Saya ingin berbicara mengenai memori di bulan februari lagi. Kenapa kenangan? Karena dia hidup di masa lalu, makanya disebut kenangan. Dan karena itu pula lah, dia bisa diingat kapanpun ketika kita sedang ingin. Tidak terasa di tahun ini saya sekarang berdiri di luar garis itu. Sekarang saya hanya bisa melihat dari luar saja. Sambil mengingat apa yang terjadi di dalam. Setahun sudah saya keluar dari radio Sonata. Sebenarnya bukan masalah yang besar sih, tapi kalo itu menyangkut radio yang pertama kali saya dengar, pertama kali yang membuat saya ketagihan mendengar musik, nah itu baru menjadi masalah. Karena banyak sekali hal yang terjadi di dalam, ketika saya masih menjadi penyiar disana.
Masih ingatlah waktu jaman-jamannya smp saya masih mendengarkan dan menyaksikan In-Dangdut di televisi, setelah kemudian saya di”cuci otak” oleh kace, nonton mtv land, mtv most wanted, mtv fresh, barulah saya kemudian mencari penyaluran. penyalurannya, ya dengan mencari radio yang bisa menyalurkan kebutuhanku. Dan di radio itulah yang bisa mengerti selera laguku. Jadi ini lah salah satu momen juga kenapa saya memilih radio sebagai konsentrasi media saya (mo buat film, malas. Fotografi, ndak minat). Ketika sekolah di Stm juga saya yang kemudian ketemu dengan salah satu Sonata Lovers juga. Menk namanya. Ketika kita ketemu di skolah, semua orang ngomongin, “eh nonton anu tidak semalam?, eh liat ini tidak di tivi?”, saya tidak. Saya dengan Menk malahan ngobrol “eh sudah dengar lagunya ini belum? Ko dengar morningnya tadi reimahdani?” dan setelah itu sumpah, gak ada yang bisa nyambung kalo ngobrol dengan kita.
Waktu pertama training saya ingat skali di bulan September 2003, pulang dari jaga warnet orang rumah bilang tadi ada telpon dari sonata. Katanya disuruh tes besok. What?! Disinilah awal mulanya. Yo olooooooooo banyaknya yang tes waktu itu. Dan beruntunglah saya menjadi salah satu dari 5 orang yang terpilih selain Lisa, Esther, Pittho, Digo (Miss u So much Folk! Dimana yah kalian sekarang?). training? Deg-deg an rasanya. Setelah sebulan training dan mengerti semua peralatannya, akhirnya saya siaran! Siaran pertama tuh, Pesona Indonesia 2 Jam + Hit radio 1 jam. Wuih, canggih! Mmm.. kalo gak salah list lagu saya pas awal-awal siaran itu,
Marcell – Firasat
Agnes Monica – Bilang Saja
Coklat – Segitiga
Vertical Horizon – I’m Still Here
Kangen!!! Kangen lah rasanya dengan suasana di dalam. Sering juga sih perasaan tak percaya (walopun udah setahunan lebih siaran) “wah suara saya di dengar satu makassar loh!” dan saya sih nyante aja. Banyak sekali orang yang masuk dan keluar disana. Tapi itulah yang membuat kita dekat. Dengan sesama penyiar. Walopun jarang ketemu, tetapi ikatan nya tuh kuat banget. Apalagi “pesan-pesan” yang tertulis di Log Book absen, seru banget! Dari janjian nonton, saling cela, ada semua disitu. Selama di Sonata juga lah saya kemudian bertemu dengan K’ Dila. My Little Fairy. Dialah orang pertama yang ngomong begini ke saya,
“adek, apa yang ko sembunyikan dari saya. Bisa saja kau tutupi, tapi matamu bisa berkata lain”
Dan kemudian dia menjadi orang yang paling bisa mengerti diriku. Menjadi teman ketika saya sudah berada di batas kehancuran dulu (tidak usah lah saya menceritakan kehidupan bagaimana yang saya jalani dulu), menjadi teman jalan, dan menjadi teman siaran paling enak. Mengenai mental, semua orang memang bilang, mental kamu betul-betul diuji ketika masuk di Sonata. Apalagi ketika masa-masa jayanya, yaitu ketika saya masuk. Wuih, disinilah saya ketemu “Bapak”. Yang punya Sonata, yang tinggal disana, yang buka pintu. Dan tentu saja yang marah-marah kalo siaran kita tidak becus. Dan dia kalau marah, begh pelan tapi dalem. Perkataannya ini benar-benar tanpa ampun. Biar kamu lagi siaran juga, kalo lagi naik arisanmu pasti kena marah (walopun seringnya sih tanpa alasan yang jelas. Kalo dia lagi bad mood dan butuh pelampiasan, pasti cari-cari kesalah deh kerjanya!). emosi jiwa, pastilah. Rasanya kalo kena marah itu, kau tidak akan pernah berharap akan ada siaran mu lagi di minggu itu yang harus membuatmu bertatap muka lagi dengan Bapak. Makanya banyak anak-anak yang terkadang tidak tahan dimarahin sama bapak. Dan mereka Cuma bisa bilang, “menyerah maka’. Sampai disini ji saya bisa bertahan”. Tapi memang terbukti sih, dengan semua perkataan keras itu, dengan semua disiplin itu, kita dibentuk menjadi penyiar yang Tough, yang pintar, yang bagus dalam mix lagu. Karena kita serius. Professional dalam kerja, biar mo ada badai juga tetap harus menyiar. Karena banyangin aja, teriakan senior pas ospek tidak ada artinya dibandingkan dengan “ceramah” dari bapak. Hehehehe, maaf!
Rasanya rindu banget ngucapin kalimat ini lagi,
“dari jalur utama sudirman 86, halo sahabat sehati sebaya muda, apa kabar di pagi hari ini. Morning sound hadir setiap pagi mulai dari pukul 6 sampai pukul 9 nanti hanya di 96 Sonata Fm. Bersama saya reza mahendra, siapkan diri kamu untuk suntikan semangat dan adrenalin melalui tembang-tembang yang diharapkan bisa menambah kesegaran di pagi hari, so stay tune I’ll be right back after this one!”
Damn! But life’s go on lah. Tidak mungkin saya selama disana. Tidak mungkin saya menjadi muda selamanya. Dan ya itu langkah terbesar yang saya ambil setahun yang lalu. Keluar dari sana. Setidaknya untuk mempersiapkan diri menjadi penyiar professional, mesti menghilangkan dulu gaya anak mudanya. Toh, secara umur juga udah mulai dewasa. Sudahlah, saya akan selalu merindukan jalanan itu, tangga itu, kursi itu, (walopun saya tidak akan pernah merindukan bapak dengan Bin, si anjing yang telah puas meneriaki kami selama disana). Memori selama 2 setengah tahun akan tersimpan rapi di sudut ingatanku. Dan akan kubuka kembali ketika saya ketemu dengan anak-anak yang dulu. Kenangan, tidak terasa sudah setahun berlalu.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Setahun berlalu
Oh, no... Here We Go Again... Again.
More photographic evidence, courtesy of Nick "SoSmelly," of the mayhem that was:
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The Party Bus, in full effect:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps the most elegant capturing of the idiocy that was I:
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Lisa & Dave, WAY too mature for this:
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Craig & Nyet, B & W Joy:
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Nyet, suspicious (& Rightly So):
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The stage, pre-rock:
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Early candidate for coolest pic of all time, Nyet & Nick:
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Where's my rockumentary at?
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Nyet & Craig, post-rock analysis:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Party Bus, in full effect:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Perhaps the most elegant capturing of the idiocy that was I:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Lisa & Dave, WAY too mature for this:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Craig & Nyet, B & W Joy:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Nyet, suspicious (& Rightly So):
----------------------------------------------------------------------------The stage, pre-rock:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Early candidate for coolest pic of all time, Nyet & Nick:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Where's my rockumentary at?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Nyet & Craig, post-rock analysis:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, no... Here We Go Again...
The MUCH anticipated video of Nyet Jones in all his bachelor partied Whitesnake glory...
Oh, dear...
Oh, dear...
Your Cheating Art... Students...William Tell... Ahn-Yoo
Spent a large part of this morning / afternoon (in between classes and tutoring and assembly) grading papers. Two students managed to get the exact same grade, a 35.
The same students missed the exact problems on the front page. They had the exact same wrong answers. Their short answer questions had the exact same form. They picked the same questions for their long answer essays, and both said the same inane things. (Oh, and the background obvious question, yes, they say next to one oanother during the test).
The real question, natch, is why would you bother to cheat off of someone who got a 35? Or if this is the collective product of two minds, do they really deserve a 17.5 each?
As it turns out, I let them off with a big warning, said it looked bad and they should sit apart from one another in the future, and oh by the way you're both failing and won't graduate. So I didn't really punish them for it - you know the old adage:
"It ain't cheating if you don't pass."
Your daily dose of muppet:
The same students missed the exact problems on the front page. They had the exact same wrong answers. Their short answer questions had the exact same form. They picked the same questions for their long answer essays, and both said the same inane things. (Oh, and the background obvious question, yes, they say next to one oanother during the test).
The real question, natch, is why would you bother to cheat off of someone who got a 35? Or if this is the collective product of two minds, do they really deserve a 17.5 each?
As it turns out, I let them off with a big warning, said it looked bad and they should sit apart from one another in the future, and oh by the way you're both failing and won't graduate. So I didn't really punish them for it - you know the old adage:
"It ain't cheating if you don't pass."
Your daily dose of muppet:
Monday, February 26, 2007
Just Because the Rhythm is Slow...
A good thing from today: I finally found an mp3 copy of Prince Fleaswallow's Rap from the video game Parappa the Rappa. We used to rock out to this video game at Lovett 509 at Rice with Jason and Will, the parappa master. It's basically a rhythm game; you tap buttons on the controller in rhythm with the music and your little psychedelic dog character raps. Sounds dumb, but it's transcendentally awesome- and besides the game, the song is awesome - a real slowed down, drawling reggae rap done by a pimp frog. But why describe with words when I can SHOW YOU:
So you can see why I've been scouring the web for this fantastic nostalgia-laden work of art. Sweetness! One more thing checked of ye olde to-do list.
This to some degree makes up for an otherwise lackluster day which I started by driving through snow for two hours only to once again learn that my students had not done their work. Beearg. I read them the riot act today; I believe the phrase "get your act together" was used.
Otherwise, just another slow day /night / teach /tutor chalk up today. Beck got home late and we watched last week's episode of Lost.
He walks among us, but he is not one of us.
In lieu of more meaningful but due to my tiredness probably downward sloping talk, I will leave you with another Muppet Show clip -there's going to be a lot of these in the coming days - of Beaker singing "Feelings."
Sunday, February 25, 2007
So don't yell Help Help - it's the South Street Brunch
I'm going to have start carrying a tape recorder everywhere I go. The conversations I find myself in are just that funny. Because I just got threatedned by a descendant of Isaac Searl, i will now recall some of them from brunch yesterday:
1. The first was some comment about how I'm always hilarious, and how does beck handle it. Beck inserts her usual eye-rolling "it's like Christmas every day" comment in here. I comment on how horrible that would be, if Christmas were so blase that we treated it more like a secular holiday instead of a sacred event.
2. Margie confessed her agony over her will. I pointed out how sneaky she had been in steering the conversation that way, idly chatting through brunch, waiting for her moment to pounce: I think her segue went something like "I wonder how much this omelet weighs? Speaking of ways, by which I mean that thing there is when there is a will, I was just thinking about wills." The agony is that several of the legal powers that be will not let you split a will three ways because of the apparent insanity that ensues when you have to divide a number by three. So Margie has decided to give Meghan 34 and the other two children 33 percent. In an instant of pure encapsulated character betrayal, Meghan says "oh, that'd be sad if you died," and Beck said, "But that's not fair." Many suggestions were thrown out, none accepted. Beck dubiously suggested having another child to make it all come out even, but this would drop her percent from 33 to 25 percent. We learned a lot about Beck's poker strategy from that suggestion.
3. We talked about the unreliability of memory. (Wait for it... wait for it...). I think.
4. We finished up with a vivacious discussion on the ATHF signs, the generational gap, guerrilla marketing, and the culpability of the people involved in the whole instant. I think I threw down the weirdest metaphor, that the ATHF guys had merely shouted BANANA in a crowded theater and the Boston PTB said "Surely he meant fire?"
Also, I had a bacon-cheese omelet and a side of French Toast, and it was awesome.
Flash forward...
Last night we went to watch the Oscars with Ben & Ali - the quick review is that watching the red carpet show is like plucking the hairs off your soul with a tweezer, one by one. Ellen Degeneres was a great host - she somehow manages to toe that line between funny and horrendously cheesy. I don't get it, but she was damn cute / funny. The following musical number was funny:
And the rest of it was a lot of the same old stupid stuff. The company of Ben-ALi and the food / dessert was MUCH better. And besides, I came home to the computer and someone had sent me this:
And btw, the title of this post is a clear homage to The Hair Bear Bunch.
1. The first was some comment about how I'm always hilarious, and how does beck handle it. Beck inserts her usual eye-rolling "it's like Christmas every day" comment in here. I comment on how horrible that would be, if Christmas were so blase that we treated it more like a secular holiday instead of a sacred event.
2. Margie confessed her agony over her will. I pointed out how sneaky she had been in steering the conversation that way, idly chatting through brunch, waiting for her moment to pounce: I think her segue went something like "I wonder how much this omelet weighs? Speaking of ways, by which I mean that thing there is when there is a will, I was just thinking about wills." The agony is that several of the legal powers that be will not let you split a will three ways because of the apparent insanity that ensues when you have to divide a number by three. So Margie has decided to give Meghan 34 and the other two children 33 percent. In an instant of pure encapsulated character betrayal, Meghan says "oh, that'd be sad if you died," and Beck said, "But that's not fair." Many suggestions were thrown out, none accepted. Beck dubiously suggested having another child to make it all come out even, but this would drop her percent from 33 to 25 percent. We learned a lot about Beck's poker strategy from that suggestion.
3. We talked about the unreliability of memory. (Wait for it... wait for it...). I think.
4. We finished up with a vivacious discussion on the ATHF signs, the generational gap, guerrilla marketing, and the culpability of the people involved in the whole instant. I think I threw down the weirdest metaphor, that the ATHF guys had merely shouted BANANA in a crowded theater and the Boston PTB said "Surely he meant fire?"
Also, I had a bacon-cheese omelet and a side of French Toast, and it was awesome.
Flash forward...
Last night we went to watch the Oscars with Ben & Ali - the quick review is that watching the red carpet show is like plucking the hairs off your soul with a tweezer, one by one. Ellen Degeneres was a great host - she somehow manages to toe that line between funny and horrendously cheesy. I don't get it, but she was damn cute / funny. The following musical number was funny:
And the rest of it was a lot of the same old stupid stuff. The company of Ben-ALi and the food / dessert was MUCH better. And besides, I came home to the computer and someone had sent me this:
And btw, the title of this post is a clear homage to The Hair Bear Bunch.
And the wheel in the (electric meter) keeps on turning (way too fast)
So after three months of absurdly high electric bills - ours usually fluctuates between 90 and 110, and the last three months came in at 202, 267, 308 - and a couple of calls into our friends at nationalgrid who swore they could do nothing about it, we finally figured out the deal:
The ENTIRE TIME we have been at this apartment, we have been paying the elec bill for OUR UPSTAIRS NEIGHBORS.
WTFTTM!!!! Our two electric meters are stacked on top of one another, and the top one is clearly attached to the electrical wires that run into the upstairs apartment. However, our door on the bottom floor is to the right of the door to the upstairs apartment. So some genius decided long ago that the upstairs apartment on the left is A and the apartment on the first floor, but on the right, is B. Which is why we live in apartment B.
But the geniuses at the electric company assumed that the B apartment was upstairs and that the A apartment was downstairs. Which is actually the right thing to assume, so this is largely a miscommunication. So no ill will for that.
The problem is that we have OIL HEAT and the upstairs neighbors have ELECTRIC HEAT. The upstairs neighbors also have gas heat, but they don't use it - apparently our old neighbors only used their gas heat, so this discrepancy did not come to their notice. But for the last three months, we have been paying both ridiculous heating bills for both apartments. CHINGAU to the max. Of course, the upstairs folks have been paying for my luxurious baths, but that does not even come close to covering that.
So, ill will towards:
1. Myself. I can't believe it took us three months to figure this out, and if we had just looked at the stupid meter instead of trusting the jackasses at nationalgrid, we would have known right away what was happening. Today, in addition to the clear evidence that the elec box number that we were getting charged for was connected to the top floor, Beck and I unplugged everything and guess what, the meter that we are not paying for stopped moving while the one that we are paying for currently kept spinning like a phishhead in the aisle. So I am dumb, and out something like $300+ bucks in the past three months alone, which I had better @#$%ing get back from national grid. And really, since the heat *probably* started kicking in in October, it's probably even worse than that.
2. The electric company. Tres @#$%ers! I called up as a concerned customer and their highly trained response was, "you know, it gets colder in the winter." How about this, dimwit - when someone calls in and says "what the hell, I'm using 2.5 times as many kilowatts as normal and I don't have any new appliances," how 'bout you say "I'm sorry, we'll send someone out right away and try to figure this out." If these pendejos don't give me back my money, I am soooooo traveling down to the Fresh Pond Best Western, grabbing my leopard skin robe and my sombrero, a walking cane and I am straight up pimp-slapping those beeatches! ARGH! Where my brocage at, chumps?!?!?!!
3. Bless their hearts, but the upstairs neighbors - it was 15 degrees! Your heating bill didn't go up at all? I went upstairs and specifically asked you if something funny was going on with your electric bill and you said no?!?!? HELLO!!!! You have been in the big city for six plus months now; that Midwestern PASS to Six Flags has expired!!! ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH.
I'm not a sucka; I don't need a bodyguard. The universe owes me all those baths I skipped to keep our electric bill down. This had better work out in the financial end or I will type more mean words about you, silly peoples. Nationalgrid, you are on my list*!!!!**
* - Of companies that I use the internet to autopay.
** - At least part of my overly hostile reaction to this business is one, I just had to unplug everything in the house in the middle of when i was trying to write progress reports (for one of my students who is currently rocking the academic casbah with a 22 average - can you say "repeat senior year?" Perhaps you will be inclined to think - that guy stole my graduation from me - he's such a robster). Two, I was woken up after a short night's sleep by two "people," let's call them Wrarkle and Spigley, who decided that sunrise = go out = bark = jump on nyet's face.
The ENTIRE TIME we have been at this apartment, we have been paying the elec bill for OUR UPSTAIRS NEIGHBORS.
WTFTTM!!!! Our two electric meters are stacked on top of one another, and the top one is clearly attached to the electrical wires that run into the upstairs apartment. However, our door on the bottom floor is to the right of the door to the upstairs apartment. So some genius decided long ago that the upstairs apartment on the left is A and the apartment on the first floor, but on the right, is B. Which is why we live in apartment B.
But the geniuses at the electric company assumed that the B apartment was upstairs and that the A apartment was downstairs. Which is actually the right thing to assume, so this is largely a miscommunication. So no ill will for that.
The problem is that we have OIL HEAT and the upstairs neighbors have ELECTRIC HEAT. The upstairs neighbors also have gas heat, but they don't use it - apparently our old neighbors only used their gas heat, so this discrepancy did not come to their notice. But for the last three months, we have been paying both ridiculous heating bills for both apartments. CHINGAU to the max. Of course, the upstairs folks have been paying for my luxurious baths, but that does not even come close to covering that.
So, ill will towards:
1. Myself. I can't believe it took us three months to figure this out, and if we had just looked at the stupid meter instead of trusting the jackasses at nationalgrid, we would have known right away what was happening. Today, in addition to the clear evidence that the elec box number that we were getting charged for was connected to the top floor, Beck and I unplugged everything and guess what, the meter that we are not paying for stopped moving while the one that we are paying for currently kept spinning like a phishhead in the aisle. So I am dumb, and out something like $300+ bucks in the past three months alone, which I had better @#$%ing get back from national grid. And really, since the heat *probably* started kicking in in October, it's probably even worse than that.
2. The electric company. Tres @#$%ers! I called up as a concerned customer and their highly trained response was, "you know, it gets colder in the winter." How about this, dimwit - when someone calls in and says "what the hell, I'm using 2.5 times as many kilowatts as normal and I don't have any new appliances," how 'bout you say "I'm sorry, we'll send someone out right away and try to figure this out." If these pendejos don't give me back my money, I am soooooo traveling down to the Fresh Pond Best Western, grabbing my leopard skin robe and my sombrero, a walking cane and I am straight up pimp-slapping those beeatches! ARGH! Where my brocage at, chumps?!?!?!!
3. Bless their hearts, but the upstairs neighbors - it was 15 degrees! Your heating bill didn't go up at all? I went upstairs and specifically asked you if something funny was going on with your electric bill and you said no?!?!? HELLO!!!! You have been in the big city for six plus months now; that Midwestern PASS to Six Flags has expired!!! ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH.
I'm not a sucka; I don't need a bodyguard. The universe owes me all those baths I skipped to keep our electric bill down. This had better work out in the financial end or I will type more mean words about you, silly peoples. Nationalgrid, you are on my list*!!!!**
* - Of companies that I use the internet to autopay.
** - At least part of my overly hostile reaction to this business is one, I just had to unplug everything in the house in the middle of when i was trying to write progress reports (for one of my students who is currently rocking the academic casbah with a 22 average - can you say "repeat senior year?" Perhaps you will be inclined to think - that guy stole my graduation from me - he's such a robster). Two, I was woken up after a short night's sleep by two "people," let's call them Wrarkle and Spigley, who decided that sunrise = go out = bark = jump on nyet's face.
One More Lewisism
A GREAT point in the book in Moneyball is that the difference between a .300 hitter and a .260 one is:
.300 * say, 550 ab = 165
.260 * 550 = 143
165-143 = 22
22 / 25 week season = 0.88 hits per week.
And that a difference of less than 1 hit per week is impossible for a human to reliably observe.
Anecdotal evidence is not to be trusted.
Of course, this entire point is made much more eloquently by your friend and mine, Crash Davis:
"Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium."
.300 * say, 550 ab = 165
.260 * 550 = 143
165-143 = 22
22 / 25 week season = 0.88 hits per week.
And that a difference of less than 1 hit per week is impossible for a human to reliably observe.
Anecdotal evidence is not to be trusted.
Of course, this entire point is made much more eloquently by your friend and mine, Crash Davis:
"Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium."
357 Hold-'em Cranium
Last night was this lady's birthday:
So the Beck and I, after a jaunt to the gym, trucked down to Boston for an afternoon / evening of stories, presents, pizza and gamesmanship. Beck, Meghan (the b-day girl pictured above), Meghan's hubby Greg, and iParents were in town. We started off with some chips, cheese, Bass / Guinness and presents for Beck (wedding), me (past birthday), Greg and Meghan (the b-day gal). Much fun - Beck got multiple wedding planning aids as well as the most perfect iF gift of all time, a pink "Citations" pad which will allow her to live out her dream - handing out written citation to public faux pas committers. So next time you let your kid cry out in public, she won't just give a dirty look to the back of his head, she will hand you a ticket. Viva Fe Fist! I got a nice gift certificate to iTunes and a couple of original Beck art pieces, both of the genre "ashtray," from beck's youth. I was informed that they are "On Loan," making me suspect that like at a new job, I am starting the marriage on probation. Greg and Meghan got the requisite psychiatrist gag gifts, Greg got some original print Yiddish 1930s newspapers to hang in his new Brookline office, and Meghan got a dearth of books and CDs and general happiness. Great gifts from the iRents.
And now, poker time! We all threw in ten (it turned out, imaginary) dollars and started with a rousing game of 357, with lots of people being very risk-happy and the pot / bet quickly jumping to 3 dollars. Lots of personality quirks showed up - Reckless Beck forgot how to pronounce the word "out" and threw in with anyone who would challenge her, often relying on other people (read: me) to figure out the hand that she actually had. Greg displayed an awesome tendency to have a full house going into the round of seven, only to get smashed by four kings or five aces - he really did have an unlucky night. Margie feigned ignorance the entire evening; I am still relatively sure that she is using some kind of mind meld to hustle us. iPJ was his usual shrewd self; he distracted us with stories of raising dead iPods (Margie's iPod is now nicknamed "Lazarus") while he turned his cards from water I mean twos into aces. He also got slightly rooked by his hands, and was probably the main victim of Beck's rope-a-dope strategy. I played my usual dodge & weave, close to the chest game; I don't know if anyone noticed, but I actually only went in on two hands the entire time (one 6 dollar win, one 6 dollar loss; I essentially ended up kissing my sister and out the antes for the game). And of course, in this completely unrigged game, Meghan the b-day girl came up on top - she used some gnarly, deceptive play and threw down some gigantic hands (she had the 5 aces and many a flush / full house on hands of seven) and not only won a bunch of hands but also took home a 12 dollar pot to end the contest. She ended up with $24+, which when combined with Greg's tragic -$4 performance, actually left them with $20 on a $20 investment. I think beck and I *maybe* collectively broke the $20 by a hair and Margie/Scott were a tad under; essentially the whole game was a wash, but fun.
So we played Texas Hold 'Em next, and this is where things got CRAZY! I took a couple of big bluffed hands early on and tried to lean on the crowd to no real avail. Meghan chipped away but dropped some money to me and couldn't hang with my insane all-in bets; she took advantage of her family members, though, and definitely left a stamp of a lesson on the night : "one should not mess with the neuropsychologist." Greg, Margie and Beck all battled and exchanged money to no one's big advantage - in the end, the game came down to a furious blow dealt to the Nyet by the iPJ. I started with an ace and an 8 suited, and bet high to remove people from the betting at the get go. A couple of people folded, but Scott re-raised; we all matched and went in for the kill. There was a bunch of garbage turned on the flop - something like 2, 4, J off suit - so I still liked my ace in hand chances and decided to puff ye old chest feather. I threw in a decent bet, but everybody hung in. On the turn: an ace! Boo-yeah! I didn't want to mess around with anyone getting a three of a kind on the river, so I threw big; everyone backed out except the iPJ. It was mano a mano; the big time. The next car drops and it's a 7; I'm a little worried but think that maybe I can fake that my pair of aces j-8 is better than whatever Scott has. So I bet $5 - and he calls! Argh. I have been bitten! But i pull out my pair of aces, hoping that maybe he was sticking with the pair of jacks. But he has - double argh - pocket aces! I lose. I try to explain how improbable it is that someone would have pocket aces when i had an ace and there was an ace on the table, but no one would listen; they just pointed at me and chanted "One of us! One of us!"
Through some more dubious bluffing against Meghan, I ended up with a relatively large stack, so Scott and i ended the game close. But I still had the scar, the veritable lightning bolt on my forehead from this evil experience. iPJ! You said it, man.
SO we ate some pizza somewhere in there, and played cranium to close the night out. Beck and I rolled some ridiculous "purples" and flew around the board, making the game exceedingly short. As usual, the highlights of the game came mainly in the charades / impressions / humdingers. The highlights include:
Nyet humming the James Bond Theme and Beck miraculously understanding it
Meghan's avant garde Elvis impersonation
Scott's Fonzie impersonation - that did not involve the use of thumbs?!?!?!
Scott's failed attempt at impersonating a volcano, aka "exploding laser fountain"
The iPs lack of knowledge that it takes a silver bullet to kill a werewolf
Don't worry; their Buffy License has been revoked, and their sentence is to watch all episodes of Buffy featuring Seth Green. We capped the evening with a chocolatey chocolate birthday cake and ice cream - fun times! We took Ma & pa back to the Coolidge Corner hotel and Beck bravely drove us hope through the yawning night. We're meeting in Westborough for brunch this morning - good times with the Searls!
Addendum - Something I forgot to mention yesterday, but tied into something from tonight - I talked about Alan (beck's grandfather) and how despite being a very well-informed baseball statsman would always tooth & nail defend Ted Williams as the best player of all time. Scott said "Well sometimes you can't tell things from statistics," and even though this is true, I was struck by how brainwashed I've become - having read BBTN and Moneyball lately, I cannot control my sympathetic spike of blood pressure when I hear this now. Thanks a lot, Bill James!
Speaking of Bill, and the real reason for this addendum, I wanted to point you to this quote from Moneyball, just because I though it was cool to hear these thoughts from a writer who is often first noted as a baseball guy. I'll end the post with this:
"Every form of strength is a form of weakness. Pretty girls tend to be insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say."
So the Beck and I, after a jaunt to the gym, trucked down to Boston for an afternoon / evening of stories, presents, pizza and gamesmanship. Beck, Meghan (the b-day girl pictured above), Meghan's hubby Greg, and iParents were in town. We started off with some chips, cheese, Bass / Guinness and presents for Beck (wedding), me (past birthday), Greg and Meghan (the b-day gal). Much fun - Beck got multiple wedding planning aids as well as the most perfect iF gift of all time, a pink "Citations" pad which will allow her to live out her dream - handing out written citation to public faux pas committers. So next time you let your kid cry out in public, she won't just give a dirty look to the back of his head, she will hand you a ticket. Viva Fe Fist! I got a nice gift certificate to iTunes and a couple of original Beck art pieces, both of the genre "ashtray," from beck's youth. I was informed that they are "On Loan," making me suspect that like at a new job, I am starting the marriage on probation. Greg and Meghan got the requisite psychiatrist gag gifts, Greg got some original print Yiddish 1930s newspapers to hang in his new Brookline office, and Meghan got a dearth of books and CDs and general happiness. Great gifts from the iRents.
And now, poker time! We all threw in ten (it turned out, imaginary) dollars and started with a rousing game of 357, with lots of people being very risk-happy and the pot / bet quickly jumping to 3 dollars. Lots of personality quirks showed up - Reckless Beck forgot how to pronounce the word "out" and threw in with anyone who would challenge her, often relying on other people (read: me) to figure out the hand that she actually had. Greg displayed an awesome tendency to have a full house going into the round of seven, only to get smashed by four kings or five aces - he really did have an unlucky night. Margie feigned ignorance the entire evening; I am still relatively sure that she is using some kind of mind meld to hustle us. iPJ was his usual shrewd self; he distracted us with stories of raising dead iPods (Margie's iPod is now nicknamed "Lazarus") while he turned his cards from water I mean twos into aces. He also got slightly rooked by his hands, and was probably the main victim of Beck's rope-a-dope strategy. I played my usual dodge & weave, close to the chest game; I don't know if anyone noticed, but I actually only went in on two hands the entire time (one 6 dollar win, one 6 dollar loss; I essentially ended up kissing my sister and out the antes for the game). And of course, in this completely unrigged game, Meghan the b-day girl came up on top - she used some gnarly, deceptive play and threw down some gigantic hands (she had the 5 aces and many a flush / full house on hands of seven) and not only won a bunch of hands but also took home a 12 dollar pot to end the contest. She ended up with $24+, which when combined with Greg's tragic -$4 performance, actually left them with $20 on a $20 investment. I think beck and I *maybe* collectively broke the $20 by a hair and Margie/Scott were a tad under; essentially the whole game was a wash, but fun.
So we played Texas Hold 'Em next, and this is where things got CRAZY! I took a couple of big bluffed hands early on and tried to lean on the crowd to no real avail. Meghan chipped away but dropped some money to me and couldn't hang with my insane all-in bets; she took advantage of her family members, though, and definitely left a stamp of a lesson on the night : "one should not mess with the neuropsychologist." Greg, Margie and Beck all battled and exchanged money to no one's big advantage - in the end, the game came down to a furious blow dealt to the Nyet by the iPJ. I started with an ace and an 8 suited, and bet high to remove people from the betting at the get go. A couple of people folded, but Scott re-raised; we all matched and went in for the kill. There was a bunch of garbage turned on the flop - something like 2, 4, J off suit - so I still liked my ace in hand chances and decided to puff ye old chest feather. I threw in a decent bet, but everybody hung in. On the turn: an ace! Boo-yeah! I didn't want to mess around with anyone getting a three of a kind on the river, so I threw big; everyone backed out except the iPJ. It was mano a mano; the big time. The next car drops and it's a 7; I'm a little worried but think that maybe I can fake that my pair of aces j-8 is better than whatever Scott has. So I bet $5 - and he calls! Argh. I have been bitten! But i pull out my pair of aces, hoping that maybe he was sticking with the pair of jacks. But he has - double argh - pocket aces! I lose. I try to explain how improbable it is that someone would have pocket aces when i had an ace and there was an ace on the table, but no one would listen; they just pointed at me and chanted "One of us! One of us!"
Through some more dubious bluffing against Meghan, I ended up with a relatively large stack, so Scott and i ended the game close. But I still had the scar, the veritable lightning bolt on my forehead from this evil experience. iPJ! You said it, man.
SO we ate some pizza somewhere in there, and played cranium to close the night out. Beck and I rolled some ridiculous "purples" and flew around the board, making the game exceedingly short. As usual, the highlights of the game came mainly in the charades / impressions / humdingers. The highlights include:
Nyet humming the James Bond Theme and Beck miraculously understanding it
Meghan's avant garde Elvis impersonation
Scott's Fonzie impersonation - that did not involve the use of thumbs?!?!?!
Scott's failed attempt at impersonating a volcano, aka "exploding laser fountain"
The iPs lack of knowledge that it takes a silver bullet to kill a werewolf
Don't worry; their Buffy License has been revoked, and their sentence is to watch all episodes of Buffy featuring Seth Green. We capped the evening with a chocolatey chocolate birthday cake and ice cream - fun times! We took Ma & pa back to the Coolidge Corner hotel and Beck bravely drove us hope through the yawning night. We're meeting in Westborough for brunch this morning - good times with the Searls!
Addendum - Something I forgot to mention yesterday, but tied into something from tonight - I talked about Alan (beck's grandfather) and how despite being a very well-informed baseball statsman would always tooth & nail defend Ted Williams as the best player of all time. Scott said "Well sometimes you can't tell things from statistics," and even though this is true, I was struck by how brainwashed I've become - having read BBTN and Moneyball lately, I cannot control my sympathetic spike of blood pressure when I hear this now. Thanks a lot, Bill James!
Speaking of Bill, and the real reason for this addendum, I wanted to point you to this quote from Moneyball, just because I though it was cool to hear these thoughts from a writer who is often first noted as a baseball guy. I'll end the post with this:
"Every form of strength is a form of weakness. Pretty girls tend to be insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say."
-Bill James, Writer / Sabermetrician
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Zelda's BFFs
Squashed Philosophers
Several major Western philosophers' works boiled down to about an hour's worth of reading each. It's like Cliff's Notes for the Soul.
Flickr's Eye Candy
A collection of eye candy photographs. Like Cliff's Notes for the eyeballs.
2005 Fittfu Video
This is a highlights collection from my winter indoor league played with the Tufts guys. If you looks carefully, you can see some plays by a trash-talking dude in silver shorts who may or may not be me. Like Cliff's Notes for bad sportsmanship.
2004 Fittfu Fantasy Stats
Just when you thought I couldn't get any lamer - here are the fantasy stats for the 2004 Fittfu season, i.e. Cliff Note's for the self-obsessed. I played for Skipper's team and came in 3rd overall in the fantasy standings; not bad for a slow fat handler. On the other hand, I tore my ACL in the finals, so I give the season an F+.
Noam Chomsky on current U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East
Pretty much is what it says it is. No real Cliff analogy to be made.
Wikipedia's Entry on the Meaning of Life
Interesting. Cliff's Notes for LIFE! Much to Marisha Pessl's chagrin (click the "Find out what it all means" link at the right).
And finally, a very, very cool monologue from Craig Ferguson, host of the late late show, on humanism, Britney and alcohol. Seriously, this is very long, but just a great piece of extemporaneous, heartfelt and still humorous speaking. Check it out; well worth it.
SO Britney, my love, here's hoping for a return to your college dorm wall adorning past. I present the video that started it all:
Several major Western philosophers' works boiled down to about an hour's worth of reading each. It's like Cliff's Notes for the Soul.
Flickr's Eye Candy
A collection of eye candy photographs. Like Cliff's Notes for the eyeballs.
2005 Fittfu Video
This is a highlights collection from my winter indoor league played with the Tufts guys. If you looks carefully, you can see some plays by a trash-talking dude in silver shorts who may or may not be me. Like Cliff's Notes for bad sportsmanship.
2004 Fittfu Fantasy Stats
Just when you thought I couldn't get any lamer - here are the fantasy stats for the 2004 Fittfu season, i.e. Cliff Note's for the self-obsessed. I played for Skipper's team and came in 3rd overall in the fantasy standings; not bad for a slow fat handler. On the other hand, I tore my ACL in the finals, so I give the season an F+.
Noam Chomsky on current U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East
Pretty much is what it says it is. No real Cliff analogy to be made.
Wikipedia's Entry on the Meaning of Life
Interesting. Cliff's Notes for LIFE! Much to Marisha Pessl's chagrin (click the "Find out what it all means" link at the right).
And finally, a very, very cool monologue from Craig Ferguson, host of the late late show, on humanism, Britney and alcohol. Seriously, this is very long, but just a great piece of extemporaneous, heartfelt and still humorous speaking. Check it out; well worth it.
SO Britney, my love, here's hoping for a return to your college dorm wall adorning past. I present the video that started it all:
S-A-TUR-DAY!!!!
Another beautiful, sunny February day in Grafton., I would post a picture, but since in our infinite technological wisdom we have not yet invented feel-o-vision, you would be robbed of the sensation of having wind tear icy flesh from your bones. I wouldn't want to give you an incomplete experience. On a related note, THANKS A LOT Sparkle and Wrigley.
Oh, and I forgot to mention this yesterday, but Frank got funding for Illinois - HUZZAH! Congrats, cuz.
I spent the morning huddled up in the study and writing this review of Moneyball. Enjoy!
I am now waiting for the Princess iF to wake up so we can go to the gym before embarking on our journey downtown to rake in cash hand over fist in a Searl Family Poker game. So while we're sitting here in the studious gloaming...
It's not the like the week ended on President's Day, but oh that it would have. Beck's been in the ER all week from 10-11 or 12 every night, so we've been living a night and day existence. Fun! And I've been slowly recovering from a cold, which has absolutely no relation to the whole not sleeping and drinking game we played this past weekend. None.
So class has been okay, though disheartening. And there have been other wacky events taking place at school, like all of my advisees floundering, students getting expelled, DC'd, leaving for depression-related reasons - all in all, not an uplifting scene. But we've dredged a little knowledge in SASI on the way through - cool activities and class and a test this week, you can check the SASI link at the right for more details.
The highlight of the week was being rescued by Ali on Thrusday - she called up b/c she knew Beck would be absent all night. So I headed over there and we hung out and reminisced on the perils of childhood - good convo. Good times! And then Ben got home and we talked about his new entrepreneurial life. Exciting times in the GrinGoatverse; if we end up leaving this frozen coil next year, I'm going to miss them a lot. As if it weren't enough to keep me company on a wintry beckless night, Ben-Ali found out about my job offer - did I mention I got observed in class on Wednesday and flat out offered a full time job for next year? Something's going right - and took me out to dinner at Cancun's or whatever that Mexican place is around the corner. That's three times in 2 weeks! I think if I am not careful, I am going to soundly test my dad's racially / culturally (potentially) insensitive theory that "Tacos make you fat." (though he is a pediatrician in SA and probably has a sizable sample for such observations). And yes, they still yell loudly "AMIGOS!" at the place in a way that is so ironic it sounds sincere. Regardless, MUCHAS GRACIAS A MI AMIGOS Ben & Ali PORQUE ELLOS SON AMIGOS VERDADEROS. That was very sweet of y'all.
Otherwise, not a lot. I've been watching a Robert Altman film called The Player in pieces this past week and I just started a very cool book called US Guys by Charlie LeDuff that I heard about on NPR's On Point. (That link has the radio show; I highly recommend it). Actually, the main reason I checked the book out from the library is because the guy just seemed so damn cool on the radio - people were calling in and asking for advice and his just sounded like a guru of the real. The book thus far is tres bien; he essentially is visiting American men in a variety of contexts and inserting himself Hunter S. Thompson style in their stories and lives. I will definitely give it the full treatment when I finish.
That's it; I think I will put up a second post here with some cool links I've seen this week.
Oh, and I forgot to mention this yesterday, but Frank got funding for Illinois - HUZZAH! Congrats, cuz.
I spent the morning huddled up in the study and writing this review of Moneyball. Enjoy!
I am now waiting for the Princess iF to wake up so we can go to the gym before embarking on our journey downtown to rake in cash hand over fist in a Searl Family Poker game. So while we're sitting here in the studious gloaming...
It's not the like the week ended on President's Day, but oh that it would have. Beck's been in the ER all week from 10-11 or 12 every night, so we've been living a night and day existence. Fun! And I've been slowly recovering from a cold, which has absolutely no relation to the whole not sleeping and drinking game we played this past weekend. None.
So class has been okay, though disheartening. And there have been other wacky events taking place at school, like all of my advisees floundering, students getting expelled, DC'd, leaving for depression-related reasons - all in all, not an uplifting scene. But we've dredged a little knowledge in SASI on the way through - cool activities and class and a test this week, you can check the SASI link at the right for more details.
The highlight of the week was being rescued by Ali on Thrusday - she called up b/c she knew Beck would be absent all night. So I headed over there and we hung out and reminisced on the perils of childhood - good convo. Good times! And then Ben got home and we talked about his new entrepreneurial life. Exciting times in the GrinGoatverse; if we end up leaving this frozen coil next year, I'm going to miss them a lot. As if it weren't enough to keep me company on a wintry beckless night, Ben-Ali found out about my job offer - did I mention I got observed in class on Wednesday and flat out offered a full time job for next year? Something's going right - and took me out to dinner at Cancun's or whatever that Mexican place is around the corner. That's three times in 2 weeks! I think if I am not careful, I am going to soundly test my dad's racially / culturally (potentially) insensitive theory that "Tacos make you fat." (though he is a pediatrician in SA and probably has a sizable sample for such observations). And yes, they still yell loudly "AMIGOS!" at the place in a way that is so ironic it sounds sincere. Regardless, MUCHAS GRACIAS A MI AMIGOS Ben & Ali PORQUE ELLOS SON AMIGOS VERDADEROS. That was very sweet of y'all.
Otherwise, not a lot. I've been watching a Robert Altman film called The Player in pieces this past week and I just started a very cool book called US Guys by Charlie LeDuff that I heard about on NPR's On Point. (That link has the radio show; I highly recommend it). Actually, the main reason I checked the book out from the library is because the guy just seemed so damn cool on the radio - people were calling in and asking for advice and his just sounded like a guru of the real. The book thus far is tres bien; he essentially is visiting American men in a variety of contexts and inserting himself Hunter S. Thompson style in their stories and lives. I will definitely give it the full treatment when I finish.
That's it; I think I will put up a second post here with some cool links I've seen this week.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Pilihan
hidup ini memilih. benar saja, bahwa dengan memilih kita akan tahu hidup yang seperti apa yang akan kita jalani. seperti apa yang kurasakan dan kualami saat ini. titik ini adalah bentuk pilihanku dari hari-hari kemarin. seringkali terpikir kembali, seperti apa yah bentuk kehidupanku di titik yang sama ketika dulu saya mengambil persimpangan yang lain? apakah akan sama bentuk perasaan, orang-orang yang kukenal, semua apa yang di kepala, apakah semua akan seperti sekarang? rasanya penasaran dan takut saja, karena perjalanan cerita bisa menjadi bagus dan bisa juga menjadi buruk. titik pertama yang paling membekas ketika saya "memilih" sendiri apa yang akan saya jalani yaitu ketika memutuskan untuk masuk SMA. karena otak saya yang lumayan encer (bukan bermaksud sombong nih, narsis aja!) saya bisa lulus di 2 sekolah yang bisa dikatakan gak gampang masuknya. Smada plus Stm telkom. yah, yang pertama sih cuma seleksi biasa aja, pake standar nilai. dan yang kedua yang lumayan terasa perjuangannya karena tes tertulis+psikotest+wawancara. yah, saya heran saja kok banyak orang mengatakan susah masuk sekolah ini (yang kutahu untuk berjuang di dalam dan keluar lebih susah lagi) tapi waktu saya menjalani dengan santai saja. dan saya lulus sodara-sodara. bagaimana yah kehidupan saya kalau misalnya memilih Smada?? hahahahahaha, rasanya pengen ketawa aja ngebayanginnya. generasi hedon bisa jadi hinggap ke saya juga. bisa kebayang bagaimana kehidupan anak sma jaman sekarang kan, mungkin punya teman gaul yang baru. ato malah tersesat di pergaulan yang salah. tidak, bukannya menjudge pergaulan anak sama buruk, cuma worries aja ngeliatnya. dan pasti saya tidak mengerti mengenai BTS, sistem kerja satelit,
dan segala mengenai sistem telekomunikasi lainnya. itu baru satu hal, bagaimana dengan teman? saya pastinya tidak akan bertemu dengan sahabat-sahabat saya nuri, ita, namus (we bussu, mis u so much!), teman-teman dengan kegilaan yang pastinya seru, dan orang-orang tidak penting yang pernah menjadi cerita lalu. yang paling jauh, apakah saya menjadi komunitas blogger makassar? entahlah... sedangkan persimpangan yang kedua yaitu ketika kelar SMA. pilihan utama anak stm sih, elektro lah pastinya. dan itu sudah jadi pilihan utama. ST3 bandung, gak usah deh, naujubileh susah masuknya dan uang kuliahnya. tapi nasib berkata lain. ternyata gak lulus di elektro. alternatif yang diambil, masuk Poltek! yah, proses itu dijalani lagi. tes lagi, seleksi lagi. dan ternyata saya lulus di jurusan telekomunikasi. yah, gak jauh beda lah dengan jurusan yang pernah saya jalani pas di Stm kemarin. duit dari pace buat ngedaftar ulang udah ada, berkas udah siap. tapi ternyata saya yang kemudian mendapat tanda tanya besar. "apa ini yang akan saya pilih sebagai jalan terakhir kehidupan saya?" dan ternyata saya memilih lagi. saya memilih untuk tidak berkuliah. sejenak memikirkan kedepannya. bagaimana seandainya di tengah jalan nanti saya tidak berminat lagi dengan dunia ini. karena selama bersekolah di stm juga, minat ku pada radio sudah semakin besar, dan puncaknya yah pas lulusan SMA itu. nekat buat surat lamaran, dan ternyata saya diterima sebagai penyiar. kehidupan pun ternyata terus berjalan. karena tidak berkuliah, saya pun memutuskan untuk berkuliah di K10 net. hehehehe, jadi OP warnet jack! bagaimana yah bentuk kehidupan saya ketika memilih masuk poltek 4 tahun lalu? yah... penasaran saja, karena banyak cerita juga yang terjadi dari teman-teman yang berkuliah di sana. tapi pastinya saya tidak akan pernah mengenal dunia maya, tidak akan ketemu dengan orang-orang spesial, tidak tahu mengenai bahasa html, tidak tahu bagaimana punya friendster, dan pastinya tidak akan di radio yang sekarang.
karena pilihan saya untuk memilih komunikasi sebagai bidang saya selanjutnya masih menjadi hujatan dan pertanyaan dari beberapa orang yang tidak mengerti. kok bisa-bisanya anak stm nyasar di sospol. karena kemarin saya ketemu dengan adik kelas di stm, dan kemudian yah, cuma nanya kabar gitu aja. dia nanya,
"kita kuliah di mana?"
"unhas"
"oh, elektro yah? berarti masih sama ki dengan k' elva, k' eko dan bla, bla, bla"
"bukan, saya anak sospol"
wakz!!!
katanya bidang ilmunya jauh beda. satunya di teknik satunya bidang sosial. loh emang kenapa? toh saya juga yakin bahwa inilah yang akan saya jalani selanjutnya. dan berkuliah di kosmik adalah pilihan yang tepat. dimana kecintaan saya terhadap media menjadi tersalurkan. bertemu dengan teman yang menjadi bagian terbaik dari kehidupan pertemanan saya. memang sih terkadang saya merasa, betapa sia-sianya perjuangan 3 tahun di stm dulu, tapi mau diapain lagi? daripada di esok hari menyesal karena gak comfort dengan jalan hidup yang dipilih, mending memulai awal yang baru saja lah.
masih banyak bagaimana-bagaimana lainnya yang ingin saya tanyakan. dan bagaimana-bagaimana lainnya yang ingin saya lihat ketika saya memilih persimpangan yang lain. yang jelas status saya di titik ini mungkin bukan sebagai anak kosmik, bukan penyiar di medika, bukan blogger makassar, bukan anak Rumah Kamu, dan bukan beruang.
Breached Whale, or the long ride home
SO beck and I headed back from the airport and called Ben-Ali on the way back. They were up for a movie and some dinner - yahoo! We met them at their place and headed over to the Blackstone for...
Breach (2007): 35
One of the worst I've seen in a while - it was not helped by the fact that the theater projector broke down about halfway through and we had to wait fifteen minutes for the film to resume. And then after the intermission the framing of the film was completely screwed up, so you could see boom mics dipping down into the shot - we looked on the internet to see if this was some inexplicable editing mishap, but a miscellaneous poster on metacritic said this was a feature of the theater and not the film itself. Those things aside - I get that the director was going for a subtle slowed down take, a sly subversion of the usual tense insanity that goes on in spy movies. And I suppose he pulled this off. But the effect of doing a movie like this based on a real life event that's not even five years old - and on top of that opening the film with the press conference where Ashcroft is describing the arrest that ends the movie - kills a lot of the suspense from the get go. The movie's strength was Cooper who played the main American agent selling secrets to the Russians - he nicely pulled off a genius jaded with the bureaucracy and pathetic political games played by others in the FBI. Unfortunately, he almost played it too well - he dwarfed Ryan Phillippe badly, which was part of the point, but more served to make Phillippe look like a stilted goof for much of the movie. He also played it too well in that he spent the first fifteen minute of the film being an uber-badass that one, it is ridiculous that he would have fallen for Phillippe's crap (given that it was acted as poorly as it was). All great men have Achilles' heels (in this case his religious devotion), but they generally don't turn off 100% of their strengths en route to exposing them. SO given the background buzz that someone this amazing in spy technique would be idiotic enough to let someone get close to them - it just rang untrue. Which is hilarious, because the story IS true. So I think in all the effort to put forth a straight forward, gritty and low light filmed rendition of an amazing and true spy story, they still screwed up in portraying the main guy as unrealistically god-like: whatever real and unlikely slips he made were just too preposterous for this blown up hollywood version of him. Couple with this with the terrible acting that peppered the backdrop of the film - the wet blanket girlfriend, the daft head of the FBI unit - and you have a craptastic movie. That apparently has grabbed some decent reviews, which I don't understand - for such a self-consciously un-cliched movie, this thing carried a lot of horrendous scenes which, true or not, were dumb in having been made movie.
So after that stupid movie experience and stupid movie contained therein, we called up Christophe and Sarah and met them at Bauhinia (sp?) for an awesome Chinese / Japanese food dinner. For wahtever reason - sleep deprivation for Beck and me? - the Mad Six were on fire with hilarious jokes, laughs and great times. Much love!!!
And so, FTR, we have another entry in the pantheon weekend set. There was a weekend my sophomore year of high school when Friday night I went to a party with my BFF Marisa Silvas that was as awesome as sophomore year parties can be without involving sex and/or illicit substances, Saturday night I saw Smashing Pumpkins at the Sunken Gardens, and Sunday night I saw Pink Floyd at the Alamodome. That was pretty sweet. There have been other ones that escape memory in this very moment, but that's the kind of action packed greatness that this president's day weekend contained - bowling, hanging with D n' X, bachelor party, hanging with BeckarunDMC in Boston, hanging with them PLUS GrinGOAT in Grafton, then the above-mentioned good times on Monday. Sweet goody goodness.
AND, lest we forget, playing in the background of the bachelor mayhem was the 2007 NBA All-star Skills Competition. Was a fat Bill Lambeer at my bachelor party? Heck yeah? But more importantly, there was some dunking going on:
And if you missed it, Shaq can dance:
All in all, some very good times. I owe the people a review of Moneyball which I just finished. It's coming. until then...
Breach (2007): 35
One of the worst I've seen in a while - it was not helped by the fact that the theater projector broke down about halfway through and we had to wait fifteen minutes for the film to resume. And then after the intermission the framing of the film was completely screwed up, so you could see boom mics dipping down into the shot - we looked on the internet to see if this was some inexplicable editing mishap, but a miscellaneous poster on metacritic said this was a feature of the theater and not the film itself. Those things aside - I get that the director was going for a subtle slowed down take, a sly subversion of the usual tense insanity that goes on in spy movies. And I suppose he pulled this off. But the effect of doing a movie like this based on a real life event that's not even five years old - and on top of that opening the film with the press conference where Ashcroft is describing the arrest that ends the movie - kills a lot of the suspense from the get go. The movie's strength was Cooper who played the main American agent selling secrets to the Russians - he nicely pulled off a genius jaded with the bureaucracy and pathetic political games played by others in the FBI. Unfortunately, he almost played it too well - he dwarfed Ryan Phillippe badly, which was part of the point, but more served to make Phillippe look like a stilted goof for much of the movie. He also played it too well in that he spent the first fifteen minute of the film being an uber-badass that one, it is ridiculous that he would have fallen for Phillippe's crap (given that it was acted as poorly as it was). All great men have Achilles' heels (in this case his religious devotion), but they generally don't turn off 100% of their strengths en route to exposing them. SO given the background buzz that someone this amazing in spy technique would be idiotic enough to let someone get close to them - it just rang untrue. Which is hilarious, because the story IS true. So I think in all the effort to put forth a straight forward, gritty and low light filmed rendition of an amazing and true spy story, they still screwed up in portraying the main guy as unrealistically god-like: whatever real and unlikely slips he made were just too preposterous for this blown up hollywood version of him. Couple with this with the terrible acting that peppered the backdrop of the film - the wet blanket girlfriend, the daft head of the FBI unit - and you have a craptastic movie. That apparently has grabbed some decent reviews, which I don't understand - for such a self-consciously un-cliched movie, this thing carried a lot of horrendous scenes which, true or not, were dumb in having been made movie.
So after that stupid movie experience and stupid movie contained therein, we called up Christophe and Sarah and met them at Bauhinia (sp?) for an awesome Chinese / Japanese food dinner. For wahtever reason - sleep deprivation for Beck and me? - the Mad Six were on fire with hilarious jokes, laughs and great times. Much love!!!
And so, FTR, we have another entry in the pantheon weekend set. There was a weekend my sophomore year of high school when Friday night I went to a party with my BFF Marisa Silvas that was as awesome as sophomore year parties can be without involving sex and/or illicit substances, Saturday night I saw Smashing Pumpkins at the Sunken Gardens, and Sunday night I saw Pink Floyd at the Alamodome. That was pretty sweet. There have been other ones that escape memory in this very moment, but that's the kind of action packed greatness that this president's day weekend contained - bowling, hanging with D n' X, bachelor party, hanging with BeckarunDMC in Boston, hanging with them PLUS GrinGOAT in Grafton, then the above-mentioned good times on Monday. Sweet goody goodness.
AND, lest we forget, playing in the background of the bachelor mayhem was the 2007 NBA All-star Skills Competition. Was a fat Bill Lambeer at my bachelor party? Heck yeah? But more importantly, there was some dunking going on:
And if you missed it, Shaq can dance:
All in all, some very good times. I owe the people a review of Moneyball which I just finished. It's coming. until then...
Dead (on) President's (Day Weekend)
Whatever happened to Saturday Night!?!? Sunday morning.
Despite having gone to bed at approximately 4:45, my habitual 5:30 wake up time jolted me out of bed at about 9:00. That makes sense, I promise. The rest of the hotel room was comatose, so I thought briefly about going for a swim in the heated hotel pool - Beck had packed me a change of clothes, but no shorts / trunks, so this was a no go. I thought I'd walk down to Olympia Sports to buy some shorts so i could swim - but no dice there, as stores tend to not open until 11 on Sundays around these parts. D'oh. So i went to McDonald's instead and had a wakeup diet coke.
I lumbered back to the hotel at about 10:45 to find everyone still asleep... eventually Dan and Christina greeted the day, and we assembled the whole hotel-staying posse, Mike-Karen-Aaron-Dan-Christina-Beck-Nyet, down to the lobby to get a move on. We were very low on actual brunch options, what with the one car Beck had kidnapped me with the night before, so we walked over to the 99 diner and had a rawkous meal on Mike. Seems those Junta royalties are still rolling in...
SO I took Aaron to the Alewife T to go see his SLF2B-mayB in NYC. This from the guy who couldn't take Monday off to hang in Boston. To each his or her own. I then headed back to the best western to grab BeckarunDMC and take them to Alewife - we piled, the six of us, into the honda civic, which it turns out has an absolute maximum density of 6 per civ. Then redlined it to Park St. and walked around Boston in the freezing cold, eventually settling on heading over to the Prudential for a look at the Boston skyline as seen from above. It was fun just touristing and hanging out, thought I felt bad for Dan and X - they seemed zonked from their flight / festivities. Or maybe they were fully alive and normal and just seemed quiet compared to Mike / Karen. Possible - just kidding, D.C.
It was fun gabbing with Mike all day - we made an entire subway ride back to Alewife go by much more quickly by arguing over whether Lost was a brilliantly intricate and well planned out show or a quintessential example of the low-effort, carpet-bombing / kitchen sink postmodern aesthetic. Most of this came up because I nonchalantly said that the show had painted itself into a corner, meaning that it had become so overly detailed and multifaceted that they would have to keep the same frenetic pace up and it was going to be more than people could take - Mike thought I had meant the more traditional and correct application of "painting into a corner" as they were stuck and had nowhere to go. I guess I meant they were stuck in that they were so completely unstuck, and things were starting to feel arbitrary and meaningless in their screams of "I'm meaningful." I think this is what I am going to get my eventual PhD in and write a book about: Stuck in the Unstuck. We'll see.
With all the high comedy that passed the day before, the probable apex of my comedy stylings came Sunday when we were riding down the escalator. A ten year old or so girl skipped by on the floor above us and waved, saying "Hello, people below me." I just replied, "That's awfully presumptuous."
Humor involving kids as the unknowing target is among my favorite types. See my long involved discussion with William and his robot toy Kilgore and how his plan to conquer the solar system would surely fail because of the complexity of maintaining an interplanetary supply line while maintaining defense of the home planet. He kept saying "and then we'll attack Saturn" and I kept asking where he was going to get his soldier's rations, who was going to figure out the taxes on their pay rate given the much longer Saturn days. This also ties nicely to the time that I tried to ruin harry Potter for some kids by telling them that in the seventh book he becomes Voldemort's CPA. More evidence that I should not be educating our collective future. Oh, well.
So we drove back to Grafton and stopped at Target to pick up an air mattress so MK wouldn't have to find a hotel. We were just going to hang out and eat some spaghetti when ben called, and I conspired to have The Grin and PGoat join the fray. AWESOME! It was a fun time - poor DC were still tired, but we put on some good tunes and let them chill. The collision of Mike & Ali (and to a lesser degree, Karen) was a spectacle - the domination of conversation was constantly up for grabs, though I think Ali brought down the house with her Playboy mansion tales and her expert Peri-analysis. The whole thing made me wonder what would happen in a Mike v. Ali v. Jerrel v. Brett conversation death match, "there can be only one" style event. I daresay that Pay-per-View would come knocking.
I played my usual game of peppering the evening air with well-placed quips; I even aped Jamie Foxx a little bit and played the role of Ben's party conscience. Cheap, but hilarious. The whole thing was just great - lots of good friends all in the same place. Props to everyone involved.
GrinGOAT eventually headed home and DC went to sleep (only to wake up at 3 AM to catch their 6 AM flight, egads) and Mike and Karen slept in the study. Did I mention that Karen and Mike fawned over S & W all weekend long? Sparkle actually got up at one point and said "Seriously guys, even I have a belly rub limit." We of course replied "OMG, a talking dog."
So when we woke up Monday, DC were gone, and Mike Karen Beck and I just spent the morning hanging out. Mike & I played a serious run of NBA Live 2003 games with both he and I playing as ourselves on the San Antonio Spurs. We sucked it up rather badly, but eventually got it together. Fun times, and a sweet hearkening to Saturday morning video gaming at Metroid, Kid Icarus and the like.
Darn that eggplant...
We took Mike and Karen back to the airport around 3 for their 4 o'clock flight. Great visit, great weekend. But it wasn't over... NEXT POST!
Despite having gone to bed at approximately 4:45, my habitual 5:30 wake up time jolted me out of bed at about 9:00. That makes sense, I promise. The rest of the hotel room was comatose, so I thought briefly about going for a swim in the heated hotel pool - Beck had packed me a change of clothes, but no shorts / trunks, so this was a no go. I thought I'd walk down to Olympia Sports to buy some shorts so i could swim - but no dice there, as stores tend to not open until 11 on Sundays around these parts. D'oh. So i went to McDonald's instead and had a wakeup diet coke.
I lumbered back to the hotel at about 10:45 to find everyone still asleep... eventually Dan and Christina greeted the day, and we assembled the whole hotel-staying posse, Mike-Karen-Aaron-Dan-Christina-Beck-Nyet, down to the lobby to get a move on. We were very low on actual brunch options, what with the one car Beck had kidnapped me with the night before, so we walked over to the 99 diner and had a rawkous meal on Mike. Seems those Junta royalties are still rolling in...
SO I took Aaron to the Alewife T to go see his SLF2B-mayB in NYC. This from the guy who couldn't take Monday off to hang in Boston. To each his or her own. I then headed back to the best western to grab BeckarunDMC and take them to Alewife - we piled, the six of us, into the honda civic, which it turns out has an absolute maximum density of 6 per civ. Then redlined it to Park St. and walked around Boston in the freezing cold, eventually settling on heading over to the Prudential for a look at the Boston skyline as seen from above. It was fun just touristing and hanging out, thought I felt bad for Dan and X - they seemed zonked from their flight / festivities. Or maybe they were fully alive and normal and just seemed quiet compared to Mike / Karen. Possible - just kidding, D.C.
It was fun gabbing with Mike all day - we made an entire subway ride back to Alewife go by much more quickly by arguing over whether Lost was a brilliantly intricate and well planned out show or a quintessential example of the low-effort, carpet-bombing / kitchen sink postmodern aesthetic. Most of this came up because I nonchalantly said that the show had painted itself into a corner, meaning that it had become so overly detailed and multifaceted that they would have to keep the same frenetic pace up and it was going to be more than people could take - Mike thought I had meant the more traditional and correct application of "painting into a corner" as they were stuck and had nowhere to go. I guess I meant they were stuck in that they were so completely unstuck, and things were starting to feel arbitrary and meaningless in their screams of "I'm meaningful." I think this is what I am going to get my eventual PhD in and write a book about: Stuck in the Unstuck. We'll see.
With all the high comedy that passed the day before, the probable apex of my comedy stylings came Sunday when we were riding down the escalator. A ten year old or so girl skipped by on the floor above us and waved, saying "Hello, people below me." I just replied, "That's awfully presumptuous."
Humor involving kids as the unknowing target is among my favorite types. See my long involved discussion with William and his robot toy Kilgore and how his plan to conquer the solar system would surely fail because of the complexity of maintaining an interplanetary supply line while maintaining defense of the home planet. He kept saying "and then we'll attack Saturn" and I kept asking where he was going to get his soldier's rations, who was going to figure out the taxes on their pay rate given the much longer Saturn days. This also ties nicely to the time that I tried to ruin harry Potter for some kids by telling them that in the seventh book he becomes Voldemort's CPA. More evidence that I should not be educating our collective future. Oh, well.
So we drove back to Grafton and stopped at Target to pick up an air mattress so MK wouldn't have to find a hotel. We were just going to hang out and eat some spaghetti when ben called, and I conspired to have The Grin and PGoat join the fray. AWESOME! It was a fun time - poor DC were still tired, but we put on some good tunes and let them chill. The collision of Mike & Ali (and to a lesser degree, Karen) was a spectacle - the domination of conversation was constantly up for grabs, though I think Ali brought down the house with her Playboy mansion tales and her expert Peri-analysis. The whole thing made me wonder what would happen in a Mike v. Ali v. Jerrel v. Brett conversation death match, "there can be only one" style event. I daresay that Pay-per-View would come knocking.
I played my usual game of peppering the evening air with well-placed quips; I even aped Jamie Foxx a little bit and played the role of Ben's party conscience. Cheap, but hilarious. The whole thing was just great - lots of good friends all in the same place. Props to everyone involved.
GrinGOAT eventually headed home and DC went to sleep (only to wake up at 3 AM to catch their 6 AM flight, egads) and Mike and Karen slept in the study. Did I mention that Karen and Mike fawned over S & W all weekend long? Sparkle actually got up at one point and said "Seriously guys, even I have a belly rub limit." We of course replied "OMG, a talking dog."
So when we woke up Monday, DC were gone, and Mike Karen Beck and I just spent the morning hanging out. Mike & I played a serious run of NBA Live 2003 games with both he and I playing as ourselves on the San Antonio Spurs. We sucked it up rather badly, but eventually got it together. Fun times, and a sweet hearkening to Saturday morning video gaming at Metroid, Kid Icarus and the like.
Darn that eggplant...
We took Mike and Karen back to the airport around 3 for their 4 o'clock flight. Great visit, great weekend. But it wasn't over... NEXT POST!
Thursday, February 22, 2007
My political career is over
I can't believe I'm posting this. Oh, well. Photographic evidence part one, courtesy of Mike. I needed a haircut and hadn't shaved (because I didn't think you needed to shave for Ethiopian restaurants). But it kinda completed the look. Here goes.
Pre party, obviously pre-sombrero. At this point I'm pulling the look off somewhat nicely.
The three amigos, or hijos, if you prefer.
Proof that the party was Iron-Sanctioned. And planned! Did I mention what an awesome job Beck did? And did I mention that flattering pictures like this = no future political career?
I believe this photo may someday turn up as "People's Exhibit A."
And here's People's Exhibit B. It was along night, as you may be able to gather by my stupefied expression. That's Nick "the coolest man in the room" Novelli next to me, and a yawning Dan in the background.
And for completion, this is Karen, she of kicking all of your butts in commenting fame. It was very fun to meet her; I will comment this more when I sum up the remainder of the weekend tomorrow. Until then - enjoy these pics; more on the way at some point, and theoretically a video, too.
Pre party, obviously pre-sombrero. At this point I'm pulling the look off somewhat nicely.
The three amigos, or hijos, if you prefer.
Proof that the party was Iron-Sanctioned. And planned! Did I mention what an awesome job Beck did? And did I mention that flattering pictures like this = no future political career?
I believe this photo may someday turn up as "People's Exhibit A."
And here's People's Exhibit B. It was along night, as you may be able to gather by my stupefied expression. That's Nick "the coolest man in the room" Novelli next to me, and a yawning Dan in the background.
And for completion, this is Karen, she of kicking all of your butts in commenting fame. It was very fun to meet her; I will comment this more when I sum up the remainder of the weekend tomorrow. Until then - enjoy these pics; more on the way at some point, and theoretically a video, too.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Lied lies (and the lying liars who lied them)
First off, anyone who thinks that an honest account of this weekend's debauchery is going up in this space is sorely mistaken. I will given thinly veiled references, vague allusions to attendees, I may even post photographic and/or video evidence of a wacky time had by all, but you won't getting any running diary here. Wooha. Perry Wooha.
So Friday night, after our bowling fun, Beck and I headed home to clean the apartment up a little bit and wait for Dan and Christina. Dan who, cough cough, had arrived on "Wednesday." And did not make any effort to hang out with me on "Thursday afternoon" when he was "in town." He was "picking up" Christina at the airport and renting a car. So Beck and I waited in Grafton, and they rolled in a little after 10, not even bothering to make all the requisite John Cougar Melencamp jokes about our fuchsia abode. We ate tacos and hung out until the wee hours, looking forward to possibly some local culture and just hanging out inside away from the cold for the duration of the weekend. Little did I know...
Woke up early Saturday and tip-toed around the abode, trying to keep from waking the trio of sleeping beauts. Everyone eventually clambered out of bed at about 9:30 or so; beck made french toast and sausage and bacon and goodness goo. Delicious breakfast, and then I was instructed to take a shower "because you smell." This turned out to be a ruse as well - something about talking to the upstairs neighbor about taking care of the pups later tonight. Are you noticing a pattern here? Referring this as a web of lies is over-complementary to spiders; metropolis was more like it. SO after I had destenched myself, we went to Black Diamond Coffee for drinks and reading; Beck and Xina then dropped Daniel and me off at Newbury Comics where we put down some cash on some excellent tuneage. The ladies were late picking us up; we proposed an excellent fine for their mistake which involved selecting from amongst the fine Newbury poster collection, but they declined. Dan had a pizza jones, so we grabbed Tas-T's on the way back to the house, where we ate, watched college b-ball, and eventually settled in for a film.
This is where the car salesman in Beck suffered a stroke. She suggested going to dinner down in Cambridge, specifically to an Ethiopian restaurant that PGoat had recommended. Wha? Ethiopian doesn't exactly sound like my kinda deal, and why are we driving all the way into town for dinner again? And then Beck gets very insistent that we leave here before 6 so we can be down there by 7. Even though we weren't meeting anyone. Hmmmm... we jump in the car, and about halfway down to Cambridge, Dan suspiciously announces that he left "something" down at the hotel. I didn't bother interrogating; this combined with the fact that Beck had picked a bizarre route to get to Cambridge had me convinced that my fishy-detector was working properly. So I played along, remembering a brief encounter with Beck sometime in the fall where i had walked in to the study to find her sending an e-mail to Zach only to have her jump and cover the screen with both hands. I smelled a surprise party...
We got to the hotel and I had smelled right. I walked into the bathroom, and when I came out, I spied Julliette and Zach in the lobby. Huh? Next followed the entire group...
Beck, Dan, Christina, Julliette, Rob, Mike, Karen, Aaron, Roga, Jesse, Blake, Nick
And Jerrel, Dave and Lisa met up with us later. Incredible! And Beck had rented a party bus for our entire crüe, so we were headed out into the Boston night with a party-focused mission. Awesome. Despite not being "surprised," I was very excited to see the whole gang. Of course, now every time Beck tells me we are going anywhere or doing anything or what the weather is, I will be forced to eye her suspiciously. 'Tis a small price to pay...
So Aaron produces a leopard print bathrobe for me to wear this evening and the iF produces a gigantic, authentic style sombrero. I am basically in auspicious pimp gear; I am not going to be fading into any backgrounds tonight. Mike hands me a bottle of champagne and we are off to the races.
Incidentally, the sombrero robe combo worked wonders the entire evening in the "Nyet gets to talk to strangers" department. My comments correlated nicely with a general spectrum of the evening. Here are the various ways that I responded to the question (asked by strangers): "Why are you wearing a sombrero?"
1. This is my bachelor party / Because I'm getting married
2. Because I'm the Man
3. To celebrate my heritage.
4. To keep the sun out of my eyes (occasionally embellished with "for siestas").
5. To keep from getting sunburned in the fields.
6. Political protest in defense of the background characters of Speedy Gonzalez cartoons*
7. Why aren't you wearing a sombrero?
8. Holy crap! You're right, I'm wearing a sombrero.
9. It's not a sombrero; I have a very small head.
10. Because it's Bastille Day.
11. Jane, you ignorant slut.
* - I didn't really say this
So as you can see, I just got cleverer and cleverer. I did get stopped by someone in the street and asked if I had lost a bet; I said, "I'm getting married, so in a way, yes." The iF did not hear that one, I don't think, given the fact that I am still able to walk right now. We also were waiting outside a bar at one point and Beck asked somebody standing in line if the bar had a cover; the guy said, "I don't know, but I'm with that guy." Let the record show he pointed at the pimp in the sombrero and leopard robe. I was also adorned at some point with a lei and a medallion that simply said "Winner." That simple medallion led to an awesome joke by me later in the evening, the likes of which will not find print here.
SO the evening consisted of a trip to an irish restaurant, a trip to a pretty standard issue boston bar, and a transcendent visit to a Karaoke bar. I'll give you one highlight from each in lieu of a painstaking though breathtaking blow by blow account. Highlights: In the restaurant, Jerrel and I had a Eight Mile style rap-battle which I won hands down. He claimed I rope-a-doped him, throwing out cheesy rhymes until he let his guard down and them flooring him with my closer. In the bar, I just got hit on like crazy by women attending bachelorette parties in same said bar who were also wearing the same leis that I was. They were very dumb and annoying, or at least their drunk-slurred pickup lines were. And the Beck flashed them some dirty looks to the back of their heads; they're lucky they didn't try anything funny or they would have gotten iron-fisted rabbit punched and we would have spent the rest of the night gathering bail money for her beckness. Anyways, one of the bachelorettes finally staggered over and tried to trade my sombrero for a tiara. I kept trying to explain to her that she was clearly at a bartering disadvantage here, that sombrero pimps are one in a million whereas tiara-wearing faux princesses are so numerous that they're always apologizing and saying that the real princess is in another castle. She wouldn't hear it or couldn't comprehend it - I acquiesced and traded briefly for a photo op; that picture will be up here at some point.
The definite highlight was the karaoke - we marched into the bar and outsang the dweebs on stage. I have a definite karaoke bar record; i.e. I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all. Past selections have included Whitney Houston's The Greatest Love of All, G'n'R's Paradise City, Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds, etc. They all rock faces int heir own particular ways. Notably this was a reunion of sorts, as the G'n'R rendition happened at a Bennigan's in Clearwater Florida on an Ultimate trip with the Tufts guys. So they were an experienced backup band - Novelli on drums, Jesse on lead guitar - and the stars were aligning for a show for the ages. Someone selected Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again," an 80's metal song famous for, among other things, Tawny Kitaen:
You know, come to think of it, I'm not even going to try to describe the show. Novelli cell phone videoed it, so once I get a hold of that I will let the performance speak for itself. We rocked the bars collective face, even if Beck described my singing as suspiciously similar to my volume=art performance as Snoopy in the 5th grade. SO anyways, you'll have to wait, but it'll be well worth it, I promise.
So that's all you're getting. Hope you enjoed it. I will post more about the rest of the weekend / this past week soon, but ... wait... what's that? this just in - we hav epictures, courtesy of Mike NTPB. They will appear - in the next post.
I'm a Winner, HA HA HA,
ñet
So Friday night, after our bowling fun, Beck and I headed home to clean the apartment up a little bit and wait for Dan and Christina. Dan who, cough cough, had arrived on "Wednesday." And did not make any effort to hang out with me on "Thursday afternoon" when he was "in town." He was "picking up" Christina at the airport and renting a car. So Beck and I waited in Grafton, and they rolled in a little after 10, not even bothering to make all the requisite John Cougar Melencamp jokes about our fuchsia abode. We ate tacos and hung out until the wee hours, looking forward to possibly some local culture and just hanging out inside away from the cold for the duration of the weekend. Little did I know...
Woke up early Saturday and tip-toed around the abode, trying to keep from waking the trio of sleeping beauts. Everyone eventually clambered out of bed at about 9:30 or so; beck made french toast and sausage and bacon and goodness goo. Delicious breakfast, and then I was instructed to take a shower "because you smell." This turned out to be a ruse as well - something about talking to the upstairs neighbor about taking care of the pups later tonight. Are you noticing a pattern here? Referring this as a web of lies is over-complementary to spiders; metropolis was more like it. SO after I had destenched myself, we went to Black Diamond Coffee for drinks and reading; Beck and Xina then dropped Daniel and me off at Newbury Comics where we put down some cash on some excellent tuneage. The ladies were late picking us up; we proposed an excellent fine for their mistake which involved selecting from amongst the fine Newbury poster collection, but they declined. Dan had a pizza jones, so we grabbed Tas-T's on the way back to the house, where we ate, watched college b-ball, and eventually settled in for a film.
This is where the car salesman in Beck suffered a stroke. She suggested going to dinner down in Cambridge, specifically to an Ethiopian restaurant that PGoat had recommended. Wha? Ethiopian doesn't exactly sound like my kinda deal, and why are we driving all the way into town for dinner again? And then Beck gets very insistent that we leave here before 6 so we can be down there by 7. Even though we weren't meeting anyone. Hmmmm... we jump in the car, and about halfway down to Cambridge, Dan suspiciously announces that he left "something" down at the hotel. I didn't bother interrogating; this combined with the fact that Beck had picked a bizarre route to get to Cambridge had me convinced that my fishy-detector was working properly. So I played along, remembering a brief encounter with Beck sometime in the fall where i had walked in to the study to find her sending an e-mail to Zach only to have her jump and cover the screen with both hands. I smelled a surprise party...
We got to the hotel and I had smelled right. I walked into the bathroom, and when I came out, I spied Julliette and Zach in the lobby. Huh? Next followed the entire group...
Beck, Dan, Christina, Julliette, Rob, Mike, Karen, Aaron, Roga, Jesse, Blake, Nick
And Jerrel, Dave and Lisa met up with us later. Incredible! And Beck had rented a party bus for our entire crüe, so we were headed out into the Boston night with a party-focused mission. Awesome. Despite not being "surprised," I was very excited to see the whole gang. Of course, now every time Beck tells me we are going anywhere or doing anything or what the weather is, I will be forced to eye her suspiciously. 'Tis a small price to pay...
So Aaron produces a leopard print bathrobe for me to wear this evening and the iF produces a gigantic, authentic style sombrero. I am basically in auspicious pimp gear; I am not going to be fading into any backgrounds tonight. Mike hands me a bottle of champagne and we are off to the races.
Incidentally, the sombrero robe combo worked wonders the entire evening in the "Nyet gets to talk to strangers" department. My comments correlated nicely with a general spectrum of the evening. Here are the various ways that I responded to the question (asked by strangers): "Why are you wearing a sombrero?"
1. This is my bachelor party / Because I'm getting married
2. Because I'm the Man
3. To celebrate my heritage.
4. To keep the sun out of my eyes (occasionally embellished with "for siestas").
5. To keep from getting sunburned in the fields.
6. Political protest in defense of the background characters of Speedy Gonzalez cartoons*
7. Why aren't you wearing a sombrero?
8. Holy crap! You're right, I'm wearing a sombrero.
9. It's not a sombrero; I have a very small head.
10. Because it's Bastille Day.
11. Jane, you ignorant slut.
* - I didn't really say this
So as you can see, I just got cleverer and cleverer. I did get stopped by someone in the street and asked if I had lost a bet; I said, "I'm getting married, so in a way, yes." The iF did not hear that one, I don't think, given the fact that I am still able to walk right now. We also were waiting outside a bar at one point and Beck asked somebody standing in line if the bar had a cover; the guy said, "I don't know, but I'm with that guy." Let the record show he pointed at the pimp in the sombrero and leopard robe. I was also adorned at some point with a lei and a medallion that simply said "Winner." That simple medallion led to an awesome joke by me later in the evening, the likes of which will not find print here.
SO the evening consisted of a trip to an irish restaurant, a trip to a pretty standard issue boston bar, and a transcendent visit to a Karaoke bar. I'll give you one highlight from each in lieu of a painstaking though breathtaking blow by blow account. Highlights: In the restaurant, Jerrel and I had a Eight Mile style rap-battle which I won hands down. He claimed I rope-a-doped him, throwing out cheesy rhymes until he let his guard down and them flooring him with my closer. In the bar, I just got hit on like crazy by women attending bachelorette parties in same said bar who were also wearing the same leis that I was. They were very dumb and annoying, or at least their drunk-slurred pickup lines were. And the Beck flashed them some dirty looks to the back of their heads; they're lucky they didn't try anything funny or they would have gotten iron-fisted rabbit punched and we would have spent the rest of the night gathering bail money for her beckness. Anyways, one of the bachelorettes finally staggered over and tried to trade my sombrero for a tiara. I kept trying to explain to her that she was clearly at a bartering disadvantage here, that sombrero pimps are one in a million whereas tiara-wearing faux princesses are so numerous that they're always apologizing and saying that the real princess is in another castle. She wouldn't hear it or couldn't comprehend it - I acquiesced and traded briefly for a photo op; that picture will be up here at some point.
The definite highlight was the karaoke - we marched into the bar and outsang the dweebs on stage. I have a definite karaoke bar record; i.e. I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all. Past selections have included Whitney Houston's The Greatest Love of All, G'n'R's Paradise City, Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds, etc. They all rock faces int heir own particular ways. Notably this was a reunion of sorts, as the G'n'R rendition happened at a Bennigan's in Clearwater Florida on an Ultimate trip with the Tufts guys. So they were an experienced backup band - Novelli on drums, Jesse on lead guitar - and the stars were aligning for a show for the ages. Someone selected Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again," an 80's metal song famous for, among other things, Tawny Kitaen:
You know, come to think of it, I'm not even going to try to describe the show. Novelli cell phone videoed it, so once I get a hold of that I will let the performance speak for itself. We rocked the bars collective face, even if Beck described my singing as suspiciously similar to my volume=art performance as Snoopy in the 5th grade. SO anyways, you'll have to wait, but it'll be well worth it, I promise.
So that's all you're getting. Hope you enjoed it. I will post more about the rest of the weekend / this past week soon, but ... wait... what's that? this just in - we hav epictures, courtesy of Mike NTPB. They will appear - in the next post.
I'm a Winner, HA HA HA,
ñet
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Friday Night Lites
And that is why the Lebowski gets a 95.
The Walnut Hill Teacherati met at Vinny T's for our TAW cocktail hour last night. It was a small enclosed space, the food wasn't very good and there was a very loud band playing, among other things, Dylan covers of questionable quality. On the plus side, they were serving gallon-sized glasses of Sam Adams beer, of which I had two. I also got to introduce The Beck to the wide cast of characters that she has been hearing about, the absolute highlight of which was when Anne, a fellow math teacher, introduced Ellie by saying "She's English." Mass confusion over her country of origin and a bevy of win one for the motherland jokes ensued. In no particular order, the cast of characters for the Vinny T's portion of the evening included:
Stephanie, Julie, Matthew, Tom, Meredith, Jim, Kathy, Ben, Lindsey, Anne, Ellie, Jon, Antonio, Andy, Leslie, Rory, Jay, Diane, Teresa...
Notably no Corin or Anne. Boo-urns!
But that was the lame part of the evening, relatively speaking, so on to the... wait for it, wait for it... LANE part of the evening! We met Gina at Fairway Lanes, a craptastic candlepin bowling alley on Route 9 a whopping 50 yards from Vinny T's. And we candlepin bowled for an hour after everyone had gotten mildly buzzed at VT's. As you can imagine, our rowdy behavior was not condoned by the serious league bowlers there. We rebutted by pointing out that they were serious league candlepin bowlers.
Candlepin bowling, as you may or may not be aware, is an insanely ridiculous sport. If there is a correlation between skill and score, it escapes all empirical detection. I am lying, of course, but there is so much going against the player - the stupid ball is barely above bocce on the bowling ball spectrum, the pins are skinny as hell, plus it's usually played after drinking at Vinny T's - that scores come out randomly. Basically the only thing you can really control is not hitting the gutters, and maybe occasionally picking up one pin spares.*
*(At one point Ellie had only the 10 pin standing for a spare attempt. Another pin was lying in the gutter right next to it - you don't clear the felled pins in candlepin - so hitting the guuer on the right practically would have guaranteed knocking down the 10 pin. So we were encouraging Ellie just to roll it as hard as possible at the right gutter - and Andy chimes in, "No, don't hit the gutter, hit the pin!" Oh, hit the pin! I thought I was listening to Joe Morgan sports commentary for a second there!)
So anyways, massive amounts of fun - Antonio flamingo danced, Rory threw very softly and I basically tried to destroy everything in my path - people repeatedly said things like "the pins are not your students," etc. Jone, Kathy and Ellie turned out to be the best bowlers, but I am positive that any decent level of Clickian analysis would quickly reveal this to be bell curve action.
So a fun time was had by all - and perhaps my favorite moment was when Kathy Liu, our science dept. head (and one of my bosses) rolled a guttar ball and I calmly told her, "Don't worry, Kathy, they're not saying boo, they're saying Liuuuuuuuuuuu."
I felt like Peyton Manning.
Friday, February 16, 2007
4000 Holes in Natick, Massachussetts
Woke up this morning around 4:15 AM (which have been doing a lot lately) unable to sleep. Lay there in bed for an hour and a quarter until alarm went off and got out of bed and ate breakfast, a bowl of oatmeal (three packs Quaker instant, on sale) and a glass of milk. Read some junk online, then eventually showered, dried off and just let hair sit there. Tip-toed around the one story apartment trying to let Beck sleep, grabbed soda to jump start the day but had been a little slow in getting ready; the clock now read 6:40 - had to be at school by 7:30 to tutor. No problem; usually a 40 minute drive. Grabbed coat and eschewed hat (hair being in perfect just so composition) and made it out to warming up Honda in no time. Sat up in the seat and pulled back through the exhaust-filled driveway; 96.9 played talk radio and I faded into the morning commute...
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
Got stuck behind a bus en route so getting there took 55 instead of 40. D'oh. Was a tad late for tutoring, but 'twas a more or less fruitless endeavor anyways; domains and ranges and simplifying radicals = too much (especially 30 minutes before test). Ran into a couple of colleagues between tutoring and 8:00; discussed bowling tonight after the soirée at Vinny T's. Taught hour and a half class on utility; went fairly well.
Headed downstairs to grab coffee and mail; there are apples in our mailboxes for Teacher Appreciation Week, and a lot of the (funny) fellow teachers have put their apples in mine, so it looks like I am a well-kissed-up-to teacher or a victim of prank. Talked to Ben in the faculty lounge for about 10 minutes about my class. He has good ideas about focusing the scope and not just repeatedly emphasizing how confusing it all is; he's an experienced teacher and more importantly I trust his judgment. Told jokes about our students and classes; steam-blowing may be the primary function of the lounge. Can't remember if I told him about the bowling (probably did), but he has two children under three anyways (probably won't come).
Headed back upstairs and entered my attendance, checked school e-mail and wrote up today's entry for SASI class. Julie (dean) stopped by; we talked about Marc. Finished up my blog work and headed to Lindsey's science class to help students with a microscope lab (intestinal cells). Quizzed Paula and others on miscellaneous biological facts, most human. Imparted to them wisdom that key to learning biology is assuming that things make sense - even though they occasionally don't, this concept saves time and makes things easier to remember. Saw Cooper and asked him about his test yesterday; he thinks it went well. Headed out and said adios.
Walked laps around the two floors reminding everyone about tonight's candlepin bowling; gave several hard sells (we'll see). Got pulled aside by Anne to discuss Arianna's test. She (Anne) is worried. Stopped by the faculty lounge again and joked around with a group of peers.
Headed back upstairs (again); Arianna stopped by to say her test went okay, but ended up talking mainly about her trouble with English. An emotional matter, but one she has hopefully learned from.
Stopped by Meredith's office on my way out of the school; discussed a shlew of students, showed her online pictures of the dogs and a student came in and discussed his/her 320 dollar shoes, sans ironic wink.
12:30, so drove home.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
Got stuck behind a bus en route so getting there took 55 instead of 40. D'oh. Was a tad late for tutoring, but 'twas a more or less fruitless endeavor anyways; domains and ranges and simplifying radicals = too much (especially 30 minutes before test). Ran into a couple of colleagues between tutoring and 8:00; discussed bowling tonight after the soirée at Vinny T's. Taught hour and a half class on utility; went fairly well.
Headed downstairs to grab coffee and mail; there are apples in our mailboxes for Teacher Appreciation Week, and a lot of the (funny) fellow teachers have put their apples in mine, so it looks like I am a well-kissed-up-to teacher or a victim of prank. Talked to Ben in the faculty lounge for about 10 minutes about my class. He has good ideas about focusing the scope and not just repeatedly emphasizing how confusing it all is; he's an experienced teacher and more importantly I trust his judgment. Told jokes about our students and classes; steam-blowing may be the primary function of the lounge. Can't remember if I told him about the bowling (probably did), but he has two children under three anyways (probably won't come).
Headed back upstairs and entered my attendance, checked school e-mail and wrote up today's entry for SASI class. Julie (dean) stopped by; we talked about Marc. Finished up my blog work and headed to Lindsey's science class to help students with a microscope lab (intestinal cells). Quizzed Paula and others on miscellaneous biological facts, most human. Imparted to them wisdom that key to learning biology is assuming that things make sense - even though they occasionally don't, this concept saves time and makes things easier to remember. Saw Cooper and asked him about his test yesterday; he thinks it went well. Headed out and said adios.
Walked laps around the two floors reminding everyone about tonight's candlepin bowling; gave several hard sells (we'll see). Got pulled aside by Anne to discuss Arianna's test. She (Anne) is worried. Stopped by the faculty lounge again and joked around with a group of peers.
Headed back upstairs (again); Arianna stopped by to say her test went okay, but ended up talking mainly about her trouble with English. An emotional matter, but one she has hopefully learned from.
Stopped by Meredith's office on my way out of the school; discussed a shlew of students, showed her online pictures of the dogs and a student came in and discussed his/her 320 dollar shoes, sans ironic wink.
12:30, so drove home.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
No, I killed the radio star.
Ever wonder why I say Boo-urns? Now hear this:
Behold the power of Walken... Christophen Walken... in this winter wonderland.
In the immortal words of Wayne Gretzky... "Um, no."
And if that's not enough entertainment...
The Future of Our World
And finally, a site that estimates the legal fees that the boss on The Office would be incurring if he, you know, existed.
Enjoy, and I'll catch you when I do...
Behold the power of Walken... Christophen Walken... in this winter wonderland.
In the immortal words of Wayne Gretzky... "Um, no."
And if that's not enough entertainment...
The Future of Our World
And finally, a site that estimates the legal fees that the boss on The Office would be incurring if he, you know, existed.
Enjoy, and I'll catch you when I do...
Blessed are the Northeasterners, for theirs is the name Beck
Oh man oh man oh man. Got up early early to eat breakfast and dig my car out of the snow, but my landlord had (yay!) plowed our driveway and (boo!) buried my car in a small Himalayan. The temperature this morning was hovering around 11 Fahrenheit; that combined with the freezing rain that coated the snow last night rendered the whole Honda-snowpile construct something of a icicle sculpture. SO I dug at the wheels, to little or no avail. I even tried to gun it out, only to flood the air with the stench of burning rubber. Yikes.
Thank goodness for Beckness - she came out with boiling water, salt, and we shoveled and hammered and chipped at the snow and more or less power blasted the car through the drift until it came to a rest in the plowed part of the driveway. After making sure Beck's car was good to go, I headed inside to see the clock read 7:43. I had to be at school, 45 minutes away on a good, non snow-encrusted road day, by 9:30. I had yet to shower or shave.
Power shower shaving spectacle and 20 minutes later, I left the house to join the absolute freaking masses on the Mass roadways. I got to route 9, 17 minutes on a good day, at 8:35. Dios mio. And the road to Natick was a traffic-stuffed one - stop and go, and I didn't get to the Natick mall until 9:15. Egads. Basically pulled into school in the nick of time, but was literally setting bags down in the corner as class began; no bathroom or coffee or anything. Woe. But we managed to scrape out a good day - we discussed the pitfalls of ad hoc reasoning and started to examine utilitarian ethics in SASI, attended a dumb assembly, tutored some algebra II (domain and range, the bane of the graphically-challenged) and proctored a bio test. Knuckles cracked, I turned around and headed home on much less crowded and much less snowful roads. (I called Dan, Rice bud and groom's party member who is theoretically in town, but he did not answer).
So I'm back in the study saddle here after a quick wrestling match with the dogs (I won, though in their defense I outweigh them together(!) by about 140 lbs. Plus, you know, thumbs). And I'm remembering that I owe the reading public some tidbits...
The Blind Side by Michael Lewis: 67
This book's strengths lay outside of what the bulk of it covered. Michael Lewis's historical tracing of the passing game in football, most notably the "West Coast Offense," was great, and the game of personnel counter-attacks as he traced it from Lawrence Taylor to new offensive schemes to the left tackle's rise in prominence was a fantastic read. Unfortunately, those things comprised about 20 percent of the book - the vast majority was spent documenting the life of Michael Oher, a left-tackle prospect from the urban wasteland of West Memphis, and his rise to a sure-to-be prosperous prospect via the Briarcrest private school football team and his contact with a wealthy white family of Ole Miss alums. Michael's story is extremely endearing, and a lot of the things it reveals about learning styles, ability, the importance of education and the dangers of IQ tests (and the labels that come with them) were spot on and poignant. But his rags to future riches story ultimately rang hollow for me - he was TOO good, he was too much a pure victim of circumstance, just a fantastic beacon of human being who if ONLY.. GIVEN... A CHANCE... in short, Michael Lewis (whose writing and storytelling ability were enchanting) just ended up seeming severely one-sided, and given that some of his main characters were accused of impropriety by the NCAA, AND given that the family were friends of the author, i think his party line defense of them is suspect, true or not. In other words, Michael's story, for all of its past tense woes, was too happy, smooth and convenient. Even his traumatic smashing of a three year old boy was passed off as an afterthought. So an almost very good book - again, the actual football analysis outside of the Hallmark card story was great, so i am very much looking forward to reading Moneyball soon.
I also read...
Howl - Annotated Manuscripts (50th Anniversay Edition) by Allen Ginsberg: 94
Howl is most amazing to me on the front that it is actually a beat take on a theme that was echoed and echoed throughout the 20th century and one that continues to echo into the postmodern today: alienation in modernity. Metropolis and Modern Times and Brave New World, all made / published in the 1920s / 30s, all look at the mechanized now and scream at how it dehumanizes us. But while these films juxtapose modern man with his more natural (or savage) counterparts, and expose the ugly gears in the machine, Ginsberg takes the story a step further - it's achingly personal, it's vulgar (and/or obscene, depending who you ask), debasing, torturous, godawful and hellish - it's the "Beat"ific "beat" down, rendered nothing in the wake of culture-at-large's wheels.
(For your convenience, here is Howl Parts I-III, and here is the Howl's Footnote)
I found several thing awesome and inspiring specifically about the poem in this annotated form - one, you see the work as an evolving thing, and gain insight into just what a work of craftsmanship this was. Words, syllables, rhythms, moods, themes, symbols, all painstakingly placed. The structure alone is brilliant, but seeing its behind the curtain enactment brought a whole new clarity. Two, a major accomplishment of the poem is its bridging ability - the epic poem form laced with the language (and content) of modern times, forcing a constant recollection of classicism past while existing in the present. Even though the poem is entirely modern (and its style largely building upon experimentation done by Modernists like William Carlos Williams), it manages to instill the present with a bigger than here sense - a big part of the power of this poem does in fact lie in its thrusting of the profane into the exalted epic form. Three, I was amazed to learn how much of the poem is culled from stories, anecdotes, homages, allusions and plain liftings from the members and the works of the Beat generation. What seems like overwhelmingly imaginative imagery turns out in large part to be event reporting. Amazing, and it lends me to the power of the celebrity, even within the small circle of 1950s poetry - the concept of "Beat" turns out to focus upon this incestuous circle of characters - Ginsberg, Kerouac, Cassady, Burroughs, to name a few - and the events that dotted their lives. Which on the one hand makes me jealous as all hell and wanting such a romantic, artistic life, but on the other hand reminds me that this art required a fair amount of low-level and sub-pleasant existence (street-begging, hitchhiking, EST and insulin-induced comas, not to mention the heroin and worse) to foster its creation.
Great poem, and a great book in which to read it - I highly recommend this seminal work.
And, in further reward for having read this far, I give you: more!
But in a new post...
Thank goodness for Beckness - she came out with boiling water, salt, and we shoveled and hammered and chipped at the snow and more or less power blasted the car through the drift until it came to a rest in the plowed part of the driveway. After making sure Beck's car was good to go, I headed inside to see the clock read 7:43. I had to be at school, 45 minutes away on a good, non snow-encrusted road day, by 9:30. I had yet to shower or shave.
Power shower shaving spectacle and 20 minutes later, I left the house to join the absolute freaking masses on the Mass roadways. I got to route 9, 17 minutes on a good day, at 8:35. Dios mio. And the road to Natick was a traffic-stuffed one - stop and go, and I didn't get to the Natick mall until 9:15. Egads. Basically pulled into school in the nick of time, but was literally setting bags down in the corner as class began; no bathroom or coffee or anything. Woe. But we managed to scrape out a good day - we discussed the pitfalls of ad hoc reasoning and started to examine utilitarian ethics in SASI, attended a dumb assembly, tutored some algebra II (domain and range, the bane of the graphically-challenged) and proctored a bio test. Knuckles cracked, I turned around and headed home on much less crowded and much less snowful roads. (I called Dan, Rice bud and groom's party member who is theoretically in town, but he did not answer).
So I'm back in the study saddle here after a quick wrestling match with the dogs (I won, though in their defense I outweigh them together(!) by about 140 lbs. Plus, you know, thumbs). And I'm remembering that I owe the reading public some tidbits...
The Blind Side by Michael Lewis: 67
This book's strengths lay outside of what the bulk of it covered. Michael Lewis's historical tracing of the passing game in football, most notably the "West Coast Offense," was great, and the game of personnel counter-attacks as he traced it from Lawrence Taylor to new offensive schemes to the left tackle's rise in prominence was a fantastic read. Unfortunately, those things comprised about 20 percent of the book - the vast majority was spent documenting the life of Michael Oher, a left-tackle prospect from the urban wasteland of West Memphis, and his rise to a sure-to-be prosperous prospect via the Briarcrest private school football team and his contact with a wealthy white family of Ole Miss alums. Michael's story is extremely endearing, and a lot of the things it reveals about learning styles, ability, the importance of education and the dangers of IQ tests (and the labels that come with them) were spot on and poignant. But his rags to future riches story ultimately rang hollow for me - he was TOO good, he was too much a pure victim of circumstance, just a fantastic beacon of human being who if ONLY.. GIVEN... A CHANCE... in short, Michael Lewis (whose writing and storytelling ability were enchanting) just ended up seeming severely one-sided, and given that some of his main characters were accused of impropriety by the NCAA, AND given that the family were friends of the author, i think his party line defense of them is suspect, true or not. In other words, Michael's story, for all of its past tense woes, was too happy, smooth and convenient. Even his traumatic smashing of a three year old boy was passed off as an afterthought. So an almost very good book - again, the actual football analysis outside of the Hallmark card story was great, so i am very much looking forward to reading Moneyball soon.
I also read...
Howl - Annotated Manuscripts (50th Anniversay Edition) by Allen Ginsberg: 94
Howl is most amazing to me on the front that it is actually a beat take on a theme that was echoed and echoed throughout the 20th century and one that continues to echo into the postmodern today: alienation in modernity. Metropolis and Modern Times and Brave New World, all made / published in the 1920s / 30s, all look at the mechanized now and scream at how it dehumanizes us. But while these films juxtapose modern man with his more natural (or savage) counterparts, and expose the ugly gears in the machine, Ginsberg takes the story a step further - it's achingly personal, it's vulgar (and/or obscene, depending who you ask), debasing, torturous, godawful and hellish - it's the "Beat"ific "beat" down, rendered nothing in the wake of culture-at-large's wheels.
(For your convenience, here is Howl Parts I-III, and here is the Howl's Footnote)
I found several thing awesome and inspiring specifically about the poem in this annotated form - one, you see the work as an evolving thing, and gain insight into just what a work of craftsmanship this was. Words, syllables, rhythms, moods, themes, symbols, all painstakingly placed. The structure alone is brilliant, but seeing its behind the curtain enactment brought a whole new clarity. Two, a major accomplishment of the poem is its bridging ability - the epic poem form laced with the language (and content) of modern times, forcing a constant recollection of classicism past while existing in the present. Even though the poem is entirely modern (and its style largely building upon experimentation done by Modernists like William Carlos Williams), it manages to instill the present with a bigger than here sense - a big part of the power of this poem does in fact lie in its thrusting of the profane into the exalted epic form. Three, I was amazed to learn how much of the poem is culled from stories, anecdotes, homages, allusions and plain liftings from the members and the works of the Beat generation. What seems like overwhelmingly imaginative imagery turns out in large part to be event reporting. Amazing, and it lends me to the power of the celebrity, even within the small circle of 1950s poetry - the concept of "Beat" turns out to focus upon this incestuous circle of characters - Ginsberg, Kerouac, Cassady, Burroughs, to name a few - and the events that dotted their lives. Which on the one hand makes me jealous as all hell and wanting such a romantic, artistic life, but on the other hand reminds me that this art required a fair amount of low-level and sub-pleasant existence (street-begging, hitchhiking, EST and insulin-induced comas, not to mention the heroin and worse) to foster its creation.
Great poem, and a great book in which to read it - I highly recommend this seminal work.
And, in further reward for having read this far, I give you: more!
But in a new post...
Track Review
Artist : Gwen Stefani feat. Akon
Title : The Sweet Escape
Album : The Sweet Escape
Tampaknya gwen sendiri sudah memantapkan langkahnya untuk bersolo karir. Setelah album Love, Angel, Music Baby yang sukses secara pasaran dan membuatnya menjadi ikon baru di dunia R & B, sekarang Gwen mengajak kita merasakan bagaimana manisnya melarikan diri dengan ditemani lagu dari album terbarunya “The Sweet Escape”. Dengan beat yang lumayan beda dengan singel Wind It Up, telinga kita bisa sedikit rilex mendengarkan track ini. Apalagi dimulai dengan vokal Akon yang unik, menjadikan Sweet Escape menjadi layak untuk di dengarkan sampai selesai. Pemilihan Akon sendiri sebagai teman untuk diajak featuring rasanya tepat, apalagi dengan suara keren sebagai intro dan tidak mengambil bagian dalam lagu ini menjadikannya unik. Jadi kalau kamu memang membutuhkan satu lagu untuk mencari seseorang untuk diajak kabur bersama, dengarkan lagu ini!
Artist : My Chemical Romance
Title : Heaven Help Us (reprise track)
Album : The Black Parade
Tidak perlu lagi untuk membahas seberapa besar dampak dari album The Black Parade dari MCR, yang dimulai dari singel Welcome To The Black Parade sampai track yang dijadikan singel kedua yaitu Famous Last Words. Masih kekurangan referensi untuk dijadikan mars pemakaman? Lupakan James Blunt dengan Goodbye My Lovernya. Sekarang waktunya tenggelam dalam lirik suram dari MCR. Dengan menunggu datangnya sang malaikat kematian, berusaha untuk tetap menunggu pertolongan dari surga.
Artist : Ruben Studdard
Title : Rather Just Not Know
Album : The Return
Kau pikir saya tidak mengetahui bahwa kamu berselingkuh? Get out from my life you fu*kin’ bit*h!!! Tapi kenapa saya tidak bisa mengatakannya langsung kepadamu? Saya berharap tidak mengetahui semua yang kau lakukan di belakangku, yang jelas kamu masih ada di sampingku. Inilah big idol yang mengatakan bahwa dia telah kembali, siap menyatakan bahwa dia bukan artis karbitan dari ajang pencari bakat. Dengan vokal slow R&B, buat kamu yang mau memakai kacamata kuda ketika kau merasa dicurangi, dengarkan suara Ruben dalam menyatakan perasaannya. Tapi, hidup ini memang kejam teman! Tinggalkan saja dia kalau memang dia berselingkuh, atau solusi terbaik : selingkuhin balik!!!
Artist : Lily Allen
Title : Littlest Thing
Album : LDN
Lupakan Britney Spears sekarang dengarkan cewek ini. Yang akan membawa kalian ke dalam parade cantik mengenai imajinasi liar dalam kepalanya. Kali ini dia mengajak kita melihat masa lalunya ketika dia sedang-lying in bed drinking tea to discovering your dirty grotty magazines-betapa menyenangkannya!!! Tapi ketika semuanya harus berakhir apa yang akan kau lakukan? Tidak usah menyebutkan sumpah serapah, lupakan Panic Channel yang menangis. Ingatlah bahwa banyak hal-hal kecil yang mengingatkan tentang dia. Dan berharap bahwa ini semua bukan akhir dari cerita. Saran terbaik, dengarkan lagu ini sambil berjalan di tengah terik matahari. Sambil mengeluarkan semua kenangan mengenai dia. Karena hanya satu yang mesti kau lakukan, biarkan dia hidup di masa lalu.
Artist : Sarah McLeod
Title : He Doesn’t Love You
Album : Beauty was A Tiger
Setelah menawarkan The Superjesus, kini sarah McLeod mengeluarkan taringnya melalui album ini. Albumnya sendiri sudah lama dirilis, tapi track ini sangat berjaya di awal tahun 2007. Untuk di dataran Eropa sendiri sudah dirilis dengan berbagai versi-kalo di dalam negeri sendiri, sudah pasti versi housemusic,disco ataupun jenis yang tidak jelas lainnya-yang menjadi lagu clubbing wajib. Dengan vokal yang mengajak anda untuk merasakan apa yang dia rasakan. Dan hanya satu tujuannya : buat para cewek dan para gay, hello!!! Sudahlah!! Dia bukan untuk kamu!!!
Artist : Incubus
Title : Dig
Album : Light Grenades
Sebuah evolusi dari album A Crow Left of the Murder, sekarang incubus menawarkan untuk memberikan 13 rasa yang berbeda dari 13 lagu yang ada. Track kedua, Dig, membawa kita dalam tempo yang lumayan mellow, setelah puas teriak dengan Anna Molly. Teringat Muse? Bisa jadi setelah mendengarkan album ini secara keseluruhan. Tapi kalau misalnya butuh lagu yang menurunkan kadar keegoan kamu, dengarkan lagu ini bersama sahabat kamu. Karena bagaimana pun juga setiap orang membutuhkan seseorang untuk menamparmu kembali ketika kamu menjadi manusia yang egois.
Artist : Chris Daughtry
Title : It’s Not Over
Album : Daughtry
Idol lagi. Bukan panen idol, bukan bermaksud untuk mempromosikan mereka. Hanya untuk tahun 2007 ini banyak sekali rekan-rekan idol (halah!!!) yang mengeluarkan debut mereka. Dan kalo semuanya bermain di jalur mainstream, yang dipilih Daughtry agak berbeda. Dengan genre yang-rock bukan pop bukan-track ini masih aman bermain di telinga anda. Mungkin buat kamu yang udah suffering banget mengenai hubungan kamu, lihat saja bagian ini-“I’ll try to do it right this time around” and “This love is killin’ me. Sounds so irritating isn’t? well, kata-kata apa lagi yang bisa keluar dari mulut seorang yang sudah hopeless?
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Butterfinger and Oreo
Blizzard.
Got up at 5:20 this morning in anticipation of a lot of scraping and shoveling out of the driveway - but luckily at 5:55 the head of the math dept. called. SNOW DAY!
Beck and I heartily made it to the gym at about 6:30 despite the ice and got a workout in. We rule! And then I had a whole lotta nothing to do, so I taught myself a song on the guitar (Led Zep's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"), read the poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg in a 50th anniversary edition that collects all of the manuscripts, traces the creation of the poem and fully annotates all of the verses. That was very cool; I will hit on that more tomorrow.
I also wrote a review of Baseball Between the Numbers for your reading pleasure. It's actually more of a summary and a way to remind myself of the answers to the various questions in the book, but the summary does a nice job of giving the Cliff's Notes version.
I *was* going to end the fun snow day by watching Lost with beck, but she has crashed into bed, so I will save that for video tomorrow. So I will cap off a day of relaxing and reading by reading in bed - wooha! Speaking of reading, I had intended to review The Blind Side here, but I will save that for tomorrow as well.
Speaking of eating, though, here's a classic clip to give you sweet dreams. Good night!
Got up at 5:20 this morning in anticipation of a lot of scraping and shoveling out of the driveway - but luckily at 5:55 the head of the math dept. called. SNOW DAY!
Beck and I heartily made it to the gym at about 6:30 despite the ice and got a workout in. We rule! And then I had a whole lotta nothing to do, so I taught myself a song on the guitar (Led Zep's "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"), read the poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg in a 50th anniversary edition that collects all of the manuscripts, traces the creation of the poem and fully annotates all of the verses. That was very cool; I will hit on that more tomorrow.
I also wrote a review of Baseball Between the Numbers for your reading pleasure. It's actually more of a summary and a way to remind myself of the answers to the various questions in the book, but the summary does a nice job of giving the Cliff's Notes version.
I *was* going to end the fun snow day by watching Lost with beck, but she has crashed into bed, so I will save that for video tomorrow. So I will cap off a day of relaxing and reading by reading in bed - wooha! Speaking of reading, I had intended to review The Blind Side here, but I will save that for tomorrow as well.
Speaking of eating, though, here's a classic clip to give you sweet dreams. Good night!
Monday, February 12, 2007
ocehan menjelang pagi
3 menit menjelang jam 3 pagi. mata ini masih belum juga mampu untuk terpejam. tidak mampu atau tidak mau? saya hanya berusaha untuk menyelesaikan postingan yang sudah lama tertunda ini. rasanya banyak sekali hal yang ingin saya ceritakan. dan pertama yang ingin saya bagi adalah, komputer saya rusak!!! damn, inilah sebabnya saya jarang membuat tulisan lagi. soalnya kompie nya belum bisa di bawa ke tempat servis. masalahnya sih udah diketahui bersama, yaitu RAM nya yang kalah. secara tu komputer kalo mao dibandingin dengan kompie yang keluaran sekarang, mah emang kalah jauh! jaman-jaman berjayanya dulu ni kompie dipake nge desain aja, langsung muncul warning, "virtual memory low". ckckckckc, dan sekarang udah sampai pada akhir hayatnya. kalo tu kompie dinyalain, hanya satu suara, tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttt. bikin ngeri, soalnya tu kompie kayak mo meledak! jadi biarlah kau beristirahat sementara. kemarin sih udah nanya-nanya di Mtc, udah keliling-keliling tempat yang bisa nyervis si kompie (jauh-jauh ke mtc, ternyata yang punya stand orang dekat rumah juga, capeekk deh!!!) dan saya udah tanya berapa harga Ram yang layak pakai? sekitar 200 ribuan ternyata!!! hmm... dugaan saya tidak meleset jauh, jadi niat buat secepatnya nyervis tu kompie tertunda dulu. soalnya belum ada duit. kemarin sih pace udah nanyain butuh duit berapa, tapi saya tidak menjawabnya. gak enak, masa bapak lagi yang mesti keluarin duit. saya lagi nunggu honor siaran bulan lalu. nanti kalo udah keluar baru langsung di ganti deh RAM nya, jadi bersabar yah kompie ku sayang...
sekarang saya juga lagi aktif membangun karir bersama spice boyz (halah!!!), anak-anak pada heran aja, kok saya jadi jalan bersama mereka? palingan abis kuliah, kalo emang gak ada siaran, ato udah gak ada bahan gosip yang jelas di koridor kampus, pasti hanya satu tujuan. kamar!!! nope, kami bukan kumpul kebo, cuma apa yah, enak aja suasananya. dan inilah yang saya senangi lagi, berada di tengah orang yang mau menerima saya. gila? pastilah, banyak sekali kegilaan yang kemudian kami lakukan, dan ini berdampak dari satu lagi hobi saya yaitu begadang sampai subuh! soalnya kerjaan di kamar, palingan nonton film doang (yang paling gila pas malam minggu kemarin, nonton sampai jam 5 subuh, serial Heroes satu season, trus pagi dilanjut nonton Happy feet+cars+scanner darkly) dan yah... gitu deh, saya akhirnya jadi additional player dari spice boyz yang sekarang tinggal jalan bertiga doang.
sekarang juga lagi betah-betahnya bwat ngupdate lagu baru... yah, secara untuk melengkapi database ku, dan mudah-mudahan dalam 1-2 hari ini resensi lagunya bisa kelar. well, udah hampir pagi, waktunya tidur sejenak, sebentar ada kuliah jam 8 pagi masalahnya. pagi.
Good "PR"
I'm not going to improve upon the comment that I read about this video earlier today, so I won't even try. Here is this year's entry for the PR Award, aka the Pete Rose Award, and if you know why we're calling it that, then you know:
Not much happening in the Nyetverse today - it's Teacher Appreciation Week, which means little more than a bunch of random markered up posters plastered all over the hallways and a breakfast spread in the faculty lounge. Plus, we get to go to Vinny T's this Friday for appetizers and beer / wine, but we are NOT allowed to bring our Pippen/Jordans. The financial wranglings of educational institution continues to baffle me. On the plus side, the cooler members of the faculty are going candle-pin bowling after the brouhaha, so that will be sweet.
Last night we (iF, Grin, SWAT-Goat* and I) hit up a new Mexican place around the corner. And it was good. Greasy style Tex-mex, a little bit, and the salsa was watered downa dn the margaritas not salty enough, but aside from that, excellent. I had a gigantic plate with lots of beans, cheese and rice. Excellente.
* - Speaking of the SWAT-Goat, Beck's car was still in the shop as of this AM, so I took the train into Natick. When I took it back today, Ali was nice enough to let me borrow her Accord so I didn't have to walk home the 5 miles from the train station. Holla Girl. And for the record, the reason that "Prettiest" (for this entry only) is becoming "Specialest Weaponest Andest Tactickest" is that Ali, finding herself locked out of her apartment in the cold, kicked her door in. Destroyed the lock and everything (though the bolt is still in place). I saw the boot used; it's large and in charge. And given the great success of Ali's hit comedy "That's Ali!," we're pretty sure that she has the star-power to launch a secondary Action-Drama called "SWAT-Goat," which if nothing else will feature a Heidi-cam from-inside-the-apartment shot of Ali busting in her door as its intro. Heidi, incidentally, is her dog.
And lest I forget to mention it, Benjamin shared a story in which he won $17.45 on a one dollar bet and then promptly lost $45 later that night on a hand of poker. Reno, NV, is dangerous.
S0 a good weekend - Beck and I chilled for a lot of it, and took in a fair number of Weeds episodes, a show that is fast becoming awesome. I also finished Baseball Between the Numbers and am well on my way (40 pages left) to finishing Michael Lewis's The Blind Side. Reviews will follow.
That's it until inspiration strikes...
Not much happening in the Nyetverse today - it's Teacher Appreciation Week, which means little more than a bunch of random markered up posters plastered all over the hallways and a breakfast spread in the faculty lounge. Plus, we get to go to Vinny T's this Friday for appetizers and beer / wine, but we are NOT allowed to bring our Pippen/Jordans. The financial wranglings of educational institution continues to baffle me. On the plus side, the cooler members of the faculty are going candle-pin bowling after the brouhaha, so that will be sweet.
Last night we (iF, Grin, SWAT-Goat* and I) hit up a new Mexican place around the corner. And it was good. Greasy style Tex-mex, a little bit, and the salsa was watered downa dn the margaritas not salty enough, but aside from that, excellent. I had a gigantic plate with lots of beans, cheese and rice. Excellente.
* - Speaking of the SWAT-Goat, Beck's car was still in the shop as of this AM, so I took the train into Natick. When I took it back today, Ali was nice enough to let me borrow her Accord so I didn't have to walk home the 5 miles from the train station. Holla Girl. And for the record, the reason that "Prettiest" (for this entry only) is becoming "Specialest Weaponest Andest Tactickest" is that Ali, finding herself locked out of her apartment in the cold, kicked her door in. Destroyed the lock and everything (though the bolt is still in place). I saw the boot used; it's large and in charge. And given the great success of Ali's hit comedy "That's Ali!," we're pretty sure that she has the star-power to launch a secondary Action-Drama called "SWAT-Goat," which if nothing else will feature a Heidi-cam from-inside-the-apartment shot of Ali busting in her door as its intro. Heidi, incidentally, is her dog.
And lest I forget to mention it, Benjamin shared a story in which he won $17.45 on a one dollar bet and then promptly lost $45 later that night on a hand of poker. Reno, NV, is dangerous.
S0 a good weekend - Beck and I chilled for a lot of it, and took in a fair number of Weeds episodes, a show that is fast becoming awesome. I also finished Baseball Between the Numbers and am well on my way (40 pages left) to finishing Michael Lewis's The Blind Side. Reviews will follow.
That's it until inspiration strikes...
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