If there actually is a conspiracy, do you still call it a conspiracy theory?

Crash gets Best Picture, South Dakota bans abortion, and I rent Oliver Stone's Nixon all within 2 days. Coincidence? Come on. We know better than that.

Autowedgification

Know what I hate? I hate it when it's wickit cold out, so you wear lotsa layers to stay warm, and then you finally get inside for the night and you start to take the layers off, and you got a couple 'a layers tucked in, and you go to de-tuck to let some of that waistline pressure loose cuz you're home and it's Miller-time and all, and really you could even just take your pants clean off if you wanted to but you don't, and so you grab a handfull of shirt and give it a good yank to de-tuck and loosen things up, only that wasn't all shirt cuz some of it was your drawers, and when you gave that good yank, you gave yourself a big ol' wedgie.

Ow.

That's what I hate.

Today Might Be the Day

... that I became a for-real New Yorker. Know why? Because today, when I got on the subway, and it was crowded, but there was room in the middle if only people would just move a little bit and make way for people getting on the train, only they never do, they just stand there as if there weren't more people trying to get on the train... I just pushed. I didn't say "excuse me," I didn't give any apologetic looks, and I didn't even look to see if there was a clear route into an open space like I usually do. I just saw these people standing in my way like the cattle we all are on the subway, and I walked right into them and kept walking until I could fit in the train, even if it meant pushing little old ladies and mothers with strollers out of my damned way.

And I didn't feel one spot of guilt about it for the rest of the ride.

Valentine's Remainders

Overheard recently, as I passed a very slow-moving, very elderly couple on the sidewalk:

Gent, tenderly: "Dear, I love you." (puts arm around companion)
Lady, firmly: "Good."

This is Now a Photoblog




I see this every day on my way to work. As do all the commuters heading south on the BQE (which I was standing under to take this picture) toward the Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn bridges into Manhattan. Heh.

You Can't See Me, But I'm Doing the Snoopy Dance

Because, you see, Trader Joe's is coming to town. Rumor has it that they're coming to Union Square, of all places, located in the first two stories of an NYU dorm building. Smart planning - nothing like locating a store full of cheap booze and upscale food in a building full of students. I don't care if it's as crowded as the Union Square Whole Foods (who can't be happy about this development), I can't wait to go get me some TJ's salmon jerky. Mmmmmmm.

Speaking of great locations, I'm... sort of happy that a new Sunac Market has opened up next to the Lorimer BART -- haha, I meant L of course, must be the Trader Joe's on my mind still -- which is insidiously convenient, right off of the Metropolitan exit. I mean right off of it; you're basically standing right in front of the market entrance when you come up the subway stairs on the northeast corner. It's pretty much a full-size grocery store, too; that and the convenience makes it hard to resist spending $2.50 for a can of tomatoes. Hard, but not impossible.

Then again, Sunac suffers from the same beer-pricing disease that affects many Brooklyn grocers - they don't seem to have any idea how much to charge for beer, or realize that customers might be aware of some standard pricing per brand. As a result, beer prices vary wildly from one bodega to another and although it's annoying when your favorite brand is overpriced, you can benefit as well. Recently, I've been buying the wonderful Brooklyn Brewery Monster Barleywine at a significant discount at Sunac; this is the same place that sells another favorite, Hennepin, at twice the normal retail price. So it goes.

Small Violence

The new year is getting off to a rough start. On Sunday, New Year's Day, I dropped off R--- and F--- at the subway and headed over to Bedford to return a video. Walking up Grand, an elderly Chinese man approached me and started talking to me. He did not ask me for money, and he did not appear drunk, but he did seem to be marginal, impoverished at the least: bad teeth and underdressed for the weather, tromping through the sleet in sneakers with no socks or laces. He told me that there were too many bars in the area -- he's completely right about that, btw -- and that in his youth back in China, there were dance halls and singing clubs and mah jong parlors where you could go and drink, but also do something besides drink. And drink was bad because his father drank too much and it killed him.

When he first approached me I tried to evade him, but we were walking in the same direction and when I stopped to read a menu he caught up with me and started on the bar thing. And because he was so pitiful and because he didn't seem drunk and because it pained me to try to imagine what it would feel like to be old and broke in a foreign country I didn't try to chase him away when we started walking again. I knew he wanted someone to listen to him and I know what that feels like, so I listened because it didn't cost me much.

We came at last to the corner of Bedford and he was going one way and I was going the other (I was relieved when he told me he lived "this way" because it meant he had somewhere to live) and so I was off the hook except that as we parted I said "Happy new year" to him and the mean drunk guy who happened to be walking by at the same moment must have heard that as something else.

I say that because as soon as I started walking away, I heard someone say, "Hey asshole!" which I ignored because I don't usually respond to "asshole" but then I heard "Hey asshole!" again, nearer and more insistent and I turned around and sure enough, I was the asshole being addressed.

The addressor was a man my age or younger with a bottle in one hand, a sleeping roll in a bag over his shoulder, and an angry look on his face and he was approaching me quickly. He got right up in my face which is when I realized he was drunk, not so much because he smelled but because I could see his tongue and his teeth which had the look of belonging to someone who had not been to sleep the night before. And when he said to me, "Why are you [unintelligible word] me, you fucking cocksucker?" I knew for sure.

In San Francisco I knew a guy who taught self defense and talked a lot about how real people react in stressfull situations, like being attacked on the street. They don't react with machine-like retrieval of their well-practiced kung-fu skills; they react with incoherence and a glut of useless, panicked thoughts that do not help the situation at all and that is exactly what I had cluttering up my head at this moment. Incredibly, I was thinking about whether the things I was thinking of to say to him would sound dumb. And the things I did say were incredibly dumb: "I don't know what you're talking about" and "Be cool." I actually told him to be cool.

He kept ranting, saying things to me that I didn't understand and getting more and more into my personal space and the next idiotic thing that entered my mind was whether I'd look like a wimp if I took off running. I didn't take off running and so I was still there when he started jabbing at me with his elbow and pushing me into the wall and in retrospect this turned out to be a good thing because the shock of an actual physical assault transformed the panicked mess in my mind into anger which in turn produced, finally, some useful behavior. I caught him under the elbow in between jabs and gave him a good, destabilizing push, and said "Get the fuck off me" and I must have looked like I meant it because afterward he did not try to close the space that the shove had opened up between us. I took advantage of that space and started walking away, keeping an eye on the drunk over my shoulder and maybe tossing a "Crazy asshole" over as well although maybe I just thought it.

He didn't follow me and the funny thing is that I immediately wished he would because now I was pissed off and had nowhere to direct my anger; I wanted him to give me an excuse to beat the shit out of him. And I could have; I say that not because I'm a big badass or because I had any weight advantage on him, but with the shove, I realized that unless he'd had a hidden weapon, which I don't think was likely, that there was almost no way he could have hurt me. He was drunk and not too steady on his feet, and he had a bottle and a sleeping roll that were both valuable to him and I know enough self-defense that had we seriously gotten into it, I probably would have come out ahead.

But instead I came out with a lot of anger and no belligerent drunk's noggin to channel it into, leaving only myself to channel it into. So the rest of the way to the video store I beat myself up for even thinking of running (a thought which was probably pretty adaptive, even if chickenshit).

The next day I had the unpleasant task of taking a subway, and then a train, and then a taxi to lovely (by which I mean, not lovely) Roselle, NJ outside of the even less lovely Newark. My car had recently refused to leave Newark on my return trip from the holidays, amid billowing clouds of steam and threatening gestures of the temp guage needle towards the bad, bad, red line. So rather than give $400.00 to the auto parts shop where I'd left it to replace the radiator (which later turned out not to be the problem) I poured stopleak into the not-actually-leaky radiator, bought a couple of gallons of water at the chinese grocery next door, and prepared to make a sweaty, anxious run for it over two bridges and a crowded highway to get back to Brooklyn.

I got two blocks.

By the time I had gotten into Roselle with the holiday train schedule, it was late afternoon, and by the time I abandoned hope of driving myself back to Brooklyn, it was rush hour and no tow truck that I was able to contact via AAA was willing to drive me. The dispatcher informed me that I'd have to wait until 9:00. It was 5:00. Four hours to kill in Roselle. On foot. I took off hoping I'd run into a movie theater or a good coffee shop or even a bar. My standards lowered rapidly as it got dark and then started to rain and Dunkin' Donuts turned out to be the best I was going to do. I settled into a corner table with a book and a not-as-bad-as-I-expected cup vat of coffee and tried to read over the distracting bleat of CNN on TV and enjoyed a good 20 minutes of unmolested reading before a drunk sat down and started talking to me.

Unfortunately, this drunk had neither stories of his childhood in China nor an adrenalin-surging assault to offer, but instead, racist, profane and mostly incomprehensible observations on the demographic makeup of Brooklyn, where he was from. Besides having to strain to understand his slurred rant, and averting my gaze a couple of times when he drooled on the table, most annoying was his barely disguised contempt for my jewishness. Yes, I know. I'm not jewish. But apparently, to a certain type of person, any guy with glasses and curly hair is a jew by default, and he kept asking me why he should celebrate Hannukah instead of Christmas, a case I was not prepared to make. I tried simply ignoring him but whether or not I was a participating audience clearly didn't matter, and I finally got up and moved. But annoyance and CNN together had wrecked my concentration and I headed back out into the rain, frustrated.

Lucky me, AAA called just at that moment and said they'd found somebody who'd take me before 9:00. I met the tow truck in the parking lot behind Dunkin' Donuts and was greeted by a big talkative guy with a heavy New Joisey accent. We got the car up on the truck and headed toward the Goethals bridge (we could already see the stream of parallel lights lined up into the distance - rush hour clearly wasn't over) and it was only then that he informed me of the $50.00 flat fee on top of the towing charge for going into the city. The AAA dispatcher had not mentioned this. I said so, and also that as a result, I hadn't brought enough money with me to cover it. He happily offered to take me to an ATM once we got to Brooklyn and reminded me of how lucky I was to be getting a tow there at that time of night, out of the cold and rain. This was true, and it was his leverage over me, as was the fact that my car was already up on his truck and we were already on the bridge. Most of the remainder of the ride was silent.

Two things changed our negotiating positions. One was that I realized the tow truck driver had no idea where, in Brooklyn, Williamsburg was, and as a result was straying well out of known territory and had also committed himself to a longer trip than he'd realized. The second was that after we were well into Brooklyn, I made a show of calling AAA on my cell phone to complain about having been misinformed about the cost of the tow. By the time we got to Williamsburg, it was late, the driver had no idea where he was, and the thought of having to drive me to an ATM apparently seemed much less appealing (as perhaps was the thought of losing business from AAA). In the end, I paid for more mileage than I had originally estimated, but the flat NYC fee disappeared from the bill calculations. I was glad that I didn't get (very) screwed, but annoyed that I spent this last hour of what had already been a massively stressful day preparing to be.

Is the theme clear, here? 2006 so far, a series of petty assaults of one form or another. I'm not a believer in things like omens, and of course my interests would seem to lie in not reading too much into these episodes, so I won't. But I am looking forward to things taking a more positive, or at least less combative, turn.

In the mean time, I have a dental appointment on Wednesday.

Most Unpleasant Thing Seen Today

There's a men's homeless shelter near the hospital where I work and there are invariably a few ragged-looking guys loitering on the sidewalk outside, pretty much any time of day. This is unnerving when I'm walking home late at night, but I've never had a peep of trouble so I don't think much about it any more. Tonight, though, there was a guy standing on the sidewalk swearing, screaming his head off at a couple of cops who were out of their cruiser, parked nearby. The most unpleasant thing about it was that while he was standing there verbally abusing them with everything he had, the two cops just kind of stood there passively, taking it all in and not getting mad or anything. I've heard homeless people complain about being ignored, but I didn't realize just how hard it must be to get anybody to pay attention to you.

Unintented consequences


Or, great features of city life that lead to un-great features of city life.


1) New York is a walking city. That's a great thing, I love walking, and urbanists often talk up (legitimately) the health benefits of walking as a benefit of city life. Indeed, I have noticed that I do not see as many obese people on the street here as I'm used to seeing in other places I've lived, and I've lost a bit of weight myself since I moved here. There seems to be an unfortunate correlary to this benefit, however: an alarming rate of shavetail among New York's young men. Yes, fit young men who, in another setting, might feature a nice pair of buttocks with which to brighten the scenery, instead have only a disappointing sag in the seat of their pants. They have, it appears, walked their asses clean off. I have become so used to droopy-drawered shavetails being the norm that I scarcely even look anymore, and that IS a shame. If a nice tush WERE to pass by, I'd probably miss it. I have even noticed a few instances of the extremely rare female variant of shavetail, and let me tell you, whereas male shavetail is merely disappointing, female shavetail is downright chilling. One more way in which New York life hardens one's soul, I guess.


2) The smoking ban in restaurants and bars has been in effect in New York City for nearly three years and by most reports has been popular even with smokers. I always kind of thought that people ought to be able to smoke in bars, but I admit that it's pretty nice not to walk into that stinky haze when I go out, and nicer still not to wake up to it the day after on my clothes. Fortunately for me, I am not a nicotine addict, so there was really nothing to lose on my part. But the downside of the smoking ban is that it pushed all those who ARE jonesing for nic out on the sidewalk. And outside of popular bars or nightlife areas, they're all over the sidewalk in big, stinky, loud, drunken messes that block sidewalk traffic. A particular annoyance is this one bar that I pass on the way to my bank. It's apparently a hot spot for singles of the bridge-and-tunnel persuasion who work in midtown. So when I pass by, I not only have to hold my nose against the smoke, but against the similarly smelly spectacle of the mating rituals of bland, midtown yuppies. To make matters worse, scaffolding has recently made it impossible to step into the street to walk around them, so I have to just hold my breath and wade right in.

I Am a Big Fat Racist

And now for some gratuitous racial generalizations:

1) African-American women take the subway stairs slow. Really. Really. Slow.
2) Chinese bicycle delivery guys have a death wish.
3) Young Russian dudes dress like it's still the 80's.
4) Mexican guys really ARE pretty short.
5) Teenagers love their cell phones. Jersey chicks love their cell phones. Japanese and Korean people, I am told, seriously love their cell phones. But I have never seen anybody who loves a cell phone like an orthodox Jew. They got the bluetooth headpiece action and everything.
6) White boys look hella stupid with dreadlocks.
7) Everybody looks hella stupid with fauxhawks.
8) Caribbean ladies talk too damn loud on the subway. I like a Jamaican accent as much as anybody else, but not at 70 db. And the Dominican ladies with the spanish shouting up and down the car, oy. Shut up.
9) Somebody needs to knock the snot out of all those bratty hispanic kids on the south side.
10) I don't think it's just the language difference: Mexican charismatic preachers sound even crazier than white or black charismatic preachers.
11) Black guys are the most likely to monopolize the equipment at the gym.
12) Asian guys are the most likely to look kinda psycho when they're working out at the gym.
13) White guys are the most likely to make annoying grunting noises at the gym.
14) Working-class Italian-Americans conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
15) Jewish girls from Long Island conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
16) White gay guys in Chelsea conform to stereotype to a disconcerting degree.
17) Yemeni grocers are dangerously excitable when the subject of the Saudi royal family comes up.
18) Chinese people make shitty Mexican food. A tip to my Eastern Hombres at the "Tortillas Grill:" I don't know if vegetable enchiladas are an authentic Mexican dish, but if they are, it's a safe bet that the ones in Mexico don't have bok choy or water chestnuts.
19) Puerto Ricans make better bagels than you'd ever imagine. I am serious.
20) I really don't like to contribute to the women/asian drivers stereotype, but I'm willing to admit that the last two times I've been afraid for my life in a car was with a Chinese woman driving. Just sayin'.
21) White people don't take their kids on the subway.
22) Indian people, apparently, don't take the subway at all.

Best Thing Seen Today


Stairs are usually the big bottleneck getting in and out of the subway, and you
always want to avoid getting behind wobbly old people or ladies with strollers
going up the stairs. Mothers trying to get strollers up the stairs by
themselves, especially, are a major traffic blocker, and sometimes you'll see
strangers help out by grabbing one end of the stroller while the mother takes
the other, and they ascend the stairs together. So today I'm getting off the L and
realize that I've gotten behind this petite, young latina mother with a
stroller, and just as I'm about to try to worm around and pass her, she grabs
the stroller in both hands, lifts it way up, nearly sideways, and bolts up the
stairs, taking two at a time. It wasn't a small kid, either -- at
least two years old, a toddler. I was impressed, let me tell you.

Questions for Public Radio Newscasters

1) Do you guys like to cultivate the image that you're dumb? I ask this because you're constantly pointing out how confusing and hard everything is. This morning, for instance, I heard a news analyst going on about how complex and conceptually tricky federalism is. Um, no it's not. It's really, really not. Warren Olney of KCRW's To The Point is one of the very worst offenders here. Every time he gets somebody on to talk about tax policy, social security, or really any policy question, he will actually interrupt his guest periodically to comment on how very confusing it all is, however will we all understand it, much less make voting decisions about it, etc. Hey Warren: if you'd shut the hell up while your guest was trying to explain it, we'd be that much more likely to understand. Stop acting like a retard. In a sense it's even more aggravating on the (few American) science shows. I love it when a scientist is on as a guest, says something perfectly clear and nontechnical in non-jargon, and the host asks him to explain it for their non-scientist listeners. By which I think he means all the dead people, pre-verbal children, and animals who are listening to the show. Because everybody else got it the first time. Tip to my radio host homies: you may be stupid, but we aren't. Shut up and let your guests talk.

2) Now that it's one of the most heavily-covered news items since the September 11th attacks, is it too much to ask that you learn how to pronounce "New Orleans?" I mean, seriously, there IS actually a correct way to say it, it's not just a matter of personal expression. People from New Orleans say "New OR-lins." Wanker northeastern newscasters who view southern culture as exotic and quaint say "New OR-lee-ans" or "New or-LEENZ." Why? If you got on nationally broadcast radio and started talkin' 'bout "IlliNOIZE" or "Shi-CAY-go" or "SEEtle" or "Santa FEE," everybody would think you were a dumbass. Know why? Because you would actually be a dumbass. Look, I'm not asking you to get all Foghorn Leghorn and start saying, like, "N'Awlins." Just say it like regular, educated, residents of the city say it: New OR-lins. That's how you say it.

3) Is it really so important that you do your station ID on time that you interrupt a guest, like, actually in the middle of a sentence? I understand that you have to manage the time and everything, but do you seriously not have enough flexibility to wait until the end of a sentence to break in?

4) Do you realize that when you decide to do a show on the big Intelligent Design "controversy" that not only are you revealing yourself to be stupid, but you're making all the rest of us stupider at the same time? Do you realize that when you have these wankers Dembsky, Behe, and whoever the hell else on, that when they talk, they're not making any sense? The first time I heard one of these shows, I realized that you don't even HAVE to know anything about evolution to argue with them, because their claims don't even stand up on simple logic. And do you realize that they just plain lie? Do you realize that when they say stuff like "Darwinism is increasingly controversial" and "scientists are finding holes in evolutionary theory" that this is equivalent to claiming the moon is made of green cheese? Could you pleeeeze stop wasting the time and dignity of actual scientists by making them feel like they need to get on the radio with these prevaricating loons just to preserve basic science literacy?

5) This a special shout-out to my man Ira Flatow of NPR's Science Friday. Ira, do you think we can't all tell that you're not paying any f***ing attention to your guests when they're talking? Sometimes, when I'm listening to you on Science Friday, I think about those times when I'm on my cell phone, and say, I go into the store to buy something but I don't tell the person on the other end of the phone, and for those few minutes I'm at the counter paying, there's no way I can concentrate on that AND participate in the phone conversation, and so I'm inevitably either saying, "uh huh, uh-huh" when it's not appropriate, or I'm failing to answer a question I didn't hear, and it's completely obvious that I'm not paying attention, and the person on the other end starts saying, "are you there? Is everything okay?" I listen to you, Ira, and I think about those times on the phone, and I know that I'm just as busted as you are.

6) Do you ever listen to your colleages on British and Australian public radio when they're doing a political interview and reflect on what a bunch of mewling, useless pussies you are? Haha, kidding of course. I already know the answer to that one.

7) Could you please, for the love of God, for the sake of the dear sweet little baby Jesus and all the kittens and puppies and bunnies on Earth, give it a f***ing rest with the puns? Have you ever thought of a punny headline to a news item and been able to resist using it because it was too obvious? No, I know the answer to that one, too. They're not clever, you know.

8) Do you ever reflect on why nearly all the best reporting on the war and political culture in this present ugly era has been on entertainment shows like This American Life and Fresh Air instead of news shows?

9) To my man Chris Lydon: Just between you and me, Chris, before you go on, is it a couple lines o' toot? Or a hit on ye olde crank pipe? Or just a tankertruck full of Starbuck's? Because, I mean, I get twitchy just listening to you. But I'm glad you're back on the air, baby.

Okayokayokay

I was away for August (more on that later) and in the intervening weeks since I've been back, I've had to contend with the new, "improved" Blogger that is no longer interested in talking to my ancient-but-beloved Mozilla (that's old-school Firefox, for you kids). I've now worked out something of a system for writing at home and posting at work, until I finally get serious about moving to OS X at home. (Yep, still using OS 9, can you believe it?). I'm insanely busy with The Big Conference looming, but I'm basically back in action now, as it were. In fact, I think I feel a proper post coming on...

Strangest thing seen/heard today, but not really that strange

Sometimes the mildly strange is strange enough.

1) I'm working late tonight and just came in from getting some fresh air. The security guard at the hospital entrance was not one of the guys I'm used to seeing during the day. He was, in fact, a strikingly handsome, middle-aged guy. I'm talking head-snapping, movie star looks, but also definitely well into his 40's, with that thick, middle-aged guy build and a bit of salt in his pepper. Why is this weird, you ask? I dunno, it's just that given the elements "security guard," "really handsome," and "middle-aged," I can imagine an intersection of any two of those, but not all three. He nodded to me as I walked by. Just like they all do.

2) At the coffee shop, I overheard two guys having a lengthy and detailed discussion of strategies for dealing with traffic in... the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a weird moment of mental dissonance as the words "Dunbarton bridge" and "880 South" filtered into my consciousness. The two coastal chapters of my life are rather separate in time and thus in my thoughts, but I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that there are other people in the world who've lived in both San Francisco and New York.

Funniest T-Shirt Seen Recently

"I was told there would be no math"

Heh. I know what you mean.

Speaking of Urban Triumphalism

This is seriously the coolest thing I think I've ever seen. After this goes through, Jetsons flying cars can't be far off.

Perspective

Last weekend I had the unexpected experience of attending a gay softball game. I haven't played, much less taken seriously, softball since elementary school. Anyway, my friend L- dragged me there as a good deed, I think, trying to get me to be a little more social, and he probably had a point as far as that goes. Talking to one of the players, here's the thing that struck me:

The team I saw play was part of a gay softball league based in NYC. There are, I think, about 10 people on a softball team. There are 4-8 teams per division, and there are 5 divisions in the league. Now, I realize this amounts to, at most, a few hundred people in a city of millions. But here's the thing: that's just the gay people who like to play softball, as opposed to the gay people who play some other sport (I know of a gay roadrunner's club, swimmer's club, and triathlete's club in NYC, off the top of my head). And THAT's only the gay people who like some sport enough to play it competitively as opposed to all the others out there who might be playing whatever but don't have the time or inclination. And THAT's only the gay people who LIKE sports, as opposed to those with some other social hobby.

The lesson here: there is a whole mess of gay people in New York City. The Big Island of the gay archipelago, you might say.

A Much Funnier New York Blog Than Mine

www.overheardinnewyork.com

I think this is my favorite. Damn STRAIGHT you can't beat a spicy rock...

I Did Not Know That

You can stick a big fat "?!" after each of these, as far as I'm concerned:

1) Ann Bancroft was married to Mel Brooks
2) There was an attempted fascist coup against FDR
3) George W. Bush is "sex-positive"
4) Orrin Hatch wears a mezuzah pendant around his neck
5) William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor dated, back in the day.

File Under: No Shitting

This is a terribly written article and the scientist in question is rather sketchy but the basic finding of this study is pretty straightforward (ha, ha... did I just say "straight?"): If you take a bunch of guys who say they're bisexual and show them gay, dyke, and het pr0n, they mostly only pitch wood when there are boys on screen. I know, shocking, innit? I believe the investigator's next study involves determining the religious affiliation of the pope.