Updating the Blog Fantastic

So I'm officially on break from reality: not teaching, just reading and watching the occasional baseball game. Classes start in three weeks (orientation in two), so I'm focusing a little bit on school subjects, trying to get myself in gear for the upcoming read-a-thon. That and selecting classes, getting stuff organized for the upcoming semester, and generally getting excited about having a purpose again.

(Okay, and I recognize that I helped a lot of kids while tutoring blah blah blah, but this little multi-year adventure represents a career-directional step, the likes of which i have not taken in quite some time. So the personal significance, and my corresponding excitement / anxiety, is how-do-you-say OFF THE CHARTS).

In other news, despite our better efforts to keep things quiet until things became official / set in stone, news leaked that Beck and I have been house hunting and have found a place. And made an offer, and received a counter-offer, and accepted a counter-offer, and written a check to a title company. So things are in motion. I stress that I do not and did not want to talk about this until it is/was finalized because there are approximately a billion things that could go wrong before we are actually moving our stuff into the new abode. But apparently people have an undying need to live vicariously, and other people, let's call them "Dr. Vet-Wife," let the news slip recently. Alas. Anyways, here's a pic of the house-as-currently-lived-in; you can click it and view other shots. We are obviously excited but reserving our partying until everything is complete; this whole process just makes me nervous (not to mention there's a blatant discordance to having the "yay I'm starting grad school" and the "yay we're buying a house" sentences in the same post. Pardon me while I vomit a Hot Pocket). Anyhoo, here ya go, enjoy:

So that was two...

The third thing is that my last day of slavery at Tutor Corps is tomorrow. Huzzah!

I kid: I would say overall that it's been an okay experience. The pay wasn't great, and there were occasional scheduling stupidities that could have been avoided - for example, I don't really think scheduling tutors for nine hours straight without a break is really a good idea. That's me. The main problem, of course, is that tutoring the same thing (SAT) over and over again gets incredibly boring, particularly when you're spending the off hours reading more philosophically oriented texts. The constant urge to shout "but truth is a social construct!" at the test wore on me.

But it was a good experience. If nothing else, hey, comedic fodder. And I'll leave the experience with this one, a quote from the last essay I graded:

"All in all, success is not a marathon, but rather a light jog."

And if you can figure out what the hell that means, you are a better tutor than I.

Neon Champ

Last Friday, Beck trekked up to Rochester for the annual Family Reunion. We made an executive decision to send one representative this year and leave the other at home for dog-caring duties. Beck won the rosham. So i was home alone, set for a weekend of dog-sitting and tutoring.

And then a student canceled on Saturday, and then another, leaving me with an open Saturday afternoon. And I had gotten an e-mail the previous week which i had pretty much opened and immediately disregarded because the event it referenced was on a work day. But i remembered it upon the second cancellation: there was a goofy Ultimate tournament down in Tucson, a mere two hours away! And so I calculated that if I ran home, walked the pups, got my stuff together and took off, I would get there just in time. And with two hours transit, maybe five hours of playing, and two hours back, the dogs would be alone for nine hours, which is pretty much what they did all the time up in Boston. So off I went.

Ahem, and a big back up, for two reasons. One, I hadn't run in about two weeks, hadn't played Ultimate, and had really only done anything vaguely athletic while tossing the disc in the park with Ben and Ali. So i was going to be out of shape for this bad boy. But I've played entire tournaments while out of shape, not just one day hat deals like this, and survived just fine. So BRING IT!!! The second problem is little more heinous: while playing for Polaroid, we had a pretty awesome team saying which simultaneously reveals the nature of Ultimate and what a bunch of jerks we could be. The saying: "Ultimate Frisbee: Love the Game, Hate the People." Yeah, we sucked. But, hey: it's a great game. And the hippie-ish, non-athlete, nerdcore vibe of it drags it down at times (just like the non-hippie, athletic, non-nerd competitive asshole vibe can drag it down). This tournament screamed more people than game; for one thing, it was starting at 4 and running until 9 on a field without lights... eh? And there was much more mention of "kegs" and "boat races" and the like than, say, what version of rules they were using, what format the tournament would be in, how many people would be there. So to extend a weirdly referenced metaphor from the previous post, this was gonna be way more Grateful Dead concert than church or baseball or Ultimate.

So it goes. The opportunities to play Ultimate in this area are few and far between, so i decided to bite the bullet and go, just put on my happy face. I've played goofball tournaments like this before that have been an absolute blast; it all depends on the people who end up on your team and how well you can strike a balance between good play and lunacy. So i jumped in the car and listened to some schwank tunes down to Tucson, getting there just in time to be placed on a team and get ready to go.

Only it turns out that fewer people showed up than the tourney organizers anticipated. So what was supposed to be a 6 team, 10 players per team tournament turned into a 6 team, 6 players per team tourney. And we played fives! FTR, I would have shifted gears and gone four teams, 9 players each and played sevens, but I was not in charge. So we were playing with one sub, and we were playing with only five on a relatively normal sized field. More running plus fewer subs. If you're smart, you can see where this is going.

My team consisted of Jack, Jorge, Lilly, Sam, Ana and me. Ana was just learning how to play, but otherwise we had a pretty experienced team (these things are called "hat" tournaments b/c they mix your names in a hat to pick teams, but they do make people rank themselves in an effort to balance the teams). We started play at 4, and it was hot hot hot. Not 114, but still, 95+. Ran ourselves a bit ragged and won game one, 11-6. Things cooled down for game two, and we eeked out a tight win, 10-8. By then it was 7, though... and quite dark.

Bust out the glow-in-the-dark apparel! Every player got four gitd rings to place on their body, and the standard issue Ultimate discs were replaced with slightly heavier discs with a light source affixed to the bottom. And each team got different colored glo-rings. Somewhat ludicrous, but quite cool, too. We were neon orange (nice and bright) and played our third game of the day against a team wearing neon blue (not so good against the duck light). One of the teams wore neon green rings and looked pretty much straight up Tron.

SO, playing in the dark is quite tough. As you can imagine, people drop passes a lot more frequently, and it's difficult to gauge depth perception with any reliability. So the games were pretty sloppy, but we pressed on. I actually made several (5+) layout catches in the dark, a weird experience for sure. Anyways, after a few points of adjustment and figuring out how to deal with the weird conditions, we ran away with game three. The easy highlight was when a huck went up and the light source on the bottom went out. 'Twas like a saucer vanishing into the night.

So 3-0 on the day got us a ticket to the finals and a bit more no-subs, lotsa running play. And that point everyone else stopped just to heckle and watch the finals, though it's hard to heckle what you can't see - I had a rather nutzoid trailing edge lay out hammer grab in the game, but it happened at the other side of the field so pretty much no one saw it. The people on the sideline got progressively drunker as the game went on, and all the usual stupid Ultimate hippie side of things - "Play a no pants point!," etc. - went on in Spades. I, frankly, reserve my right to keep my pants on. That's what makes me American (the right, not the pants).

So we won, big time. Huzzah. I won a tournament, something I can remember happening in... let's see, sectionals '00, regionals '02, random tourney with Polaroid, random good cause tourney... and that's about it. So this was the fifth. So apparently this is a rare event, or I suck. Hmmm...

Anyways, a fun tournament, but it prompted a ton of questions. One - I knew nobody there. A couple of guys made the trek down from Phoenix as well, but they aren't really guys I know all that well. So there were two people I recognized, and a ton I didn't. On the one hand, it's cool that anyone can jump in and have a good time with a bunch of people that they don't know - I met a couple of the U of A players and some other folks who were reasonably cool. On the other hand... weird to be in such a big mix and feel entirely a stranger. I also had to drive home, making me much less inclined to partake of the beer-based funniness. So there's that. I guess the second question is, then, why do that? For every part that is fun - playing well, hanging out with new folks - there's a long drive, potential for injury, the guaranteed soreness afterwards, the recurring "why do I do this again?" questions...

Oh, and I should have mentioned the soreness a little more prominently. Here we are, six days later, and i STILL have sore hamstrings. Turns out that sprinting for five hours is not good if you haven't even jogged in a couple of weeks. Dumb, dumb me. On the plus side, ankle held up quite nicely.

Rewinding, after the day wrapped up and we took team pictures and such, I booked it for home and dogs. I intelligently grabbed some Wendy's Fries on the way out of town, a delicacy I don't partake of all that often but one which was highly called for in this case of salt deprivation. And they hit the spot - man, best fries ever. I highly recommend running for five hours just so you can taste fries afterwards. It may be worth a week of awkward walking.

Another note - the key to late night driving is Erasure, specifically the compilation "Pop!." I guarantee that it is impossible to fall asleep with that perfection of 80s synth pop resounding in your ears. Who? You. You need love like that.

So overall I would say the experience was a good one. At this exact second in time, I'd say I'm unlikely to go back next year - playing in the dark is kinda dumb and dangerous, even if fun, and the peripheral shenanigans were pretty annoying. Then again, I say that now, and I 'm sure next summer I'll be itching to get in any playing I can. So, per usual, we shall see. But you read it here from a glow in the dark champ - it's fun, but it ain't that awesome. And ow.

42 bpm, or, Slow Jamz

So I have an anomalous radial artery - it doesn't sit in the groove as its supposed to, kinda winds over to the side of my wrist instead. This leads to hilarity a la the following:

PA: Hi, I'm X_______, I'm just going to do some preliminary work for your checkup today. The doctor will see you shortly.
NJ: Hi X________. Thanks.
PA: First, I'll just take your pulse real quick.
NJ: I should probably tell you that my radial art...
PA: OH MY GOD!!! YOU HAVE NO PULSE!!! CODE BLUE!!! THE PATIENT IS DEAD!!!!
NJ: No, it's actually just that...
PA: OH MY GOD!!! THE DEAD PATIENT IS TALKING!!!! THE DEAD PATIENT IS A ZOMBIE!!! HELP!!!!

Etc.

So I was sitting at Tutorcorps yesterday with my hands folded, waiting for a student to finish a timed test section, and had inadvertently placed my fingers on said anomalous artery. And i noticed: thump (long pause) thump (long pause) thump. Strange. I took my pulse (don't worry folks, I'm *trained* in this) and it was 41. Took it again and it was 43 - again and it was 42. Woah! A little freaky - "normal" is 60 or so - so over lunch I drove to the trusty blood pressure machine at the grocery store to check it again. BP normal, but indeed, pulse 42. I mean, I've always had a slowish pulse, but more like 52. So if you know what this means, um, let me know.

I am apparently unexcitable these days.

Now With 4.4% Less Nyet!!!

Skidding our way into July here, only six weeks until I re-re-restart my real life at grad school. I am completely typical in my balance of anticipation and anxiety - and beyond that, I am thoroughly eager to stop tutoring for a while. I don't know why - maybe it's just a bad string of kids - but work has been particularly torturous lately. Oh, well, nothing I can't tolerate for another month or so. A month that, according to the computer here, is going to feature highs of 109 every day until the apocalypse. So we have that going for us.

Beck has recovered from an unpleasant week - after the cat bite to the hand and the antibiotic / tetanus shots, she was sore and had some weird reactions that gave her achy joints. Better now - her hand's still sore, but she's walking / running normally, much better. We've been keeping things pretty low key of late - haven't been hiking because we like not dying of dehydration - and generally sticking to A/C-laden destinations or cooling off in the pool. Sometimes I feel I am not living the world's most exciting life. Ah.... well. No, seriously, we've been having fun times keeping it chill of late - finished the Deadwood series, have generally eaten like kings, watched a slew of terrible number-based movies - the hits just keep on coming.

Saturday we enjoyed the flesh-fest that is Ra Sushi - met up with Dan and Christina in North Scottsdale to observe the habits Peoplicus Beautifulis up close. The helium-voiced plasticine hostesses balked and then actually showed us to our tables, the low red light atmosphere of the joint reflecting just so off their artificiality. I openly questioned if we were pretty enough to eat at such a restaurant; perhaps coincidentally, we were put in a booth in the back. Dan openly questioned whether they were Russian Lit or Communications majors; he's judgmental, that one. We eventually enjoyed a delicious if stupidly expensive meal - I am admittedly not a sushi man and resorted to chicken teriyaki, so when I say "we" I mean "they," and when I say "stupidly expensive" I mean "stupidly expensive." Try to keep up. To cap things off, the waitress nickel and dimed us over some coupons that we had brought - turns out the definition of "free glass of wine" is up for debate, and rather than placate a customer, the management decided to debate the finer points of the fine print and charge us. Really? Let me tell you how much I love conversations with waitresses that involve pointing at tiny, coupon-sized pieces of paper and saying, "It says here..."

Barf. Screw you Ra and the rip-off horse you rode in on. Next time I want to see the pretties, I'll read People.

I had heard via Christastrophe that NBC was re-airing the original episode of Saturday Night Live (hosted by, RIP, George Carlin), so we came back to the condo to sip on beers and watch a comedic legend. And... hmmm. Decidedly unfunny, actually, or at least super campy. I mean, this is one of the best things EVER:

But the rest of the skits were pretty low-energy, one-joke numbers. And Carlin's contributions were little segments of his stand-up routine which largely involved a lot of mugging and trite observations. I appreciate historical comedy with the best of them - you can see that Carlin is setting the roots for the bulk of standup to come, and maybe this was just a bad sample of material - but wow, I felt pretty dumb for suggesting this as the night's activity. Oh, well. We did also get to see Billy Preston doing "Nothing From Nothing" (note: that's not the actual performance, SNL being the copyright-protecting jerks they are) and Janis Ian singing "At Seventeen." Solid 70s fare.

D&C left so they could go get the new Guitar Hero at midnight. You know, with all of the other 14 year olds in Phoenix. Use that information as you will.

Lots more low-keying on Sunday - I got up early to shoot some baskets and watch some pretty high quality pickup soccer down at the park, then came home and watched some of the highest-in-the-world quality soccer, the European Championship Finals. I watched a lot of the tournament, so it was good to see a fantastic end - and now Beck is in love with this guy:

How can a Nyet compete?

My athletic exploits of late: 7 miles on Thursday, 4 miles on Friday, 7 on Saturday, bringing me to 32 miles for week 2, 62 for the past two weeks. I also played Ultimate Sunday night and did another 5 miles on the treadmill Monday. WOOHA. Some other significant stats: Two weeks ago I weighed myself before and after running at the gym, and it was 204 and 198. This week it was 195 and 190. So things are headed in the right direction!

AS mandated by Beck, though, today i am doing NOTHING athletic for the first time in 15 days. So hopefully I'll come back rejuvenated for Wednesday. We'll see. Now it's off to Tutor Corps for a few hours and then back to hang out with the beck, who has today off - sweet!

Shaven, Still Not Stirring

Heat continues to rule the day / headlines here in Sunny, Sunny Azz. Took the pups in to get a fur cut today and they're still lounging around the house like sweaty Cleopatras. No relief in sight. We get what we deserve!

Am continuing on the road-blazing trail: I indeed ran 3 miles on Sunday morning to complete the 30 for last week, and have since run 7 on the roads and 4 on the treadmill and another 3 jogging / sprinting combo this morning. So that's 14 for this week, 44 for the one month time frame. Yeeha!

As a consequence, though, I am hella tired. Barely made it through my scant tutoring hours today, though that is admittedly 50% due to exhaustion, 50% due to sheer boredom with all aspects of the SAT. Blar.

Tired as I am, I am not touching the Beckian levels of last Saturday. She came home from work, we started to eat some of the leftover pizza from Friday and next thing I knew, she was muttering, "I'm just going to rest my head," and falling asleep. At 6:30, or thereabouts. So much for the Deadwood marathon. We both effectively hung out around the house on Sunday, stopping momentarily to lunge in the pool. Man-o-man, no fun this time o' year. We did managed to take in a few more Deadwood eps and are now just about at the thrilling conclusion of season 3, looking forward to some Hearst-blood. We shall see.

Speaking of blood: poor Beck got attacked by a clawless cat today who sank its fangs into her hands multiple times. She then had to go to the clinic to get antibiotics, which apparently came in the form of shots... in her hands. Ouch. Occupational hazard, but still, no good. I am taking the dinner reins tonight in order to help her rest her paws.

And speaking of dinner: Beck is kicking all kinds of culinary butt these days. Yummy salmon on Sunday, turkey burgers last night... all delicious. I am reminded every day how much I WIN.

Speaking of, there's a leftover turkey burger calling my name for lunch. Mmmmmm...

(Btw: some reviews are slowly making their was down the Ballad Factory conveyor belt. SO you have that to look forward to. Some of them will come from my lauded "And Civilization" series. Get psyched!).

To Tide You

Sorry for the dearth - a few things to post about, but time is lacking this morning, as I have marathon tutelage to perform. Trust that all is well and that you will get a couple of posts in the upcoming days before we head off to a slew of weddings on the east coast next week. In the meantime, enjoy this pic of a horned lizard that Beck and I saw in payson yesterday:

Night of the Living Thumpers

I stole that picture from somewhere on the internet, but it's too perfect not to share. Hey look, it's the animated, rotting corpse of Disney, come to devour your wallet! Hooray!

Not much going on here - some tutoring early today, then a bike ride is on the docket. Wrigley is off with Beck today to get her teeth cleaned, so it's just Sparkle and me holding down the fort today. Hopefully Russell Crowe won't show up, because DAMN.

3 Days of Dumb

I'm thoroughly aggravated at my workplace right now. In the past couple of days, I've had numerous students cancel on me - not entirely surprising, it's finals week - but no one really called to confirm their appointments, so this resulted in me going in several times from Mon to Wed and waiting for students who didn't show. I was biking to work, so several of those trips involved biking back and forth, getting sweaty and all hair-a-tussled for no good reason. Did I mention that it was 112 on Monday, in the hundreds on Tuesday, and still 95 yesterday. Awesome!! So i am sub-pleased with the folks responsible. Oh, well. That's what I get.

I've attempted to direct some of my ill-energy at exercising and guitar playing which has worked to a mixed degree. I ran about 3 miles Monday, 4 miles Tuesday and 7 miles on Wednesday - the last one turned out to be a bad idea as my left knee started clicking at about the six mile mark. Boo-urns. So I've decided to take today off and jump back on the proverbial running horse tomorrow (Note - taking the day off still includes running a 400 yard dash with the pups on their walk. Which is, as mentioned, awesome).

So on one of my runs I listened to the indomitable "Omaha Stylee" by 311 and decided to learn it. And once that fell easily, I started conquering other 311 songs. Yeeha. SO if you're in the need for some white boy funk metal, give me a call.

Tonight: the plan is to go to see Beck's boyfriend Indiana Jones. Don't know if that will pan out timing-wise (Beck gets off from work about 7, which could mean 8, and given her circa 9:30 bedtime lately, probably not a great idea to head to a 10 o'clock showing. Especially ona school night).

Two "shouldn't we talk about the weather" items: one, after being well into the 100s on Tuesday, today it's maybe 80, if that. Wa-friggin'-hoo; we push the deadly summer off at least another couple of days. Two, this Sunday past was absolutely fantastic - my back was bothering me a bit, so I skipped Ultimate and opted for a sit out by the pool day instead (and put a healthy dent in what might be one of the best novels I've read, The Sot Weed Factor). Just a gorgeous, perfect day for it, 100 degrees notwithstanding. I also had a bizarre string from Sunday through Monday where every single sporting event I even glimpsed came out favorably for the team for which I was rooting. Off the top of my head, in that two day span, The Cubs won twice, the Dbacks won twice, the Celtics and Spurs won Game 7s, the Penguins and Red Wings advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Red Sox won twice (and threw a no-hitter) and the Yankees lost. Great stuff.

Of course, that little streak was certainly not in effect last night. No analysis here - but if you can't cash in on the game where you have a 20 point lead midway through the 3rd quarter, it might be a hard series for you. Ugh. Not giving up, of course, but that was pretty barfariffic last night.

Alright, here's to upward facing days. I've been funked by bad Ultimate, bad work, bad disc golf, bad condo car thieves, aching backs and knees, just general badness of late and it's time to bust out. RAWWWWWWRRRR!!! Condo, hear my electric guitar!!!

(Oh, and if you are ludicrously bored, I just finished a fantasy strat-o-matic season and documented the results here). (Yes, I'm a dork).

Lest I Forget

There's a pretty solid argument that maintains that the primary purpose of blogging is bitching and moaning. In that spirit:

Guess how happy I was on Thursday afternoon at 2:20 pm.

If you picked "Not very," then

CONGRATULATION

You a winner, HA HA HA.

Because on Thursday at 2:20 pm, I had the idea that I should bike down to the golf course on Friday morning. But in order to do that, I needed a pump for my bicycle tires - it wouldn't be too bad to have a flat en route to work, which is only ~1.5 miles away by roads, but getting stuck 9 miles from home without a functional cycle would have been bad. But it was 2:20, and I had to work at 3, and the bike store closed at 7, before I would be done with work. So in order to save time, I decided to drive over to the bike place real quick, head home and then bike to work. So I walked out to the parking lot.

The eerily empty parking lot. The one WITHOUT MY CAR!!!

After about 2.3 seconds of brutal panic, I realized that everyone else's cars were gone, too, so unless we had just been victimized by a very shwanky and very targeted crime syndicate, my car was probably not gone. Also, there was the fresh smell of tar in the air - I am, as mentioned here, Smelltard the Magnificent, but that putrid scent does not escape my attention. It turns out that though they cannot afford to pay their water bills, my condo association can afford to repave the parking lot. And apparently can afford to tow people's cars out of the way.

I was, understandably, miffed, as there had been no warning of any of this. But mainly, I just wanted to find my car so I could get to the bike store and then on to work. So i went to the office, land of the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track Girls. Who are OH-SO-EFFING-HELPFUL, not. Beck has a particular hatred for them since the incident when they refused to let us park our moving truck in front of our apartment (they claimed it would block the sales spaces, and made us park across the complex. It was 115 degrees at the time. And no one parked in the spaces the entire time; Beck checked). So Beck routinely parks in their Sales spaces out of spite. YEAH! I have had several encounters with them where they treat me with something in the contempt to utter disregard range, so I am not a huge fan either.

All of this is meant to indicate that I didn't particularly expect any help when I got to the office. I was not disappointed. I first asked, "Do you know where the cars are?"

Unhelpful lady says, "I don't know; I think they're around back."

"Where around back?" I asked, as "around back" is about a mile long area.

"I don't know. You really should have moved your car ahead of time."

"Um, how was I supposed to know you were repaving today?"

"Uh, yeah, we sent a letter." Trust that this was in the best possible tonally inflected Frank Zappa valley girl type accent.

"I didn't get a letter. To whom did you send them?" (And yes, I busted out an objective pronoun).

"Well we sent them last week to the condo owners."

"But, you see, I am not an owner, I merely LIVE HERE."

"Well, the owner should have told you."

"You didn't think notifying me directly or maybe posting some signs would have been a good idea?"

"That wasn't my decision to make."

Buck passed! Obviously this interaction was going nowhere, so I left, tracked down one of the pavers and asked him where they had moved the cars. *He* was helpful and even apologized for having to move the cars, realizing that the complex's representatives had not exactly done the world's best job of notifying people. So I found my car, drove to the bike store, got a pump, headed home, and rode my bike in, just a couple of minutes late. So all told, no damage done. But in the eternal humankind basically evil / basically good game, chalk another couple up for the BE. Though I don't know if the Pep-Squad-to-Sorority-to-Real-Estate Career Track qualifies you as human. Can those gals use tools? I mean, besides blackberries and dirty looks?

----------------
Now playing: Gang of Four - Natural's Not In It

Frank: Changing the World One Nyet at a Time

Exciting week in the Ballad - I took my bike into the shop on Monday to get tuned up / new tires. Taking the bike in was interesting - it just barely fit in the Honda, kinda diagonal across the back and front seats with the front tire off. Yikes. So on Wednesday when I went back to get it, I though it would be smarter just to run to the store, a scant three miles away. No big deal. Except I got there and despite the fact that the bike was supposed to be done on Tuesday after 5, they were still working on it. So I jogged around the block for another half an hour while they fixed it. Fun! After they finally financially molested me, I got my bike back - brakes sweet, derailers sweet, tires nice and pumped and shiny, good to go. I rode home in just a few minutes; much more fun than the running it took to get there.

So since Wednesday I've been biking into work. And besides the sweat and the interesting hair formations that the helmet (yes, Frank, the HELMET) gives me, I'd say it's working great. SO great, in fact, that this morning I planned a little jaunt:

That's a 9 miles bike trip (18 miles total) down to the disc golf course at Vista Del Camino. Big fun, except of course I picked a gusty windy day to do it - biking there with the wind at my back wasn't too bad, but on the way home with the wind in my face was a little exciting. And the gusty winds made for a terrible round, too - a pretty decent par start got super derailed on the back nine, and I ended up about +7. Ouch! My back has been bugging me since Wednesday - here's hoping that's just coincidental and not caused by the biking - so thanks to that and the gusty wind, my drives were going nowhere and or majorly askew. And predictably, putting was a joke. No fun. But the bike ride was sweet; I was on the Green Belt the whole way, and except for a couple of traffic lights, it was completely easy, traffic-free riding. Huzzah.

That's about it. Trying to get in contact with the Danimal to see about going to DBacks - Tigers games this weekend. We'll see. Otherwise it's a light day of tutoring today and all day tutoring tomorrow. Bleh. Will see you on the flip side, hopefully with more enthralling things to post.

Apocalypse H2O!

So I just took the pups for a long W in the Phoenix summer spring sun. And as usual, Wrigley galloped into the bedroom to drink water when we got home. Only the bowl was dry. So I went to get her some water from the tap and... nothing.

"Oh crap," I thought. "Phoenix has finally run out of water." Somewhere, Jared Diamond smiled.

Nope, it turns out - and Aaron may or may not appreciate this - that our apartment complex FORGOT TO PAY THE WATER BILL. D'oh! Delinquency and procrastination, it's not just for recent college grads any more! So for the time being, we are without water here at the complex. This may prove interesting for my pre-work shower / shaving - did I mention that the dogs and I, as is our habit, ran the last quarter mile home? And if you didn't know this already, you should be aware that I suffer from a condition called Nyet-sweat. I pity the poor tutoree.

Meanwhile, S&W get to drink store-bought spring water. They live the good life, yes. Which reminds me of a tale from the tutoring front: I had a girl, let's call her Mona Corona, who did not know what a perimeter is. She dropped her Prada shades and turned her diamond encrusted iPhone off long enough to be sure to hear my explanation. I, spotting a rare moment of math-English syzygy, said, "Let's split the word up: what does "meter" mean at the end of a word?" She didn't know, so I told her about thermometers, speedometers, Shawon-o-meters, and the fact that what they had in common was that they all measured things. So "meter" means "measure." Then I told her about a periscope, and how it sees "around things." I asked her if she could think of another word with "peri" in it, hoping she would go with "peripheral" or something of that ilk. But she said,

"Perrier?"

OH, OH: No. No.

Goodness, Badness, Correction-ness

Goodness: Coming home on Friday night to chill with the pups and watch Tony Parker decimate - and yes, I mean "kill one in ten of" - the Phoenix Suns last night. That's right, D.J. Strawberry, call up M.C. Banana because you are dead, an example of what happens when Tony Parker exacts Roman Law on your coward head. (20% of Brian Skinner will be smote as well). Seriously, that was a case of one unstoppable man playing pure, aesthetic basketball. And I jest with the previous; I'm not really out for Phoenix's blood, I just like me some high quality basketball. And TP delivered. Most excellent.

Badness: back at work, and I had a tag-along new employee today. When I observe, I hang back, ask questions in between appointments, etc. I do not interrupt the person I'm observing, try to correct them when working on problems, or point out inanities (e.g., you can represent consecutive even numbers with "x, x + 2, x + 4" and this person pointed out, "that works with odd numbers, too!" Yay). I felt some palpitations today I got so frustrated with her - and mind you, she stood out as frustrating in an environment where 50% of the people don't know what "susceptible" means. Good gads, lady!

Correction-ness: it seems we here at The Ballad, Inc., TM, Conglomerate have offended one Ben Grin by insinuating in hyperbolic fashion that he spent the entire vacation with a cellphone glued to his ear. That was an untruth; he is not addicted to Crackberry. Ben partayed down like the rest of us the entire time (though he did conduct some business at moments, too). As a humble, head-bowing apology, please accept my proof that Ben indeed can get down, get funkay: here's a centerfold shot of him enjoying his margarita. Note that while this is safe for work, it is NSFYL*:

*Not Safe For Your Loins

Ohhhhhhkaaaaaay

Saturday: I tutored from 8 am-4pm, no breaks, straight-through. This is not that impressive, as lots of people work for eight hours without stopping. But there's something about one-on-one working and talking for hours on end that I find a little draining. So by the end, I was seriously ready to collapse and do something low-key for the evening.

(Side note: let's say you're the future of America, and you schedule an appointment for 8 am on Saturday. One way you will certainly piss off your teacher, aka "The Present of America," is to not show up on time, or more exactly, twenty minutes late. And yeah, I split that infinitive. That should be a clear indication of how angry you have made me. Grrrrr).

(Work-related side note two: I've been working on a project at Tutor Corps that has involved evaluating our sample SAT and ACT tests for discrepancies in difficulty. Yep, I was looking for variance in tests that are specifically designed not to have variance. I didn't split that one, but please don't feel that I am not equally annoyed. This project involved perusing (used correctly) the various tests, noting the number of steps involved in the math or science problems, guesstimating the difficulty of reading problems or grammatical errors. In other words, about a week and a half's work of BLAR. And guess what, at the end of the day: no significant difference. The positive part of me looks at this as some kind of Koan-esque experience).

So I came home, walked the pups, and waited for the Beck to return from her veterinary adventures in west Phoenix. I caught a horrendous Cubs game in the meantime. Barf. But Beck eventually got here, and we packed up our blanket and headed down to ASU to watch the 12th annual ASU outdoor film festival. (Big thanks to Beck & Nyet's personal cultural coordinator iPMM!!!). Because, yes, in Tempe, you don't really have to worry about such things being rained out. The venue was nice; just a little crowd gathered on the steps in the courtyard outside the museum. Here's a swiped view:

Saturday night featured a crystalline night sky unlike this pic from above; consequently, our viewing backdrop included Orion and the moon. Just a great setting; the night blue sky behind the buildings definitely added to the atmosphere. We sat on a blanket towards the front right - we had to move there after a brief altercation with some chair-sitters who were so unthoughtful as to sit in front us (fear not, Beck told them what was what). Little did we know that our entire evening would be thereby colored by the set of three lady JACKASSES sitting behind us.

So I'm all for cultural practices, and I recognize the whole "be quiet and appreciate the artists' work" angle is an attitude steeped in my own white middle class suburbanism. I don't mean this as a racial observation; I don't really know what race or culture of origin the jackasses in question were, but the point I am trying to make is that I recognize that different people have different manners of enjoying art, and that is all well and good. Attending the Rocky Horror Picture Show and sitting there quietly and hoping to hear all the dialog would be equally stupid. Note first, though, that there is a when in Rome aspect to life, and when you are at an artsy outdoor film festival, you are decidedly in my white suburbanite Rome. Note second that when you are outdoors and the sound for a film festival is coming from some low watt rented amp system, it is not always easy to catch the music/dialog from the film. So when you TALK and say "OH noes" or "Damn" or whatever the hell idiotic thought escapes the boundaries of your non-functioning frontal-lobed head, it is as ANNOYING as HELL. But trumping that annoyance is your categorical response to every event in every film that was even slightly odd or off-beat or weird. And that would be the ubiquitous:

"Ohhhhhhkaaaaaay."

I would suggest that next time, you just shout out "I am too close-minded and unsophisticated to even attempt to understand what I just saw, it being well out of the realm of standard commodified entertainment to which i am used. I am, how do you say it, an idjut."

SO that's enough of that; just imagine that while we were trying to enjoy some rather offbeat and weird films, we had running Beavis and Butthead commentary coming from the left and behind us. Beck suggested that if they were ASU students and they ended up in my class, I should fail them. Done and done.

Outside of that, the festival faired pretty well. You can check the program here, and I'm sure that the bulk of the films are google-able. The highlights, in Beck's and my humble opinions, were My Blue Friend, Three-Fifty, The Birthday Girl, The Lemon Tree, Urban Sprawl, You Can Awesome, Shuteye Hotel, Beth, (...almost like one of the family), and The Execution of Solomon Harris. In fact, what the hell, I'll do the legwork - here are the ones I can find on Youtube (some are just the trailers):

The Birthday Girl

So, a good Saturday night. Next day, next post.

Free Friday Funball

Greeting from the "weekend that was" perspective that is becoming habitual in these parts. But when you're having these awesome weekends, there's not a whole lot of motivation to break the pattern, stop everything and blog about it mid-weekend-stride. So here's the dealio that went down since I last posted:

I was slaving away at Tutor-Corps enterprises, both thanking my lucky stars that my employers had not killed me yet and simultaneously rationalizing not to commit suicide because, hey, this wasn't so bad, when I got a call from the Beck. "Can you make it down to a free Diamondbacks game by 6:40?" Why yes, yes I could. I texted her Dan's number (Why? You may recall that Beck lost her phone at a national park a couple of weeks back), and he, too, could meet us down at Chase Field. So after sending my student off with some wisdom re: the ACT (she was painfully nervous about her test Friday, so that day's tutelage involved a fair amount of counseling / confidence-building), I booked it home to take the dogs out and wait for Beck to pick me up. The dogs spazzed out and adopted "full-on crazy" mode as we ascended the stairs back to the apartment; Beck had returned home and oh boy oh boy they knew it. They sprinted into the bedroom to attack her while I got their dinner ready. We separated them by gate per usual and allowed the Prius to take us out to the ballgame.

The 101 was surprisingly uncrowded, and beside a little bit of brakelights and the brutal glare that is driving west in Phoenix at 6 pm, we made it down to the stadium without a hitch. Met up with Dan after some stadium circumnavigating and wound our way down to our 60 dollar seats. YOWSAHS! We were below the upper deck overhang but just slightly to the right (looking out on the field) of directly behind homeplate. Which means we got that perfect, why-don't-they-always-film-games-like-this view of the pitcher, the batter, the catcher/ump and the entire field. The roof and the outfield panels were open; Chase Field is only 1000% more enjoyable as an "outdoor" facility. And our seats afforded us a very limited view of the stupid 360 degree light sign that encircles the ballpark, so we were subjected to a lot less of the idiotic inter-inning mayhem that accompanies major league baseball games these days (though we were privy to the incessant "rattling" sound that the Diamondbacks sound guy plays. Oh, what, high pitched rattling sounds are annoying? Who Knew?). That cannot be emphasized enough: all of the "entertainment" that accompanies the games, the hot dog races and the amusement park in centerfield, t-shirt cannons and DBacks girls (who stand out, for the record, only slightly from the influx of midriff and/or boob-bearing Scottsdale skankhood seated in the stands), is painful, and somehow opening the roof countered a lot of this postmodern idiocy. There is also a new HD scoreboard in CF, and I am very impressed that they have managed to use it in a way that adds to the game - batter info, matchups, history, etc. It's like playing strat-o-matic in real life. On a screen that probably costs 15 million dollars.

I had forgotten to check the matchups on the way out of the house, so I was pumped to see none other than 2006 Cy Young award winner Brandon Webb on the hill for the DBacks. We got to our seats for the top of the second, which proved to be Webb's only remotely shaky inning: after an infield single by Matt "In Cambodia" Holliday, Webb walked Brad Hawpe and uncorked a wild pitch to Garrett Atkins, putting runners at second and third with no outs. A quick glance at a run expectancy chart (admittedly one from the heart of the, um, "lots of runs being scored" era) shows that you're looking at 2.052 runs scored in the inning on average in this situation. Yikes, especially with the Rockies ace Jeff Francis opposing. So Webb cranks up the dial, and gets a soft liner to leftfield from Atkins.

So, Eric Byrnes, or Eric "Boo-urns" as he should obviously be known (second place: "Eric Byrnes," pronounced as though your mouth is full of peanut butter) , is a total spaz. You know this, I know this. The whole "Eric Byrnes and dog reporting live from McCovey Cove" debacle from last year's all-star game is proof enough. And he flails wildly in the batter's box, and runs around left field like a maniac. But he's got a pretty good reputation as a fielder, and actually garners himself a "very good" rating on Start-o-matic fielding charts. But I was not so sure on Friday night. Brynes catches the soft liner, is falling over in the process and has more or less no shot whatsoever of nailing Holliday at the plate. But he does a FLIP-THROW home, presumably for style points and to impress the cute blond sitting in the front row of the bleachers. (Dan reports that Byrnes's wife is platinum blond and starting her own fashion line, aka living the stereotype). Predictably, Byrnes's throw was about 30 feet up the first base line, Holliday scored, and only by some baffling baserunning incompetence did Hawpe stay at second. I can't effectively convey how stupid this was and how stupid he looked as he performed this "athletic" maneuver; it was like watching bad stop-animation ragdoll kungfu. Dan glared and mentally noted how many laps Eric would be running for missing the cut-off man were he under Dan's Little League coaching system. Of course, it didn't matter, because Webb badly K'd Torrealba and got a weak groundout from Nix, escaping a scary inning with a single run scored. (Torrealba, it should be noted, looked stoopid against Webb all night - three AB's, twelve pitches, one barely foul tip and 3 K's. Egads, man). And that was more or less it for the Rockies - Webb threw nasty sinkers, slider and change-ups that reduced the Rockies to tears all night. Very exciting to see such an expert performance up close and in person.

Of course, Byrnsie was far from done - he tripped all over himself in left to make a couple of seemingly routine fly ball catches, and nearly decapitated himself against the fence tracking down a Helton flyball. Always an adventure... (though I would take Byrnes over, say, Soriano in left any day). Of course, two innings later, the words "DBacks overpaid left fielder Eric..." had just passed my lips when Byrnes launched a two run shot down the left field line, spaz-swing and all. So what do I know. Boo-urns a-trottin':

Oddly, Byrnes did not win the spaz swing of the night award. That would easily belong to one Justin Upton, the Rockies young and by all accounts future hall-of-famer right fielder. In the 6th inning, Upton got an outside cut fastball from Francis and swung so hard that he fell down. No, it's not like the ball almost hit him so as he swung he had to jump out of the way; no, this was strictly a close-your-eyes, kill-the-ball swing, spin into the earth that resulted in Upton sitting firmly on his butt in the batter's box. "Swing hard in case you hit it," everyone in the stadium simultaneously thought. And then, Justin Upton "in-cased," in 450-foot HR fashion:

You can see this sequence (and the rest of the devastation that the DBacks wrought) in this video highlight from MLB.com. Seriously, look where that stupid thing landed, and then imagine watching its path from directly behind the path of the ball - majestic. Speaking of words that start with "Maj," did I mention that Dan "Josh" Beckett spotted Thunder Dan Majerle in the crowd? Sitting in the sweet seats is living the good life. ANyways, just a hilarious sequence from the young DBack, definitely the highlight of a highlight-infused game.

The DBacks won handily, 8-2, and in case it's not obvious, I had a great time. The absence of people who thought that Matsui and Fukudome were brothers was a noted plus. Great night at the old ballpark - and it was fun to catch the DBacks in the midst of this uncanny hot streak. Looking up and seeing nearly every DBacks player with an OPS north of .900 - that's just great. It's not going to last - there will surely be some regression to the mean before too long - but as a whole, the team looks very plate-disciplined, and the pitching remains top-notch. I thoroughly enjoy living around a good baseball team, and as we all know, the Red Sox suffered for some 80 years before I showed up, and then won two world series in four years during my tenure as a New Englander. I guess what I'm saying is: hey Diamondbacks, where's my paycheck / consulting fees?

More on the weekend in the next post.
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Now playing: Envy - A Cradle Of Arguments And Anxiousness

"If I Wanted Yesterday's News, I'd Look in My Brain."

Yep, Beck greeted me thusly this morning after I told her that Charlton Heston had died and that Beyonce and Jay-Z had gotten married. Don't blame me, blame a non-refreshed Yahoo-headlines page on her laptop. That said... I give you Yesterday's News! And the day before that, and the day before that.

First, though, a bullet list of miscellaneous thoughts that crossed my mind in the past few. Several are music related. A couple are not.

1. During the opening day Cubs game, Brewers outfielder Corey Hart (wearing his UV-filtering contact lenses during the day so he can so he can see the ball before his eyes) made a nice play down the line in right. The camera lingered on him a bit after the play, and he did something I've never seen on a baseball field before - reached into his back pocket and pulled out a laminated, color-coded sheet. Clearly some kind of scouting report info on the Cubs batters. Why haven't I seen this before? Why don't pitchers carry palm pilots out on the mound and look up the batter's tendencies online? The future is now.
2. I walked into Fry's the other morning very early to get some milk, expecting to hear the usual pop-morass on the overhead speakers. And lo, I was elated: "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by TMBG! In a friggin' grocery store! Awesome. I danced like no one was watching, because no one was; there were approximately 3 people in the grocery store: a cashier, an old lady buying four weeks-worth of groceries, and a Nyet. Sweet! Of course, this was followed up by the sad-sap R&B stylings of a synth-infused no one, so the trend stopped quickly. I then spent 15 minutes waiting for said old lady to finish her checkout, all the while exposed to the more normal top 200 stuff. Sigh.
3. I had GPGDS's Slow Down in the CD player as I left ASU campus on Friday. "Seasons Change," specifically. And there was something very nice about a little indie reggae providing the cruising soundtrack as I rolled through campus. I had a pretty good mood going anyways (see below), but I especially enjoyed the serious happy-times triumphant life-score provided by "Seasons Change" in a place where they rather blatantly don't (unless nice -> hot constitute seasons). So, further props to Jamie et al for providing a solid life soundtrack.
4. While that was great, I did have a better music as soundtrack experience yesterday while walking to work. I was attempting to motivate myself for a full day of tutoring - "here we go, seven hours of SAT, YES!" - when on the iPod comes that familiar Survivor beat. No, not Destiny's Child; rather, the early '80s version that invokes boxing and general riff-driven ass-kicking, aka "Eye of the Tiger." Only something sounds a little funny about the guitar, and it's not until I'm fist pumping and shadow-boxing and the first verse is about to kick in that I realize that this is not Survivor, this is Werid Al, and this is not EoTT, this is "Theme Song to Rocky XIV." Fat and weak, what a disgrace, etc. So I had a good laugh about that one. But again, I was on the Pima path, nary a soul around, so hell yeah I belted out those lyrics. Somebody got a 9:40 AM free show. All praise Weird Al.
5. On a separate trip to the grocery store last week, I saw an older lady drop her bag of groceries. And she exclaimed pissed-offedly, "God F... Bless America." I think, but am not sure, that is the first time I've seen blasphemy and treason committed in the same breath. Props to Scottsdale.

Alright, there were other things, but I'm sure I'll think of them later. Friday, as mentioned, I had an appointment with Drs. Robert (crushingly, I just learned that this is pronounced "Reaux-bear," which makes a lot of sense given his Canadian origin. So alas, a lifetime of Beatles jokes just died right there) and Maienschein down at ASU. And we had a fantastic meeting, setting up courses to look at for this fall and people to talk to re: research projects. Just awesome to be speaking with people and not have the conversation revolve around what "unique" means or why 4 divided by 2 is not, actually, negative two (and yes, those are two real conversations I had this week at work. God F... Bless the future of America). Seriously, though, talked about a seemingly infinite gamut of topics and projects and potential directions. Great stuff - it sounds like it will be very easy to mix and match coursework in everything from neurosciences to media studies to journalism to philosophy to etc. - YAH! I get that deep-welled since of "SWEET, FINALLY!" just thinking about it. Great feelings, life-direction-wise, after quite a while of wheel spinning. And after feelings of pressure crept up, I reminded myself: I smoked my med school courses, and that was with a fair degree of anti-motivation. I am, in a true sense and not the usual "good things to say in interviews" fodder sense, looking forward to seeing what I can do when properly motivated. We shall see.

So that's more than enough self-indulgent yeah-Nyet talk for today. But suffice it: am pumped. Might even start working on some projects this summer. Here's to real life, started at age 30.5. Of course, contingent upon whatever I mean by "real."

So the rest of Friday was spent serenading the neighbors with electric guitar and rolling into work for a a few hours of tutelage. And then I drafted yet another fantasy baseball team for a somewhat ridiculous league in which the only stats that matter are HRs and Ws. No, I will not post my team; instead I will laugh at buddy Neil for auto-drafting and grabbing Ichiro and a slew of closers. Good luck with that, homes. (Neil, incidentally, is kicking in Japan these days. Use that info as you will). Beck and I made an evening of margaritas and Risk (in which she kicked my ass soundly - the the atrocities committed by the pink armies storming Western Africa will be forgotten in the annals of history as there were NO SURVIVORS for my side. Yikes. I smell a revisionist history as written by the Iron Fist in the near future). Beck deserves special congratulations - and not just for the Risk-smacking - essentially for the first time since she started working, she was thrown to the veterinary wolves, left in the clinic by herself without other doctors in a coincidentally extraordinary busy time. And she performed swimmingly and made mad cash. Diagnosed kitties and pups and saved many lives. Great work, Dr. Fe-Fist. :)

Sometime Saturday I was strangely inspired by the nice weather and texted Dan - we arranged some HOME RUN DERBY for the afternoon at the gargantuan ballpark near our house, known in these parts as the "Little Miss Scottsdale Softball Park for Grades K-9."So after work, Dan came over and we displayed our prowess, launching many balls well past the 140 foot foul poles. As you can guess, HELLA fun but made us feel manly in exactly no way. Beck hit, too, and in her first set of swings crushed the ball. We won't mention the second set here.

Dan had dinner plans with Wren & Tim, so we stayed local and headed to a film. On Tufts-bud Andy's rec, we went to see "The Bank Job," which was quite good - nice, tense action/heisty film which struck a nice balance of humor and complex crime plot. Not going to win an Oscar or anything, but definitely in the 70-75 range for very good film - I recommend it, too. The Beck and I followed up our movie with a nice quick dinner at Oregano's (featuring an Award-Winning Weirdest Waitress Rocking a Pseudo-Britney Look) (who failed the "Bring Beer Within 20 minutes" test) and came back to watch a better-than terrible SNL hosted by Christopher Walken. So I'll hold off the Sunday news and just let you feast on the late night skit of "Googley Eyes Gardener" which just seems like some sort of "let's see if Walken can pull this off" type bet. And he did:

Update Promised, Update Delivered

Played a tight first half but eventually rolled our way to a 15-10 win in Thursday night's huckfest. More importantly, I made it through an entire game WITHOUT laying out, so no blood-oozing from the Nyetian corpus after this one. Huzzah.

Big-time highlight: we managed to have a one-throw score last night, which as you can pretty much guess is the lowest number of throws it takes to score. They pulled it to us, reasonably deep (about 10 yards outside our endzone), and my defender sprinted down the field, head down and hoping for some sort of first throw glory. I'd been playing handler all night, hanging back around the disc, so in his enthusiasm he assumed I would be headed back toward the guy who picked up the pull. But that guy was "Big Nate," a player with excellent hucks, and an all around cool dude whom I've played with quite a bit the last three months (he was on Velvet, Immaculate Goat, and this hat team). Not to mention there is one thing and one thing only to do when your defender sprints at you full speed, head down off the pull: go deep. So I did. As we "ships-pass-in-the-night" and my defender looks up just in time to see me going fast in the complete opposite direction, he yells out something in the general "OH @#%$!" vein. No one else is back there, Nate launches a gorgeous 70 yard huck that just floats in nicely as I run it down for the score. One throw! And this was around the 12-10 mark, so it was pretty devastating for them. The coolest part about it was that after the screamed obscenity, the entire field went silent. He didn't even have the heart to ask for help deep, which would've been pointless anyways since by the time I caught it I was abut 40 yards behind everybody. And no one cheered, stunned as we were by the beauty of the throw. Tres exciting.

Rewind to earlier in the day, and a pathetically sick Essa was not up to her usual hijinks. She was super sniffly, but stuck to it and made it through the lesson. We were reading about the 1984 Olympics, and she said that she didn't remember that. I told her of course she didn't remember that, she hadn't been born yet. She said that must have been sad. I said she didn't really exist yet, so it couldn't really be sad or happy. She said, "No, I meant sad for everyone else, not to have me around."

Rewind a bit further, and we learn that the lunar eclipse was not the only thing we missed in the sky on Wednesday night. In another glorious moment of "Team America, @#$% Yeah!," the U.S. of Aim BLASTED a satellite OUT OF THE SKY. You can watch videos and press conferences here, or check out some groovy pics here. I really feel like one of those pics should be turned into an LOL-rocket, with something along the lines of "O Hai China/North Korea/Iran, did U see whut we did ther?"

Yowsers.

Nothing I Can Say, A Total Eclipse of...

The eclipse. D'oh!

Sunny AZ was cloudy AZ yesterday at exactly the wrong time, and the moon and its eclipsed-ness were obscured by clouds. Sigh. Better luck next time; natch, I can always look at pictures on the web for the fauxperience. Of course, as suggested in the previous post, I had a back-up plan for the lack of moon-viewing: the quite excellent Star Trek in Wonderland video. I was pretty excited to share this glorious piece with Beck, especially since she had just heard "White Rabbit" for the first time in the car on Saturday. It led to this conversation:

"Hey Beck, since we can't look at the moon, check out this video."
"How long is it?"
"Three minutes."
"THREE MINUTES!!!?!?!"

I can't convey the inflection appropriately. Just know that it's just about the same thing as if a little kid asks if we're there yet, you say "still thirty minutes" and he whines "thirty minutes!" Hilarious. Beck has apparently joined the short-attention span few.

Saw this on the interwebs yesterday:

It's the panaorama scene from the Simpsons intro, excellently written about by this dude. I take no credit for this.

This is fairly genius, too:

He clearly just stumbled across nyetjones.org.

Otherwise, it's business as usual here at Nyet Jones, Inc. I dragged myself to the gym this morning, took the pups for a long walk and am shortly headed to TutorCorps. Fans of Essa, be excited: it's Thursday, and that means I should be full of ridiculous stories tomorrow. Fans of Nyet, be excited: more Thursday Ultimate, and I've been on a little bit of a hot streak lately. Ever since that layout D at New Year's Fest, I've seemed to remember that I'm actually pretty decent at this game and can dominate when it's, you know, hat league. Sigh. Regardless, there should be more pointless highlights here tonight. Look forward to it!!!

And we'll cap this with a dedication to Christina:

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Now playing: Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit

It's 10 AM Somewhere: The Weekend That Was (to die)

After Thursday night's double header, I felt pretty much awful. The cumulative effects of Tuesday's insane dose of running-around and Thursday's fuel to the fire left me pretty nauseous; I couldn't eat when I got home Thursday and that pleasant feeling continued through most of the day Friday. Blarf. I rallied a bit for a burrito or two on Friday night, but still, it was a pretty crappy way to spend the day. We capped it off by watching Lost and Eli Stone, both of which registered somewhere in the annoyingly incomplete to annoyingly annoying range. Pile this in the death of modern culture heap, right next to the place where I had a student tell me that yes, she's seen The Nanny reality show but has never seen Mary Poppins.

Saturday fared better. Long day at the tutoring factory, but the crush was salvaged when I got a text message from Dan that went something like "Bowling or guitar hero tonight?" I responded that I was sure he meant AND instead of OR. After some emergency apartment cleaning Saturday afternoon / evening, we trekked down to Phoenix to hang with the DC crew. Christina has not only gotten a cute haircut, she has whiled away countless hours at the GH and is now a medium level superstar. I killed Knights of Cydonia, but my skill on the fake guitar falls somewhere under my skills on the real guitar and my skills on the computer keyboard fake guitar. Christina five-starred everything, including "One," and Dan claims it's no longer fun to play with her. Sigh. Dan also says things like "the tomatoes made me like to die," so you always have to wonder what seventh level of English he's using. Still, watching Christina kill the GH was mesmerizing, but could not hold our attentions for long. We were hungry.

Dan drove us to the TeePee, a nice little mexican joint complete with tvs to show all-star dunkage (Huzzah to Superman!) and teenage conversation. Dan and I mocked people whose musical tastes don't match our own, for something new and different, and I may have maxed out on Pitchforkish snobbery when i claimed that you wouldn't get Xiu Xiu if "you were the kind of person who likes melody and/or rhythm." Subjunctive tense and slamming elitism regarding conventional staples of music appreciation: 72 points in the big dork game, methinks. Sigh. After an exceptional dinner accented by margaritas and highlighted by existential comments re: teenage boys' valentine gifts, we headed over to our local trashy bowling alley, which was about 2/3 full.

"Sorry, no lanes available," the counter man chimed. Huh? Christina looked briefly over her shoulder at the twelve empty lanes; Dan speculated that they had been reserved by George Clooney "just in case." The option given to us by counter man (who, in retrospect, may have been politely telling us that we were way too cool to be hanging in an adolescent-laden bowling alley on a Saturday night) was to wait until 10:00 to reserve an *Extreme Bowling* lane which would be available for play at 10:30. Given Beck's Meghan-esque sleeping schedule of late, this option did not strike us as particularly viable. We left for casa DC, taking solace in the fact that if we couldn't get our faux-sport on with some bowling, we'd get our faux-faux sport on and bowl on the Wii.

The bowling was fun; Beck annihilated us. Christina decided we needed characters; Christina and I created reasonable likenesses, and Beck rendered herself as a "Mii" which invokes names like "Brumhilda, Eater of Villagers." We're talking one impressively hideous animated un-doppleganger. Yikes. We golfed briefly with our new selves, and Beck predictably crashed asleep. Said goodbye, and got ready for an "Ethical Brunch" on Sunday.

Woke up at 7 am to clean the bathroom and the parts of the apartment we didn't get to the previous evening. Fun times. Went to Fry's to buy honey, poppy seeds and...

They don't serve alcohol before 10 am at the grocery stores in Phoenix. I know this, because I tried to purchase champagne (technically, sparkling wine, you crazy Wayne's World fans) for mimosas at 8:57 and set off all kinds of alarms at the self-checkout lane. Seriously, the automated voice*, normally so pleasant and kind, all of a sudden blurts out, "Please put down the item. A sales associate is coming to take it from you." WOAH! Indeed, a sales associate laughs his 20 some odd year old ass at me as he takes away the champagne and tells me I can't buy alcohol until 10 am. "Why 10 am?" I ask. He doesn't know. I guess that it's because it's noon on the east coast, and that qualifies as "noon somewhere." He doesn't reply, just walks down the alcohol aisle. Sigh.

* - oh, the automated voice. Separate post.

I went home, cleaned some more and went back at 10 for the champagne (to a different Fry's, of course; don't want my neighbors thinking I'm sort of crazy champagne-obsessed alcoholic). Tim and Wren and DC came over about 11, and we had an EXCELLENT brunch prepared by Beck. Bread pudding, spinach souflee, eggs and bacon and sausage, fruit salad, mimosas, coffee, and topped off with ice cream and bananas glazed in orange rum sauce. Ridiculous good, and a great time; this satisfied our "host a veggie party obligation" and was a nice party, taboot. Naia (TW's daughter) made the trip, and outside of a baby-phenomenon euphemistically referred to as "a blowout" - yeah, that's right, she popped a tire - she had a good time. The dogs didn't even try to eat her, mainly because we separated them soon after T & W entered. Phew. NEhoo, great brunch; the people left at about 2:30 and I headed out to play some Ultimate.

(Blar - I tweaked what I'll refer to as my Roger Clemens muscle pretty much as soon as we started playing. Between that and a charlie horse I received Thursday night, I was hobbling something awful. No fun. I have a game tonight (Tuesday), so hopefully I've recovered to the point where I can function. We'll see).

Leftovers and scrabble Sunday, tutoring and Terminator and the rest of the leftovers Monday. Good times had by all. And now you're caught up. As always, I will try to be more exciting in the upcoming week. But seriously, who doesn't love a story about bowling and brunch???

Wednesday in all its glory

I didn't even have to use my AK. After waking up from the previous night of exhausting Ulti, I jumped into action Wednesday with some errands to run before traipsing in for a 8.5 hour tutor-a-thon. I was almost out the door when the Roger Clemens debacle began, and I forced myself to sit down and watch a few minutes so that I could bask in the cultural experience and have all those remember-when reference points.

Interesting things about it? Well, one, it seems bizarre to me that a guy like Roger Clemens, with access to mounds of cash and the lawyers that those mounds afford, got such terrible advice on how to comport himself. Stuttering and repeating "I'm a good guy" and interrupting the inquisitors, egads. He basically made himself look like more of a criminal than he already was. Again, it's not that "Roger Clemens looked like a criminal" is an interesting opinion or statement, it's more "how does that happen?" when you've got the best counsel money can buy. Idiotic.

The second were some rather interesting conceptions of truth. Sports dudes, and I've already rantily posted about the quality of their coverage, repeatedly referred to the two stories being "diametrically opposed." They chose this vocabulary as opposed to "inconsistent" or "contradictory." It may have been catch-phrase sloppiness, but it's indicative of a prevalent precept of "common-sense" truth, namely that matters are always by nature dichotomous. While the entirety of the truth of the two parties' stories may have been said to be inherently inconsistent, there is nothing left-right opposite about them, at least in an absolute sense. The "either he is lying or he is lying" invokes an unfounded exclusive or - both could be lying, right? And with the complexity involved in years-old memories, etc., it seems that "lying" oversimplifies concepts that might overlap quite a bit with "misremembered." It's nothing necessarily new, but the mainstream approach to these things - one state two state red state blue state - by nature dumbs things down and renders them inaccurate. I'm all for simplification as a teaching method, and I recognize (and profess) that our knowledge system is doomed to incompleteness, but to go around intentionally dumbing things down - why? Do the PTB just assume that people are too stupid to grasp nuance? Seems a self-feeding approach.

Beyond that, just listening to the continued "Is it true that you had a conversation where you said that you had said that she said...?": whatever happened to hearsay? And the reliability of memory? I've talked about this with super neuropsychologist Meghan before; the unreliability of memory (and its plasticity and susceptibility to intentional bias) is mind-boggling. But we incarcerate routinely on its basis. Yikes.

Anyways, I eventually dragged myself away from the TV to go on a failed trip to the recycling center. Bins full - yay Scottsdale. I then headed over to the grocery store for some materials for a VDay Eve present and my normal holiday gift to the Beck of sushi. You say roses, I say raw fish. I also say peeps - I made a Peeps bouquet. It had all the quality of a five year-old's masterpiece in pasta medium. The intent - to obliquely celebrate my love for the Beck without kowtowing to typical capitalist VDay commodity - was there; the execution lacking. Oh, well, she appreciated it.

Moment of surreal at the grocery store - I rounded a corner to stumble into about 20 Fry's employees, all decked out in red garb, posing for a picture. Only: no camera man. So we've got people dressed in crazy Valentine's Day celebration garb on the wrong day (this was the EVE) posing for a picture that doesn't exist. "Performance art!" I accused. Nope, the guy with the camera had gone to replace the battery or something. Still, I definitely had a "glitch inthe matrix" moment there. I've probably failed miserably in relating this.

So I headed home, made the bouquet, took care of dogs, and headed in for a long day of work. Nothing that crazy*. I was working with a lot of SAT kids, but we also had an influx of youngins who were working with some of the other teachers. And one of the other teachers asked every single kid a litany of detailed questions about the Valentine's cards they had bought for their classmates. Holy indoctrination!

I'm admittedly not the world's biggest VDay fan - some of my friends and I routinely referred to it as "Black Thursday," or whatever day it happened to be that year, back in high school. But hearing the same series of questions leveled at academically struggling seven year olds brought part of the problem into clear focus. We're teaching, at a very early age, that the appropriate manner in which to express your affection for others is by purchasing pre-constructed cards and then delivering one of these to every single person in the class. Now, the egalitarian approach of giving one to every student is on surface a good idea - we don't want to be crafting Timmy into a world-hating, angst-ridden and potentially violent future adolescent by isolating him in the "who-gets-a-VDAy card, not you" world - but it's also false. Kids aren't stupid. Pretty chicas Keri Mendoza and Kelly Southwell get the Valentine's with Road Runner and Bugs Bunny, while fat-girl Susie Sally Millicent gets porky pig. Our commodities have relative value, duh, and a whole level of cultural analysis could go into the subtle implications of giving a fellow male the Bugs Bunny dressed as a girl Bunny card. Choo-choo-choose me, indeed. All of this is predicated on the actions of teachers and parents who, like my colleague, made the purchase of VDay cards a mandatory action. What are the teachers teaching? How are we molding the creative process via such actions?

I was talking about this with my dad, and suggested that we "celebrate" this dumb ass corporate-devised holiday by teaching our kids that they should write or say something nice to everyone in the class. Or if you insist on the heart and lace motif, just stick to using construction paper for constructed celebrations. This seems to foster all kinds of individual creativity, personal sentiment, and educational opportunities (you could even check the grammar on their cards!). Of course, I'd be asking a culture to do something heartfelt when the radio is saying things like "is your VDay budget only $100 this year?" VDay budget? Whaaaaa....? This all points toward the great idea of giving our loved ones lumps of coal for VDay. When the inevitable disappointed glances come, you say, hey, carbon is carbon.

(or, to reuse a joke that I originally stole from Mitch Hedberg, say "Just wait").

Heard on the radio this morning: "Is your diamond jewelry out of style?" No, this is not a problem that I have. This is not a "problem" that anyone has. STFU, mr. radio salesman. Though I do give you some unintentionally funny points for saying such things the day after VDay.

ANyways, that's enough of an anti-VDay diatribe. I got home after work, and in a joking mode, Beck greeted me at the door. Sparkle had a sock, Wrigley had a shoe, and Beck had an envelope...

* - Not as crazy as, say, Thursday. I have an adorable 8 year-old student named Essa whom I work with on math and reading every week. I walked into the office, and she is sitting in the waiting room *reading an issue of Arizona Parenting*. I give her a weird look, and she says, "Just in case my baby comes early." Straight-faced.

Later, we read a story about a rabbit who couldn't sleep because a frog was singing. I asked Essa why she thought the frog was singing at night. She responds, in her best Barry White, "for the ladies."

I also made the mistake of teaching Essa to add by using dice. I rewarded her efforts by teaching her a simple version of craps. And now she comes in every week and asks,"if I do a good job, can we gamble today?" Oops.

Shimon once argued that he disliked Sixth Sense because he thought kids don't act as precocious as Haley Joel Osmond. I continue to contest.