(Not so) Quick Knicks Note

With my dad coming from up-state New York, and me growing up in Sacramento, as far as basketball was concerned, I considered myself a New York Knicks fan first, and a Sacramento Kings fan second. Well, early in my life, I'm sure I rooted for Magic Johnson and the Lakers more than I ever rooted for the Kings. But that changed somewhere in high-school, probably around the same time the Kings actually got decent.

Anyway, having lived in the City for the past three-and-a-half years means that, as a self-purported Knicks fan, I've been able to watch first hand the incompetence of the Isaiah Thomas era and the running-aground style of ownership of Jim Dolan. The Knicks have been a collection of bad trades, poor drafting, and lackadaisical execution for a while, and while I'm not as hardcore as some Knicks fans (the NBA doesn't rank that high on my list of things-I-like), it's been tough to pay attention to.

Of course, last year they booted Isaiah, brought in Donnie Walsh, hired coach Mike D'Antoni, and he installed his up-tempo offense that players seem to love. While D'Antoni had lots of success with Steve Nash in Phoenix, those Suns teams never made the finals because, it seems to me and some local NBA-covering reporters, those teams never contorted themselves into defensive units. So what did we have last year in the Garden? High tempo offense...32 wins instead of 28...and almost no emphasis on defense.

Eddy Curry, a mountain of a man and an Isaiah import (bust), touted by the I-man as the next Shaq, played all of 14 minutes last season. Really though, he had a stomach flu that made it hard for him to get in proper shape, and his daughter was murdered in Chicago, which obviously is a tragedy, and one from which that it'd be understandable to want to take some time off. David Lee, a white-kid forward and rebound specialist, is a great young player--he ranked all season in the top-ten in rebound average--and he wasn't even a starter. Explain that to me.

Now, I saw in the paper today something that boggles the mind and cracks me up, like in May when the papers are worried about how many games the Yankees are behind in the Wild Card standings...in May...well, this season for the Knicks has been rendered basically meaningless, as all eyes are looking forward to July 1st of next year. That's the day LeBron James could become a free-agent by opting out of his contract. He could become a free-agent, which means he could sign with the Knicks, which would make the Knicks relevant again...

Whether he wants to sign with the Knicks...whether he wants to leave Ohio and Cleveland, where he is treated as a god first, a king second, and a governor third is another question...

There is a graphic in the paper today saying "Only 274 more days until LeBron could be a free-agent"...and that's how the Knicks season is going, and will be branded throughout the NY media all year...let's just wait for the free-agent class of 2010. LeBron is dream candidate number One, Dwayne Wade is dream candidate number Two, then a toss-up between Chris Bosh and Amare Stoudamire...

New York teams don't rebuild (maybe the Jets and the Nets, over in east Rutherford, are allowed to rebuild), they just restock, and the Knicks have a tough road ahead, made even tougher by the fact they refuse, and have refused the past four or so years, to admit that "rebuilding" is what is necessary. So, we wait until next July, with a pesky season to play in between.

Happy Birthday Marc!

My good friend, old roommate, and current dairy-shill partner Marc celebrates his twenty-third birthday today. Or at least that's what we're telling people. He says the specks of gray in his hair have been there since junior-high.

Marc has the distinction of being the gentleman who introduced Corrie to me, or me to Corrie (probably both or fine and accurate), and we'll never forget it--mainly because he'll never let us. I kid, of course, as he's ever gracious about his match-making abilities, as Corrie and I aren't the first or the last couple he's set up.

Happy Day Marc! Thanks for everything, and congrats on the new Deal!

"Who is this '80% of America' anyway?"

The line above sounds strange, and it should, grammatically at least.

Another line from the source material is "If my son falls off his bike and breaks his arm, he should have to pay for that...out of his allowance."

That's followed by this gem "How else is he going to learn not to fall of his bike?"

Backyard zoos with white tigers and pygmy horses...how dare us want to take that away from health insurance CEOs...

It'll make more sense once you see this video.

Mike Fights for the Worker

My cousin Mike, last time we spoke a few weeks ago, told me about one of the demonstrations that his union was organizing against the hotel chain Hyatt. Hyatt has recently cut almost a hundred people from the house-keeping unit from their Boston hotel, and replaced them with house-keepers at nearly half the wages and no health benefits. "Bring Back the Hyatt 100" was the name of the organization as well as an obvious mantra.

Gov. Patrick of Massachusetts supports the Hyatt 100, and has called for a possible boycott of the Hyatt chain aimed at getting these workers back to work.

The demonstration Mike was telling me about had their activists getting a large group together to go to Chicago, where the Park Hyatt is the scene for negotiations, and in an act if non-violent civil-disobedience, getting arrested for the day. This was a tricky thing, he was telling me, because while the younger people in the group were all for it--getting arrested--some of the older church-going grandmotherly aged ladies had to be persuaded, but eventually some of them even joined in.

It made some of the news outlets...here are some links: New York Times, Chicago Ttibune, and the Boston Globe.

Toys from Childhood

My brother sent me an email in which he said that boredom and computers create strange discoveries, and he sent me a few links that had my brain unearthing nuggets of deep memories that had been long since covered up.

The first link was for Battle Beasts, and while the name rung a bell, and the three elements (wood, water, fire) also struck a visual note, it took actually seeing the little action figures to make me truly remember what they were. The Battle Beasts were a series of maybe two-inch animals that were decked out with futuristic knee-and shoulder-pads, and each had a heat-activated sticker on their chests that told you what their element was in the grand scheme of rauchambeau.

The second link was for Captain Power, another bell ringing name, but less so. After perusing the page, I still had little memory of the action-figure series...the description of the series--an interactive animated show where kids at home could shoot a NES-like light gun at the screen during battle scenes--didn't jog my memory, as I don't remember doing anything like that. After clicking on the link for a picture of the toy, I remembered. It all fell into place. A memory of waiting for a double pie at Little Caesar's Pizza with my Captain Power action figure claiming a back counter, rappelling down an invisible rope, and then blasting the (unseen) badguys came rushing up to the front of my neo-cortex, and my Sunday afternoon with no television to watch the Yankees clinch, the Giants rout the Bucs, or the Jets womp the Titans, was totally complete with a stroll down memory lane.

Thanks, Dan.

Governor's Island: Some Other Sights

From Governor's Island one can get a good view of some landmarks, or at least one landmark and some views of Lower Manhattan and across the Hudson to Jersey City. Here's Lady Liberty...

Lower Manhattan...

Jersey City...

Here's Corrie taking a shot of me with the bridges in the background. Brooklyn Bridge is the closest, then the Manhattan Bridge, then farther down is the Williamsburg Bridge...maybe only with the zooming feature of clicking on the picture will you be able to see any of that.

I hadn't really planned on making four separate entries about Governor's Island, but after looking at the pictures I wanted to post, it seemed like a series of short posts could accommodate my desire to churn out tiny nuggets of observation, while keeping it short and sweet.

Governor's Island: A Panopticon Among Us

A Panopticon is a circular prison design, originally devised by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham, where the cells are constructed in a circular fashion with a central tower being able to see inside each cell easily and down upon the "yard" while the inmates are exercising. The design has been used historically throughout Europe and occasionally here in the US.

Castle Williams, on Governor's Island, is basically a Panopticon, but with no central tower. Corrie and I were among the last visitors allowed through the gates this past Sunday, as it was closing for the day. Here are some pictures.

The fact that it was in use up until the 1960s explains the presence of the glass over the bars. From the outside, the winnowed window fixtures are quite striking, and I had Corrie jump up into it and have a seat to show some scale.

Walking around inside was not quite as eerie as walking around Alcatraz, but there definitely were some vibes and bad energy in the space.

Governor's Island: Artistic Festival

Upon Governor's Island this past Sunday was the end of a weeks long (weekends only) art festival promoted in part by the same promotion team that brought out the actress dressed as the Milkmaid--a celebration of 400 years of Dutch involvement in the area. Once we disembarked from the quick ferry ride (it took far longer waiting in line than it did in crossing), we walked past a few military settlements and into a large field littered with metallic Items. The Items looked like part chez-lounge and part metal butterfly, and all had paintings on them. Here's a picture to get the scope.

They were everywhere in this field, quite a sight from a distance, or directly in the midst. Some of the paintings were good, some great, some fantastic, and eventually you got the sense that we were being invaded by alien robotic butterflies.

Once passed the field, we were into another military type dormitory zone, and in the distance between two sets of austere housing buildings was a fair of some type, put on by Amstel and Heineken. This might have been The Fair; it had small booths like a Renaissance Fair, with performers coming out occasionally to perform their skills. There was a raised platform--a wooden catwalk basically--bisecting the fenced in "fair-grounds" that patrons were encouraged to walk across by wooden steps at regular intervals. Behind one of the performers, a young long-haired pianist (she was pretty good, also pretty good at shooing away curious patrons from her piano when she wasn't playing) were a pair of statues. One was large and bulbous, looked almost womanly, and the other was very skinny, male, and both were in begging type poses. I got a good picture of the skinny fella.

I graffito-tagged a pillar that was meant to be tagged--they had glow-in-the-dark markers attached to it--and then we left and saw a performance artist doing some interpretive dangling from a tree to some spooky music.

We explored some of the other installations in some of the open houses, mostly of a historic nature, and not necessarily of the artistic nature. It was a pretty neat artsy-fartsy outing, even if that hadn't really been our initial motivation for going. Here's my tag (re: Norm).

Governor's Island: Colonial Vistas

Governor's Island is a short ferry ride from downtown Brooklyn, an island that for centuries acted as a mustering point for different military ventures. The British have used it, as well as the Union Army during the Civil War, the American Army during both world wars, and its Castle Williams, built in the 1840s as a prison, remained in use in this capacity--military brig--until the 1960s.

The first people to really live upon the island, after, of course, the Lenape natives, were almost exclusively military personal, as many generations of soldiers trained there. Here is a picture of the commanding officer's quarters.

Sometimes as you walk around the community on the island, it strikes you as not seeming to have been military personnel, as this picture looks like a neighborhood out of colonial America.

This next picture shows the barracks for the military school in the foreground, with lower Manhattan's skyscrapers in the background, looking as if they were just a few blocks away, and not a couple of miles away across the bay created by the meeting of the East and Hudson Rivers.

The island is closed from mid-October until mid-May, so it's with good reason it's considered a Summer getaway. It helps that ferries run every twenty minutes from Brooklyn and Manhattan, and are free. The day we went, the line stretched for a while, and we waited for just over a half-hour, watching two ferries leave without us. The ferries were running more often that Sunday, mainly because demand was high because it was a nice day and there was an art festival.

Lagging...

I know I've been lagging with this site, but I've been busy...so goes my main mea culpas...

For Norm: I've gotten to around page 430 in M&D...damn slow going for sure, but good, in a strange, hard to express way...

The French chef Allegre? With his digressive story about Vaucanson's duck (which was a real automaton duck)? How it fell in some sort of love with him, can talk, can fly at super-sonic speeds, and protects him at all times? What the hell am I reading here?

Corrie and I went to Governor's Island last weekend, and I'll put up some pictures about that here...it was a pretty place, isolated and still visibly colonial in design, and very close to us...

Sorry loyal readers, I'll try to get back with this stuff soon enough...

The Milkmaid

The Milkmaid, a painting by the Dutch master Vermeer, is on a rare tour to New York (nee Nieuw Amsterdam), on loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Corrie and I waited in line for only twenty minutes to get in back in 2005) and showing at the Met. Here it is.

At Union Square Park the past week an actress dressed as the Milkmaid was on hand, with a large frame, and having pictures taken with passersby (for free) to show up on their website promoting Amsterdam (does that place really need promotion?) and the painting.

Here's the website...if you want to see my picture, check on Tuesday, September 15th, or just look below.

Tuesday was beautiful, warm, clear, not much else you could ever ask for for an end-of-the-summer-type day. I was out doing household stuff: getting our fuzzy little boy some food.

Entire World on a Street in Queens

Now, having lived in Brooklyn for the last three+ years, as have many transplants from outside of NYC to Brooklyn or Manhattan, I've taken some joking shots at Queens. It's too sprawling, we say; it's too poorly serviced by subways, we say...all probably true, but it does have a wealth of worldly peoples, and may be the most diverse county in the entire world.

How diverse? Well, Astoria in particular, a neighborhood usually considered Greek by most New Yorkers (who don't live there), was the sight of an experiment by a gentleman-genographer named Spencer Wells. Genography is the study of how human genetic material has spread around the world through migratory patterns.

At the 30th Avenue Street Festival in June of 2008, right in the heart of Astoria, Queens, Spencer went around asking volunteers for a cheek-swab sample. He got 193 volunteers to pony up a sample of cheek-cells for his genetic research.

Out of those 193 volunteers, he was astounded to find traces of every single human migration--except one--known to human history. There were 22 people who had gone the least distance, genetically, having migrated from East Africa (where, genetically concerned, we all started) to a spot still considered East Africa, and most likely descended from those enslaved on this continent. There were 4 people whose genes represented an early migration from East to Western Africa.

There were 54 people who were descended from those who migrated to the Middle East. There were 10 from Southern Europe, by way of the Middle East. There were 33 from Northern Europe (also by way of the Middle East, which must be understood as basically a necessity of leaving continental Africa). There were 6 from South-East Asia and 1 from East Asia. There were 13 from South Asia (Indian Sub-continent).

There were 30 from Central Asia, 18 from Siberian native peoples (very similar to American native peoples) and, surprising to me, only 2 from the Americas. But, two people still count as representing another one of the major human migrations.

The only major migration from pre-history not accounted for in the 193 volunteers in Astoria is the usually-considered-the-very-earliest-human-migration, the now-called Khoisan tribes, having left there original spot in East Africa and moved slightly south and west, eventually being pushed to adapt in the harsh Kalahari Desert by the Bantu Explosion. If you've seen The Gods Must be Crazy, then you're familiar with the Khoisan, or at least with how their lifestyle would have been a century before the filming.

Not bad for a street festival in Queens.

At What are We Looking?

I found this picture while doing some background research, and I thought it was interesting to see that certain eras and certain desperado type-casts are virtually the same everywhere. If I were to tell you that these fellas were dynamite men (minors) from Telluride in Colorado, you could believe it, if they're out on a sojourn or something.

If I said they were German and French protestants escaping religious persecution in Europe by fleeing to a life of Gaucho in either Mexico or the Patagonian plain, you could buy it.

If I said they were Cossacks from the deep hinterland of the Siberian wilderness after adopting a type of dress seen in the Buffalo Bill Cody's Traveling Wild West Extravaganza, it probably wouldn't shock you.

Nor would the truth, that these guys are Boers, a Dutch term that translates as "farmer". The Boers were the Dutch, French, and German settlers in the Dutch Cape Town Colony that all migrated (trekked) inland, away from the coastal Cape Town, when the British took over control of the outpost. This picture wast taken during the Second Boer War, also known as the Second Boer-Anglo War, since the Boers were fighting against the Brits.

Charlize Theron may be the most famous Boer known in America...her dad's family were German and her mom's French. She's said to prefer the pronunciation of her last name to be more congruent with her native Afrikaans, instead of "ther-own" to be more monosyllabic, "thrown".

Quick Note for Norm

O...kay...

I've been laboring through Mason & Dixon lately, passed page 100 a few days ago...

I thought it was interesting to see another sailor-man named Bodine. In V. it's Pig Bodine, in Gravity's Rainbow it's Seaman Bodine, and I think there might be another appearance in some other book.

For any of my few readers who're unfamiliar with this banter between Norm and I, Mason & Dixon is one of Thomas Pynchon's long works, while fascinating and "fun" (quotes on purpose), it is written in the vernacular of the 1780s, complete with spelling things like o'er, ne'er, spoil'd, as well as capitalizing every important--though not necessarily proper--noun.

It's almost as difficult to read as Gravity's Rainbow...in one sense it could be harder, what with the anachronistic premise, but really it's a buddy story, while GR expects the reader to be on top of ten "main" characters, and two-hundred important characters, or something like that...

I was trying to explain to Marc, who had been reading The Crying of Lot 49, take the hardest sentence you've seen in that book, then translate the prose to 18th century vernacular, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization rules, and you're almost there. To get "there", as it were, nestle the sentence in 750 pages of the same thing.

Happy Birthday Mom!

September 10th, though the year matters less.

Eight years ago I called, and we talked, and then the next day was a big day for me, for reasons different than those that changed the history of the world. The next day, back in 2001, after spending the morning watching the news, going to school at Cuesta (I picked up a Jack Handey book of silly proverbs--the ones from SNL--from a campus book sale and tried to lighten the mood of those close to me) and coming home, I got the letter from Cal Poly that I'd been re-admitted, this time as a transfer student rather than a freshman high-school grad.

In any case, Happy Birthday Mom! Love you.

09/09/09

I know this is a silly post, about a silly arbitrary day, a phenomenon that happens solely as a result of our calendar system, but it nonetheless is a phenomenon of our calendar system.

I remember on July seventh, back in 2007, the paper was saying that people were flocking all over the nation to chapels and justices of the peace to get married on "lucky sevens", the date being, of course, another quirky result of our calendar system, 07/07/07.

I had a driver's license that expired on my birthday in 2004 (04/09/04) and once it was renewed, it expired five years later (04/09/09)...still quirky, but not quite as cool...now as the tens-column inches forward, the ones column will oscillate between 4-9-4 and 4-9-9...unless of course we move to a place where driver's licenses expire in a longer-than-five-year time period.

Happy Birthday Liz!

Today is my cousin Liz's 21st birthday. She might still be in Turkey, she might be back in Seattle for the start of school...I don't know. I'm going to find her number and give her a call, as I've attempted the last few 9/8s.

She'd my second-favorite girl, the little sister I never had, but felt as protective of.

There came a point at our Mexico wedding when I was making the rounds, stopping at tables to say hi and try to spend time with friends and family, where I got to the table with my mom, my Auntie Peg and Uncle Dan, possibly my dad and brother as well, and Liz, and there was a heated conversation going on. I wasn't aware what was being discussed, and as I got to the table, my mom and Auntie Peg asked me if Liz had ever worn a bathing suit during a Christmas trip to Hawai'i we took in 2003, four and a half years before. This is before I even got to say "hi" or anything. Liz said something, but was quickly shushed. "Let Patrick answer," they chided.

Now, as much as I love my mom, and my god-parents, Auntie Peg and Uncle Dan, I have a reflexive desire to always--always--side with Liz (and Mike, her older brother, my cousin and hero), and here I was in a position where I didn't know which answer was more beneficial to Lizzie.

I tried to take an answer not offered, saying something like, she probably wore a suit, she was definitely in the teenager-broody-too-cool-for-school phase that we all go through, while apologetically looking at her, since the older generation's point seemed to be that in Hawai'i Liz never went swimming, or never put on a suit and got in any water--be it pool or ocean. I figured that out after I finished what I was saying, then felt sheepish. She needs me better than that, I remember thinking...

I love you Liz. Happy birthday!

Wm'Burg Biergarten

Recently, there's been a sprouting of Beer Gardens around the City, none, as far as I know, in Manhattan. The largest is in Long Island City, in Queens. The closest to us is in Williamsburg, and we attended it for the first time after our jaunt to Ward's Island.

I think one reason there aren't any Biergartens in Manhattan is that a beer garden is basically a copy of the Hofbrau Haus in Munich. For people who know me, I don't like using the English names for German cities, but I can't get the damn umlaut to show up on my blog...In any case, the Hofbrau Haus has high ceilings being held by large curving beams of thick wood, and plenty of sturdy picnic table-style seating areas. In Manhattan, space is too premium for that kind of openness, that style of loud, airy alcohol fueled camaraderie.

There was something of an annoyance, to me anyway, when I ordered the only drinks Corrie and I got at this Biergarten, one each of the Hof Brau Dunkel liters. Nothing beats a quart of dark beer after a long day of hiking around uptown. I ambled to the bar, having already seen that they carried the Hof Brau brand, and having already decided on what I was ordering, the tender asked me what'd I want.

I told him, "Two liters; Hof Brau Dunkel" and I pronounced it all correctly, even the "doo-nk-el", with the hard "ooh" sound that the German attach to the vowel "u". It was sorta loud and all, but he squinted and said, "The HB dunk-el?" with a pronunciation reminiscent of the basketball play, the slam "dunk"...

Ooh, that grated on my nerves. For one, treating Hof Brau beer as a simple brand, "HB" (since that's the logo on all the liter mugs and coasters and t-shirts, etc.), and then the repeated mis-pronunciation of "doo-nkel" as "dunk-el", repeated I mean by everyone else in the place, from bar-maidens to the other patrons...

To me, that was almost as annoying as the prevalence of toddlers running around. Toddlers, running around, causing havoc, being chased by beer-swilling overprotective parents, at least a half-dozen of them! I may be overprotective too if I had my daughter, a few weeks past learning to walk, running wild around a hundred large, drunken, and obnoxious hipsters, but, I may think twice before bringing my babies to a bar. But see, this isn't a bar, this is a Biergarten.

In Deutschland's Biergartens of course the little kiddies are there, but at least they give 'em Radlers (again, damn the lack of umlauts). Radler is a German drink they make for kids, to get them to consume their necessary beer quota for the day, a mix of about fifty-fifty beer and lemonade. This is not a joke. The kids behave, they're mellow, and when they're teenagers, there's no taboo associated with drinking, and they don't feel like slamming beers at keggers and then driving home. It seems to have created a strange class of folks with knowledge of responsible alcohol consumption...

Don't get me wrong, we did enjoy ourselves, and if we lived closer, we might frequent the establishment a little more.

Ward's Island

Corrie and I spent Sunday of Labor Day weekend exploring Ward's Island. Ward's Island was originally purchased by the Dutch from the Indians in 1637 and used for farming purposes.

Nowadays Ward's Island has become almost an afterthought as a name, as the island is usually called Randall's Island, and, while administratively in the borough of Manhattan (as are all the islands, originally placed in the County of New York with the largest, Manhattan Island, taking center stage), it is goverened by the Randall's Island Sports Commission. Randall's Island is home to many soccer and baseball fields.

After doing some research, I found that at one point Randall's Island and Ward's Island were both individual islands, but were connected with landfill. Note the non-use of articles there.

Randall's Island is just barely separated from the Bronx by a small river, and the conglomeration is separated from manhattan by the East and Harlem Rivers, and from Queens by the East River. We decided to get there by the foot bridge, a cool non-automotive connector, constructed probably in the last fifty years. It connects Manhattan to what used to be Ward's Island at 103rd Street.

There are some cool views from the bridge, as well as the island itself.

The island had many, many Latino families playing, barbecuing, and generally having a jolly old time. There were also little league baseball games going on (I thought the season was over?) as well as soccer games.

We went down by some rocks that constituted a beach, watched the river's edge lap upon the pointy breakers at our feet, and relaxed with some reading material. It was a nice escape, a nice little easy adventure in our City of Adventure.

We thought about how to get to tiny Mill Rock, seen below, a nearly 4-acre plot of land that's been closed since the sixties. There are no plans for it presently, but the history is rich and colorful, and if we ever sneak over in a canoe or something, I'll be sure to go into detail about it.

Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn

As the rooftop farmer explained to me, a "farm" by definition is a commercial enterprise; what he had was a farm, and not an elaborate rooftop garden. That, and the six-thousand square-feet might help.

This rooftop farm is in Greenpoint, the most northernly province--neighborhood--in Brooklyn, kinda like, in Brooklyn terms, Greenpoint is the Canada to Williamsburg's America, the last bastion of civilization before the arctic bleakness of Queens.

The views from on top are, to say the least, spectacular. If I was with you, my fair readers, I could show you the building where Corrie works, but it is too hard to describe it's whereabouts here.

The farm has tomatoes, eggplants, various squash, many peppers, basil, edible flowers, many herbs, and is gearing up for beans and peas. They also have lettuces, kale, and chard. In the previous picture, on the right side, are the heirloom cherry tomatoes, delicious brown beauties and ripe right now; and on the left side are a different strain of heirloom tomato, large acorn shapes, which will be ready in a week or two. The eggplant is ready and ripe, as is the parsley. The hops are almost there, and they're trying to find a purchaser...they're still talking with a few local breweries.

They supply a few restaurants as of right now, as well as stands at a few markets. They enjoy visitors, so if anybody will be in the City within a few weeks, I could arrange a tour.

Egg Harbor, So. Jersey, and a Car

Corrie took me as an assistant with her to a job in Egg Harbor, but not, mind you, Egg Harbor City, which is a different place (or thing). She was telling me it was in Southern Jersey, close to Atlantic City, but I had an incorrect notion in my brain about how far south Atlantic City was. When I saw it on a map I finally figured it out. Wowzers...

Then I realized that while Atlantic City is so far, it is only so far for the folks out here. Yes, it is at one entirely opposite end of a state, but states out here are so small, or seem so small if you grew up out west. People here are loathe to drive to Philly and back in a day, which is equivalent to driving from SLO to Santa Barbara and back, or Citrus Heights to SF or Berkeley and back...how many times have one of us driven from SLO to LA or the Bay Area and back in a day to run some stupid errand? Relative distances and collective imaginations...

In any case, Corrie and I set out on our subway at ten-til-eight Tuesday morning, going to Penn Station, which is on our route, thankfully, having no need to transfer trains. At Penn Station, we boarded a commuter train heading deep into Jersey, and departed at Princeton Junction. Apparently the Ivy League university is off a ways from the train line, and from Princeton Junction one can take a two-car train called, I'm not making this us, a "dinky", off due west towards the university, a few miles away.

At Princeton Junction, arriving around 10, we picked up the ZipCar Corrie had reserved, and I got to be navigator for our leisurely drive south-by-east to Egg Harbor, an inland (go figure) suburb of Atlantic City. I wanted to drive, since I have a valid license and all, but I'm not on Corrie's office plan, and we can ill-afford a speeding ticket, and boy, the ridiculous nature of Jersey roads, highways, traffic organization, and drivers drive a driver a certain kind of crazy.

Along the way we had fun laughing at things native Jersey folk probably think of as quirks, or when they find a particularly maddening traffic signal or sign while traveling outside of New Jersey, they might sigh wistfully and say, "Just like home..." We tried to stay off the main toll roads and drove through small towns, but out there they're all called "Townships", like you'll see a sign for "Edison TNSHP", with an abbreviation that makes you wonder "does leaving the vowels out really save that much money?" or "that W must be expensive."

We got lost, sort of, on the way back, since the road we were following turned out not to be the road it said it was (that makes little sense, I know, but fly to Jersey, rent a car, and try to keep your sanity driving around the interior; it'll become clearer), but we got back to the spot two minutes later than we were reserved for, but thankfully didn't incur a fine. We tried to find a place to eat by the Princeton Junction train station. Good luck with that yourself. If we weren't so hungry, we would've just waited. As it were, we had to choose between Dunkin' Donuts and Subways...

At least Subways has food that hasn't been deep-fried. Don't get me wrong; I've eaten at Dunkin Donuts plenty of times since moving out here; I've eaten at Subways, since moving out here, um, once--last Tuesday in Jersey. That kind of food hurts my body, and I was hurting for most of the train ride back.

I'm glad Corrie had someone--me--to join her on a trip like that...if it had been me alone, or her alone...jeeze, blood-pressure levels would have been dangerously high for the better part of the day, possibly week...

Carnival, Brooklyn Style

Every Labor Monday for the past few years (decades?) in Brooklyn is cause for the Carnival Parade in the style of something resembling Rio's Carnival...other times it's called the West Indian Day Parade or West Indian Pride Day.

All along Eastern Parkway West Indians clamber for a viewing spot to check out the parade festivities, rubbing elbows with Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Colin Powell, now a resident of Virginia, but who grew up in Harlem and is one of the City's favorite gehtto-to-Army-general success stories.

As was the case the last four Labor Day's we've been here, we skipped the event.

Nothing against West Indians, of course, as the brightly colored flags representing the various countries go on sale a few days before hand, and get worn by revelers like capes, dew rags, neck-kerchiefs, pocket adornments, are quite pretty and give us a chance to test our knowledge of foreign-but-close-by nations.

One thing that keeps Corrie and I away is the size of the crowd. This year, while the final tally of amount of spectators is sketchy and won't be known for a while, they were expecting upwards of four-million people to attend. Let me say that again: four-million. That is a ton of people (many must have come from PA, NJ, CT, and areas of NY outside the City), almost half of the population of the entire five-boroughs, and almost twice the population of the entirety of Brooklyn itself. That's quite chaotic, and if Corrie and I were younger, and into visceral life experiences, we might be interested in checking it out...or at least I would.

Times Square at New Years is a packed sardine can of drunken party-people, and they can only boast a quarter of the amount of people they expect to line the blocks of Eastern Parkway every Labor Day.

In 2006, our first Labor Day in the City, we asked our neighbor (who's since moved back to the Bronx) Tanya if she was going to attend. "Hell no!" she responded, "somebody's always gettin' stabbed at that thing..." The next day the papers told the story of the few fights, stabbings, and a shooting or two, which, the paper made it seem like, was run of the mill. We learned to never be surprised when a few million people get together, drinking booze, and mostly natural hot-heads who take attacks on pride as fist-fight--or worse--inducing events.

To me, though, four-million people seemed like it could be in the range of the total population of the Caribbean collection of nations--until I looked it up. I was thinking at most maybe 10 million, but then I saw that as of 2000 it was estimated at 37.5 million. My bad.

It looked like they had a great time at the parade, as usual, and as usual after the parade, late last night there were roving gangs of drunken teens chasing each other up and down our street, throwing water balloons at one another, even though that wasn't my first guess. A shiver goes up your spine when you see one guy running for his life, being chased by six or eight guys, running down the middle of the street, all past your stoop...then it's a relief when you hear the water-balloon...a real fracas would probably have included guns and less running, you tell yourself.

Quite Possibly the Worst Haiku Written

I'm sure there's probably worse Haiku written than this...but maybe not...

I found a Haiku poem I wrote for a homework assignment during eighth grade in some old papers I still have with me, having lugged them--apparently--from Sac to SLO to Brooklyn...

I cracked up when I read it, at how lame such an effort was, but it was the second to last Haiku in the assignment, and the last one is at least, I don't know...

In any case, here you go:

"

My mind is going blank

I can't think of anything

I am now done

"

Is that not the epitome of pathetic lack of effort? Sometimes it's hard to believe I aced that class. I must have put forth effort at least occasionally. Homework was never my thing, but it's usually not most people's "thing"...

One-Hundred-and-Fifty

I was tempted last week to try and add filler to boost my post totals up to get to 150 before August ended, but that didn't seem right.

150 strong and counting, I guess...maybe about 130 posts are actually content and not "I'll be on here soon" or "Hey Dan, how's it going?" (that could be done serviceably with a phone) or "So here's another milestone post or photograph..."

I've had some interesting job scenarios creeping out of the woodwork lately, which is nice, and which I'll keep anyone interested posted. I finally met the literary agent my New York friends kept telling me I needed to meet...we'll see how that develops. In my quest to finish off Thomas Pynchon's entire library of published material I've only got the short-story collection and the novel Mason&Dixon to go, which I aim to get my hands on this weekend.

My own writing has been going well. I like to think of my style being inside a unit-cube, with the axes being--instead of x-y-z--Pynchon-Denis Johnson-Haruki Murakami, and each piece falling in someplace closer to one axis or another, depending on the subject. Whatever. That's hard to explain...

Corrie's kicking ass and taking names still. I was lucky enough to venture to Egg Harbor, New Jersey just this week with her to a job site. This spot was far away, really, as far away in New Jersey as one could get. Her hours are complete and submitted (that is, her hours needed to start taking the licensing exams), and she's thinking about organizing some of our Architecture people into study groups.

Tuxedo has been doing his thing. Whining, mewing, spazzing, outsmarting us, begging for love and attention...and I'll end with a picture of Corrie and him...

Thanks for reading this far, everyone who does, I love all of you.

Quick Video Note

I was turned on to a website back in 2004, while at Poly, that had on a semi-weekly basis a cartoon program where one of the characters would reply humorously to reader's emails.

I'm talking of course about Strong Bad of Homestar Runner's cavalcade of humorous ninnies. The remarkable thing about this website and it's content is that it is funny, yet it's clean. Norm told me that it was started by Mormons, which could be the case.

Homestar Runner is the good-guy idiot, Strong Bad has two brothers--Strong Mad and Strong Sad--as well as some furry toadie simply called The Cheat, but I'm not going to go into all the other myriad characters. Strong Bad's email-reading cartoon shows, called sbemails, have progressed over the years upon better and better computers (the Tandy, the Compy, the Lappy, the Corpy, and now the newest version yet).

I've already spent too many words dealing with some background. I'm supplying a link to a clip about the difference between Independent films and Indie films. This is a pretty good spot to be introduced to this brand of actually funny clean humor, and, for those already familiar with these knuckleheads, it'll be a nice reminder that they're still producing some funny stuff.

Quick Football Note

Kellen Clemens got beat out by the rookie Mark Sanchez, the former USC quarterback (and descended from Mexican migrant workers), to be the starting quarterback for the New York Jets. The Jets moved up in the draft to pick Sanchez, needing a new face for the franchise and trying to drum up support for their new stadium--opening next year--and the attendant expensive PSLs (that's Personal Seat License for you non-NFL fans...does it seem strange that you should need to drop between two- and twenty-thousand dollars for the right to buy tickets to games?).

At first, depending how much you know about the Jets, or really care in the least, it might seem to appear that Clemens got jobbed. He was supposed to be the new face-of-the-franchise. He was picked in the second round a few years back after a nice college career at Oregon, tapped to be the new "it" kid by the coach and general manager. He never wowed anybody though, and before last season started, it seemed like that would have been his time to shine, his time to excel, his time to claim his spot as an elite starting QB...and then the Jets went and traded for Brett Favre. Maybe next year would be his year.

And then they went and drafted the flashy Sanchez, and let them battle for it during the preseason. I thought they hosed Clemens. To me, it seemed like they were screwing him over again, but the reality of sports in this media-centric area makes franchises skittish with unproven stars, and maybe Sanchez could be some backup, some insurance.

But then Clemens never took control of the quarterback competition this preseason, even with four years to learn the complicated playbook and starting out ahead on the depth chart...so, whatever it's worth, I've changed my mind. Maybe Clemens hosed himself. Maybe he needs a change of scenery, and with a trade he might develop into a great QB. Maybe he's just not good enough to be elite.

But really, it's just football. American football. America's bloodsport and machismo factory. I must say, though, that it's kind of neat having an LA kid who's grandparents were thrown out of Chavez Ravine, to make way for Dodger Stadium, after moving over from Mexico, be in an extremely prominent spot in New York. After Sonia, he's another Latino role-model in the area that's set to make a splash.