Procrastinet

Week 3 Can Kiss My Tuches

So I was jamming along through the 100 Pushups program, getting close to the daily numbers even when I didn't hit them. I improved from 23 to 32 in two weeks. Not exactly on pace to hit 100 four weeks later, but a fair improvement.

Then I got to Week 3.

Mind you, the creator of the site (who did not come up with the program - he's simply re-printing it based on something he found on the intarwebs years ago which has since disappeared) has admitted that he himself was totally unable to make the numbers of Week 3 and had to repeat it this time around.

Yeah.

The problem is, if you started with lower-middle ability, the numbers just aren't possible. Today's goal was 25/17/17/15/25+, which totals out to 99 pushups. With only 60 second breaks. Dude: 60ish just kicked my ass FOUR DAYS AGO. How am I magically supposed to do 99?!

So I hit the near-comical 25/17/8, and then had to take a several minute rest. Then I got 13, waited another 3 minutes or so, and got 7. At that point I had to really concentrate on not barfing. So: instead of 99 I totalled 70. Which is, for those keeping score at home, NOT EVEN CLOSE.

I've been building to this conclusion but now it's official: I call shenanigans on the whole 100 Pushups program. Clearly it is a good way to increase the number of pushups you can do, fairly quickly. I'm still glad I'm doing it.

But the claim that *anyone* can do 100 pushups within six weeks is completely bogus. It's snake oil.

Maybe - MAYBE - if you started already able to do 50+. But for noodle-armed 23-pushup dumplings like myself? The chances that I will bang out 100 pushups without a break three and a half weeks from now are approximately - wait, carry the two, minus four - nil.

But hey. I just did 70 pushups. My triceps think they're on someone else entirely.

100 Pushups - Week 1

Apparently a sudden online trend has sprung up around the site hundredpushups.com, which claims to have a regime by which you can train yourself to do 100 consecutive pushups in a 6 week program.

I'm ON THAT.

I did the "initial test" tonight, and discovered that I could do 23 and a half pushups before my arms stopped moving. I used to be able to do 25-30, so that's not a terrible dropoff. I'll start the program (a series of reps with varied intervals) tomorrow, and keep tabs here so that I can be shamed if, come August, I can not tear off a century at will.

I'm going to be SO BUFF.

That is all.

MAJOR UPDATE:

Oh, it's on. Mr. Peanuthead has signed on for the 100 pushups challenge, with a little wager to make it more interesting. In eight weeks (allowing two weeks of slide) we'll be in Tahoe for a wedding - at which point we'll go head to head to see who can do 100 pushups... FASTEST. There's $50 riding on it.

Of course, Mr. Peanuthead is, at 7 years my junior and 12 pushups fitter in the initial test, well ahead of me. Even so, fitty bucks is fitty bucks. So mid-August will find me WAY MORE BUFF than him.

UPDATE (ongoing):

Week 1/Day 1 - complete. 10 pushups, then 10 pushups, then 8, then 6, then as many as you can do (at least 7), with 60 seconds in between each.

The set of 8 started to get shaky. On the fifth of six I, um, may not have gotten all the way down. And on the sixth of the "at least 7" I definitely dipped my ankles to help sort of throw myself back up. But I got 7 - and then my arms dropped me on my face on the floor. They quit like somebody threw a switch.

It felt like somebody snuck up on me during that last set and replaced my biceps with baked potatoes. But I got through it - 41 pushups total. SO BUFF.

Week 1/Day 2 - complete(ish). 12/12/10/10/10+, 90 seconds between. On the fourth set my form went to poo on the last two, and on the fifth set I definitely started to lead with my butt on numbers 8, 9 and 10. Still, I got from nose-to-the-carpet up into the air, so I'm counting it. Sorta. 54 total pushups (49 if you leave out the bad form ones).

Woke up yesterday with knitting needles in my pecs. Seriously. Sore. Better today, just in time to get all wrecked up again.

Week 1/Day 3 - complete(ish). 15/13/10/10/15+, 2 minutes between. Kept the form more or less together through first four sets, then bonked after 9 on the last which was supposed to be 15+. So I totalled out 6 short of where I was supposed to be.

Still, 57 pushups total. Considering that 41 kicked my ass just five days ago, that's not bad.

Week 2/Day 1 (6/27) 12/12/9/7/10+, 1 minute between. Felt *way* stronger on the first set, just as cashed by the end. Did 11 in the last set, for a total of 51. Made the number required, but 6 fewer than two days ago. Hmm.

Week 2/Day 2 (6/29) 16/13/11/11/15+, 90 secs. between. I've started to suspect this program isn't all it's cracked up to be, as the number I was supposed to do today was totally impossible, and I'm only on Week 2. Rather than fall short on total, I stopped when I totally bonked but then when back to complete the set after a short rest.

So my actual set went 16/13/11/10/7/4/5. 66 total. I know in future weeks you're encouraged to repeat weeks if you can't hit your numbers, but that's looking totally inevitable and I'm left wondering who, if anybody, can actually go from 23 pushups to 100 in 6 weeks. Even the author of the site admits that, the first time he did it, he had to repeat a week.

In other news, ProcrastiWife has joined the challenge! She knocked out 9 pushups (not girl style, either) in her test, putting her in the second column. Way to go!

Week 2/Day 3 (7/2) 15/15/12/12/15+, 2 mins between. Actual was pretty close - 15/15/12/12/13/2 - w00t! Didn't feel wobbly until the last couple of the third set, and the last several of the fourth set. After second set, Lisa (who had already done hers) said "you make that look so easy." After the fourth, she said "yeah you're not making that look easy anymore..." Total: 69.

She banged out 7/7/5/4/5+ as 7/7/5/4/3, which is damn good.

Up next: I "re-test" to see how many I can do in one go.

Week Two - Re-Test - On the malodorous floor of the Rt. 9 Budget Inn, Warrensburg, NY, I banged out... 32 pushups in a row. Which is nine more than I did two weeks ago. And still 3 shy of where Mr. Peanuthead started, which makes me a little nervous about my part of this wager. Lisa is projecting "exponential" improvement in the coming weeks, which was probably just to make me feel better.

In the meantime, she cranked out 9/8/6/5/7, which is pretty damn impressive.

I Touch Myself

The only reason for this post is to be posting from my iPod touch. Thumb typing on the touchscreen and everything!

I am so fancy.

That is all.

Separated at Birth?

Lisa suffered a rare (for her) bout of WANT-IT lately, in her frantic desire to deal with the eyesore that our upstairs sofa has become. It's a great sofa - a Pottery Barn "Basic" slipcovered three-seater that I bought on eBay for maybe $300, six years ago. It retails at Pottery Barn for an extortionary $1299-1699 (depending on the fabric).

The problem is, our cats destroy furniture. All furniture. Thoroughly, and in short order. So the original slipcover was completely shredded, not to mention liberally daubed in a remarkable collection of cat- and baby-stains.

So we got a slipcover at Target. It was not cheap (~$80). It was, however, exceedingly ugly. It looked like we had draped the sofa in an ill-fitting beige sheet.

Why, you ask, didn't we get a slipcover custom-made for our couch by the fine folks at Pottery Barn? That would be because they charge $669-$1169 for the honor.

Oh, hell no.

But lo, my wife became sore tired of having an ugly couch that nobody ever wanted to sit on. On a recent Ikea trip, she fell in love with the Lillberg sofa. It being relatively cheap, we decided to buy it.

Except: in their obscure Swedish wisdom, Ikea doesn't have cushions for it in stock at any store on the Eastern seaboard. We know, because we've been to them.

But on one Ikea trip (Paramus?), while waiting to deposit Max in the Smaland play area (to which he has become addicted - he can't wait until Ikea Brooklyn opens and he can go EVERY DAY!), I noticed the Ektorp sofa. And it looked... familiar. I took its vital measurements, and compared them to ours. They were very, very close.

So we bought an Ektorp slipcover and crossed our fingers. Sure enough, it fits absolutely perfectly in every dimension. They are literally, despite the almost ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR price difference, identical sofas (though it must be noted that the PB sofa's cushions are way more comfy).

Check it:

Pottery Barn

Ikea

One can understand them having the same basic style. But the same exact measurements in every dimension, cushions and all? Somebody been cribbin' somebody's design...

Anyway, now my wife has been restored to sanity, and our couch looks like this:

Urban Picnic

I'm on Jury Duty all this week and last week (more details to come once it's no longer illegal for me to talk about it). One perk is that I spend my lunch hours in Brooklyn Heights. Today there was a farmer's market in front of the courthouse and I cobbled together maybe the best picnic lunch ever:

I got a fresh pumpernickel boule, a wedge of brie and two heirloom tomatoes (a "black prince," cut open above, and a "yellow zebra"). I also got a pint of fresh pressed apple cider and two cider donuts. Graeme helpfully pointed out that this all means I'm gay.

I assembled my picnic on the promenade, with a lovely view of work, where I am not:

Nice.

Trip Report: Tulum, Mexico - Day 2

Max woke up at 6am, just as dawn was starting to peek up over the ocean. It was hazy, with low clouds at the horizon, so no spectacular sunrise, just a gradual brightening and the occasional peek of a blood red disc of sun. We made our way down to the beach and let Mommy sleep a little bit more.

A guy from the cabanas next door, with an impressive, almost Sikh-like beard, came out swathed in a white gauzy robe, sporting an iPod, and meditated while chanting fervently. I wonder how Max’s cries of delight as he started to play in the waves affected the yogi’s meditative state.

I later christened him “the Naked Yogi” when he finished meditating, stripped naked (nice even tan, for a yogi), and run into the surf.

One of the two resident dogs at Hamaca Loca turned out to be an avid early-morning crab hunter, digging furiously until she unearthed one and then snapping at it. The crabs, to their credit, all seemed up for the fight, and gave as good as they got. Eventually, their stoic self-defense would win her over, and she'd mosey off to dig up another while they frantically re-buried themselves:

We futzed around on the beach for an hour or so, then headed out to find breakfast. I decided we should try the “bargainous” Trecelunas.

(notice in the picture above that Mommy is pulling a "don't you dare!" face at the boy, who got a little cranky over his toast)

The breakfast was tasty, if not particularly large portions, and at 80 pesos (~$8) didn’t seem as bargainous as I’d hoped. But the coffee was strong and, once I got the young waiter’s attention, plentiful. I found myself anxious about time, which is a bad idea in a Tulum restaurant, because I wanted to get to the ruins before the buses arrived, and somehow it was already 10:30am (we ran up to the San Francisco to get more pesos before breakfast).

We got to the ruins later than I’d hoped, and there were already four or five buses in the parking lot, and then killed some time wandering the shops at the entrance, where I immediately fell in love with a panama hat (I’m a sucker for grandpa hats). The guy wanted 300 pesos (~$30) which for some reason I balked at. I took Max to the bathroom, with the guy following me the whole way, pointing to other shops and other hats that he represented. On the way back, I stopped to ask if he would “bajar un poco el precio.”

He made a face at me. I suggested, perhaps, “doscientos cinquenta.” He rolled his eyes.

“Because,” he said, crossing himself, “you is my first sale, dos ochenta.”

Lisa came to see how I was doing. “Doscientos ochenta,” I said. She made a face.

“I think I’m okay,” I told the guy, giving him back the hat again, and he looked like I’d kicked his abuela. We walked away.

“Hey!” he called as I got twenty feet away. He waved me back, grudgingly, and looked around as if he was making sure nobody was watching. He clearly wanted me to believe he was giving me an embarrassingly good deal. “I do what you say. Dos cinquenta. Because,” he crossed himself again, “you my first sale today.”

I walked away absurdly happy with my new hat, and absurdly proud at having haggled extensively just to save a whole $5.

(entering the ruins in my new grandpa hat)

(to carry the boy on my shoulders I had to switch back to the Yankees hat)

With the boy along I knew a tour guide would be a waste of money, as we’d spend the whole time wrangling a bored child. Sure enough, he was pretty much a stinkerpants the whole time, and we sort of grumped through the somewhat-crowded ruins. They seemed to be the usual history-tourism combination of amazing and a little boring. After about a half hour, we headed down for the beach.

The beach at the ruins is awe-inspiring, even when clotted with daytrippers. Big limestone formations, beautiful water, cliffs with ruins hanging above – just amazing. It would have been even better if I’d thought to put on my d*mn bathing suit, but there you go.

After an hour or so on the beach, we went back up to the ruins, continuing a feud with our son who insisted on screaming for the opposite of whatever it was we happened to be doing. Finally we headed for the parking lot, stopping to pick up two sorely needed ice cold Cokes from a guy with a cart. When we got to the entrance compound, we discovered a troupe of Mayan dancers getting ready to do the falling-from-the-pole thing I’d seen pictures of. I was so happy to catch it that I gave them the full $10 they requested when they came around passing a hat.

It was really heating up as we headed towards 1pm, so we went back to the cabana to get out of the worst of the heat and relax a little bit.

We wanted to go to Maya Grill for lunch, but it had a sign up saying it was closed (I think for a private event, though it was closed again the next day). A rope was across the entrance, and a uniformed guard waved us on. We were getting perilously close to the cranky level of hunger, but I pushed on a ways up the north beach road, looking for Don Cafetos. The other option was Que Fresco! at Zama’s, which for some reason I had a bias against.

Just as I had given up and agreed to turn around, we got to Don Cafetos. We took a seat all the way on the beach side of the big dining area and ordered the massive margaritas.

They dropped off the salsa and chips, and the bowl of hot veggies and peppers which somehow, despite all of the reading about the various restaurants I’d done, was a surprise to me. It was terrific – hot carrots and potatoes, assorted peppers, and a clove of garlic, all in a spiced oil with cinnamon sticks broken up in it. Fantastic.

I nibbled the corner of one of the peppers, and it seemed innocuous. So I bit off the end. About ten seconds later, I was on my way to deeply unhappy.

I covered my tongue with sugar and then, as one does, convinced my wife to take a bite.

Lunch was great – I had the chicken fajitas:

She had the Mexican Platter, with two enchiladas, two quesadillas, a chile relleno and two rolled fried something-or-others:

Max had the fries. An American kid all the way, our kid. Then he hid under the table.

After lunch, we went down to the big beach there (I’m sure the point has a name, but I’ve been referring to it as “the beach at Don Cafetos”). VERY wide, beautiful beach, which seemed popular among locals. Lots of fishing boats and activity. Worth spending some time on, but my itinerary had us pushing on to Akumal for some snorkeling, so we just took a quick look and headed out.

The drive to Akumal was uneventful, and let us get used to driving the Jeep with the top down (very windy at 100kph!). We parked at Lol-Ha, identified the patch of beach that appears on the locogringo webcam, and rented masks.

Part of my running theme of leaving everything useful behind on this trip (not on purpose, but remarkably thorough): our masks and snorkels, unused since our honeymoon in 2000, were in my mother-in-law’s garage. By the time we realized that, it was too late to go get them. I also left behind our Can-Do Riviera Maya map, my Yucatan Guidebook, the printouts of our car rental and cabana reservations, and our JetBlue itinerary. And then Lisa left the Mexican Spanish Phrasebook on the plane on the flight down. Sigh.

Anyway, I forged out into the choppy water looking for the brilliant snorkeling of Akumal. But I had trouble with the scale of the maps I had seen, and saw nothing but empty sea grass. I came back in and tried somewhere else. Still nothing. The guy at the rental shop had suggested in front of the soccer field at Akumal Beach Club, so I tried there, and resolved to keep going out until I found something interesting.

As I headed for open water, all alone in choppy seas, a fishing boat buzzed past about 30 feet in front of me. I turned back.

Halfway back to shore, I said, possibly aloud, “no g*d d*amnit I’m going to find something” and turned back to the bay. After about five minutes of dogged swimming over barren sea grass, I suddenly soared out over an astounding reef, choked with fish.

The waves were so choppy that there was sand in the water, and the sky was partly cloudy, and the mask was stinky and cheap, but it was still breathtaking. I can only imagine what it must be like under better conditions. Really amazing.

I swam back in to let Lisa have her turn and take my turn on kid duty, where he was in this kind of mood:

In the meantime, I heard a guy nearby talking about where to see turtles, and asked him. He gave me directions and waxed stoner-excited about the experience (“Dude! One was, like, THIS BIG. It was AMAZING. You’ve totally got to go…”). So when Lisa came back I headed where he had pointed.

On the way out I eyed the darkening sky back west of us. The weather reports before our trip had indicated thunder storms on Saturday, and the sky was bruising up pretty good. I hurried out, but as I got most of the way there I turned back to see that the black clouds were right over the beach, and the wind was kicking up. So I reluctantly gave up on the turtles and hurried back in.

I got the Jeep covered and we got all the way back to Tulum, the clouds creeping south and east as we went. We were back in the cabana maybe two minutes when a massive thunderstorm rolled in. The soaking rain made a couple of drips through the thatched roof, but not too badly.

We waited it out, then headed out for dinner around 8:30 or 9pm. Max fell asleep in the car, and when we got to Vita e Bella for dinner he stayed asleep.

Dinner at Vita e Bella was somewhat disappointing, despite the lovely atmosphere – the bacon in my penne with bacon and pecorino hadn’t been cooked before going into the sauce, so it was essentially penne with boiled bacon. Eesh. Great drinks, though, and beautiful grounds.

A good, full, second day, especially once I got over the feeling that there were things we had to get done. It’s hard to remember to be on vacation when you’re on vacation.

Trip Report: Tulum, Mexico - Day 1

I expected to pop out of bed as soon as the alarm went off at 5am, with the excitement of an impending vacation. But the alarm found me groggy and almost unable to move. I trudged out to get the car, double parked and came in to haul Max out of bed, still asleep and whimpering. He balanced precariously at the toilet and asked to go back to bed. “Okay,” I said, “but we’re going to get in the car first…” Still bleary, his eyes mostly closed, he smiled. “Mystery vacation!” he said.

I tried not to tell the family where we were going on our “Mystery Vacation,” though it had slipped to Lisa two days earlier that we were going to Mexico. Max was still surprised, for what it was worth, and Lisa didn’t know we were going to Tulum – she just knew it was “one of those eco-things.”

Max is in love with the AirTrain to JFK. I swear it’s his favorite part of the trip.

Everything was smooth through check-in, but the flight left about an hour late after congestion on the runways. The flight was uneventful, with Max peacefully watching television (bless you, JetBlue).

We were coming in to land, the jungle about 1000 feet below us and the crew in their “prepare for landing” positions, when suddenly the engines screamed back to life and the plane banked up as sharply as it would go. The whole plane took a collective deep breath as we pulled slowly back up into the sky, turning sharply as we went, the engines howling. “Um…” I said to Lisa.

Eventually we leveled off and the captain came on. “Sorry about that folks, someone… um… hit a bird down there, and they’re cleaning off the runway. We figured we’d… wait until it was clean and then come in and try again…” At this point I saw a plume of smoke coming from the jungle near the airport, and worried in the back of my head that whoever “hit a bird” hadn’t made it back into the air.

Okay, so maybe I worried that in the front of my head. Whatever. I wasn’t scared. Okay, yes, it was scary.

So then we landed safely, got through immigration and customs without any hitch, met our America Car Rental rep outside, and were in the van to the office in no time.

The guys at America were great, and the two timeshare guys hanging out at the office (who were flacking a new resort pretty darn hard) were very friendly, and pushy in an easily resistible way. One of the guys had lived for a long time in South Philly, and missed the cheese steaks. Go figure.

(picture with our Jeep, the next day. Yes, I'm aware how pudgy I look.)

We jumped in the red Jeep, got the directions (which I didn’t really need, as it’s basically “turn right on 307, go to Tulum”), told the timeshare guys no three or eight more times, and headed for the Pemex to fill up. Lisa got snacks at the 7-11 (classy and local, right? What can I say, we were hungry – and at least the jamon y queso was on a tortilla…) and we got on the road.

Next stop was an hour and a half later at the San Francisco De Asis supermarket, for beer, ice, a Styrofoam cooler, limes, and a knife to cut them with. I went in while the fam stayed in the car, and was pleased to successfully air my sub-gradeschool Spanish. “Hielo?” I said to the cashier, remembering that one word from somewhere, and then followed his pointing until I found somebody to give me some. The cashier looked about 15. Actually, everyone who worked at the Super looked about 15, or younger.

All the way down the beach road, I kept shouting out the names of the restaurants and cabanas we were passing, because after a month of obsessive reading of tulum.info I felt like they were all old friends. The weather was great, the topes were bumpy, the Jeep was rattly, and we couldn’t stop grinning.

I thought Hamaca Loca was right next door to Dos Ceibas, so I was confused when we went four or five doors past without seeing it. But there it was, just as the southern beach road bends around to the left. We pulled onto the lovely, narrow grounds and parked on the sand.

A guy named Claudio came out to greet us. Claudio is magnificently friendly and speaks almost no English. We established that we spoke very little Spanish (I get by on words strung together, Lisa does better as she at least studied it in school), and after that we mostly just smiled at each other a lot. He helped us carry our bags to the cabana, gave us the key, waved happily, and went away.

“Um… don’t we have to… necessito registrar?” I ventured. This confused Claudio. “Never mind,” I said, and he beamed and disappeared.

Hamaca Loca is that kind of place. If you met some folks while backpacking, and they offered to put you up if you ever came through Tulum because they had a nice guesthouse, it would feel much the same as staying at HL. It’s beyond laid back. It was Sunday night before anyone thought to ask us to pay.

Oddly, the hamacas at Hamaca Loca (“Crazy Hammock”) were pretty tatty – the multi-colored one was torn down the middle with one useable side, and the green one was coming unraveled but had a one-foot-wide section that you could balance on. “These hamacas,” I announced to the family, “sure are loca.” What can I say. I’m a wit.

Priorities: cerveza y playa.

I didn’t know how Max would take to the beach, as in the past he’s been too little and too afraid of the waves. This time, after some hesitation, he fell madly in love with it. The sand, the waves, the clear water, he loved it all.

As the picture caption reads on Flickr, the rules to Max’s new favorite game, Throw Sand at the Ocean, are as follows:

(1) pick up handfuls of sand;
(2) shout;
(3) throw sand at the ocean;
(4) repeat for two hours.

The waves were just big enough to merit boogie boarding, so I went up to find Claudio and see if Hamaca Loca had any around. Claudio was sitting having a cigarette with a woman who also seemed to work/live there (whose name I never got, though we talked many times). Through her mangled English and my even more mangled Spanish, we communicated that yes, everything was just wonderful, yes we loved Tulum so far, and that according to her it was the most beautiful place in all of Mexico. “I believe,” says me, forgetting to add the “lo” in “yo lo creo…”

The whole time, already beach-drunk, I was grinning like a doofus.

So it turned out, to my disproportionate delight, that they did have a boogie board, and I went back to beach and splashed contentedly in the gentle waves for a while.

Now, we had set up a system to try to bribe Max into trying new things on vacation. He’s a boy who usually prefers the familiar, so we were apprehensive about his encounter with all things Mexico. By this system, if he tried nine new things, we’d buy him a tricycle (rank bribery is all that motivates him, what can I say, the kid’s a little capitalist).

I announced with great fanfare that being held in the waves counted as one, playing on his own in the surf counted as a second, and that if he would try boogie boarding that would be three already.

So out we went, the brave little tot clinging to the board.

We had a fun, gentle little ride on a wave or two:

And then Daddy lost hold of the board and the boy, who had in his not-yet-four-years of life never been totally submerged in water, slid off the front and was rolled by a wave. The water was crystal clear, and the image of his little pale body under six inches of water, his face squeezed shut in terror, will be with me forever. Good work, Daddy!

Obviously, he was fine, as I knew rationally he would be – it was just a good dunking, the surf was still gentle, and he kept his mouth shut and didn’t inhale any. He was crying when I pulled him out, and asked to go back to the cabana, and I thought maybe I’d spoiled the beach part of the beach vacation already.

But he bucked up and went right to playing in the waves. Brave little fellah.

Within our first twenty minutes at the beach we had another disaster in the making. I was holding Max in the waves, and decided to sit down in the shallow water with him in my lap so the surf could break right over us. Max was terrified but loved it. The second wave that came our way was bigger than I expected, and I had to life Max over my head while I took the brunt of it on my chest and face. The problem was, I hadn’t expected to be swimming yet, and still had my glasses on.

The wave took them off and swept them away.

Great, I’m thinking, Lisa doesn’t drive a stick, and now we have three more days of vacation with me 1/2 blind. “Take the kid! Take the kid! I have to find my glasses!” I shouted, and Lisa deposited him on the beach and came back out to help me look as I searched around on the sand in a foot or so of rolling water with my hands and feet. Nothing. More waves swept in, and still nothing.

Lisa walked quite calmly along the shore for about eight feet, then shouted “Ah-ha!” and came up with my glasses. Unbelievable. Good job, hon.

We headed up the beach to Dos Ceibas for dinner, arriving at 6:30pm. The one guy in the office seemed bemused to see us. “Cena?” we asked hopefully?

“Not yet, not yet,” he said “7:40. Come back 7:40.”

So we walked up the beach all the way to the Ana y Jose Beach Club (garishly lit, with uniformed guards at either side of the beach, and all in all entirely non-contextual, as we say in snotty Brooklyn circles), and all the way back, and managed to kill an hour of the intervening time. We passed several purple man-o-war-esque jellyfish, including one the size of my pinky that Max christened “CutiePie” and spent the whole walk back looking for. Alas, CutiePie had been swept away.

Dos Ceibas has a beautiful, candle-lit garden restaurant. Just smashing, and for the first half hour we had it all to ourselves. Mario, the all-around guy there, brought us our margaritas and took our orders: the grilled shrimp and calamari for Lisa, the fish fillet Tikil Kin (sp?) for me, and pizza for Max (thank heavens for pizza and fries, it kept the kid from starving). Plus a terrific guacamole and quesadilla appetizer that we utterly failed to get Max to try a bite of, even with attempted bribery.

Lisa’s grilled stuff was good, my fish was great (coconut sauce and spices, stuffed with grilled shrimp – just fantastic), the wall of candles-in-nooks was wonderfully romantic. Really couldn’t have been better.

Except when I decided to try a mojito for my second drink. It was a valiant effort on Mario’s part, with tons of fresh mint but not enough sugar, and ended up tasting like iced grass clippings. I was afraid if I didn’t drink it, Mario would think I couldn’t handle my liquor, though. So I surreptitiously poured about 1/2 of it out under the table. I’m classy like that.

Hey, at least it was a sand floor.

Back up the beach in the dark, and to bed for the whole family. Not the *best* night’s sleep I’ve ever had, as Max was restless and the quality of the Hamaca Loca mattresses is… um… not the best. Next time I would bring a battery powered fan, even if it was tiny, just to get some air moving. I got used to it for the next two nights, but that first night was fitful.

Still and all – with one day down of our four day insta-vacation (counting Friday and Monday as full days, which isn’t really accurate), we were having a delightful time.

w00t! Mini-Vacation!

That's my "ticker" from the message board where I've been fanatically researching our vacation destination this weekend. It's a trip that has been billed to the family only as "The Mystery Vacation," because I kept the location a secret.

Until two nights ago, when apropos of nothing, talking about something else, our conversation went like this:

Me: I can't believe I have to get a show open two weeks after we get back from Mexico.

Lisa: [sits up, blinks, stares at me]

Me: What? [realization] Aw, g*d d*mnit!

So now she knows we're going to Mexico. Flying into Cancun, but not staying there - renting a Jeep (which I'm unduly happy about) and driving elsewhere. And no, despite what the ticker says, it's not Playa del Carmen - that's just the website that hosts the ticker-maker.

Yes, so we're leaving the country tomorrow morning, returning Monday night. Short and sweet, just a chance to plonk down on the beach and complete the decompression that hasn't really had a chance to happen since the huzzurah of the Youngblood show in Feb/March and the end of Lisa's school term (in which she pulled not only a pure 4.0, but the top-of-class award! Way to go, hon, perfect game!)

And, hopefully, some actual Procrastinet posts will come of it...

Thumbs Up

A month or two ago I belatedly got on the USB thumb drive bandwagon - I have five years or so of personal stuff on my computer at work, and (a) that's a bad idea in general and (b) they're theoretically upgrading our workstations soon. One of the IT dudes suggested a thumb drive to get all that stuff off. So I toddled over to J&R (I feel about their blue bags the way most people feel about the Tiffany's blue bags - sheer, unreasoning joy) and picked up a Kingston DataTraveler 2GB drive.

Side note that shows my age: 2GB = 2000MB. I remember when PJ and I heard, in 1992, that they were coming out with a computer with a 128MB hard drive, and we were like "what would you POSSIBLY do with all that memory? You could, like, NEVER fill that ever..."

Anyway, I loaded up the entire contents of my computer, with room to spare. Also on board is a long term project I've been working on, which I've picked up again recently, which last week it was making me happy to have on my person at all times. Periodically I'd reach into my pocket and toy with the thumb drive like a talisman.

Then it went missing. It wasn't on my dresser, or with my wallet, or in the pockets of the pants on my dresser, or at work. Hmm, I thought, that's not so great.

Last night Lisa called me while I was at the theater gearing up for the show (last minute subliminal plug):

Lisa: I found your thumb.

RJ: Some what?

Lisa: Thumb. Your thumb. I found your thumb drive.

RJ: Oh! Yay!

Lisa: No. Not yay.

RJ: ...it was in the wash, wasn't it.

Lisa: Yep. Washed and dried. On high. I was afraid to plug it in.

So last night I got home, muttered a minor prayer, and plugged it in.

The little green LED lit up. And blinked. I opened the Finder, and there it was, all the files intact.

Consider this, then, a ringing endorsement for Kingston Thumb Drives (Subliminal Amazon associates kick-back plug). Washed, dried, working. Way to go.

Blog Cheating

Okay, so I'm flagrantly cheating. I hadn't posted in so long that all my posts disappeared. And I'm in tech for two different shows at once, which is eating my life. So I did what any responsible blogger would do:

I went into my preferences and chose to have the last 28 days' worth of posts displayed, instead of just the last 14.

So, my loyal readers, enjoy the articles which you've already read, which are now temporarily re-displayed below (at least until they are 28 days old, or until I up the limit again, whichever comes first). And rest secure in the knowledge that, when I get these mothers open, I will be back. If slightly singed around the edges.

Some cuteblogging that is really more like heartbreakblogging: I haven't been home in the evening since a week ago Monday (see: "teching two shows," above). Last night I made it home. I went downstairs to see Max, expecting his usual exuberant "DADDY!"

He looked up from the Backyardigans, saw me, and kind of sighed.

"Hi, buddy..." I said, tentatively, as he looked back at the tv.

He looked over at me again, looking a little mournful. And said, quietly: "Is your play over?"

...

...

...and then I STABBED. MYSELF. IN THE EYE.

None of the Old Ladies Wanted to Cross The Street

So I'm parking my scooter by the Harmony Playground, to meet Lisa and Max after work today. A guy goes by on his bike, with TWO kids on it with him - one in front of him, one behind - and as he goes by me his wallet flops out onto the pavement. I call after him, but he doesn't hear me.

In retrospect, I should have just jumped back on my scootch and gone after him - I probably could have caught him in a few blocks. But I went to check in with the fam first, then looked through the wallet for an address (I also ducked into the playground to avoid the attentions of the two homeless dudes who saw the whole thing go by, who had their own opinions on what should happen to the wallet).

Anyway, the address on the Driver's License was on our street, and I nipped over on the scooter and found the guy still getting his kids inside. He didn't even know the wallet had been gone, and goggled at me for a while before he realized what had happened. He thanked me profusely, his older kid said some hilarious stuff about cheese pizza and, mysteriously, that he would "see me in the morning" (?!) and I left.

The guy's stunned reaction and some reactions I've heard since - congratulating me on taking the wallet back - have left me wondering: Is there really anyone out there who *wouldn't* take a wallet back to somebody?

Plus, CoolTools had a fun interactive poll today that I wanted an excuse to try out. So, here:

9/11

Before we get started: happy fifth birthday to Lily Jane, who almost exactly 5 years ago right now I dubbed "The One Good Thing."

Okay, so if a guy isn't allowed to be self-indulgently mawkish on his own blog on the anniversary of a major national tragedy, then when the heck *is* a guy allowed to be self-indulgently mawkish? Don't answer that.

In the interests of getting it down in complete form, and with the secondary goal of maybe being able to resist the compulsive telling of the whole story every time 9/11 comes up in conversation, here's how we spent the morning five years ago today:

We lived on Gold Street, three (cross-town) blocks from the WTC. Living so close, it had always hovered in the back of my mind - what if they fall. Stranged that it never occurred to me they'd fall straight down. I always sort of pictured them going sideways, like a tree.

Lisa had gotten up before me, and was doing Tae-Bo (this was 2001, remember). She heard a big bang, but there was constant construction on the street outside our building, so she assumed it was a truck going over a construction plate. When her tape was over, NY1 was on as always.

The first thing I remember is her shaking me awake, even though it wasn't time for me to get up yet. I was grumpy about this. "What?" I said.

"A plane hit the World Trade Center, and it's burning," she said. I lay there for a moment, grumpy about the face that this was too big for me to roll over and go back to sleep, which is what I really, really wanted to do.

All the news commentary said it was a single engine plane, a Cessna or something. "Some idiot amateur pilot," is what I was thinking.

We had watched about ten minutes of coverage when there was a tremendous bang that shook our windows. We both jumped, and the tv went blank for a moment. When the picture came back, there was a massive fireball billowing from the side of the south tower.

I guessed that the fire in the north tower had gotten hot enough to cause something in the south tower to explode - maybe a transformer or something. After a few minutes, the news anchor (we were jumping around between channels, trying to find someone who knew anything, so I don't remember if it was our beloved Pat Kiernan or someone else) said "All right, I know this sounds crazy... but we're starting to get reports that it was a second plane."

I was instantly furious. "Come on," I said. "Don't say that on the air, you're going to totally freak people out." Whichever channel we were watching, their camera angle didn't show the cause, just the explosion. They were talking about whether maybe there had been a horrible air traffic control mixup, and a whole flight path had been mistakenly re-routed into the WTC.

We changed channels. The new channel had the right angle, and their replay clearly showed a jet fly straight into the south side of the tower.

"Um..." said Lisa.

"Um..." said me. "I think we should maybe get farther away."

We worked three blocks away, towards the Seaport, so without any better ideas we headed towards work. On her way out the door, Lisa noticed that the cats didn't have much food or water in their bowls. This will, as you can guess, be a factor later.

I took my camera. Even then, I was torn about taking pictures - but I figure every major event needs to be documented, and since I couldn't think of anything more useful to do, that's what I decided to do.

We went out to the corner outside our building, on Fulton Street, and joined the crowd peering up at the north tower. "Holy god," I said, "that's a really big hole." The streets were full but in a weird kind of suspended animation - everyone was hushed, and nobody knew what to do but stare.

I kept thinking, "boy, that's a lot of damage. They aren't going to be able to fix that for a long time - like, maybe six months even."

We made our way down to work, picking our way through the sidewalks full of frozen people, everybody staring up at the burning towers. We met Scott there, and Rita (a secretary who sat next to me), and stood in front of the building watching.

Our HR coordinator was the daughter of the NYPD's head hostage negotiator, and she had gotten him on the phone. That's how we found out about the jumpers. We turned in sick horror towards the building, just in time to see something spin away from the side. I felt faint and nauseous, but realized that the falling thing was much bigger than a person. The metal sheeting that covered the girders of the tower and made it shine was peeling off in the fire, floating away like mylar confetti. Against the beautiful blue sky, it was perversely pretty.

Our second-hand connection to the NYPD is also how we found out about the Pentagon. We also heard the rumor that there were thirteen more planes unaccounted for. People began to freak out in earnest, and that's the when we started talking about Al Qaeda.

There were probably sixty of us standing around in front of the building. We were right in front of the entrance, where the view of the north tower was just blocked by the building across the street. Some people were standing in the street on Maiden Lane, where they could see the tower.

The people in the street screamed. A few of them collapsed to the ground. Everyone pointed, screaming. It looked just like a Godzilla movie.

I jumped out into the street in time to see the top corner of the north tower, at a slight angle, drop from sight into the cloud.

That's when I felt my brain sprain. There was something so vast and wrong about that gigantic tower moving - so quickly, so gently - when its entire nature was not to move.

People who were still up on the sidewalked asked what was happening. "It's down," I said. "The north tower is down. It's gone."

"Oh my god," somebody said. "All those people."

Then we saw the dust coming. It was a solid wall, as high as the buildings. Everybody has seen all this on the footage by now. But that was the first time that we realized this wasn't an emergency that was happening over there somewhere, this was something we were in, that was coming our way. "Let's go, let's go!" I yelled, thinking we could get behind the building or something. "Cover your mouths!" I yelled. Even at the time, I felt half silly barking orders, but I couldn't help myself.

We got to the back of the building and it was clear we had to go farther - by this time the cloud was on us. It was somewhat diffuse, so we could still breath, though it smelled and tasted horrible. We crossed Front Street and I saw some people vaulting over the fence between the bus parking and the Seaport esplenade, even though there was a gap in it that you could walk through maybe ten feet to the left.

We ended up out on the pier that has the museum ships berthed on it, as far out as we could go. The light, in the dust cloud, was tan. When we'd gone as far as we could, we stopped. With nothing left to do, people - myself included - started to go to pieces. I went to my knees and cried, and Rita - who we had kept with us as we ran - was sobbing as well.

Once we had pulled ourselves together, and were just sort of standing around in the dust wondering what to do, we heard jets scream overhead. Lisa said later that's when she really started to freak out - we still thought there were as many as a dozen hijacked jets still in the air. I thought I recognized them as fighter jets.

There was a guy out at the end of the pier with us who was completely panicking, and acting like he was the center not only of the universe but of this particular tragedy. "Somebody call the Coast Guard!" he was shrieking, trying to get his cell phone to work. "Tell them where we are, tell them they have to come RESCUE US!!!"

With the overreaction of stress, I wanted to punch him in his disgusting face. The abhorrent selfishness, the self-centeredness of thinking that somehow, with untold thousands of people dead, we who were standing around dusty and scared on a pier had to be "rescued..." It still makes me seeth.

By this point, we were trying to figure out what to do and where to go. That's when Lisa remembered that the cats didn't have enough food and water. We didn't know when we would be able to get back to our apartment - plus, it was going to be handy to have some clothes. So I left Lisa with Scott and ran back up Fulton Street to our apartment.

Everything was covered in beige dust, like a snowstorm. As I ran, first along the cobblestone streets of the Seaport and then up the sidewalk, I kept looking at the ground and singing "Love Me or Kill Me," which PJ had just written for Pity (the show we were writing at the time). It played like a loop in my head, and I think I probably sang some of it out loud. I was trying to stay in the zone where I was courageous (with a side of foolhardy) and getting things done, rather than thinking about the fact that I was running back towards the towers.

I think I levitated up the stairs to our 6th floor apartment - I don't remember running up them. And I wasn't, even then, in that good shape. I found that our phone was still working, so I called some folks to let them know we were okay.

When I got my mom on the phone I said "Hi Mom, it's me. We're okay."

She said "...um. Okay...?"

I said "Oh. You're not watching tv, are you."

"No," she said.

"Turn on the tv," I said. "The country is under concerted terrorist attack."

(Now, I want to point out that while I *was* dorkily formal, when Mom retold it this past weekend she said it like I was shrieking. For the record, I was totally calm.)

I was in our bedroom, the closest point to the towers, trying to figure out what to pack, still on the phone with my Mom, when I heard a rumble. Mom was saying something, but I took the phone away from my ear and listened. I got back on the phone and said, "Well, now we find out if coming back here was a really stupid idea or not." It was the first time I thought maybe I'd done a really, really stupid thing.

The rumbling stopped, and of course now I know that I was still way too far away to be in any real danger.

It felt like it took me forever to pack, and I know I brought some random and useless stuff. I was thinking "Huh, I wonder if I should bring this, probably not, oh well let's pack it up anyway." I wasn't thinking very straight.

I finally got packed, put lots of supplies out for the cats, told them we'd be back for them as soon as we could (we have four, so there was no way to take them all right then), and headed out. In the hall, I passed the building maintenance guy, who just shook his head at me. "Was that the south tower?" I asked. He nodded.

There were lots of people in the lobby, and the dust outside was thick. It looked like nighttime. I had already kept Lisa waiting long enough that I knew she'd be worried, especially with the second tower falling, so I headed out.

As I rounded the corner from Gold Street onto Fulton Street, I realized two things: a) I couldn't see anything, and b) I couldn't breath. I started coughing and couldn't stop, even with my shirt up over my face, and that was the second time I worried that maybe I'd done a really truly stupid thing. "Most people who die in a fire die of smoke inhalation," I scolded myself, "and if you pass out here, ain't nobody gonna see you in time." I found my way to the corner of the building and felt my way along, unable to see farther than ten feet or so in front.

After a block it lightened up, and I ran down to the Seaport.

Still worried about the theoretical missing planes, we decided to take the Williamsburg Bridge instead of the Brooklyn. "No landmarks," we agreed, "nothing that would make an attractive target."

As we walked, we saw lots of people who'd been closer to it than we had. One man, wearing a three piece suit and holding a briefcase, was so covered with dust he looked like a frosted donut.

On the way up the ramp to the bridge, Scott told us his uncle worked in the north tower, on a high floor. He should have been at work by 8:30. Scott assumed he was dead. (It turned out later that he had been, as a rare fluke, late that day. He was standing at the elevator when it exploded into the lobby. He started running, and the next thing he knew he was at Union Square, still holding his bag and his coffee.)

We stopped halfway across the bridge and looked at the massive plume of smoke drifting over Brooklyn. It was such a beautiful day.

As we came down the ramp into Williamsburg, there were Hassidic men with big white beards, holding jugs of water and cups, giving water to everyone who was evacuating. The look of desperate compassion on their faces as they did the only thing they could think to do broke me down entirely, and it took me a while to get myself together. It still chokes me up.

Scott got his father on the cell and split off to a meet-up point which his father was driving to. Lisa and I found our way to Bea's in Williamsburg. We showered - it's hard to wash that stuff off, and it itched like hell - and drank and watched the news.

It was when I finally spoke to PJ later that afternoon that I found out about the One Good Thing - Lily had been born that morning.

We got back to our apartment the next day, and I think that's when we got the cats out, though it may have been Thursday. We put two of them in hard cases on the luggage cart, and two of them in soft cases which we carried. We had to walk to Union Square and get a subway to the LIRR from there. We also went back on Thursday, and security was much tighter - we were stopped at Canal Street, even though we were residents, and we had to sneak in through a loosely guarded intersection in the far eastern part of Chinatown.

We had been scheduled to fly to my parents' house on Friday, and instead we rented a car and drove down. Work didn't re-open for two weeks. I don't remember how long we were out of our apartment - a couple weeks, I think. It's funny how painstakingly vivid everything that morning remains and how totally fuzzy the weeks after were.

There's lots more to be said about the change that came over the city, which lasted months and months before it finally faded away. We never thought it would fade, incidentally, but I guess it'll take something even bigger than 9/11 to stick for good. (Which is not a price I want to pay) But that's for another rumination.

The first time we went to look at "the Pile," we turned the corner from Chambers Street and stopped in awe. "Oh, my god," I said.

"What?" said Lisa. "Where? Do you see it?" I was flummoxed, as the pile stretched three stories high and covered the entire end of the block.

"Right there," I said.

"Where, behind the trees?"

That's when I realized: it was night time, and the rubble was lit from the side by huge worklights, and it looked like the edge of a wooded park. And Lisa's mind refused to process it as anything but trees.

"That's not trees," I said. "That's the pile."

That's our 9/11. Thanks for listening.

Gridlock!

Yes, yes, I know, I haven't posted anything for over a week. Meaning I have left the last thing that I posted, a (self-)celebratory missive about my machine gunnery prowess, at the top of the site in a fit of accidental overweening self-congratulation.

The explanation is quite simple, though two-parted: (a) I haven't thought of anything meaningful and/or entertaining to say, and (b) I'm a huge dork.

The second part of that statement relates directly to this link. Don't click it. You don't want to know.

While my brain is refusing to cough up adequate nuggets, please visit the links on the right - let me give an extra special shoutout (again) to Just A Little Guy.

In the meantime, consider this an open request for submissions. While I've been dropping the ball on helping you pass the time online, what have you been up to? Where have you been surfing? How have you been ensuring that your time is spent poorly?

The Inherent Superiority of Tostadas

About once every couple of months, when I was growing up, we'd have tostadas for dinner. I'd hit that all-important moment in the day when I'd ask Procrastimom what was for dinner, and there were only a couple answers that I got really, really stoked about: flank steak, chili and tostadas. Those weren't her only go-to meals that I *liked* - she's a good cook, and I liked almost all of it (except for the "steak" that I always chewed for ten minutes before giving up and spitting it into my napkin) - but they were the only ones that would immediately perk up my day.

There was something ritualistic about tostada night. The table spread with all those bowls of toppings; getting exactly the right distribution. Our staples were: beans, beef, cheese, shreddy lettuce, tomato, salsa, and - here's where we were a bit weird - plain yogurt (my mother seems to have objected to sour cream). While my mother and I would layer in the traditional beans/beef/cheese order, my dad put the cheese between the beans and the beef so it would melt. Now that I'm a dad, I've adopted that method as well. Seems like the thing to do.

Now, some of you are probably wondering "what the heck is a tostada?" Which just goes to demonstrate the perversity of this country.

Because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU knows what a taco is. These strange, damaged, perverted, bent-up, logistically and culinarily useless deformed tostadas have somehow dominated the crispy-corn-tortilla-with-stuff-on/in-it market in America.

Check it out:

TOSTADA

Notice the careful, even layering of ingredients. If you build your tostada with enough care, every single bite from the first to the last has a little bit of each ingredient in it.

What happens when you bite into a taco?

TACO

That's right. It BREAKS. And everything in it falls down the front of your shirt.

And even if it doesn't break, or even if you clamp the two sides together without letting salsa dribble all over you, you have to choose: am I going to eat a beef bite? Maybe a lettuce/salsa bite? Maybe I'll take a small bite of beef and THEN a small bite of lettuce/salsa so that I sort of get all the tastes together at once?

Inferior. Perverse and inferior.

And yet: I've looked in every grocery store in our neighborhood, plus one by work, and not one of them carries tostada shells. We're stuck with the tyranny of tacos.

One brand has even addressed part of the logistical nightmare that is a taco: they've created FLAT BOTTOMED taco shells, so that you can stand them up on your plate while you fill them. Whoop-de-friggin-do. They're still going to break when you bite 'em, and they're still going to drop your food down your shirt, and you're still going to get a bite of all beef and then a bite of all lettuce.

So, now that we've started having Tostada Night (which I refuse to call Taco Night and always will), I have to buy taco shells, break 'em in half, and build two demi-tostadas.

And even THAT inconvenient workaround is better than a taco.

Why? Why, America? Why would you support the inferior platform? Is it just because they called themselves "Taco Bell"? If they'd used "Tostada Bell" or "Burrito Bell" would I be able to eat my tostadas in peace?

Of course, since tostadas are not among the 2.5 things that my son will actually eat, "Tostada Night" for Max might as well be "Dorito Night," because all he'll eat is the broken up shells anyway. Last night he teased us, and requested a little bit of each ingredient on his chip, so we built him a nice little tostada. He looked at us expectantly. "Eat it, buddy, it's good!" we encouraged.

He picked it up. We were on the edge of our seats. He held it up towards Mommy.

"Mommy? Wipe it off!" he said. And then he ate the shell with nothing on it.

Full-Family Barfblogging

Saturday night, Max began getting restless around 11pm. We were downstairs watching the bonus features on "Lords of Dogtown" (which means we *really* dug the movie), and heard him start ootching around on the monitor.

We took turns going up to soothe him, with Lisa taking the last turn as we finished the movie and prepared to go to bed. I was getting the movie ready to go back to Netflix when I heard over the monitor:

Max: Mmf. Mommy...?

Lisa: It's okay, buddy, I'm AAAAAIIIIHHGGFFF!

[Silence. Max crying.]

Lisa: Oh, no, buddy, it's okay OH my GOD no, it's okay... HON?!

I was already arriving at the room by then, to find my wife and child absolutely drenched in barf. Drenched. She later told me that she had been leaning over him, about two feet up, when he showered her straight upwards. Unfortunately, this meant it all fell right back onto him. He looked like the Zapruder film.

So they took a bath and I stuffed their clothes and his sheets into the washer. And then we took turns sleeping with him, to comfort him during the six more times he barfed that night. Mostly, we got towels in the way of it. And mostly, it was just water from there on out. Mostly.

Predictably, Lisa got it Monday night. I was at rehearsal, but called off the second half to come home and put Max to bed while she hugged the toilet. By about 4 a.m. it had let up enough to allow her an hour or two of fitful sleep.

Tuesday night at rehearsal I got "indigestion." I hurried home, took an Alka Seltzer, and went to bed, hoping against the odds that would be all it was. At 1:45 a.m. I returned my ill-advised dinner of cheeseburger and fries to the circle of life that is the sewer system.

There's a strange quality to barfing as a result of a stomach bug. When you've had food that disagrees with you, or you're drunk, your body seems content to just toss the food out and call it even. But with a stomach bug, it's like your body is pissed off. "EVERYBODY OUT!" it seems to be saying. "RIGHT NOW! I MEAN IT!" It feels like being wrung out like a damp dishtowel.

The sound effects were truly comical, though. Since the actual barfing wasn't the bad part (the bad part is the 15 to 35 minutes beforehand where you're totally uncomfortable and know you're going to barf but can't yet), I was able to appreciate the humor of it - especially since each one started with a weird burpy thing, and since after the cheeseburger was dealt with, all I was spitting out was water.

"BRAAAKwarglebargleglarglewargle!!" I'd shout at the toilet. "BRAAAAGHwargle bargleflargle!! BLARGHlebarfleglargle! HARRglegargle! HARrrrr... *spit* *spit*"

Somehow, getting to share the experience with a wider internet audience makes me feel better about the whole thing. Thanks for listening.

Silencio!

One whole post in the first ten days of the new year. Banner! I declare 2006 a BANNER YEAR!

Here is what's been eating my time:

(Click the picture for show info)

Co-producing the festival of two one-acts and a full-length in rep, while directing the full-length ends up being a fairly full-time thing. But hey, that's where the BIG MONEY IS AT. Yeah, baby.

For those keeping score at home, the picture above features the ProcrastiWife and Peanuthead as the ladies, and Sanpete as the dude attempting to prove he's not at all in any way gay.

I Couldn't Look Away

Three minutes and fifteen seconds of something truly, totally sublime. And awful. And wonderful.

Three Norweigan dudes in track pants (one with his ass falling out). Playing "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

On kitchen appliances.

Dude. Seriously? WTF.

[Via the excellent Monkey Disaster]

OW! MY BRAIN!

From the ProcrastiMom comes this brain-sprainer - a java applet that shows a view of the Milky Way from 10 million lightyears away (10 to the 23rd meters), then gets closer by an order of magnitude with each slide (10 to the 22nd meters, etc.) until it's face to face, real-size, with a leaf on a tree outside the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida.

Then it continues into negative orders of magnitude, going into the leaf's cells, then the nucleus of one leaf cell, then the genetic material, and finally to the quarks that make up one proton of the carbon atom's nucleus.

Ow! Ow ow ow!

After the slide show, you can use the arrows to go back and forth in scale, from this:

to this:

(Actually, you can go two orders of magnitude smaller than that, but it makes a boring picture out of context)

Go check it out, but prepare to spend several minutes going "Dude... whoa, dude..."

And, as far as I know, my mom's not even a stoner...

Eau, No!

When, I wonder, is unauthorized water going to stop invading our house?

Last week, I paid the price for my inexpert plumbing during the bedroom renovation. Faithful readers may remember that one final leaky joint in the baseboard heater, which I epoxied to within an inch of its life.

Thursday night, I was on Lisa's side of our bedroom, in my bare feet. And suddenly I'm thinking to myself "huh, that's funny, I don't remember this part of the hardwood floor being ridged with sharp edges..."

I checked under Max's bed, and sure enough the fugitive joint was leaking vigorously. Which had caused the floor boards to warp all the way through the closet and out into our room.

Our super, who's really just another owner who likes to tell people what to do with their apartments, was away. Since he's the only person with access to the baseboard heating system in the basement, I couldn't turn the water off. It was also after midnight in an absurdly busy week, and Max was asleep in the bed that bestrides the problem spot. So I did what any sensible homeowner would do: I stuffed a towel under the bed and went to sleep.

The next day I called in "flood" at work for the third time in six weeks and set about repairing the leaky joint. Which would be hard enough to do properly with the pipe drained and dry and re-solderable, let alone undrained and full of water. Let alone undrained and full of VERY HOT water that wants to get free of all this constricting pipework and explore our hardwood floors and Max's rug, and maybe see if it can burn my fingerprints off.

With the aid of a length of rubber tubing, a tube of caulk and several pipe clamps, I got the thing covered. And it held. All day Friday. Saturday morning. All dry. No problems.

Saturday afternoon it was leaking again. I removed the rubber tubing and caulk, and replaced it with bigger rubber tubing and wax. Which didn't even pretend to work, and began dripping immediately. So I removed that and replaced it with rubber tubing and string caulk weatherstrip, which just laughed at me. So I removed that and replaced it with rubber tubing and the original kind of caulk, which I let sit out for an hour to partially cure before putting it on.

And finally, finally, with six pipe clamps in place, the leak stopped.

If you've ever considered trying to screw a pipe clamp together over a length of black rubber tubing wedged between two hot heater pipes while scalding water and melted caulk spray all over you: don't. Give it a miss. You won't regret it.

[Note: as you can see, faced with the immasculating prospect of carping endlessly about minor suburban nuisances while also publishing letters from a correspondent in a politically volatile area who gets drunk with mercenaries and almost got blown up last week, I've decided what the heck. Soon I'll get around to posting the pictures of my kid's barf, and the dichotomy will be complete.]

G** D***** SICK AGAIN.

The flu bug that put me out for every other day the week before last has returned. I feel like a raw nerve with feet and a headache. Sigh.

More scintillating wit and commentary, including the Most Graphic BarfBlogging EVER!!!!, once my temperature dips back under 100.

Bonus embarassing and gratuitous admission: since our regular thermometer broke last week, I had to self-diagnose last night using the digital one intended for, and which has been used on, Max's butt. I cleaned it thoroughly with alcohol first, but still - OH MY GOD I USED THE BUTT THERMOMETER.

Gross.

The Tenth Doctor

So can someone please explain to me when Dr. Who became WICKED COOL?

I spent lots, and lots, and lots of time as an adolescent obsessing over Dr. Who. Being a "Whovian" was a major - if not THE major - part of my identity in years 12-14. I would call them The Friendless Years except that's not true: I had one really, really, really good friend (who checks in on P'net fairly regularly - hi K!).

And that one sustaining friendship was forged through what? A common knowledge of Dr. Who - which we discovered at the lab table in 7th grade Life Science, when one of us made a Dalek joke.

Oh yes, people. I attended conventions. I wore costumes (1985 was a particularly brilliant iteration, featuring a full Tom Baker get-up complete with wig and scarf, PLUS a hand-built K-9 replica fashioned out of cardboard and the bottom of a shopping cart). I bought the magazines and the books and had a plastic card identifying me as a member of the Fan Club.

I had not one, not two, but several dreams about Tom Baker showing up at my house, and still remember how stoked I was to get to chat with him.

I loved me some Dr. Who.

But at NO POINT was any of this REMOTELY cool. Cool qua cool, that is. There was, at this time, no such thing as geek chic.

Today, I read an article about a new Dr. Who spin-off which will be adult-geared, and feature swearing and sex. Good on them.

Then, I decided to check around for images of the new Doctor (the tenth, which means I've lost count: let's see, 1) Hartnell 2) Troughton 3) Pertwee 4) Baker 5)Davison 6) Baker (Colin) 7) McCoy 8) ??? are they counting the movie ??? 9) Eccelston 10) Tennant).

(click for full size)

I don't even know where to start. The grimy urban setting. The streetchic hottie companion. The eighties-licious pinstripe suit. The chucks MY GOD HE'S WEARING CHUCKS. And no gimmickry: no question-mark pins on the lapels, no scarf, no celery. Just a quirky snappy dresser.

Did I mention the Ryan-Starr-lookalike HOTTIE COMPANION? Jesus, we had to make do with Louise Jameson! (No, yeah, okay she *was* kind of hot. And I have her autograph! OMG d0rkz!)

Anyway... erm... yeah. Just had to get that out of my system.

UPDATE: Yes, they are counting the movie - so Paul McGann is the official Eighth Doctor. You can climb down off of those tenterhooks now.

Apres Moi...

So as far as battling the forces of angry, angry Mother Earth goes this year, I'll take three days of soaking rain over devestating mudslides, cataclysmic hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes... But that doesn't mean I'm enjoying my 30th hour of waging a war of attrition against the steady leak into our basement. It began Wednesday afternoon and has cropped up for about four out of every eight hours since. Last night I had to set an alarm to go off every ten minutes, so that I could wake up, vacuum up the 20 gallons/hour of water that was making its way in, and drop onto the couch for another eight minutes of sleep.

Makes the night pass quickly, though! It was disturbing to wake up each time with my thoughts full of Ecclesiastes and the requirements of the Spirit - our clock radio recently tuned itself to the Christian station, and I've found it very effective for getting me out of bed...

Outside, the rain has picked up again, and the dribble has re-commenced. Operation Play-Doh Perimeter, which was semi-successful last night (keeping the seepage in a corner rather than letting it run rampant), is back in effect, though the tiny little blue and green levee is getting awfully soggy. Soon the water alarm I've placed in the trouble spot will go off, and I'll have to start vacuuming again - despite having ground my floor attachment down to a nub over the last couple days.

Weather reports call for the rain to finally, finally end tonight. Fingers crossed.

Biggest. Dork. Ever.

So here I am, about to spend my lunch hour watching a live updated web page from the Steve Jobs Keynote from the Worldwide Developers' Conference.

Because I've got my panties all twisted about rumors Apple may start working with Intel instead of IBM.

Sigh.

I'll keep you posted, as I'm sure you're all on the edge of yer damn seats.

UPDATE: ZOMFG the live site bonked just as the keynote started. TEH SUCK!

UPDATE: Okay, see, in my book this is NOT scintillating "LIVE" coverage:

Dreeems

Someone once told me that it is impossible to describe a dream you had to someone else without boring them to tears. I take that as a challenge. Here are three dreams I've had in the last two nights:

1) One of the playwrights in my theatre group takes me to visit a psychic homeless lady who lives in a gully behind the playwright's childhood home. The woman lives among piles of rubber stoppers from old laboratory equipment. We take a boat ride, but lose control of the boat and have to swim home.

2) I'm in Las Vegas, and a stripper has gotten a crush on me (the stripper is portrayed by an actress that I know). She takes off her robe and is quite attractively naked, though I'm sorry to note she has fake boobs, and not a very good job at that. One of her nipples is way out of place and has been drawn in with red lipstick. She climbs in my lap, getting her fake nipple lipstick incriminatingly on my shirt, and tries to kiss me. When I explain politely that, since I'm happily married, I can't do that, she gets very hurt and angry and stalks me through my next four dreams.

3) I'm at a ball game with a charity group of inner city kids. One of the kids is mistreated by an usher, so I go to complain. The stadium manager has gone home, so an overweight usherette takes me up to the office, which is full of movie executives. Barry Sonnenfeld and his goons come into the office with machine guns and begin shooting people. Overweight Usherette and I hide under a desk, but my feet keep sticking out, and Barry Sonnenfeld finds us. He chats with us amiably, prefatory to killing us, in good movie-villain style. He's killing studio execs because they tossed him out after the Sonnenfeld Interregnum, during which he had run the studio.

I want to tell him that my wife and I were just saying a few nights ago that Men in Black is one of the most perfectly executed movie comedies of all time, but suddenly I'm afraid that I'm remembering wrong, and Barry Sonnenfeld didn't actually direct MiB and will kill me for forgetting this.

UPDATE: I would like to invite Procrastinet readers to attempt to synopsize their dreams in hopefully non-boring fashion, in the comments... C'mon, you know you've got one stuck in your head...

All of which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Real Genius (paraphrased from memory):

Chris Knight: Was it the dream where you're standing on top of an Aztec pyramid in sun god robes and hundreds of naked women are bowing to you and throwing little pickles?

Mitch: ...no.

Knight: Why am I the only one who has that dream?

Gripe Gripe Grouse Grouse Blah Blah Whine

Is it just me, or is packing to move - anywhere, for any reason - the most unpleasant thing a person can go through short of outright tragedy? I mean, it's got nothing on a bad illness, or an accidental death or dismemberment. But as far as relatively quotidian nuisances, it really takes the cake.

I'm changing desks at my day job. Who knew that packing up all the books I've accumulated over the last $%# years here, and the drawers full of apparently every slip of paper I've handled in that time, all within the bounds of my 8x10 cubicle, could be such a major pain in the rump.

Strike up the tiny violins.

Passing observations:

GoogleMaps kicks ass. I went to give Scotso the Lawbot directions to our place today, and ended up throwing them out when GoogleMaps found a better route. I am humbled.

We're hosting the First Night Seder this year, for which MamaSan sprung for a cleaning lady for us. I would like to report that it is UTTERLY HUMILIATING to realize once and for all how little deep cleaning you actually do at home (despite Lisa's near-constant surface cleaning), as a very sweet and personable stranger who speaks next to no English is forced to paw through your dustbunny snowdrifts and under-dresser cat litter deposits. I missed most of it, being off at work, while Lisa hid in the basement. Thank you, Claudia, you're a trooper (and thank you, Nana Sanna, for sending Claudia to us).

And that brings to end this sparse posting week. Thank you for your kind attention.

Wow! The Pong! Tales of a Stinky Janitor

The bathroom janitor in my building at work is stinky.

I first noticed it about a year ago, when my pit stop happened to coincide with his fill-the-papers-and-wipe-up rounds. From fifteen feet across the room his b.o. was shocking.

He must shower periodically, because the level of stinky varies. I've run into him at mild, moderate and abusive levels of smell at various times. There are times he's merely unpleasant.

He also seems angry much of the time. Whether this is because he's a bathroom janitor, or because he stinks so damn bad, or because he's a bathroom janitor who stinks so damn bad, or what, I have no idea. All I know is that it's very disturbing when you're having a nice reading break in the stall (yeah, I bring a book, whaddya gonna make of it?!) to have a reeking, fetid dude slamming doors open and shut and pounding on toilet paper dispensers in barely repressed fury.

Today, he has really outdone himself. I went to the restroom just now. I passed a young, classy looking attorney about 10 feet from the bathroom, who was trailing a nasty pong. "Hm," I thought, "he doesn't look like the kind of guy who'd let himself get stinky." Then I opened the door to the bathroom, and realized the smell wasn't his - it was just stalking him down the hall.

The reek in there was so bad it was tactile, like rotten sweat-pudding. You know the bit in The Rock, where Nicholas Cage gets all covered in nerve gas and jams an eight-inch syringe of atropine straight into his heart? I'd have done that, if I could have.

It smelled so bad it made my neck twitch and my eyes water. It smelled so bad the image of a moist armpit, huge and room-filling, beat its way into my brain and wouldn't go away.

Worst of all: the dude wasn't even in there. Judging by the paper towels already collecting on the floor below the wastebasket, he hadn't been there for quite some while. But his pong lived on, curling and roiling like some great beast, attacking innocent passers-by and chasing them down the hall.

This guy should join the circus. He's got a rare talent, which is going totally to waste. He's like a superhero with a terrible superpower. "Beware, evildoers, for THE STENCH is upon you!" I bet he doesn't even have to walk places. He can just float on a big slimy cloud of stank.

A Sad State of Consumer Affairs

For the last long while, at least a year or maybe more, we've been using whitening tooth paste. Because, well, you're standing there in front of the toothpastes, and some say "Whitening!" and some don't, and you're all like "well god damned if I'm going to take that lame old-skool non-whitening shit when I've got this cutting-edge whitening joint right here."

I happened to take a good look at my teeth last week. In so doing, I noticed that they were whiter than they used to be. Like, WAY whiter. Orders of magnitude whiter. I was flummoxed.

And I realized in that moment that it had never once occurred to me that the stuff might actually work.

Discovering that a product for which I had paid actually did what it purported to do was the most surprising moment of my whole week.

I was buying it. I was using it. I was choosing it over other options. But I NEVER EXPECTED IT TO WORK. And in spite of that presumption of uselessness, I never even considered NOT buying it.

Grab my leash. They've got me trained.

I've Been Graphed!

Thanks to "red091077", I have now been fully analyzed. I'm startled to receive only middling scores for Narcissism and Self-absorbtion, though my Vanity score makes me happy.

Take your own voyage of self-discovery here.

BLARGH!

So I was poking around on The Sun UK's "Top 20 Viral Emails" page (can't link to it directly, but you can go to the Sun's main page and find it there if you look around) and I found an image which has now made me sick.

And so, in some limited recreation of The Ring, I pass it along to you. I strongly advise you NOT TO LOOK AT THIS PICTURE.

If, however, you DO look at that picture, know one thing - it's just a .jpg. It's not animated. Nothing is really moving. That's just you going slowly out of your mind.

Keep looking for too long and you'll want to barf.

You've been warned.

Giant for a Moment

So I'm on my way to lunch and I stop by the lavatory. I end up using the low-on-the-wall, kid-sized urinal, as it is the one nearest the don't-look-at-my-penis barrier on which I have balanced my sandwich (safely zip-locked) and the Cory Doctorow novel I'm planning to read at lunch.

And for just a moment, whizzing away into the bath fixture far below, I felt the extremely realistic illusion that I was hugely, toweringly tall. NBA player tall. Robert Wadlow tall (and that's really tall).

Totally gratifying.

102.4 = Lie Down, Stay Down

Okay, so it is very hard to be stoic while cooking up a fever over 102. After a week that involved opening not one but two shows, while planning for two more this week and next, my body clearly decided it was time for me to lie down and stay down.

I started hallucinating; in my fog it seemed like someone had chosen Beyonce to sing all the songs at the Oscars. And I had this weird flashback to the early 90s - I swear, I thought Counting Crows was there. But I must have just been dreaming because there's NO WAY Durwitz would still have his hair like that in 2005, right?

UPDATE:

Well, despite the fever receding below a slow braising, whatever bug is currently monkeying with my system figured out some new tricks yesterday, and I managed to eat exactly four and a half saltines and eight forkfuls of plain pasta. Whee! I won't go into the rest of the details - when it's about the baby, at least I can say "no, but it's CUTE..."

Eating today, cautiously. Up and around, also cautiously. Whee!

Posthumous Implant Scavenging - Now with the Personal Touch!

I wrote a few weeks ago about Gustavo Limon, a quadriplegic who is selling the neuroprosthetic implant that lets him use his arm (possession to be taken by the buyer after Mr. Limon's presumably natural demise). He's trying to raise $99,999 to fund a documentary about his travel across Africa.

In a recursion loop only possible on these newfangled internets we've got, Mr. Limon saw my article and is now citing it in his new ads on Craigslist. He also left a comment on my original article, quite rightly pointing out that "Hey, how many others would be willing to sell their right arm to make a difference in this world?"

Well, when you put it that way, I'm glad to help. And the movie project, which he describes on his site, really does sound potentially neat-o, especially the bits about the collision of hi-tech (like the neuroprosthetic implant in question, his powered wheelchair, etc.) with no-tech (like, oh, most of sub-Saharan Africa).

But, Mr. Limon, I would be grateful if you can explain why your new ad includes a picture of you unconscious on the floor next to a hospital bed?

It's a bit disturbing, unless of course you're trying to create an image for the potential buyer of the heady moment when the implant becomes theirs... Which, yeah, no, that's pretty disturbing too.

And We're Back

Wow. So this past weekend our webhost came under a massive hacker attack. The server was compromised and every .html file was replaced with the hacker's material - which consisted of some very lame looking heavy-metal-ish logo work (a dragon wrapped around a rose or some crap) and a long bit of text in Spanish.

The host figured out what had happened and undid the damage, restoring from an old backup file - which is why for the last three days the posts only read up to 12/29/2004. It took another couple days for Procrastinet to come back online, as I'm using an older version of Movable Type that didn't get along well with the new server security measures, but now we're back. And with no lost data, as the databases were uncompromised.

Phew!

So, big thanks to the valiant folks at Xlan for spending several hairy days fighting off the scumbags and fuckos of the online world.

UPDATE: We're still clearly loading slowly, and this post glitched a few times as I tried to publish it, so we're not totally out of the woods...

For Your Personal Collection of NEUROPROSTHETIC IMPLANTS

Via craigslist (well, really, where else) you have the once in a lifetime opportunity to buy this guy's neuroprosthetic implant:

(The implant is in the guy on the right, not Bob Dole)

The man, a quadriplegic named Gustavo Limon, is trying to raise either $9,999 or $99,999, depending on whether you believe the title of the ad or the body (and really, how can you criticise the typing of a guy who's using a NEUROPROSTHETIC IMPLANT to type AT ALL) to fund his movie, A Quad In Africa, which will be a documentary about him making a trip across sub-Saharan Africa as "a demonstration of struggle, determination, good will, and the trust of others and technologies (old and new)." To do so, he is selling the ownership of the implant which helps him move his arm:

The catch is, the lucky buyer won't get the device until Mr. Limon's demise. He does not indicate a prospective time frame.

Mr. Limon is appropriately philosophical about the fate of his implant. Quoth the ad:

This sale includes legal fees to ensure extraction of implant. Selling to fund my documentary as I need funds and implant does me no good upon dying.

In what may be considered a fit of optimism, he suggests that the sale would be of interest "for inclusion into a museum or private collection of neuroprosthesis." Which leads naturally to the question of how many private collectors of neuroprostheses regularly troll Craigslist, you know, just in case.

The first page of the Quad in Africa site bears the unfortunately-formatted title "What is a Quad in Africa?" which sounds like a joke I don't really want to know the punchline to.

I have to admit - I started writing about this as a bit of a sideshow post, because, you know, the guy is SELLING AN IMPLANT ON CRAIGSLIST... but the more I think about it the more it's actually kind of amazing. You go, Mr. Limon.

An Open Letter to Sofia Coppola

Dear Ms. Coppola:

Last night I watched Lost In Translation, via my newly reissued Netflix membership. Sorry it took me so long - what can I say, it's been a crazy year or two. Congratulations on all of the acclaim that the movie has brought you.

I must say, however, that I am concerned about the long-term effects of that acclaim on your career and artistry, as I'm afraid it may have reinforced and supported some bad decisions - or, more to the point, one egregiously bad, movie-ruiningly bad, scornfully and contemptuously bad decision - which you made in regards to the film.

[SPOILER ALERT: Anyone who is living even farther under a rock than I am and has thus not yet seen Lost In Translation should be aware that I am about to give away the "ending" of the movie, after the jump, below. You have been warned.]

I refer, as you have probably already guessed, to your decision to render Bob's last line to Charlotte inaudible to the audience.

Now, I am sure you have many justifications in your mind for this decision. It is probably, to you, the entire conceptual cornerstone of the movie, the feather in the cap of the whole achievement.

You are incorrect. It is crap. And a cop out. And an insult to those who have spent one hour and thirty-one minutes of their lives watching your movie to that point.

Why do I say this with such assurance? Here's why:

There's this little thing in the world of dramaturgy (or, to put it less pretentiously, "storytelling") called "Dramatic Structure." It's probably very passe among the cinema cognoscenti, but it is important to pay heed to nonetheless.

In this Dramatic Structure there is, traditionally, something that scholars refer to as the "Dramatic Question," and it is in pursuit of the answer to this question that the audience engages with the narrative at hand. One classic example is in Oedipus Rex, when the audience wonders, throughout, "when Oedipus learns that he has, in fact, killed his father and married his mother, will he/won't he totally freak out and gouge his eyes out and wander mad for the rest of his lifetime." The answer, as it transpires, is that he will.

With me? Good.

Since filmmakers, for all their high-falutin ways, are fundamentally not that far removed from the shaman dancing around the fire telling the assembled tribe how Serpent boinked Turtle and made The World, films tend to contain at least the rudiments of Dramatic Structure, including a Dramatic Question. It may surprise you to hear it, but your film bears these primitive artifacts.

The Dramatic Question, if I may be so bold, could be stated as "will/won't Bob and Charlotte figure out a satisfactory conclusion to their impossible situation." That's why we're watching. That's why we care.

You may have thought that we were watching to admire the filmmaking, to get a (well-executed) simulation of a purgatorial travel experience in an unfamiliar city, or for many other possible reasons. These are, no doubt, factors, but they can't really be called primary.

No, Ms. Coppola, primary is the vulgar interest in people - to wit, the people that your movie purports to be about - and the situations these people find themselves in and try to deal with.

When writing your screenplay, you had the power to answer that question in any way you chose. You could have answered "no, they will not figure out a satisfactory conclusion, because their situation is, in fact, intractable." This would have set you the challenge of making that decision acceptable to an audience who has invested the above-reference 91 minutes, but it is in itself a totally valid choice.

Alternatively, choosing as you did to answer "yes, they will indeed figure out a satisfactory conclusion," you set yourself the challenge of figuring out what, in fact, that conclusion *was.*

Except you weaselled, didn't you. You had your actors mime for us their satisfaction, without letting us poor schlubs in on how they pulled it off. And in so doing, you undercut everything the movie had, to that point, achieved - because the sum of that achievement was that we actually gave two shits what the answer turned out to be.

I'm sorry that I had to resort to this public dressing-down, and to the draconian measure of rating your otherwise quite excellent movie a mere two stars on Netflix. But I'm convinced that in the long run you'll see I have your best interests in mind.

I apologize again for weighing in so late, and hope that I have reached you in time. If you wish, I'd be more than happy to take a look at drafts of your future projects to prevent further mishaps along these lines.

Best of luck,
R

Barfblogging

We used to call Max "The Emperor" a lot. He was a charming, charismatic, outgoing and generally pleasant baby, but he had demands. And woe betide anyone who refused to fulfill those demands. The Emperor was unamused.

He's still got firm opinions about what needs to happen and when, but he delivers them mostly in a more typical toddlery fashion now: pointing, yelling, whining, etc. The British would call it "whinging," and actually that captures the sound of it better.

But in his high chair, he's still the Emperor. Last night I plonked a small pile of green beans in front of him, holding the chicken nuggets in reserve so that, hopefully, he would eat something that was neither bread nor breaded. With the affronted reserve of a fine diner who finds a roach in their crudite, he carefully picked up each string bean, held them out over the edge of the tray between two fingers - with, I swear to you, the other fingers extended delicately like a marm sipping tea - and dropped them one at a time on the floor.

Fine.

So we gave him his chopped up chicken nuggets. Most of which he ate, with the usual tithe that had to be ritually smeared into his hair, fed to the cat, wiped on the sofa, or scattered over his head like fairy dust. When he was done, the Emperor requested removal from his throne ("Upf!"). I fished into his bib to retrieve whatever food had been lost, and pulled out a handful of chopped up nuggets and one whole one.

"Finish those," I said, "and then you can come up."

"Upf..." he said, sulkily, and set about finishing off the pile.

When he was done with the chopped bits, he began waving the whole nugget (one of the Weaver kind which is, horrifyingly, pressed into the shape of a small drumstick) like a mad conductor. "Eat it, honey," said his mother. "But it's whole, so chew it up good. With your teeth."

"Teees" says Max. And shoves the entire nugget into his mouth whole.

The process of attempting to ingest a whole nugget gave Max (and, let's be honest, his mother and I) great amusement for a few minutes. Every time he chewed, some of it would push out of his mouth, where he would stuff it back in with both hands. Then he'd laugh about it, which would blow bits of nugget across the table. Then we'd laugh at that, which would make him hambone it even more. At one point I'd swear his hand disappeared up to the wrist and re-emerged covered in nugget.

Then it all went wrong. He's laughing, grinning, stuffing away, and suddenly a bit of nugget must have hit the wrong bit of the back of his throat. His brow furrowed. "Aaaah!" he said.

"What'sa matter, baby?" I asked.

"AAAAA!" he said, looking around with increasing franticness.

"Well, spit it out!" says his mother.

So Max opens his mouth and pushes with his tongue and the unswallowed bits of nugget fall out onto his bib. "Good!" says Lisa. "See? That was eas--"

His mouth still open, Max's eyes widened a bit. And, like a grade school science fair paper mache volcano overflowing with baking soda and vinegar, the remainder of his dinner came bubbling calmly out.

Max seemed confused as to what was going on, and began looking around for the cause. Which, of course, merely dispersed the barf over more of the floor, the high chair, and himself.

When he was all done, Lisa and I looked at each other with the resigned look which will be familiar to all parents. It's the look you share whenever your child does something biological and gross that will require a great deal of completely yucky cleaning. It's a resigned, passive, defeated look. But there's also a strange, martyr-like acceptance. "Yep," says the look, "so that happened..."

Max paused for a moment, as if waiting to see if anything else was going to go awry. Clearly, all systems had returned to equilibrium. He looked at us, happily. "Upf!" he cried.

So Lisa drew a bath, and I tried to strip him naked without smearing more of dinner on himself or our bed, and I tried unsuccessfully to keep the cats from eating off the burpee I used to clean the high chair and thereby getting digested nugget on themselves, and I disassembled the high chair to clean all the crannies that had gotten doused.

And next time, when the Emperor says it's time to get Upf, well then upf he will get.

Smokeblogging

Ever since 9/11, every time I pass a window at work, I cast a quick barely-conscious glance over the skyline, making sure there aren't any plumes of smoke. Last night I had a dream involving a passenger jet plummeting into a city, and today as I walk past a conference room I see a huge gout of smoke furling up from Brooklyn.

Something in DUMBO or nearby is energetically on fire, and has been for the last half hour or so. There are no threads of white in the smoke yet, so the FDNY has yet to get a significant stream of water on it. Seems to be a building, with smoke coming from the center and the far side, as far as I can tell.

I'm sure it's just a regular old building fire (albeit a big and nasty one). Still - gave me quite a turn.

UPDATE:

If I have a cameraphone I might as well use it, right?

Storms and Family

I posted a couple weeks ago about our family connection to this year's hurricane season.

When we found out that both "Ivan" and "Lisa" (my wife's name, and her father's) were on the list this year, we began joking that Ivan was going to be massive and destructive, and I speculated that Lisa would flare up just long enough to get a name, then drop back down into a "tropical depression" and sort of wander around the Atlantic somewhere.

Well, Lisa is still a tropical storm, but she's having trouble getting organized:

And, amazingly, Ivan has resurrected himself as a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Which led to this poignant screen capture:

Lisa's dad has been gone for 14 years now, so it would be deeply startling if he suddenly reappeared. But right now, satellite imagery shows us Ivan (middle far left, in the Gulf) and Lisa (bottom right) together again.

(click on picture for full size, which is HUGE).

All images are from NOAA, which (along with the National Hurricane Center) are fascinating to read during storm season. For instance, NOAA is currently running a story full of hi-def aerial shots of the post-Ivan destruction in the Gulf.

The Talented Shot Girls of New Orleans

As a teaser for the full New Orleans Bachelor Party Diary (Public Edition), let me introduce you to one of the most astounding people we met: the Shot Girl on Bourbon Street.

(that's her on the left - as a