, all of which were light and fluffy. This felt like eating a slightly melted rock, though the toffee chips were nice. After finishing about 60%, I headed out and bought a Gatorade to wash the taste out of my mouth. Get it if someone else is paying for it.

After that, it was time to head over to the US Botanical Garden to see their holiday exhibit. I had seen it once before, but wanted one more chance to take a look - still drop-dead stunning. I also enjoyed walking around and seeing the "Christmas Walk" stickers - indications of the stories frankincense and myrrh - but did not enjoy being on the walkway in a coat when the sun was blazing through.

After that, it was time to check out the Capitol Christmas Tree - one donated from New Mexico and dedicated by kids. The tree was a tree was a tree, but the dedications were something else. Dreamcatchers, Area 51 aliens, the New Mexico state flag symbol - just a cacaphony of color, in the best possible way. Very cool.

With my day pretty much over, it was time to walk to Hecht's and get a shirt or two and then head home. As I walked to Metro Center, I noticed an ad for the Washington Ballet's version of the Nutcracker.

Sidebar - a mom wrote into the Post yesterday, complaining that her daughter and other kids, who were scheduled to dance in the production, were the real losers.

Nothing signifies the Washington holiday spirit than a mom worried that a strike is going to cost her daughter a line on her college application essays.

Anyway, Hecht's was pretty packed, with the consistent trouble of people at the front of the line trying to return things for which they didn't have receipts. I put my purchases on the counter and announced that I was trying to return seveteen things without receipts, which got a nice laugh from the lady behind me in line.

With that came a long Metro ride back. Back at Springfield my bus came. Lots of other people complained that the Springfield Mall bus hadn't shown up yet - the driver replied that traffic was backed up.

He wasn't kidding. Frontier Drive was a parking lot. Apparently from what they said, however, Wal-Mart was a quick in-and-out earlier in the day (maybe people had picked over everything that was worth buying?).

And, with that, my adventure was over.

Almost.

2005-12-24T23:01:00.000-05:00

So why did I originally say that these three entries were going to "sort of" going to be in chronological order?

That's because, when I arrived back home yesterday, I noticed a message on my voice mail. My sister-in-law had just had their second baby, Brendon Andrew (who is infinitely cuter than Tai Shan). So I got to expand my unclely duties with an amazing early Christmas gift.

Oh, one thing, Brendon - early promise from me. You're going to get separate birthday and Christmas presents.

2005-12-22T22:31:00.000-05:00

Today did not start off well. Last night I was exceptionally tired (partially due to a basketball game that will be blogged about tomorrow), and had nasty chapped lips to the point where opening or closing my mouth was near-torture.

This morning, I woke up to find out that my alarm clock hadn't gone off and I had ten minutes before my bus left (note to males reading this blog looking for tips on entering the white-collar workforce - keep a razor and shaving cream at your desk). Then, to top it all off, while jetting around Metro today, I missed two consecutive trains by seconds - each of which cost me a ten-minute wait. Even better, someone left a duffel bag in plain view at the Gallery Place stop and everyone just walked on by.

Some day, someone's going to leave something dangerous in a Metro stop, and a lot of people's lives are going to depend on someone noticing it and caring enough to report it.

Anyway. After work, I decided to head to see Say Anything at the Library of Congress. Because I had some free time beforehand, I decided to take a quick detour and see the Christmas Pageant of Peace. I'm doing them in reverse order for reasons that should hopefully come clear at the end.

First, the movie. The crowd was interesting - about a third were twenty- and thirty-somethings, whereas the other two-thirds, and I mean this with a significant amount of respect - were marking time until death. The guy on my left described them as the regulars, which seemed apt.

One of the best examples of this was the guy on my right. He began the night reading a New York Times profile on Tony Curtis, which must have tired him out because he went to sleep five minutes after the movie started. Whenever there was a significant change in light or sound, he'd wake up and say "Jesus!" loud enough for the theater to hear. He also smelled very distinctly like onion.

The movie was introduced by a woman who began with "Happy holidays, merry whatever, and welcome to the Mary Pickford Theater". She intro'd the movie (only about half of the people had seen it before - all of the regulars must have skipped it on TNT because they had to eat their mush), then indicated that it was in line for National Film Registry status (basically an indication that the film in question is an important part of American movie history and should be preserved). Apparently, the director of the board that chooses the movies for inclusion is a big fan of this movie, so it has a good chance to get in (Washington politics for you - thank God he's not a fan of Underworld or Street Fighter). And, in a cool quirk, we'd get a chance to vote (I didn't see a ballot and decided that asking about it wasn't worth it).

For those of you who followed the above - yes, the regulars play a role in helping to determine what movies get preserved and which don't.

This is why democracy isn't always the best system. Just sayin'.

Anyway. The movie. If you haven't seen it, you probably should - lots of quotable lines (my favorite has always been "if you start out depressed, everything ends up a pleasant surprise", which is useful in a surprising number of situations) and a nuanced plot that gets better every time you see it, as well as a killer song (actually listening to it right now - "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" were hits, too, but there's "Don't Give Up", which has its moments, and "Red Rain", which just has an enthralling opening - why don't they still make albums like this?).

As I walked out, there was a young twentysomething couple. While the female half of whom sounded like the chick in the movie that got into Cornell, she did make the point that, while she had seen it lots of times (ten bucks says that the male half is going to get dumped in three months when she realizes that he's not Lloyd), the movie experience enhanced it - the bigger screen and people laughing at different lines. I recommended the DVD to her (she had it, but hadn't opened it), and disappeared into the night.

So let's back up a few hours. And a few years. When I was at Georgetown, I went with a friend one year to see the tree get lighted - just an awesome moment (I may also have seen the trees when I was much younger, but I don't remember clearly). I started going to see the trees once a season a few years ago - and the first time I went, I remembered hearing this mom say to an unruly kid "We flew all the way from Iowa! Get over here!".

This year I had about thirty minutes before I had to catch the train. A guy can pack a lot of living into thirty minutes, and I can pack a lot of sightseeing into thirty minutes.

Quick summary of the pageant if you've never been. There's a huge monstrosity of a Christmas tree that looks nice from a mile away but which looks frighteningly fake up close. Around the tree are some simple train displays, a Yule log, and a manger scene (there's also a menorah that will, I assume, light up as Hanukah progresses), as well as space for performers. The main attraction, though, are trees decorated with ornaments from all fifty states, as well as quasi-states like Puerto Rico and the District.

While I was wandering around, all the people got to listen to the Solid Ground Bluegrass Band and Melanie Walker, a Christian bluegrass ensemble. They were, in a word, great (check out the sound clips - you'll recognize the sharp harmony of "Down to The River" from O Brother, Where Art Thou) - it was lively and peppy and people were walking around just singing along to the music. There's one song that they did about coming home for Christmas that stuck in my brain (there was also a song with the refrain "Jesus, it's your birthday"), and they did a great bluegrass version of "The Christmas Song". Just a joy to experience.

And that's what I love about the pageant - lots of families, a nice mix of tourists and locals, all a little cold and spending some time by the Yule Log to warm up a little, and all in a great mood.

Now, to the ornaments...

If you get chosen to put up ornaments, don't include pictures of people in it. It looks like you're cheap and money-grubbing. Three states did this - I only remember Utah.
Nebraska's decorations were all yellow ribbons with a wreath in the center.

You knew one state was going to do it. For some reason, I'm not surprised it was Nebraska.
Michigan's featured ornaments with an abstract model of the state and came from Holland.

Apparently, Michigan's now outsourcing.
New Jersey's didn't have a theme. Its tree was this awful, yet beautiful, mix of everything - colorful and chaotic. One of the better ones.
Delaware's wasn't anything to write home about - I think the same group in Hockessin that won last year did it this year. Maryland's was lots of flimsy paper decorations without a real theme.
Virginia's was awful - some awful paper cutouts of Virginia were the better ones. The worse ones were the clear ornaments on which people had written slogans like "VA is for lovers" in black permanent marker - the bachelor Christmas gift theme
Virginia's was awful, but it wasn't the worst. That "honor" went to Wisconsin, which let Kohl's produce them. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck.
D.C.'s showed a variety of local landmarks, including the Pentagon.

You wish, losers! And we may not have baseball, but at least we don't have your city council! Enjoy Marion Barry.
New Hampshire's were done by a pewter maker and were impressive.
Washington chose a variety of different colored shiny materials. Gorgeous.
And now we come to the winner. Louisiana did well last year with fleur de lis-themed ornaments. This year, their contributor was The Louisiana Children’s Museum in New Orleans. In the words of the website, "Because of Hurricane Katrina the museum staff was unable to craft ornaments for this tree. In the spirit of giving, all the states and territories offered an ornament of their own so that the Louisiana tree would stand proudly, bearing the gifts of all Americans this Christmas."

It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. So beautiful it brought tears to my eyes then and still does now. No, there are still people that can't go home and probably will never get to, and there are those who are hungry and those who went through hell and those who lost friends and family members in a preventable disaster, and nothing that was done for this will really change that. But it's possible, for a few seconds, to take a look at the tree with its donated ornaments representing all of America, to see the manger scene on the other side of the walkway, to hear some music that just makes you want to clap your hands with happy people walking about and your cheeks just a little chilly and to think that maybe Americans do care for each other and that living in the world right now can actually be a wonderful thing.

All in all, a great end to a humdrum day. While you may not have received exactly what you want (female, ages 22-35, glasses a plus, devious wit a requirement, quirky cuteness a plus, conservative leanings a plus, Georgetown or Philadelphia Eagles fandom a DEFINITE plus), you occasionally get a nice present nonetheless.

Tomorrow (well, apparently today - this took a little longer than expected), I am waking up around 4:15 to see if I can make it to the National Zoo early enough to get Tai Shan tickets. Wish me luck.

I'm probably going to need it.

2005-12-20T19:35:00.000-05:00

Went to Ballston with Law Boy to see King Kong last night. I got tickets on the evil website featuring the talking paper bag puppets whose name shall not be uttered here, based on the fear that the movie might be sold out (we were a few minutes late in getting dinner, so the ticket guy kindly exchanged our tickets for a later show).

There were - including us - maybe ten people in the whole theater. Not exactly LoTR.

We got there a few minutes before the movie started, and got the traditional "Next time get to the theater earlier to catch all of The Twenty".

Why, you sick freaks? Why? Why would I come and pay $9.25 plus a dollar service charge to sit in your movie theater so I could see a five minute infomercial for "My Name Is Earl"? Why? Answer me that, you soul-sucking spawn of Satan.

Anyway. Previews...

The Da Vinci Code: For some strange reason, I came into possession of Deception Point, one of Dan Brown's other works. It's awful - just awful. Trite and hackneyed. I refuse to read the book, and I refuse to see the movie.

But, Tom Hanks looks vaguely like Keanu in one scene, which was sort of interesting.
Final Destination 3: Pass. People dying in the sensory deprivation chamber was a little different, though.
Glory Road: Cheese Boy called this to a T. It's Remember the Titans, all the way down to the players singing together. Only this version doesn't have Denzel. For such a momentous moment in NCAA history, the movie probably is going to be a turkey.

You know what basketball event I'd like made into a movie? Loyola of Chicago versus Mississippi State in the second round of the 1963 NCAA tournament. The Bulldogs were banned from competing in an integrated event, so the coach and team snuck out of Mississippi in the dead of night. Get me a coach with brains that thinks basketball and wants to outwit his bosses (based on this, maybe Billy Bob Thornton?), some sharply-defined players that run the gamut in terms of what they think about the larger social implications - and maybe a freshman student who's a massive Bulldog fan who provides some narration and context (and humor) as he finds out about the plan and makes the trip there. Lots of skullduggery and tension (including that between the desire to play basketball versus racism and politics), as well as great basketball footage (MSU beat Kentucky that year). I always wanted to call it The Game with a tagline along the lines of: "You can't win if you don't play."
The Break Up: From the plot outline: After Brooke (Aniston) calls it quits with her boyfriend Gary (Vaughn), neither person is willing to move out of the condo they share. Taking the advice of their repsective friends and confidants (and a few total strangers), they both engage in mental warfare designed to force the other person to flee the premises -- until they both realize they might be fighting to keep their relationship alive.

I'll take that bet.

Anyway, this looks like your typical Vaughn movie. As I said with Wedding Crashers, if he doesn't diversify he's going to be in a lot of trouble in five years when his hitting on twins will just seem creepy.
Not a preview, but I saw a poster for this in the men's room. That's pretty much apropos.
Inside Man: I've enjoyed Clive Owen's work since Croupier, and he gives off the same I'm-too-cool-for-you-mere-mortals gig here. Denzel and Jodie add to a nice cast, but this seems like it has a big twist, and I usually end up being disappointed by big twists (Usual Suspects and Shawshank excepted).

Anyway. Kong.

SPOILER WARNINGS

Law Boy loved it and called it a new classic. I think it's your prototypical three-star movie - heavily recommended, see it in the theater, maybe buy it on DVD. It's the perfect date movie - nice love story, plus your sweetie can get scared by the oozy monstrosities and you can put your arm around her and reassure her.

But there are a lot of problems that come from the movie. Jack Black's trying too hard to be Jack Black - he does the eye thing early on (it's his first scene, if I'm not mistaken) and doesn't stay in the role. His uttering of the last words seem like he spent too much time thinking about he was going to say the lines.

Surprisingly, though, Adrien Brody was great - after the self-promotion following The Pianist and that evil Diet Coke commercial, he tones down everything here and creates a real character rather than a carboard copy (one of the best lines comes when he is suckered in to staying too long on board and Jack says something approximating "if you really liked (theater), you would have jumped" - just a great line). The motley crew of sailors is your standard stock, but the one they spend a lot of time on - the boy - has all of this buildup and then no payoff.

And then there's the island. The second time that everyone goes to save Ann (the native vaulting over the water was a classic and frightening image), none of the natives have all disappeared and never return again. There's more lack of continuity when Kong gets cholorformed - with just seven people, all of whom are bruised and bloodied, they apparently manage to take Kong and bind him up on the ship and sail back somewhere - this despite having most of their choloform supply sunk when the boat was destroyed and despite Naomi Watts, who is basically catnip for Kong, is living on board the very small ship.

In New York, apparently a twenty-five foot ape can walk on ice without it cracking. The scene's nice and beautiful and fun, but it's so incredibly out of place - Kong escaping and rampaging, Kong relaxing, Kong getting shot at - that it doesn't work at all. The entire New York scenes feel tacked-on - sort of plagued by the knowledge that everyone knows where they're going to end up, so why not just hurry up and get there?

I'm not panning the movie - it's just that it was good enough that the above questions impeded my ability to enjoy the movie further, when what could have been a real classic just missed enough points to annoy me and keep me focusing on them rather than on the great picture I was seeing.
END SPOILER WARNING

So it was interesting. At least it's better than Final Destination 3.

2005-12-18T20:38:00.000-05:00

Saw some NBC ads on Friday night. One was for The Book of Daniel, a show that will not see the light of day if anyone at NBC gets a conscience. Fine, do a Desperate Housewives knockoff - but why does the hook have to be centered around an Episcopalian priest? It's offensiveness seems to reek of lacking any sort of inventiveness.

The other one was an ad for NBC's new Thursday lineup, which now includes My Name is Earl and The Office, which was done to the sounds of "Amazing Grace" and praised both as the two most original shows on television, which is pretty funny when you consider this.

Anyway. On Monday night, as part of my court-mandated weekly fun, I decided to attend this after an enjoyable dinner with Cheese Boy (including a Cajun Chicken Pasta that Cheese Boy compared to cheese fries which elicited some sounds of joy from me).

Anyway. I've heard about Frazz, but probably wouldn't have known about it if it hadn't been for this Post chat, which is interesting in the vast range of topics it covers and which is usually pretty goshdarn funny. Highlights:

Beforehand, the store was playing Barenaked for the Holidays. I was listening to "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings" while reading a few pages of the book. Always fun.
Frazz in general is an enjoyable cartoon, though it seems to evoke/rip off Calvin and Hobbes a tad too much. But some of the strips were pretty good - and in a world without The Far Side or C&H, you take what you can get.
Weingarten's introduction was interesting, particularly since he brandished a straight razor during it. I could explain why, but it's complicated.
Despite the allegation that Weingarten's chats feature large numbers of attractive single women, I really didn't see any. Not that I would have been, you know, looking. By far the most attractive person there was Mallett's wife. Of course, I didn't hit on her, because you shouldn't antagonize cartoonists.
Jef Mallett was interesting - he obviously had a few rehearsed responses, but most of his answers seemed well-thought out. I've seen Dave Barry (at the same store) do the Krusty "hey hey!" routine, answering questions with ease, so it was fun to see someone less experienced with a little verve.
As an intro, Jef did a quick drawing of Weingarten, and Weingarten did one of him.

This is actually the second time I'm writing this blog posting - the first time was Monday night, when I got a few bullet points further than here, and I accidentally sent everything into cyberspace, then said "to hell with it".

Anyway. During that time and now, I still haven't been able to indicate why the drawing bit was funny. It just was.
Lots of people kept on asking Jef questions about other merchandising opportunities - plush dolls or TV specials.

Now, I don't mean to be mean, but go back to the list of other places where the book is being introduced. A grand total of one is outside Michigan. Wait for a book tour that involves at least four states before discussing anything that involves NBC, ok?
Does every book signing have the one "that guy" who just a little too into the material - the one who has a web site where he outlines all the mistakes in the Clancy books and who thinks that one character was based on her, or the one who got a tattoo before the Rachael Ray book signing that said "EVOO" and brings a hand truck of books, all of which are first editions?

Ours did.
During one of his answers, Jef indicated that his syndicate would occasionally make some changes to his work.

Bad answer. For about half of the next few questions, people kept on asking him all these questions about the Syndicate (there questions put it in capital letters, like it was the mafia) and whether it was crushing his freedom and voice. Jef's answers fortunately indicated that, no, the syndicate didn't drink pig's blood, and yes, that they did help him.
The funniest moment of the night came when Jef was discussing various ways in which his syndicate provided assistance. Apparently, he had put something in a strip that ensured that he would never be in a certain paper again.

We asked. And he hold us what happened.

Jef used to be an editorial cartoonist before Frazz. Apparently, he got into a tiff with the editor of a Grand Rapids newspaper. After a little while, he decided to sort of bury the hatchet, by referencing the newspaper in a cartoon.

No, this isn't going to end well.

So Frazz is hosting a carwash, and tells all the kids to pick up a rag. Cut to the last frame, where he tells one of the students that "(paper name here) is not a rag!".

Let me guess something. You saw the comment I made up above about not antagonizing cartoonists, and assumed it was just a throwaway joke. But no, I actually reworked that section three times so that the above comment would flow seamlessly into this. And what do I get for this from you people? Nothing! No respect. Nothing at all.
As the book signing part began, I found myself at the end of the line. Though it was a relatively short line, Jef still had that thing of talking with everyone. Since I was tired and had a long metro ride back, I decided to pass on the signing.

Anyway. Interesting night out.

2005-12-18T16:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks to JohN Kelly's column for the below.

Ok. Now we come to this.

Really. Honestly. I don't understand anything. Stuff like this photo. Stuff like patronizing articles on biking to work and the guaranteed ride home program, and lots of stuff on how only fools drive. Stuff like trying so hard to make transit sexy. Really, if Carrie was in her shoes, she'd wrinkle her brow even more and then stab these posers with a Manolo.

It's frighteningly bizarre. And I've been clicking on various links for about fifteen minutes, and can't even begin to create something to review this. It's like the ultimate web page that no one ever wanted.

2005-12-18T15:20:00.000-05:00

Wow. I haven't blogged in a while. Shame on me.

Let's start with last night, where Georgetown smacked around Stetson (see The Washington Post's game story, GUHoyas.com's game story, ESPN box and summary or the USA Today box score and summary). Thoughts...

Flag Boy, Girlfriend of Flag Boy, and I dined on Wisemiller's beforehand - both Chicken and Burger Madnesses aplenty.

Even if you've never been to Georgetown, you know what Wisemiller's is. It's the near-campus haunt that serves greasy food that tastes really good. I think that they're a chain, but one that operates under a different name at each school.
McDonough wasn't all the way full, but it got pretty close. This was particularly impressive considering Georgetown's well-thought-out scheduling (hey! let's play a major SEC opponent on Thanksgiving weekend! let's play a game on campus when almost all the students have left after exams!). There wasn't the huge manic pulse that came when we played Cal State Fullerton (It's coming! I swear!), but it was still pretty darn impressive.
This guy is Stetson's coach. He looks frighteningly like Dr. Janosz Poha in Ghostbusters II.

Well, Stetson was like the buzzing of flies to Georgetown. The fact that he looked a few years older than me and wasn't wearing a tie (which the student section mercilessly taunted him with - they're getting good) didn't help.

I mean, really - he's a former lawyer. Shell out a few hundred bucks, slick down the hair, and go for the Pat Riley look.

Oh, there was also one timeout when he just talked to his assistants. Flag Boy's logic was that he was trying to get some coaching tips.
By the end of the first five minutes, Georgeton was ahead 15-0. Stetson wasn't even getting shots. Before the end of the first half, one of the scrubs (Sead) was getting playing time. This wasn't as close as the final score indicated - GU could have rung up a hundred if they felt so inclined.
It was Bowman and Hibbert's game. Hibbert had a team-high 17 and ten rebounds, as well as a block or two, while Bowman was just a whirling dervish - lots of monster dunks.

Disappointingly, Jeff Green was pretty quiet, though he did have numerous assists.
During warmups, I saw this guy and was sort of worried since he seemed to be a potential danger.

Not exactly. Hibbert hooked shots in whenever he wanted, and "Chief" (the only thing on his jersey) ended up with two points on 1 of 1 shooting.
Contest entertainment included a beat the buzzer make the shot from the other end of the court in less than five seconds-esque thing that netted winners a burrito (this used to involve Independence Air tickets - currently, I'm not sure which is worth more) as well as a halfcourt shot for $120 in gift certificates (in years past, this used to be for a new car). There was also a contest where two students spun around ten times before having to make a layup - the announcer kept on saying "how sick are they going to get?" which seemed ghoulish.
The best entertainment, however, was at halftime, and was remarkably not the Hoya Dance Team (who did the whole Santa hats, white shirts, and leotards thing and who were wildly off doing the kickline). It was, instead, a Hoya dunk competition featuring young kids and a mini-hoop.

Large, large amounts of fun. Everyone cheered, all the kids seemed happy (even the ones that missed), and the student section cheered like maniacs, even chanting a few names and starting a "play for Stetson!" chant. Very very cool.
Georgetown seemed disinterested in the second half, allowing Stetson to kinda sorta creep back into it with a late 14-0 run. But a dunk or two later and order was restored.

Fun, simple night out. Savannah State on Wednesday should provide similar joy.

2005-12-11T21:14:00.000-05:00

So about a week ago I went to Wal-Mart and procured the $25 Garth Brooks CD monstrosity, which comes with its own ground clearance. It's relatively definitive in terms of including hits - the only ones that it misses are "She's Every Woman" and "Ireland". The decision to include already-released CDs leads to some track duplication, but the price is still right.

Also included in the price is a DVD with ten "music videos" (the reason for the quotes is discussed below). Unfortunately, one of the omissions is "The Thunder Rolls" (never shown on TV due to its depiction of infidelity, spousal abuse, and vigilantism, though it did win Video of the Year).

Anyway. Let's review the video selections (with commentary by Garth before each):

"Tearin' It Up": Recorded in Croke Park in Ireland in 1997. Your standard concert music video with lots of people singing along. Let's move right along.
"Two of a Kind, Workin on a Full House" (sic): Recorded at Reunion Arena in Dallas in the early 90s. Your standard concert music video with lots of people singing along, only this is the early 90s, so people are committing lots of fashion atrocities. Let's close our eyes and move right along.
"Papa Loved Mama": Recorded at Central Park (no, not this one) in 1997. Nothing else new. Garth describes this song as a "seventh-inning stretch" number.

On the bright side, the concert led to this Top Ten list. Since you've had to suffer through a variety of "concert video - nothing new", take a look at this and this, especially number two.
"Standing Outside The Fire": Let's back up. I went to a Georgetown a cappalla concert that featured an all-male group from the University of Maryland known as the Generics. I enjoyed their work and bought their CD, which included upon it this song, which I then proceeded to play for about two hours straight on repeat. Just a great version - the additions were better than the original.

So let's go to the video - a first for this set. It's awful. Truly awful. Basically a mentally disabled student decides to go out for the high school track meet instead of the Special Olympics. Does Mom support her baby no matter what? Does Dad, who apparently has had no role in raising his son up until this moment, oppose it since he might get hurt? Does the school track coach cluck disapprovingly? Does it all come down to the track meet, where our hero falls down and gets more blood on his face than had he been an extra in Platoon? Does Dad immediately run down and implore his son to finish?

Yes, Garth Brooks says that he got lots of letters from parents and siblings of people with Down's Syndrome. But it's so remarkably overwrought that it's painful. Fortunately, the photo gallery on the DVD plays to the same song.
"Callin' Baton Rouge": This one was filmed at Texas Stadium in 1994. A few fashion atrocities, and Garth says that Texas Stadium is open-air so God can see His team play (did I ever mention that there's a book about Philly fans called If Football's a Religion, Why Don't We Have a Prayer?? And you do know that, before Ed Rendell was governor of Pennsylvania, he offered bounties to Eagles fans to hit opposing players with snowballs, right? Don't mind me, I'm just bitter).

This is actually better than the above songs since the song just totally rocks - fast fiddles and guitars. Also interesting is the traditional stereotype of Texan good-ole boys - look at the video and you'll find them out in force.
"Friends in Low Places": It has been alleged somewhere that more people know the words to this song than to the Star-Spangled Banner. This video focuses on that by taking footage from Texas, Central Park, and Ireland and combining them pretty seamlessly. This is particulary notable for its playing of the "dreaded third verse".
"Wrapped Up In You": Garth and a few bandmates pull into a town in the Midwest, where they find four racially diverse old fogies, including one guy who looks like an older version of Garth from Saturday Night Live and one who looks frighteningly like Donald Rumsfeld, making music with whatever they have - blocks of wood, a broom, checkers. So Garth and company decide to jam with this group, leading to one of the guys to break out a harmonica and no one to go out of tune once. This is sort of like this movies where some plucky kids put on a Broadway musical to save the town library.

That would be bizarre enough. After two verses, four remarkably attractive and diverse women who look very out of place in this small town (they're almost fashionable enough to escape a sneer from Robin Givhan) walk down the Main Street, see them, and start putting their arms around the old guys for no discernible reason as the song continues.

Then Garth and company leave after one more verse, the women also bail, and the old guys are left dancing, which includes the Donald Rumsfeld lookalike doing a complicated soft-shoe routine. You can't understand this - you can just watch it and hope that there is a higher power that can one day explain it.
"Ain't Goin Down ('Til The Sun Comes Up)": More generic concert footage, this time with lots of flags cycling through at the beginning to indicate that musical is universal, yadda yadda yadda, which would have been a great idea if basically every single hair band in the 80s hadn't done it already.

Also included on the DVD are some interviews. Most of them are pretty generic (regrettably, Garth's story of why he decided to release this collection involved a generic tale of lunch with a guy from Wal-Mart and not him opening his door one day and finding them twenty suitcases filled with nonsequential hundred-dollar bills). Rising above things, though, is one where he talks about music by saying that he was at some benefit and Michael Bolton started singing "Georgia" and he (Garth) was having a great old time until Marlee Matlin asked him to describe music to her.

The bizarre part of that was the enjoyment of the Michael Bolton.

Anyway, he eventually gets into his influences and lists James Taylor and Freddy Mercury before going to a riff on how his daughters are progressing musically, enjoying things like Conway Twitty. He also mentions, however, that his girls control the music and references Evanesence and Nickelback before stating that he loves Avril Lavigne's music and saying that there's a wide spectrum of options from her to Hilary Duff.

Sidebar. One of the more bizarre occurrences of the past year involved me walking through the refrigerated food aisle of the Kingstowne Safeway while this mom walked past me with her two daughters doing a giggling, pitch-perfect version of "So Yesterday". Anyway. Back to the blog.

The artists referenced are sort of strange for any music star, but particularly bizarre for a country star.

Anyway. Interesting, as always.

2005-12-11T15:43:00.000-05:00

Georgetown finally won a laugher, thumping Fairfield 76-51. It wasn't that close. Here is the GUHoyas.com recap and USA Today summary. Thoughts...

Fairfield's coach is Tim O'Toole (Yes! Just like the kid that fell down the well!).

Coach O'Toole's biography is great, particularly for its inclusion of the following: Duke University owned a 13-18 record in the year prior to his arrival, but posted an 18-13 mark and received a berth to the NCAA tournament in his first season. During his two years with the Blue Devils, Duke compiled a 42-22 record, an ACC regular season title and earned two NCAA tournament bids.

It wasn't Krzyzewski coming back. It was O'Toole. Obviously.
While waiting to get in, I was standing next to an elderly guy in a St. Alban's jacket. Due to boredom, I asked him how their basketball team was going to do this year.

Big, big mistake.

For the next five-ten minutes, I got this long thing about how St. Alban's was 3-2, so he didn't know how they were going to do this year - just like Georgetown, and could I really know how the Hoyas were going to be, and what's with the T-shirts saying "Respect is Back. Fear is Next." and how he doesn't want teams to fear the Hoyas, he just wants Georgetown to win.

This is why I'm not a people person.
Early in the game, Georgetown seemed as if it would have been better if it had gone for the Modified Princeton Offense - passing around until they could take a contested three. This is because every single time someone had an open look, he missed, whereas every time someone was guarded, he scored. Flag Boy's logic was that players overthought when they took open shots and missed, which seemed plausible.
I felt so empty during the Chevy Chase Check Card Challenge. Oh, well.
Reindeer make serviceable stand-ins for stags when people on the Jumbo-Tron are performing unspeakable violence towards them.
Unlike last year, Georgetown students are under both baskets. This led to some cool cheers - notably the "Hoya!" coming from one end and the "Saxa!" from the other. The students appear to be in fine midseason form.
This was really a laugher, so JTIII got lots of time to test out some lesser-played players. This included Amadou Kilkenny-Diaw (referred to by Flag Boy as the Irish-African Assassin), Kenny Izzo (no, not Tom's son), and Sead Dizdarevic, who is this year's Rudy (and who hit a shot with about five minutes to go, causing the crowd to go bonkers - Izzo had a chance at a shot as well, but missed badly).

The Delaware players all did quite well, as well. Life was good all around.

2005-12-10T20:24:00.000-05:00

It's been about a year now, so I think I can finally do it - talk about my night with the Christmas with the Camerata.

I'll back up. Flag Boy has an annoying habit of having friends who are involved in various regional singing groups. Now I have nothing against singing groups per se (per se being translated as "as long as I get good value for my money if I have to pay to see them") - everyone needs to do things to keep from going stir crazy and annoying me while I'm standing in line to see a stinky plant - but, at some level, it becomes insidious. That level of insidious, for me, is when you recruit friends and friends of friends to pay money for what really should be advertised as a good night out for masochists. Really, honestly, I like pool and karaoke, but I'm not charging anybody to watch me. It has that vagueish elementary school concert/dance recital vibe, where everyone there knows one of the performers.

The first such group I had an experience with was the day after I bought my condo and involved the Alexandria Singers, who would have merited staying for a song or two and a few bucks if I saw them on the King Street Docks but who were most assuredly not worth $20 (note: I noticed that the Alexandria Singers were actually looking on a volunteer website for people to take tickets and do ushering at their concerts - not only do members of the unsuspecting public get conned for $20, but other people looking to help worthy causes help what is essentially a pyramid scheme). Once again, though, Flag Boy called up and asked if I was interested in a holiday concert. Once again, idiot that I am, I said yes.

Anyway. The set list. A mixture of old favorites (Silent Night, We Three Kings, Ave Maria, All I Want for Christmas is You (just kidding)) and Latin carols (Personent Hodie, In Dulci Jubilo). The Camerata put its own "spin" on each - as opposed to singing the carol straight through, they did it in a version that was either like a round or a simulated echo. Rather than singing "Bearing gifts, we travel so far", for example, the Camerata would sing "Bearing (Bearing!, Bearing!) gifts, we travelled (travelled!) so (travelled so!) far (far! far!). What was therefore seventeen songs plus a minimal intermission therefore took around four hours and sucked the life and joy out of every single song they did. It was like the Borg without any semblance of the coolness coming from alien life.

There was entertainment to be had, though. Much of it came from an upcoming concert that I decided I wouldn't be attending by the middle of the first song: Slava! - "a sonorous exploration of the Russian musical landscape. From sacred themes to folk songs to soldier hymns for Mother Russia...". I'm assuming that this would be like buying the soundtrack to The Hunt for Red October, only having it take longer and with more songs about attacking Poles and Estonians.

So, on a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst, ten being the best, and five being average, I give the Camerata a three. I plan on patronizing them in the future if I win tickets at the same time that I need to take my mind off something.

2005-12-10T19:39:00.000-05:00

So, what's the Czech phrase for "well, maybe in four years"?

Anyway. Spent some time picking up a sweater and a mixer in Kingstowne today - World Market was particularly fun with a huge line and lots of people looking at stuff like it was written in Chinese.

Oh, wait - some of it was.

I retain my opinion of hating pre-Christmas shopping since it drives people out, making lines for things I'd buy anyway remarkably annoying. The one bright part of the day was that I found out that we finally have a movie theater - the Consolidated Theatres Kingstowne Cinema 16.

Yes, a new theater opening is news, particularly when it's been in the works for more than a decade and the only other options in the near area are either the Springfield Mall, which has been taken over by nasty teenagers, or the Hoffmann Building, which is located next to DoD-leased office space and which has the personality of a dead ferret.

In Yet More Country Music Which Is Really Cool, Honestly, take a look here. Really dumb but fun song. Heavily recommended.

2005-12-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

So a friend sent me this link. It's an interesting article, but what caught my eye was #6. Anne Hathaway's picture and name looked familiar, so I was trying to remember what movie I associated her with.

After some time with IMDB, I found out. It was this.

The reaction upon finding this out was difficult to quantify. Let's just say that I got a nasty shiver and wanted to see this movie even less than I did before.

Anyway. Georgetown lost. I watched it with Flag Boy, GoFB, and lots of insane GU students at a viewing party at Georgetown (GU Hoyas.com recap, Washington Post recap, and ESPN.com recap). Comments...

The item beforehand was the ESPN college football awards show. We started watching right during the Tom Osbourne love-fest, then saw the Maxwell award go to Vince Young.

The interesting thing here was that the winner from 1956, Tom McDonald of Oklahoma, was there to help present the award. When the other presenter made a generic comment about the finalists, McDonald mentioned that he (McDonald) was just really old. It seemed like the Green Room was well-stocked.

Anyway, after Young won, he did a full body chest-bump with McDonald, who did not die immediately afterwards. You had to see it to believe it.
The game itself was disappointing - Illinois took an early 10-0 lead, and Georgetown was absolutely awful offensively in the first half. On the bright side, Roy Hibbert recorded three blocks in ten minutes - but GU couldn't take down Illinois' pressure defense. Another game with nothing going the Hoyas' way - few calls, shots rimming out, Illinois hitting off-balance shots. Not good. By halftime, what had been a big Hoya crowd had thinned considerably.
The announcers had a bizarre tendency to mention the term "quarterback". This term was used no less than fifteen times. Whether Dee Brown was a high school quarterback, or Augustine was quarterbacking the team, or one of the announcers paid three dollars for a $2.75 hot dog and just got a quarter back, this term was annoyingly omnipresent.

It's basketball. Not football. Try to use basketball terms - and if nothing else, mix it up a little.
During the game, ESPN had about seventeen different previews for an ORIGINAL MOVIE, which I will not give additional publicity to by mentioning it again here. Anyway, the sponsor is Kay Jewellers (aka the "every kiss begins with..." people whose women are consistently surprised and affectionate after any male gift of earrings, as opposed to indicating that, if you still plan on having a chance in hell at retrieving the boxers that you left at her place, then you better give her a gift that makes at least six of her friends green with envy).

I don't get this. The movie is on a Saturday night and has nothing to do with jewelery, and it's right after the Heisman presentation. It is a proven scientific fact that any man who is watching this movie has no girlfriend, and he won't have enough money to buy his mom a gift since his allowance doesn't cover rent for the basement as it is.
Georgetown, down 28-13 at the half, made a few runs at the Illini in the second half, but couldn't make the one "wow, this just got really, really interesting" shot once they cut the deficit to eight. Flag Boy was much more pessimistic than I was. We'll see what happens against Fairfield.
One thing that did drive me nuts was the Georgetown tendency to pass the ball, pass up high percentage shots, then go for the Kama Sutra Shot - a weird, in-air, off-balance shot that involved arms and legs twisted in bizarre positions. Georgetown took four or five of these.

Sigh. This isn't as fun as last year.

2005-12-06T21:10:00.000-05:00

Watched A Charlie Brown Christmas before turning on an NCIS episode focusing on a serial killer. If that isn't the strangest two shows on in one hour, I don't know what is.

Anyway. CBC has two remarkable lines that come less than a minute apart. The first is the end of Sally's speech where she asks Santa for tens and twenties. In response to Charlie Brown's complaint, Sally says "All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share." in a hurt voice. While that one is as philosophically deep as TV gets, the best is a line almost immediately after when Lucy introduces Charlie Brown as the director and one of the girls immediately responds "Oh, no!". Very very funny.

Even better in terms of hilarity was a commercial in between for that Hallmark record player ornament where the kid asks what the thing is and mom says it's a record player and waxes poetic about how she used to play old Christmas songs on it.

This is funny for the suspension of disbelief - had it really occurred, the kid would have said "what's a record player?".

2005-12-06T19:40:00.000-05:00

Cheese Boy sent me this link, and I have to say that I'm disappointed. When Sister explained it around first grade, I instantly connected to the notion of "God's waiting room" - it seemed reasonable and valuable in certain circumstances.

People smarter than this blog have commented thusly.

2005-12-05T19:14:00.000-05:00

Since I recently gave you bad Christmas gift ideas, let's go with a better one: Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume Three (see particularly the plot summary of "To Beep or not to Beep" - Wile E. Coyote attacks the Road Runner with an enormous boulder-throwing catapult, only to have it constantly backfire on him - which is as good a summary of the Road Runner shorts as I've ever seen..

The quick summary - they're Looney Tunes cartoons. Sixty of them. The only major misstep is that they lack even one Marvin the Martian cartoon, which I find well-nigh criminal. On the bright side, they do have "Robin Hood Daffy", which is almost worth the entire purchase price on its own, as well as "Rabbit Punch", which is ensconced into my brain from my childhood. This is also the first version to include a Speedy Gonzales cartoon, though the choice is mean-spirited and isn't as fun as others I remember.

The only strange part is that, when I bought this, I noticed a warning that the cartoons were specifically for adults. I was sort of wondering what was going to happen - and since the cover has Bugs embracing a dancer, I had an idea of what to expect.

Wrong. The warning came because some of the cartoons have some racist moments - there's two or three moments when you feel particularly uncomfortable. There's also a scene in one of the Porky Pig cartoons where his courting of Petunia hasn't gone well and he prepares to hang himself. Very strange.

But that doesn't take the cake. "Rebel Rabbit" has Bugs annoyed that the bounty on rabbits is so low - he then creates all sorts of chaos to get people annoyed at him. One of the documentaries emphasizes that Bugs' strength comes from the fact that he always has to be provoked, and then he just humiliates his opponent. This doesn't happen here - Bugs acts like Daffy, and you wind up rooting against him. Bizarre.

That ties with a pilot for Philbert, a show whose "gimmick" was that a cartoon character existed who could only be seen by his animator. It was like "Mr. Ed", except without the witty banter.

Anyway. Rather than put the offensive cartoons out and have to explain themselves to a lot of concerned citizens, Warner Bros. decided to have Whoopi Goldberg introduce each DVD with a "Wow, Looney Tunes are part of Americana, these are great cartoons, but some of the animators did some Very Bad Things (insert frowny face), but to remove them would be to pretend like Warner never did this, which they did, and they did a lot of good things, like hiring minorities, so we're keeping the offensiveness in, and hope you enjoy! Can I have my money now?"

If you've never been lectured on four separate DVDs on tolerance by someone who encouraged Ted Danson to arrive at a party in blackface, it is a sobering and depressing experience.

2005-12-04T22:36:00.000-05:00

Yet another trip down to the wilds of Spotsylvania with Flag Boy and GoFB to see his rapidly developing house (now with electricity and cabinets!). As things go, I'm glad that I bought my condo as-is - seeing things come up bit by bit is heartening in one sense, but well-nigh undending in another.

After that came a dinner at the Fredericksburg Cracker Barrel. This particular Cracker Barrel was interesting since it was located in Central Park. Central Park is described on their website as "North America's Largest Retail Resort!". This is one way to describe it. The other is the absolute and total fulfillment of capitalism. Imagine hundreds of stores in an open area, from Super WalMart to Best Buy to Super Target to Mattress Wearhouse to hundreds of other chains (Smokey Bones is also located here).

Anyway, this makes Cracker Barrel unique - it's not simply off the interstate by its lonesome, but is just one of many restaurants. The meal was enjoyable down-home cooking, as always (chicken and dumplings with macaroni and cheese and delectable biscuits and sweet tea (the nice waitress couldn't bring out a pitcher, but did bring out an extra glass) and a fire right behind me). Flag Boy also noted among the kitschiness an advertisement for Gollam's Ice Cream (apparently, the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor is precious to them). Regrettably, we just missed this.

After some time in WalMart came Mass at Georgetown, which was notable for it being held right before finals, with everyone except myself and Flag Boy remarkably stressed from having not done any work the previous three months. The homily was strange - the presider tried to get everyone to continuously repeat the phrase "Jesus is coming!" in the style of a revival Southern Baptist church, which really doesn't work since no finals-stressed juniors are going to suddenly yell "I see the light!" a la John Belusi.

Even more annoying was the recessional. There are approximately seven hundred thousand religious songs that deal with the Christmas season, six hundred thousand of which receive continuous airplay along with "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" and "Blue Christmas" on the all-Christmas station of your choice.

So what song was chosen? "We Are Going to See the King", which is apparently used as a spiritual and at funerals. In the heading that shows the appropriate time at which the song is to be sung - "O Come O Come Emmanuel has "Advent" next to it" - this one had "Second Coming".

One would think that they wouldn't take this one out of storage very often. And I'm going to Hell for it, but the first thing I thought of was the joke with the cardinal and the pope and the punchline "Look busy".

2005-12-04T21:42:00.000-05:00

If only...

"I'm John Saunders, live in Indianapolis with Brent Musburger, to reveal the NCAA playoff pairings. As you know, the playoff seedings are based on the BCS standings.

"John, this should be a great time. We've got seven great games."

"Well, our first game features the number one seed, USC, taking on the eighth seeded Mountaineers of West Virginia at the Gator Bowl. USC looks like the clear favorite in this game, Brent."

"Well, yes, but WVU only lost one game and won the Big East. They've had a great seaosn with a new coach, and this should be a great experience-builder for them. And you never know, they might pull the upset."

"Our next pairing is in the Cotton Bowl, where the number two seed Longhorns of Texas taking on the surprise champions of the SEC, and how 'bout them Dawgs? Lost a close one to Florida when DJ Shockley was out, but he proved he could play at a high level in the SEC championship game. Now they take on a team that just buzzsawed Colorado, Brent."

"I can't see Georgia winning this game. But if Shockley is up for this first round, I can see them making the 'Horns sweat."

"We head to Detroit for the next pairing, where Penn State takes on Notre Dame. Penn State is the obvious favorite here - but maybe not, since Notre Dame beat Michigan, whereas the Wolverines gave the Lions their only loss."

"Good game, here, John. Notre Dame usually plays to the level of its competition - since this is the playoffs, they'll probably up their game. I can see the Irish pulling out the upset, here."

"Our final game is Ohio State versus Oregon at the Sugar Bowl. The Buckeyes lost to the number two and three seeds in this playoff, whereas Oregon only lost to the top-seeded Trojans. Probably the most balanced of the four games here - Ohio State has consistently played well against some brutal competition, whereas Oregon's been a little of an unknown quantity, winning a few close games at the end of the season to lock up their place here. You said you could see the Ducks pulling this one out, Brent?"

"You never know, John. Yes, Ohio State's played the tougher schedule, and has been in every game they've played - and lots of Buckeyes will probably be going down to Atlanta. But Oregon wants to prove that Western football is more than USC, and would get to play the Trojans in the semifinals if they and USC were to win. Pride will matter a lot. The longer this one stays close, the more I think that the Ducks will be going quackers at the end."

"We're now joined by Myles Brand, the NCAA's president. Dr. Brand, just a few questions. What do you have to say to those teams that were left out?"

"Well, John, we think that this year's tournament is very fair and any of the eight institutions that are a part of it - each with its own distinct tradition - could come away a winner. For that, we're obviously quite grateful. The closest contenders - Miami and Auburn - weren't able to play in their conference's championship game - while LSU and Virginia Tech both lost. We're getting the teams that are peaking at the end of the season."

"What about West Virginia? The Big East is significantly weaker than in years past - do they deserve the bid over an LSU team that got outgunned by Georgia?"

"I don't think that that's fair to West Virginia, John. West Virginia's won four straight games convincingly, and LSU lost by a lot to Georgia. WVU is playing some great football now, and I think that their matchup with USC will be a great game."

"What about the old BCS system - USC playing Texas in one game. Most would say 'why not just gave that?'"

"Well, John, remember that last year three teams finished undefeated. In some cases, you'll have only two undefeated teams. But in a lot of others, you'll either have numerous undefeateds, just one, or even none. The BCS system is good for that exception - this playoff is great for the rule."

"We're almost out of time. Any final thoughts, Dr. Brand?"

"Yes - I'm so glad that the NCAA is sponsoring such a great contest. Each of these games should be better than the last."

"Brent, any final thoughts?"

"Some great games in just the first round. Texas surprised me with the energy they had against Colorado - I'll pick them to win. That second-round opponent is going to be drained, so they should have an easier path to the finals. Ohio State really wants to break through - I could see an upset over the Trojans in the other semi. But the Longhorns seem like the best."

"Interesting take. And that's all the time we have. We'll see you on ABC next Saturday for the quarterfinals. Good night."

2005-12-03T17:19:00.000-05:00

Woo-hoo! Hoyas win! And it wasn't even close.

Of particular note is this box score, which caused me great consternation as I tried to figure out how Patrick Ewing, Jr. got eligible.

2005-12-03T15:17:00.000-05:00

Woo hoo! My alma mater won the Delaware large schools (hush - I hear laughing) high school football title. Seriously, the only way they could have won more titles this fall was to go co-ed.

In a kinda sorta update to a post made last year, I finally bought Barenaked for the Holidays thanks to some coupons I had. I have to say that I was lucky - despite the fact that it was December, - I escaped the traditional throng of desperate parents and increasingly-crazed lovers trying to get the Sex and the City boxed set for the love of their life (or at least the next six months) and the newest Pokemon game for Junior - or was it the other way around? This slowly makes every store a massive exercise in tedium (with the potential exception of the grocery store, though they have a tendency to put in "Jingle Bell Rock" and push "repeat").

Anyway. The album is better than I portrayed it - "I Saw Three Ships" has a spare Celtic feel to it, and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings" still has the jazzy and soulful urgency that keep it playing in my mind.

An absolute and total surprise is a song called "Footprints". Perhaps not surprisingly, it has that vague, stalkerish vibe that distinguishes "This Old Apartment" (yes, I know it's about a couple that comes back to an old haunt to find someone else occupying it, but you and everyone else who listened to it the first time thought the same thing). Slightly doleful and depressing, with a great Spanish guitar-esque (lots of plinks) beginning. Very cool.

In other news, I think that I've found the two worst-ever gifts for the holiday season this year.

2005-12-02T20:33:00.000-05:00

For those of you who may be interested, Blogger's newest "Blog of Note" is the polar opposite of this blog.

It's also depressing to note how many people came to your blog looking for who did "Under Pressure" for the Zales commercial. Actually, less that and more that they don't know.

Sigh. Queen. Just go here.

2005-12-02T19:31:00.000-05:00

So Metro has some nasty problems. There are some major concerns that the system is rapidly approaching capacity, maintenance keeps on getting deferred, and escalators have a half-life of up to and including sixteen minutes.

So what is Metro going to do? They're going to create platform markers, encourage passengers to stand to the right on escalators, and change escalator directions.

In the immortal words of Dilbert, if you put a little hat on a snowman, it can last a long time in Hell.

On the bright side, Metro has unveiled one of the more innovative ad camapigns I've seen in a little while. Metro recently unveiled a new set of trash cans that are remarkably bulky - my assumption is that they're being done since they can all withstand explosives (yes, there's an implicit assumption underlying it that there are many, many different ways people can die in this area, an increasing number of which appear to be related to something exploding, someone shooting something, or some virus spreading and causing boils before an excessively painful end, and the geniuses who thought up the platform markers to solve Metro's logistics woes are responsible for making sure I don't keel over with a purplish tint to my bloated face at Braddock Road. I do my best not to think about it too much).

ANYWAY, these trash cans are like your standard industrial-strength trash can on steroids - imagine R2-D2 combined with Darth Vader. So there's this new campaign to introduce them to people - based, I assume, on the fact that Metro doesn't need anything else like buying new cars or renovating stations. I can't quote it verbatim, but it's close to Strong, silent type is new to the neighborhood - Hi, I'm new here, and I'd really like to feel welcomed. So give me all your trash.

Really, it doesn't do it justice unless you see it. It's frightening, yet strangely compelling.

P.S. to Lindsay Czarniak: Since Maureen Dowd hasn't responded to me yet, I wanted to know that I think we can work - while you do have that infectious peppiness, I think I can cure you of that.

But we do need to work on your bizarre affection for the Washington NFL Franchise. Green suits you so much better.

2005-11-28T19:32:00.000-05:00

Incidentally, never accidentally mix ingredients from two different recipes.

On the bright side, if you're trying to make cinammon bread custard, and you add buttermilk accidentally, you will be treated to watching the cinammon bread puff up to the point where, if you hadn't rescued it and released some steam, it would have exploded.

All of this is purely hypothetical, of course.

2005-11-28T17:33:00.000-05:00

Next-to-last BCS playoff standings. Given that I got some rules questions along with my turkey, here they are again.

Eight teams qualify. The Big Four - the Rose, Orange, Fiesta, and Sugar - always host the semifinals and the finals. The Rose always gets either a semifinal or final - the other three alternate hosting the quarterfinal as the "odd team out".
The other three quarterfinals are bid on by existing bowls or other sites. Bowls that don't host a quarterfinal are free to continue hosting games - the Vitalis Sun Bowl isn't going anywhere, in other words. For this year, I randomly picked the Cotton Bowl, Gator Bowl, and Motor City Bowl as winning bids. Bid sites are chosen by the NCAA.
Teams are seeded based on the final BCS rankings. The top three teams choose their playoff location from the predetermined bowls. The top-ranking team does the same in the semifinals.

With the exception that the top four seeds can't play each other, teams should not have a first-round matchup against either a conference foe or someone that they played during the regular season (i.e., if Iowa finishes seeded first in the BCS and Northwwestern is seeded eighth, then Iowa would play the seventh seed).
Playoff winners aren't reseeded in the semifinals - in other words, the winner of #1 vs #8 plays the winner of #4 vs. #5 even if the eighth seed wins.
Playoff qualifiers are first based on seeding, with the following exceptions:
- There can only be two wild cards (i.e., teams that didn't win their conference championship) in the playoffs. Independents are considered conference champions and don't need to qualify as wild-cards (aka the Notre Dame rule). As such, if Texas finishes first in the BCS, Oklahoma finishes second, Colorado finishes third, and Missouri finishes fourth, Missouri doesn't qualify.
- Teams that finish unbeaten qualify automatically (assuming that there are eight or fewer unbeaten teams).

So, with that in mind, here are the next-to-last playoff seedings, with some comments on each matchup/ As discussed above, USC gets Ohio State since they've already played Notre Dame and Oregon this season. Miami, Auburn, West Virginia, UCLA, and Georgia are the last five out. Miami, Auburn, and UCLA need wild card berths.

#1 USC versus #6 Ohio State (wildcard) (Gator Bowl): USC is 4-0 against top 25 teams, but squeaked by the only top ten team they faced (then number 9 Notre Dame). The Buckeyes own a 3-2 mark against top 25 teams, including close losses to numbers 2 and 3. With no obvious home field advantage, expect a close game and another close Buckeyes loss.

#2 Texas vs #8 Notre Dame (Cotton Bowl): Ooh. This one could be fun. Texas has Vince Young, but Notre Dame has a quarterback with maybe even better pro potential. The Irish probably don't have the horses to pull out a win in Dallas, but they're still dangerous.

#3 Penn State vs #7 Oregon (Motor City Bowl): This could get ugly. Penn State has been playing like a team possessed and owns wins over Ohio State and Wisconsin, with a squeaker loss to Michigan. Oregon squeaked by inferior competition and got thumped by USC.

#4 LSU vs #5 Virginia Tech (Sugar Bowl): Two teams that had one really bad game can't afford that luxury in the playoffs. LSU's tank job was against Tennessee, and they just struggled to beat a mediocre Arkansas team. Virginia Tech crapped out against Miami, and they've beaten their last two combined opponents by a score of 82-17.

But the game is at the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta. LSU will bring truckloads of fans and should be emotionally up for this.

Let's go through the list of playoff contenders, status, and what needs to happen for them to get in.

USC - In whether or not they beat UCLA - if they beat UCLA, they control where they're going, but that's it.
Texas - In even if they lose the Big XII championship (unless they lose it 55-3 and Vince Young breaks both legs).
Penn State - In. Season complete.
LSU and Virginia Tech - Here's where things get interesting. Both are certainly in if they win their respective conference championships, and could even climb as high as a #2 seed. If they lose and don't drop too far, they can sneak in as a wild card.
Ohio State - Probably in. Season complete. If some combination of Texas, LSU, and Virginia Tech lose and two finish ranked above OSU, the Buckeyes are out.
Oregon - Maybe. Season complete. If some combination of Texas, LSU, and Virginia Tech lose and one finishes ranked above Oregon, the Beavers are out.
Notre Dame - In. Season complete.

Of the teams currently in the playoffs, that's four locks. Here are the teams on the outside looking in and what needs to happen for them to qualify. Note that Miami and Auburn are eliminated since they aren't ranked high enough to be wildcards and have no games left. Florida State and Colorado still have games left, but there's too much ground for them to make up.

West Virginia - Needs to win at South Florida and have one of either Texas, LSU or Virginia Tech lose AND the team that won not rise above the Mountaineers in the BCS rankings.
UCLA - Needs to win at UCLA. This should allow them to overtake Oregon in the BCS rankings to grab a wildcard.
Georgia - Needs to beat LSU. This should probably raise their BCS ranking high enough for them to get in.
TCU - No more games. The chances are slim, but there's a possibility. They are in if two of the following happen: A) West Virginia loses; B) Texas loses; C) Virginia Tech gets blown out badly enough for the Hokies to drop below the Horned Frogs.

2005-11-26T18:47:00.000-05:00

In good sports news, my high school alma mater, Salesianum, is in the Delaware Division I football final. Sallies, in true aggressive Catholic school sports tradition, kept on losing to Middletown, so they hired their coach. If Sallies wins, they complete the trifecta - winning state championships in soccer and cross country.

In other cool football news, Wesley College won its second-round playoff game. I never attended there, and was there only twice - both times for Texaco Star (now Comcast) Academic Challenge loser's bracket games - but it's still good to see Delaware represent.

I now promise that this is the last time I will use "represent" in the above context.

In entirely unrelated sports news, go to this web site and check out the video for "Boondocks" (no, there's no Huey in this one). Great song that recalls something - I forget what it reminds me of, maybe "Sweet Home Alabama"? - but it has that Southern rock and energy thing going. It must be something to be in the fifth row when everyone in the arena is singing this. The best part is that "you get a line, I'll get a pole" a cappella stuff at the end that turns into a round - but it's all good.

2005-11-26T16:41:00.000-05:00

Sigh. Vanderbilt beat Georgetown in the first home game of the season. You can take a look at the USA Today summary, Vanderbilt summary, and the Georgetown summary.

Basically, everything that could go wrong did - early foul trouble, Green, Hibbert, and Cook were shut down (Hibbert in particular looked very weak - a massive change from him tearing it up against Navy and JMU), and poor defense that Vandy exploited like Villanova in the championship game. Plus the refs seemed to miss lots and lots of calls (yes, I am probably biased).

The only good thing was that I won the Chevy Chase Check Card Challenge, which I tried to do every single game last year, only to be consistently rebuffed.

Afterwards was lunch/dinner at a Chinese restaurant, where we discussed the ABA (the good one, not the bad one).

2005-11-24T20:52:00.000-05:00

So, do you think this will include a charge for sending emails on the job?

Time for a Thanksgiving recap. For reasons which shall become abundantly clear, let's call this

Mad Max Beyond Holidome

See? You're intrigued now. That's what good writers - and me - do.

Anyway, I met up with two relatives on Wednesday morning for the drive up to York - yes, the "Factory Tour Capital of the World". I have no idea what types of parents schedule family vacations around this type of a campaign, but there you go.

After a very relaxing drive on 95 and 83 - the opposite direction of the
tractor trailer that exploded south of Washington to satisfy a state law that requires massive accidents on major travel days - we arrived in Hanover, a town relatively close to York. The reason? Before heading to visit my brother's family, we decided to take in a factory tour. The decision was made to try the Utz factory tour (I've been with people who have nixed the Harley-Davidson tour two years running, and plan to go there next year, on my own if I have to).

Backstory. When I was growing up, I got a chance to see the Herr's factory tour. This tour was an absolute blast - kids got to wander around the factory floor, taste hot potato chips (if you've never done this, you haven't lived), and basically do everything but operate the machinery. A few years ago, I took the tour, which had devolved - you now walked on enclosed catwalks, and it started with a required annoying movie featuring Chipper, but it still involved hot snacks. I still remember my brother, my father and myself taking a Norwegian kid who was staying with us for a few days to Gettysburg and the Herr's tour - Gettysburg because my father and I wanted an excuse to go there (my seventh-grade trip there involved gobs of rain and our bus hitting something on the way back, which led to a Pennsylvania state trooper getting all of our names - on the bright side, I finished Ten Little Indians on the ride and got to the last level of the Double Dragon NES game when I got home, so my experience there was muted), and the Herr's tour because my brother and I wanted an excuse to go there.

Compared to that, the Utz tour was disappointing. It was self-guided, which was nicer than being moved from place to place, and included some fun facts, including the requisite Utz company video and a History Channel item on potato chips (interestingly, the Utz video claimed that the first man to get a potato chip was Cornelius Vanderbilt - the History Channel was silent on this). Even cooler was an Utz Philadelphia Eagles jersey (since Utz was their Official Snack Foods or Heavily Salted Substance - I forget which - company) and a billboard that said referenced Milwaukee having lots of beer, but no Utz chips (there was also a sign saying "Welcome to North Dakota" that was apparently featured in a commercial where a North Dakotan threw snowballs at the camerman since Utz chips weren't there.

After those exhibits, it was time to tour the factory. More enclosed catwalks - but the tour was still interesting, as it showed the assembly-line fashion of getting potatoes, peeling them, washing them, slicing them, frying them, salting them, seasoning them, packing them, and storing them for shipment. Even more stunning, people on the floor actually smiled and waved.

This would not happen if, for example, there was a catwalk right above cubicles at the Justice Department.

This brings up another point about this part of Pennsylvania. I described this two years ago to my brother as the place where there is one homeless guy in the entire area, and all the neighborhood kids get together to throw him the bestest Christmas ever. It's also a place that still has giant doughnuts and soft-serve cones on top of stores, as well as lots of signs promoting Lions Club pasta dinners. Coming out of a parking space at a McDonald's, our way was blocked due to a large line of cars at the drive-through. The first person who could waved us out.

Basically, if I had to live there, I'd go insane.

The Utz video had similarly Greatest American Hero-esque music - maybe not 1950s era, but definitely older school. The only thing that slightly tarnished the image was hearing Britney Spears' "Stronger" in the McDonald's.

Anyway. After the tour came time to see the hotel in which we would be staying - the York Holiday Inn Holidrome - the same place I had stayed last year. We all checked in and then headed to the Holidome for some ping pong and putt-putt golf. You can see the pictures of the course on the website - the course was not well-maintained, but was still difficult. I ended my first go-round with 25 after nine holes (par 2 for each) - the last was a loop-the-loop that was a royal pain which cost me five strokes. We then headed to see my brother.

My brother, his wife, and my sxiteen month-old niece, aka The Cutest Little Girl in the Whole Wide World (or TCLGitWWW - take that, Nora!), in their new house in Dover (yes, that Dover. He said that the school board was elected on a platform of not raising taxes, decided to raise taxes, and did the minor evolution thing to strengthen their Republican base. This thus managed to alienate Republicans who hate tax increases and Democrats who oppose any reference to God. This was not, as you can guess, a winning strategy. After a quick tour of their impressive home (even more impressive since it was bough in poor condition and my brother did a lot of work, including redoing one bathroom entirely) and some quality time with TCLGitWWW, we headed out with my brother to see where he works.

Comparison - I have a desk job. My brother works as a mining engineer in a mine in the York area. His job apparently does not involve sending a lot of emails - something that I discovered when we had to switch pickup trucks since his didn't have a diesel engine. Going around a limestone mine was amazing - we finally topped out at approximately 300 feet underground. I heavily recommend doing this at least once. Very cool and I'm very proud of him.

Anyway. Dinner that night was at Outback. After that and some more quality time with TCLGitWWW that involved her chasing a red balloon, we headed back to the Holidome for some swimming. After that, I headed back to my room to watch the last minute of Drexel making Duke's life difficult and paged through a magazine on Central Pennsylvania - particularly notable for indicating that York was an early capital of the United States and a full-page ad indicating that Harrisburg wasn't the total black hole it was a decade ago. I also saw some debate on TV about PETA dropping off pamphlets for kids saying that fishermen were predisposed to cruelty to animals, and that they might go after the dog or cat next. During the debate, the PETA rep indicated that this was harmless "exaggeration". Given that...

Hey, kids! Don't join PETA meetings because their people have no respect for human life. PETA members are only focused on pursuing their agenda, and, if they kill someone, will automatically justify the perpetrator by saying "we know what urges led to this event."

The next morning involved more swimming. As I walked down to the pool, I noticed a few flakes of snow on the ground.

Yay! It's Christmas Day, and it snowed last night and Santa game!

Oh, wait. It's Thanksgiving. Ignore.

After some swimming and some watching of The Waterboy, I headed down to play some mini-golf. Here I score a seventeen on the nine holes, including a two on the evil loop-the-loop hole. Then it was time for a trip back to my brother's for Thanksgiving.

Sidebar on TCLGitWWW. You have no idea how depressing it is whenever your first-ever niece sees you and just starts crying.

Second sidebar on TCLGitWWW. Apparently the parental units have taken to hiding her books as she will be quite insistent that they be read to her over and over and over and over and over and over and over until one collapses. Yay.

Anyway. Thanksgiving. I'm not a huge fan of Thanksgiving. I agree that the good part is that it's not commercialized. But the bad parts are pretty much everything else. Thanksgiving is almost a competition - someone else is always bringing more relatives or has more or cooler food. If you're not part of Thanskgiving, everyone sort of pities you - you're this sad little creature who doesn't have anyone who loves him enough to invite him to their house. This plus traffic and food chaos equals a holiday that isn't worth the stress.

So I like how my brother and his wife handled it - just eight people, with a little bit of football (the Lions didn't even seem to be trying, and they called a timeout trailing 27-0 with a minute left in the fourth quarter - apparently going for the rapid score-onside kick-Hail Mary-onside kick-Haily Mary-onside kick-Hail Mary combo) with some appetizers (I hadn't had breakfast, so I enjoyed about six or seven cracket/slice of Pepperidge Farm loaf/Velveeta sandwiches) and dinner early (around 2). Turkey, salad, and corn bread were great (I'm not a fan of grvay or stuffing), but the coup de grace was the pumpkin pie.

Sidebar. Two years ago, during their first hosting, my brother and my sister-in-law did something with the pumpkin pie. We don't know what, but it wasn't edible. Since then, however, they've outdone themselves - including real whipped cream for this edition. Anyway, TCLGitWWW warmed up to me a little and let me feed her - she particularly loved the whipped cream.

After that and a call to my aunt and my sister and her husband to wish them a happy Thanksgiving, it was time to head back.

Hope you all had similarly fun days.

2005-11-23T01:31:00.000-05:00

Before we get into JMU, I forgot to mention that I saw a trailer for Superman Returns as well. As someone who remembers this abomination foisted upon man and nature and has the 7-11 Slurpee cup stashed somewhere in my parents' house to prove itr, I just have to ask "Why?". I mean, aside from the potential buckets of money, the original Superman wasn't really campy and Christopher Reeve did a bang-up job. There are so many other potential movies to make. Do them first.

Also, this sickens me. If the genders were reversed, I can't see the teacher not getting substantial prison time.

Anyway. USA Today box is here here. GU press release is here. JMU's press release is here. My summary is here. And by here I mean below.

Anyway. So Flag Boy, the Girlfriend of Flag Boy, and I left Arlington at around 4. What had started as a few small drops had eventually become a torrent. That, plus the traditional I-66 traffic, led to a crawl for most of the trip. We did stop at Middleburg for a little while to allow for a "stretch-your-legs" stop and for FB to conduct a business call - ah, the wonders of cell phones.

Oh, yes, Middleburg. Nothing says Middleburg like a small BP store that has Ho-Hos and Almond Joys and Powerade - and its own wine section, complete with monthly picks. Nothing like the horsey set.

Anyway. More driving through torrential rain (thanks, FB!). Very not fun. I-66 turns into I-81, which after the sun has set is not the most happening place. We eventually arrive at Harrisonburg, park, and enter.

When we walked into the arena, my first response was "Does Edison play in the undercard?" It looked like a high school gym - a large high school gym, but a high school gym nonetheless. This was helped by the fact that 96% of the seats were on the two sides - beneath the basket were about 50-100 fans.

FB compared it to the game in Hoosiers that they play at Ootlick (I think) - the one where Hackman keeps on claiming that the ref is biased.
As we got situated, I checked the score. GU led, 27-21, and there was 7:44 left in the first half (radio timeout). We found our seats, which were primo - three rows up from the Georgetown bench (there's nothing like being unable to yell at Sead to sit down).
We were directly in front of Hoya Blue (aka the insane travelling students). I was quite impressed with them compared to the last year - they were consistently improvising (notably taking over the "Fun-da-mentals!". Best chant: "In-co-rrect, sir! CLAP CLAP CLAPCLAPCLAP". Very loud.
JMU's fans really wanted this game - their school had printed out T-shirts that said "Beat the Hoyas" and chanted it, too. 90% of the fans were intense, but nice (notably the ones right behind us - a couple in their 60s or 70s).

Then there were the "fans" behind the basket next to the Georgetown bench (on our left), two of whom looked like either good-behavior candidates from the nearest county prison or like they were taking a course in mafia theory and practice, with emphasis on the practice (I'm referring specifically to the guy with the Phillies hat, arm tattoos, and no neck).

So Patrick Ewing, Jr. transferred to Georgetown this year. He can't play until next due to transfer rules, so he just attends every game in a suit. Well, a small group of fans - not all of them - started taunting him mercilessly. They eventually started a chant of "Ewing's ugly!".

Really classy, guys.
The Dukes seemed to benefit from the home arena - lots and lots of what seemed to be clean blocks were whistled as fouls, and quite a few clear fouls on the Hoyas weren't called.
Halftime. Georgetown up by 10. Out comes someone twirling a baton, which didn't help the "high school" atmosphere. Then comes Duke Dog, JMU's mascot, who starts by missing a behind the back three-pointer.

Hoya Blue starts "Air-ball!"

Duke Dog mimes that maybe Hoya Blue can do better.

A Hoya Blue member decides to take him/her/it up on it.

Duke Dog thinks better of it, takes another shot. Nothing but net. The crowd erupts.
Halftime over. Time for JMU to come out on the court.

JMu comes out to a techno piece that a few people had heard before. Very infectious, if a bit annoying. It looked like a huge purple-clad rave.
Hibbert, who apparently had scored the first fifteen points, was a beast in the second half. Continuously rebounding and altering shots. The defense took a massive step upward with him there.
The Dukes just wouldn't lay down and let the Hoyas rout them. They kept on making lucky shots and GU kept on just missing. On the bright side, the Dukes never tied Georgetown, though there were a few scary two-point leads.

On the negative side, JMU was 6-22 last year and was picked ninth in the CAA.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Georgetown pulled away - they just had better defense and rebounding (and they made foul shots! Georgetown, sweet Georgetown, went 19 of 22 from the line!).
Hoya Blue took advantage. They started with "Beat the Traffic!" in the last two minutes as the game was clinched - and then, in their crowing glory, did an a cappella version of the techno music.

It was priceless to see the looks on the Dukes' fans' faces.
End of game. Georgetown wins. FB, GoFB, I, and Hoya Blue sing the fight song. I get my new T-shirt ("Respect is Here. Fear is Next. III."). Then we decide to leave out a less popular entrance to avoid a) traffic and b) the Phillies guy.
The postgame dinner was at a Chili's: I thrilled to Monday Night Football as the Pack scored early. I ordered the salmon (being spoiled previously by Ruth's Chris, GoFB ordered the fajitas, and FB ordered the baby-back ribs. We ordered the bottomless tortilla chips and salsa as an appetizer.

While waiting, we enjoyed talking with some other fans, as well as with a group of students celebrating a 21st birthday and who looked one or two drinks shy of collapsing. We also took a look at a collection of JMU sports equipment, which of course included stuff for this.

We also saw the Zales diamond commercial. I love this commercial and hate it: I love it because they're using "Under Pressure", which is just so infectious and cool and catchy; I hate it because they're using "Under Pressure", which is just so wrong for a commercial that talks about engagement rings.

Anyway. Forty minutes pass. Our waitress comes back and says that the cook just informed her that they have no baby back ribs (which is strange since we were the last food orders in there). FB is obviously upset - he doesn't get to play the Ozzy Osbourne role - but chooses the fajitas as well. The manager comes out and apologizes, too. I hope that they did something ominous to the cook.

Food comes. Enjoyable - Ruth's Chris crusted the salmon, which made it infinitely better - but this is OK for what I'm paying. They end up comping our drinks, appetizers, and FB's fajitas - obviously he would have preferred the ribs, but life isn't that bad, considering.
Drive back. Lots of rain, but nothing else. I start doing my trademark yawn, which sounds almost exactly like Darth Vader's heavy breathing. I get back at around 12:30 and head to sleep around 1.

2-0, with Vandy at home on Saturday. Woohoo.

2005-11-22T20:05:00.000-05:00

One of the last BCS playoff pairings. Rules are attached, if you'd like to read 'em.

#1 USC vs. #6 Ohio State (Wild Card)

#2 Texas vs. #8 Notre Dame

#3 Penn State vs. #7 Oregon (Wild Card)

#4 LSU vs. #5 Virginia Tech

USC gets Ohio State since they've already played Notre Dame and Oregon this season. Miami, Auburn, West Virginia, UCLA, and TCU are the last five out. Miami, Auburn, and UCLA need wild card berths.

Big games and playoff musings broken down by conference:

ACC: Virginia Tech wins the Coastal Division with a win over UNC in Blacksburg. Miami hosts Virginia with a chance to make the playoffs with a win, but the Cavaliers probably aren't ranked high enough to let the 'Canes overtake Oregon.

Florida State has clinched the Atlantic Division and has an eensy chance to leapfrog West Virginia, Fresno State, and TCU to grab a playoff berth - but they need to win the ACC championship and beat Florida at Florida field this week.

Big 10: No more games. Penn State is in as the champion. Ohio State is almost certainly in as a wildcard unless things go crazy.

Big XII: Texas probably locks a playoff berth no matter what happens in the Big XII championship game if they beat Texas A&M at Kyle Field. Make this the game of the week in a weak lot.

PAC 10: No games this week. Next week it's UCLA/USC at USC. USC has clinched the PAC-10 title as well as a near-certain playoff berth by virtue of the tiebreaker, but UCLA can make a great case for inclusion if they win.

Oregon has no more games. Their playoff berth isn't assured, but they're probably in.

SEC: Georgia's win at Kentucky clinched the SEC East for the 'Dawgs. LSU can clinch the West championship with a win against Arkansas at LSU. If they lose, the West champion is Auburn.

Like Florida State above, Georgia can improve their playoff chances if they win the SEC by winning at Georgia Tech this week.

Other: Notre Dame can pretty much lock up a playoff berth with a win at Stanford this week. West Virginia can stay in the mix if they beat Pitt at home. TCU is praying for upsets. Fresno State is almost certainly finished.

A preview of the playoff implications of the last games of the regular season as well as some first-round pairing comments are coming next week.

2005-11-20T19:42:00.000-05:00

First things first. Cheese Boy has pointed out that the movie Over The Hedge is based on this comic strip.

I still say that the movie will underimpress - the comic strip for today had better laughs than the entire preview.

"Beak of Death". Hee hee.

Anyway. Yesterday I went with Flag Boy and his brother (FB and BoFB, or, alternately, FBB) to see the estate yet again and discuss the benefits of clay versus sand (discuss this, what the best baby record is, or the "procedure" you have scheduled for next week, and you will need to accept that you are not the person you were at 21).

Anyway. Relatively quiet afternoon that involved going to Smokey Bones (aka the BBQ place with the above-average cornbread, the crack-like pecan butter, and the criminal lack of sweet tea) to watch Penn State screw around with things before finally putting away Michigan State, and some bowling in Spotsylvania (I provided interesting commentary, but embraced my suckiness and did not bowl).

Flag Boy, who did attend the Navy game, also provided one of the better laughs of the day. Apparently, some of the Georgetown students started chanting "This is our house!" in Annapolis when the Hoyas were comfortably ahead.

Navy responded with "We defend it!".

Anyway. Today. My options were watching the final nail being placed in the Eagles' coffin at Rhino or seeing a stinky plant. I, showing my own unique style, decided to go for option B.

So, after a Metro ride featuring a fair amount of Washington NFL Franchise fans, I was in line to see the titan arum.

Right in front of me were three women with five or six rugrats. Drove me nuts - let the kids run around, let them hang on trees, the whole shebang. The parents were nice, though.
Right behind me was a nice woman with two much more well-behaved daughters - she entered the line singing something. I complimented her on her voice and she mentioned that she had studied at Catholic before becoming the traditional MoCo soccer mom. After a few minutes - when I told her that I had gone to Georgetown, the guy behind her said that he was surprised - he thought we married.
Oh, yes. The guy. Really, really weird. He brought along a camera and had a tendency to tell shaggy dog stories that the mom had to sort of listen to nicely.

Basically imagine a more annoying and creepier version of me.
The line. When you've waited in line to see Rosa Parks and Ronald Reagan, the line to see a stinky plant was much smaller. Probably 30-45 minutes to get in the door. And it was a gorgeous day, too - great day to be outside.
While waiting outside, two gusy approached me and asked what the line was for. I explained the stinky plant theory (including referencing The Simpsons, which neither had seen - FYI, Channel 4 used the episode as a teaser for their coverage tonight), and ended by making an Eagles reference.

Some people are obviously sane.
After entering, we noticed that the full Christmas season exhibit was up.

NB: On December 24th of last year, I had a day on the Mall, including some fun at Pentagon City laughing at last-minuters, missing Santa waterskiing on the Potomac, taking a look at the christmas tree outside the Capitol, and finding out the National Museum of the American Indian wasn't worth my time (I did recommend the cafeteria to MoCo Mom, while mentioning that, fifteen years ago, I had to endure five-day old hamburgers). Anyway, one of the last things I did involved coming to the U.S. Botanical Garden and enjoying last year's train exhibit - MoCo Mom remembered an old-time mining town, while I remembered it as a small-town exhibit.

Well, this year the exhibit was Washington monuments - there was the Washington Monument, the Jefferson memorial, the US Botanical Garden, and the Lincoln memorial. Very well-crafted, with the occasional USBG touch (notably the gourd on top of the Jefferson). Worth going to see on its own merits.
Early on in the line is a desk with a guy who's providing information about a variety of different plants - sort of the educational part of the visit. He mentions that the orchid that produces vanilla is the only orchid that has something that people use for something besides aesthetic reasons (he also has Hershey's Kisses that he gives out as a bribe - mentioning that chocolate comes from the cacao plant).
More waiting. What had been a really fast pace slowed down significantly as we got inside. MoCo Mom has brought water, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and an apple to placate her kids, but it's not working and they're getting cranky. The kids in front of me are about as good as they were earlier - one of them finally gets admonished by mom for touching a plant. The next room we're in is one for desert plants -

. Creepy Guy kept on making very strange comments - including using an excited voice one of the girls that the plant they were going to see was so stinky that she was going to have dreams about it.
MoCo Mom almost fell when her younger daughter, complaining about an itch, pushed her - causing her to nearly fall into ten different orchids.

My current planned date to consider having children is now 2037.
Anyway. The plant is finally in view. Creepy Guy makes an offer to MoCo Mom and me that he could take our picture and, if we give him our email address, he could send it to us. MoCo Mom declines, as do I, who's sort of worried about giving this guy any personally identifiable information so that my larynx doesn't end up as a wind chime in his basement.
Oh. The plant. Meh. It's nice, and interesting to see in person, but the smell isn't that bad (I don't think I was that stuffed up) - it smells bad, but not jaw-droppingly bad. The Christmas scene was worth the line.

After that just comes enjoying the Mall on a nice day. I start by heading down to the Ripley Center to see this, which was enjoyable. The came the Natural History museum to see an exhibit on Colombian gold, which was interesting except for the part where the descriptors said repeatedly that shamans "became" jaguars, snakes, and bats - including a reference to Dracula and which said that shamans gained the power to suck blood, fly, and rule the night.

Apparently the old director of the National Zoo is well-employed.

Anyway. After that it was a nice walk up to the National Building Museum. I was disappointed by their exhibits, though - Jewish Washington barely focused on architecture and seemed disjointed, and, while this exhibit had some gorgeous tile and stained-glass architecture, it seemed more of a paean to Prince Chuck.

The exhibit that I enjoyed most was this one, which focused on livable communities. My enjoyment came from the principles of design that were laid out with blocks and trees to show how basic principles of design could make a truly liveable city.

I enjoyed this because, if you've been to London recently, it's absolutely hilarious.

Anyway. That was my day.