We Now Return to Our Previously Scheduled Programming

All right, all RIGHT.  Between the settling-in, and the worst flu I've had in 10 years, and getting used to the insane Japanese science work schedule, I'm a little behind in the promised posting here.  

Shut up.  Stop nagging me and read the next post.

There's Plenty of Nothing in Japan, Too

Holy crap!  I'm going to Japan tomorrow!

The biggest cliche in life Blogistan is weepy apologies for not posting more often and promises to be better in the future.  So, fine, this is one of those, but with a qualification that means you should take it slightly more seriously than usual.

I am, indeed, going to Japan tomorrow for a not-completely-known period of time (probably 4 months) and since:

1. I speak next to no Japanese, and get the sense that most Japanese people don't speak loads of English, and therefore I will have no-one to talk to;
2. Being on a bit of an adventure will give me something to write about for a change;
3. I've made all sorts of promises I'm not likely to keep about keeping in touch while I'm gone

... this blog is likely to be updated more often and resume its once marginal, as opposed to null, level of interestingness, at least while I'm gone.  The point will, as always, be to record the trivial and pointless, since the important and consequential can be recounted one-on-one at appropriate times without losing anything.  Also, to keep the keeping-in-touch a little more lively, my next project here is to finally start taking advantage of the Flickr page for pictures, and I think I'll even use my iWeb gallery, finally, for pictures that would violate the semi-anonymity I try to maintain here.   Finally, if there's anyone who reads this thing who doesn't pay any attention to the linklist (linkblog? delicious list? I don't know what you call that) on the right or the tumblog (top right), that's where most of the action has been lately.

Imperial Indian Summer Ale

The end of November is pretty late for a "what-I-did-this-summer" kind of post, but since significant adventures are about to ensue, and since I did not post for shit this summer, I feel like a catch-up post is called for before moving on to What Happens Next.  So, among the interesting things I did this summer:

• Went to Coney Island and rode the Cyclone, which may not be an option next summer.
• Watched movies in McCarren Park Pool, which also may not be an option next summer.
• Dated a ridiculously great guy, which I hope will generally remain an option in many future summers.
• Ate at the all Mac-n-Cheese restaurant.
• Drank the very best IPA I think I've ever had right nearby at the Brooklyn Brewery.
• Cought a few Sunday afternoon barbecues at the Metropolitan.
• Saw a bunch of friends from times past and places distant.
• Saw the production of Hair in Central Park and got a good taste of why people fall in love with New York City.
• Spent a lovely day at the DIA Beacon, which was nice even for art-grumps like me.
• Spent a lovely day sailing around the New England coast.
• Got myself a jailbroke, busted-ass iPhone (but its busted-assedness only makes me love it more).
• Got a lot of good news about friends makin' babies.
• Gave up, once and for all, trying to learn to fold fitted sheets.
• Learned my way around Korean food.
• Got myself a black president!  (Okay, didn't really happen this summer).
• Last but not least: learned a little (a very little) Japanese.

And no doubt, a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment.  I also, for reasons I can't explain, wrote several posts which I never actually posted.  I've decided to go ahead and post them where they would have gone had I posted them at the time, and link back to them from here.  I kind of want to tidy the place up before moving on, because this place is about to get busier... (see last item!)

More Catching Up


If you want to talk about some serious catching up, try THIS on. Remember this picture? Here's what the view from my doorway looks like now:

Notice anything missing?  Since I arrived in New York, my neighborhood has been undergoing a transformation that was just in its early stages when I arrived.  In my first month after I was full time in New York (after that nasty bit of back-and-forth between here and The Woods), I went to a Drinking Liberally event (sadly, and surprisingly, there is no longer a Williamsburg chapter), and the big local political issue was the very contentious zoning change that allowed all of the subsequent development to proceed.  And boy, oh boy, did it proceed.  When I came back from my summer in Beach Town, there were 3 new high-rise buildings in the skyline view from my house that hadn't been there when I left.  Now, while half of the rest of the country is walking away from housing rather than building more, the Williamsburg building boom has reached my own block.  The entire block across from me, save one single 3-story, old-stock residence, has been razed; two houses next to mine have been razed, and construction has begun on both sites.  I now wake up to bed-shaking piledriving every morning.  Within a one-block radius in each direction, there are currently 8 major construction projects that I can think of, and if I were to take it another block out, I couldn't even count them from memory.  By the time I leave here, the Williamsburg I moved into will be utterly plastered over, and the transformation was already well underway when I arrived.  I often try to describe to people the strangeness of having my years in Florida coincide with a transformation of my hometown so complete that while its old, agrarian roots are a palimpsest still legible to me in the body of my own family, they are utterly invisible to nearly everyone else.  I can't imagine what it must be like to be an old-timer here.  I'll be putting up more pictures at the Flickr page later.

Speaking of Catching Up

I'm finally working my way through a stack of old New Yorkers loaned to me by a lab mate, and I have to share this great sentence from last July by George Packer, on the subject of a Bloomberg presidential bid, back when some people -- not me, never me! -- were able to take the idea of such a thing seriously:

If a five-foot-seven divorced Jew with a nasal whine is taken seriously as a Presidential candidate, it would at the very least diminish the power of faux symbols in our political life; and a Clinton-Giuliani-Bloomberg race would so thoroughly explode the Sun Belt's lock on the White House that an entirely new kind of politics might be possible, in which evolution is not at issue, no one has to pretend to like pork rinds, and the past tense of "drag" is "dragged."

As the bloggers say: "heh."

Happy Belated Sarah Vaughan's Birthday

Lots of catching up to do now that The Dark Time is over. For starters, while it's a little late, I want everyone to know that I had a perfect Sarah Vaughan's birthday:

• Started with a swim in the morning and a cup of the very best coffee that I'm aware of in all of New York (made by the cutest barista that I'm aware of in all of New York, which doesn't hurt.)
• Spent the day at work enjoyably fine-tuning the configuration on my new, lightning-fast Mac Pro w/gigantic monitor, hereafter know as “Teh Sex Machine” (get on up!).
• Had a dee-licious pimento cheese sandwich, my first since last summer, for lunch
• Ditched work early for a happy hour downtown that features bluepoint oysters for $1 each, a phenomenal price in NYC, only to be surprised that my co-happyhourists had rallied a whole crowd of birthday well-wishers to join us. Had a vat-sized Hendrick's martini to go with my oysters.
• Went from there to see one of my very favorite movies (Contempt), in a new restored print & on the big screen for the first time since it first came out in the 60's. After the movie, I found I had a string of voicemail well-wishes from my sweet little mama, other assorted friends and family types, and the guy who asked me out the week before (don't even know how he knew it was my birthday).
• Finished the evening gabbing until the wee hours about two of my favorite subjects: the movie we'd just seen, and beer nerdery, the latter having been prompted by a book on the subject written by Brooklyn Brewery's brewmaster, (BB is 2 blocks from my house) that was a Sarah Vaughan's birthday gift.
• And, capping off the birthday-weekend, and celebrating the nice spring weather which is part of my annual Sarah Vaughan's birthday present from god, on Saturday I had the first pink wine of the season.

And of course, the best Sarah Vaughan's birthday present was yet to come (see previous post).

You Know That Scene in Wizard of Oz Where Everything Goes to Technicolor?

Crazy Roommate, she gone.

(More later - this is the post that stupid MarsEdit ate).

Better Than I Deserve

As some of you are aware, I am currently experiencing a bit of difficulty with my roommate.  Living with the level of toxicity that's developed right in my home, and the anxiety over my future living situation, has surely been trying, but I must say there's been one hell of a silver lining to the whole business.  The amount of support, both moral and material, that has been offered by my friends has really blown me away, particularly since there's no argument to be made that I had it coming.  So, thanks everybody.  Clearly, I'd better start being a hell of a good person or the karmic load is going to squash me like a bug.