| 06/30/04
Napoleon Dynamite (I Love Nerds) 06/29/04 Cable's Out/DNC 06/28/04 Cable's Out/Fahrenheit 9/11 06/26/04 MBTA/Britney Spears is Engaged 06/25/04 Finished Da Vinci Code/Dick Cheney Curses 06/24/04 Gratuitous Pap Smears 06/23/04 Bad Face Day/Lollapalooza's Defunct 06/22/04 Super Size Me 06/21/04 Tom Hanks/5th Amendment 06/20/04 Camping! 06/19/04 Backstage Demands on Smoking Gun 06/18/04 Da Vinci Code is Bad |
06/17/04
Rehobeth with Christians 06/16/04 Kendall Square Turkey 06/15/04 Rat Facts 06/14/04 Coffee's Nook 06/13/04 The World's an Ad 06/12/04 Freq 5 06/11/04 News Bits 06/10/04 Enron Crooks/CoWorker's Bro 06/09/04 Network TV Summer Programming 06/08/04 Arigato: Southern Japanese Cuisine 06/07/04 Beach Vacation/Bedtime for Reagan |
| Wednesday June 30, 2004 |
****And the inhumanity continues...
Home internet access is still not up. Comcast has got a lot of e'splaining to do.
****Napoleon: Dynamite!
I love nerds. Although in high school I was more "freak" than "geek", there existed this symbiotic bond between all of the marginalized factions of my high school, which was ruled equally by athletic upper-middle class Italians-Americans and raucous bullies who were one generation away from being po' white trash.
Most of the so-called nerds were actually geeks (the general difference being, I believe, applicable intelligence) but there were a handful of true nerds who really had nothing going for them: They dressed poorly, behaved strangely, and were targets for mockery by everyone, even teachers. I didn't socialize at all with them, but they always fascinated me.
That being said, I couldn't wait to see Napoleon Dynamite, a movie in which the main character embodies pure nerdiness.
Click here to read my review of Napoleon Dynamite.
| Tuesday June 29, 2004 |
****Depravation, 2004 Style
Life without home internet access is more of a hardship than I could've imagined.
I mean, I'm forced to watch television news to stay informed. Local television news. It's simply unbearable.
I think all of the morning weather people in Boston are smirky soft-core sadists... the kind who get turned on from administering firm spankings.
****Girl to City: Stop Whining
All the local television news channel in Boston are fueling the intense public resentment of the transportation and commuting difficulties that will occur during the upcoming Democratic National Convention. I can't believe this city. It's one week in the thick of summer... relax. You will not be fired if you get to work an hour late because of the DNC, because your boss will probably be in 2 hours late.
Boston is sometimes an alien world to me. Wouldn't the citizens of most cities be proud to have the DNC bring national focus to their city, especially when the convention will result in the Presidential nomination of one of their Senators? I mean, be proud, people.
| Monday June 28, 2004 |
****Comcast: A Big Sarcastic Thanks!
With no new episodes of the Sopranos until 2005, en and I decided to get rid of HBO. I mean, who pays $30 a month to get endless repeats of crap movies like Juanna Mann and Captain Ron piped into their homes? So en called Comcast and explained to the Rep that we wanted to cancel HBO, but kept Basic Cable and High Speed Internet. "Okay, I've turned off your internet," she says seconds later, not even bother to confirm with en before she flipped the switch.
What?!? Turned off our Internet? You stupid cow. She assured us that it would come back on in few minutes, but when this did not happen, we called Comcast back, and it turns out we must wait 4 business days for internet to be restored to our apartment.
I am enraged. Thoroughly enraged.
****Fahrenheit 9/11: Moore, Please
On Saturday, we went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 at the Coolidge Corner theatre in Brookline. What a mob scene. I expected vast amounts of radicalized young people, but the 80% of the audience looked middle-aged, white, and as if they just came from a nice restaurant.
It was a sold-out crowd, and we were separated from our friends. en went to the concessions stand before the movie. Next to me, an elderly woman told me she had just seen the 5pm showing. "Oh, was it good?" I asked. She nodded. "But the audience wasn't good. They just sat there. They didn't... react."
I assumed she meant that the audience didn't laugh, clap or cry during the movie. See, in my mind, that's the only acceptable way to "react" in a crowded theatre of 600 people, each of whom just paid good money to fully absorb a thought-provoking movie.
But as I soon found out, "react" means yelling things like bullshit and crooks throughout the whole goshdarn movie. So that sort of ruined parts of the movie for me, as I was distracted not only by her "reactions", but by my own "reactions" to her "reactions". I managed to keep them bottled up, but by the end of the movie I was dying to tell her to shut up and let us watch the movie.
Anyway, from hearing about Fahrenheit 9/11 on the news, I expected Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary to exhibit paranoia and far-fetched conspiracies. But it articulated views with which many Americans would agree. The ideas that Moore presents are not nearly as radical as the media seems to imply, and I hope these ideas are discussed in the national media in these final months before the election.
Click here for my review of Fahrenheit 9/11.
| Saturday June 26, 2004 |
****T Talk
I've been amusing myself with this Bad Transit web site (here- "Your MBTA "watchdog", with news, vitriolic opinion, commentary, biting sarcasm, parody, dissent, insult, rumor, and sad humor on the USA's most inept mass-transit system - Boston's MBTA"). I thought I had issues with transit? Bad Transit wins the ribbon.
(Hey, the MBTA may be inept, but at least we're not Houston. The 6-month old light-rail train has been hit by no less than 40 cars- here for story. God I'm glad I don't live in Texas. Boston drivers may be aggressive, but at least they're not morons.)
I haven't been writing my Tales from the T lately. Since no one's commented on this, I don't feel bad, though frankly I consider them to be fascinating. They're like dreams, I guess. I don't particularly like other people's T stories, but mine are endlessly amusing.
The truth is, my commute's gotten sort of dull since I've take mainly the Red Line. And there's only so many times you can make fun of fellow transit-takers before you start to look and feel like a jerk. Maybe I'll start doing them again. It's sort of satisfying to horde all my silly stories then burp them all up in one post.
My Past Tales from the T:
****And in the news...
Britney Spears and her dancer boyfriend are engaged, Spears' publicist said. Is there anything Britney Spears won't do for attention? Her life is just this endless sad string of publicity stunts. It's so sad. (here for story).
No additional details are available... but my money is on a quick and calamitous dissolve to this latest mockery to the institution of marriage. Of course the mundane specifics will be slowly doled out to us over the next week or two, until the public is so fed up that our attention will be magically focused on, oh I don't know... some reality TV show star who is finding out that in a digital age, 15 minutes really is just about 15 minutes?
What's sad is that Britney's latest ploy is taking Bill Clinton's place in the entertainment news.
| Friday June 25, 2004 |
****The Da Vinci Code
Did you ever finish reading a 400+ paged book, put it down, think for second, seize the book and howl "Give me back the hours of my life you stole from me, you stupid piece of crap! I could have been reading something good! That Thomas Pynchon book could have a huge dent in it!"
Yes, in spite of my initial, correct pronouncement regarding the nil worth of The Da Vinci Code (here for post), I trudged through it to reaffirm its total crappiness. Plus... I couldn't stop reading it. Horribly addictive. I was ravenous for Dan Brown's crackpot theories about religion, femininity, the Holy Grail, and Walt Disney.
Seriously. According to The Da Vinci Code, Walt Disney is a part of the whole conspiracy. Don't believe me? Watch The Little Mermaid. It's all in there.
****Cheney's Got a Pottymouth
Yesterday, Dick Cheney cursed out Senator Leahy (D-VT) during the Senate class photo. A spokesman for Cheney confirmed there was a "frank exchange of views" (here for story). I love these Bush Administration euphemisms. According to Wonkette (here), Cheney said "Go Eff Yourself..." and the Wonkette would never lie, not even for a good punchline.
Speaking of Dick, this is possibly the best thing ever (another CNN story, here.) Powell also disputed Woodward's contention that he and Cheney were so estranged by their differences over the war that they barely speak, insisting that his relationship with the vice president is "excellent."
"When the vice president and I are alone, it's Colin and Dick," he said.
Why isn't Kerry's campaign all over this stuff?
| Thursday June 24, 2004 |
****Gratuitous Pap Smears: Break the Habit
This headline kinda shocked me: 10 Million Women Who Lack Cervix Get Pap Tests (here for story). First of all, it sounded as if it was a simultaneous event, like they were all lined up in stirrups and the doctor was going for the record!
Secondly, I had no idea that women could "lack a cervix". But apparently it's often taken out during a hysterectomy. Dr. Noller said he suspected that a reason the test was being done in these women anyway was that doctors were used to it..."It's sort of become a habit."
Well, since it's unnecessary and wasteful, these doctors must break the pap smear habit!
If you know a doctor who is in the habit of pap smearing women who lack cervices, talk to them. Make them admit they have a problem. Get them to recognize that they are ambling on a path of near-certain pointlessness. Then, gently prod them to commit to breaking the pap smear cycle. Suggest that next time they have the urge to pap smear a cervix-lacking woman, to stop and think hard about it. Suggest taking a walk until the urge abates. Give them the confidence they need to master the "pap-smear on women who lack cervix" habit.
With your support, we will stop this needless pap smearing.
| Wednesday June 23, 2004 |
****Bad Face Day
Most women, regardless of how free she is from burdens of vanity, has thought "Holy smokes! I'm having a bad hair day."
My hair is constant: Lanky, thin, and soft. To call my hair "bad" on one particular day essentially brands it as such. So I deal with it.
But I do get bad face days. Yesterday I had one of those. I blame Boston's lovely tropical mugginess, which my Super Anglo skin can't deal with, and it pouts: Where's the dry cold. I like dry cold. I get smooth and I glow in dry cold. What's this hot wet weather. Panicking. I'm morphing into a new, bizarre looking face. Bring back dry cold.
And I also realized that I've crossed the Great Divide of Makeup Application Objective. I no longer use eye shadow and mascara to make myself look older. I do it to make myself look less old.
In case you can't tell from the insipidness of today's post... it's also a bad brain day. (Yeh! Whaaas'up, Bad Brains! Now I know where you're coming from...)
****Lollapalooza: Irrelevant Once More
This week, the Boston Phoenix published an article "Daydream notions: The renewed relevance of Sonic Youth, Lollapalooza, and Perry Farrell" by Matt Ashare (here). I kinda smirked at it. Sonic Youth are old, beyond relevance. Why can't we find new rock heroes? This clinging to the past bothers me.
Then
I heard yesterday that Lollapalooza is cancelled due to poor ticket sales
(here), and I knew
that despite what rock journalists like to believe, most people doubt the
relevance of aging rock stars looking to make a quick buck. Our generation
will not perpetuate a lifetime of Rolling Stones-like arena tours for the
rock heroes of our youth! We will let them get old and irrelevant, like Satan
intended.
| Tuesday June 22, 2004 |
****Big Mac Attack
McDonald's is trying to counteract the public relations nightmare that is Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, a documentary that should be called "Watch this Snide Sum'bitch Slowly Poison Himself"(here for story, here for my review).
I did a search on McDonalds in Google News, and it returned 681 stories in .05 seconds. Wow. Most were about the documentary and new healthy eating campaigns.
But a few more interesting tidbits came up.
My favorite? Durango, Colo., residents who get a Big Mac attack have to drive to Cortez or Pagosa Springs after a fire closed the only McDonalds in town (here on DenverChannel.com).
Can you imagine having to drive to a different town to get your Big Macs and milkshakes? I mean, send in the National Guard.
| Monday June 21, 2004 |
****Terminal Career?
Is anyone surprised that nearly twice as many people would rather see Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn over The Terminal with Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg (here for story)?
Which movie sounds more appealing: A comedic romp about dodgeball, or a poignant flick about a nation-less man forced to live in an airport?
Maybe people are finally getting sick of Tom Hanks. It's about time... Forest Gump should've killed his career, and Castaway should have rendered him unsuitable for the Hollywood Squares.
****Who are We... kidding?
The CS Monitor sums it up nicely: US citizens do not enjoy a constitutional right to refuse to reveal their identity when requested by police (here).
Some people may think: Big whoop. If you've got nothing to hide, why should it matter?
Because of a little something called the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution: No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself (here for entire Bill of Rights.) We continually degrade the original meaning of the ideals that our nation's forefathers set forth.
Does the court honestly think that no one will self-incriminate themselves by revealing their name to the police? And does anyone think it's a good idea to give more power to men who excel in beating up innocent non-white civilians?
| Sunday June 20, 2004 |
****Treatment for the Urbane Urban
I woke up today in a tent on the hard hard ground on New Hampshire. The brook babbled with thawed mountain snow, the trees whispered knowledge of wind, last night's fire smoldered in the fire pit, and en tossed fitfully beside me.
The humbling experience of camping works me over like Prozac on a manic depressive: Awakening my senses with the joys of nature, while rubbing out my urges to be sarcastic, snide, and clever.
On the way to and fro Tripoli Road in New Hampshire, en, I and the couple we went with were treated to the sights of Bike Week (here), the annual gathering of hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists in nearby Laconia. The ultimate on-road entertainment. Everywhere we went, there were bikers, all identical except for the subtle differences in style that we relished in pointing out.
This is the best headline ever: "Meredith now popular with bikers" (here). Tee-hee. That is, the town of Meredith. Given my adversion to fringed leather chaps, I don't think I would be too popular with bikers.
| Saturday June 19, 2004 |
****Backstage Demands Revealed
Curious about what your favorite rock star demands in exchange for exhibiting their glorious musical talent to the world? Check out the Smoking Gun's Backstage Pass (here), where I learned fascinating things like:
- Neil Diamond drinks Decaf Coffee (here).
- Hootie and the Blowfish requires a fifth of Jim Beam in their stage cooler, the cooler they use DURING the show (here).
- Having a quart of freshly-squeezed, non-pasteurized orange juice is "very important" to Def Leppard (here).
- Outhouses are "unacceptable" to Johnny Cash (here).
- Lil Bow Wow requires no food except candy and chips "presented with silverware" (here).
- Cher explicitly demands BLACK Solo cups (here).
- Eminen requires a box of Splenda (here).
- Elton John forbids lilies, daisies, carnations and cold cuts (here).
And the infamously ridiculous demands that Jennifer Lopez made when performing at a charity concert (yellow roses with red trim?) are here. Not that anyone deserves to be horribly disfigured... but doesn't Jennifer Lopez deserve to be horribly disfigured?
****The Real Secret of the Da Vinci Code
Everyone was talking about it. Everyone on the T was reading it. It single-handedly rekindled the masses' interest in novels. It was a fiction book aimed at adults, not an Oprah's Book Club selection, and still got hype!
So I requested the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown from the Cambridge Library system about, oh, 5 months ago. It was a long waiting list, and just when I had lost hope and interest, word came Tuesday that it was mine, all mine! When I went to pick it up, the librarian said "Well, it's your turn with the Da Vinci Code!" and handed it to me like it was a prize pie. I half-expected music, dancing, and champagne.
My turn with the Da Vinci Code comes at an unfortunate time, as I'm currently engaged with two other books, but last night I sat down read a bit. After 75 pages... I must say, all my instincts say it's crap. Sure, it may seem "brainy" (as the reviews on the author's web site say, here) because the story crams in incredible amounts of factual information.
But the way it's written: Riddled with suspense! It's like "so and so looks at the picture and gasps at the horrible thing he sees" but you don't find out it is for another 10 pages. Then "he looks at the body and gasps at the horrible things written on it in invisible ink" but do you find out what is written on the body in invisible ink when the character does?
No. The book just propells the reader along with all this unnecessary suspense. I mean, this is in the beginning of the story! Do I really want to put up with another 400 pages of this fractured narrative? It reminds me of Sidney Sheldon (here), actually, whose novels I admittedly devoured as a teenager because they are more addictive than nicotine. Once you start reading one, you literally can't put it down. They were real page-turners.
The real secret of the Da Vinci Code? It's crap!
****Saved! by the Lord
When I was a freshman in high school, I went to a Christian youth convention with my school's tiny, marginalized God Squad (one of whom I knew from my enrichment classes). It was a weekend-long romp in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware (in the dead of winter), and my life was pretty boring at that point, so I decided to go.
Our bus arrived at the hotel late Friday night. We were ordered to remain on the bus for about a half an hour. I let my guard down and closed my eyes. The next thing I know, about ten tall white kids wearing gangsta style bandanas and baggy pants burst onto the bus with boom boxes blaring MC Hammer's then-popular "2 Legit 2 Quit" and reciting in a rap-like manner random things about Jesus Christ our Saviour.
I was simultaneously terrified and amused. It reminded me of those movies when the terrorists spread out in the airplane, shoving guns in everyone's faces. I embarrassed the God Squad by ostentatiously laughing. "Jesus is too legit to quit!" this one kid said with a heavy "I'm a white guy talking like a black guy" accent that he learned from In Living Color (the TV show, not the band). It was a priceless moment until I realized people were giving me creepy looks, like they sensed Satan was present. They were taking this seriously.
Needless to say, I did not fare well at the Christian youth convention. I tried to leave the hotel to go walk around Rehobeth, but the doors had guards who asked me so many questions that I gave up. The fire escape were unlocked but alarmed. And they closed the pool!
That was my most intense brush with Christian youth, a weekend that I fondly relived by seeing Saved!.
Click here for my review of Saved!
****Bikes!
An American living in Amsterdam shares his thoughts about (and many pictures of!) Dutch cyclists (here).
****The Kendall Square Turkey
On my way to the T on Monday morning, walking through the office building wasteland that is Cambridge Center in Kendall Square, I saw a wild turkey. I'm totally effing serious. There was a huge wild turkey just hanging out in the grass next to a building. It was magnificent.
This insanely random incident almost made it onto this site on Monday, but it sounded too weird and contrived. Plus, isn't that a sign of severe psychosis? Like it was a hallucination manifested from my guilt about forsaking 10 solid years of vegetarianism to consume poultry? ("Gobble gobble, girlie!" it said, beating me senselessly with its wings...)
I couldn't mention the wild turkey without collaboration; thankfully, I stumbled across Dirac Angestun Gesept, who confirms that there was in fact a turkey in Kendall Square on Monday (here). I can't prove it, but that probably was the same turkey that I saw.
This guy saw it around this time last year, and posted a few pictures of it (here).
Seriously: Why do I get the feeling that the yearly appearance of the turkey is the doing of some MIT and/or biotech nerd who raises exotic fowl?
****You think clowns are scary?
A children's birthday party in Dorchester was interrupted when a teenager with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest approached the house and collapsed in front of the party-goers (here).
****Oh, Rats
Here are some of the more gripping factoids I learned from Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan (here on Amazon, though it's more the sort of book to rent from the library):
- Most rats bites occur because a rat smells food residue on a child's face and bites it. However, in 1979 a tugboat union strike caused garbage to pile up in NYC, fueling the rat population, and witnesses say a swarm of rats attacked a woman, who jumped in her car and drove off before the police (and media) could talk to her.
- Rats can have sex up to 20 times a day. They have a 21-day gestation period and litters of 8-10.
- How to estimate a Rat Population: The rule of thumb is, if you see 1 rat, there's 10 more. If you see a rat during daytime, then you don't know what the hell you've got.
- For the love of all that's sane in the world: Do not try to solve the rat infestation in your basement by throwing a cat down there. The only thing that works is poison, and lots of it. Guns also work; a surprising number of New Yorkers shoot rats.
- Rat's top 3 favorite foods are scrambled eggs, mac and cheese, and cooked corn. Least fave is supposedly apples. However, like humans, the food preferences of rats is geographically based. A rat living off a Chinese food dumpster might consume rice with more vigor than a rat behind a deli. Rats living in Hispanic areas are more likely to eat spicy foods.
- In 19th century NYC, the world record in dog-on-rat fights was held by Jocko the Wonder Dog, who killed 100 rats in 5 minutes and 28 seconds. When Kit Burns (the Don King of rat fights) was taken to court by Henry Bergh (the founder of the ASPCA), Burns argued that rat fights were okay because rats weren't animals, they were vermin. Everyone wanted rats dead anyway, why not have some fun?
Good book, written from the perspective of a journalist, not a scientist. I recommend it if you're interested in the history of NYC. I was disappointed that Boston's rat problem was scarcely mentioned, and at times Sullivan's personal reflections on rats got a little boring. But I learned a lot from it... knowledge that I pass onto you, gentle reader.
One last thing: To be an 'exterminator' is to be an optimist. Call them 'pest control operators.'
****Look at My Cat
Okay. I've probably lost my mind: This weekend I was overcome by the desire to make a web page for my cat.
Yes. I said I made a web page for my cat. Stop laughing.
Click here to visit Coffee's Nook.
****Advertising Age
At what point does the omnipresent push to make us all walking wallets demean humanity?
When college students start "headvertising" by getting ads temporarily tattooed to their foreheads (here - guaranteed to "get you individually noticed in any crowd")?
When movie-goers who have just paid ten bucks to see the latest Hollywood inanity must view a slew of commercials before the previews start?
When you're in a bathroom stall at the pool hall, sitting on the toilet and staring at an ad for Yasmin (here) birth control pills?
Or did advertising get out of control a long time ago, when product peddling became empyreal and began polluting the skies, the ultimate reminder that we are just shoppers? I looked out my window yesterday to admire a perfect New England day with a luscious cool blue sky... An ad for Ameritrust (here) is circling the sky above Fenway Park for the Red Sox game (which they lost, 14-5... bah-ha-ha!). The blimp hummed importantly as it maneuvered turns. It was there all day long. Of course, ads on blimps are nothing new (here for the history of the blimp). We're accustomed, so we never stop to think it's disgusting. Kids like to point at them and maybe adults feel important, like they're at event special enough to warrant a blimp. But it made me think: Since the dawn of civilization, humans have pondered the truths of the universe while gazing at the skies... should we be forced to think about mortgages?!? Our first morning at the beach on the Outer Banks a few weeks ago (here for pictures!), I marveled to en that no planes flew above the shores towing ads: "At the Jersey shore, planes fly by every 5 minutes with ads!" I spoke too soon, or too early in the morning, because about an hour later, planes started flying above us towing ads for Hooters. I wonder what would Pythagoras would think of that [insert celestial body joke here]. |
Transmundane Commercials: The View from My Deck |
****The Ultimate Boyband
I randomly discovered that a kid I went to Methacton High School with is in a boyband called Frequency 5 (here) that appears to be achieving middling success in the California Mall and Middle School circuit.
My former schoolmate is the blond on the far right: the Justin Timberlake, the Joey McIntyre, the Nick Carter. Only he's a bit old and too ruggedly sexy to be marketed to 13 year olds in that way. Look at the photo... you know what he's thinking about, and it's not buying you ice cream and holding your hand! Dying for some insight into his background? He was an academically-challenged, likable twin... identical right down to their pearly-white grins that appeared in a dentist's ad on the back cover of our local Yellow Pages to the general derision of everyone. People questioned their sexual orientations. I couldn't tell the twins apart, but one or both of them would always do a dance number in the school talent show. Our reunion is not until next year, but he's already got my vote for Biggest Peddler of Crap (unless someone in my class works for the Fox Network, Real Simple magazine, or the Bush Administration). |
What a bunch of freaks... I mean, freqs. Freq5! |
****Look at Me
Pictures of my North Carolina trip are here.
****Yawn
Stayed out late last night to watch Trans Am (here) rock the Middle East.
Sleep? (sneer) That's for squares and yes-men. Cool kids don't sleep at night. They wait for the internal project status meeting in the 5th floor conference room at 9:30am the next morning.
****Gentrify Us!
Why aren't there more Starbucks in Baltimore, the mayor laments (here).
Well, Caramel Macchiato and Double Chocolate Chip Crème Frappucino are tough sells in a city where crack is already king.
****Women More Like Dogs than Previously Thought
Research shows that women with no intention of getting pregnant are still 24% more likely to have sex on days when they are ovulating (here), suggesting one of the following things: 1-Women subtly go into heat or 2-Men can sense that women are fertile, and therefore more likely to hit them up for sex or 3-Sex makes women ovulate.
****And Today's Travesty of Justice Is:
After reading Pipe Dreams by Robert Bryce (here on Amazon), I knew everyone involved in the Enron scandal deserved to have each hair on their head plucked out, and then be sent to prison for life. And not a fenceless white-collar prison, but a dank facility where murderers constantly size them up and maggots wallow in their morning gruel.
Those Enron effers not only felt entitled to steal astronomical sums of money, but thought they would get away with it. They do not deserve to live among us, as they are essentially leeches who contribute nothing to society because they cannot control their greedy-bastard egos.
Take Lea Fastow, wife of CFO Andy Fastow. She took it upon herself to make bad artistic investments and decorate Enron's offices despite the impending bankruptcy: The Fastows were the driving force behind an amazing art-buying binge. They spent $575,000 on a soft sculpture by Claes Oldenburg. They paid $690,000 for a wooden sculpture by Martin Puryear, a record amount for his work sold at auction... by August and September 2001, the company had spent about $4m on 20 different pieces (here).
She fancied herself a real bit of culture, this one. Then, Lea helped hide her husband's crimes, for which yesterday she was sentenced to a mere YEAR in prison (here). Her husband, indicted on what eventually grew to 98 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading, money laundering and others for engineering widespread schemes to hide debt, inflate profits and enrich himself on the side, got 10 years in prison.
Welfare Moms we vilify... Drug Addicts we lock up... Prostitutes we marginalize... Martha Stewart we crucify... but Enron crooks we slap on the wrist? If this country strives to be a capitalist democracy, we cannot tolerate criminal acts of corporate greed. Just because a crime is non-violent does not mean it is victimless. Ask the people who lost their retirement funds because this rich bitch wanted to buy art.
****But Seriously...
A co-worker who I've known for 2 and a half years, and who I've always admired, lost his younger brother to Hodgkin's Disease last year. Yesterday this co-worker sought sponsors for a cancer walk that he is doing in his brother's memory.
I never met his younger brother, but I almost cried when I learned that he succumbed to his long, painful struggle, partially because he was exactly the same age as I am.
Only I turned 27 two weeks ago, and my co-worker's brother will remain 26 forever.
****Another Reason to Defect
A top official in Paris proposes that the city ban SUVs, (here) calling the vehicle "a caricature of a car."
****But uh-oh those summer nights
I remember when summer television was nothing but re-runs, and nobody cared. It was accepted. It was summer.
To watch television on a summer night and miss out on the prolonged, resuscitative evening sunlight and sweet atmospheric coolness would be insanity. There were pools to swim in, bikes to ride, fireflies to catch, tents to pitch, playgrounds to roam, balls to throw, and air-conditioned malls and movie theatres in which to hide if the heat was unbearable.
I sound like an old fogey but I don't care. There's something genuinely wrong when people want to watch television during the summer, and the networks oblige by unleashing over 20 new series for people to suckle on (here for story).
And we wonder why the children of America are dumb and fat? Why we're dumb and fat? This isn't a case of networks and advertisers trying to foist must-see TV on an innocent public. Over the years, ratings during the summer have risen to the point where our proclivity for crap is making it worth the network's time to compete for viewers.
Terrified that their kids will suffer from abduction! drive-by shooting! marijuana smoking! sex! freak accident! if they venture outside, parents all over the country would prefer their precious offspring watch 2 brainless sluts parody the good folk of this country in Fox's Simple Life 2 (here). They themselves will gladly escape from the drudgery of their 9-to-5s by immersing themselves in Fox's The Casino (here), dreaming of a job that's essentially also a vacation.
I guess I understand if you stay in to watch FOX... it looks so damn appealing. Better that you miss summer to watch sexy new stuff instead of a Malcolm in the Middle that you've seen twice before.
****Arigato, but No Arigato: A Restaurant Review
The comedian Lewis Black says that the product peddlers believe consumers are so dumb that we're "meat with eyes." That phrase repeatedly popped in my head during my vacation to North Carolina, but the time I'll use as an example: Dinner at Arigato in Greensboro (here).
We arrived at our hotel in Greensboro last Friday night after driving all day in torrential rain. I was surprised to see three Japanese restaurants listed in the hotel directory; craving sushi, I talked en into going to "Arigato Japanese Steakhouse and Sushi Bar".
When we pulled up to the Walmart-sized, window-less building with a parking lot full of pick-up trucks, hunger prevented me from pondering why the restaurant was a hit with the masses of Greensboro, NC.
We asked for the first available table and got stuck in the smoking section at a BBQ table with six Meat With Eyes (MWEs): Four young 20-somethings who seem pretty happy now but you can tell they're all 5 years away from a succession of calamitous white trash milestones, and a horrible 30-ish white trash couple who didn't talk to each other once the entire meal and put all of their concentration into shoveling as much rice and meat into their mouths as human anatomy permits.
The Caucasian waitress, dressed in a mockery of a kimono, offered us chopsticks. Gone are the days when you have to shame yourself by asking for a fork! Now you can identify yourself as a cultured pansy by taking chopsticks, which one of the MWEs, and en and I did. Then we ordered: I got shrimp BBQ, en got chicken BBQ, and everyone else got steak BBQ, or steak and shrimp BBQ.
Our soups looked like miso soup except with fat gobulars floating on top. It tasted like chicken broth with five times the added salt. We ordered the only maki roll on the menu (California) and in place of the customary crab stick there was shredded imitation crab. The wasabi was mild enough to feed a baby.
The tossed salads were drenched in American dressing. The worst white trash MWE ate one leaf of lettuce that was essentially a Blue Cheese dressing reservoir, then pushed his bowl aside. Halfway through my salad, everyone at the table lit up cigarettes except for en and I. As a Bostonian it was a shock to see people smoking indoors, and I couldn't help but to glare at them.
I didn't catch our ambiguously-ethnic chef's name, but for the purposes of clarity, let's call him "Juan Carlos." Juan Carlos approached our table muttering broken sentences in a distinctively Southern English accent, his knife in a metal holster. He began frying our vegetables (onions and zucchini) in a cup of oil, then fried the shrimp appetizer in a lump of butter. Then he fried a big bowl of white rice with CORN mixed in. Because the Japanese are ravenous corn lovers.
"This is how Japanese make it good," Juan Carlos said as he tossed giant pats of butter all over the food.
With his gleaming sharp cooking utensils, Juan Carlos dazzled us by cutting up cooked shrimp really fast and pushing the pieces two inches away into a simmering pool of butter, a trick he cultivated during his extensive study of the millennia-old discipline of Japanese Table Theatrics. The MWEs sucked their cigarettes and politely clapped while I suffered severe stomach spasms stifling hysterical giggles.
We then each got about five cups of fried rice and corn and a tablespoon of shrimp and vegetables, which everyone devoured while Juan Carlos cooked our meat. He did some more tricks, like banging things on the table really fast while making karate noises.
After our meat was done and served, Juan Carlos left to enthusiastic applause from the MWEs, who seemed genuinely appreciative that his presence rendered dinner conversation unnecessary. After about 5 more minutes of eating and smoking, the waitress came over armed with take-out containers and checks.
Japanese food, widely acknowledged as one of the world's healthiest cuisines, has undergone a sickening transformation in order to be successfully mass-marketed to Meat With Eyes and satisfy the public's hunger for new settings in which to consume 1000s of empty calories. I've been to fabulous Japanese BBQs before and has a great time, but apparently Japanese has become the new Chinese.
****I'm Back
I'm back. For awhile... My vacation time (wisely!) used up, I am confined to Boston until the winter holidays, bar the occasional weekend getaway.
The thing about long vacations to the beach: If you dread the return to home and workaday life, then something is wrong with your workaday life. Pining for relaxation is healthy, but aversion to reality isn't.
That said, it's good to be back. Pictures to come...
****Reagan's Dead: Permanent Bedtime for Bonzo
The only thing more insufferable than 8 years of a Ronald Reagan presidency is the inevitable flood of tributes, nostalgia, updates on the location of his corpse, and "Gosh Nancy is a saint" utterances that his death has unleashed (here, or here, or here).
I practically danced a jig when I learned of his demise. I loath the blind worship that the old fool induces among conservatives who forget that Reagan made the federal government bigger in terms of bureaucracy and spending. And thanks to Reagan's insane defense and military spending, our country has 1000s of outdated weapons of mass destruction, waiting to fall into the wrong hands. This, tragically, may be his most defining legacy.
Reagan is loved by people who bought his stoic cowboy-like image honed by Hollywood. He made this country crave leaders capable of quotable one-liners and a likable personality rather than a leader who is, oh, just plain CAPABLE.
I first grasped the concept of "President of the United States" from the propaganda-ridden Weekly Readers distributed in my elementary school. The Weekly Reader always featured an article about the great deeds of Ronald and/or Nancy Reagan, and a message from them telling us to stay in school, read, don't do dope, and don't accept rides from strangers.
(By the way, thanks to the Reagans and the Weekly Reader, I grew up with the misconception that there are thousands of men with facial hair trolling the streets, looking for kids to abduct, and I was terrified that I'd forget and get in their car. Must... have... vigilance!)
At the same time, our Weekly Readers taught us about the starving Ethiopians. I recollect thinking Reagan was not a good president if he let children in other countries starve. Boy, I didn't know the half of it.
In conclusion, I sort of wish he lived forever, so we could avoid this whole media-spurred beatification of a B-movie star who co-starred in a movie with a chimp and then got damned lucky.