Recap 2008

It’s getting down to the wire here in 2008, isn’t it? Somehow a final taking of stock seems appropriate.

Miles bicycled: 915.98

Minutes of tennis played: 6,949

Appallingly short list of movies seen in the theater:
There Will Be Blood
Iron Man
W.
Valkyrie

2009 movies that hopefully won’t suck:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Watchmen
Star Trek

Presidential elections pwned: 1

Purchases reflecting my deeply conflicted nature:
New MacBook laptop
Xbox 360

Other things I want to see in 2009:
My house sell
Gilbert Arenas playing basketball
Another Crowded House album
Continued improvement in my Halo 3 multiplayer kill/death ratio

And of course:
World peace.

Hello

Whoops, I promised myself I would keep up the blog, yet here I’ve been lax for all of December. Here’s a photograph of a chandelier made of shattered plates that I saw at MOMA in New York over Thanksgiving, as a gesture of apology.


Tomorrow we head to the family holiday festivities. Wish me luck. Otherwise, no news to report: no offers on the house, no more crazy neighbor encounters, no decent weather for cycling, nothing going on but the daily slog. I promise the next post will be more interesting. :)

Review: Robyn Hitchcock at the Somerville Theatre

In a break from my personal housing crisis, the Swami and I saw Robyn Hitchcock last Friday in Somerville. We first saw him with the Egyptians in Columbus back in 1993, and I remember that show being awesome. Next, after moving here in 2000 we saw him with Grant Lee Phillips at the Middle East, where they screwed around with a lot of cover songs, including an infamous rendition of “Kung Fu Fighting.” Also thoroughly enjoyable, of course. So when I saw he was coming by again, I immediately bought some tix.

What I didn’t realize until the day of was that Robyn was traveling to a few cities across the US performing the entirety of I Often Dream of Trains, his second solo album from 1984. Now, this is where I reveal that I must not actually be much of a fan, because despite this album being legendary among the knowing, I’d never heard it at all. But what it meant was that I got a very cool opportunity to listen to an album for the first time, played live.

Well, it was fantastic. I mean, you have to take Robyn with a grain of salt sometimes, because he has a love for surrealism that often pushes his lyrics right past reasonable into the downright silly. But the music, the music always makes up for it by being absolutely beautiful, or catchy, or some diabolical combination of both. And with two sidemen that play just about everything except drums, you get a very fluid and multilayered sound that can fill a room without puncturing your eardrums. It’s like a chamber orchestra for the slightly insane.

For visual aid, I can direct the curious to a random guy’s Flickr page, where he took some pics of the event. You can even see Robyn in the polka-dot shirt holding the polka-dot guitar, which is somewhere between totally cool and extremely dorky.

Finally, a word of hurrah to the Somerville Theatre. They’ve more than taken up the slack since Avalon disappeared. Granted, I think GA venues like Avalon tend to stir up more energy in both bands and audiences, but there was always a huge downside of drunk assholes screaming inane nonsense to each other at the bars, an annoying person constantly elbowing you in the back, and an annoying girl in front of you constantly flipping her hair in your face. There’s something to be said for the better behaved types who come to Somerville. Also, how weird is it that you can get popcorn and Twizzlers at a rock show? Hey, not weird if they’re playing movies in the room next door.

Way beyond belief

One of the reasons I’ve been quiet on the blog is that some things have been happening that are a little too painful to describe. Also, even in the relative anonymity of this forum, I’m still a little squirrely about giving details about what’s been happening.

So what the heck has been going on? It turns out that our new neighbor downstairs, who moved in less than two months ago, is completely nuts. She’s been nothing but impossible to deal with since before day one. Thanks to a couple of misunderstandings on her part, she now refuses to speak to the Swami at all and is convinced that our primary life goal is to make her miserable. She has demanded that we make a bunch of stuff right with the condo and is threatening us with all kinds of legal action. Some of the stuff is work that she promised to do the legwork for, but is now something she’s angry about us not doing. She’s also claiming that we are refusing to reimburse her for some work that she shouldn’t have done without asking us first. The problem there is that we’d be happy to pay her, but she doesn’t seem to realize that she has to actually give us an amount first! The whole situation is completely crazy. She’ll go for two weeks not speaking to us, and then tape eight-page handwritten notes full of looniness to our door threatening all kinds of stuff.

So we have made the decision to put our house on the market and get an apartment. We just met with our broker last night and got things rolling. I am really torn up about it—I love our place and I can’t believe someone else is pushing me out, especially now when the real estate market has gone very soft. We’re offering it for about 11% less than we paid. Fortunately we’ve been paying the mortgage down fairly aggressively, so even that low price won’t leave us under water. But the whole situation is just awful. I absolutely cannot believe that my housing went from being absolutely perfect, with great neighbors, to this clusterfuck in less than two years.

This weekend is the first open house, and probably our first attempt at looking at apartments for rent. We’re definitely not going to buy a new place right now, partly because we don’t really want a single family house, and partly because we just don’t want the hassle. Also, the truth is, we can rent a place for about the same amount as our mortgage and not have to worry about things like repairs or whether the lawn looks like crap. And there’s no damn way I’m ever buying a condo again. It’s just not a good idea to tie your living situation to somebody else, and too impossible to trust that your neighbors will always be reasonable. Maybe some people are unfazed by dealing with irrational people, but it has been absolute hell for us. I can’t rule out any behavior by this woman, and I can’t live my life tiptoeing around somebody batshit. And definitely not someone who has such a vendetta against Swami. Does it make any goddamn sense for one trustee in a condo to refuse to speak to another? How is that a constructive way to live your life?

So now I have two worries: First, I’m worried that we won’t get a
buyer before the holidays start up. If that happens then we’ll have to try again in January. And second, I won’t be able to relax at all until I start seeing some apartments that I want to live in. Right now I am about to jump, and I still haven’t seen where I might land.

I just hope that someday this woman comes to face the fact that she has brought misery to us, people who did her some kindnesses and didn’t wish anything bad for her. I know the world doesn’t work that way. Actually, what I really want is just to live in peace. Until we unload this place, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Almost too true to be funny

The Onion nails it.

President Obama

Yes we muthafuckin did.

Uncertain times

Recently it seems as though things are far less settled than usual, from the large-scale to the personal: the economy, politics, and a new (crazy) neighbor downstairs. I haven’t had much to say publicly on any of it the last few weeks, so it’s been a little quiet in blogtown. (For the neighbor story, even the purported anonymity of this blog doesn’t feel like enough cover for me to publish all the details; let me know if you would like the story emailed to you directly.)

In the midst of all this uncertainty I want to focus on the truly important things in life: the Swami, music, cycling, tennis, friends. And I would like to wish for the following things to increase in this world: rationality, humility, compassion. Those are commodities that seem to be in short supply.

Voice of reason

I’ve been trying to think of how to write a blog post about the election without it just being a litany of all the ways I hate John McCain. Although if you would like a semibiased source for many reasons why you might want to vote against him, this article in Rolling Stone might be for you. Anyway, as I was listening to him say a bunch of inflammatory shit in the debate last night, I found myself listening not to what he was saying, but to his voice.

Something I’ve noticed since the first debate is the soft, wavering quality to his voice. Now, the human voice is a pretty complicated instrument, with a lot of different physical structures influencing the final product. This is why it is often easy to recognize individual people by voice. And according to various scholarly studies, it is generally also easy for people to guess a speaker’s age and sex based on voice alone. A lot of it has to do with F0, which is the fundamental frequency of a voice. This interesting article talks about the average frequency of male, female, and child voices, for example.

But back to McCain. More than anything he reminds me of two other people: one is a ninety-year-old retired professor who often calls me when he can’t figure out what his computer or printer is doing. And the other is Grandpa Simpson. All three speak with a wavering, higher-pitched tone that I can’t help but associate with the feeble befuddlement of extreme old age. (According to that interesting article I cited in the previous paragraph, what I’m hearing is variation in F0 that exceeds the norm.) McCain’s voice gave me this impression especially strongly in the second debate, when he was trying to play all nice-nice in the town hall setting with the “my friends” stuff. When he went for that softer, less belligerent tone, it projected even more of the confused-old-guy vibe. Never mind his policy proposals; I think that he’s also kind of screwed because of his voice. His aggressive tone, which we heard plenty of last night, comes off as whiny and crotchety, and his softer tone suggests that he needs us to help him find his glasses.

I think the quality of a person’s voice is one of those things that actually has a strong influence on other people’s impressions, on a subconscious level. It’s probably one of the reasons why Palin was such an effective injection of energy for McCain’s campaign, since she could probably outshout a football stadium full of people. Strength of voice is clearly an indicator of age, and with that comes an impression of a person’s vitality. And it’s yet another reason why McCain bugs the crap out of me.

Electioneering

As promised, we did go canvassing for Obama in New Hampshire yesterday, and as promised, I’m here to tell you about it. First, the facts. We went to the local democratic party office about 9 a.m., got driving directions for where to go in NH, and then picked up a couple of people who needed rides. It turned out the directions were really crappy, but we did make it to the destination at about 11. From there we were handed packets that contained a short script with talking points (more on them later) and a list of names and addresses to go to in a neighboring town. More crappy directions later, we ended up finding the target neighborhood at maybe 11:30. We split up into two groups and started looking for addresses.

Let me add a little more about the name and address list. Each entry was for a particular person at a particular address, with information like age and party affiliation listed. Then, to the right of that info was a space to circle how your encounter went: not home or refused to talk; supports Obama or McCain or is undecided, etc. It turned out that a lot of the information was incorrect; I remember one particular time we knocked on a door expecting a 65-year-old woman to answer, but the person that answered to her name was more like 30! Either that or she was in fantastic shape. She should give McCain some tips.

The goal of the whole deal was not to actually persuade anyone of anything, but just to gather information about how people were leaning in the election. So if you met a McCain supporter, you just thanked him for his time and moved on—no arguing or any of that. On the other hand, if you met someone who was truly undecided, you were supposed to engage him on the talking points and kind of talk up how Obama would address whatever issue he was worried about. For people already in Obama’s camp, you tried to get email addresses or drum up interest in volunteering. In this fashion we tramped to about 50 addresses and talked to maybe ten actual people.

Now, I should hijack my own recollections and get to the real point of my post: Canvassing was incredibly nerve-wracking and pretty much left me feeling as though I’d been beaten for several hours. I have just about zero talent for chatting with total strangers and am not too great at thinking on my feet when it comes to talking about politics. Hell, I kind of dislike people in general and would be thoroughly annoyed if someone knocked on my door and tried to chat me up about Obama. In other words, I think I’m just about the worst possible person to go canvassing. I was petrified we would actually encounter someone who was undecided, because I felt like I had no ability to make a good impression. In the end, we ended up encountering only committed voters, so that didn’t come up, but it always took a giant dose of courage to push each doorbell.

We got through our list of addresses at around 2, and headed back to the NH office where we’d started. I have to let out a little whine here and mention that I had just about no food or water for the whole time, which probably added to the difficulty of the whole thing. The rational part of me recognizes that it makes a difference just to take the time to walk through someone’s neighborhood and to be a friendly face for the campaign, but the less adult part of me had a supremely miserable time and wonders if I could actually gather the strength to do it again. I mean, now that I have some experience it would probably be a less fearful exercise, but did I mention how miserable it was? Agggh.

Anyway, I am glad I did it. Although it truly was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. For the first time, I’ve been contributing to the effort to get my candidate elected, and that is important. On the other hand, have I mentioned how easy it is to go on the website and donate some money?

Back to the surface

As you can see by the date, it’s been a bad month for the blog, with a bunch of crap at work and other things getting in the way. But there is some good news to report, mostly on the sporting front. First, I’ve been taking my singles tennis league by storm. I started out 1-1 but have won my last five matches, and just qualified for the playoffs. All the matches have been a lot of fun and very competitive, which is a nice change from what I was experiencing in the doubles leagues the last two summers. Unfortunately, Swami has been suffering in his singles league, which is super frustrating. For the upcoming indoor season we’re signed up for a doubles clinic with the local pro, and I’m excited about that. I haven’t had formal tennis instruction since a class I took in college back in like 1988. The only difficulty I foresee is if my reflexive dislike of authority comes to the surface, heh.

In other news we did the Hub on Wheels charity ride again this year. This time we did the longest course of about 47 miles, which was only the fourth time I’ve ridden more than 40 miles. And I played tennis matches on the days before and after, which proves that I am now certifiably insane. But the ride was a blast, as usual! It’s getting to be very popular: last year I think there were about 3,000 cyclists, and this year it seemed even bigger. They’ve managed to move nearly the entire route to roads rather than bike paths, too, which is really awesome. My only disappointment is that we were supposed to hook up with some people from a Meetup, but got there too late to find anybody. We’ve been trying to get into the Meetup scene now that most of our friends have moved out of town, but it’s been a slow process. I have to say, Yankee standoffishness is kind of frustrating to me now that I’m short on local friends. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m a standoffish Yankee myself, does it?

This coming weekend I think we’re going to go to New Hampshire to canvass for Obama/Biden. I’ll let you know how that goes; it’ll be the first time I’ve ever hit the pavement for a politician. Given my dislike of chatting up strangers, I’m not sure it will turn out well! But this election has me feeling like I’d better do something, rather than just sit around worrying.

Speechless

I don’t think I have it in me to get into a really detailed discussion of recent events about the election, but I do have a couple of things to get off my chest.

It all comes down to just one question: are these people kidding me? The Republican Party, the one that’s bursting full of people over the age of 50 who bemoan the crassness of today’s culture, has a VP candidate whose family life looks like the plot of a bad reality show. You’re telling me that the people who shrieked and freaked at the whole Monica Lewinsky debacle are totally cool with Palin’s teenage daughter getting knocked up and forced into marriage with a self-admitted douchebag? Cool with the idea that Palin, whose daughter is going through what is probably one of the more traumatic scenarios an adolescent can imagine, has seized upon it as the perfect opportunity to reaffirm her political stance on abortion? And her speech last night, what little of it I could watch—is she running for host of the Tonight Show or vice president? Cracking jokes and bashing a man who is worthy of respect whether you want him to be president or not? Give me a break. Her speech was all about the usual Republican haterade, delivered in the kind of vapid content-free style that you get out of the Cosmo you’re stuck reading while waiting for a haircut. “Ten Reasons We Think You Should Dump Obama!”

What a fucking joke. And “joke” is the operative word. Who’s responsible for turning discussion of political issues in this country from substantive debate to an idiotic junior-high-school popularity contest? Not the goddamn Democrats. Jesus. After the last eight years and this kind of nonsense, does anybody think the current crop of Republicans has any ability to govern?

Now that the numbness has worn off

Yesterday I completed the second skirmish in my war against periodontitis, getting the other half of my teeth scaled to get rid of all the nasties in there. Fortunately, it wasn’t a bad experience at all; I had the Crowded House turned up on my music player and the novocaine did its thang. Thanks to everybody who reassured me about what the whole thing was going to be like—it really wasn’t bad at all.

But despite all this happiness and sunshine, it’s time for me to pitch a bitch. In this most timely article, we learn that oral health is being shown by more and more studies to play a significant role in overall physical health. That’s interesting news, and let me tell you that I’d happily have that scaling done many times over my lifetime if I meant I was less likely to have a heart attack or develop diabetes, osteoporosis, or whatever other diseases are lurking out there that might be linked to gum disease.

That’s not the bitch part. Here’s the bitch part. I just spent $450 getting this procedure done, and because I’ve exceeded my paltry maximum coverage for the year on preventive dental care, I’ll have to pay entirely out of pocket for my next required cleaning and exam in November. Does this make a damn bit of sense to anyone? I could go to a doctor for a bruised elbow or a freaking hangnail and pay one lousy $15 copay. Meanwhile, I take what are obviously considerably more crucial steps to preserve my health, and it costs me something around $600? Why exactly is dental care separate from medical care anyway, in the tiny minds of the healthcare and insurance industries? (Yeah, the cynic in all of us knows the answer to that, but let’s ask the question anyway.) Diseases like diabetes and heart disease are long-term, expensive illnesses to treat. They kill people all the time, for pity’s sake. Doesn’t it make sense to throw me $600 to head all that shit off, rather than hold on to the money now and risk having to spend a million trying to treat me down the road?

And here’s where I thank fate and fortune that I have the money to pay for this stuff. It pisses me off to think how many people are not so lucky. Why the hell can’t we fix the healthcare system in this damn country.

This rant has been brought to you by early stage periodontitis. Make sure you know how to floss properly, people! It sucks but it beats the alternatives. And no one else is going to help your ass out when it comes to it, either.

Data pwns Klingon

Yeah, I’m a total sucker for TNG. This scene is one of about ten thousand reasons why.

Goodbye Sandy Allen

Everybody, please break out your Time and Tide albums, Sandy Allen has died today. She was 6'3" at age 10; I didn’t break the 5-foot mark until I was 12!

Some geek talk

I should be hitting the sack, but I gots some free association geekery to drop. First off, must link to this interesting interview with Alan Moore. Weirdest, coolest dude.

Next, wanted to link to the Watchmen trailer. I hope Moore is wrong and that the movie does justice to the book. Hope hope.

Finally, been thinking about getting one of these. For when my Palm finally dies. And to go with the MacBook I’ve been thinking about. (I think there’s a longer post in me about my Computers I Have Loved, so I won’t go into detail about the MacBook plan here.) But someday I think my affair with Palm is going to have to end, since my Tungsten E has lasted far longer and been far more trusty than most people have experienced with theirs. It seems crazy, but what I really need is a personal organizer, not a music player or kewl web surfing device. But why not have all three? Yeah, I sound like Steve Jobs’ bitch, don’t I. It pains me, but to some extent it is true.

On that note, time to put the computer and myself to sleep!

Vermont kicked my ass

Well, I’m back from my not-quite-a-week in Vermont! Just to start the bragging up front, I cycled for five days in a row for a total of 162 miles, completed in 13 hours and 38 minutes. That adds up to a whole lotta riding. And you dear readers might not know this, but it’s kind of hilly in Vermont.

The tour started in Stowe on Sunday evening, where we met the two tour leaders and the other people crazy enough to vacation in this manner. It was absolutely pouring rain down in buckets, which is good because we didn’t ride the first day. So the recap is as follows: Monday morning we rolled out ridiculously early to head to Montpelier, which was about 38 miles of back roads away. Monday and Tuesday night we stayed at the Inn at Montpelier, which was really nice (and the rooms had TVs that got the Tour de France coverage, yay). Tuesday we did a 36-mile loop from Montpelier through a few minuscule towns and lots of fabulous countryside, hills and bucolic settings galore. Here’s a shot of a friendly goat—no moose spottings, though.


Wednesday we packed up again and headed from Montpelier to the Highland Lodge in Greensboro, about 33 miles away. There was a damn serious hill we had to slog up to get to Greensboro, let me tell you. Actually, the day started with a miserable hill but I took the van for the first three miles. Hey, the van is there, why not take advantage! Swami took the macho route and sweated up the hill. Thursday was a loop from Greensboro that included a visit to a little town called Marshfield, where there is hidden a totally awesome pastry shop and cafe called Rainbow Sweets (see photo below). Best damn spanakopita I have ever had. I cut that day’s riding a little short at 23.4 miles, and Swami did about 33 just to show off. That gave us a little time to check out Caspian Lake, a beautiful blue lake just across the road from the Lodge. (Somehow I neglected to photograph the lake, whoops! But here’s one by someone else, and here’s a site with a lot of cool aerial photos.)


On the last day, even before I got out of bed I could hear some ominous rumbling outside. And a peek out the window revealed some seriously black clouds. But hey, there’s breakfast to get before we have to worry about the weather. During breakfast we got to experience a pretty spectacular mountainside storm: first we noticed that we couldn’t see the lake anymore, then we noticed that we couldn’t see the road just outside the lodge. In a final dramatic flourish, the power went out. Fortunately the breakfast food had already been cooked—at that point I was guarding my potential calories pretty intently! Although as time went on, it was looking unclear whether we’d even get a final day’s ride at all—riding in the rain is doable, but not in a ridiculous thunderstorm. But either by van or by bike we were heading back to Stowe, because it was checkout time.

Finally after breakfast the sky cleared, and we started to get our stuff together. Everybody’s luggage got loaded in the van, and a couple of people who were fed up with cycling got in as well and started back to Stowe. Then, as Swami and I were headed to the shed to get our bikes, another storm blew up and stranded us in the shed for about 20 minutes. Were we going to end up riding or not? Weirdly, after four straight days in the saddle I was feeling like I needed another!

Fortunately the storm did blow through and for some reason the tour leaders thought it would be okay if we got on the bikes. So ride we did, kicking up spray and generally getting wet and gritty. And the rain did stay off in the distance, for the whole 32.6 miles back to Stowe.


Back in Stowe it was time for a quick shower and packing up. A huge storm squall even washed the bikes clean on top of the car on the drive back (although it was actually a damn scary trip—at one point we even had to get off the interstate because there were tree branches coming down around us and it was decidedly Not Safe). But overall it was a great week and I’m proud that I survived. I didn’t even take any painkillers and I still have full use of my legs! On the other hand, sitting at my desk at work doesn’t seem like such a bad thing at this point. Anyone up for a ride next weekend?

Ups and downs

Down: Periodontitis diagnosed today
Up: It’s early-stage and can be reversed!
Down: Requires anxiety-causing procedures over a couple of weeks next month

Up: New tennis racket still awesome!
Down: Four cancelled doubles matches thanks to the crappy weather

Up: Tour de France!
Down: Lingering cynicism about the Tour thanks to doping scandals

Up: Obama!
Down: Obama’s stance on FISA

Big Up: going to Vermont for a cycling vacation next week!
Down: Ain’t no downside to that.

Angst trifecta

Got beat again playing doubles yesterday (new racket notwithstanding), George Carlin died, and Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” is stuck in my head. If that don’t just mean it’s Monday.

Congratulations KG

I’m not a huge fan of the Celtics, but I do loves the Kevin Garnett. So glad he finally got a ring! And it’s just too much to embed the Youtube vid, but I can’t help linking to it: his postgame interview with Michele Tafoya was beyond description. As I was watching it live, I feared for my safety even though the dude was a couple of zip codes away.

Whoa where am I

Due to the heat wave we just suffered through, I haven’t gotten around to posting in a while. Here are some ruminations on a few topics.

Obama! Wooot!

A tale of three tennis rackets: Finally, finally, I got around to demoing a few new tennis rackets to try and replace the craptacular no-name brand I’ve been playing with for the last seven-eight years. (Raoul, you will be especially happy to learn of this development!) So today I’ve got to decide between this Prince model and the RQS 9 (scroll down a bit) by Yonex (a brand I hadn’t heard of until this week, because I am a Not Cool Person). And I’m irrationally worried that a new racket will somehow screw up my game. Maybe I should lighten up about this stuff, huh?

More tennis: Man, did Nadal crush Federer at the French, or what? That was just harsh.

Jesus Christ, again with the tennis? We’re back in a doubles league and play our second match tomorrow. First match we got completely pwned by these two dudes that were probably 4.0 or maybe even 4.5. I don’t think I successfully returned a serve by one of the guys the whole match. Hopefully there will be somebody else a little closer to our level to play, or else this is going to be a real slog!

Hey, something that’s not tennis: Speaking of getting pwned, the Celtics put in an amazing performance on Thursday night. Down by 24? No problemo. What a game that was—good thing I didn’t give up watching at halftime. But can someone explain this game schedule to me? No games on Friday or Saturday nights? Total crap.

Bong hits for Comcast

Man, the further I read in this article, the more I could have sworn I was reading the Onion. Rock on, hacker dudes. Aren’t we all tired of Comcast’s shitty service?

Fifty miles

Yesterday I did what was probably the most challenging physical thing I’ve ever done: I cycled a half century (that’s fifty miles to you non-cylist types). It was a crazy day, pretty emotional and not just in the expected ways.

I was really questioning my sanity in the morning when the alarm went off at 7 a.m. That’s an hour earlier than I get up on weekdays, for chrissakes. (I know, I know, I get up super late on weekdays, but that’s just how I roll.) One thing that will forever keep me from being a true cycling geek is my absolute hatred for getting up early, especially on weekends. But this was a special occasion, the Spring Century for the Charles River Wheelmen. And the scheduled start was at 9:30, which meant an early rise.

Now, besides the whole physical challenge, I was pretty concerned about the weather. All week they had been predicting showers, which makes for a pretty miserable bike ride of any distance. But despite the earlier threats, the weather was absolutely perfect. It was totally clear and sunny for most of the ride, and just started clouding up at the end. Thank you, weather gods.

As for the ride itself, it went well except for a some unexpected drama. We were riding along a fairly rural neighborhood road (I don’t even know in which town) when we spotted one of the more dangerous things you can encounter: an unleashed dog. He was running along behind a little kid on a bike. Swami got past the hazard without any trouble, but as I came by I saw the dog start coming right out into the road. I slowed down, but that unfortunately got the dog’s attention and he decided I was something to chase after. And bark at. And growl at. I heard him right behind my back wheel and remembered that it wouldn’t take much to get brought down at that point. Fortunately I had received some good instruction on loose dogs in Vermont last summer: stop and get off the bike, and yell at the dog. Then slowly walk away.

It took a lot of yelling. And I almost forgot the walk away part—my instinct was to just stand there shouting hostile things at the dog, apparently. Fortunately Swami reminded me about the walking. And just as fortunately, I got less interesting to the dog as I walked away. I was shaking pretty hard by the time we thought it was safe for me to get on the bike and keep riding.

The kid, of course, being young and small, was absolutely no help in calling off the dog, and didn’t see any reason to go get an adult to take care of the situation. And that’s who I’m really angry at: the parents who let this young kid go out in the street with an unleashed dog. Yes, even your sweet golden Lab might find a strange person worth snarling and barking at.

But I can’t let that detract from the overall ride. Hey, I survived! And the first 40 miles felt good, too. It was only the last ten that started to seem like a slog. I can actually say that I was sick of being on the bike by the time we finished, which is not something I’m familiar with. And today I don’t feel particularly sore, either.

Now for a bit of time off, including a trip to SF this weekend. And maybe in the fall, we can try for a metric century. Always good to have a goal, right?

Review: Crowded House at the Somerville Theatre

Rather than attempt to be coherent, I’m going to do this in a more stream-of-consciousness style, because I’m still buzzed and not interested in making sense. First, I want to thank the Swami for indulging my need to go to both shows, even though they were on a Monday and Tuesday, because I really couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d missed one.

First night (setlist, although see below for more details): We were up in the front part of the balcony, but I wasn’t about to complain because I damn near missed out on getting any tickets at all. (Foolishly gave up a pair of orch seats right at 10:04 on sale day and then couldn’t get anything for an agonizing fifteen minutes.) It’s not like the venue is huge, either, so you’re never that far from the action.

Funny thing is that I thought the show started out kind of low on energy, although we got some songs I really enjoy (“Everything Is Good for You” and “Say That Again,” for example). And they’re workshopping new songs, which is something special that I’ve never seen with the Crowdies before. But then things really took off. We got absolutely scorching versions of “When You Come” (which Neil had to interrupt because he thought he was going to sneeze, heh!) and “It’s Only Natural,” with Nick at one point cheerfully abusing a tambourine like a madman. And the encores kept the energy level high, with a great version of “Fingers of Love” featuring one of Mark’s magisterial solos.

And then—chaos! Neil actually agreed to attempt someone’s impossible request of “Mary of the South Seas,” which he has obviously forgotten almost entirely. He sang the chorus a couple of times while the rest of the band looked quizzical (Mark did his soldierly best to accompany on harmonica). Then Neil started thinking about all the songs he’s written that mention names. So he played “Lester,” “I Love You Dawn,” and “Hello Sandy Allen” while calling chord changes out to Nick. Then somebody yelled for “Log Cabin Fever,” which Neil again did his best at. (Unlike Neil, I remember the second verse, dammit, but I was too far away to yell it to him.) At this point I was thoroughly falling out of my chair. During the rockout end of the song, Neil was playing alone, then said “You know it’s all in E, boys,” and the rest of the band finally joined in—though of course it did not resemble the actual song. Then we got the insanely obscure “Evelyn” and a bit of “Iris,” and finally the whole awesome detour was capped off by a full and gorgeous version of “Catherine Wheels.” What else can I say!

Actually, I should mention the night’s theme of Sharks, which is a kids’ game where you try to make it across a room without touching the floor. I’ve been informed that it’s nuts that I hadn’t heard of this game, but apparently the Kiwis have come up with something entirely original. And it led to a fair amount of silliness, which is another reason to love seeing these guys live.

Second night (see discussion thread here): I figured it would be hard to live up to that first night, but they still put on a great show. I also had the best seats I’ve ever bought for a show in my entire life, second row center section. The ticketing gods smiled upon me that day, and I am grateful.

They stuck to the set list this time, but the best thing about CH is that they can do a second show with hardly any overlap. I’m a huge fan of the unpredictable set list. As for songs, there’s never any reason to regret hearing “Private Universe,” and they did a kickass version of “Chocolate Cake.” But the highlight for me was “Whispers and Moans,” which I truly thought I would never hear in person. Ohhhh yeah.

It feels very, very weird to not be at a Crowded House concert tonight. And what a treat it was to have two shows in a row. Considering that I went from 1994 to 2007 without any live CH, but have seen four shows in the last ten months, this is just what a fan needs. Whoop!

(Postscript added on edit: I should also mention that Mark, in his suit and tie, looks more and more like an English teacher rocking out on stage. I also spotted Nick and Mark on the sidewalk shortly before show two, but managed to keep my cool [i.e., chickened out] and didn’t bug them. Another opportunity to look like a crazed fan avoided.)

Overhyped

I feel obligated to respond to the suggestion that LeBron James is not overhyped, as I claimed over here.

A short discussion of semantics is called for as a preliminary. Labeling James overhyped has nothing to do with whether he’s a good basketball player; it would be downright idiotic to claim that he has no skill or talent. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s about the hype. In the immortal words of Public Enemy, don’t believe it.

First, he hasn’t actually achieved anything. And no, I don’t believe for a second that a player has to win a championship to be considered an excellent player. But consider the attention James gets, the adulation, the seemingly unconditional love and attention. And consider what he has delivered in return.

Second, he receives insane levels of preferential treatment from the refs and the league. He travels to the basket all the time. Players who foul him receive harsh punishments; when he metes out similarly flagrant fouls on other players, he is protected from the consequences.

Third, he’s just a lousy representative of the NBA. Do I have to bring up the Darfur thing again? He’s a manufactured superstar who has done very little to earn respect for what he does, but rather seems to just sit back and let the league crown him as king because they need individuals to feed their hype machine.

Really, how can he not be seen as overhyped at this point? It will be very interesting to watch the Cleveland-Boston matchup in round 2. I hope KG goes easy on the poor guy; he has such a tough time getting fouled while he’s traveling his ass towards the basket.

Wiiiiizzzzzzz

They won! They won! A close one, too. Agghh, I am prematurely aging watching these guys play. LeBron is overhyped, big time.

Glad I could track down this clip of Soulja Boy doing the DeShawn Stevenson’s “I can’t feel my face” thing from Game 3 in DC. Heh!

Vinyl Elvis

Hm, I need to stop thinking about how badly the Wizards are playing in the playoffs. Because they are playing very, very, very BADLY. It’s killing me. But I can’t blog about that, it’s really too painful.

So yesterday Elvis Costello released his latest album as vinyl only (though there is a promise of a CD version to come out later). It’s interesting to watch the reaction of the fans, because two things become clear: (1) both he and many of his fans possess a huge, I might even say irrational, love for vinyl LPs; and (2) I don’t.

I suppose there’s a reason one refers to the formative years as being, well, formative. During mine, there was one record player in the house, and it was smack in the living room. And the floor in there was incredibly susceptible to vibrations, so if you wanted to listen to a record you had to announce your intention so that everybody could sneak around and not make the record skip. The implication of this is that playing music in record form was not in any way a private activity, even with headphones. So if it hadn’t been for the cassette tape, I wouldn’t have had any freedom to listen to whatever I wanted, or to give the music the kind of undivided attention that music sometimes demands. (Or to get emotional when the music demanded that you got emotional.) This set of circumstances also means I never had the magic moment of putting a needle down on a record to hear it the first time, and so I don’t have a desire to recapture this with Elvis’s new one. (I also don’t have an audiophilic passion for the topic of fidelity, but that might be worth a whole post of its own.) But I can’t fault Elvis for engineering that experience anew for a lot of people who find that important, so that’s cool. Although he’d better put the damn album out on CD too, dammit.

Through a strange coincidence I also watched the movie High Fidelity for the first time last weekend, and of course it’s awash in record-store geekery and nostalgia for the vinyl. God, how I wanted a summer job in a record store when I was younger. It’s probably for the best that I was never granted such a platform where I could feel cooler than the rest of the world, heh. But as a mini-review I’ll say that I wasn’t super impressed with the book, and the movie didn’t work any better. For a John Cusack plus Tim Robbins flick, I would definitely watch Tapeheads a few more times rather than see this one again. (Heh, according to the IMDB rating I am in the minority opinion there!) And for John Cusack directed by Stephen Frears, for the love of Pete you should totally go with The Grifters—much better.

Think there’s any chance the Wizards won’t get swept? Aaaaargh.

Alternative minimum schmack

It’s that most momentous of days today, tax day. Funny how income tax in the US reveals so much about us, both in general and individually. Let’s start with the former and move to the latter, in an orderly, linear fashion that upholds the spirit of the tax forms themselves.

First, I noticed that it was a complete mob scene at the post office yesterday, which suggests that a lot of my fellow Americans are just as procrastinatory as I am. Although my rationalization for sending my taxes in at the last moment is that I’m putting off giving up my money as long as possible, so that I can earn a little more interest. However, that was probably more than offset by the extra stamps I randomly put on the envelopes to avoid waiting in the huge line to buy the exact postage. So that again shows a collective lack of planning by me and my fellow countrymen—another valuable insight.

I also thought about the common wisdom about a few tax-related topics, and by common wisdom here I of course mean stubborn ignorance. The best example of this is the deduction for interest paid on a home mortgage. People often like to blather about the wonderous shower of money that rains down upon you when you own a home, because hey, you can deduct the mortgage interest off your taxes! But hello, if you think about this for two seconds, you realize that you aren’t making any money. You’re just not paying tax on top of the interest that you already paid. In other words, you’re getting kicked in the head, but not stomped on the foot. I suppose that could be seen as a net gain in the optimist’s world. Speaking of optimism, viewing a tax refund as a good thing is a bit wack in my mind. Congratulations, you’ve been giving the government a free loan of your money rather than saving it yourself. This in the same country where people shriek about being trapped in a nanny state when it comes to things like wearing a seatbelt, or being allowed to blow cigarette smoke in other people’s faces.

Now to some specifics. I learned (once again) that I am exercising a smart career choice by not being an accountant or tax professional. I made two giant, honking errors in my first draft of the tax forms, which would have cost us some $1100. That ain’t too cool. I also am finally coming to grips with the reality that I should really get some damn tax software to figure all this stuff out, rather than doing it by hand. There’s just some persistent, crazy corner of my brain that doesn’t trust that the software is any better at this than I am; or rather, that a roomful of programmers, all equally or perhaps slightly less smart than I am, could actually achieve a better result than I with my pencil and my calculator. Hell, Danielle cheerfully reported to me that in New Zealand the government figures your tax for you, and then sends you a check or a bill. Can you imagine this working in the US? People here are suspicious of the freaking census, for chrissakes.

Anyway, I hope the Postal Service enjoys my extra fifty cents or so of postage. I wonder if I can deduct that off my taxes next year. Just think, that’s free money!

Disillusionment of the day

Hmph, I just learned over here that what everybody calls wasabi is not actually real wasabi, but some kind of concoction using regular horseradish. More can be read about this diabolical conspiracy here. I feel cheated!

Although this will in no way prevent me from having huge sushi cravings at least once a week. And there’s a restaurant in Waltham named Ponzu that serves little nuclear bombs called wasabi pork dumplings, which are basically (faux-) wasabi laced pork meatballs wrapped in wonton wrappers. They are evil, they are delicious, they will kick your ass and make you cry for your mommy. Who could refuse food that does all that? If you survive, you feel like the ultimate stud; if you die, well, you died eating a pork meatball. An anecdote for the ages!

Parking enforcement, yo

I made a special trip with the camera to capture this one.

Abandon all hope

I was clearing out old emails at home the other night and came across a good discussion we had on the Elvis Costello mailing list back in 2006. The question was, what books have you abandoned reading? Now, I have at least one good friend of steely resolve who finishes everything she starts, no matter how painful the experience. I, on the other hand, have a lot less resolve—okay, let’s be honest and say hardly any. Unexpectedly, though, my abandoned list is not that long, since I don’t start a lot of books that I’m not sure I’ll be interested in.

The following list is in no particular order.

Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
This one is not surprising in the least, although it’s mildly surprising that I tried to read it in the first place. I first heard of it in grad school, because it’s the subject of a (very dull) scholarly article written by a proponent of the Russian Formalist school of literary analysis (yeah, that sounds just about as dry as it actually is). The book is actually fairly entertaining, especially given that it was written nearly 250 years ago, but is so meandering and plotless that it finally lost my interest. It might have been easier to get through if I took some kind of recreational mood-altering substances.

Idiot, by Fedor Dostoyevsky
Another bad decision motivated by grad school. I was supposed to read it before my comprehensive master’s exams, but never managed it. A later attempt was also foiled when I quickly lost any interest in any of the characters, and couldn’t find a plot to speak of. I was surprised by my abandonment, though, because the other Dostoyevsky I’d read was actually quite good. If you want to give the Russian classics a go, I would recommend you try Crime and Punishment, which was way, way more engaging. Actually, start with Gogol—that cat had a sense of humor, unlike any of his fellow countrymen.

Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The third in my trilogy of grad school-inspired miscalculations. I don’t even remember a single thing about it. Did I get past the first page? I think I did. I would definitely recommend Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich instead, if you feel that you must.

The Bostonians, by Henry James
Whoa, was this one a crashing bore. I don’t think I made it past the first scene where a bunch of tiresome people say dull things in someone’s salon. Considering how much Boston gets your heart pumping, what with the gale-force winds and insane drivers, this book should have a lot more going for it. This was my first and last attempt at Henry James. I will not make a weak Dave Chappelle joke here.

Dune, by Frank Herbert
Admittedly, I pulled this one off my brother’s shelf when I was too young to really have a crack at it, but the first page was all I got through. Heck, even the Bible knows that you put all the dull genealogy a few chapters in so that you give the reader a chance to get interested. For whatever reason, I never went back. Doesn’t stop me from making postmodern, ironic references to the sandworms, so I figure it’s win-win.

Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
I put these on the list even though I have actually finished them, simply because it’s remarkable to note that I made two attempts in my youth to get through all three, but got stuck both times at the end of Two Towers. Frodo and Sam get separated in Shelob’s lair, and then for some reason I failed to pick up volume three. For all I knew, Sauron got the ring and nuked everyone’s ass back to the First Age. Then again, I was too young for these, too; for example, it was only during the recent revival of Tolkien and my first adult read of these books that I realized that Strider and Aragorn were the same dude. Rest assured that I’ve now finished these easily, and got all the way through Silmarillion as well. Boo yah!

Sometimes I wish I was Catholic

Relax, that’s a line from a song. So I’ve turned the big 35 today, and I got this awesome peep cake from the Swami earlier, so I’m totally jacked on sugar right now. I took the day off work, which was schweet—now that’s a constitutional amendment I could get behind, that everyone should get their birthday off of work. Paid, I might add. Who’s with me!

Upswing

The last few weeks have been slowly crushing my soul, what with late winter weather (crappy, with extra crap on weekends) and some actual work at work (the horror!). But today was a much-appreciated break. Swami managed to scrape us both out of bed and we went cycling for only the third time this year. Even though it was only 30F, the sun was up and the roads were dry. Oh, and the wind was calm. All three are pretty much key for riding this time of year, believe you me. I absolutely cannot wait for the weather to improve, because getting on the bike seems to be critical to my soul’s happiness.

Then for lunch I hit an Indian joint named Punjabi Dhaba, which was damn good cheap Indian food. It reminded me of the best over-the-counter Indian place I’ve eaten, Flavors of India back in Columbus. That place was manned by just one dude and a woman I assume was his wife. I thought he was either really cranky or really rude, until one day I realized he was just insanely laid-back. He had this graceful method of ladling the food onto the plate, with just a little too much flourish to be blandly efficient. And the food, well, yum. Even with my stomach still full of dal and parathi, I still can get a little drool on thinking about Flavors of India. It’s good to know I can get that kind of fix here, just a 15-minute walk from the office.

So for now, the universe seems to be in alignment. Let’s hope it keeps up.

Oh, also, by the way, shouting out to a friend, good luck with the thing tomorrow. I’ll happily give you all the good vibes I got over here.

Leap day

Well, I gots to post on February 29. By the time the next one rolls around, we’ll probably all be brains in jars with terabit wireless implants for communication and virtual interactions in Fourteenth Life.

In contrast to the futuristic tone of that paragraph, things have been pretty retro this week. This morning I saw the video for Rick Springfield’s “I’ve Done Everything for You,” which is five minutes I’ll never get back (but I just couldn’t look away). And my bro tipped me off to the fact that if you run a little program called DOSBox, you can play Snipes on your Mac or Linux box. Oh man, did I waste a cumulative several months of my life playing that. I’m actually afraid to set it up now—you all might never hear from me again. At least, not until the whole brains-in-jars thing comes to pass.

Time killer

I blame Danielle for sending me this link. I got past level 10 once! Highest score so far: around 420K. Swami is kicking my ass up and down, of course.

Prepare to waste massive amounts of time

Pardon me, I need to go scrutinize a map of Africa.

Alma matters

As a graduate of William and Mary, I had a front-row seat to this week’s debacle of President Nichol resigning. He was the target of a lot of irrational right-wing blustering about a few topics; you can read about it all here (among other places, I’m sure).

When I was there in the early 1990s, W&M was a mix of a few goofy braniac weirdos like me and a whole lot of Young Republicans studying business and wearing blue blazers and chinos. Somehow I managed to look past the school’s associations with Margaret Thatcher, Scalia, and James Baker and focus on more progressive happenings, such as when Doug Wilder came to campaign. (Although I must admit that most of my time in college was spent shirking the assigned reading and going out for nachos.) But now, the attacks on Nichol are harder to ignore—if only because a fair amount of the conflict has been waged in my email inbox. Also, it’s been a stark change from the relentlessly sunny PR I usually receive, whose singular purpose is to induce me to donate some dough.

I have to say, anybody attacked by the likes of Michelle Malkin is pretty much all right by me. Virginia clearly is torn between its conservative past and a more liberal, hopeful future. Too bad this incident with Nichol is a clear step backward.

Speechless

Here’s what Mitt Romney said yesterday when he dropped out of the presidential race:

I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating al-Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

What a tool. What a huge tool. Yeah, that’s not exactly reasoned political debate on my part, but the implication that voting for a Democrat is equivalent to “surrendering to terror” is so beyond batshit crazy that it’s hard to respond in a rational manner. It’s this kind of laughable rhetoric that makes me wonder how anyone takes these people seriously. (Although not enough people considered Romney worth taking seriously, so maybe that’s something.) The fearmongering worked in 2004, but since then it has seemed as though Americans were finally getting a clue regarding the current administration’s corrupt mismanagement. I can only hope that Romney chose his words less for their general impact and more as a coded message to the conservative base that he’s still willing to drink the crazy juice. Damn, what a freak show American politics is.

P.S. I’m also irritated that text after my blockquotes is always formatted all nasty. What gives?!

Review: Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that Larry Sanders was the best comedy show on television, ever. But I do know that it is true. I think I first became aware of this universal truth near the end of the show’s run, around 1996 or 1997, when I managed to watch the entire series without much trouble thanks to the relentless rerun policy of HBO.

What can I say about Larry Sanders? If you haven’t seen it, then your life is that much grayer than it could be. It had that vibe you get when you’re playing the piano and your fingers just happen to strike the best sounding chord ever. Or you’re playing tennis and you aren’t overthinking things and hit the most incredible shot you’ll ever hit. At that point you sit back and think, well, that was a moment of greatness I should savor, in case it’s the only one I ever experience. I’m not kidding, Larry Sanders was just like that.

So it’s long been a source of deep suffering that only the first season has been released on DVD. (And frankly, the character of Larry’s wife is so uninspiringly obnoxious that there’s some definite suffering involved in watching that season anyway.) There’s been a lot of speculation about why there haven’t been any other releases, among them the idea that all the musical guests are complicating the licensing process, or the ridiculously acrimonious lawsuit that was pending between Garry Shandling and Brad Grey. (Can I just say for the record: Brad Grey is a hangnail on Satan’s littlest toe.) But regardless of the reasons, the world has remained cruelly deprived of a DVD compilation of the entire series. And for chrissakes, you can buy the full run of freaking MacGyver, how is it possible that Larry Sanders remains incomplete?

But at last, last year I found out (thanks to Lifton over at WFW) that Shandling had finally crossed some kind of Rubicon and was putting out another DVD. I finally got it for Swami for Xmas, and now that we’ve watched the whole thing I can give it a proper review. Not to be deliberately turbid, but here are all the adjectives I could use to describe it: good, bad, great, transcendent, disturbing, depressing, essential, heart-wrenching, and completely awesome. I could come up with a few more if I thought about it a little longer, I’m sure, but I doubt the exercise is helping any of you understand what I mean.

What’s the big deal? Well, this is by all accounts the last DVD we’re ever going to get, so that automatically casts a poignant light over everything. It’s bad enough when great things come to an end, but far worse when someone tells you that you’re not even going to be able to experience the whole of the greatness again. (And here I must mention the travesty that it’s not for lack of technology, or some kind of tragic force majeure, that’s keeping us from seeing this stuff—after all, the laws of physics have permitted us to view any episode of MacGyver we might desire.) True, with this four-disc set you get over thirty of the episodes, many of them with deleted scenes and some with commentaries, but dammit I want them all.

Nevertheless, this is one fine set. Of course some fantastic episodes are left out, but a damn lot of great ones are included. You also get several audio commentaries, individual interviews with just about all of the cast, lots of deleted scenes, and a few incredibly weird interviews that Shandling did recently with some of the people who guested on the show. (These are weird mostly because Shandling appears to be the single most neurotic and uncomfortable person on earth, although he’s also one of the funniest goddamn people I’ve ever seen in an off-script situation.) And the fourth disc is a huge amount of material just about the final episode, which is all well worth it. The only disappointing thing I found, besides the fact that some of the cast come across in their interviews as not very bright, or self-absorbed, or sometimes both at once, was that the reunion with Shandling, Jeffrey Tambor, and Rip Torn was a heavily edited letdown—after watching the three of them kick ass all over the place in the show itself, I was hoping for something more there. (Geeky sidenote: Before I ever saw Larry Sanders I already knew of Tambor from Max Headroom, man did I love that show.) If it’s possible, this DVD set has actually caused me to become an even bigger fan of Larry Sanders now than I was before.

But I hope I don’t come across as insane when I argue that there’s something far more important to be gained from this DVD than just having a bunch of the episodes handy at last. There’s a larger message to be grasped that addresses my earlier metaphor of that perfect piano chord or tennis shot. As you learn about the process of making the show through the audio commentaries and the interviews with cast, and as you learn a little more about Shandling through the interviews he did with various friends, you are invited to face an essential fact about human achievement: It’s never easy. Even that piano chord wasn’t actually easy, considering the hours of playing, listening to music, training of muscle memory, and all of the other factors both mundane and important that made it possible for your fingers to hit those keys at that precise moment. It wasn’t easy to make that show, to write jokes that are still funny today, to create and inhabit characters that seem so perfectly real, to stick cameramen in closets and on rollerblades to get shots that make it feel like you’re in the room when it’s all happening. It wasn’t easy for Tambor to be Hank Kingsley, or Torn to be Artie. (Well, it was probably easier for Rip, but still not all the way to truly easy.) I admit I’ve never watched recent shows like the Office, which also purport to be showing you real or realistic people and situations, but I doubt they would be possible without the groundbreaking work of Larry Sanders to build on. And it was work, definitely work.

What a great series, truly. I sincerely hope “never” doesn’t really mean never, and we get the full run someday. In the meantime, go get this set (or at least borrow mine) and as Hank says, get ready to have a good time.

Buko tarts and final thoughts

I’ve been meaning to write one more post about the Philippines trip, and finally have gotten around to it. Ignoring any sense of narrative, I give you a completely unorganized list of things that I remember the best, now that it’s been a whole month since we got back.

Tropical tennis: One of the most fun things we did while we were there was play tennis with Kaskasero and his parents at their club. The courts were covered with crushed gravel and shell, which was kind of like a clay court in terms of play. It was nice to play some doubles for the first time since last summer, even though my internal clock was telling me it was three in the morning! And as the sun went down, any tennis ball that was hit high in the air was immediately dive-bombed by bats wondering if their sonar was pointing out the biggest insect of all time. So neat.

The ring of fire: My number one goal of the trip (besides seeing Kas get married, of course!) was to see a volcano—a trip to the Pacific Rim wouldn’t be complete without that. So the day after the wedding we drove to Tagaytay, a bustling resort town a couple hours’ drive outside of Manila. The town is perched on the ridge of a huge volcanic crater, at the middle of which is a big lake with Taal Volcano in the middle of it. Totally awesome views.

The town itself kind of reminded me of the Cape around Hyannis, with lots of people and lots of places selling stuff. You could get all kinds of food by the roadside; this photo shows some people selling hot corn on the cob.

But the number one thing you’ve got to eat in Tagaytay is the buko tart. Buko is young coconut, and the tarts come packed in boxes so you can grab a stack to go. Definitely tasty. Here’s a fellow blogger’s account of a buko tart from Tagaytay.


The wedding: Of course, the main reason we went to Manila was to see Kas get married. I’m so glad we did, too. The whole thing was really great, seeing him and meeting his fiancee/wife for the first time. They’re really good together and I wish them all the best. Congratulations, you two!

Tuff juice

We interrupt the Philippines report to mention that Swami and I went to the Celtics game versus the Wizards last night. It was the second game in a home-and-home series, and the Wiz managed to beat the Celtics at home last Saturday, despite the fact that Gilbert’s still out healing his knee. Man, with Garnett on the team this year, it’s been looking damn good for the Celtics so far. I won’t even mention the home opener, where they absolutely crushed the Wizards (and that was with Arenas!). Anyway, it’s tough to watch your team on somebody else’s home court, especially when that court’s in Boston. The fans here aren’t exactly charitable to opposing teams or, frankly, awash in the notion of sportsmanship. And the fact that the Wizards had just beaten the Celtics two nights ago meant that everyone was a little, shall we say, pumped up.

Despite my partisanship it was pretty awesome to see Garnett on his new team, though. And to see him live, which I hadn’t done before. Dude is intense, let’s put it that way. Just look at that picture from the Jan. 12 recap I linked to in the first paragraph. And it looked like the Celtics were going to win without too much trouble, after the Wizards had a disappointing third quarter and were down 14 points in the middle of the fourth.

But then my man Caron Butler took over, scoring some amazing layups and getting fouled and helping the Wiz outscore Boston 25-6 in the last six minutes. It was something else to hear that crowd, who had been screaming so loud all night, end the game in a stunned hush. (Here’s the recap for posterity, with a great pic of Caron.) It was tough to be in an arena where the outcome was considered a shocking loss, but I managed to walk out of there without my huge grin attracting any attention. And listening to the Boston fans loudly bitching about the loss on the T, that was pretty sweet, too.

On an unrelated note, this is my blog’s 100th post. Go me!

(Edited on 2 Feb: Dammit, they took all the cool pics down off the recap pages. Sorry!)

Beer for breakfast, and other indulgences

It’s high time I talked about one of my favorite subjects in the context of the Philippines trip: food. I consider myself pretty adventurous for an American, which I admit isn’t saying much, here in the land where ketchup is considered by some to be spicy. But growing up, we ate all kinds of weird things: tongue, liver, kidneys, and every imaginable vegetable, including the infamous brussel sprout and ones you ain’t even heard of like kohlrabi. So I was well prepped for Filipino food, which seems to consider just about anything edible, including crickets. (Note: it is damn near impossible to Google anything about the eating, rather than the sporting, kind of cricket, so no link for you.)

First off, let me be clear that I did not try the crickets. And I didn’t cross paths with balut, although I admit that after a beer or two I might have actually tried it if someone had plunked it in front of me. But I was spared. Anyway, having said all this, the food was consistently awesome. Besides the daing na bangus I already mentioned, another seafood standout was inihaw na pusit (grilled squid). Just damn good. I was also glad to have tongue again, which I haven’t had in ages. Yay kaskasero for having it at your wedding! Also great was sisig, which is probably best when you have no idea what’s in it. (Everything is chopped up nice and small, though, which helps with any urk factor you might feel.) You can see the squid and the sisig in the picture below: sisig on my plate, and squid two serving dishes away from the camera.

Don’t forget the rice, of course! Rice with every meal including breakfast. And everything is eaten with a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other; you use the fork to push food onto the spoon. And if you’re paranoid about food safety like I am, you wash everything down with San Miguel, which is a pretty good beer considering that I pretty much hate beer. (Even Jet Li and Stephen Chow like it, so who can argue?)

As for nonnative food, well I have to laugh, because there are heaps of American chains in Manila, and I studiously avoided them all just like I do at home. Shakey’s is apparently popular there, which is amusing because I think they have almost no presence in the U.S. these days. And how funny is it that I traveled almost 9000 miles to eat the first Krispy Kreme doughnut I’ve had in a long while?

I leave you with a link: This article has a lot of interesting stuff in it about eating in Manila. And based on my own experience, I have no doubt that it’s all true!

Crowd control

First off, happy new year everybody! And now back to the Manila report.

I should backtrack a bit from the previous post and spend a little time describing our arrival on Monday night. It was a four hour flight from Tokyo, which definitely qualifies as insult to injury. We arrived around 10:30 pm local time, and you could feel the warm humidity from the jetway, of course. It was probably about 75F/24C and balmy, with a strongly funky overtone. Or maybe funky, with a slightly balmy overtone. Anyway, once we slogged through Immigration, waited an eternity for our bags—I think each person on that 747 was shipping eight boxes full of Christmas presents home—and got through customs, I figured we’d see the smiling face of kaskasero waiting to pick us up.

Not quite. I need to provide a little background on the scene, though, and explain about balikbayans and other overseas workers. Lots and lots and lots of Filipinos work outside the country all year, and then come home at the holidays. By lots I mean gazillions. So the international airport around Christmastime is a total madhouse (although for all I know, it’s like that all the time). For a lot of overseas workers, their whole family will come to meet them at the airport, and so there’s an outrageous mob of people waiting for arrivals at any time. So in order to handle the crowds, all the people waiting to meet arrivals are kept in an area away from the airport, behind a big fence and gate. If you’re the one arriving, you follow signs for the family waiting area and then get sorted by last name. Then you come out into an open area where your family can spot you from a distance, and persuade a guard dude to let you through the gate to meet your peeps. Kind of complicated, but totally necessary, I suppose. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard to figure out on no sleep!

In general, Manila is ridiculously crowded. Apparently the hordes are at their height around the holidays, so we saw the scene at max capacity. Besides the vehicle traffic on the roads, there’s also nutso amounts of people packed in the malls, and pedestrians randomly crossing streets whenever there seems to be a tiny break in the cars. (Or no break at all; I swear people were actually nudging pedestrians out of the way with their cars.) Occasionally the government sees fit to try and discourage people from walking across the faster highways; hence this sign:

Roughly translated, it says “Don’t cross here, you will die.” Of course it turns out that others have noted these signs. Funny, and yet not. People actually do cross any road, any time, even the elevated highways like EDSA, and apparently they don’t always make it.

Another thing I experienced that ties in with this theme is security. It was everywhere. You couldn’t walk into a mall or hotel without opening up your bags and often walking through metal detectors, and there were bomb-sniffing dogs and armed security guards in a lot of places, too. It was somewhat reassuring, given the unrest that the country experiences now and then, but also unnerving, since you recognize it’s all there because there’s a need for it. When we flew out, there were three separate security checks to go through at the airport, including one just to get into the building. Although, that wasn’t what bothered me about the departure. What bothered me was that they charge you 750P/$18 cash before they allow you to fly out. What the heck?! Fortunately we were warned at the hotel. Kaskasero, I’ll pay you back, I promise!