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11/30/3: "I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today, yeah." That's a pretty good way to start a song. Played some touch football today. I can't stay with anybody -- I've definitely hit that crossroads in life where I need to decide if I want to take charge of my body and try to get a few more years of sports out of it, or throw in the towel and disintegrate into the couch. Today we lost 7 scores to 4. We drove all over the city trying to find a field before finally settling in Prospect Park. We were in the middle of a bunch of other football and soccer games, and on one stretch of grass there was like a 15 on 15 tackle game going on between some kids in their mid-teens. Observing that game, I noticed a whole lot of macho posturing and yelling and blaming of others, and very little in the way of sportsmanship. After their game ended, the kids ambled across our field like we weren't there, completely disrespecting our (admittedly small-time) game in progress. It's unmistakably clear that these kids are getting their attitudes from watching pros on TV. I try to refrain from being judgemental in times like that -- I don't know where these kids are from and what kind of self-defense mechanisms are involved in their day to day existence. And there's nothing like an old man who doesn't understand a younger generation, and chooses to criticize it anyway. Plus, I always detect a hint of racism whenever a white announcer talks about "playing the right way" or "there's no place for that in the game." Of course, the kids we saw today were of all races and ages -- the only thing they shared was an almost unfailing tendency to act like punks whenever possible. And I don't think I am racist or old-fashioned or trapped in false memories of Dr. J and Don Mattingly when I say it's gotta stop. I remember Kevin Johnson telling a story about a court he would drive by in the summer when he was playing for the Suns. He would just stand and watch the games on this one intense court. There was one guy there, he said, who took an extraordinary amount of grief from all the other players. Guys were talking shit to this guy all game long, making fun of him, and trying to physically intimidate him by knocking him on his ass. KJ said the guy didn't say a word the whole day, he just kept getting up, playing, and winning. I wish we had a tape of that guy to play before and after every professional sporting event. I mean, there is certainly a place in sports for brashness and exuberance -- we don't want everybody to act like Doug Christie -- but it's just so uncool to celebrate and taunt after every tackle, every sacrifice bunt, every unnecessary no-look pass where you look away after you throw the pass. My wife used to keep a mental list of the NBA players who she thought were most likely to smell on the court. At the top of her list was Vlade Divac. The scraggly beard, the cigarettes, the lack of muscle tone and apparent disregard for his appearance -- it added up to a pretty stinky-looking package. But then I read this year that Divac showers immediately before every game, so he's probably a fresh spring breeze out there. There's an old and obvious lesson in there somewhere. Today's heroes are all men who find the time to shave every day. How the hell do you do that? It really blows me away when I see a rock star who's in the middle of a three week coke binge but still shaves every day. It's so far beyond me I can't imagine it. Perhaps if I had a deeper stubble I would get my act together. 11/29/3: Peanut butter and jelly. Christmas and "It's a Wonderful Life." Lynn Swann and John Stallworth. Some things just make beautiful music together, and today I'm rocking out to the familiar tunes of "Hangover plus Meaningless College Football Game." So very sweet. "Blog" is not an expression I'm comfortable with. It's about as natural and smooth off the tongue as "Flash Mob." But unlike the Flash Mob, the concept of the blog is something I find very appealing. Just the sheer volume of people out there who feel they have something to say warms my heart. Even if half of them are pointless and boring, blogs still lend a certain nobility to our average lives. Anything that's documented must have some worth, right? Anyway, as I sort through the scores of blogs (God it hurts just to type that word -- it's too bad the name stuck so quickly, before somebody thought of something better), I will occasionally come across one that blows me away with its wit and originality. And since part of the spirit of blogging (there I go again) is linking to one another's sites, here is one that I stumbled upon that is worth a click of your mouse. And if you like his style, please read his righteous attack on Bob Costas (yes, there are a few factual slip-ups). After checking out some of these blogs, I think my site needs a bit more sex. For laughs, even. But as I have previously outlined, discussing the relations that take place between married people (or, really, any two people who are in love) is creepy. So I call on those of you who are in the dating world, having real, wild, "meaningless" (i.e. hot) sex to send in your stories so I can spice things up here. I will be happy to keep them anonymous, you can even use the handy form at the bottom right of this page if you don't want me to know who you are. Oh, and they needn't be true. 11/28/3: I hope everyone had a good and safe Thanksgiving. I did. I even defied the vegetarian Gods and had a slice of turkey. I also ate some mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, green beans, creamed onions, popcorn, ice cream, and two kinds of pie. My wife and I have a wireless internet thing going in our apartment. I refuse to use the term that some people like to toss around to describe this setup. You know the one. Anyway, the wireless is nice because my wife and I can, when necessary, live what are essentially separate, fully functioning lives -- we each have our own TV, our own laptop, and our own room. These, as you well know, are the main ingredients for survival. She likes to watch TV and mess around on the computer in the bed, I take the living room. Of course, I get lonely and go in to visit her periodically, such as last night, when I threw the bedroom door open and said, in a raised, clear voice: "What's my whore up to?" ...not realizing she was on the phone with the cable company. Early one Friday evening in 1986, my friend Jonathan and I were waiting on the corner of 6th Avenue and 13th Street, trying to catch a cab heading uptown. We were heading to the Loews 34th St. Showplace, which was sort of an early multiplex prototype. We were so dateless and hopeless that a big night meant seeing whatever stupid flick had just opened up, be it "Bullies" or "Born American" or "Red Heat." Then we'd go to the theater, buy popcorn and play some Arkanoid before the movie started. On this evening, we stood on the corner looking south down 6th avenue, trying to spot a vacant cab. Since all the cabs we could see in the distance were either occupied or off-duty, we hadn't raised our hands to hail anything. An unmarked sedan pulled up next to us, and the driver rolled down the window. He was a blow-dried 80's Guido type, and said, "You need a cab?" Not wanting to get into this mystery car and deal with whatever hassles that might entail, I said, "No, sorry, we're waiting for a friend." The guy gave me a little pissy stare-down and sped off. About a minute later, we hailed a nice legit cab and were on our way. Around 18th street, we were stopped in traffic, laughing, anticipating some good Arkanoid and a rockin' evening in general. All of a sudden, my door flew open, and Guido was standing there, looking very unhappy. He said, "Don't ever fucking lie to me again" and slapped me right across the face. Then he slammed the door and disappeared. It was pretty shocking, even though I was later able to feel some sympathy for this guy, trying to make a living for himself and not having the credentials to get it done. Just another poor soul who slipped through the cracks. But a fucker nonetheless. So if I ever slap you across the face for no apparent reason, blame that prick. 11/27/3: If you ever see a TV program or movie featuring one of the following lines, you may safely turn the channel/walk out of the theater and ask for your money back. "We believe they were abducted by a group called the Covenant -- a loose
affiliation of Russian nationals." I just saw "The Sum of All Fears" on the Magic Box. It blew fiercely. Chechnya was loosely involved. Which is weird, because I was just looking through the paper and saw some great air fares there for the holidays. Something to keep in mind. Not a bad place for a long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving. Be especially thankful if you have the Magic Box. Root against Dallas. Speaking of Dallas, I have been sort of swept up in JFK assassination fever these last few days. Like most suckers, my little forays into the case coincide with the anniversaries every fifth year. I am amazed at how dismissive the mainstream press has been this time around of any notion of conspiracy. I guess most evidence points to Oswald, but there are sure a lot of interesting questions to ask. What I don't believe is that it was some huge conspiracy with all the different groups involved. Perhaps a smaller conspiracy - Oswald, Ruby, and a neo-fascist named Dressler. Regardless of what you think, it's endlessly fascinating. Band name: The Three Tramps. 11/26/3: The woman who compared me to Doogie Howser's buddy "Vinny" came by my desk today and issued a half-assed apology. She said, "You really don't look anything like that guy on Doogie Howser." I was like, "The damage is done. But I forgive you." She goes, "Let me get you a picture of what that guy looked like." I don't want such a picture. I know the guy was no matinee idol. Why must she pursue this further? In an online bulletin board where people were discussing Rush Limbaugh's recent troubles, some genius had this to say: "I don't think he's being
hypocritical, per se; he just said that doing drugs was wrong. Since I tend
toward Blackburnian emotivism, which is a species of emotivism that holds that
moral discourse has taken the form of referential speech, I don't think that "x
is wrong" implies "don't do X" (sorry, i'm tired and not explaining well —
emotivism means there's no truth content — when you say "x is bad" you're really
saying "boo! X!" which isn't T or F. Blackburn contended that, while this is
true, moral language took on the appearance of T or F sentences). That's settled, let's move on. We are all familiar with the phenomenon of something being touted as underrated/underappreciated for so long and in so many places that it becomes overrated. The following items might fall into the "Things that have received way too much praise to ever be considered underrated, hip or obscure* again, and are now dangerously close to becoming overrated" category: Big Star; Ken Phelps; Jimmy Carter; "It's Your Move"; staying in; "Office Space"; Intellivision; The Bronx Zoo; Spy Magazine (mid-late 80's); LP's; BBC News; Tecmo Bowl, etc. Indeed the danger of discovering a secret treasure or a forgotten work of genius and raving about it to others is that one day it may become just another overcrowded, overglorified piece of shit. But I posit that the opposite is also true: if something gets overhyped and overplayed enough to create a serious backlash, and you hear the inevitable cries of "overrated" enough, then that item may be taking a turn towards underrated territory. An example that has been bugging me: The Strokes. How easy it is to criticize this band. They are annoying rich kids, playing what many might describe as a rehashed version of ten other more original bands spanning the last 35 years. They've been on the cover of just about every magazine there is over the last three years, and they only know about twenty songs. They seem eager to grab the crown of new rock and roll heroes, they date famous women and they talk and act like rock stars. I guess to the well-trained ear their music is totally derivative and therefore somewhat lamer than what came before it. It is impossible for us to listen to music without putting it in the context of what we've heard in our lifetimes, and sometimes we feel it's necessary to protect the legacy of the unheralded/underrated bands that did it first and did it better (even though those bands are by now most likely overrated). But are we injecting too much knowledge and thought into this? If being hip and coming artistically correct didn't enter into the equation, wouldn't you like that first Strokes album (and not just the EP that came before it) just fine? Isn't that enough to call it a good album? And shouldn't it be possible to separate the music from all the magazine covers and the admittedly irritating personalities of the band members? I say: Strokes, so well-known for being overrated they are on the expressway to becoming underrated. Or we could just get rid of the categories of underrated and overrated and get back to good and bad. I guess Yogi summed it up best: "Nobody goes there anymore -- it's too crowded." * - yes, I realize these are three different things. 11/25/3: Today was our office holiday party. My 11th(!) one with this same company. After the party, I went to a bar and had a couple of beers with the next generation of alcoholic employees. At one point, there were about five of us in a circle and someone brought up the tired old "If they made a movie about our office, who would play so and so?" game. Now in this situation, it seems to me you should think of an actor or actress who is far more attractive than the person you are comparing them to, sort of like if you are guessing someone's age, you subtract about ten years to be on the safe side. Anyway, that's the principle I was operating under, but I don't know about the other people. I was compared first to Doogie Howser, and when I objected (almost in tears), one woman says, "No, maybe you look more like Doogie's buddy -- you know, the guy who always climbed in his window -- Vinny or whatever." I seem to remember that kid being even more annoying than Doogie himself. I wanted to say, "The game is which actor or actress would play each of us -- not which actor or actress from Doogie Howser would play us. There's a whole universe out there of people you can name who never appeared on that show." It's just a reminder how differently the world sees us than we see ourselves. The scariest thought is that they were trying to be nice --maybe Doogie was their enhanced version of me. Free booze and sushi aside, the office party itself was pretty lame -- we were informed that we will not be receiving a bonus this year. Last year, everyone in the company received $500 because we had such a great year. Now compared to bankers' bonuses (bonii?), that don't sound like much, but it'll probably buy you an iPod and a new one a year later. I am by no means a PC devotee, but the typical "Mac Person" talks about the products they own as if they are family members. It's a little creepy. As someone who wondered about this potential problem but bought an Ipod anyway (for my wife), I thought the link was pretty interesting. I must add that Apple is now offering replacement batteries (but you have to either open up the iPod yourself or send in your iPod and get a different used one back in the mail). Anyway, since Apple products are supposed to be so user-friendly and elegant, I take some delight in developments that suggest otherwise. Another example was when they released iTunes for Windows and it conflicted with MusicMatch jukebox, the default program that originally came bundled with Windows iPods. The folks at Apple are just as fuckery as Microsoft, I suspect. In summation: Has anyone ever sampled the opening to "Serenade" by the Steve Miller band? Somebody get on that shit. 11/24/3: Nimphius took a tough loss today. I have no legitimate running backs, thanks to the complete breakdown of William Green, my second round pick. The guy has been busted for DWI, he's violated the league's substance abuse policy and been suspended for five games, and now this: "In a search of Green's house, Police found marijuana in four different places, as well as a steak knife with blood imbedded in a kitchen cabinet door. The Browns' running back was hospitalized on Wednesday after reportedly being stabbed in the back by his fiancee. An investigation continues, but Green could face drug charges." I know I should feel some sympathy for this troubled soul, but I paid $50 to get in this league, and he's ruining everything. What a dick. I can only imagine how the Browns and their fans must feel, paying him millions of dollars and putting their season in his hands, and watching him toss it all away. I find it fascinating that there is finally some talk of how perhaps the NBA's decision to legalize zone defenses was not the solution to declining scoring and attendance. Two years ago, a bunch of basketball's finest minds (sort of like Hardee's finest chefs) gathered to figure out what could be done to open up the game and bring back the fans. The best thing they could come up with was getting rid of the illegal defense rule. I know the idea was to eliminate some of the one on one stuff and force teams to move the ball, which would theoretically make for a more entertaining product. After all, people love to watch passing. The arrogance of this committee was pretty astounding, though -- they ignored the obvious impact of the new rule, which would be to give the defense an even larger advantage over the offense. They thought one step beyond that, and figured that they could force people to learn how to play good offense by making them face a new defense -- they would have to abandon the bad offensive habits they'd developed. It was sort of like saying, "You're failing algebra. Try some calculus." Anyway, it hasn't worked and they better try something else. 11/23/3: The general sense I get from people about the internet is that it's a big disappointment. And I guess as the future of all industries, it didn't quite pan out. You still have to go to the barber to get your hair cut. Most of us still have to go to work in the morning. But I just love it so much. Case in point: in the late-80's, some friends and I heard that Roy Firestone, the ESPN interviewer guy with the weird tufts of hair that come too far forward across his temples, had picked up a Super Bowl ring as a backup QB with the Dolphins championship teams of the early 70's. None of us could quite believe it, but we had no way to know for sure, without heading to a library and doing some actual research. In 2003, in less than three minutes time I can be sure that he never played professional football, and I can also tell you that he'll speak at your Bar Mitzvah for $22,000 plus expenses. That's a significantly different universe in ten years' time. I also think the internet has made it inexcusable to be lonely. No matter how undesirable you think you are, how impossible it would be to love you or be your friend or your backgammon partner, there is somebody out there who is dying for a chance to be exactly that and more. If you're too timid to seek them out, there is endless smut to tide you over. Smut. Sports scores, interactive games, term papers, bad adolescent confessional poetry. A way to buy things like pants in a big size without making eye contact. Music, movies, right and wrong answers to every question you ever asked. Instructions on how to do things. Maps. Weather. Cars. Airplane tickets. Endless JFK assassination theories and facts. Petitions to stop bad things from happening. Just a bottomless well of every stupid thing you'll ever be able to imagine. This is all in a decade. It's a bit unlucky that we didn't all get rich in the foolish mid to late 90's. But I'd say the first ten years* are a rousing success. * Yes I know it's technically way more than ten years. 11/21/3: I rode the bus to work today. I like that the bus is the transport of choice for old people. There's some dignity in a nice bus ride that you just don't find on the subway. What interests me is how there are about 10 choice seats at the front of the bus clearly designated for the elderly and/or disabled, yet the old people are loathe to sit in them. It's as if by sitting in those empty seats they would be accepting their own creeping mortality, and to sit in a regular seat next to another person is to celebrate life and the elbow-brushing city they love. I wonder if I'll do that. I hope I get the chance. 11/20/3: I think this is the least newsworthy article I've ever seen in a NYC paper. And it was on like page 5. If they had been mutts, nobody would have cared. Breedists. Pete sent me the following list: "list of things i'd rather do besides watch the nba: In addition to creating an amusing list, I think Pete speaks
for a larger and larger segment of the American sports-watching public (even
though soccer is probably his favorite sport - note his anglicized
spelling of "practice"). It's now generally accepted that the NBA is not
providing the kind of product it used to. Even though I have defended the
league forever against mounting evidence, I'm at the point now that I must
agree. The games are bleak, even though there are plenty of great players.
The arenas are dead, the style of play is a mess of bad passes and 24 second
violations. There are a lot of explanations for what's gone wrong: too
many young players who don't have the necessary fundamentals (not really buying
it); a lack of shooting ability (I half-agree); too much defense (I agree);
bodies too big and bulky (I guess); expansion has diluted the talent (nah -
would Granville Waters or Bob Thornton be on an NBA roster today?). 11/19/3: I have been slowly ripping all my CD's (only about 250) to my laptop in anticipation of either: 1) Me getting some fancy new MP3 player. I assume one of these will happen within the next couple of years, and I must be prepared. Anyway, I like putting all the songs in my little MusicMatch library into my playlist, then hitting "shuffle," and listening to them in whatever order the computer spits 'em out. It's a digital variation on a game I used to play with my friend Brady in college. We called it the "Random Grab" -- we would reach blindly into our stacks of unalphabetized CD's, and force ourselves to listen to whatever it was we grabbed, even if it was the Rembrandts or Bell Biv Devoe. OK, sometimes it was so horrible we'd shove it back, defeating the entire purpose of the game. But it was still fun. Grab a couple of Old Milwaukees, some plastic-tipped darts, and have ourselves a little party on a Tuesday night. Anyway, I like doing the shuffle thing with all my songs because it's neat to see the weird combinations of songs, even in a pretty homogeneous collection of music like mine. Seeing "Babies Making Babies" followed by "Caroline, No" followed by "Lonesome Suzie" followed by "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" makes you think deeply about the interconnectedness of the musical universe, or at least it makes you stare blankly at your screen for about 9 seconds. But the problem is that "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" isn't coming up until song #2115. I don't want to embarrass myself by doubting the countless scientists who have toiled countless hours so that newspaper articles could routinely feature lines like this, but I can't help thinking that if we had a time machine they would all be proven dramatically wrong in one way or another: "The rhinoceros-size triceratops would have been a common sight in Colorado in the late Cretaceous period, 69 million to 65.5 million years ago." 11/17/3: I think a person should get some kind of credit for every good idea they come up with independently, even if someone else had the idea first. Meaning, if I had never seen a chip clip, but then I made one, I'd be a genius of sorts. Maybe I wouldn't deserve as much credit as someone who could definitively prove they had a spectacular idea before all others, but as long as the idea-haver is completely unaware of the earlier person's thought/invention/hypothesis, they deserve to be hailed as some kind of colossal smarty-pants. Even if they can't prove that they didn't hear the idea previously, subconsciously absorb it, and then regurgitate it years later. In this vein, I want to be remembered as one of the men who invented drinking pants, named drinking pants, and actively used drinking pants for their intended purpose. That's all. Writing that paragraph reminds me of the frustration of dealing with the he/she/they dilemma, and how hard it is to find a graceful solution. I just sort of decided to chuck it. Am I stupid here? What do you recommend? You can't say things like "they deserve to be hailed as some kind of colossal smarty-pants." But you can't say "one deserves..." or "he or she deserves..." all the time, either. Pain in the ass. First person who comes up with a beautiful solution will get some kind of eternal credit. Even if it's somebody else's old solution. Unless Jeff Foxworthy came up with it first and can prove it. 11/16/3: On Friday afternoon/evening, Alcohol continued its incredible winning streak in head to head competition with yours truly. I think my lifetime record against booze is now 0-628. Like the Washington Generals, I keep coming back for more. One day I will have a positive experience, I'm sure. I'm sure you've heard about the Milwaukee postal worker who discovered a four-foot alligator chewing its way through an express mail box. That article clued me in to a little-known regulation: "Alligators longer than 20 inches are not allowed to be sent through the mail, and officials said the shipment from Milwaukee to Colorado was under review." Nimphius: 8 straight wins, 9-2 overall. Hopes are being raised in preparation for dashing. 11/12/3: Have you heard this story that Wade Boggs drank 64 beers on a cross-country flight? Is that possible? If so, he's definitely a first-ballot Hall of Famer. I have also heard it reported as 72 beers. I think I've probably maxed out at maybe 30-35 beers in an evening, and I was pretty much a tree stump at that point. Andre the Giant, God rest his soul, once drank a confirmed 124 beers in one sitting. There are a few people I know and respect who listen to Sports Talk Radio. Other than the benevolent and level-headed Joe Benigno, whose mellifluous pipes guided me through some tough overnights in the late 90's, I have never had much patience for it. I've always considered it right down there with video games and...well, sports in terms of the least enriching recreational activities. Part of it might be that I don't own a car and don't face a long commute every day. Anyway, tonight I was wasting some time flipping through the channels and I came across Mike and the Mad Dog's show (which is a televised version of their radio show, airing live and simultaneously) on the Godawful YES Network. Here are a few things that occurred to me: 1) What is a frail forty year-old talk show host doing
with a nickname like "Mad Dog"? I assume it is related to the frothing
sounds that occur as huge amounts of spit tumble out the corners of his
mouth. In an earlier entry, I mentioned that never in my baseball-watching lifetime had I seen a hometown fan refrain from reaching for a foul ball so that his team's fielder could make a play on it. I then re-posted my observation to give myself some sort of recognition in the wake of the Steve Bartman incident. But shortly after that, I came across a NYT article that reminded me of one notable exception: "In the sixth inning of Game 1 of the 2000 World Series with two outs, the Mets' Todd Zeile sent a drive toward the short left-field corner of Yankee Stadium. The ball seemed destined for the seats, but struck the top of the padded wall and bounced back onto the field. Mets fans believed it was a home run; Yankee fans knew better. The Mets' Timo Perez, who was on first base, also thought it was a home run and loped toward second base, but the Yankees' left fielder, David Justice, fired to Jeter, who threw to catcher Jorge Posada, who tagged out Perez at home. The Mets never recovered, and the Yankees won the Series in five games. The play took place, however, only because a Yankee fan named Jack Nelson, seated directly behind where Zeile's ball struck the fence, didn't reached out and snag it. Nelson, as he later told reporters, knew not to interfere with the ball." Yankee fans. We're the best. Lastly, did I mention the Halloween costume I heard about that made me jealous? Four friends went as the Cutters from "Breaking Away," complete with bike helmets and T-shirts with "Cutters" printed on them. 11/11/3: (The following is gross. Stop if you are bothered by gross.) Mark Leyner had a line in one of his books a few years ago that went something like this (I wish I had the exact text in front of me, it was much funnier): By 2010, the world's water will be in such short supply and the means of delivering this water will be so interconnected that if you're taking a shower in San Diego, and someone flushes a toilet in Mombasa, you'll get scalded. I don't know about all that, but I can say that the plumbing in my apartment building gave way tonight in the following spectacular way: I flushed the toilet, and someone's bowel movement came shooting up through the drain in my tub (I say "someone's" because it wasn't mine, and apparently each apartment in this building shares its bathroom drainage with one other apartment). Again, if this stuff grosses you out, stop here. When I say bowel movement, I mean the full fecal mini-logs, the toilet paper, the little bits of red pepper or tomato or whatever it was -- everything. The tub filled up with about 3 inches of skank water, and one of the least entertaining nights of my adult life was underway. After calls to the super (through the doorman -- we weren't allowed to speak to the super directly) were met with laughs and a denial that such a thing was possible, we raised sufficient hell to drag him back from whatever he was doing across town. First he tried the mega-pump-plunger thing. It cleared the tub clog -- and you haven't lived until you see someone nudge the last bit of turd from your bathtub into the drain. But it was no luck with the toilet, which was also clogged. And so it was on to phase two: the snake. He snaked that thing for a good fifteen minutes, while informing me that the clog was probably caused by something we flushed down the toilet -- a tampon, a bunch of paper towels, or even a can of soda. Of course we have never flushed any of those things down our toilet, but it was an interesting thought. Snake # 1 was a bust. Whatever was blocking our 3 inch pipe was nowhere to be found (he kept pointing out that the width of the first (smallest) pipe, the one that he was sure was blocked, was the same as the height of a tampon, insinuating either that this was my wife's fault or that I have some kinky tampon thing going on). He went to get the electric snake, and before he deployed it, he removed the entire toilet from the floor. When he did this, shit-water from three generations of tenants, some dead, spilled across our bathroom floor. Things were smelling pretty bad. As he was about to get started, he held up the supersnake and said, "Let's go fishing." I'm sure he says this each time he pulls out this majestic tool, but it made me squeal with excitement nonetheless. He reached the coils of the supersnake deep into the hole that now appeared on our bathroom floor (this sight was admittedly more astonishing to a city slicker like myself who has never installed a toilet than it might be to you country folk) and gunned the engine. After about a minute of struggle in which he actually did resemble a fisherman battling a particularly feisty marlin, he began reeling in the catch of the day. It looked like a dead pigeon or a rat or something, but apparently it was a bunch of paper towels and God knows what else. This wasn't the culprit, he assured me, but rather was just some of the detritus that gathered against whatever the actual object was that was blocking the pipe. In went the supersnake again, and out came more of this mystery matter. He put his ear near the hole and said, "I think I got it." We never saw what "it" was (I assume a gator), but the drain started to flow semi-normally and the healing process could begin. It will be a long process, of that I am sure. On a happier note, Nimphius is 8-2. 11/10/3: Sorry about the fucked-up colors. I started messing around with the background and now I am not sure how to make it look good. I hereby solicit suggestions for what color the background should be. It's very important. Tonight's celebrity dinner sighting was Warner Wolf. I know, borderline. Dude is looking old. I was thinking about the fact that my wife and I always seem to go out for our big dinner on Sunday nights, and that's when we always see these celebrities. The fact that Paul Auster was one of them gives the series of coincidences an Austerian kind of vibe. If it was a Paul Auster story, the celebrities would all fit together in some creepy way, and at the end of the story, I'd wind up trapped inside a cave in Central Park with Lloyd Lindsay Young. I think I forgot to mention that we saw Nicole Kidman and Lenny Kravitz at brunch last week. I am famous. I had to work today on a Sunday because I was behind in some stuff, and on the way in, I stopped to watch a little co-ed touch football game that was going on in the park near my office. I was deeply moved by the way one woman would play line, and she would stand there, dutifully preparing to block if and when her opponent (another woman) reached 5 "Mississippis." All weekend warrior sports touch me, especially when I am actually playing -- something about the fact that while we are all mediocre, it is still enjoyable to see if we are any less mediocre than our opponents. But this game in particular was a heartbreaker. Each team had their own colored T-shirts, yellow vs. green. The green team actually had one guy with a white T-shirt on, but he was wearing a green ski hat, so I guess that counts. Just the thought of the phone calls during the week was kind of sweet. "So you guys are definitely yellow, right?" But the real kicker is the use of "Mississippi." Earnestly counting Mississippis in your mid 30's is a strange thing to do. Not that I haven't done that exact thing in the last 6 weeks. And then there is at least one inevitable dispute about the pace of the Mississippi counting. And sure enough, there's always one guy who is counting 'em off way too fast, clearly disregarding the original intent of the use of Mississippi -- which I am pretty sure is to measure the passing of 1 second. As sad as it is to be still worrying about Mississippis this late in life, it would make me sadder still if we were the last generation to use this particular system. Imagine walking by a field and hearing some little bastards counting off Harry Potters? I have a new list in mind, but I need a few suggestions. The list goes something like: Stores in which the disturbingly-well-informed clerks are most bafflingly condescending (not counting the obvious music and video stores): 1. Comic book shops Surprisingly, I have always found the people who work in wine stores to be most understanding and helpful, and they have perhaps the easiest opportunities to be judgmental dicks. 11/9/3: All the recent attention to the new $20 bills makes me want to salute the unsung warrior of currency, the goddamned ten dollar bill. Its virtues are too obvious and too numerous to mention, but suffice it to say that making the ten the standard unit of ATM dispersal instead of the twenty would bring us all a lot closer together. After playing basketball for the first time in about six months last night, I am about ready to hang it up. However, I am proud to have come up with a nickname for my friend Lucas, possibly the least intimidating moniker in the history of streetball. From here on out, he will be known as "Loose Ball" to all who encounter him. A loose-ball retrieving specialist. And a legendary one. Lucas "Loose Ball" Cooper. I saw him in his prime. Of course, we all know there was plenty more to Lucas's game than retrieving loose balls. 11/5/3: I can't really get a handle on my feelings about Will Ferrell. When he first came to SNL, I recall thinking that he was possibly the least talented cast member (save Charles Rocket) of all time. He basically just stood there in every skit, relying on a comedic arsenal containing little more than his own physical awkwardness and strangely earnest line delivery. There are some performers, like Sean Penn, who are known for never breaking character, even off the set. Of Ferrell it could be said that he never even entered character. He just said his lines and showcased his pale hairy belly, and he always seemed to have one eye on the crowd, hoping for laughs. And indeed the crowd ate it up. I was reading an article on SNL in which the unfunny but technically skilled Dana Carvey said something interesting. He mentioned that when he (Carvey) first got to the show, he wrote a few skits that got huge laughs, and he was quite satisfied with himself. He felt poised for stardom, and then some of the old-timers told him that the laughs he got were "bad" laughs. Prior to that, he always thought, a laugh's a laugh. That was the first time he realized there were purists out there who cared about the quality of the laughs you got, and he figured he'd better pick up his game. Apparently those old-timers were gone by the time Ferrell arrived, because this lesson never seemed to come through in his work. He was there to MAKE YOU LAUGH. It was that simple. And, other than the mystifyingly recurring cheerleader skit, I often found myself laughing. He always seemed completely comfortable with who he was. He was going to do whatever was necessary to get a laugh. Eventually, he became the cast's go-to guy, although I always felt that this honor was really an indication of how weak the show had become as a whole. He had definitely expanded his repertoire a little, even if his best skits were not necessarily well-written or brilliantly performed. He was just funny. You couldn't help but laugh at the sight of him. But a lot of people worshipped him, and I didn't get it. By the time he finished his run on SNL, he was being mentioned with the great comedic minds to come off that show, and it was generally assumed that he was going to become a huge movie star. And that's basically what's happened. And now somehow it seems perfectly natural. When I see him in interviews, he cracks me up. He rarely says anything that clever, it's just sort of the way he says it. He really sells it with everything he's got. I haven't seen "Old School," but I am sure I would laugh throughout. Maybe they'd be bad laughs, but perhaps the beauty in Will Ferrell's comedy is that it doesn't really matter. He doesn't care; why should we? Sign # 246 your basketball team is lacking togetherness: one of your players hits a buzzer beater to give your team a 20 point halftime lead, and nobody even goes over to slap his hand. These are your Trail Blazers! 11/4/3: My fantasy football team, Nimphius, is 7-2. That can't last, but does anyone have a picture of Kurt Nimphius they can send me? 11/3/3: Last night I spotted a couple more celebrities at dinner. We went to Cafe Rosso on W. 12th Street and at a table of 6 people or so sat Parker Posey and Paul Auster. Strange combination. I am sure some of the other people at the table were famous as well, but I didn't recognize them. I got to overhear one of the women at the table say about her daughter, who was sitting next to Parker Posey, "So and so went to a small Quaker college in the Midwest." The slightly frumpy daughter looked kind of embarrassed, and then Parker Posey said in that kind of condescending, snotty Parker Posey way, "Are you kidding? I'd love to be able to say I went to a small Quaker college in the Midwest," as if to make the girl feel better. Did she mean "I'd love to be able to say I went to a small Quaker college in the Midwest, instead of having to say 'I'm a sexy, successful movie star who dates big annoying rock stars and I get all my clothes for free'"? I'm probably just being a dick, she seemed to be genuinely pretending to think the Quaker college was a cool experience she had missed out on. You know what's a scary thing to say? "You think I'm kidding." Whenever someone says that, there's a thirty percent chance they will soon kill everyone in your office. It usually follows an angry, outrageous promise of some future harm the person plans to inflict. Like, "I'm so fucking pissed off about Endecott getting that promotion, I should just go into the boss's office and tear out his fucking eyeballs." In response, you laugh sympathetically to defuse things a little, sort of trying to welcome the freak back into the real world. And then Crazy Jimmy says, "You think I'm kidding." Wow. The difference between Jimmy's thoughts and anything based on earth is so large that he needs to clarify that he is indeed deadly serious. That's when you need to check the fuck out of that conversation and pack up for the day. My first solo album: You Think I'm Kidding. Now that it looks like the lawyer who got shot by his client is gonna be OK, I feel comfortable having some yuks about it (I know I was a little premature in anticipating Roy's recovery after his mauling -- good luck to you, Roy). Anyway, please check out the video of the shooting if somehow you haven't seen it already (remember, the guy is fine now). Crazy stuff, it looked like a Tom and Jerry cartoon the way the guy was dodging the bullets around the tree. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because of this eyewitness account that I found pretty excellent: "He just calmly walked on by, straight ahead . . . like it
was nothing. Dude could have been getting a Big Mac or something and you never
would have known he had just shot someone." 11/2/3: I know the album has been out for awhile, and she's already been roundly thumped for her blatant attempts to sex up and sell out, but have you looked at the cover of Liz Phair's album? She's always been upfront about her sexuality, but doesn't this look a little desperate? She's all but shoving that guitar up her ass. One of the fun things about living in an apartment building is trying to find out as much as you can about your neighbors without ever engaging them in conversations longer than 10 words. For instance, on my floor there is a photographer dude who I think is sleeping with at least three women on a regular basis. The thing is, the guy is such a nice, considerate fellow that I think they're all cool with it. There is another couple with a yappy dog that lives in the apartment right outside the elevator. The other day, I saw the woman place what looked like a camera bag (sorry about the bad picture) outside her apartment door. As far as I can tell, it's been sitting there ever since, about five days. I had no idea what it was (I even speculated that the photographer guy shagged her and left his camera inside her apartment), and then my wife came up with what I think is a pretty obvious correct answer. Can you guess? Today, I walked by their apartment and I heard the husband, who is apparently a Cowboys fan, watching the game alone. After telling someone on the phone he had to go because the game was back on, this is approximately what I heard him say. It cracked me up; I had forgotten what it's like to be around passionate football fans. It also reminded me of one of my favorite things to do. When watching a football game in a rowdy sports bar or even with a big group of people at somebody's house, if there is one guy there who's REALLY into the game, surreptitiously watch him when the team he's rooting against has the ball. I bet you will see him say the words, "Get 'im!" at least 30 times during the game. It's humanity at its most basic, without any concern for the reaction of others. Just a creature expressing its most raw and immediate desires. It's beautiful. "Get 'im!" I love that. Is there a more overused expression than "literally"? It's bad enough when used correctly, meaning "actually, word for word." Like, the Bigfoot was literally right outside my tent. But now, people use it to mean the opposite, NOT literally. Like the idiot ESPN announcer who just said Gilbert Brown is "literally playing with one arm." Cool, I thought, assuming I would see a guy standing there with literally one arm. Instead, it turns out he just has a torn biceps. Big whoop. I was so unimpressed I literally turned the channel.
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