"It's so nice that I can wear my hoodie without any concern that it may result in some form of punishment," he said. "I'm just happy to say on behalf of all the hoodie-wearers everywhere that MLB is back in line with a subculture that I can really, truly identify with."
I just posted a comment (awaiting moderation) on a Design Sponge before & after blog entry.
The photos show off a very nice kitchen and dining room but the pots the plants sit in don't have any saucers/basins for the water to collect. And this brings up something that continues to vex me. Here's my comment, for reference:
I’m confused by the potted plants. Are they live plants? If so, are they in cache pots? I’m wondering about how you water them since I don’t see any saucers to collect excess water. Most of my plants have saucers and they’re not the most attractive items in the world. Any suggestions out there for how to reduce their use without trading up to unusually large cachepots?
I've wanted new pots for my plants for at least two years. Possibly five. I think this mostly suggests I'm a bad shopper. And also terrible at signing up for things because I really have considered taking a pottery class to create what I want. Am I terrible at finding the right pots? I'm really at a total loss. Can someone please step in and help me out? Pretty please! I'll give you a small cutting from one of my jade plants for your help!
And for those curious about my plant collection (and how I used to post to the internet much more frequently), check out my "plants section." Alas, many of these plants have seen their lives come to unfortunate ends.
I tend to like long, difficult names for things. Why is this blog called "Watching Expired Appliances Align" instead of "MiscRap?" And remember when I had that DVR blog? Why was I calling it "Regarding Recording Television" instead of something snappy and catchy like "PerfectV?" Oh. Right. Those new names aren't catchy. And I leave letters out of them. And smash words together. I find doing both of those things to be absolutely horrible.
On an unrelated note, I think I have a small salsa stain on my shirt.
On an unrelated note, my socks don't match the rest of my outfit today. They match each other and that has to count for something.
I am now shilling for my twitter feed. It is more interesting than my blog. For sure. Sign up for twitter and follow me. There. I am begging. Here are some recent tweets. Don't you want to follow these in real time?
2009 is my year of organization. Deleted iPhone notes containing info on size of my apt windows & type of vanilla extract I should buy. 4:14 PM Jan 5th
I'm resisting the urge to go all Harper's Index on my detailed finance reports from 2008. (ie, exceeded drinking budget by 216%) 9:49 PM Jan 2nd
Just got a $.15 bag discount at The Greene Grape for carrying my two bottles out in my shoulder bag. 6:35 PM Dec 30th, 2008
During my morning walk to Target, my ballcap flew off and almost landed in a puddle. Does that successfully summarize 2008? 11:13 AM Dec 30th, 2008
Almost bought wine coolers at pathmark. Party. 8:21 PM Dec 29th, 2008
If you have an iPhone, twitterfon is my favorite app for following twitter.
The shutting down of professional baseball in Hawaii is pretty disappointing. I flipped through the league website a few times, hoping to find a decent shirt or ballcap to order but never could find a decent logo. Of course, the lack of good logos doesn't seem to be the reason the league is folding and moving that level of play to Arizona.
The other night at bocce practice I bounded into Floyd somewhat energetically. Youthlarge attributed the pep in my step to the Chuck Taylors I was wearing, making a comment about how me wearing Chucks makes her laugh (but in a good way). I'm totally misquoting her, I know. It had something to do with the energy and the shoes and the slight goofiness of it all.
The comment about the shoes caused me to remember this photograph. My scanner isn't working so this is just a photo of a photo. Don't let that ruin your enjoyment of my long hair, weak moustache and casual leaning against the Grafton-Stovall Theatre popcorn machine.
(photo from 1995, probably November)
During my Thanksgiving vacation cousin Dave gave me the rundown on his holiday gift-giving philosophy. I made a few notes and present the list below.
Only give Christmas gifts if you're going to be there in person.
Children under 5 get a ball.
Boys ages 5-12 get a pocket knife.
Girls ages 5-12 get anything "unicorn." Girls love unicorns.
Boys ages 12-17 get cologne.
Girls ages 12-17 get perfume.
Adults get either a toaster or an alarm clock with big numbers.
I wrote down this list in his presence. At first I wrote "alarm clock" and he corrected me, noting the importance of one with big numbers. "Next year they will tell you how much they appreciate the alarm clock with big numbers on it."
MightyJunior just linked to a color changing ball sold by the MoMA design store. I couldn't be happier. Sadly, it's on backorder.
Dear Friends,
I need your help. Six or seven or maybe even eight years ago the metal strip on my bathroom cabinet door started coming unglued from the door. The tiny metal strip stayed attached to the magnetized part of the cabinet and the door would rest in the wide open position. I swear to you there is nothing in my medicine cabinet that I'm trying to hide. Well, maybe you'll realize I have at least three razors in there but blades for none of them. I run the occasional facial hair update, though. How worried can I really be?
Back to the question at hand - for years I've applied two pieces of foamy double-sided tape. During the past ten months the lifespan for this solution has decreased. As you can see from the tape residue below, I once tried duct tape. No dice. Do I need a different brand of double-sided tape? Is there some sort of industrial grade glue solution? I need your help! Make this problem disappear. I want to walk into the bathroom and look at my face in the mirror.
I've posted a few photos below, to give you and idea of what I have to work with. Please post suggestions in the comments!
(the cabinet door)
(the cabinet - with the metal strip stuck to the magnet)
Thanks,
Your Pal Balgavy
Way back in January I went a little overboard describing and posting pictures from the 2007 New Year's Day Board Game Party. Today I topped that. I just posted a GeekList to boardgamegeek.com.
NOTES FOR HOSTING A NEW YEAR'S DAY BOARD GAME PARTY
I did some serious internet searching last November and December for board game party ideas and couldn't really find that one source of great ideas. I hope this GeekList will encourage others to offer their ideas and make the 2008 party even better.
Instead of checking out bocce courts this weekend, I spent my Sunday afternoon visiting art studios in Gowanus. It was AGAST - the Annual Gowanus Artists Studios Tour. I like these sorts of things and I was bummed about missing the open studios last month in DUMBO.
For some reason, I'm really shy when I go into open studios and talking to artists. I'm bad about talking about art. I think I'm afraid. Anyway, I picked up postcards and business cards from some of the studios I liked. Here's a list:
Megan Piontkowski
Dave Marin
Jacob Roesch
Dana Matthews
Patricia Watwood
Curtis Wallin
LJ Lindhurst
Bonnie Steinsnyder
As a result of spending last Saturday outdoors, my face got sunburned. I should've used sunscreen. On Tuesday my nose started peeling. On Wednesday it was my cheeks. Today it's my forehead. I just scratched my forehead and saw white flakes fall onto my brown shirt. It would appear I have a dandruff problem. On the other hand, I shaved my beard (aka, my hollywoodian) Sunday night so I don't have a beardruff problem!
Does anyone feel like going out dancing or clubbing or whatever it is that people do these days? I'm sort of in the mood to go somewhere that makes me really uncomfortable because I don't know if they'd let me in or not. And I promise I won't wear sneakers. But I also want to do this on the cheap. Is that possible? Who's with me?
Time to step into the sorta'-way-back machine again. I recall the days between Christmas and New Year's as one haze of partying. I think I went to three parties over the course of three nights. Oh, wait. The third party was the New Year's Day Board Game shindig at my pad. How could I have forgotten about that? Perhaps because I was dancin' like a fiend the night before?
If you've got twenty seconds, and who doesn't, check out these five snapshots taken just after the clock struck Midnight, 2007:
Oh, these two sure know how to party. How can it not be a good year if you start out by double fisting champagne?
Is that Listmaker getting into the swing of things? Actual fist-pumping? Or is he just stomping on the floor and moving his arms and torso along to the music?
Why can't I find myself at a dance party every weekend? It's summertime right now and if I were to purposefully go to a dance party, I think I might convince myself to wear a mesh t-shirt. A totally awesome plan, right?
Nothing says "good dancer" like a guy who forces you to take pictures of him with his camera and then dances with his mouth WIDE open. So, umm, let's cancel that mesh shirt plan.
Listmaker yells at the downstairs neighbors. Or, is he about to start breakdancing? You make the call.
Earlier tonight Listmaker asked me what I do with all the photos I've taken for the last year and a half. "I file them" was my response. And that's it. I might flip through them but I no longer select the best shots and put them together for this webpage. I'm not sure when I lost interest in doing that, but I did. Handwashings mentioned that he missed my podcasts. I sort of miss doing them. I have a secret fear that I'll start smoking again if I do another podcast. It's total superstition.
Anyway, I think I'll post random blog entries in the near future about what I've been doing while in my thirties. Earlier today Handwashings and I took the G to McCarren Park pool for the Band of Horses show. We got there early and caught some rays. Listmaker joined us in time to see the headliners.
(Band of Horses)
(Handwashings is the king of relaxation.)
I had a fun time. I wish Band of Horses had been opening for a band a little more suited to the venue - someone a little more rousing and able to really take control of the space and the crowd. It was a free show, so I'm not really complaining. And I've got to say I'm a huge fan of that venue. Is it the best outdoor space for live music in the city?
I'm going to assume no one is interested in knowing that I now keep a spreadsheet to track all my grocery store purchases. If you are interested, please note I purchased One A Day Men's Formula vitamins tonight at Pathmark. They're on sale until midnight. I got in just under the wire. I saved 2.7 cents per vitamin. Pretty sweet, huh?
If you’ve hung out with me in the past few months you’ve probably seen me pull out a pen and make a few random notes after buying a drink or slice of pizza. Since November 20th, I’ve kept track of every penny I’ve spent.
Whenever I spend cash, I take a second and jot down the amount and, sometimes, the type of item purchased. (Note the piece of cardstock which tucks halfway into a pocket of my wallet. I cut the cardstock to the perfect size so I can spin it around and use the bottom half when the top part is fully covered.)
After getting home and checking email, I open Excel and transfer that information into a spreadsheet in which I also list a category for the spending. (That $2.16 was for jute twin purchased at the hardware store. I couldn’t find twine at Pathmark or Target. How in the world do the people in my neighborhood recycle their paper goods?)
Every two or three days I copy the cash spent information into Microsoft Money. (Today was a splurge on lunch day as I had a burrito, chips and salsa at Chipotle.)
I know all the recording seems like too many steps with high redundancy, but I’ve found it’s a system that works for me.
The important thing I’ve realized during the past six months of trying to get control of my finances is that using a system that works for me has been key. Is it really that important I note every quarter I spend on a newspaper? Of course not! I’m compelled to do so, though. It’s a rigid little system of organization and I like watching all of it come together at the end of each week or the end of each month. Comparing the dollars I’ve spent versus my ideal budget is an oddly fun exercise that reminds me I’m trying to save a little money (even if it’s for my next trip to Atlantic City).
One of the personal finance websites I’ve been reading since late 2006 wrote about this topic (keeping track of your money – not blowing it at the casino) recently.
Honestly, adding a few personal finance websites to my rss reader has been a huge plus in helping turn around my spending and saving habits. I peruse almost two dozen feeds at the moment and I admit I’m overdoing it by about twenty. Three or four years ago I surfed the web looking for a good blog about personal finance and couldn’t really find anything. The growth in personal finance information and commentary over the past few years has been pretty amazing. If it’s something you’re at all interested in, in addition to Get Rich Slowly, check out The Simple Dollar or Lazy Man and Money. It sounds like I’m totally shilling for these personal finance blogs. I guess I sort of am but the topic is one I’ve been thinking about over the last half year and it’s a topic I wish I’d been paying more attention to since I started drawing a paycheck at fifteen.
at tonight's white elephant gift exchange jamie (shrewdness of apes) walked away with some fantastic star spangled suspenders. if i wasn't about to pass our from a combination of bourbon and red wine i would post a photo. he put them on over his striped shirt and they were fantastic. no man has ever looked so good while holding his pants up!
Sunday night I joined a friend and a few other folks for drinks in midtown. From there it was a short walk to Dave & Buster's. It's been years since I've been to one of the adult sized arcades. I enjoyed a meal of chickfingers (Goldfingers, officially) and mashed potatoes. Sufficiently filled with delicious foodstuffs, I spent the next 1/2 hour closing down the giant trivia machine.
As much as I'd like to pretend I'm good at first person shooter games or that I can really kick ass on fake jet ski 3-d simulations, I can't. Watching a giant screen that flashes a question and 3 multiple choice answers while rewarding you with tickets is something I can do, though. I kept swiping my power card (or something similarly named) and taking on anywhere from one to five other competitors. Five questions. The person who answers the most questions in the shortest amount of time wins. There are consolation tickets for second and third place. It was fun and I was smart in covering all three giant buttons (A, B, C) with both hands, ready to pounce upon seeing an easy answer. I even managed to recognize Lawrence Taylor as a linebacker!
This machine is the future of trivia, despite putting Arts/Sciences into one category! Did I mention that it's giant size? The buttons for the answers are each the size of dinner plates. And the monitor that displays the questions has to be 4 feet wide. It takes up a lot of space. But it's the future. And I was rewarded with an acrylic Dave & Busters highball glass. Can a Sunday night out get any better?
More photos from 24 hours in Asbury Park coming soon.
Earlier today I noticed the public subscriber lists on bloglines aren't available. "Subscriber" numbers aren't listed either. I liked this function of bloglines because it let me know how many people subscribed to feeds of my blogs (usually 1(me)-5), it gave me a slight ego boost when I could claim to be one of the first subscribers to a cool blog and it was also a great function that let me find "related" feeds.
It's that ability to find related feeds that I'll miss the most. Taking a look at the public subscriptions of other internet users was a very fun, informative sort of thing. Doing so was especially useful when those users were good about structure - putting tv related feeds in a tv folder, music related feeds in a music folder, etc.
So, is this bloglines functionality gone for good? Just a temporary burp, pending an upgrade? Only time will tell.
Here are my public bloglines subscriptions: bloglines.com/public/marcb
UPDATE (4/11/06): The numbers are there. No conspiracy afoot.
It's the top of the 9th inning during the Venezuela / Dominican Republic World Baseball Classic game. It's intense stuff. I think people are getting sucked into this whole thing, and I'm one of them. TEJADA ERROR!!!! WOW.
And if you think those are my only baseball thoughts, think again. Below is a list of links I've recently noted to my del.icio.us account.
But first - DUANER SANCHEZ! Is this what we can expect from the new NY Mets bullpen??? The bases are loaded now. Whew. Popout to right field. That was intense.
The Baseball Journals » HOK Renderings of Nationals Ballpark Design
Nothing says top-notch ballpark like a view over the outfield into the parking garage!
The $39 Experiment: Asking Random Companies for Free Stuff
today's distraction
I'm ready for the next baseball game. Is there another baseball game on tonight? Does anyone remember that book "Free Stuff for Kids?" I think I had two different editions when I was young. I remember getting a free "ban handguns" decal. I'm sure I got other things, but I can't remember what they were.
Shades of August: VRE has heat restrictions
Commuter trains from DC to my hometown also slow down every August. How much will it take to fix this and can it be taken care of right away? It's completely silly for modern transportation systems to have these issues.
If I ever live an hour or two from my workplace and find myself able to commute via train, I sure would like to have a group of commuter friends so we could play board games during the trip.
The Baseball Journals » Funding Stadiums: An Unassisted Triple Play Is Easier
A call for MLB to develop a central stadium fund - and a nice summary of what's involved in trying to get a new stadium for a ballclub
If you follow the business of baseball, I think this website is a must-read.
Baseball Prospectus | Baseball Between the Numbers - What Do Statistics Tell Us About Steroids?
no subscription required.
Unrelated - should I order an LCD Soundsystem album?
AZ Snakepit :: Woo! Canada!
I read to this line - "the smug face of Derek Jeter ambled to the plate, and I suddenly was more Canadian than Wayne Gretzky after he's downed a six-pack of Molson." and I knew I had to share.
Overheard in New York: The Voice of the City - Real Bunny Eyes Dissolve, Too
My favorite "overheard" for the month of March.
I'm in favor of pronouncing things "my favorite ___ of the month" before the month makes it to the halfway point.
Stewart gets mixed reviews: What the hell were they expecting? - TV Squad
Regarding Stewart, I've got to agree with the thoughts here. Except there was no sushi at my Oscar party.
Should I order sushi for the next Oscar party? What about for the next game day party? Anyone up for Cluzzle sometime soon?
Ballpark Frank
I so wanted this to be about stadium hot dogs. (via baseballmusings.com)
I'm going on another baseball trip this summer. To the midwest, no less. That's where the good hot dogs are, right? I'm not sure I'll want to have a dog at every stadium. I did that during last year's trip. I need a new hook for this trip!
Pitchfork: Daily Music News - TV On the Radio signs to Interscope
For the record, I'm a fan of any article that starts "Following in the footsteps of Therapy?"
For the record, I'm a fan of sentences I start with "for the record."
NYDN - Entertainment - 'Simpsons' role a Homer run for 'Office' manager
The other day I realized I didn't set the Simpsons as an "always record." I must make sure to record this one.
It airs March 26th. I made this note about three weeks ago and I still haven't set up The Simpsons. But have I grabbed you by the shoulders and told you to start recording CAMPUS LADIES??? If I haven't, I will. The show is that funny.
The House Next Door: To the point
A Matt Zoller Seitz rumination on digital cable guide log lines for movies.
Strange New Products: Beer Can with Lip Wrapper
This will soon sweep across America. Germophobes, get your wallets out.
Daily Graphing: Carl Crawford -- The Hardball Times
A quick, worthwhile look at the lack of walks Crawford takes.
I'm trying to remember if it was acceptable for parents to have beer on the sidelines when I played t-ball. I doubt it was. Man, sipping a 16oz. tall boy in one of those ribboned folding chairs during a hot summer afternoon sounds ideal right now, doesn't it?
AaronGleeman.com - Book Review: The Mind of Bill James
There's a Bill James bobblehead doll??!?!! Sometimes marketing really is the best thing ever.
I think baseballmusings or somone else recently mentioned the new issue of Esquire (the one with Rosario Dawson on the cover) has an interview with James. No talk about this book or the bobblehead doll, though. Speaking of Esquire, does anyone read this? Or any magazines anymore? I heard it contained the James interview and bought the magazine. I've flipped through it a few times. I just don't understand magazines anymore. And I want to. But do I need 1/2 a page telling me "How to Impress Her for Twenty-Five Dollars or Less?" I am never ever going to buy plain white handkerchiefs from Brooks Brothers!!! But just now I saw Leslie Bibb's name! I loved her in POPULAR. I had no idea she's currently on CROSSING JORDAN. Why does no one tell me these things?
A Fan's Guide to the Midwest League
cool. i wonder if this summer's baseball trip will take me through any of these towns?
Baseball Prospectus | Bronx Bummer - The Yankees Stadium Deal
"It shouldn't matter whether the public is putting in 75%, or 33%, or 10%--what should matter is that if we the people are putting in the same share of the cost as the team, we should be reaping roughly the same share of the benefits." (sub. req'd)
This is the all baseball stadium edition of balgavy.com, I guess.
Inside the Dodgers
from the front office of the dodgers. this could be fun. i wish more companies created this sort of thing. (via baseballmusings.com)
I mean that. I'm totally serious when I think that more corporate blogging should be done in this fashion.
Adrants » DVR-Resistant 'Smushed' Ad Grabs Attention
while watching THE OC last week I paused, then watched this ad.
FYI: The baseball game is over, in case you couldn't tell. I'm now watching an old episode of NY NOISE. I dig that OF MONTREAL.
Boing Boing: Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?
must reading for anyone interested in digital delivery of content
So when is everything going to be decided? I just want to download the new version of Quicken and figure out what I owe everyone now for the next year of content I want to bring into my home. Can that happen? HBO, can I give you $50 now for the next year of everything you produce? Or do you want me to send my $10 directly to David Chase? Wait, was that Time Warner calling my name? Do you want a cut? Tell you what - NO. I already give you too much money. I alternately love and hate talking about this kind of stuff.
HBO wants its programming to be off-limits for DVRs
egads. life gets better. life gets worse. (via pvrwire.com)
Have I mentioned that I love cupcakes? They're a great dessert option. Not to take anything away from cake, but there's something fun about cupcakes. The individual decoration on the top of each cake! The challenge of eating a cupcake without getting icing on your moustache! The greatness of not having to force the birthday person to cut his or her own cake. So, yeah, put me down in the pro-cupcake column.
ESPN.com - MLB - Rickey Henderson back with Mets ... as instructor
also scroll to find out PEDRO'S SPECIAL SHOE HASN'T ARRIVED!
Henderson isn't contracted to be an instructor for more than a few random weeks. And that Jose Reyes! Stealing third in the WBC game. Since Reyes is playing in the WBC, does that mean he's missing out on Henderson's instruction??? Can someone answer this right away?
Fimoculous.com: Feeding On Itself
two bits of cereal news! who knew rex @ fimoculous even had a cereal category! (He links to Cereality, a cereal ba & cafe from Philly that's already spread to Chicago and Tempe).
Oooh, I just remembered that I haven't watched last night's Real World/Road Rules Challenge! I'm hitting post post-haste!
Recently DF posted his thoughts about his stay at a fake lodge on the outskirts of Kansas City. Experiencing a made up retreat filled with sanitized notions of fun, relaxation and vacation scarred him. And he can't stop thinking about it. Since reading his post, I can't stop thinking about it, either. And thinking about it just makes me ask more questions.
Is DF overreacting? I don't think so. The conflict he brings up is very real. And it's one that a lot of us face in this format or one that's similar. What makes for a real experience? How does one deal with the guilt of spending extravagant amounts of money for the same "manufactured" experience that hundreds of others experience every weekend? Do some people even confront this issue?
I think I've seen a Great Wolf Lodge, or something similar to it. Two years ago while traveling across Michigan, some friends and I pulled into a chain restaurant for a late breakfast / early lunch. Across the street, and right off the highway, was a massive hotel structure with a giant water park. It was strange. We'd been traveling for hours, surrounded by trees and other aspects of "nature." Out of the blue, a "destination" spot appeared. How close were we to The Dells, a more traditional Michigan vacation spot?
I should be upfront about my biases. A trip to a museum is not my idea of a vacation. I don't have children and I'm not sure I'm currently capable of handling that lifestyle. I can't imagine what it would be like to spend my time planning how those children are going to use their time. I expect I'd become one of those parents who takes his child to museums, but the hand-on touch-the-horseshoe crab-type museums. I'm okay with that. I went to those types of museums as a kid. But I also spent two summers working at a theme park. I still have memories of receiving a plastic wallet card and being told to memorize the corporation's "mission statement." I read websites about the newest technologies and I wonder how I can incorporate those items into my life. I like shopping for and buying expensive toys.
I also want to mention a trip last summer in which a few friends and I found ourselves in Las Vegas for twenty-four hours. DF compares the fake lodge with its indoor, climate-controlled water park to Vegas. I couldn't wait to get to "sin city." I craved the gambling. I wanted to face my reaction to such a manufactured environment. The idea of giant hotels created for the express concern of taking me "out of my day to day reality" (as my Kings Dominion mission statement used to put it) was as exciting as it was repulsive. Was it going to be a day of "forced fun" or were there moments of real joy and entertainment to be had? Were those feelings going to be the result of the environment or the result of interacting with good friends?
After three hours in the big hotel casinos, the urge to visit the seedier, older casinos took hold. And from there, I wanted to see the low-rent casinos, the casinos where the Vegas regulars play. Driving from the strip to the outskirts of town was a quiet thrill. How is the very recently constructed Las Vegas just like the rest of our "fast food nation?" And what are the tiny things that make it different? Besides the glitz and glamour of our very expensive hotel, which was designed to look like a fake New York City, what made Vegas Vegas? I don't have the answers to those questions. I was also interested in playing craps, and my urge to gamble usually wins out over my urge to pretend at being an "urban explorer."
I could go on at length about my interest in towns and what I want to see and the oddities of what makes those small towns or large cities tick, but I want to get back to the bigger questions DF's post has me asking. None of these questions are original. Most of them have been discussed in books and on the internet ad infinitum. I guess this is why blogs are here, so that each of us can join in on "the conversation."
DF alludes to this, but I'm not sure it came through as loud and clear as it could have, "what sort of culture do we want from out lives?"
How does the notion of spending time with our families play into that?
How has our relationship as individuals and nuclear families changed with the increasing geographic distance between extended families?
Do individuals have too much free time on their hands or not enough?
How has global connectivity and shared knowledge changed our perception of ourselves and our "rank" with the others in our lives?
What role does technology play?
Besides identifying these issues, when do we start asking questions that change our habits? How can we go about changing our habits (if we do, indeed, need to make changes)? What other options are out there? Is a vacation to a "real" mountain lodge, nestled by a lake an option for everyone?
How does the sheer number of people in the country alter destination choices?
Is the need to spend vacation time in cramped, artificial spaces an inherent need to reconnect with humanity because we spend so much of our day-to-day private time within the confines of our McMansions?
With regards to parenting, how have priorities changed over the last half-century? Twenty-five years? Decade? Is there too much structure? Too much parenting? Too many options? How does that alter the way parents, and consequently children, perceive relaxation and vacation?
And that's where I start on the topic. What comes next? Do I want to try to answer these questions in subsequent blog entries? Have I had so much exposure to TGIFridays and the like that I feel hopeless about the answers to many of these questions?
UPDATE (2/14/06): Matt Zoller Seitz's take on Disney World. It adds to the conversation in an interesting way, suggesting the merits of large scale productions being personal and conforming to childhood visions.
If you're not plugged into the feed of my del.icio.us links, you're missing out. Of course, you're not missing much sense I happily re-post most of those links below:
New York City Parks/Parks and Recreation: NYC Bocce Courts
a note for spring
I did some searching around on Google maps. We're going to have to travel around a bit to get to some of these. I'd like to figure out how a bunch of us can go and really get some playing time to ourselves. Maybe we should go soon during a warm-ish weekend.
ESPN.com - MLB - New skipper Girardi: No facial hair for Marlins
I am 100% against this policy. And what's with the shaving of Quarterback Ben's beard on Letterman? Can't people chill out about facial hair?
Strange New Products
i'm finding tiny little bits of happiness from this website
It was a boojum: Curling like me
One of the guys from Off The Wall (a local bocce team) tries his hand at curling.
TheMirl.com - "Enter Sandman" - Wagner & Rivera!!!
(via Ducksnorts) New Mets closer Billy Wagner uses the same intro music as Yankee Mariano Rivera! Spring's going to be interesting.
(BW) ``BUBBLE'' Grosses Estimated $5 Million in Opening Weekend with Day-and-Date Strategy | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
"$2,250 per screen average" - that sounds very low. i would love to see more info about how the simultaneous platforms affected theater-going.
Kansas City Star | 01/15/2006 | The passion’s out there
A few Royals go on a road show. "Affeldt and Brown look exhausted...One thing that does impress everyone is that the trash containers in the mall all have automatic doors that open when you walk up." via Bad Altitude
Popular Transit (Diana Eng's blog)
scroll down to Jan 11 and read "Project Runway Reflections Some thoughts on how Project Runway has changed my life"
TVgasm - The OC: If You Love Something, Set It Free
i can't read this many words. i doubt you can. just scroll down for the "'hey!' count."
I've been loving The OC quite a bit lately. My DVR went all wonky during the last five minutes of last week's episode. Those were the five minutes promoted by Fox as THE FIVE MINUTES YOU CAN'T MISS. I missed them. My friend and I went online looking for a recap. Where do you go when you need a recap of a TV show one hour after it airs on the east coast? I wanted full details involving quoted lines and expressions and a fair level of observation by a group of people just like me. No dice. Perhaps it's time to resume the meetings of the post-OC club?
file : the collection - commuter 02
a plainly gorgeous photo
AaronGleeman.com - Weight Loss (Day 1)
Looks like Aaron Gleeman (of The Hardball Times and elsewhere) is getting a few week jump on Will Carroll. Is there something in the baseball writing air?
The Year of Living Chemically: Part One
Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus starts a weight-loss blog. I'll admit to being intrigued. I like his writing and it will be an interesting follow-up to THE JUICE. I imagine there's a whole slew of other weight-loss blogs out there, right? And they always start in Jan.
And that's what the internet looked like to me this past January.
As I did a year ago, I spent an October afternoon in Dumbo. This past weekend the event was the 9th Annual D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival. A lot of artists' studios in that part of Brooklyn were open and since the F train goes right there, it's a tough event to miss. As my legs tired and my brain filled with too many images, I wished I'd visited on Saturday as well as Sunday - if only to provide myself with some rest inbetween the overwhelmingness of everything.
A few of the things I liked:
The Cowboy Images by Brent Spaulding.
In the elevator up to the open studio that featured the images I saw a postcard or flyer. I had no idea some of the images would be so huge. Only a few of the images were 10 feet high, but they were the ones I really loved. Film influenced cowboy culture never looked so good.
The Bird/Clouds/Math Images by Miranda Maher.
I don't think her website is up and running yet, but when it is, check for the series she's working on that features birds in the sky with printed images of geometry on them. Really fun and light and the kind of thing I really want up in my house.
The Animals and Lonely Images by George Boorujy.
Go look at his website. A lot of his work is posted there. I really liked his work which features great animal illustrations. But there's a lot more to it. I bought a print of a roller coaster on the edge of cliff, with lots of white space around it.
It's been a long time since I've written about art, so please forgive my awkward sentences. I had a great afternoon, though. It was really inspiring and I feel like I saw a lot more art I liked this year than last.
i thought i should make an entry. just a list. perhaps.
i need to create another podcast. i'm stuck on not having any ideas. except for the baseball trips. there are plenty of audio clips from that to use.
and i have one more page of baseball trip photos to post. hopefully, i'll get ot that this weekend.
i've also pretty much stopped writing about tv. there are no new tv shows i'm head over heels crazy for.
Just a question for the peanut gallery - when I'm walking around drinking tap water in a "Smartwater" bottle, am I lying to everyone who walks past?
Here's the list of del.icio.us links I've been meaning to share for the past 2-4 weeks. Now with additional commentary! Whoo!
VIVO - barefoot shoes - Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools
i just picked up a pair today
for real. i mean it. i got them in brown. i love trying to find a more ridiculous pair of shoes than the last. i think i may have found them! the zippered, removable sole is part kevlar!
Introducing Slate Audio Tours - The commentary museums don't want you to hear. By Andy Bowers
suddenly i can't imagine life without an ipod
useful, but when am i going to remember to do this?
Can't Stop The Bleeding � Paging Mr. Blackwell & Paul Lukas
reminds me of dancing in spain during the summer of '92. i had a ponytail.
click on this link. it will take you two seconds. you've got to see these minor league baseball uniforms.
Rails to Trails (roads with no cars) - Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools
time to buy a bike?
i have this weird fantasy life where i'm an outdoors sort of guy and i spend a few hours every two weeks or so doing fun outdoor things like riding a bicycle along re-purposed railroad tracks.
Palazzo di Bocce: play bocce, enjoy fine Italian dining at America�s best bocce club
they have a "pro shop." i wish i'd know about this place a year ago.
alex sent this link. i should also let you know there's a bocce tournament before the cyclones game on the 18th.
i've been busy. here are some fun, random links i've collected to my del.icio.us account during the past few weeks. and by random, i mean mostly about baseball.
Old ballgame has newfangled twist
this is awesome. baseball teams to have the 1st 2 innings of a july game played on x-box, then the real players take the field.
Jimmy Page's Sweater Vest: A little off the top
Andrew Beaujon's search for a cheaper razor blade
Conversational Reading: TAYARI JONES - 2005 AUTHOR
an author discusses the differences of being labeled a "southern" writer for one book and a "black" writer for another
Reason: Locker-Room Liberty: Athletes who helped shape our times and the economic freedom that enabled them
a review of books about joe namath, richie allen and oscar robertson
-but also a lot more
Balls Out | 2005-06-16 | dallasobserver.com
A great profile of Dock Ellis who pitched a no-hitter on acid in 1970. (Ellis had enough experience with LSD to know that it wouldn't be wearing off anytime soon; as a, uh, "precautionary measure," he took somewhere between four and eight amphetamines)
Gothamist: John Vanco, IFC Center
When I start going to movie theaters again, the IFC Center will be at the top of my list.
BRING IT, EFFIE
"Also, I saw Jesus at least 100 times. He wears tevas, by the way. " (Bunny McIntosh goes to Bonnaroo)
file : the collection
"lexington, mass" - my favorite photo of the week
Handwashings: 21 Years Ago in The New Yorker
the wash takes a look at an issue of THE NEW YORKER from 21 years ago
looks like will leitch is handling some of the chores at gawker this week.
here are some recent del.icio.us links i've posted:
(special bonus edition - now with more commentary!)
Baseball Prospectus | Articles | The Week In Quotes: May 23-30
scroll to the bottom for cubs manager dusty baker's take on the modern man
-but let me save you the trouble and repeat it here:
"Guys don�t seem to talk as much baseball these days. They talk about a lot of other things like, what do you call those little things that puts 10,000 songs on there? Yeah, an I-Pod, things like that."
--Dusty Baker (Arlington Heights Daily Herald)
Baseball Toaster : Catfish Stew : Blog the Dawgs
rickey henderson in san diego!
(scroll through to the photos to see how rickey loves to slide)
Movies and Theaters - Lets make the Customer King and make more money - Blog Maverick
mark cuban starts getting at some of the details about his plans for movies and integrated distribution of films
(even if you don't agree with him, you've got to like that he's willing to put his ideas out there and openly discuss them in the marketplace. i got tired of watching his reality show, but i'm hooked on his blog.)
Pernice Brothers | Audio / Video
an indie rock cribs pilot?
(joe pernice walks around his place with a video camera. it's a very low key presentation. and very friendly.)
The Bad News Bears � posterwire.com
highly anticipated.
(billy bob thornton's name is huge on this poster. and the 19 year old me is very upset that the current version of me doesn't actually check out this blog on a regular basis.)
Herald.com | 05/20/2005 | From brain to Beast
rarely do i worry about movie or tv casting - but kelsey grammer as the beast in x-men 3????
(is this still for real? has this changed since i learned this news on may 22nd? someone please tell me it has. i mean, i love falling asleep to frasier late at night, but i'm not ready for this.)
Baseball DIY: Publishing punk rock baseball talk since 2004.
there's so much to read. i need to turn off the computer.
(make sure you check out the interview with baseball fan, joe pernice.)
Athletics Nation :: Michael Lewis Returns to AN
good long interview with the author of moneyball
(has anyone read his new book? in this interview he talks about a future book he'll write about a baseball draft class from a few years ago.)
News Askew: [Feature Story]
kevin smith's blog is back with rss feed. whew.
(i can't get enough of this blog. say what you will about his films, and i know most aren't fans, there's something so awesome about smith's rabid fanboy-ness. the fact that this man has become a very successful director and stayed in touch with the things he loves and continues to respect his fan base is really cool. and i use "cool" without any hint of irony. in a gushing, i'm a fan of kevin smith kind of way.)
MoorishGirl: Flight vs Fight of the creative class
The pros and cons of Austin as a city for writers
(every so often it's good to talk about something that's not baseball, movies or tv. ohh, but richard linklater is an austin filmmaker. and his movie IS about baseball.)
it appears as though the thing to do today, memorial day, is to post pictures of what took place over the past few days. never one to be afraid of jumping on the bandwagon, here's my entry:
saturday at coney island. cyclone and three holes of miniature golf. there was a little skeeball action inbetween, but no photos of said action. also no photos of me playing dance dance revolution:
i feel like my calves are on fire. any self-respecting blog deserves a good drunken post every now and again. nothing like typing with your eyes closed and pulling balk on your memories of being in tenth grade and learning to touch type. computers. binary. then typing class. whenever holidays appear creating stupdie typed out illustrationsof faces or flags or whatever. i think i got an A or a B-. i passed. and learned to touch type, which is something all of us older non-internet generation kids needed to do because yeah becaus.
feels like my calves are on fire.
on fire. that's all i could think of while i shuffled home from the bar yes shuffled. robert ownsend where are you now?????????
the sound of the keys is so awesome i could sit here and ramble for hours bout i won't. argh. eyes closed. computer screen burning my retinas.
out. peach.
just saw that i typed peach instead of peace. whatevs.
UPDATE (9:55am, 5/21/05):
this state of drunkenness lead to a night which caused dreams in which i tried to ride from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe on a MoPed and argued the efficacy of wearing blue lycra futuristic Birkenstocks in the snow.
(from del.icio.us/marcb)
Baseball Prospectus | Events | Chat with Paul Lukas
"Paul Lukas: I love that Baseball Prospectus readers can't resist asking stats-oriented questions, even tho I'm the uniform guy..."
Cannes Film Report: Last Days
sounds like Gus Van Sant's newest isn't that impressive at all
News Askew: Kevin Smith's My Boring Ass Life Blog being relocated
and with no RSS feeds anymore!
Fredericksburg.com - City's pear proposal has designer peeved
this is the sort of thing that makes my hometown seem like a small, small town
Saved by the Bell - Box Cover Is Saved: New Art Shows Both Jessie & Tori!
whew. i think everyone i know was worried about this.
(Last weekend in Virginia)
all of my products are blue.
or blueish-green.
just in time for your high school reunion
newjetta.com
recent del.icio.us links:
Saved by the Bell - Fans Up In Arms Over Manipulated 5th Season Cover Art!
Elizabeth Berkley is always the source of controversy!
Fredericksburg.com - Truck stop to close
Servicetown, near where I grew up, closing after 40 years (a rather comprehensive article)
Ducksnorts: Ducksnorts Unofficial Guide to San Diego Taco Shops
must remember this for the august trip to california
Inept but likable - Love That Gulager!
the best review i've seen of PROJECT GREENLIGHT (and who can resist calling out GULAGER?)
U.S.S. Mariner
a very fine looking seattle mariners blog (courtesy the black table baseball preview)
Here are a few of my recent del.icio.us links:
Jimmy Page's Sweater Vest: A butterfly in the Amazon flaps its wings...
some talk of a new minor league ballpark for richmond, va
Undeclared - Apatow talks about music, extras, whether or not there will be a special edition, and whether the release is really in July!
i want it on cable and on-demand! i'm so greedy!
New (sub)Urbanism: Getting Around in Suburbia
with real trolleys you can just jump onto the sideboard, right?
music (for robots) - Smokey Turtle by EYEBALL SKELETON
i just heard this track on WXJM. there's nothing wrong with a good novelty song every now and again.
here are a few of my more recent del.icio.us links:
MTV.com - Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies) - Video
maybe a bit too literal at points, but i really like it. sadly, subterranean just ran it without any identifying credits
The Podcast-Review Blog (copyright safe music for podcasts)
knowing this kind of stuff could keep me in front of the computer for the rest of my life
ESPN.com - MLB - Caple: Driven to succeed (Bobby Madritsch)
bobby madritsch is my favorite baseball player. there should be a new profile of him every week.
music (for robots) - The Hysterics
new york kids make the pretty rock music you can't help but love
a few days ago salon had an interview with a guy who wrote a book about me culture. i've only just begun reading the interview, but it reminds me of chris larry's blog post from a few weeks ago about egocasting and media culture.
in an effort to give you as much information as i can without actually expressing an opinion, i'll let you know the author's name. it's thomas de zengotita. the book is called mediated : the hidden effects of media on people, places, and things.
umm, and you have to watch a commercial to get to the salon piece.
i'm caving. after months of seeing del.icio.us links everywhere, i've decided i need to try it out. my del.icio.us links can be found at http://del.icio.us/marcb.
by no means will that decrease my infrequent posting here. it will also not alter the low quality of posting here, as the links i post there will be of only minor interest (albeit quirky and/or valuable).
UPDATE: for my friends who are unwilling to click through to find out what del.icio.us is, i will try to explain. imagine something like flickr - but for web pages instead of photos.
basically, it's just a collection of links to other webpages. my current plan is to write extremely witty and brief commentary for all the links i include. okay, so maybe my comments won't be that witty. i need the practice since i rarely write commentary for the photos i no longer post on my rotating photo pages. anyway, here's an example of what to expect from my del.icio.us posts:
- Suspension of Disbelief
a comic book fact-checking blog! i'm sure it's causing many a fanboy to lose multiple nights of sleep.
- Lost - to DVD Sept. 6th
the first three episodes should've been put on one disk and included on cereal boxes back in december
- HDTV buying - Part I, the basics - Engadget - www.engadget.com
let's pretend i'm bart simpson writing on the chalkboard: i will not read this until i can afford to read this.
i'm reading middle-aged men pulling muscles (the story of one mets fan's trip to fantasy camp). i'm about six entries in and really enjoying it.
(link via baseball musings via sabermets)
UPDATE (1:49am): yeah. go read it now. it's a lot of fun. and if the author isn't shilling for the mets, he should be. he makes baseball fantasy camp sound like the most fun thing ever!
i'm not sure if i've mentioned this before or not, but i'm a huge fan of a website called cheap stingy bastard. on a daily basis, the guy behind it lists at least a dozen shopping deals on the web. the deals range from cutlery to discounted recordable dvd's to free magazines.
one of the deals today lists a sale of reaction kenneth cole jackets at nordstrom. when i scrolled past the link polybonded hipster coat, i knew i had to click it. when did it become acceptable to label a coat as a "hipster" coat? yes, i'm too old now to be talking about "cool" and the idea of cool and the right words to use for things. those sorts of discussions begin to become less interesting as you escape from your mid-20's. i can't help it in this case. "hipster." that's one of those words that only works when you toss it around semi-derisively. and now it's being used to label a coat? a coat that almost looks like a jacket i own (except that mine is made from a totally different material and lacks the "soft, luxurious feel")? perhaps my mock indignation here comes from almost being called a hipster? or, perhaps i'm jealous that i don't have this exact coat, and thus i'm not quite a hipster?
we'll never know.
am i posting these photos of my bedroom because it's the end of the year and that means it's time to take stock of my life? am i posting these snapshots to offer you, gentle readers, quiet insight into my daily life? am i posting these random images to remind you that i own a lot of shoes, like photographing my books and sometimes exclude the photos i take of target receipts?
no. i'm posting these photos because i've been bad about posting here on a regular basis. photos take up so much space! and that means everything on the sidebar should line up smoothly. order. there must be order. and if anyone gives me grief about not having posted photos i took starting in august, i understand and accept your scorn. please be aware that all comments hurled in my direction about the lack of updates to balgavy.com will do nothing to speed the posting process.
also note that i'm listening to that arcade fire disc right now and i'm kind of enjoying it. i guess i should stop talking trash about it (which i've never actually done). like everyone, i have commented that it doesn't live up to the hype. but what does?
while driving around fredericksburg the day before christmas i listened to an album called "let's bottle bohemia." it's the new disk this year from the thrills. while it doesn't make me as happy as their first album, it lifted my mood while weaving in and out of parking lot traffic while completing last minute shopping chores.
onto the pictures:
i bought a bunch of picture frames at macy's the day after christmas. i was so happy about owning them that i rushed home from work monday and immediately filled them with photos i took in louisville.
note to would-be theives: there is a moderately heavy handful of change in that crumpled up plastic bag.
note to aspiring directors: steven soderbergh's diary of the making of sex, lies and videotape is a million times better than the book called "what i really want to do is direct" that i bought for less than a dollar at strand eight years ago.
note to readers who like well observed minutiae of daily life: andrea seigel's book "like the red panda" is an excellent read (as is her blog: this afternoon in drama.)
seeing "moneyball" on the shelf reminds me that i need to return it to jamie. i also need to return paul feig's "kick me" to anne. "sex and death to the age of 14" by spalding gray is sitting on the top shelf of the pictured book shelf. shawn lent it to me about five years ago and i need to return it to her. someone borrowed my copy of "confederacy of dunces" a month or two ago and i would like it back if you've finished reading it. if you are the person who borrowed this book, please identify yourself.
about a month ago i bought a cheap frame at target and stuck a 1992 map of kings dominion inside. for the past five years i've kicked around the idea of framing these maps and putting them up on the wall. i thought it would be a nice play on the idea of framing really old maps of foreign lands. sadly, this map is not as exciting as i would like for it to be, and the frame is a little too big. for more exciting amusement park maps check out theme park maps, which i just learned about a few days ago.
i've got a weird habit of photographing my stacks of shoes. it's something i do every year or two. the idea is so much better than the execution. what's interesting is that seeing the shoes always brings back memories. sadly, they just don't make for interesting photographs.
this photograph is here to serve as a reminder that i really need to clean out my closet before the end of the weekend.
these plants need water. i drank the glass of water pictured here about twenty minutes ago. hidden under that cd from the velvet teen is a packet of brush-ups. has anyone tried these things? they are wild. a crazy invention that could've only been concocted by some savvy oral-b executive while driving drove home from too many nights of debauchery and anonymous one night stands.
i saw sideways for the second time on christmas day. my parents really enjoyed it. it holds up on repeat viewings, i'm happy to report.
on a saturday in mid-october i spent the afternoon hanging out in dumbo, checking out open studios 2004 (dumbo - art under the bridge). it had been a long time since i'd actually spent an afternoon checking out various galleries. most of what i saw didn't really appeal to me. i think i'm stuck on only liking photography. sometimes everything else just strikes me as not good enough. but one artist's work did catch my eye. i was delighted when i walked into the studio of amy bennett. she paints this oddly realistic images of families. i call them odd because the setting is a doll house. the dollhouse she'd lately been using as a model was one she built herself and it sat in the middle of her open studio. her work was open and free and just a bit fun. i really liked it. and i'm going to the open studios event next year, too. even though i didn't love everything i saw, it was a great way to spend an afternoon.
outside the speed art museum.
outside the parking garage of the speed art museum.
outside glassworks, downtown.
i just checked the the ten day forecast for louisville. next friday there is a 40% chance of rain/snow showers. do know how to travel, or what?
obviously, the comment spam on my blogs is way out of control. for example, please see the following chunk of numerical text. it lists the IP addresses i've blocked for this blog so far this month (with the date i blocked them also included).
195.94.1.203 2004.10.02 218.76.51.3 2004.10.02 203.197.234.177 2004.10.02 217.144.0.140 2004.10.02 200.79.91.6 2004.10.02 61.145.123.203 2004.10.02 213.156.52.96 2004.10.03 195.38.127.26 2004.10.03 207.232.252.3 2004.10.03 12.215.220.247 2004.10.03 81.118.4.10 2004.10.03 81.118.4.10 2004.10.04 66.136.74.227 2004.10.04 24.103.90.87 2004.10.05 148.244.150.58 2004.10.05 203.195.201.29 2004.10.05 83.64.161.34 2004.10.05 164.100.11.92 2004.10.06 195.141.64.150 2004.10.06 202.144.39.154 2004.10.08 66.137.18.140 2004.10.08 62.87.136.125 2004.10.08 218.145.25.11 2004.10.08 62.150.20.166 2004.10.08 61.95.205.231 2004.10.08 81.118.4.7 2004.10.10 81.86.97.45 2004.10.10 202.83.174.42 2004.10.10 195.87.69.26 2004.10.10 81.118.4.13 2004.10.10 81.118.4.16 2004.10.10 220.93.120.39 2004.10.10 168.143.113.128 2004.10.12 168.143.113.124 2004.10.12 168.143.113.126 2004.10.12 168.143.113.128 2004.10.13 168.143.113.126 2004.10.13 168.143.113.124 2004.10.13 168.37.253.30 2004.10.13 200.66.106.253 2004.10.13 66.234.255.2 2004.10.13 203.162.3.145 2004.10.13 200.242.61.26 2004.10.13 200.76.61.198 2004.10.13 80.18.225.2 2004.10.13 82.135.33.100 2004.10.14 80.239.49.154 2004.10.14 80.58.50.42 2004.10.15 208.53.138.8 2004.10.15 65.77.169.165 2004.10.15 66.230.178.42 2004.10.15 200.162.72.131 2004.10.16 62.58.77.21 2004.10.16 203.115.21.155 2004.10.16 67.104.82.62 2004.10.16 207.44.234.22 2004.10.17 193.41.101.169 2004.10.17 192.197.213.25 2004.10.17 68.84.126.83 2004.10.17 195.57.165.180 2004.10.17 200.31.79.214 2004.10.17 24.112.134.155 2004.10.17 82.117.202.247 2004.10.18 195.162.98.199 2004.10.18 195.162.98.199 2004.10.18 200.62.146.126 2004.10.18 193.146.142.66 2004.10.18 68.60.197.232 2004.10.18 209.136.7.125 2004.10.18 208.63.158.141 2004.10.18 211.185.38.61 2004.10.18 207.250.10.170 2004.10.18 65.66.66.145 2004.10.18 202.155.115.68 2004.10.18 69.20.4.149 2004.10.18 195.224.127.34 2004.10.22 200.252.8.134 2004.10.22 200.32.86.243 2004.10.22 203.127.190.22 2004.10.22 219.148.148.180 2004.10.22 66.144.5.25 2004.10.22 208.27.203.131 2004.10.22 80.58.10.170 2004.10.22 210.0.212.102 2004.10.22 213.33.64.68 2004.10.22 82.117.202.241 2004.10.22 218.130.90.113 2004.10.22 81.113.58.197 2004.10.22 203.127.190.22 2004.10.22 219.147.36.253 2004.10.22 210.0.209.47 2004.10.22 80.58.33.46 2004.10.22 212.165.158.100 2004.10.22 64.3.231.3 2004.10.22 80.67.172.1 2004.10.22 209.177.4.130 2004.10.22 195.23.5.116 2004.10.24 64.141.68.16 2004.10.24 134.214.105.102 2004.10.24 218.91.254.3 2004.10.24 212.217.2.36 2004.10.24 202.88.149.72 2004.10.24 66.144.5.24 2004.10.24 69.10.139.36 2004.10.24 209.150.203.162 2004.10.24 195.23.5.116 2004.10.24 80.58.4.111 2004.10.24 149.163.50.22 2004.10.25 206.222.88.10 2004.10.25 63.67.102.226 2004.10.25 156.110.47.251 2004.10.25 63.210.92.58 2004.10.28 80.58.23.235 2004.10.28 80.58.47.44 2004.10.28 203.113.29.1 2004.10.28 80.223.246.97 2004.10.28 195.177.67.169 2004.10.28 209.161.205.12 2004.10.28 205.206.63.123 2004.10.28 61.131.63.186 2004.10.28 202.78.71.20 2004.10.28 66.230.161.122 2004.10.28 66.119.33.186 2004.10.28 160.79.240.52 2004.10.28 218.58.50.70 2004.10.28 82.108.178.34 2004.10.28 212.200.107.221 2004.10.28 82.185.182.115 2004.10.28 68.48.242.253 2004.10.28 209.161.205.12 2004.10.28 219.169.108.66 2004.10.28 62.87.152.58 2004.10.28 218.13.33.247 2004.10.28
i don't have any plans for the evening. i need some plans. anyone up for doing something? please. for most of the week i locked myself in the house, watched baseball, debates and bad network televsion. i need to escape this rut!
on the walk home from o'connor's i developed a theory about the "good me" and the "bad me." developed is a strong word. and not entirely accurate. or even precise. i loved that about tenth grade chemistry - that whole difference between accurate and precise. but i digress...my theory isn't a full blown theory. there's not much to back it up. right now the good me is winning. but only by a little bit. a tiny bit. and i know you think this rant will be all weird and oddly personal about the bad me. but the bad me isn't that bad. and the good me is just the part of me that buys paper products in bulk. that's how the idea came to me. the good me takes care of the bad me when the good me buys a lot of paper towels and sort of hides them in two or three locations around the apartment. i almost ran out of paper towels tonight, but then i realized a roll was hidden in some kitchen cabinet i rarely use. saved. the good me one. and the bad me said "hey, marc, check to see if there are any hidden boxes of tissues." sure enough, there were two boxes of tissues, purchased in bulk, hidden in the closet. thank you "good me." during the past week my allergies have been acting up and i've been using paper towels to blow my nose, inbetween taking minor doses of claritin. now i can use tissues. and the red skin underneath my nose appreciates that. i like the good me. i want to be more like that.
it's time to throw down some links and clean out my bloglines clipblog:
back in june gothamist linked to a few new photoblogs which reminds me that i should update the picture on the front page of balgavy.com and check out all the photoblogs i like. posting jamie's photos from the borrowed camera project would be a good idea, too.
splicing gone wild matt of a whole lotta nothing suggests the idea of the "ego feed" which would combine all of the various feeds he produces with photos and lists and such. i don't fully understand it and i guess that's why i saved it. reminder to self: look back into this two or three months from now.
a link to a review of sharp's kid glove shave gel check out the actual review and all the comments...since it was linked from boing boing and got tons of exposure there are dozens of thoughts on shaving. i have yet to really delve into these. this link also reminds me that this morning i was struck with the urge to shave. i won't be getting rid of my beard but i think i will be carving away a few of the hairs below my lower lip. it's going to look seriously stupid. it's the end of summer, and i'm allowed.
a post from today by jeff jarvis about protests and the convention and the police some interesting thoughts on the nature of protesting and wondering if there's a better way for a group to get their message across.
jon stewart and ted koppel part 2 another link from today, this time from lost remote. i guess jon and todd spoke with each other again and there was good discourse about the nature of media. i'm sorry i missed this. i even watched about 5 minutes of nightline last night, too.
there are one or two other clippings i've yet to really get into but they require some actual thought on my part. i'll have to save those for some other time.
Forbes has a list of 60 Cheap Places to Live. I've yet to read this, but I'm sure it'll start off interesting and then get kind of boring. But I'm up for change. And I'm curious to know what's out there. (link via cheap stingy bastard)
UPDATE (30 seconds later): I just realized this piece is slightly interactive! Very Cool. And I am saying this without sarcasm, I swear. I am looking forward to finding out more about various types of communities (Porch-Swing, Happy Hootervilles, IQ Campuses, Steroid Cities, Bohemian Bargains, or Telecommuting Heavens).
while spending all those hours driving a few weeks ago, a fair number of hours were spent searching out baseball games on the AM radio dial. if you're interested in ground conductivity, the ionosphere and the transmittal of radio waves, doc searls just posted a nice blog entry called the dirt on AM radio coverage.
reason has a great interview with john perry barlow, a co-founder of the electronic frontier foundation and a longtime collaborator with the grateful dead. he talked a lot about digital revolutions fifteen years ago and now he's participating in an interesting tv show for discovery about the health of his body and how he's changing many of his habits in order to survive middle age. and he's become a democrat. the interview is pretty broad reaching and barlow talks about part of the reason for becoming a political activist - he was busted for having a small amount of pot at an airport. it's an interesting story and his take on things is worth reading. as far as the current administration and how we ended up with bush as president he has this to say:
People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.
(fyi: barlow's blog is barlowfriendz. he doesn't update too frequently, but whenever he does it's worthwhile reading)
chris larry spots laura bush in soho and blogs about it right away:
"At first I was hoping new Met wife Anna Benson was enjoying the fruits of her new city, but when one onlooker said it was LB I knew I had to sit around and wait for the show. "
fredericksburg, va's local newspaper runs a feature every monday called ON THE SPOT. it's a short interview section with just a regular person from the community. it's sort of like the gothamist interview, but there are ever any crazy taxicab stories. today's ON THE SPOT interviews a woman who owns a store called THE BEAD PARADE. she provides my favorite answer ever:
What celebrity do you most identify with?
I like Adam Sandler. He's not conventional. He's a little bit crazy, and I like that he's so funny. And I think it's cool that he likes penguins.
i'm trying to find the ON THE SPOT archives, so i can look at all of these interviews at once. there was a good one either last week or the week before with a guy who wouldn't tell anyone about all the trouble he got into as a kid, even though he had a nickname like "toughguy" or "bad dog" or something like that.
my friends are all about the radio dial these days!
chris larry has a run down on his experiences with listening to AIR AMERICA RADIO during the past few months. this is a must-read for anyone who has never listened to the station (that would be me) and is curious to know what it's all about.
and jamie says XM satellite radio is the "bomb diggity!" or is that just "the bomb." he didn't say that about it. is the right phrase ..satellite radio is "bomb diggity"? anyway, it made him use the phrase in a blog entry and that's a-ok with me.
i am obsessed with my fantasy baseball team. it's pretty much the only thing i can think about these days. thursday night i'm meeting friends for happy hour (i'll be a bit late, by the way) and i am going to make a most concerted effort to avoid talking about baseball. it will be a challenge.
as of this morning i was 2.5 points out of first place in my twelve person league. on april 30th, with a lead of 4 points, i moved into first place for the first time. i've hovered in and around first place for the past month. i had no inkling my rotisserie team would do so well. on nights that don't involve going out for happy hour drinks i find myself at home obsessively flipping from one baseball game to another. the whole thing is well beyond ridiculous.
(image from 30 april 2004)
on another note, is online poker the new day trading?
the feel good story of the night
danny graves, a pitcher for the cincinnati reds, lost his wallet while playing on the west coast not too long ago. someone found it and returned it to him. the heartwarming part? graves' $1400 in cash was converted to travelers' checks before the package was sent back to the address on his driver's license (minus shipping costs).
i was in atlantic city this past weekend. did some gambling. took a few photos (slowly being displayed on the front page of this site). ate pizza at 6:30am one morning. enjoyed a steak sandwich at the white house sub shop.
but i didn't know atlantic city could inspire such serious internet pontificating until i read "the worst game room ever". it's a long article with lots of pictures about a guy who stayed at the quality inn. he visited the hotel's game room, and i've got to say, it looks pretty bad. his entire tale is fun to read and something worth doing this afternoon.
here's a snippet of what the author had to say about the ice cream machine in the game room:
It's filled with crap, and I know what you're thinking. It's just gooey melted ice cream. Gross, but not too gross. You don't want to touch it, but even if you were unable to keep the ice cream wrapper from touching it, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker.
No, no no no. Even if you want to believe it's ice cream -- and it's not -- please scroll back up and check out the photo of the dreaded machine. See that poster thing depicting all the assorted cones and sundaes a person could conceivably get if the machine suddenly morphed into a better model that actually sold cones and sundaes? Posters like that haven't been produced in at least, what, fifty years?
(link via kottke.org)
we here at balgavy.com HQ require an email address when someone wants to post a comment. not an uncommon practice. another standard practice is for said commentor to make up that email address. i'm down with that. it's cool, and usually pretty damn funny.
we've also taken to calling jamie by his shortened blog name - "apes." and that's led to the fake email addresses that end in @apes.com.
has anyone checked out apes.com yet? the world wildlife fund missed a big opportunity when they let that domain slip, i'm sure of it. apes.com sends all web viewers direct to ALL PHASE ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS.
rest assured, like the staff of all phase, the staff of balgavy.com can be found "arriving in a clearly marked service truck and wearing a uniform with an Identification Badge letting you know they are here to serve you with pride."
Three or four years ago a roll of really cheap pink toilet paper entered my bathroom. I�m an adult with a job and that means I can afford good toilet paper. I prefer Charmin, but Cottonelle will do. The thin toilet paper that you can steal from work or buy for $.59 per roll at the bodega just isn�t up to my standards.
Sometimes you run out of toilet paper, and that�s where the cheap stuff enters the picture. It�s uncomfortable. It�s scratchy. It�s flimsy. And when it�s pink it�s not even aesthetically pleasing. On occasion, it�s the only thing in the bathroom. Sooner or later, we run out of good toilet paper and need to place the pink roll next to the toilet. I don�t know who brought the pink stuff into my house, but I owe that person a beer.
For the past three years, I�ve used the pink roll as the �safety roll,� functioning in the same way that the end of a cash register tape does. If you�ve ever worked a register, you know that when the tape roll is reaching the end, it has a red stripe printed on one side, alerting the user that it�s time to get a new roll. Cheap pink toilet paper serves the same function in my household. Everyone I�ve ever lived with is pretty good about buying new toilet paper but every so often it�s necessary to use the pink roll.
Due to it�s not-so-pleasing nature, the pink roll is only used for half a day and then replaced by the good toilet paper. The safety roll returns to its spot in the cabinet and is reserved for another occasion three or four months into the future. Over the course of the past three or four years I�ve purchased two or three rolls of cheap pink toilet paper. They�ve been among my wisest investments.
UPDATE: please see comments below. it turns out that i have zero original ideas, but i am happy to steal the ideas of others and share them with the world.
the current soap at my bathroom sink is the banana flavor just for kids anti-backterial foaming hand soap from bath and body works. it makes my hands smeel like runts.
i don't like to get political very often, but this post by jeff jarvis about howard stern's most recent fines, freedom of speech, michael powell in the fcc rolling over to michael copps' views and the impending content witch hunt by ashcroft may be the best thing on the internet at this very moment.
sarah f. has a written a piece for prettywitty.com called You Can Have the Town, Why Don't You Take It? (The Hilton Sisters Take On 21st Century Feminism):
Truly girls of the modern era, The Hilton Sisters enlist all the benefits of capitalism to create a new kind of feminist persona. Paris and Nicky have cast aside social morals usually drilled into famous heirs. And not in a Lizzie Grubman way. They may be spoiled attention seekers, but The Hiltons revel in these traits of their upbringing.
but sarah, that still doesn't answer the question of how paris would react if i stuck the ends of an ethernet cable in my ear like a stethoscope.
This is the space where I pretend to write something transcendent about socks.
This is the space where I mention Satan�s Laundromat.
This is the space where I comment about how I can never spell laundromat and I don�t know the word�s derivation.
This is the space where I get indignant about my socks never matching.
This is the space where I get overly descriptive about the "feel" of my boots with the unmatched socks.
This is the space where you roll your eyes and wonder what I�ve been smoking.
This is the space where I apologize that the focus of the last three months of my life has been about the quest for sneakers when it really should�ve been a thirty minute trip to Macy�s to buy new black socks (and maybe one dark grey pair).
This is the space where I act all sheepish about caring so much about those gosh-darn socks.
This is the space where you shake your head and stop reading.
today i just learned about a cool new project some friends of mine created: day 17. according to the introduction to the site it's "a web-log of sorts, updated monthly, in which each participant takes note of what happens to them on the 17th of the month, and writes it down."
played a little poker last night. a lot of hands were dealt. jeremy, jim and i all have sore fingers today from all the shuffling. i just checked online and it looks like we can get an automatic card shuffler for less than $15. it's on a website geared for those who are getting on in years. and it runs on C battteries. it's about time i create an amazon.com wishlist.
if you're not intersted in an in-depth discussion about citizens' media being the new pong, today's fun online reading seems to be the women of the black table "rooting for the underdog" (they explain why they're attracted to certain guys who aren't hot in the traditional sense - both tucker carlson and james cromwell make the list).
just a quick reminder:
snopes.com, the urban legends reference pages, is a great resource.
hopefully five years from now no one under 40 will ever need to spend more then an hour or two debating various urban legends. yes, that takes a lot of fun out of life. we now have more time to discuss why the lead reality television particpant in "my big fat obnoxious fiance" is so unsympathetic.
Last week I realized that I want to know more about the town where I grew up than just what I read in the headlines of The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VA�s local paper. What I want to be able to view online is a blog like Gothamist, Gawker or blogging.la that covers the city and adds a bit of flavored commentary (okay, okay "snark"). I scoured Google typing in terms like: Fredericksburg, blog, weblog, Stafford, Spotsylvania, blogspot, and even livejournal. I couldn�t find much at all. I certainly didn�t come across any current blogs that looked at life in Fredericksburg or even a certain aspect of life in the area. I was pretty disappointed.
While reading the local paper today, I came across an article entitled Web Site Targets Beck (Bill Beck, Fredericksburg�s mayor). While Fred Bugle is not quite the site I was looking for last week (and I�m a bit frustrated that it didn�t come up in any of my searches) it seems like the kind of thing a good sized Virginia town needs. I�m not saying I agree with the articles published on the web site, although I did get a good laugh at the front page�s 469-word disclaimer. Actually, the only article I�ve read so far is about two baseball fields that have been vacant for at least the past year or two due to problems with the soil. The new site adds to the conversation and I like that.
Not only does Fredericksburg have a local newspaper with a regularly updated web site (I can even have the articles downloaded to my Palm handheld!), there�s also a local monthly paper called Front Porch Fredericksburg that publishes online. With the new City Council critiquing (lampooning?) Fred Bugle thrown into the mix there is a perfect niche waiting to be filled by a blog critiquing and commenting on all three sites. And I want more. I want a Fredericksburg blog that also covers the arts and culture scene. It should also include photoblog content.
This is where I get a little ahead of myself. I dream too much of being able to spend an afternoon reading about various cities not from their daily papers: but, from locally produced web sites that include commentary and links from a number of different sources. J.D. Lasica, Sr. Editor for Online Journalism Review, has a number of thorough articles on the subject of "participatory journalism."
I imagine in the mid-to-late nineties a lot of cities and towns created websites that listed contact phone numbers and other �welcome to our town� features. It�s now time to revisit those sites, updating and modernizing them. A brief search lead me to a few blogs (The Dover (NH) Post, St. Louis Bloggers, and lawrence(ks).com blogs) produced in other cities that seem to do a good job heading in the direction of what I want from the Fredericksburg, VA internet community.
Perhaps a web site like this already exists for the town where I grew up and I just can�t find it? If you know of one, send me an e-mail (marc (at) balgavy (dot) com). I�m anxious to read what�s out there.
architect james kunstler examines the cultural landscape with his eyesore of the month. i'm anxious to devour the archives before turning to tonight's poker game. but read lightly - he can get deliciously mean (for example, check out his september review of a typical suburban house). (link via boingboing)
one thing i really like is the warmness of a stack of paper that's just printed from a recently powered up laser printer.
all the crazy news happens on fridays. i failed to read or hear about this over the weekend (probably because the only newspaper i picked up was the new york times magazine, which had no articles i actually read): in south carolina last week a group of police offers entered a high school (as requested by the principal) in an attempt to shut down drug activity. guns were drawn. no drugs were found. (link via hit & run)
i grew up in virginia. at the other end of the county one county over from where i grew up there's a giant man-made lake that's used to cool some sort of nuclear power facility. it's called Lake Anna (the lake, not the power facility). anyway, i still like reading the local newspaper. today i saw a headline that read "Child playing with lighter ignites Lake Anna blaze." but did i read that properly or did i subconsciously add an "a" to the front of the word "blaze." i added the "a," clicked the link and expected to read about a lake catching on fire. maybe i'm just not a detail oriented type of guy. or maybe i'm just really wanted to see photos of a giant lake on fire.
sometimes you find yourself in a hurry. and you need to make a few calls. but the people you are calling aren't picking up the phone. voicemail is convenient. it's the way to go. i like being able to leave a message on voicemail. what i don't like are those pre-recorded voicemail messages tacked onto the ends of user-created voicemail messages. do you know what i'm talking about?
you're in a rush! all you want to do is say "hi. this is marc calling you back. please call me at your earliest convenience." but what do you have to wait through in order to leave that simple message (esp. if you don't know if the shortcut to the "beep" is the pound key or that asterisk (but that's a completely different rant))? "hello. you've reached janet q. public at private enterprise company. unfortunately i'm not at my desk right now but i may be around the office or at lunch or in a meeting or on the other line. if you need to reach my right away you can call my cellphone at xxx.xxx.xxxx." AND THEN you have to listen to a pre-recorded message about pressing 1 to mark your message urgent or press 0 to reach the operator or press 2 to leave your callback number or press 3 to leave a message (unless you'd like to wait for the tone). all that excessive talking sends me into a rage! a rage, i tell you.
(comments worth noting - from before the archives were deleted and then restored)
i hope you got good and drunk last night.
Posted by: jamie on September 4, 2003 11:47 AM
he got good. don't think he got the drunk.
Posted by: alex on September 4, 2003 02:00 PM
Don't you hate pants?
Posted by: kfan on September 4, 2003 05:07 PM
i totally hate pants. i can't think very clearly when i'm wearing pants. (i sort of equate my body to a computer, and like a computer, i work better when i'm not overheated. pants are a main source of me being overheated). i'm pretty sure having to wear pants is the reason i haven't been made a vice president in my company. when i create the next list of things that frustrate me to know end, pants will certainly be at the top of the list.
Posted by: marc on September 4, 2003 07:01 PM
have i already covered the excessive use of scotch tape? whenever i see a one page flyer or a poster that uses more than tiny pieces of transparent tape i become visibly frustrated. i roll my eyes and wonder why a fifth of that amount of tape couldn't be used. the additonal tape does nothing to hold that piece of paper to the wall, or the inside of the elevator or wherever. all it does is create a complex probelm when it comes to removing the flyer. granted, i'm not the one who has to remove all that tape that eventually gets stuck to the wall, but someone will. and prying tape away from an object with your finger nails isn't a fun task.
it's ridiculously frustrating that at 12:02pm if i want a cigarette and a scotch (i don't prefer scotch, that's why this is hypothetical) i can't walk into the bar around the corner and have both at the same time.
today i think i'll be posting from the list of things that annoy me to no end. during the past year or two i've kept running notes on my computer about some of my pet peeves.
i find it really distressing when people create documents or files with dates in the title and then write the date in the "incorrect" fashion. they usually call the file something like "report090203.xls" or something like that. and that's fine - today. it tells me the report was created on september 3rd, 2003. i appreciate they've included the date, i really do. but i wish they would write the date so i could locate the file faster when i'm using a computer.
i want files with dates to be written "report20030902.xls." things just line up better that way. the first part of the number changes the least, and the last section changes the most. and when the reports appear in a list, they appear in the order they were created. are these things not taught in schools? do people not think these things through? do people never ever go back to their files? it's quite frustrating and i wish people would change their behaviors. at least once a week i think about putting together an email and sending it to some of the main offenders at work telling them how numbering their reports my way would make everyone's lives about 0.000001% easier. but i don't. because i am quiet and shy.
Another Halloween is about to pass and I�m going to go through another year without a costume. My costumelessness is reaching a new level of personal embarrassment. I tried last year, I really did. I was all set to go to a party on a Saturday night and I realized I had to find a costume. I remember that Saturday clearly. I walked all over Brooklyn trying to find foam padding. I was still at the height of my plant obsession (see previous entry) and I wanted to be a pachypodium. I was going to find green foam and cut it into the shape of leaves. I checked a carpet warehouse and Home Depot without any luck. I ended up going to the party without a costume. I was kind of bummed.
About a month ago I went to a foam shop on Canal Street. I thought I�d do this year�s Halloween costume planning in advance and get everything taken care of so I wouldn't worry if I had to go to a last minute party. The woman in the store had no idea what I was looking for. When I asked for the kind of foam those Statue of Liberty headgear things are made out of she looked at me kind of funny and suggested that those things weren�t even made out of foam. I gave up my search. I won�t be dressing as a plant this year. But if photographic evidence is to be believed, I had a great costume in elementary school! I was the Canadian province of Manitoba!
common courtesy has flown out the window!!!
printed below is an email i just received from someone i've never met. someone with whom i've never communicated.
i can only assume she's visited this plant page of balgavy.com. but there's no introduction, not even a hello. just five question marks!
>From: "C. H."
>To: marc
>Subject: Question...
>Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:35:52 -0700
>
>My ponytail palm is getting brown on the tips...Am I over watering or under
>watering...???I water once a week ?? Thanks for the help ..
i awoke from an odd dream this morning. influenced by dave eggers' new book, you shall know our velocity, i dreamed of traveling america's southwest. and i ended up inside a big box retailer. the dream is hazy now. work was busy this morning and i didn't get the chance to make this entry at 11am, as i'd hoped to do. but when i woke up i couldn't stop thinking about visiting a store called BEST in northern virginia circa 1982. or maybe 1981. it was a great sort of prequel to the world of big box retail. sort of like a department store, but not attached to a shopping mall like all those anchor stores. my fond memories of comparing prices between the toy department of BEST and the toys of TOYS R US made my morning thoughts shift. suddenly i was consumed with the idea of TOYS R US' shopping gauntlet! as a child i was so amazed that TOYS R US was so big and that every one of them looked strikingly similar. and no matter what, to get to the real toys, you had to enter and then veer down an aisle and back - passing all the seasonal items. is that kind of store design legal? i haven't been inside a TOYS R US in years. surely the one in times square that has the ferris wheel isn't like this. is it?
this morning i was convinced i hadn't been inside toys r us in five years. it turns out i haven't been inside a suburban toys r us in five years. the company's stores in manhattan and brooklyn have a different outside appearance than the ones i remember from when i was seven. i've been inside them, i just haven't made any purchases.
what is wrong with kids these days? thanks to the link from the obscure store i found this article about students who violate the dress code at their high school. if they wear some offending article of clothing, it seems as though they then have to wear a t-shirt for the rest of the day. printed on the t-shirt? "I violated the dress code" and "Property of the discipline office."
i want to know why the article doesn't mention the student backlash? shouldn't there be large groups of students violating the dress code on purpose just to wear the t-shirts? is high school that based on conformity these days? are the t-shirts really that ugly? does anyone have a link to the photo of the shirts? i think i want one!
in the spirit of mc.clintock.com and the listing of items sold at the mcsweeney's store i've decided to occasionally list five items which can be found in the top drawer of my dresser. today i've pulled the following items for examination:
1 pair ray-ban sunglasses in original case with copy of 'limited warranty against breakage' dated 22 may 1992
2 small christmas tree bulbs from blockbuster video promoting the release of 'monkey trouble'
11 packs dentyne ice chewing gum in wintergreen, peppermint, spearmint and arctic chill flavors
1 snoopy wallet which contains a foil sticker of han solo. the words "i love be___" written in the billfold part of the wallet with gold paint pen are starting to fade.
1 promo catalogue for the art of shaving and geo f trumper products
the plans for wednesday night changed. there was no shaving to do when i got home. i've called an audible and decided to let my beard turn into significant stubble through the weekend. i will then shave my sideburns into the pattern i really want.
so i visited my parents over the weekend. my sister had one of those giant squishy exercise balls stored in the room where i sleep. if you were there, you'll recall i tried using a friend's in pittsburgh. because i was quite drunk i met with little success. that memory haunted me throughout the weekend and i made no attempt to remove this ball from its perch.
saturday night was spent visiting the bars of the town where i grew up. i went out with the thought of looking for folks i knew from high school. i also thought i'd have an okay, sort of fun time. that attempt also met with little success. i had a pint at some upstairs bar. not too crowded. spoke with no one. walked through spanky's (a regional chain), but the bar was fairly empty. and then i walked to a place called brent's or bret's or brock's. yes, brock's. it was next to the river and it was packed with lots of loud music emanating from the back deck. i showed my i.d. but was then faced with a five dollar cover charge. i asked 'even if i'm just going to the bar?' 'yes.' i turned around and walked a few blocks to a place called orbit's. when i looked in i saw some hippy looking troubadour strumming a george thorogood song. and everyone was sitting down at tables. i turned around and went to the area where my car was parked, cursing myself for not realizing a seemingly interesting alt. country band had played the same venue the previous night. before unlocking the car door, i stopped in at some bar known for its right wing political leanings. there were about 20 people inside. no one i knew. i didn't order a thing. i drove the car a few blocks and checked out another bar on the river. this one had a live cover band and a five dollar cover charge. having had only one drink the whole night, i decided i was willing to pay the five dollars. but i wasn't ready to hear a bad cover band. so, i did what any logical person would do and walked down the street back to brock's. and i paid my $5 to them. i ordered a beer and milled about. the place was packed with all kinds of young twentysomethings - none of whom i had any interest in speaking with. although it was fun watching them interact with a few of the folks from a local high school's class of '62 reunion.
that about sums up my weekend.
because it's a gorgeous day with sun and light clouds and blue skies, i think i'll spend a few minutes complaining. during the past three or four weeks i've had to deal with a broken NGN terminal at my local deli/foodshop. i'd grown used to spending twenty seconds in the morning looking at the screen and getting the weather forecast, local sports scores and national news. and by broken, i don't mean that the screen has gone blank - it's still repeating the information from three weeks ago. the weather forecast still says 95 degrees and sunny! i just don't know how i'm expected to get through my day! am i really supposed to come into my office, hit a few buttons on my computer and pull up the weather forecast on my own? yeah, it's part of my homepage, but i still have to go through the trouble of opening the browser.
i guess things are going well if that's all i have to complain about.
I missed my 10 year high school reunion. I was in Boston. (to digress, I�m currently enjoying a chocolate chip cookie or two from Cookie It Up!) The plans to visit Boston this past weekend were made before I knew about the reunion, so instead of visiting Virginia, I visited Massachusetts. It looks like I missed some of the fun at the reunion, but Keefe was kind enough to post photos from the various gatherings.
I don�t have too much to say about my high school days. It was during those years I came to the conclusion I had ten total hours of conversation in me. I figured that after talking with someone for about ten hours (spread out during a few days or weeks, of course) I would be out of things to say. I came to this conclusion as stage manager for one of the drama productions at school. There wasn�t too much for me to do as stage manager except talk with the extras in the play � their small roles allowed them plenty of time to chat. I remember getting to know a few of them fairly well. But after eight hours of conversation, I�d start to realize that I was running out of things to talk about. Being the meta-conversationalist that I was at the time I�d always mention that I only had ten hours of conversation in me and I think that would bring the conversation to an end. Perhaps all my thinking about my conversation skills was just a defense mechanism to get out of getting to know people better?
some people should just learn how to use the 'unsubscribe' option.
(this is really only directed at those who are part of group emails that complain about being a part of that group)
It�s been a month during which I�ve spent more time reading the blog entries of others than writing my own. Too much time spent at the office doing real work. Weekends spent traveling or resting. Rest assured, I�m taking photos, just not posting them. Labor Day weekend looks to be busy (filled with photo opportunities, I�m sure). I�d spoken about putting balgavy.com on hiatus for the month of August, and I think I�ve come pretty close. There�s catching up to be done, and I�m intent on doing it soon.
i just want to take a moment and give a shout-out to a guy named eddie i knew in elementary school. i think his name was eddie, but i don't totally remember. he moved out of town sometime after fourth grade, or maybe even before then.
i do remember a birthday party at his house that involved games of skill. one of those games involved dropping clothespins from nose level into a target. the prize? some sort of james bond edition matchbox car with - get this - an ejection seat!
now that i put some more thought into it, it may have been a party my parents threw for one of my birthdays. but it was held indoors, and my birthday is a summertime event. it wouldn't have been indoors. anyway, here's a shoutout to eddie, even though it was his birthday and i won the ejection seat james bond matchbox car.
bar closes because owner doesn't like clientele.
i've always been one to eat cereal without milk. i guess the official term is "dry." i just like it that way. when i was younger i discovered my favorite way to eat cheerios. during breakfast i'd sometimes have bacon on my plate and i'd tear that bacon into little tiny cheerio sized pieces and drop it into the bowl of cereal. talk about a great meal!
of course, this process makes one think of bacos (i don't think they were on the market yet). a few months ago i finally tried baco bits or bacos or whatever they're called. i didn't like them, but maybe that's because i was eating them on a baked potato and not in a bowl of cereal.
I was cranky through almost all of Sunday. I woke up cranky. I went to brunch cranky.
I watched "Lovely & Amazing" while cranky � and upon exited the theatre I feel like I spilled too much venom about the movie. I had no idea the movie was going to be as depressing as it is. I thought entering the theatre and seeing something light and comical would change my moodiness. I was hoping to go from cranky to something else. Even a post movie shower didn�t change my mood. I went to the park cranky. I threw Frisbee as if I had a chip on my shoulder. I rode the subway cranky. And then at home I spent hours updating my website. Cranky the whole time! Still cranky today, too.
Honestly, I think my crankiness (I�m so trying to overuse this word, �cranky�) was gone by the time I ate crispy M&M�s at the park. Chocolate and crisped rice can cure anything.
i don't have any proof for what i'm about to mention. somehow during the past year or two i've started to use email only for communicating about upcoming events. it's not longer a substitute for a long letter written to a friend. those letters seem to have disappeared with adolescence. of the five to ten non-work email messages i compose during the course of a day, 99% of those involve plans for that night, the following night or the upcoming weekend. email for me is like the telephone was ten years ago. i have no desire to "waste my time" with pleasantries. these days i'm in such a rush to dash those communicative thoughts into an email that i barely breathe - even if the email is several sentences long. i think i'm getting old in that mid-to-late twentysomething kind of way. what's next after email? when i'm 70 will i be sitting in my garden thinking about writing a long letter to a friend across the country? will i be sitting in that same garden with some laptop on a table? a brain reading machine strapped to my forehead? i don't know. thinking about the future confuses me.
i spent the weekend in front of the computer screen and my eyes aren't sore. this is frightening. and so incredibly wrong. does this mean i'm becoming the future of humanity? a remarkable combination of man and machine?
actually, i did spend a few hours in the park saturday afternoon. those slightly overcast days are so dangerous. flirting with turning my cheeks red from an almost hidden sun is such a fun prospect. instead of working to finish 'fast food nation,' i read an article about human longevity in reason magazine. am i really dancing around the idea of declaring myself a libertarian?
the summer is a great time of year. while i didn't accomplish much during the long fourth of july weekend, i did manage to rent a video game or two from my local video store. and last night that video game (with the late fee increasing by each non-returned day) got some serious use. summer monday nights work perfectly for hanging out with friends, playing video games, and talking about the brilliance of the fla-vor-ice.
the bar is good. very good. started out slow. picked up. didn't matter. people. quick walk home, brisk even. i like being able to type fast. i'm so happy i took a typing class in high school. i imagine i'd be able to type fast if i hadn't but i never would have had the experience of making pictures with typed symbols. geez, holidays.
i'm blaming the heat for anything i've done, said or written in the past 48 hours.
call me insane, but i didn't mind the heat this morning. yeah, yeah, i know it will get hotter by 2pm but for right now* i'm comfortable. i'm enjoying the feel of the sweat forming on my brow. for some unknown reason i walked briskly this morning. and this is not the kind of weather that suggests brisk walking. i think this morning energy is just a carry-over from last night in which i managed to accomplish a few major tasks i'd been putting off; not only did i wash dishes and shave, i filled my laundry bag for hauling to the laundry mat. it was hauled there this morning.
oh, i just wish i had something interesting to say about tape dispensers.
*fyi, i'm inside an air-conditioned office building right now
in general, food preparation is not my thing. i don't get too excited about it and i don't think about it too frequently.
sometime between yesterday's sunday afternoon nap and the brisk walk to prospect park, the subject of broiling vs. grilling came up. none of us knew the difference, and assumed it was the same thing. i vowed to look into the subject further and have found an answer. basically, broiling involves heating from the top and grilling involves heating from the bottom. all those who already knew this, please stop laughing at me.
i'm currently working on a letter to the mayor of pittsburgh about the terrible time my friends and i had getting a cab two saturdays ago. i'm planning on sending a copy to the yellow cab company (which is more or less a monopoly in the town), the pennsylvania public utility commission (they regulate the cabs) and probably the allegheny institute for public policy. that organization published a report entitled "An Analysis for the Demand of Taxicabs in the Pittsburgh Area" in March of 2001. to read the report, click here and scroll down to report 01-01.
i've got some sort of sinus cold today. it's acting on that part of my brain that controls my dreams. i was having a lot of strange dreams this morning.
i was wearing the t-shirt i've got on right now - an old college t-shirt with lots of holes in it - especially in the collar. but i was wearing this shirt backwards and i kept adjusting it. i wore it with a zip up fleece so that no one would notice the holes.
i was walking around my old college but it wasn't my college at all (and no, the fry bar didn't play into this dream). i was with a friend from high school who also went to my college. and we were with her friends, visiting our old dorms and such. but then i didn't want to go into one of them, and stumbled off to the corner of the yard where i saw a green garden hose and a giant area for sliding (a la the famous slip'n'slide).
after that i wandered over to another table where a bunch of friends from high school who didn't go to my college were hanging out. they all had haircuts. all of them. one of them (who had gone off to medical school) was going to be enrolling for a semester. i told her we should hang out (as i was now going to this school in my dream). she thought i told her we should freak out and that made her a bit nervous. then i walked back toward my house, not wanting to bother them anymore. i passed by the campus center and started getting chills and filling with anxious thoughts because now that i'd re-enrolled in my college, on campus mailboxes weren't guaranteed for all four years. that meant i'd have to get my mail at my house. and if you lived where i lived during college that meant you'd be getting mail there for at least the next ten years.
i'm not sure i'm a 'party' guy. i'm definitely not a 'city guy.'
i'm feeling the urge to see and be seen at a lot of parties this summer. but can i even be a party going sort of person if i don't wear sunglasses? i think i own two pairs of sunglasses.
i bought one pair for one dollar two years ago at coney island. they've got plastic black frames supporting two mirrored lenses. these are the sort of sunglasses you might put on your five year old child for the school talent show. these are not glasses anyone should actually wear into the sun. the odds are good they've got the stickers about protection from uva and uvb rays still on them, but i don't believe those stickers. is that what sunglasses protect from? or is it just sunscreen?
my second pair of sunglasses was purchased at the height of my 'maybe those hippies aren't so bad' days. during my high school's senior skip day, a friend and i traveled to springfield mall where i bought a pair of black metal framed ray-ban's with circular lenses. they suited my long hair and tie-dye that summer. by the time college ended they weren't worn out but i was convinced that the roundness of the lenses mirrored the roundness of my cheeks a little too closely.
during the past three years, i'd given up on contact lenses. now that i've cast my glasses glasses to the wind and i'm wearing the contacts again, it's time to reexamine my sunglass options.
i think all the activity of the past two weeks has finally caught up with me. there's a backlog of photos to post and i've got a giant headache. and a runny nose. and a slight cough. and i feel like i'm in need of two days of sleep. and all this is after a sunday of sleeping on the couch. i have a cold. or a fever. i'm not sure which. if i had one of those plastic strips for my forehead, i'd take my temperature. i'm sure it would be higher than normal.
while resting in bed earlier tonight it occurred to me that i've had multiple checking accounts over the course of the past 12 years. in all those years, i've never ordered checks with anything other than the basic check design. sure, i've varied the color depending on the account, but i've never ordered checks with little pictures of the simpsons. or checks with a watercolor like background of my university. or checks with pooh and pals. i think i've missed out on a lot. if i were the type to write checks in the grocery store, i'm sure i could get some funny looks. and i'm sure those checks would brighten the lives of those receiving the money at time warner cable. or is it aol time warner cable? i think it's time they spin that business off. but that's just me. nope. no little line drawings on my checks. as much as i love astronauts, i've got no images of snoopy in a space helmet. or wood cuts of chimpanzees (representing primates in space). i've been forced to put all my checking creativity into the "notes" section of my checks. now that i'm old all i can muster is the random account number or the delightful catch phrase i utter at the beginning of every month - "rent."
i don't think 'careening' is exactly the right word. it's not an entirely perfect description. i do think it comes close. saturday was one of those days that just lasted a long time and by the end of it, i was ready for a solid sleep. is careening something you can do without a car? specifically, i'm referring to my walk between luxx and the rock star bar. at no point did i actually stretch my arms to the sides and pretend I was an airplane, but in retrospect, it sure feels like that's how i navigated the trip from one part of williamsburg to the next.
i think my ears are still ringing today (or maybe that's the incessant whine of this computer). after seeing the wall of sound that is skywave at luxx, i gathered my wits (disappointed they didn't play one or two more songs). wth my digital camera tucked into my pocket, i whirled out of the bar and headed west. i was on a quest for pizza and in a hurry to get to my next destination.
a left on bedford. no sign of pizza...but there were a few open delis. i stopped in one, thinking it would be the last option for finding food. in my drunk and quite buzzed state i asked for a roast beef sandwich. no bread. i needed food. i hadn't eaten since the fourth or fifth inning of the mets game. thinking perhaps too quickly, i surrendered to my sugar loving interests. i bought a pack of hostess cupcakes (for $.50!) and i was out the door. by the time i got to the rock star bar i was on a sugar high. i think. i must have been. but i honestly can't tell. i've never gotten any sort of sugar high before. processed sugar is like water for me. but i couldn't sit still at the show. the only thing that kept me focused when the spectators finally went on was the picture taking.
yeah. lots of careening and whirling on saturday night.
earlier this morning, for the briefest of moments, i thought i was wearing two different types of shoes. i can't explain how it happened. i stepped off the elevator and looked down at my feet. my left shoe had just the right amount of sun glancing off the top and i was certain i'd accidentally slipped an old shiny loafer onto that foot, instead of the four month old boot i knew i was wearing. the boot was definitely on my right foot. it had that worn out look at the top. of course, there was nothing amiss. luckily, that split second thought left me unfazed for the rest of the day.
oddly, i've been thinking about shoes quite a bit.
while walking up the subway stairs this morning i knew i'd made a good decision with the boots now covering my toes. in contrast to the six previous wearings, i somehow managed to do a good job securing the velcro "laces." these boots are definitely staying on my feet. part of saturday was spent at saks fifth avenue making a sandal purchase. the warm weather of the weekdays before had convinced me the time to buy summer sandals was upon us. i'm happy with the pair i found but i haven't been able to wear them at all. i'm not sure if it's gotten above 60degreesF all week long. bigger still, i can't believe i'm ready to confront the new york summer as a sandal wearer.
woke up at 7am. haven't gone back to sleep. and i was feeling great at 7am!!! great. i'm not quite sure what happened. i was wasted. wasted. when i got home. around 1:15 am. office holiday party. i'm sort of piecing things together. i was talking a lot of shit at the party. too many inquiries about things i had no business making inquiries about. but that's what being drunk is about, i guess. and when i was doing a circle lap through the party to find people to chat with, i remember thinking "it's time to go. i must extricate myself from this situation." but did i? of course not. one more drink and it was time to make more of an ass out of myself. but that was my plan going into the night. i guess i'll find out monday if i succeeded.
sunday morning i dreamed that my apartment was overwhelmed by spiders. the images my brain created of these spiders were amazingly realistic. i was paralyzed by fear: one of the spiders was approaching a roommate and i saw it creeping behind her - i couldn't say a thing. my mouth was glued shut and i could only make brief noises that amounted to nothing - she couldn't hear me. my brain shifted, though, and i don't know if that spider got to her. out of the corner of my eye i saw two more spiders on a webline they'd created from a shelf. these spiders were on their spider strand and i think they were making out. all the black spider legs were intertwined. the spider legs were pointed and sharp and totally scared me. totally.
there's a bottle of 22 oz malt liquor in the fridge - maybe that will cure my nightmares.
over three thousand votes. amazing.
a few years ago i read an article about the coming of blue l.e.d. lights. i haven't seen too many of them yet. i guess "they" are still working on the technology. blue lights are more expensive to create and use than green or red, or even orange lights.
while at the local bar tonight it crossed my mind that i'm feeling rather peaceful. content. i'm at a nice place in my life right now. the overwhelming urge to buy a little house in a tiny town has been surpressed. i'm not aching for a girlfriend. i had a great dinner last night with expensive wine. i still need to use more lotion to moisturize my elbows, but other than that, things in my small circle of happiness are going well.
i got so much shit in first grade for always writing "o.k." instead of "okay." i think my teacher was just pissed that a child of my intellect and creativity couldn't stop using the phrase "okay."
my eyes hurt andthe spacebar on my keyboard is now pretty shoddy. i should look into fixingit.
everything seems to go wrongat the same time, doesn't it?
i feel like the only productive thing i did today was acquire a Lord of the Rings glass goblet. my
roommates and i went to burger king for lunch (after watching Behind Enemy Lines). Somehow I saw two Owen Wilson/Gene Hackman films in one weekend.
It's late. I'm sleepy. Confused. As always. But more confused than normal. i never vacuumed the corner of my apartment where the dry leaves from my boston fern have collected on the carpet. the situation will be rectified this week.
i was drunk last night (saturday night). i remember the things i said...and i was sort of (but not really) shocked that i was saying them.
and i was serious about an invitation i made.
so i'm the guy with the bottle opener. that fact became clear to me this evening. my friend held a birthday party and everyone brought beer. some of us picked up fancied up bottles of beer that can't just be twisted off. and i was the only person out of 30 who had a bottle opener. what a chore! but what a great way to meet people?
i've had the same plastic key chain bottle opener since the fall of '92. it was a promo item my freshman year of college - a gift from the radio station. the college radio station that was my home away from the dorm rooms for so many nights. the radio station where i met so many great people (some of whom were at the party tonight).
conversation veered from working out to the superfriends to marriage to grilling techniques. it really was a swell evening. and not as drunken last night.
last night was the drunkest i've been in ages. lots of stumbling home and consuming as much water as possible. and! get this! i was in bed before midnight! a rare, rare thing!
i just had an orange freezer stick thing (referred to earlier by their proper name).
tuesday i ordered a few plants on-line. i'm an addict, i think. i'll have to reconfigure the space by the windows in order to get all the plants where they need to be. proper light and all.