Gowanus Dolphin

I opened up my Sunday paper the other day and saw a picture of a dolphin with some black gunk on it's bottle-nose with the following title:

Before I started reading the article, I sat dumbstruck thinking about what "canal" is in New York that a dolphin could swim in and end up dead, and then the word Gowanus caught my attention somewhere in a paragraph.

Gowanus Canal is an old spot in Brooklyn where industry had been set up for mre than a century, but now had very little action, but the pollution never was satisfactorily taken care of. Before we left, I was pretty sure getting it cleaned up was on the docket. I even went over and took pictures in 2007 because I heard they'd be getting it corrected. The surrounding neighborhoods are a mix of well-to-do and working class, the wealthy parts are newer and built over dilapidated industrial grounds in the near-past.

The day I was there was hot,and while the water didn't smell too bad, it certainly looked like it could ignite:

That's no joke, man. Here's another picture with the large iconic Williamsburg Bank Tower on the right side, in case you didn't believe that the picture's from Brooklyn:

Have you seen Goodfellas? The spooky scene late in the film when Robert DeNiro tells Lorraine Bracco to pick up the dresses, "Nah na, right around there!" he yells from down the way? That was filmed maybe within a thousand feet of the Gowanus opening, if that helps place something, anyway...

Mess in Mali

I've been meaning to get to this, the trouble in Mali, a landlocked West African nation. Named for a great kingdom of the 18th and 19th centuries, the current borders have little to do with that kingdom's domain, but the ethnic groups felt like the name was appropriate enough.

They've been experiencing some armed turmoil in their hinterlands, and the French sent a contingent force months ahead of their own plan for securing help from other west African countries. It became obvious that if an important city fell, the insurgents would be very hard to un-entrench. It then became obvious that that particular town was about to fall, so the French jumped into action and sent troops while the politicians tried to get neighbor countries involved.

That scramble is still going on.

Egypt was the big sexy revolution of the Arab Spring, and at the tail end of that early portion of 2012, Syria seemed the last country to get on that bandwagon, but Assad had strong allies in Russia and Iran, and they're slipping continuously into outright civil war, and Egyptians are already pretty fed up with Morsi and the Brotherhood. Maybe because Mali is a black country and not a good representative of the dream of Arabs embracing democracy we're not hearing about it.

What is that sound?

I was in bed in a twilight state the other morning while Corrie was showering before work. It sounded like someone was eating potato chips right behind my head.

Crunchy, salty, greasy potato chips. I cracked my eyes a little and saw my bookshelf, blurry with the sleepy eye sand of the night. trying to wrap my waking brain around the crunch I turned around to get a look.

It was Tuxedo, and he was biting and chewing the dried leaves of some bedside flowers that could be ready for the dustbin.

I shooed him away. He's chewed up plenty of our plants before, and some of the ones that even made him sick he went back and chewed again. When we started looking into which house plants were poisonous to cats we made sure we didn't have any of the serious offenders. Some plants won't kill, but there's quite a spectrum between harmless and death. He doesn't ever seem fazed by any of it.

He has a vendetta against the lilies. We've had to put them out of reach because he goes after them like it's personal.

From the Newspaper...

I just had to post this picture:

When I got to this page on this past Sunday I first noticed the little girls holding signs in favor of, eh, more guns I guess. I don't know...giving a little girl a sign (mis)quoting the Second Amendment is something a crazy dedicated-to-the cause parent would do.

But leave it to our newspaper to put the article about folks protesting stricter gun laws directly next to the article about gun-show patrons getting shot on accident.

A good laugh was had on the couch that morning.

RIP Sacramento Kings

Oh how I hope I'm jumping the gun. Kevin Johnson, the former NBA player and current mayor of Sacramento had his attempts to strong arm the city into coughing up tax-payer cash for a new arena rebuffed, has for his last ditch effort an intriguing one. He wants to take the team public like the Packers in the NFL.

The Maloof assholes owners have agreed to sell their 53 percent of the team, along with 12 more percent owned by another minority owner to the Seattle based group intent on bringing a team back to their region.

But the Kings...(sigh)...

They moved to Sacramento around the same time we did, and the logo above is one of my earliest memories of a local team. During this era I was a Laker fan, what with Magic Johnson being himself and taking the league by storm and my mom being from LA. But the Kings were lackluster at best. They did have the coolest away uniforms, though, the powder-blues:

Then some things started to happen. They changed their logo to a more aggressive black and purple look, like the anti-Lakers. They got Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond and they started making the playoffs. Then they scored a crazy hit in the form of Peja Stojakavic, a Serbian national who played in the Greek league and was billed as their Michael Jordan. In Sac, he was just an all star.

The Kings became a city of destination for Slavic players. Then, one season with C-Webb and Vlade Divac and Peja and the Kings were in the Conference finals against the Lakers, against the Kobe/Shaq Lakers, pushing them to a decisive game 7, and does anyone remember what happened?

Vlade Divac fouled out in the first seven minutes of the game. There is a neat conspiracy theory about the fix coming in on this game, how David Stern preferred the Lakers in the Finals to the NorCal television market, and the "evidence" is there if you want to believe. It wouldn't be the last time David Stern actively screws Sacramento. The disgraced gambling referee Tim Donaghy claims the game was fixed, but nobody except Kings fans were listening.

And Kings fans in Sacramento are about as crazy and fanatical as any teams fans. Actually, more so. There are no other fans that love their team as much as the fine folks in Sacramento. The Thunder in Oklahoma City are as close as we'll get today, and they're part of the problem that has befallen the Kings in the River City.

The team is one of the oldest teams in the NBA, and for all of its longevity, it has been as rootless as the Celtics and Knicks have been institutions in their cities. The franchise started as the Rochester Royals, one of the three New York State teams (along with the Syracuse Nationals, who became the Philadelphia 76ers):

This previous logo shows that purple wasn't a totally foreign concept to the essence of the Kings. From Rochester they moved to Cincinnati:

And in Cincy they developed, in 1971, the logo that would remain for nearly 25 years:

The very next year the team moved for the third time, and spent a few seasons split between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska. Can you imagine an NBA team today splitting their home games between two cities almost 200 miles apart? Are you ready for the Trenton, New Jersey/Germantown, Maryland Pipers?

But now, doesn't Kansas City have a team already called the Royals? What should they call the team?

Now we have the Kings as a name. Eventually they stop heading to Omaha and sty in KC. Does anybody love the Kings? Has anyone ever loved this vagabond team?

Sacramento is the answer to that question. They love the Kings, and like any capitol city that wants attention, a professional major league team in any of the big three sports (hockey counts more in the northern states) certainly makes a city feel important, feel validated.

But in all reality this team has no deep history, no roots. The NBA doesn't really care what the fans want, and never really has. A team that was a symbol of an area, was a community stalwart for more than 40 years, had a fan base that was nearly as loyal, and was a symbol for the dreams of countless Reservation kids was allowed to be sold to a dude who stole them away from that community.

And now that owner, the owner who was disingenuous about his plans to keep the team in that community and eventually moved them to his town, is the head of the NBA's relocation committee. That team is the Thunder, and the community that had its heart ripped out was Seattle.

A deal has been reached. If the NBA doesn't let this last effort to take the Kings public (sadly this will NEVER happen--franchise ownership in major league sports in America is scared club), there will be a green and gold Supersonics team playing in Seattle next year, and Arco Arena will be dark 41 new nights a year.

On the one side, Kings fans can thank Clayton Bennett and his jacking of Seattle. That left one market very hungry for a team. Then you can also thank the Maloofs, who've had their eye on moving the team ever since I can remember living in Sac. First it was Las Vegas, but Stern said, "Ehhh, nah." Then they tried to get Sac to build them an arena, and the city said, "Nope." Then, most recently, the threat was that the team was heading back to Kansas City, or heading down here to the Southland and living in Anaheim, or, now the most likely and obvious destination, the dreaded rebranding of the new Sonics.

The NBA isn't on schedule to expand anytime soon, so maybe the Grizzlies may need a new home before too long.

One of the sad parts of this is if it goes down and the Kings become the new Sonics, the franchise will reclaim all the stats and history of the Seattle Supersonics, a history that the Thunder left behind. The Thunder, with their great team, will be building history like an expansion team, while the Sonics play in Seattle and go on and retire Gary Payton's number. The folks in Sac?

They'll be left with less than three decades of memories, and the legacy of one of the oldest franchises will be set in lucite and preserved forever. There'll literally be no more Kings. A franchise consigned to the books, like the Chicago Zephyrs or Decatur Stayleys.

And, on top of all of that, what else does Sacramento have, sports-wise? Seattle has the Seahawks and Mariners; Kansas City has the Royals and Chiefs; Cincinnati has the Reds and Bengals. Omaha and Rochester don't have other teams, but the age is different nowadays. At least Oklahoma City is pretty close to Norman and the OU Sooners football. Sac will be left with memories.

Say, in a few years, the Grizzlies have a need to move, and there's structure in Sacramento to bring in a new team and the deal gets made. Do we think that team will be renamed the Kings? Is the legacy in Sac that strong?

[[Updated some of the Kings logos. Thanks Chris Creamer!]]

Happy MLK Day

So, I went over to the post office earlier today. It was maybe ten minutes past nine, but the lobby door was locked. What kind of BS is this, I thought. I went to the side entrance and tried every door, with each new one I pulled harder and with more frustration. Finally one opened. I moseyed through the deserted lobby to the self service kiosk, just looking around.

What the hell...oh...oh yeah...

Yeah...duh...

So the stuff I'm mailing will be chilling in the box until tomorrow anyway.

But today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and poetically Inauguration Day, we take a chance to look back over the body of work of our most famous Civil Rights leader.

We do this knowing that his name was originally Michael King Jr, and his friends all called him Mike. And while we study the course of the black American from the late 1950s to the present, the talk in the mainstream media will gloss over the fact that Dr. King had begun to brainstorm tackling broad social change on top of bringing attention to Civil Rights. This type of stance might have ultimately led to a similar end for the Reverend, but may not have included James Earl Ray.

The debate of those bygone days was whether violence or non-violence was the proper way to force the changes in society that the Civil Rights movement demanded (and that we haven't entirely achieved, Obama's election and re-election notwithstanding), but we won't hear any of that today. We also won't hear about Stokely Carmichael, the radical counterpoint to Dr. King who disagreed with the Reverend's stance on non-violence.

Dr. King was an icon, hero, and martyr, but by celebrating him and him alone, we lose an essential part of our collective American identity: the desire to fight back against tyranny.

Stokely Carmichael Shows Up in Random Spots

I still get a newspaper. For one, I like to read. For two, I like to support old-fashioned (and possibly dying) media. And lastly, Season 5 of The Wire. Like with the Daily News in New York, with my Long Beach Press-Telegram I read the sports first, then the front section, and then the comics.

So, try to gauge my surprise when I got to the comics and read the mostly throwaway "Mother Goose and Grimm" and saw:

The punchline is a pun about "Malcolm in the Middle", but days are few and far between when you can open up your daily funnies page and see Stokely Carmichael's name. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen a newspaper piece about the militant black revolutionary in all my life. My introduction to the leader was by way of the Swedish documentary The Black Power Mixtape. The history of that time period had been washed away from the books.

Oh, you hear about the hippies, and the Vietnam protests across college campuses, but you never hear about the race riots in LA, Chicago, Baltimore, Harlem...the black revolutionaries were far scarier to the white establishment than anything today. As close as you can get today is maybe David Stern, commissioner of the NBA, forcing all players who are injured or inactive for games to be in suits while on the bench, a dress-code specifically for the young black men who were beginning to get a little too proud apparently.

I read "Mother goose and Grimm" everyday, but the thrill of the humor left, for me, maybe fifteen to twenty years ago. I just like the form.

The Night Without a Furnace

Corrie and I live in Southern California. One of the perks is the weather. As much as I miss the seasons--crisp autumn breezes, icy afternoons in January--having the days be relatively the same across the diurnal shift and across the four seasons is a novelty we haven't had anywhere else.

Right now we've been hit with a cold spell, or what constitutes a cold spell down here. During the summers, our apartment would bake in the late afternoon sun, and proceed to radiate that heat throughout the night. By morning the apartment was nice and cool, having lost the previous day's heat. It would be pleasant all the way until the late afternoon sun would start the baking.

We have one of those classic yet inefficient wall furnaces. I believe I wrote a post about Tuxedo sleeping in front of it all day. In any case, Corrie and I were trying to be proactive about turning it off during the day, which is on me. Overall, I figured I'd be proactive and keep an eye on how much we leave it on.

Eh, how much I leave it on. Even when I'm not cold, I like standing in front of it. It's relaxing.

But last night, right before heading to bed, I turned it down enough to be essentially off, thinking the apartment might hold the warmth from the day's worth furnacing. But, here's where the inefficiency comes in, because there's no way the furnace could get the entire apartment as warm as an entire afternoon of direct sunlight.

So this morning, wowzers was it frigid.

Well, what constitutes for frigid down here in the Southland. It may have been down to the low fifties inside, which I think is cold enough inside an apartment or house. I won't be turning the heater down that low overnight again.

One More is Among Us!

Welcome to the world of air, young Marco!

No more amniotic fluid for you!

Marc and Linda, our dear friends in New York, have added to the world's population, and we're all so excited. Mother and son are healthy and happy.

Marco, a healthy young boy, joined us on January 9th, in the 23rd hour. Congratulations to you two! Can't wait to meet him.

New Ride

For the December 25th Gift Day celebration Corrie pledged to get me a new bike. How exciting for the both of us, since we could resume our paired travels on the weekend. Those had been on hiatus since October, when the Karmic balance tipped against some poor dickhead.

But finally a suitable specimen was found. This is my third bike purchased in Long Beach, and from a third different establishment. Spreading that money around, I guess. Corrie's bike came from a fourth bike shop, so we're really equal opportunity spenders.

Here's a picture from nearly the same spot as my October wanted poster:

It's a balloon-tired cruiser with a big comfy saddle and leather handles on the bar. I may switch out the handlebars for a different pair, but this is a pretty classic look. This next picture has a better use of the sunlight:

Notice the new U lock bolted on. Not fucking around anymore.

Corrie and I had been at a diner eating breakfast, and had discussed the possibility of getting a bike on the way home. At least checking out the bike stores. The day before, which had been the 26th, I'd gone to a bike shop and basically picked out what I wanted. They were going to have to order it, and I wasn't ready to commit. I said Thanks, but maybe later.

Cut to the next day, walking home, and we walk by a bike shop and go inside and start talking with them. It turned out that at breakfast Corrie had read a tiny missive in our local paper about a bike shop winning a small business award, and it was THIS shop, and they didn't even know! It's this kind of detail that tricks residents here in the LB to think of our beach town as a small town.

In any case, they were real cool; they knew this blogging chick I read (Lovely Bicycle!); the appreciate the old steel frames (like Corrie's bike and my Frankenbike project); and they were very interested in Robot Crickets.

The bike I got had some nicks and dings, so they gave me a break on the price. I said I, too, had nicks and dings. I'll be going back periodically for the add-ons I want, like a chain guard, rack for the back, and possibly a small fender system.

It's good to be locally mobile again.

Some Holiday Gifts

As December comes and goes, Corrie and I find ourselves with gifts and toys and odd things we'd never purchase for ourselves (or our cat), but things that which seem to make the days lighter. I'm talking about the traditional stocking-stuffer fodder.

The first are of the traditional "add water and watch it grow" kind. Reading the small print on the packaging I saw it said "not instantaneous, takes up to 72 hours, do not ingest, NOT A TOY". Oh really?

Here they are at max size:

As of now they're drying out and returning to the barely one-inch square size. I'm going to make them big again and start a cycle of water resource abuse/experimentation to see specifically how many times they can go through the process before total disintegration occurs.

This next toy is a stress ball from thinkgeek.com that was a present from my Auntie. They were dubbed the infectious disease stress ball. The "flavors" we got to see on our little Tuesday morning fun-time were smallpox (Mike and Liz), zombie virus (Corrie), and mine, bubonic plague.

Why the crazy names? They have the effect that when squeezed, the netting causes different colored "pustules" to develop:

I think the smallpox was red and green, the zombie virus was an orange and granny smith apple green, and mine is blue and neon green. They're pretty sweet.

Lastly, my mom's dog Gus was kind enough to get our cat Tuxedo a feathery toy. Here he is chewing on it after only seconds of him being aware of it:

He let it alone mostly after the initial taste, but each morning we get up and find another feathered appendage all chewed on and licked clean:

Feathers are pretty cool on toys for Tux: he'll go ape shit for it and usually within minutes will have literally eaten the feather right off its bushing. Here, though, he's oddly shown some restraint. 

I do appreciate the gifts.

After the Desert Ruins: Angeles Forest Ridge Crest Trail

So, in a few days I'll be posting about our trip to the desert ruins of a failed socialist utopia. But today I'm putting up some pictures about our drive back. We drove along CA Hwy 2, the Angeles Ridge Crest drive. It's beautiful. And winding. And, there was plenty of snow. Here's a shot of the mountains from the desert ruins side:

From the beach to desert ruins to snow-capped mountains and back to the beach, all in one day. It was pretty crazy.

We stopped to play in the snow, but my leg limited my activities:

Here's a self portrait with corrie in the background. (I'm currently growing a beard for the student I tutor.)

The drive down from there was two hours of icy switchback roads, almost all of which had vistas like the one below; towering snow-covered mountains. It dropped down to 24 degress, whoich was the coldest I may have ever seen in the Passat's readout.

This next picture is something at which you may need to look closer. It's a picture from the top of the ridge looking out all the way to Long Beach, with Catalina Island shrouded by fog behind the ships coming to port in LB:

The 44 miles of winding icy switchback was worth the trip. The desert ruins were probably less than thirty miles from LA as the crow flies, and the Ridge Crest Trail is between them. I would suggest it to anyone who ever has time during a visit to the area.

Random Picture: the Real "Bunk"

This isn't so much a picture I found on the internet as much as a photo I took of a show I was watching. It's better if you're familiar with "Bunk" Moreland, a character from The Wire played by Wendell Pierce. If unfamiliar with the Bunk, I'm sorry. Really. Detective Moreland may not be "natural police", but he's professional, and while his thirst for Jamison eclipses mine, his integrity is intact.

Here's the real Baltimore detective who provides the nickname and the majority of the personality for Moreland.

Random Picture: Squid Sucker Closeup

This is the first random picture post of stuff I've come across. It's an actual photograph of an extreme closeup of the suckers from squid. The colors are post production (and inaccurate).

How can you not think this is cool? That's just how suckers work. The white teeth-looking stuff are actual tiny tiny bits of enamel, which pretty much makes them teeth. Too cool.

Magnification can make many things very cool.

Happy New Year!

2013 is among us. It's the fifth calendar year of this blog. Fifth.

So, I went live with my first book, Robot Crickets. Here's a link to it.

The holidays were pretty solid on our end. I'll be getting to some things later. We got plenty of booze...Jamison, Patron, Pisco, wine...it's nice. I joke that we're thearsty and all, but we don't usually drop that kind of cash on liquor.

After the madness I committed myself to in October (trying to post all over my many blogs everyday of the month), I slowed down and took it easy on the blogging between November and December, and on this blog I took to organizing bigger, more loosely involved posts. There will be a few more of those, but every once in a while, when the subject dictates.

Also, I have, over the four years of having the laptop I'm currently writing upon, collected a bunch of random pictures from the internet. So, a new series of posts will be of a random picture and the explanation as to why I was intrigued by it in the first place.

Also, the other blogs aren't dead, but posting won't be heavy like April of last year. Whatever. I love all of you. And check out the book.